I Don’t Care if Our Attention Spans Are Shorter

The other day I heard a statistic that caused the people around me to gasp in horror: people now have attention spans shorter than a goldfish, only 6 seconds. Shock! Amazement! Terror! Technology will destroy us and we won’t be able to have meaningful lives or relationships anymore and we’ll never learn things or grow as people because we can’t focus for more than 6 seconds.

Fun fact, it took me more than 6 seconds to write that paragraph, uninterrupted. All I did was write that paragraph, for more than 6 seconds. I wonder if attention span science isn’t as great as it’s cracked up to be? Or perhaps our attention spans change based on context. Huh.

But if I’m honest, I actually don’t give a rat’s ass if our attention spans have grown shorter. We’ve been hearing this same kind of complaint about new technologies for literally thousands of years. Our dear pal Socrates was opposed to writing because “[Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.” (From the Phaedrus).

People have complained about technologies ranging from the printing press, to the telephone, to television and beyond, convinced that each of these technological improvements will make us less intelligent, or maybe just destroy society. Amazingly, here we all still are, capable of functioning, making new discoveries, improving technology even further, and maybe still remotely intelligent.

Because here’s the deal: our minds change in reaction to the world around us. We are adaptable and flexible beings. We change to fit the environment that we live in. Perhaps we do have worse memories than the ancient Greeks did. But you know what? I don’t care. There is nothing inherently better about being able to remember more things. The world that we have today is one in which we don’t need to remember things as much as we used to. It’s incredibly rare that we won’t be around a computer, phone, or other device that allows us to look things up. Being able to remember vast stores of information is no longer actually very helpful.

Instead, what is helpful is being able to sort through huge amounts of information, cope in a setting where there are many competing distractions, and suss out what is important or useful or true at any given point. No one seems to be asking whether the changes that are happening in human brains (if they are in fact happening) are USEFUL. Are we losing memory to make space for quick shifts in focus that allow us to notice the hundreds of distractions but still move back to what we were doing before? Are our brains beginning to pick up more of an ability to focus on multiple things at once? Why do we always assume change is bad?

Nowhere are we taking the time to ask what we get out of the change. Amazingly, things like this tend to happen for a reason other than “kids these days.”

I can’t help but feel as if all this worry about shorter attention spans and bad memories is just more angry old men yelling at clouds. I have yet to see any criticisms of these changes in the human brain that actually tell me WHY it’s bad for our brains to change in these ways. They all assume that we’re already on board, that we all want really long, focused attention spans or great memories. And it seems like the reason that they assume we’re already on board is because those are things we’ve prized in the past so they must be good now, even though the world is different now, our needs and abilities are different now, work is different now. Different is not less, even if we couch the difference in terms of deficits.

So no, I don’t care if our attention spans are shorter. I care if we are functional in the world we’ve got. And overall we seem to be doing pretty well.

Woman

This is the final post in a series about Kesha’s album Rainbow. You can find the rest of the series here: 1, 2, 3, 4.

I have not addressed every song on Rainbow, but I think that this post is going to be the final post of the series, because I feel I’ve addressed most of the elements that are important to me. I’m going to wrap up with my favorite song, as well as a short discussion of why Kesha’s choice to release essays in conjunction with the album was, I think, absolutely brilliant.

So let’s talk about Woman.

Just take a moment with that.

Take a moment with Kesha’s fucking gold motherfucking outfit.

Take a moment with every single bird that Kesha flips.

Take a moment with backup singer Saundra Williams and how utterly glorious her side eye is.

Just take a moment.

I’m going to quote a big old chunk from Kesha’s essay about this song, because this essay is one of my favorites.

“I realized that for most of my life I was intimidated to even try and run in the leagues of the people I look up to. With “Woman,” I hope my fans will hear that wild spirit still strong inside me but this time it was created more raw, spontaneously and with all live instrumentation, which I found was a huge reason I loved the records I did love. There were one or two or 12 different people playing real instruments together, and all that real human energy is exciting and very fun to listen to. I wanted this song to capture that organic, raw, soulful sound and keep the imperfect moments in the recordings because I find the magic in the imperfections.”

This song is all about those organic moments, and I think that’s why I love it so much. I love the horns. I love the syncopation in the chorus. I love how many times she says motherfuckin’. This is a song that came straight from someone’s heart, with so much joy that she couldn’t seem to contain it. I LOVE that it is a song about being independent, adult, and responsible without being boring or stodgy, and without feeling a need to put down men (it just says she doesn’t need a man to hold her too tight. You can still have a relationship and be independent).

Perhaps my favorite thing about this song is that it’s tacky. I mean that in a totally loving way. Kesha is wearing an entirely gold, sparkly outfit. It’s ridiculous and my absolute favorite thing. She swears. She is unabashed. But that’s the thing: she doesn’t have to be some kind of put together lady to be an adult who is confident, beautiful, self sufficient, and AMAZING. This song sends the message that independence doesn’t mean one thing. It can mean what feels right and empowering to YOU.

