Lately
…I am pondering the amount of time it takes for a cool thing seen on the Internet to go from “Holy shit, that’s the most awesome thing ever!” to “Holy shit, that thing? I’ve had it forwarded to me 327 times and seen it on 17 different blogs. Fuck that thing and every dipshit who promotes it.”
That time seems to shorten continuously. Right now it’s about two days, maybe three. Certainly not as long as a week.
The thing that set off my irritation meter today was that guy who does the teeny-tiny pencil lead carvings. I first saw those a few weeks ago, maybe two, and I was blown away. Jeez they are teeny and tiny and intricate. Impressive.
And then I started to see them in more and more places. It seemed to be some kind of insane crossover that showed up on art and design blogs, living blogs, random cool shit blogs, tech blogs. Everyone seemed to think this fit into their blog genre, and wanted to share. But instead of being initially impressed and then glad that so many people were celebrating this artist, I began to feel… irritated. The work had not changed, but my perception of it shifted as it became less novel to me. I couldn’t even just gloss over the continued mentions, they started to almost enrage me. THAT GUY AGAIN? WTF MORONS!? Was in my head more than it should have been.
And it seems the time it takes for that to happen is shortening. I see a thing three times, maybe four, and the thing and all people associated with the thing earn my immediate scorn.
My brain craves novel amusements, thinks of them as its due. My brain does not want your same old tired shit that it already saw yesterday, that shit should no longer exist! My brain wants fresh fun, god damn it.
Other things that have lately enraged me with their ubiquity: the video of the cat fighting its own reflection in the floor. Posts about how Glenn Beck is hurting America (yeah I know, not news.) Everyone who retweets The Oatmeal. Recaps about the show Mad Men, on many many blogs that had nothing to do with TV shows. (Ditto posts about Lost.) I don’t watch that show, and thus who cares? I already read that blog, why ask me to read it again? Why are you clogging my interwebs with this nonsense?
It’s like the more things become customized to cater to my tastes, the less patience I have for things that are not specifically suited to my desires at that moment. And I do not know how to turn this irritation and lack of patience off.
I do not enjoy spending half the day in enraged contempt at things that enter my overloaded data-stream and are judged irrelevant. But what is the answer? Turn the data stream off? Have less access to less information? How does one learn to gracefully tolerate the same information flying at them nonstop all day? Because that’s the issue. I am already sorting mental wheat from chaff all damn day. It’s hard to process all the information coming in. When the information repeats, it’s like it’s doing it specifically on purpose to clog up my already overburdened neurons. Hence the irritation. And yet, this is not a phenomenon that will go away. If I see a cool thing I want to share it, and my friends will want to share it, and other blogs will want so share it, that’s the way memes work. And with various info streams all feeding in, I am likely to see intricate pencil carvings guy on Twitter (MUST READ!) and Google Reader (analyzed by twenty art and style blogs + Boing Boing) and on Facebook (have you guys seen this guy OMG) and who knows where else. So it’s up to me to manage my irritation at the audacity of a thing existing past the time when I deem it relevant or desired. But how to do that?
So that’s what I have been pondering lately. Tips welcome.
Filed under: personal ramblings | Comments (5)5 Responses to “Lately”
Leave a Reply
Ok, I have no problem with someone forwarding to me a funny/interesting email that they think I might enjoy. Where it irritates is when someone forwards me 12 emails just because other people forwarded them to me. Could people at least be discerning about what they send me?
I don’t know if I’ve ranted here or on my own blog about this in the past, but I think that the “forward” button should be removed from all email programs and if you want to share an email with someone else then you have to type it out yourself and insert any images – suddenly it wouldn’t seem quite as important to share all those emails with the world.
From what you’re saying SBG, it is to me the difference between going to a bookstore and browsing around for an hour or so for a book you want (and probably finding something new in there that is of interest) and recieving an email from Amazon telling you that “these books have just been released and you mightbe interested in them” – it takes all the fun out of the discovery.
So my problem is more akin to going to the book store, browsing for the books I want, purchasing them, and THEN getting an email from Amazon about “here are some books you might like!” when those books are sitting on my table. And then I delete that email and get an email from Barnes & Noble (another bookseller over here) “Have you considered these books, perfectly suited to your interests?” and then seeing an online review of those same books at Goodreads. And then seeing an online review of those books at The Library Thing. And then getting an email from Amazon again, in case I forgot to read the first one. Which, by then I want to hurl my own books into the front yard, I am so sick of hearing about them. I guess I am more irritated by the ubiquity and the loss of anything feeling interesting or unique.
I’ve just read something slightly sad this morning that typifies the problem: The Oxford English Dictionary, which in its multi-volume form has been the definitive version of British English for over 150 years will only be made available online in its 3rd edition. Although apparently it won’t be published for another 30 years, it will be a sad loss for browsers who like to set out to look someothing up, then end up discovering other things.
Also, people have, for the most part, stopped forwarding me little god-angel bless you thingies. Which is pretty awesome when I stop to think about it. That always annoyed the crap out of me. I always wanted to respond with, “Dear person, I’m not a member of your religion, and I find nothing intrinsically cute and/or cuddly about dead babies with harps. Please refrain from sharing them.”