Does (or Ought) Advertising Make Us Miserable?

I talked about Adam Lee’s quest for minimalism before, but in a recent post he asks if capitalism makes us miserable.  Since he’s anti-capitalistic, his answer is going to be some form of “Yes”, but in line with what he talked about when he advocated for minimalism how he thinks capitalism makes us miserable is tied to advertising in an odd way:

This is where capitalism comes in. We’re bathed in more advertising than ever, both in the sheer quantity of ads and in their intrusiveness. Marketers spend trillions of dollars to cram commercials into our eyeballs everywhere we look. Capitalism incentivizes this behavior in a way that no previous economic system did.

And that matters, because the purpose of advertising is to make us unhappy. Its goal is to make our lives feel incomplete so we’ll spend money trying to plug the hole. No matter how much you have, it sends the message that you’re falling behind and need more.

Now, this is in line with what he talked about before and this is a pretty common argument made by anti-capitalists/anti-consumptionists, but it’s an argument that doesn’t resonate at all with me, because my reaction to advertising is not at all that.  And as it happens I spent some time watching a number of media sources that feature a lot of ads, and I can’t say that this seems to be the purpose of advertising or the ads at all.  While that may not have been true in the past, these days ads don’t seem to me to be trying to make us unhappy, but instead to be trying to show us how happy their products will make us if we purchase them.  It’s almost as if it assumes that we are generally happy and are trying to make sure that we stuff as much fun and happiness into our lives as possible, instead of assuming that we are unhappy and trying to present their product as the cure for their unhappiness.

I mean, take the ubiquitous car commercials.  They are full of people using their vehicles in ways that are fun or allow them to go to things that are fun.  It’s all about having fun and how their product facilitates them having fun.  Sports channels are swamped with gambling ads and yet again they aren’t about how much money you can make on them and how that could change your life, but instead are about how much fun that is and how much fun winning is.  Commercials for restaurants focus on how enjoyable the food is and, for sit-down restaurants, how much fun being there with your friends will be.  Again and again we see ads that talk about how much fun it will be to use their products or how easy their products are to use and how much time you’ll save if you use them.  That all pretty much assumes that your life is great and that you want to get back to that greatness as soon as possible.

This, then, pretty much explains my reaction to most ads, in line with my idea of mindfulness.  The ads are aimed at showing you how much fun you will have with those products if you buy them, but I already have a pretty good idea what I want and what I like and what I’ll have fun with.  So if I know that I won’t really have fun with a product, the ad has no effect on me.  And if the product is something that I would have fun with — like the update of Persona 3, which I saw on an ad while listening to “Mayday” on Pluto TV but still haven’t bought– then I’ll note it and try to pick it up.  So the ads are aimed at presenting how much fun I’ll have with the product and I know whether I will have fun with it or not and filter accordingly.

So the only way that ads can make your miserable is if they promote something that you think will be fun but for some reason you can’t get it, either because it isn’t available or you can’t afford it or whatever.  But the right attitude towards this is to figure out how you can get it and then plan for it.  So if you can’t afford it, make a plan to save for it and watch as your savings add up with the anticipation that comes from doing that.  And if you can’t afford it at all, then you have to learn to be satisfied without it.  I find, myself, that for things that I can’t get immediately — like the aforementioned Persona 3 remake — I might feel a little upset about not being able to get it for a brief time, but then I quickly forget about it and move on.

Admittedly, I’m a bit odd in my attitudes towards such things, where I tend to regret more not getting things than getting things that I might not use.  And for most of the things that I buy that maybe I am at least currently … underutilizing all of them are things that I am not using only because I don’t have time to do so but when I get time they will still be there (board games don’t go bad, after all).  But I wonder if capitalism is getting blamed for something else:

Ubiquitous social media also supercharges our ability to peer into other people’s lives. Once, the only people you could easily compare yourself to were your neighbors on the same block. At most, you could read a gossip column or watch a TV show about the lives of celebrities. Now you can see in real time how the richest people on the planet live. That widens the circle of people you compare yourself to, and as the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy.