To complement that message, in her essay Kesha writes “I really have to thank Stephen Wrabel and Drew Pearson for helping me through the past few years and making writing songs a beautiful thing again. Both of those men made my art/work safe and fun, and every session with the two of them was so healing.” First, way to give a huge middle finger to Dr. Doucheface without actually ever having to mention him, second, thank you for making me cry at the fact that you had to do art and work in a place that didn’t make you feel safe, and third, kudos for recognizing that THIS was what felt safe and healing for you, then putting that out there. It doesn’t look the same to everyone, but working with these two men was empowering for her, and I so appreciate her speaking openly about her process. Her use of the word “safe” feels incredibly important when we have folks freaking out about phrases like “safe space”.

The final thing I’d like to touch on in regards to Rainbow is Kesha’s choice(s) of media.

Assault and trauma are both incredibly complex things. Many people express their experiences of them through art. That art is often incredibly helpful to other people and can start a dialogue around trauma and assault. What’s interesting about that process is that more often than not the artist does not really join in the conversation ABOUT their art. Kesha has taken control of the dialogue from the start by writing essays that give more depth to her art.

Each of the essays allows readers to see how Kesha herself views the song, the stories behind the songs, and the history of her depression and eating disorder. Songs are not the best medium for a narrative or explanation, which is why I think Kesha’s choice to include essays is really useful to the overall understanding of this album as a process of healing. Combined with the visual elements of four music videos (which is a lot for an album that’s only 14 songs long), Kesha has created something that is truly multimedia. Especially since she released four songs early, each accompanied by a video and an essay, we got a tone for the album that said “this is bigger than the individual songs.”

Not only that, but there is play between the songs. Kesha repeatedly references herself as a kitty or cat (classic jazz language that plays into her change in genre in this album), in Rainbow she sings “You gotta learn to let go, put the past behind you”, a clear reference to Learn to Let Go (which helps us see the relationship between the two: Rainbow is your motivation for Learn to Let G0), and generally creates an album in which you know that the songs do not stand alone but are meant to be taken as a whole.

When Kesha writes in her essay on Hymn: “This song is dedicated to all the idealistic people around the world who refuse to turn their backs on progress, love and equality whenever they are challenged. It’s dedicated to the people who went out into the streets all over the world to protest against racism, hate and division of any kind. It’s also dedicated to anyone who feels like they are not understood by the world or respected for exactly who they are. It’s a hopeful song about all of these people — which I consider myself one of — and the power that we all have when we all come together,” you know that she’s paying attention. She knows that her album is about more than herself, and she is inviting a conversation. She says that she is creating a space for others. It makes the song bigger than a simple squad anthem and into an anthem for the oppressed.

These essays have turned a simple piece of art into a powerhouse of social justice work in my opinion. I am so impressed with everything Kesha has done to make this album not simply musically powerful, but also powerful in its message. I love you Kesha. This album is so important.

Rainbow, Spaceship, Learn to Let Go

This is part four in an exploration of Kesha’s new album ‘Rainbow’. Find parts 1, 2, and 3.

I’m not going to spend as much time on each individual song as I did on Praying and Boots, but instead will be clumping a few songs of similar themes together where it makes sense. In this case, there are quite a few songs on Rainbow that are about moving on, finding hope, or growing and changing after a challenging time. I’m going to focus on Rainbow, Spaceship, and Learn to Let Go for this post, as all three of these songs circulate around this attitude of healing and growing.

If I were to place these songs, they would be the songs of recovery, the ones that come after trauma, depression, an eating disorder, the darkest places. These are the songs that you can write when you’re coming out the other side. They are the joyful songs of the album, and I love that they coexist on an album with songs as honestly painful as Praying.

This is a side of Kesha that we don’t see very often and I really appreciate that she felt empowered to show it, to let us in to a sweet, naive version of herself. I love that part of her healing is not about being aggressive or strong or any of those things, but just being a kid again. She seems so intensely free in these songs and it feels very hopeful to me in a way that goes beyond the “you’ll find a rainbow” but in a way that says “you get to have joy after trauma.”

In her essay about Learn to Let Go, she writes “I’ve looked at this record, ‘Rainbow,’ as me being myself, Kesha Rose Sebert, my name without the dollar sign, genuinely for the first time ever. I mean that on every level but especially musically ― and that’s really scary for me.” This really comes through, especially in the video for Learn to Let Go, which puts home videos of Kesha as a child next to an adult Kesha reenacting the scenes.

It gives a depth to the song that says “I’m not just letting go, I’m remembering who I used to be, I’m uplifting the parts of myself that give me life.” This video is 100% my favorite of the videos for this album. It is so unself-conscious, so free, so wonderfully joyful. Watch it. Watch it again. It’s so good.

