It is rare that anyone in this society expresses sympathy for the struggling artist. Quite frankly, with very few exceptions, no one cares about struggling artists but the struggling artists themselves--not even their more successful brethren. (As Balzac put it when writing of the publishing world in Lost Illusions, "the most brutal bookseller in the trade is not so insolent, so hard-hearted to a newcomer as" they, for where a "bookseller sees a possible loss of money" in a newcomer's manuscript, a successful author sees--"dreads"--in the newcomer "a possible rival," with the result that "the first shows you the door, the second crushes the life out of you.")
The result is that such expressions of sympathy from people who were not struggling artists have tended to get my attention in the past--until time and again the reference to the troubles of artists proved to be just a hook for another rant about the glories of copyright and attack on anyone not taking a maximalist view of such rights as scum. That said, I will not get into the rights and wrongs of copyright here--but the plain and simple matter of the fact is that sterner enforcement of copyright laws is just not going to do much for the newcomer. Such laws defend the interests of those who possess intellectual property. They do nothing for those who have yet to produce any of commercial value. The standard copyright supporter's position is that a strong copyright regime incentivizes the creation of such property--but those struggling artists need a lot more than that if they are to do so successfully, and those professing concern for them show no interest in that whatsoever.
After all, if we grant what copyright's supporters say, and that a more stringent copyright regime does leave, for example, publishers with fatter profits, what are they likely to do with them? Give newcomers more chances? Only those who have no understanding of publishing, business or the neoliberal age can imagine that they would prefer this to a course of new mergers and acquisitions, or financial engineering, because publishers exist to make money, not produce books (and not even necessarily make money by producing books if they can get more, faster, with greater certainty in some other way)--the monuments that young authors rear with their life's blood, as Balzac put it, to them "simply a good or a bad speculation," and in the view of publishers, generally a bad one, whatever the merits of the work. Alas, a refusal to acknowledge such facts is a requirement in those given platforms from which one can reach an appreciable audience in our time, helping make the reference to the interests of struggling writers the cynical thing that it is.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
What Irony is Really About: Superiority Without Responsibility
The word "irony" is much misused, so much so that reflecting the situation the writers of Teen Titans Go! actually had one episode in which such misuse by other members of the team had Robin devoting much of one of their adventures to explaining the concept, to the point of giving them an eighth grade English class explanation of the differences between verbal, dramatic and situational irony (as they went through one of their adventures, of course).
Sound as far as it went, it was also consistent with the fact that even those who actually use the word "irony" with impeccable correctness from the standpoint of denotation and syntax are not often sensitive to what it means to look at others and their troubles "ironically," namely the sense of superiority without responsibility involved, for instance, "I can see that this person is heading for a fall, but I can just sit back and enjoy that."
It is the outlook of the self-satisfied aristocrat without respect, sympathy, empathy for lesser beings, whose destruction he takes as entertainment, and the history of art being what it is, pervasive across our inheritance of higher culture, widespread today, and altogether absolutely irresistible to a middlebrow mind--which is why we see so much of it about, all as it is a rare occurrence that anyone points out that this might not be an entirely healthy state.
Sound as far as it went, it was also consistent with the fact that even those who actually use the word "irony" with impeccable correctness from the standpoint of denotation and syntax are not often sensitive to what it means to look at others and their troubles "ironically," namely the sense of superiority without responsibility involved, for instance, "I can see that this person is heading for a fall, but I can just sit back and enjoy that."
It is the outlook of the self-satisfied aristocrat without respect, sympathy, empathy for lesser beings, whose destruction he takes as entertainment, and the history of art being what it is, pervasive across our inheritance of higher culture, widespread today, and altogether absolutely irresistible to a middlebrow mind--which is why we see so much of it about, all as it is a rare occurrence that anyone points out that this might not be an entirely healthy state.
"But He's So Smart!"
It does not seem uncommon for a certain sort of person to defend a position on the basis of its endorsement by some public figure alleged to have a higher than normal level of intelligence.
"But he's so smart!" they will say when anyone challenges them on this.
It is a case of that very basic logical fallacy, the "appeal to authority," one that is the more blatant because alleged high general intelligence is the source of the authority on what may be a very specialized topic, addressing which high intelligence may simply not mean much unless it has been trained and informed and, of course, put to use on the problem in a serious way, which is far from always being the case. The intelligent may on average be better-equipped to form a rigorously thought-out opinion, but they have their areas of special concern, and there are so many issues in the world, and only so many hours in the day, while even the greatest intelligence is uneven in its performance across the full gamut of mental tasks and subject matter, and even among the intelligent few are capable of wholly setting aside prejudice and self-interest. And they often offer opinions in line with all these limitations--even the genuinely accomplished offering only banalities and worse when they speak about something outside the area of their special expertise (and alas, not realizing it themselves).