Lee is talking about how people are less happy than they used to be, and maybe a big part of that is not that advertising is trying to make people unhappy and we are bombarded with such advertising, but instead that we are comparing ourselves too much to other people.  In the past, we in general could only compare ourselves to the people in our own areas, who tended to be people with similar jobs and similar economic circumstances to ourselves.  We might look over at the rich part of time and wish we were them, but we didn’t expect to be them or think that we somehow ought to be able to have the things that they have.  But with social media, people who look far more like “us” seem to have better lives than we do, and often do that by spending money on things.  The move towards “experiences” over things only makes this worse, because we are measuring our lives against them not just by possessions, but by experiences and, thus, on how enjoyable our life actually is.  In the past, we might envy someone who has something that we want but if we can’t afford it we can’t afford it and have to make do with what we have.  But when we are envying someone who looks like us but is having a more fun life than we are, it’s harder to make do with the inferior life that we are now living.

This can tie back to Lee’s comments about inequality and how that makes people unhappy.  As he says, there’s always been inequality.  But it doesn’t seem like we can have a world without some inequality, and so the problem isn’t that some people have more or less than others but instead is about whether everyone gets what they deserve.  What capitalism and the old-fashioned work ethic that spawned it insist is that you deserve to have is what you have earned through working for it.  What I’ve seen in more recent attitudes is in line with this comment:

I can believe a huge reason for Gen Z’s unhappiness is the ridiculousness they see and believe they’re entitled to. Phones and constant connection to people pretending they live like the rich and famous, plus celebrities, can’t be good for the psyche.

The rest of the comment talks about how we all were content with simpler lives in the past, which is in line with what I’ve been saying while also aligning with Lee’s ideas of advertising and social media, but I think the idea of “entitlement” is an important one.  The arguments seem to be that where there is inequality that is bad and people are entitled to some sort of “equalization”.  More importantly, they seem to have abandoned the idea that they should have to work for what they get, but instead think that they should be entitled to this on the basis of simply existing.  While you can make a case for that when you’re talking about basic necessities, what they think are the basic necessities are far more than the, well, simple basics.  One comment that I’ve made on a number of occasions is that I don’t really have sympathy for anyone who complains that their wages aren’t enough and they should make more money who nevertheless has more “toys” — meaning items bought primarily for fun/entertainment — than I do.  Yeah, I don’t want much, but I can afford more than most people.  If you have more toys than I do, then the problem is probably not your wages but your wants.  And, to be honest, a lot of the complaints strike me as aligning with the attitude that I criticized in this post, where someone outlined that what she thought was a “fair” wage was a higher wage and better benefits package to start than I had after working for almost 20 years in a high demand field.

This, I think, is what is driving a lot of the dissatisfaction.  They are not thinking in terms of what they ought to be able to expect, but instead strictly in terms of what they want.  They aren’t willing to wait for the things they want.  They aren’t willing to work around not being able to afford things or do without them.  The most they do is talk about “hacks” to get what they want without paying for it or, very occasionally, to find some things to do that provide fun but don’t cost anything, as a sop to minimalism and anti-capitalism.  But there is indeed an undercurrent of entitlement to these social media posts and blog posts, where the push is on what others should give them with little focus on what they should give in return.  Even when they try to be charitable the focus is on how good it makes them feel to help others, not on how it is their obligation to help others if they can.

So maybe the problem isn’t capitalism.  Maybe capitalism is just a convenient scapegoat because it ties into the thing that they are really opposed to: the old Protestant work ethic that advocated that you work for what you have.  That’s why they find various forms of socialism appealing that advocates for taking away from others by taxing to them to give it to others through social benefits.  And, of course, they all expect to be on the receiving end of this equation, not the giving end, and then insist that those who would be on the giving end are just being selfish for not wanting to give things to others just because.  And so when society doesn’t give them what they want without working for it, they are unhappy because they don’t have what they think they are entitled to, and want others to make sure that they get it.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There are some issues with society as it is, so that some people cannot reasonably afford housing and the basic necessities of life on the salary that they can achieve.  And there are lots of proposed ways to fix that that I’m not going to argue over here.  But people like Lee who are reasonably comfortably middle class and yet are griping that they should be able to get more while working less are not in that situation, and it’s hard to see their anti-capitalism as anything other than entitlement not being fulfilled.