Rainbow was written while she was in rehab for her eating disorder. She describes it as her promise to herself. I personally don’t love it when people say “oh it will get better, just think about the future”, but knowing that this is her reminder to herself, her mantra that she can return to changes it for me. And there are some amazingly honest lines in it:

“And I know that I’m still fucked up
But aren’t we all, my love?
Darling, our scars make us who we are, are”

Even as the message of “you’ll find a rainbow” is far from deep, there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface here, and you can see it in the musicality that happens around the lines “so when the winds are howling strong…”. It’s vivid, orchestral, intense. The rainbow she’s looking for isn’t trite or small. It’s a respite from the chaos you can hear in these lines. I love the imagery of color everywhere, of kaleidoscopes, of seeing everything the world has to offer again. There’s more here than the silly phrases that many people use to describe gratitude or the good parts of life. Instead, there’s a recognition that the world holds layers of wonder and beauty. It speaks to the ways that many people who feel broken or hurt often experience the world differently from other people, which brings me to Spaceship.

Spaceship reads very neurodivergent to me. It’s a song about feeling as if you belong somewhere else, and waiting for your people to come and get you, bring you home. That experience is so common in the autistic community, as well as for others who deal with mental illness. While Rainbow is about finding joy in this world, Spaceship seems to be about finding a place that doesn’t exist in this world: somewhere that is safe and where you feel normal and acceptable. When paired with a lot of Kesha’s more youthful songs on this album, it speaks to the ways that we’re expected to conform as adults, and how often that means losing an innocence that doesn’t need to go.

Even as this album is more musically complex than her past two, it seems to have less “polish”. It’s less produced. It’s more authentic. These songs get to the heart of that and are in many ways the heart of this album. They are not dealing with the past or the trauma, they’re an adult reclaiming their identity and their self, regardless of what has happened or the difficulties of what has happened in their life. I find the vulnerable emotions and unrestrained joy really refreshing.

Praying

This is the third part of a series on Kesha’s new album ‘Rainbow’. Click for parts one and two.

Let’s start by all taking a look at the essay that she wrote to go along with the song. It starts by quoting the opening lines of her video. One of the things that has stuck out to me about this album is the decidedly upbeat tone of it. What has surprised me about that is the fact that it doesn’t annoy me. I think the reason for this is that while this album appears to be coming from a place where Kesha seems ok, it doesn’t shy away from where she has been before. This essay speaks very frankly of depression, and the intro to the video gave me chills: “Please just let me die. Being alive hurts too much.” 

Praying is one of the few songs in which Kesha openly and vulnerably lays out how bad it was for her, and in the essay she is even more open about how in recent years she has struggled mightily with depression. She never mentions why; we all know. The information she provides in the essay goes a long way towards understanding the power of Praying: while the song is about moving on, the essay tells us what she’s moving on from.

The depth of this song doesn’t come from poetic lyrics, but from simplicity. Kesha doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know (especially if you are one of the many people who has dealt with abuse or assault), but what’s important is that she is making art out of it: she has created a beautiful song and she is sharing this experience in a wildly public way. She’s taken a personal and vulnerable experience and become powerful through it.

Kesha’s voice in this song is something else entirely and is what creates a truly transcendent experience here. She writes about learning how to trust her voice throughout her prior tour, and that in this album she really wants to show it off. In Praying she does amazing things with her voice. There are layers of meaning when you understand that she was not confident of her instrument, her very body, until just recently, and then you hear her carrying an amazing ballad with the lyrics “You said that I was done. But you were wrong and now the best is yet to come.” She is not only asserting that, she’s fucking proving it with the musical quality of this song.

My favorite thing about Praying is that when you first hear it, it sounds a bit like a song of forgiveness. I don’t think this coulid be further from the truth. Even if Kesha says “I hope you find your peace”, the very next line is “falling on your knees”, implying that he needs to ask for forgiveness, he needs to change, he has not earned his peace or his forgiveness yet. She even says “Some things only God can forgive”. No, this is not a song about Kesha being the bigger person because FUCK the idea that she even needs to be. This is a song of Kesha saying “sometimes I think about you but mostly just to remember that I’m so much better without you.” She is speaking from the position of power, where for most of her relationship with Dr. Jerkwad she had little to no power.

Speaking of Dr. Jerkwad, my favorite thing about this song is that she doesn’t even bother to hide the fact that she’s talking about him. We all know it, we all know that she’s giving him the middle finger, and we all know that this song is her getting the final word.

The second half of this song is a fucking ANTHEM for all the people who have been hurt and abused, who were told that they were worthless. I have been amazed time and again at how much applause the line “I’m proud of who I am” gets (yes I’ve watched multiple live performances of this song). I can only imagine singing that line when you’re a woman of color or a trans woman or a disabled woman, feeling that those words get to be yours. Feeling that you get to tell the world, which has oppressed you for so long, “when I’m finished, they won’t even know your name.”