The illogic of the approach is underlined by the selectivity of the approach, and its vulnerability. Those who appeal to the authority of intelligence in, for example, citing tech billionaires' statements in support of unrestricted capitalism cannot on this basis respond when someone cites that supreme icon of the Cult of Intelligence, Albert Einstein, in defense of the opposite--remembering that he published "Why Socialism?" in the very first issue of the Monthly Review. Indeed, taking that into account it becomes very easy to argue that tech billionaires (even if one accepts the far from unimpeachable claims for their "superior" intelligence) support capitalism not because they have reasoned out that this is best for society, but because they are billionaire capitalists who, perhaps knowing and caring nothing about anything else, are selfishly defending their positions of extreme privilege.
"But he's so smart!" they will say when anyone challenges them on this.
It is a case of that very basic logical fallacy, the "appeal to authority," one that is the more blatant because alleged high general intelligence is the source of the authority on what may be a very specialized topic, addressing which high intelligence may simply not mean much unless it has been trained and informed and, of course, put to use on the problem in a serious way, which is far from always being the case. The intelligent may on average be better-equipped to form a rigorously thought-out opinion, but they have their areas of special concern, and there are so many issues in the world, and only so many hours in the day, while even the greatest intelligence is uneven in its performance across the full gamut of mental tasks and subject matter, and even among the intelligent few are capable of wholly setting aside prejudice and self-interest. And they often offer opinions in line with all these limitations--even the genuinely accomplished offering only banalities and worse when they speak about something outside the area of their special expertise (and alas, not realizing it themselves).
The illogic of the approach is underlined by the selectivity of the approach, and its vulnerability. Those who appeal to the authority of intelligence in, for example, citing tech billionaires' statements in support of unrestricted capitalism cannot on this basis respond when someone cites that supreme icon of the Cult of Intelligence, Albert Einstein, in defense of the opposite--remembering that he published "Why Socialism?" in the very first issue of the Monthly Review. Indeed, taking that into account it becomes very easy to argue that tech billionaires (even if one accepts the far from unimpeachable claims for their "superior" intelligence) support capitalism not because they have reasoned out that this is best for society, but because they are billionaire capitalists who, perhaps knowing and caring nothing about anything else, are selfishly defending their positions of extreme privilege.
That Cheerful "Think Again!"
I have always found the rhetorical device of stating some misapprehension supposedly existing among their audience and then saying or writing "Think again!" at the end exceedingly obnoxious.
There is not only an often unwarranted assumption that the audience is thinking the thing they will presume to show to be false because they know so much more than the idiots in the audience do (especially offensive when the misapprehension in question is something only the deeply ignorant or profoundly stupid are likely to believe), but the cheery self-satisfaction in slapping them in the face with their presumed misapprehension with that "Think again!"
"Think that eating a tub of fried lard every day is good for your health? Think again!"
Think that's good writing?
Think again!
There is not only an often unwarranted assumption that the audience is thinking the thing they will presume to show to be false because they know so much more than the idiots in the audience do (especially offensive when the misapprehension in question is something only the deeply ignorant or profoundly stupid are likely to believe), but the cheery self-satisfaction in slapping them in the face with their presumed misapprehension with that "Think again!"
"Think that eating a tub of fried lard every day is good for your health? Think again!"
Think that's good writing?
Think again!
The Obnoxiousness of Prefacing a Statement with the Word "Look"
A great many people seem to find a person's starting their statements with the word "Look" off-putting.
A significant part of it is likely the strong association of the tendency with a tone of exasperation, and condescension, which can seem at the least graceless and very easily insulting, which is inseparable from the fact that the exasperated, graceless, insulting person who has resorted to this usage is presuming to tell another person what to do. To command them. If someone can't stand being told what to do even by a person indisputably authorized to do so, how are they going to feel when someone with no grounds for bossing them about that way starts speaking to them in that manner? Especially when they are, as is very likely the case, dictating to them not simply what they are to do but how they are to see the world, forcing their self-serving subjectivity upon their own?
It is no accident that in an interview that is other than the usual flattering promotion by a courtier a cornered rat of a politician, lacking much in the way of self-awareness or alertness to the subtleties of the English language, or respect for the intelligence of an audience in many cases likely to be far smarter than they, so often begins an answer to their interlocutor with that word "Look"--a fact which does nothing to make the unpleasant usage seem any more genial to those who have to hear it.