Thoughts on “At the Devil’s Door”

So, over the past few posts, I’ve lamented that Shudder’s descriptions have been pretty awful,  I will say that this one is quite a bit better:

When ambitious young real estate agent Leigh is asked to sell a house with a checkered past, she crosses paths with a disturbed girl whom she learns is the runaway daughter of the couple selling the property. When Leigh tries to intervene and help her, she becomes entangled with a supernatural force that soon pulls Leigh’s artist sister Vera into its web — and has sinister plans for both of them. Contains strong supernatural horror, suicide scene.

The only thing that’s a bit misleading is that it implies that Leigh is much more important to the story than she is.

We start with the purportedly disturbed runaway, following her through her life and encounters with the demonic spirit up until her seeming death by suicide.  Then we switch to Leigh, with an implication that the girl showing up there is the daughter of those who want to sell the house — which is the house the girl died in — but it is revealed later that it is the girl we saw first — and know would be a ghost — and then that their runaway daughter is a different person entirely.  This does not work out well for Leigh, who gets attacked by the demon who seems to want something from her, but then wants something from her sister, Vera.   The demon kills off Leigh and we switch to Vera, who is impregnated by the demon, wants to kill the unborn child, ends up being knocked out and committed to an insane asylum for five years, tracks down the girl to kill her, but then the girl says that she knew that Vera would come for her and they drive off together, despite the daughter having been adopted into a happy home with a mother who was frantically searching for her before that.

The main issue with this structure is that it doesn’t leave us a lot of room to get to know the characters and develop them and their plots.  This means that some of the things come out of nowhere.  For example, there is a reason why the demon chose Vera and not Leigh:  Leigh can’t have children.  She drops this in during a conversation with Vera, which might make you think that this is a subtle hint that pays off later, but it isn’t important enough either there or when Leigh is killed to have the payoff that it needs to work as a subtle hint.  I did figure out that that was what was happening during the movie, but it didn’t have the emotional oomph that it needed to have to work.

That Leigh gets killed off early is also sad, because she gets the most development out of all three characters and is the most interesting and sympathetic.  The first girl is fine since she’s a ghostly presence that is used to hint at the overall story and introduce the demon, and also provide some scares, but the last part of the movie and in fact the ending revolves around Vera, and she seems irresponsible and a bit flaky.  And we follow Leigh for it at least seems like longer and what we follow Leigh for tells us more about her than we get from Vera.  Vera is introduced as a character that is there it let us know more about Leigh, and the transition from that to a main character isn’t very smooth, and it needs to be for us to care about the ending.

Also, the movie isn’t particularly scary either.  There are some parts where scares happen but they seem to either be dragged out too long as Leigh wanders slowly through the house chasing a girl that isn’t particularly scary at the time, or else the demon lashes out too quickly and ends things so we don’t have that great build-up of tension that culminates in the attack.  It doesn’t even maintain a creepy atmosphere that I’ve seen in other movies that is overdone but at least makes it clear that this is a horror movie.  Yes, the plot makes it clear that that’s what they’re going after, but the movie itself isn’t particularly horrific.