Whenever I hear Praying, I like to imagine an army of oppressed people singing that line to Neo Nazis and White Supremacists. I like to imagine singing it to my abusive ex. I like to imagine singing it to the asshole who raped my best friend. So rarely do women really get to be angry at their abusers, or throw threats of any kind at their abusers. Honestly it’s really fucking refreshing. Even more refreshing is a song that can move from raw depression to this kind of empowerment. Praying is pretty fucking amazing.

Boots

This is the second of a series about Kesha’s new album Rainbow. For the first post, click here.

Boots seems to be out of place in Rainbow. It doesn’t address the past, pain, or moving forward. But listening to Boots feels delightfully powerful to me. After sexual assault, it’s easy to feel like your sexuality, and especially your joy in your own body and sexuality has been stolen. I’ve known too many people who before sexual assault were joyfully, intensely sexual, and their sex life was a major part of their identity. Following assault, they have described the experience as “I don’t know how to do it anymore.” There’s insecurity, fear, and a sense that the ability to enjoy their own body has been taken away.

Which is why I love Boots.

Kesha has always been an artist who is unabashedly hedonistic. Her earlier albums were about drinking, partying, and sexing. Typically these topics have been reserved for male artists, and one of the reasons I love Kesha is that she isn’t afraid to say “yes I party and I have a good time, and you still need my consent.” Boots feels like a return to some essential parts of Kesha. I’m glad that Rainbow is a more mature album overall, and I think it’s got a lot more depth, but Kesha also strikes me as a simply joyful and fun loving human being (check out little Kesha’s dance moves in the Learn to Let Go video for reference). One of the hardest things about depression and trauma is finding things that make you joyful, reclaiming things in an untainted way.

Boots to me is that anthem. It’s the recognition that Kesha is still a sexual being and someone who is happily so. It feels so wonderfully joyful to have a song on this album about healing in which she reclaims her sexuality. When assault can rob someone of their connection to their body, can leave them with PTSD, can mean that sex more often than not ends in tears or flashbacks, a song that finds joy again is so powerful.

Even more importantly, when she made her accusations there were some folks who decided to make a big deal out of the fact that she sang about partying and sex. That doesn’t fucking matter. She can love sex and still be assaulted. She does not have to be some kind of “gold star” victim to be a victim, and this song in context shows that she is not willing to give up her open, loud sexuality just to get people on her side.

In this respect, one line sticks out to me: “If you can’t handle these claws you don’t get this kitty.” I’ve seen friends criticize this kind of sentiment as a way for excusing bad behavior, but in this particular album it doesn’t read that way. Claws are associated with aggression, fighting back, defending yourself, and the kitty language has some obvious parallels to pussy and sex. To me this line reads as a message to people who want to ignore her boundaries; you do not get her body if you are not willing to respect her boundaries. I hear Kesha saying “I will fight back if you try to take what’s not yours.” In the middle of a song about reclaiming sexuality, that is a fucking anthem. It’s a slap in the face to Dr. Buttface.

My final impression of Boots is the recognition that not all of healing is painful or difficult. Some days you feel joyful. You find people that make you feel better. It might be simply be a distraction, and that’s ok. Feeling good sometimes is HUGE, and it doesn’t invalidate that you might be depressed or that you’re really struggling. It feels so good within this album to have a moment of unabashed sensuality. It’s a good reminder to all of us who have been hurt that our bodies don’t have to be dangerous or feel broken. It’s possible to reclaim them. And that is fucking awesome.

Whiplash, Monuments Men, Great Art, and Happiness

A few nights ago I saw the movie Whiplash. As many people have said, the acting was superb and overall it was a quality made movie. But what pulled me in was not the plotline, but rather the assumptions of the characters and the varied interpretations of the people with whom I saw the movie regarding what makes a life worth living.

Andrew, the main character of Whiplash, wants to be the best. In one conversation with his family, when they ask him why he doesn’t have any friends, he says that they would just get in the way. He wants to be remembered, like Charlie Parker was remembered. He wants to be great. His dad looks at him and says that Charlie Parker died at 35, that’s not success.

But Andrew is unswayed, and continues to engage with his abusive band teacher in order to force himself to be better, to win, to prove that he is the great person he could be. He refuses to be broken by the abuse that the teacher doles out, even if that means trying to play while his hand is broken and he’s bleeding.

The end of the movie is ambiguous. Andrew plays an amazing solo. He plays to his own tempo instead of listening to the conductor. But he does it all because he was abused. He becomes great through the horrific methods that left another student dead from suicide.

Underneath the success, the amazing performance, the smile that Andrew finally gets from Mr. Fletcher, there’s the dark knowledge that if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he as well will probably end up dead. If nothing else, he will be alone, anxious, depressed, and constantly feeling that he isn’t living up to his own potential. He requires greatness of himself, because he sees how much the greatness of one person can affect others.