A significant part of it is likely the strong association of the tendency with a tone of exasperation, and condescension, which can seem at the least graceless and very easily insulting, which is inseparable from the fact that the exasperated, graceless, insulting person who has resorted to this usage is presuming to tell another person what to do. To command them. If someone can't stand being told what to do even by a person indisputably authorized to do so, how are they going to feel when someone with no grounds for bossing them about that way starts speaking to them in that manner? Especially when they are, as is very likely the case, dictating to them not simply what they are to do but how they are to see the world, forcing their self-serving subjectivity upon their own?
It is no accident that in an interview that is other than the usual flattering promotion by a courtier a cornered rat of a politician, lacking much in the way of self-awareness or alertness to the subtleties of the English language, or respect for the intelligence of an audience in many cases likely to be far smarter than they, so often begins an answer to their interlocutor with that word "Look"--a fact which does nothing to make the unpleasant usage seem any more genial to those who have to hear it.
How Much Research Do Writers Really Do?
Considering the matter of writers' writing from fiction--a tendency so extreme that they do so even when they are writing about that professional activity they know personally, writing--it seems that a good explanation is, besides the demand that they produce work according to formula to get their paychecks, their essentially impressionable natures.
Of course, considering that one might come to that question of the research writers are supposed to do.
This has always been much on my mind because the writers I gravitated toward tended to write "information-heavy" narratives, much of the interest of which was their showing us something of the world, which they often treated in "big picture" fashion, doing which well often entailed a very heavy burden of research. Even as I found myself reading fewer techno-thrillers and more science fiction, and then less science fiction and more of what we call "classics," this stayed with me--such that even as my personal reading consisted more than before of Capital L literature, it was people like Balzac and Zola and Sinclair and Dreiser who got my time and my respect.
These days I suspect that figures like them, who are pretty unfashionable these days (today literary critics are apt to ignore Balzac, mock at Zola's science-mindedness, deride Sinclair for "message," treat Dreiser as "a dead dog"), are also unrepresentative in this way, most writers doing very little research at all. There are often practical reasons for that, especially for those who find their ability to make enough money to live on are driven to work at high speed, with all that means for the opportunity to properly research their subject matter. However, that impressionability seems to have given them that other way of thinking about their subject matter even when they were not so pressed--with the crummy result that fills up our bestseller lists with dreck, as I find myself far more interested in Balzac and Zola and Sinclair and Dreiser than the works our retailers are ceaselessly trying to foist upon us today.
Of course, considering that one might come to that question of the research writers are supposed to do.
These days I suspect that figures like them, who are pretty unfashionable these days (today literary critics are apt to ignore Balzac, mock at Zola's science-mindedness, deride Sinclair for "message," treat Dreiser as "a dead dog"), are also unrepresentative in this way, most writers doing very little research at all. There are often practical reasons for that, especially for those who find their ability to make enough money to live on are driven to work at high speed, with all that means for the opportunity to properly research their subject matter. However, that impressionability seems to have given them that other way of thinking about their subject matter even when they were not so pressed--with the crummy result that fills up our bestseller lists with dreck, as I find myself far more interested in Balzac and Zola and Sinclair and Dreiser than the works our retailers are ceaselessly trying to foist upon us today.
Why Do Writers So Often Write From Other Fiction Instead of Life?
Where the answer to the question that is this post's title is concerned my thought had long been that it was a matter of plain and simple laziness--hacks taking the path of least resistance, and relentlessly encouraged in this by the Dauriats of the industry, whose determination to pay for what is most easily sold within the market they have created through the exercise of their power to the crassest ends leaves them open to only a painfully limited range of material.
Yet considering the view that artists are a "sensitive" lot working in unconscious and impressionistic rather than conscious and analytical ways suggests that there is something more. They go by their impressions--and the reality is that, in a mediated world, their impressions will be mediated ones, especially in regard to anything outside what is usually rather a narrow range of personal experience. Depicting, for example, police investigations, they are apt to have a head full of episodes of procedurals, and so this unavoidably influences what they are likely to write when they pen an episode of a procedural themselves--easily producing results like those atrocious episodes of Castle which I watched unsure of whether I was supposed to be taking it as a parody or not.
Yet considering the view that artists are a "sensitive" lot working in unconscious and impressionistic rather than conscious and analytical ways suggests that there is something more. They go by their impressions--and the reality is that, in a mediated world, their impressions will be mediated ones, especially in regard to anything outside what is usually rather a narrow range of personal experience. Depicting, for example, police investigations, they are apt to have a head full of episodes of procedurals, and so this unavoidably influences what they are likely to write when they pen an episode of a procedural themselves--easily producing results like those atrocious episodes of Castle which I watched unsure of whether I was supposed to be taking it as a parody or not.