And the plot itself suffers from being nonsensical.  Yes, we get that the demon wanted to be reborn, but that’s not a particularly interesting or dramatic revelation.  What we want to know is why it wanted to be reborn, and why it seems like it wanted Vera to take it away, and how it was able to seemingly hypnotize her into accepting it when she was primed to kill it.  All of this is important to the ending, and none of it is explained.  This makes the ending more of a “Meh” ending than a really dramatic one:  I’m not scared because I don’t know what it all means for anyone or anything

Given that the plot is nonsensical, the characters are underdeveloped, the most interesting character is killed off and isn’t present at the ending, and there aren’t a lot of scares in the movie, this is not a movie that I would watch again.  There’s really nothing here for any horror fan that they wouldn’t get better in other movies.

So, is this normal?

A while ago John Scalzi wrote a post that seemed mostly in earnest about having written almost 3000 words in a day and being mentally wiped out by that, and the few commenters on the post again seemingly mostly in earnest congratulated him on his productive day.  This struck me as odd, and since I know that at least a couple of regular readers also write on a much more formal level than I do I wanted to post about it and see what the opinion of them or people who do that was.

See, why I found it odd was that when I read that I had indeed just written over 2000 words for a blog post.  I think it even was one of my philosophical ones.  And that wasn’t my entire day’s productivity.  I was doing it in an afternoon where I had done a lot of other things and was going on to do other things, many of which wouldn’t be called productive but almost all of which would be intensely mental.  When I started talking about “Proving History”, the post where I started talking about what caused me to pause reading the book to talk about it was itself 2500 words, and again I did other mental things that day (all my hobbies are mental).  I’ve written 3000+ word philosophy posts in the past around work and other things.  Writing almost 3000 words will not wipe me out mentally (although it might make me not want to write more posts that day, although that’s partly from having to sit there for that long and not having the time to do more that day).

Now, one could point out that I was writing philosophy and not fiction, and so that might change things.  First, I’m not certain that most people will say that writing philosophy is less mentally draining than writing fiction.  Second, I also looked at one of my longer fiction segments — the end of “Inheritance of the Old Republic” — and noted that it was 2000 words long, and as you all know I do that at the end of the day while my dishes are soaking.  I might end up with the entire output of my writing day being 3000 words, but I’d be doing other things and other mental things that day.  If that 3000 words was perfectly polished work, then that would be different because, again, as you all should know my fiction and even my posts are pretty much unpolished, and I know from writing philosophical essays that polishing is incredibly boring, which is why I always had to write and then go away for a few hours or a day before editing my essays, and why with my fiction I leave it for a day before doing my one and only editing run.  But it doesn’t seem like Scalzi generally polishes while he’s doing this sort of writing, but from what I’ve heard comes back and does that later, and even then being wiped out by that seems odd.

Now, one reason why this strikes me as being odd might be because of my experience with philosophical essays.  These can easily fall into the 7000+ word range — “Is Art Necessarily Aesthetic?” is almost 7500 words — and so writing one long joined piece is something that I am quite used to.  A professor of mine teaching a graduate course challenged the students by making them write a 1000 word summary of the reading for every class.  The challenge was not getting to 1000 words, but was instead limiting it to 1000 words.  Yes, we philosophers can be wordy!  So I’m used to spending my entire day or week programming and then coming home and writing a few thousand words more before settling in with an RPG-style game before going to sleep.  That’s not something that most fiction writers have never had to do.

But is dedicated fiction writing harder than this?  Am I missing something important that may hit me in a few years if I decide to take that more seriously?  Anyone in the gallery have opinions?

Final Thoughts on “Classic Doctor Who”

So, the ability to finally watch all of the Classic Doctor Who series was a big reason why I picked up “BritBox” when looking for streaming services to subscribe to.  I knew that it would be a massive undertaking, but it was also something that I really wanted to do, as I pretty much completely missed it the first time around and only got into Doctor Who at all with the modern version when a friend suggested that I take a look at it.  So I was interested in seeing just what it was that created this great British franchise that lasted for so long and managed to make a successful return in more modern times.

Yes, as most people will tell you, the show was always a bit cheesy in pretty much all ways.  What I’ll say is that I didn’t mind the special effects as much as many people do, but then again I grew up in that time and so am pretty much used to that, although I must note that the Daleks compare better to their modern versions than the Cybermen do.  But for the most part I could easily look past that.