As Mr. Fletcher says, it’s unacceptable to deprive the world of the next Charlie Parker.

But is it really? Is great art more important than actual human lives? Or even one single human life that gets extinguished after short years that are filled with unhappiness?

Let’s talk about another movie for a moment. Monuments Men is for the most part a rompy kind of action movie, but somewhere in it is a question. The Monuments Men take resources that the army could have been using to save human lives and direct those resources towards saving art instead. Great, amazing art, but art nonetheless. Is it ethical for the army to do that?

I tend to think no. Art is beautiful and enriching, but there is always new art being made. People continue to create meaning, beauty, connection, and discussion through art in almost every circumstance they are placed in. Art is not a finite resource that we will run out of. There is no perfect painting or drum solo or play that is out there waiting to be created. We create what we need, what is meaningful to us, and we get the meaning that we need out of the art available to us.

I’m not one to value an empty or unhappy life simply for the sake of life, but I’m also not one to value art without any end. Art is valuable insofar as it enriches human lives, and when it takes away from the human ability to be fulfilled and content, or when it takes away resources from keeping people alive, art starts to lose value. I think that’s true of any human endeavor. No goal is more important than its consequences.

So back to Andrew and Charlie Parker. Why does Andrew think that being great is a better goal than any immediate happiness? Clearly he wants to be remembered, but he also seems to think that he’s doing something good and enriching for the world (just as Mr. Fletcher does) by creating something great.

I am so afraid of that rhetoric.

While talking with friends after the movie, I found that I was the only one who really resonated with that intense drive and need to always be better, the all-consuming, obsessive perfectionism. I can vouch that in my life it has been an extremely damaging influence. But those around me didn’t feel like the movie was in danger of portraying that obsession in a positive light because they had never felt it, never been in a place where they thought that it was the best way to be.

Of course in the movie, Andrew is supposed to be sort of screwed up but only develop clear mental illness symptoms after Mr. Fletcher starts pushing him. But I don’t think that obsession of this level is something that one can just learn. It’s something that you have to spend your whole life fighting if it’s in you to begin with. And while the movie clearly criticizes Fletcher’s methods, it does not clearly criticize the art that comes out of it. It does seem to imply that the art that comes from the abusive, obsessive methods is better than what would have come about if Andrew had a sane teacher, made some friends, stayed with his girlfriend, and tried to temper his obsession with drums by being a healthy person mentally.

So the movie seems to imply that there is some sort of trade off here, that we could get some amazing art, something important or meaningful out of this kind of drive, and that while it’s unhealthy, it is amazing.

And sure there are real life examples of these types. Sylvia Plath or Kurt Cobain, people who used their mental illness to fuel their art and whose dark art touched and was important to thousands upon thousands of people.

And there is never any guarantee that the depression makes your art better. More often than not it makes it worse because you can’t think clearly, your mind is trailing in circles, you have no energy. More often than not you create work that is indulgent rather than transcendent. Of course some people who recover choose never to truly engage with the dark emotions again, and that hardly creates good art, but it is possible to continue to think deeply while in a healthy place. Some of the best art is art that comes from a place of self-respect rather than depression, fear, and uncertainty.

And there’s more than one life that gets hurt when someone wallows in their mental illness. Everyone they interact with gets hurt. Despite the fact that they aren’t trying, most people who are incredibly depressed, anxious, obsessive, and perfectionistic, are not very nice and are certainly not able to have healthy relationships because they themselves aren’t healthy.

But of course the people that I was watching Whiplash with didn’t see it as glorifying this kind of obsession. I’m not sure what it is that made me think it was condoning at least part of the obsession, but perhaps it’s that I expect discussions of (what clearly seems to me to be) mental illness to not simply portray the behaviors because just showing the behaviors can feel like condoning when you’re in a bad place. If I had watched this movie 5 years ago I would have seen it as validation of my choices. I would have watched it and seen a young person overcome everything to pursue perfection and then achieve perfection. I would have seen that it was possible.

And so I wouldn’t have stopped.

I do wonder about our portrayals of obsession and whether we treat those behaviors in a way that says “this is not healthy” or whether we do some glossing over of the truth. How did the film actually treat questions of obsession? Did it say that there were benefits? Of course no one would see it as condoning the behavior of Andrew, but it did seem to make him into a hero, or possibly an anti-hero, something even more attractive to many (especially young) people.

I can’t predict how other people might react to this film, and the people that I watched it with didn’t seem to see it as any kind of validation, but it did focus on a young person overcoming obstacles to reach his goal, even if there were huge sacrifices along the way. Many people would see that as a positive. Continuing the stereotype of disturbed genius isn’t really helpful to anyone, and while the movie criticized the choice to embrace that life, it didn’t do anything to dismantle the stereotype that exists in the first place, leading to many people seeing artistry and greatness as something that necessarily comes with insanity.