Of the Term "Useful Idiots"
The term "useful idiots" to denote a person whom a cynical operative dupes into supporting a political agenda not their own apparently dates back to the article "Party Spirit in France" in the June 11, 1864 edition of Britain's The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art. The usage specifically referred to "a supremely foolish" citizen who gave Olivier Émile Ollivier, a formerly republican statesman increasingly siding with Napoleon III in these years of the "Second Empire," a convenient chance to defend his (to many, treacherous) actions.
However, the term has since been almost universally treated as a coinage of the Russian revolutionary and Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and in the associated memory used as both exemplifying the view of leftist leaders as vile cynics whose only motive is gaining, holding onto or increasing their personal power, and anyone who not merely followed them but was simply "soft" on the left as at best the dupes of such.
All of this, of course, is in spite of the inconvenient fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that Lenin ever said any such thing, or even anything from which such a meaning could be extracted. However, as the ubiquity of the belief that he did indicates the attribution is almost never questioned. Equally, anyone who says that Margaret Thatcher called any man riding a bus past the age of twenty-five is likely to have a right-winger immediately screaming in their face that "She never said that!" Not that "There's no proof that she ever said that," but a very confident "She never said that!" (Indeed, even when Thatcher was so obviously on the record as having said something similarly callous and insulting to working people, as with her notorious "There is no such thing" remark in reference to the existence of society her supporters, unable to say "She never said that!"--indeed, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation itself has the full text of the relevant interview up on their web site--insist "She never meant that!" when the easily checkable context, evident in the transcript on the web site, makes it all too clear that she meant exactly what she sounded like she meant, and indeed came off as even more sneering toward the disadvantaged when we do check the context and see her mocking the homeless for expecting help.)
One cannot call this respect for the facts, only respect for the piety of the politically orthodox, and the prejudices that go with that, making for an easy attitude toward the difference between fact and fiction in the one case, and pseudo-sticklerism for the facts in the other, each equally propagandistic.
However, the term has since been almost universally treated as a coinage of the Russian revolutionary and Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, and in the associated memory used as both exemplifying the view of leftist leaders as vile cynics whose only motive is gaining, holding onto or increasing their personal power, and anyone who not merely followed them but was simply "soft" on the left as at best the dupes of such.
All of this, of course, is in spite of the inconvenient fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that Lenin ever said any such thing, or even anything from which such a meaning could be extracted. However, as the ubiquity of the belief that he did indicates the attribution is almost never questioned. Equally, anyone who says that Margaret Thatcher called any man riding a bus past the age of twenty-five is likely to have a right-winger immediately screaming in their face that "She never said that!" Not that "There's no proof that she ever said that," but a very confident "She never said that!" (Indeed, even when Thatcher was so obviously on the record as having said something similarly callous and insulting to working people, as with her notorious "There is no such thing" remark in reference to the existence of society her supporters, unable to say "She never said that!"--indeed, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation itself has the full text of the relevant interview up on their web site--insist "She never meant that!" when the easily checkable context, evident in the transcript on the web site, makes it all too clear that she meant exactly what she sounded like she meant, and indeed came off as even more sneering toward the disadvantaged when we do check the context and see her mocking the homeless for expecting help.)
One cannot call this respect for the facts, only respect for the piety of the politically orthodox, and the prejudices that go with that, making for an easy attitude toward the difference between fact and fiction in the one case, and pseudo-sticklerism for the facts in the other, each equally propagandistic.
Of "Writer's Block" in Bad Fiction
One of the more irritating clichés of the writing life as depicted in pop culture is the ceaseless reference to "writer's block." The writer in question, perhaps in the middle of some project, perhaps after the completion of some project, simply cannot write another word.
Certainly writers do get "stuck" in their writing, for any number of reasons--stress and self-doubt as ever-present as they are unhelpful. Yet we see so much of it in pop cultural depictions of writing because it is so much easier to present to an unsophisticated audience than the multitude of other difficulties that writers face in their work--all as they would much rather present writers having trouble writing than writers who have no problem producing the words, but finding no takers for them, and still less succeeding in making any living from them, precisely because they have been so cowardly about telling the truth about their own business.
Alas, they are not necessarily worse than the practitioners of other profession that way.
Certainly writers do get "stuck" in their writing, for any number of reasons--stress and self-doubt as ever-present as they are unhelpful. Yet we see so much of it in pop cultural depictions of writing because it is so much easier to present to an unsophisticated audience than the multitude of other difficulties that writers face in their work--all as they would much rather present writers having trouble writing than writers who have no problem producing the words, but finding no takers for them, and still less succeeding in making any living from them, precisely because they have been so cowardly about telling the truth about their own business.
Alas, they are not necessarily worse than the practitioners of other profession that way.