In terms of story, I found that the serialized nature of the show worked against it, especially compared to the modern approach.  As I’ve noted, I’ve also started rewatching the modern shows and the arc approach to story-telling works a lot better than the serialized approach.  One of the main issues with the serialized approach is that every episode has to build to a dramatic ending to justify the “To Be Continued” nature of such serials.  For the classic serials, that was their entire nature and so that was expected, but any attempt to build a longer or deeper story here often got cut-off by the half-hour ending and a dramatic cliffhanger needing to be invented to carry things off, ones that far too often were resolved too easily and quickly to justify the dramatic tone that accompanied them.  This was only made worse by the fact that the episodes were a half-hour long and so too often we barely got the story moving before it had to stop to build in the cliffhanger.

Thus, story is not the strength of Classic Doctor Who.  Oh, certainly, more committed fans than myself will be able to point to stories that were great and had real meaning, but overall throughout the entire Classic run the stories were, well, nothing to write home about.  But what drove the run for me, at least, was the characters and their interaction between them.  From the very beginning, this interaction was what drove the show and made it interesting.  And as such, for me it was the case that if I liked the companions and their interactions I generally liked the series, and if I didn’t I didn’t.  This was only compounded by the fact that I preferred the more eccentric Doctors to the more normal ones, starting from Hartnell where I far preferred his companions to him, into Troughton who was the first Doctor that I actually liked.  As such, there are some companions and combinations that I really liked — Ian and Barbara, Zoe and Jamie, and Sarah Jane and Harry — and some companions that I really liked for how they interacted with the Doctor — Romana and Peri, in part — and those also tend to align with the sequences that I prefer.  Companions and their interactions with the Doctor, for me, make the series, which is not how I view the modern series.

So, the big question:  would I watch all of these again?  Classic Doctor Who fits into the same category for me as the original soap opera version of “Dark Shadows”.  There are some monumentally bad serials and stories in Classic Doctor Who, but overall the rest of it is just entertaining enough that I don’t mind it and think of it fondly, overall.  But there’s just so much of it.  To watch it all again would be another five or six months, and while I’d probably enjoy a lot of it — and dislike a lot of it, like the interminable season where every serial involved the Master, even when he had no need and no reason to be involved — that’s still another five or six months of only watching that, but trying to slide it in as background watching would only make it take that much longer.  I can’t imagine myself having the time to watch it for the next few years.  But, importantly, that I’m considering how long it would take means that I indeed am considering rewatching it at some point and think it would be worth rewatching.  Yes, I enjoyed it enough that I would indeed rewatch it … if only it was shorter or if I had more time.

Thus, I don’t regret watching it at all.  I’m glad to have gotten through it and finished it.  And some of the things that I encountered were things that I didn’t know about and am glad to have had the chance to experience.  I may rewatch it again at some point.  Classic Doctor Who was definitely worth watching.

Ruby Jades Diary: Take Cover

Yeah, so we had to go down to Corellia to retrieve the special forces guy and figure out who the First Son is.  I know that I’m waiting with bated breath to learn that.

Oh, and Corellia is in a state of open warfare as the Republic is trying to overthrow the overthrow of the Corellians that the Empire did.  Confused?  Well, you won’t be after I, well, tell you the story about how I managed to do that pretty much single-handed.

The nice thing, though, was that helping out the Republic here was more obvious and more direct than it has been anywhere else.  There’s open warfare.  Win the war.  And if you manage to do that, you’ll get through your own mission, too.  Everybody wins!

So, yeah, went down to the planet and figured out where special forces guy was and he revealed his information:  Master Syo was the First Son.  Well, colour me shocked!  And, of course, he had lots of information about all the safe sites we had set up on Corellia and, of course, they all suddenly stopped responding to us.  So it was my job to go around and take them back, to figure out where Syo was hiding.