This might lead many people to frame questions of dedication to art as whether they want to be happy or whether they want to be great, when in fact they can be both.

So let’s hop back to Monuments Men. Is any piece of art worth ruining your life over? Probably not, especially when we can create art without the intense depression that the movie portrays. Of course every individual has the right to make the choice in their own life, but it’s important to create messages that say it doesn’t have to be that way. You can be amazing without being pushed in cruel and awful ways. Oftentimes greatness comes with support, love, and self-empathy. Especially in today’s world where the cruel actions of famous people get broadcast to the world immediately over the internet, people are becoming less and less tolerant of brilliant assholes, and instead expect their geniuses to give back in some way.

There are many other facets to the reactions to this movie. I see more women feeling driven to prove that they deserve to be on this earth by being great, leading me to worry about the effects of portrayals of greatness on young women. How do we portray negative things in a responsible fashion is a concern that has never been properly answered (no Plato, we don’t just not portray them). And how healthy can obsession ever be?

But I do think it’s important to pull apart the association between greatness and depression. It’s not necessary.

Intellovert and Other Variations

Personality typing and tests are super popular at the moment, particularly in regards to the introvert/extrovert question. How do we need to treat introverts and extroverts differently, how can introverts and extroverts get along even though they’re completely different, and what do you need to do to care for your introvert/extrovert self? I’m all for opening up discussions of the different ways that people function and thrive, but I’m certainly not the first person to point out that the introvert/extrovert dichotomy misses a lot of nuance in how people interact socially.

For the last five years or so, I’ve firmly identified as an introvert. I have a lot of social anxiety and so spending time in large groups is draining for me. I need alone time and personal space, I love to read and write (alone), and I recharge by taking long naps and watching Netflix. But in my current relationship, I’m finding that I want to spend more time together than my partner does, as he needs more recharging time than I do. I’m finding that when I’m out of work, I want to be with people nearly every day. So am I an introvert or an extrovert?

In my last therapy appointment, my therapist mentioned that one of my needs as a human being is intellectual stimulation. I get bored easily, and when I don’t have something to keep my mind occupied I start to lose it a little bit. Interestingly, I find that intellectual stimulation is an incredibly difficult need to fulfill without the help of other people, particularly in the form of conversation.

When I’m having engaging, deep conversations with other people, I feel my batteries recharge. When I have to make small talk, be around a large group of people, talk to someone I don’t know very well, or interact with other people for simply practical needs (setting up an appointment for example), I feel drained. Where does this put me on the introvert/extrovert scale if there are some social activities that I find rejuvenating and some that I find horrible?

Well it probably just makes me human, since I’m fairly certain that this is true of everyone. But it might make more sense to talk about introversion and extroversion in relation to specific activities or types of interactions instead of overall personality traits. I’m extroverted when it comes to intellect, puzzles, very close friends and family, and public speaking (yeah, I’m a weirdo). I’m incredibly introverted when it comes to big groups, loud atmospheres, strangers, casual acquaintances, or overstimulating situations.

It’s pretty easy to see some patterns here. There are some things which will make me feel rejuvenated whether or not they happen with other people: learning, validation, deep connection, feeling competent, or getting attention. There are other things that will wear me out whether or not they involve others: overwhelming environments, too many things to pay attention to at once, or repetition of basic information.

While introversion and extroversion are helpful concepts in some ways, it might be helpful to also start to think of how we recharge our emotional batteries with or without people. Almost everyone has some things that feel good and restful both with and without other people. These things might point towards what it is that we crave as individuals, what our emotional needs are. If we see what we want from our lives, it might be easier to set up social interactions to successfully cater to those needs.

Example: when I think of myself as an introvert, I try to schedule more downtime for myself. I inevitably end up bored and frustrated after a few hours of entertaining myself. If instead, I think about fulfilling my need for stimulation without an overwhelming number of things to pay attention to, I set up quiet coffee dates, game nights, movie nights, and other similar quiet activities that let me talk to other people and stay engaged.

Maybe I’m an intellovert: I get my rest and relaxation from exercising my brain. It’s quite possible that there are lots of other ways that people find rejuvenation. Perhaps someone is oriented towards physical exertion, human touch, sensory cues, or something else altogether. I don’t think it’s useful to get rid of the words introvert and extrovert altogether, but it might be time to rethink the ways we use them, or introduce some new concepts to think about when we’re explaining what fulfills our personalities.

#GamerGate, Non Gamers, and Bad Reputations

If you have any connections whatsoever to video games or the gaming world, or even if you have none of those but have been on the internet at all in the last month or so, you’ve probably heard about GamerGate. The underlying sexism in the gaming world has been bubbling up and coming out in the form of a lot of disgruntled menfolks harassing women for being involved in gaming, all under the guise of “journalistic ethics”.