Sonya Saraiya on David Fincher's The Social Network
A decade after its release Sonya Saraiya revisited David Fincher's The Social Network in a lengthy piece in Vanity Fair. As it happened her remarks about the film were less interesting than her remarks about Facebook in the real world--a thing that I suppose can't be helped given the profound limitations of the film.
There was, for example, her remarks about just how "toxic" her experience of the site was as she found herself subject to the post-graduation bragging of acquaintances about their new gigs, turning it into "a platform of envy--a poisonous, insidious sort that turned all of that anger and frustration inward, corroding my self-esteem and sending me into a sustained depression." Indeed, Saraiya initially thought Fincher's "Facebook" movie would be about what it was actually like to be a Facebook user, and what they felt during it--"that peculiar sense of isolation in the midst of purported connectedness," "the mingled pride and disappointment of seeing your life laid out in blue and black type," "the minor agonies of wanting people to like you on the internet."
Of course, the film had nothing to do with that, the movie not "Facebook: The Movie" but a much more personal story about Mark Zuckerberg becoming a tech billionaire. Saraiya reads it as a morality tale about ambition and money coming in ahead of principle and loyalty and friendship, but it is undeniable that the movie, in spite of the rather pathetic whining of some of Silicon Valley's courtiers in the press, is fundamentally a hyperbolic glorification of Zuckerberg. And indeed, referencing a piece the film's screenwriter Sorkin wrote for the New York Times some years later Ms. Saraiya suggests that "Sorkin is still too dazzled by the skills of a tech genius . . . to really blame Zuckerberg for what Facebook has become."
Why, precisely, is that the case? Reading that I find myself thinking about what Upton Sinclair had to say about artists, and what makes so many of them so obsequious to the rich and powerful and those in authority in Mammonart--their "sensitivity," their "impressionability," such that so many an artist "feels a real awe for authority," and sure "his sovereign is bigger in spirit . . . making him bigger in body," even when they are not in any direct way necessarily being paid to glorify them, the way they so often are.
So it would seem with Sorkin in relation to Zuckerberg--to his discredit.
I wonder: can Mr. Sorkin handle that truth?
There was, for example, her remarks about just how "toxic" her experience of the site was as she found herself subject to the post-graduation bragging of acquaintances about their new gigs, turning it into "a platform of envy--a poisonous, insidious sort that turned all of that anger and frustration inward, corroding my self-esteem and sending me into a sustained depression." Indeed, Saraiya initially thought Fincher's "Facebook" movie would be about what it was actually like to be a Facebook user, and what they felt during it--"that peculiar sense of isolation in the midst of purported connectedness," "the mingled pride and disappointment of seeing your life laid out in blue and black type," "the minor agonies of wanting people to like you on the internet."
Of course, the film had nothing to do with that, the movie not "Facebook: The Movie" but a much more personal story about Mark Zuckerberg becoming a tech billionaire. Saraiya reads it as a morality tale about ambition and money coming in ahead of principle and loyalty and friendship, but it is undeniable that the movie, in spite of the rather pathetic whining of some of Silicon Valley's courtiers in the press, is fundamentally a hyperbolic glorification of Zuckerberg. And indeed, referencing a piece the film's screenwriter Sorkin wrote for the New York Times some years later Ms. Saraiya suggests that "Sorkin is still too dazzled by the skills of a tech genius . . . to really blame Zuckerberg for what Facebook has become."
Why, precisely, is that the case? Reading that I find myself thinking about what Upton Sinclair had to say about artists, and what makes so many of them so obsequious to the rich and powerful and those in authority in Mammonart--their "sensitivity," their "impressionability," such that so many an artist "feels a real awe for authority," and sure "his sovereign is bigger in spirit . . . making him bigger in body," even when they are not in any direct way necessarily being paid to glorify them, the way they so often are.
So it would seem with Sorkin in relation to Zuckerberg--to his discredit.
I wonder: can Mr. Sorkin handle that truth?
Remembering David Fincher's The Social Network
I remember that when I heard that Aaron Sorkin was writing and David Fincher helming a film about the creation of Facebook my thought was "Who the hell wants to see that?"
As happened every so often I was wrong about that, the film actually proving a commercial success. (It was also a critical success, but never mind the opinions of courtiers or claqueurs for now.)
What interests me about that success as I look back is the apparent receptivity of the public to the particular crapola Sorkin and Fincher had to sell (for it is indeed crapola). Film critic Kevin Kearney (one of a few to comment on the film that I think can safely be considered neither courtier nor claqueur) summed it up well when he wrote that the film's makers try "to channel the enthusiasm of youth capitalism" and enthusiasm about "revolutionary potential of Internet" that were "associated with the 'dot-com' speculative bubble of the late 1990s," and the associated "market populist" crapola that, as Mr. Kearney puts it, "substitut[ed] a number of red herrings for the great social issues," as with "the upstarts with computer skills vs. the wealthy stuffed-shirts, the young vs. the old, the hip vs. the boring, and so forth" in a film that, whatever its pretensions, "blithely devot[ed] itself to sex, status and the art of being cool."