And this is where the missions converged.  See, in order to do that, I had to be able to move around the city.  And the main way to move around the city — the rocket trams — were controlled by the Empire who had these kinda ray beams that would kill anyone on any tram if the activated them.  So I had to go on a long quest to get some droids to help me break in somewhere to get control of them.  I won’t bore you with the details; God knows they bored me.  But suffice it to say that after killing a bunch of enemies and destroying a bunch of droids I got control of the system, and then had to face a choice.  A bunch of Imperial soldiers were coming in on the last trams to leave, and I could wipe them all out with their own weapons.  But civilians tended to try to smuggle themselves out with them and so a bunch of them would probably die, too.  Now, normally I don’t like killing civilians and figure that we don’t need superweapons and should rely on our own strength, but this was open war.  Lots more people would die if I didn’t do this, and while it sucked to be them sometimes you have to do things that suck in order to win things like wars.  So I activated them and killed the approaching troops.

Hey, I keep telling you that I’m not a nice person.  Maybe you’ll start believing me now.

Anyway, I had to run around dealing with Imperial troops and Sith Lords and the Children of the Emperor that were guarding them.  I also had to run around a battlefield in one of their main parks doing a bunch of things to help the war effort.  And after doing all of that, I had to face the Sith who was running Corellia. Darth Decimus.  Well, as usual first I had to fight my way through the entire government building and find the Corellian councilors so they could be deposed, fighting some Sith chick along the way who figured that she could beat me even after I killed, well, a lot of Sith Lords along the way, so that didn’t last long, but at the end of it all there was one councilor who had helped us get in who they wanted to, well, lock up or do some other kind of nasty thing to.  I stepped in and said that they should give him another chance to prove his loyalty, because he actually realized his mistake and tried to help, while the others just waited around for things to settle and seemed to be hoping that they’d get forgiven afterwards.  Really, don’t punish people who change sides to help you out.  If you do, then people won’t help you anymore, and then where will you be?

Anyway, I ended up facing Darth Decimus, and he made a couple of mistakes.  First, he made the typical Sith mistake of arrogantly thinking that he could beat me.  Second, he decided to broadcast the entire thing to all of Corellia.  See, I can be arrogant, too, but if I was in his place I wouldn’t have done that.  I’d have cut it off and then after I won I would have come back on and said that a minor Jedi had attacked and I’d handled it easily.  After all, if it was that easy showing it wouldn’t be that more impressive than simply saying it, and even if I won if the fight was tougher than I thought it’d be it’d look bad.

And, of course, there’s always the chance that I might lose, like he did, and then all of Corellia could watch the Empire crumble before my might.  That wasn’t exactly going to encourage the people to not join the revolt.

So there was a little ceremony and I got to make a speech and blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda whatever.  But the point of all of that was to make the First Son’s plans on Corellia crumble, so that it’d anger him enough to reveal where he was.  And it worked.  He’s hiding under the city, and I know where he is.  So that’s where I’m going next.

Broken Pieces Shine (Chapter 3)

Standing backstage waiting for the show to start recording, Amanda caught herself checking herself out in every reflective surface she could find, making sure that her hair was still perfect, her makeup wasn’t running and everything was all in place.  Why am I so nervous about this? she admonished herself.  It’s not like I actually want to go out with these guys!

She certainly hadn’t been nervous when she’d showed up at the studio and went through the long process of making herself “presentable”.  And listened to the producers and her agent wrangle over the last minute details to make sure that she was going to be able to get all the proper plugs in for her latest album.  And then it was off to meet the new host, an Internet influencer that she probably had heard of before but couldn’t remember.  Yeah, the show was aiming younger — she ruefully noted that the poor girl might have never heard her music — but at least they didn’t go for a blonde bimbo.  No, the host was dark-haired, wore glasses, and was really, really trying to present herself as some kind of intellectual … while still trying to make sure that the audience noticed her boobs and legs in a short, tight dress.  But then Amanda couldn’t really say anything about that, given that she was wearing a tight dress that highlighted her … assets as much as she could get away with on TV.