I have very little to say about the particulars of this situation that haven’t already been said, as I am not a gamer and I know almost nothing about the gaming industry. Miri has a great round up post of articles written about the incident, which are more thorough than I could ever be. So why am I writing a blog post about this? Because so far all of the voices I have heard have been from within the gaming community, and as someone on the outside it’s very clear to me that Gamergaters are doing themselves no favors right now. Here’s the truth gaming community: every time I hear about GamerGate I want less and less to do with you. Despite having many gamer friends, an active interest in nerd culture, and the beginnings of an interest in gaming, I am now 100% not interested in being actively involved in the gaming community and it is entirely because of the harassment that women have received.

There are lots and lots of people out there who are getting their first picture of gaming and the type of people who game (beyond the stereotypes of movies  and media) from GamerGate and the incidents surrounding Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu. There are lots and lots of people who don’t do much gaming, don’t follow the media around gaming, and really haven’t given it a whole lot of thought…until now, when they’re reading articles about it, seeing vitriol posted on their social media, and hearing these names pop up again and again. You can bet that many people who wouldn’t have given gaming a second thought before now are going to be forming opinions about gamers due to this controversy.

This might be what you were looking for. Maybe you wanted the attention. Maybe you are still mentally five year olds who are convinced that any attention is good attention. If that’s the case, I want you to know something: Gamergaters are not coming off like the heroes here.

Throughout the articles that I’ve read about GamerGate, one of the common threads has been that gamers feel like victims: no one likes them, they’re stereotyped as lazy, fat, losers who live in their parents basements and eat Doritos all day, and the only place that they can be safe is in the gaming community. They cry out again and again that they just want the safe haven of games to be free from developers who get good reviews by sleeping with reviewers, from journalists who take sides or push “social justice” agendas on them, from women who want to criticize their games into nonexistence. Society has rejected them, and they just want their community to be their own.

Somewhere, buried in the confusion about purpose, GamerGate appears to be about the desire to be respected as a community. Update from the rest of the world: if you want society to treat you better and respect your community as a legitimate space for art, self-expression, and decent relationships, the way to do that is not by making rape and death threats to anyone who criticizes you. That actually makes you look even worse than the previous stereotypes, and will probably end with you feeling even more victimized because you’ve managed to earn the derision of society at large through horrible, abusive behavior. If you do want the respect of the world at large, you might have to act like adults, engage critically with other people, and be willing to talk through differences of opinion. Until you do that, gaming will continue to be stigmatized as childish and silly.

So if Gamergaters think that they’re improving their community or making headway into society by using their current tactics, they are dead wrong. What they’re actually doing is gaining themselves a fairly horrible reputation with everyone who wasn’t already a part of the community.

It’s quite possible that GamerGate had to happen, that this is the growing pains of a space that previously had been the haven for those who were hurt and lonely. It’s quite possible that the gaming community will come out of this much better, and will draw in new voices and perspectives, and gain respect. It’s possible. But from the outside it looks like the temper tantrum of a bunch of overgrown children who don’t want to let other people play in their sandbox, and if this outsider is anything like other outsiders, it is not endearing you to society at large. You thought you had a bad reputation before? You have made it so much worse for yourselves. Sometimes bad reputations are deserved, and right now you are making it clear to the world that yours definitely is. If what you want is respect, then you better start earning it.

Yours truly,

Everyone else

The Common Language of Pop References

Yesterday a friend of mine off-handedly mentioned the phenomenon in which someone will make a pop culture reference and use their audience’s reaction to judge the people who are listening. You got my obscure Firefly reference? You’re awesome and a good human being. You didn’t? Well…you might not be worth my time.

I suspect that we’re all guilty of doing this sometimes, and I know I’ve felt that burst of connection when someone else knows my favorite book, so I couldn’t stop thinking about whether this was pointless judging or whether it might serve some purpose. And then I read this absolutely lovely article about a pair of sisters who found a way to communicate through Supernatural. The show gave them templates and referents through which to talk about their relationship. It seemed that sometimes coming at the problem head on was too scary or direction, but the shared media gave them a common foundation on which to build their emotional understandings of each other.

Suddenly it all came into place: we all do this. When we reference things, we’re using a different language that holds much more content because it assumes the shared experiences of the media we love. Instead of trying to explain a complex, semi-abusive relationship, you can just say “it’s like Spike and Buffy”, and someone will have a full emotional picture of what’s going on.

So when we make references to some pop culture thing we love and someone responds positively, we suddenly have an entirely new shared language of referents and emotions and relationships to draw from. It can be incredibly liberating to find that you don’t have to explain yourself but can use a reference to immediately instill a certain emotion or understanding in your listener. There’s a certain safety in having those shared understandings of the world, in knowing that no matter how differently you perceive the world, you have this touchstone with which to communciate and connect. These kinds of shorthands aren’t simply an easy, quick way of communicating, but they’re also a way to signal that you understand and care about the person you’re interacting with. If I respond positively to a reference, it means I want to engage with the person who has made it. I am interested in understanding what is going on in their brain and I’m willing to search my memory for a reference in order to do so. If the reference comes easily, it means that we don’t have to struggle to understand each other as much as we might have otherwise.