As I said, CRAPOLA!
All as, being what it is, the film has not aged particularly well, Americans these days looking rather more critically than before at the propaganda, such that even writers for a publication like Vanity Fair admit the film's having aged badly as the realities that flew right over the heads of Sorkin, Fincher, et. al. grow harder and harder for even the more credulous members of the public to ignore by the year, the month, perhaps even the week.
As happened every so often I was wrong about that, the film actually proving a commercial success. (It was also a critical success, but never mind the opinions of courtiers or claqueurs for now.)
What interests me about that success as I look back is the apparent receptivity of the public to the particular crapola Sorkin and Fincher had to sell (for it is indeed crapola). Film critic Kevin Kearney (one of a few to comment on the film that I think can safely be considered neither courtier nor claqueur) summed it up well when he wrote that the film's makers try "to channel the enthusiasm of youth capitalism" and enthusiasm about "revolutionary potential of Internet" that were "associated with the 'dot-com' speculative bubble of the late 1990s," and the associated "market populist" crapola that, as Mr. Kearney puts it, "substitut[ed] a number of red herrings for the great social issues," as with "the upstarts with computer skills vs. the wealthy stuffed-shirts, the young vs. the old, the hip vs. the boring, and so forth" in a film that, whatever its pretensions, "blithely devot[ed] itself to sex, status and the art of being cool."
As I said, CRAPOLA!
All as, being what it is, the film has not aged particularly well, Americans these days looking rather more critically than before at the propaganda, such that even writers for a publication like Vanity Fair admit the film's having aged badly as the realities that flew right over the heads of Sorkin, Fincher, et. al. grow harder and harder for even the more credulous members of the public to ignore by the year, the month, perhaps even the week.
Speculating About the Demographics of Hate-Watching
Let us, for the moment, accept the claims that there is a good deal of hate-watching out there (by which I mean really watching things they hate, rather than just saying they do).
Alas, even as the relevant media analysts insist that more people are doing so, they are fuzzy on who is doing so--all as it seems plausible that not everyone does so equally. (Certainly I don't bother with hate-watching. My personal response to seeing something I don't like is to simply change the channel or terminate the stream--if I have even made the mistake of bothering to turn on something I end up hating in the first place--and I find that I get more and more inclined to do this all the time.)
Might it be that hate-watching is something we see more among, for example, college graduates of the coastal cities of middlebrow attitudes and the people who imitate them, with all the addiction to elitism and snobbery and irony (I refrain here from using stronger words) that goes with that?
It doesn't seem implausible.
Alternatively might it be that hate-watching is something we see more among those demographics which may not like the ways in which television has changed in recent decades? For example, the shift away from casual and easy viewing to insanely overpraised Midcult pretension? Or who dislike the way the ever more pervasive and strident status politics of our time seem ever more constantly manifest in what is supposed to be the entertainment to which people look to take their minds off their troubles and relax? (I certainly suspect that what I have said about TV commercials carries over to TV more broadly, and it is undeniable that a lot of people are not loving it.) Could it be that rather than, for example, taking refuge in the more pleasing TV of a past era, at least for some of the time, they prefer to bash the present?
That doesn't seem implausible either. And it all seems to me to be worth a bit of consideration from those who study such things.
Alas, even as the relevant media analysts insist that more people are doing so, they are fuzzy on who is doing so--all as it seems plausible that not everyone does so equally. (Certainly I don't bother with hate-watching. My personal response to seeing something I don't like is to simply change the channel or terminate the stream--if I have even made the mistake of bothering to turn on something I end up hating in the first place--and I find that I get more and more inclined to do this all the time.)
Might it be that hate-watching is something we see more among, for example, college graduates of the coastal cities of middlebrow attitudes and the people who imitate them, with all the addiction to elitism and snobbery and irony (I refrain here from using stronger words) that goes with that?
It doesn't seem implausible.
Alternatively might it be that hate-watching is something we see more among those demographics which may not like the ways in which television has changed in recent decades? For example, the shift away from casual and easy viewing to insanely overpraised Midcult pretension? Or who dislike the way the ever more pervasive and strident status politics of our time seem ever more constantly manifest in what is supposed to be the entertainment to which people look to take their minds off their troubles and relax? (I certainly suspect that what I have said about TV commercials carries over to TV more broadly, and it is undeniable that a lot of people are not loving it.) Could it be that rather than, for example, taking refuge in the more pleasing TV of a past era, at least for some of the time, they prefer to bash the present?