Of course there are in-group elements to references, and of course the references we make and the ways we value references have a great deal to do with the way we assign value as consumers, but somewhere in the practice of making references we find that pop culture names, quotes, and places become symbols for feelings or plot arcs or ideas that are far more complex. Just as Biblical scholars have an entire lexicon of symbols that hold a different kind of meaning than they would to anyone else, so fangirls of Supernatural have a shared lexicon. Carry On My Wayward Son isn’t just a song, it’s an anthem of family, heartache, long journeys, impossible tasks, and endlessly broken hearts. Where you come down on the Spuffy/Bangel split will tell me immediately whether we’ll get along (protip: Bangel sucks). The reason I get excited when I see someone making a reference that I understand is that I suddenly have an entirely new window into this person, a new lens through which to view them, an entire set of experiences that we had together about which I can get their reaction. It’s not quite the same as the trust you gain from firsthand seeing how someone reacts to new situations, but it is a helpful simulation.

Especially for a reference that is uncommon or that few people would recognize, it’s like a special shared moment you get with another person. It’s as if you’ve found another kilt-wearing unicycle enthusiast: you thought you were the only one, but now you can find someone who resonates with those feelings and reactions you had. Now nothing about this implies that making judgments about others based on their pop culture references is a brilliant and ethically sound decision. In all likelihood you’ll be misjudging a fair number of people. But there are useful things about making references, and the better we understand those uses the more effective we can be in our communication.  It’s being able to say that you’re the Marshmallow to my Lilypad and not having to explain any further, and that’s a kind of connection that is kind of beautiful.

Get Off Your Phone!

It’s a common sight at events, concerts, or attractions to see someone (or many someones) with their camera or phone firmly planted in front of their face, recording or snapping pictures for the entire experience. It is also a common sight to find blog posts, rants, and other forms of judgment telling everyone that this is the wrong way to enjoy your life. “Get off your phone! No one wants to see those pictures! You’re not experiencing the event, you’re just taking pictures!” There is a common sentiment that an unmediated version of reality is the best version of reality, and that if you’re taking pictures or video your mind is on how to capture the experience rather than on the experience itself. If you’re not 100% mentally and emotionally present, then you’re ruining your own experience!

The odd thing about this is that more often than not, those taking these pictures aren’t distracting anyone else. Their behavior is entirely irrelevant to the people who are upset with it. It simply has to do with how that individual is experiencing someone, a personal choice that is entirely their own. This need to police other people’s happiness is an impulse which is both incredibly self centered (other people need to do things the same way I do or they won’t be happy) and incredibly unhelpful.

Here’s the thing: everyone has different ways of experiencing the world, and everyone appreciates different things. We get happy in different ways. We engage with things in different ways. We are present in different ways. These individualities are why not all of us like to go to bars and not all of us like to play Dungeons and Dragons, but for some reason when technology is involved it’s no longer ok to have preferences but instead there must be a Right and a Wrong way to exist because otherwise technology will infiltrate our lives and destroy our human connections (or something).

For some people, taking pictures allows them to experience things in a more active way. They prefer not to simply be passive recipients of their experience, but want to think about how best to capture it, about the angles of light and the image of what’s going on. For some people, thinking about how they will capture the experience makes them think about what they want to remember in the future, and helps them focus on the things they like most about their experience. Some people just like taking pictures or videos and that is an additional enjoyable experience beyond whatever primary experience they may be happening.

And guess what? Even if you personally don’t want technology to be a part of your day to day experience because you find it makes you less present, that doesn’t mean that technology inherently pulls people out of their lives and pushes them into the “unreality” of the internet. Some people find that having their phone on and around is a distraction from the people they want to be with, where others (especially the introverted and socially anxious among us) find it a useful way to take a quick break from socializing when they need a mini recharge. The point is that people experience technology (as well as social situations) differently. In the past, if someone had a hard time being fully present in a situation with lots of people for a long time, all they could do was leave or just try to stick it out or maybe dissociate. Now there are more strategies they can employ through technology. They may be more visible, since someone taking out their phone is more obvious than someone simply zoning out and ignoring what’s happening around them, but people have always had ways to take a break from a current experience. All of us do it, and that is 100% ok. We don’t owe any place or person or experience all of ourself for the entire time we are there.

So please friends, take out your phones if you want, take those pictures, hide behind your camera or take that video because you want to watch it tomorrow. Let yourself disappear for a bit into technology or find new ways to love the concert you’re at by finding the perfect image to capture it. I want you to know what makes you smile, and that’s no one’s business but your own.