That doesn't seem implausible either. And it all seems to me to be worth a bit of consideration from those who study such things.
Do People Really Hate-Watch So Much?
These days we hear ceaselessly of "hate-watching." This is not merely a matter of people watching things they don't like (because their partner wants to watch and makes them sit through it), but of people deliberately watching things they don't like for the pleasures to be had in despising them.
It seems plausible that a good many people are only saying they are "hate-watching"--perhaps because they are embarrassed to admit they actually enjoy the trash they are consuming (as with those who "watch ironically").
Yet it is not wholly inconceivable that more of this may be going on, partly because of the pathetic desire of some to feel superior to something, anything, at all, partly because the Internet offers no shortage of cesspools in which to wallow in one's own nastiness about the safely petty, partly because of the increasing tendency to distracted rather than engaged viewing encouraged by a host of factors (like people catching TV anywhere and everywhere on their smart phone rather than sitting down for a proper watch).
Still, one can picture something more serious going on. It may be that more people are so exhausted or stressed out that they can't get into anything really enjoyable, and find it easier to get pleasure out of mocking something bad rather than enjoying something good--perhaps all the more in as there is less casual, "easy," viewing in recent scripted production, and so many people take in so much of the execrable reality television that really does deserve all the insult that can be thrown at it. It may also be a matter of the extreme distance between what even people who are not incapable of enjoying a show or a movie actually experience when they see contemporary offerings as against what the increasingly loud claquing of the critics tells them they are supposed to be experiencing. (There was once a time when people laughed at the TV critics' unhinged outpourings of praise for The Sopranos, but alas this is standard now.) And it may be that what gets made now, reflecting our cultural politics, is inherently divisive--in contrast with the blander, more general audience-oriented fare of the past, pandering to some while showing utter contempt for the tastes of those outside the target audience, all as some are not just ready but eager to make a culture war out of anything and everything, and so rather than changing the channel on what they can't stand staying so that they can fight the good fight over at the review aggregators and everywhere else online.
It seems plausible that a good many people are only saying they are "hate-watching"--perhaps because they are embarrassed to admit they actually enjoy the trash they are consuming (as with those who "watch ironically").
Yet it is not wholly inconceivable that more of this may be going on, partly because of the pathetic desire of some to feel superior to something, anything, at all, partly because the Internet offers no shortage of cesspools in which to wallow in one's own nastiness about the safely petty, partly because of the increasing tendency to distracted rather than engaged viewing encouraged by a host of factors (like people catching TV anywhere and everywhere on their smart phone rather than sitting down for a proper watch).
Still, one can picture something more serious going on. It may be that more people are so exhausted or stressed out that they can't get into anything really enjoyable, and find it easier to get pleasure out of mocking something bad rather than enjoying something good--perhaps all the more in as there is less casual, "easy," viewing in recent scripted production, and so many people take in so much of the execrable reality television that really does deserve all the insult that can be thrown at it. It may also be a matter of the extreme distance between what even people who are not incapable of enjoying a show or a movie actually experience when they see contemporary offerings as against what the increasingly loud claquing of the critics tells them they are supposed to be experiencing. (There was once a time when people laughed at the TV critics' unhinged outpourings of praise for The Sopranos, but alas this is standard now.) And it may be that what gets made now, reflecting our cultural politics, is inherently divisive--in contrast with the blander, more general audience-oriented fare of the past, pandering to some while showing utter contempt for the tastes of those outside the target audience, all as some are not just ready but eager to make a culture war out of anything and everything, and so rather than changing the channel on what they can't stand staying so that they can fight the good fight over at the review aggregators and everywhere else online.
Of the Supermarket Self-Checkout Machine: A Few Thoughts
The use of self-checkout machines in supermarkets says a lot about the manner in which business has employed automation--just as does its use of the phone tree in customer service. It is more eager to reduce its reliance on human workers than to maintain a tolerable quality of service, and to that end prone to rush systems not yet ready for use into the workplace, and leave their remaining employees, and their customers, to suffer the resulting problems.
The courtiers of business in the press, the kind who call a Jack Welch or a Ken Lay or a Sam Bankman-Fried a "genius," use words such as "innovation," "entrepreneurship" and "leadership" to denote such things.
Real people use . . . other words to describe the practice.
The courtiers of business in the press, the kind who call a Jack Welch or a Ken Lay or a Sam Bankman-Fried a "genius," use words such as "innovation," "entrepreneurship" and "leadership" to denote such things.
Real people use . . . other words to describe the practice.
The User-Unfriendliness of Our Information Technology
Aubrey Plaza recently gave an interesting interview to the Wall Street Journal in which she owned up to never having seen the season of The White Lotus for which she has been nominated for an Emmy because she could not work the password system for the relevant streaming service.
Some may be tempted to laugh at Ms. Plaza, but I applaud her for admitting something that more people should be frank about, namely the extent to which functional people are being defeated by supposedly simple technological tasks, which seem less and less simple. Even as the general level of verbal and numerical literacy show every level of declining the standard of computer literacy expected of the user seems to be ever-increasing, reflected in how these days it seems that if you Google any problem you will find casual advice to go poking about in your registry editor to resolve the most minor-seeming issues--as if this were not a good way to brick your computer, especially if you are not an expert in such things, but have little alternative as the "easy" fixes seem to fix less and less all the time.
It is not what we expect--the conventional expectation that technologies grow more user-friendly, not less, with time, and it seems fair to discuss why this has not happened here the way it has with, for example, cars.
One plausible reason is the geometric increase in the performance and complexity of personal computers as against just about everything else, with the standardization of Internet connectivity, home networks and much else playing its part--and the ever-rising burden of cyber-security.
However, one can also argue for other less justifiable factors--as with that sign of decadence in product development, the creation of lots and lots of features that no user really wants or needs but which add to the complexity of the system so as to potentially cause additional problems, simply to justify selling a new thing rather than more of the old thing.
Less innocently there is operating system makers' obscene obsession with spying on everything computer users do in a manner George Orwell could not even begin to imagine, and locking them into "ecosystems" of their crappy products. (Thus is it the case that you can't just get the computer out of the box and turn it on and use it with the option of creating an account if you want to do so later on--rather you are required to create an account as part of a set-up process. In said process you are pressed to network with the computer all the company's other devices, never mind whether you actually own them or not. And you are barraged with advertising for their other wares before you can finish the set-up process--which, if you are canny, will include rooting around through their system's settings unchecking box after box after box to, as much as is possible, deny the company permission to take your information and lock it up in the clouds. And on and on it goes.)
It does not seem at all unreasonable to think all this has something to do with the notorious failure-proneness of our computers today--which leaves us devoting 10 to 20 percent of our computer time to just coping with problems according to a recent Danish study.
Put into automotive terms it is as if we were still in the days when idiots of the kind Booth Tarkington seems to have found so charming taunted motorists trying to repair their vehicles after they broke down by the side of the road with shouts of "Git a hoss!"--with the difference that where then cars were toys for the rich, today everyone is required to use a computer just to get through the day.
Some may be tempted to laugh at Ms. Plaza, but I applaud her for admitting something that more people should be frank about, namely the extent to which functional people are being defeated by supposedly simple technological tasks, which seem less and less simple. Even as the general level of verbal and numerical literacy show every level of declining the standard of computer literacy expected of the user seems to be ever-increasing, reflected in how these days it seems that if you Google any problem you will find casual advice to go poking about in your registry editor to resolve the most minor-seeming issues--as if this were not a good way to brick your computer, especially if you are not an expert in such things, but have little alternative as the "easy" fixes seem to fix less and less all the time.
It is not what we expect--the conventional expectation that technologies grow more user-friendly, not less, with time, and it seems fair to discuss why this has not happened here the way it has with, for example, cars.
One plausible reason is the geometric increase in the performance and complexity of personal computers as against just about everything else, with the standardization of Internet connectivity, home networks and much else playing its part--and the ever-rising burden of cyber-security.
However, one can also argue for other less justifiable factors--as with that sign of decadence in product development, the creation of lots and lots of features that no user really wants or needs but which add to the complexity of the system so as to potentially cause additional problems, simply to justify selling a new thing rather than more of the old thing.
Less innocently there is operating system makers' obscene obsession with spying on everything computer users do in a manner George Orwell could not even begin to imagine, and locking them into "ecosystems" of their crappy products. (Thus is it the case that you can't just get the computer out of the box and turn it on and use it with the option of creating an account if you want to do so later on--rather you are required to create an account as part of a set-up process. In said process you are pressed to network with the computer all the company's other devices, never mind whether you actually own them or not. And you are barraged with advertising for their other wares before you can finish the set-up process--which, if you are canny, will include rooting around through their system's settings unchecking box after box after box to, as much as is possible, deny the company permission to take your information and lock it up in the clouds. And on and on it goes.)
It does not seem at all unreasonable to think all this has something to do with the notorious failure-proneness of our computers today--which leaves us devoting 10 to 20 percent of our computer time to just coping with problems according to a recent Danish study.
Put into automotive terms it is as if we were still in the days when idiots of the kind Booth Tarkington seems to have found so charming taunted motorists trying to repair their vehicles after they broke down by the side of the road with shouts of "Git a hoss!"--with the difference that where then cars were toys for the rich, today everyone is required to use a computer just to get through the day.
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