And then it was off to record the intro.  She stood beside the host on stage as she went through the opening spiel.  “This is Amanda, ” she said.  “She’s got a secret and it’s hidden inside this red bag.  Has she had sex with more women than men?  Has the men she’s dated left her unable to trust men?  Or does she make her men dress up like the Easter Bunny in bed?  We’ll unlock this bag and a whole lot more coming up on a special episode of ‘Baggage’!”

And then it was time for her to head backstage again, touch up her hair and makeup, and wait for them to start the episode proper.  And get nervous.

Sure, she was primarily here to promote her album, but she was essentially putting herself out there to be judged, and like pretty much anyone else she was worried that she’d be found lacking.  Not pretty enough.  Not nice enough.  Not worth dating.  And here it was going to be in front of an audience of … well, thousands if the gimmick worked out for everyone involved.  She didn’t want to like them, but gosh darn it she wanted them to like her.  Which they probably wouldn’t if she actually used terms like “Gosh darn it”.

She stifled a laugh as the lights came on on the stage and the host went through her monologue.  “Hi, I’m Erica Marx, and welcome to the grand return of ‘Baggage’!  I know that no one can replace Jerry Springer as the host of this show, but they’re paying me to try and so gosh darn it I’m gonna try!”

So that was why I used that phrase, Amanda mused to herself.

“Anyway, ” Erica continued, “we have a very special episode today, and it all starts with our dater.  She’s a singer, songwriter, actress and I’m sure the subject of the teenage wet dreams of a lot of now happily married men, from Los Angeles, California.  So let’s say hello to Amanda!”

That was her cue, and so she came out and walked up to the stage to stand beside Erica.  After waiting for the applause to die down — which was loud and long enough that Amanda figured that a lot of the audience did know who she was — Erica continued, “So I hear that you’re working on your first new album in over ten years!”

“That’s right, ” Amanda replied.

“Think you could give us a little sample?” Erica said, playing her part perfectly,

“I’d be happy to, ” Amanda replied, and then broke into the chorus from the song that they’d teased, a hard rock ballad that she might not really have the pipes to pull off like she used to, but that she could still do as well as almost anyone else out there.

And it seemed that the audience felt the same way, breaking into another long burst of loud applause when she finished.

Amanda was pleased.  She’d been hoping that they’d like it and she wouldn’t make a fool out of herself here, and singing always calmed her down.  Now all she had to do was make it through the rest of the show.

“Now, you’re going to be choosing between three great guys here.  I’ve seen them backstage and I have to say that they’re all fine specimens of manhood.  So it’s going to be a tough choice, and I hear you have some friends in the audience to help you with this, ” Erica continued.

“Yes, I have my best friend Marge and my agent Catherine, ” Amanda replied.

Erica turned to them.  Marge pretty much looked like the part of the blonde bimbo, and dressed that way, too, but she was actually pretty smart.  She was just really, really wild, dating a different guy every night and always saying that she was going to settle down someday … but not today.  Catherine was chic, calm, unruffled, with a calculated look that included a pair of glasses to make her look very serious and intimidating.

“Well, I guess if you can trust your agent to guide your career you can trust her to guide your love life!” Erica commented.  “So, tell me, why do you think a lovely woman like Amanda is still single?”

“Do you know how hard it is to find an honest man?” Catherine said.

“Honestly, I just like to find a hard man!” Marge quipped.

“Well, let’s see if we can’t find both here tonight!” Erica replied.  “Now, we’ve got a very special set of guys for you to meet, as they’re all best friends who are vying for a date with our lovely dater.  So let’s meet them.  First, he’s an entrepreneur from Mountain View, California, let’s say hello to Steve!”

The first man came out to stand by the small piece of luggage on the far left side of the stage.  He was tall, dark-haired, handsome, well-built, and well-muscled in the way that only someone who actually put a lot of time into his physique could pull off.  He walked with a self-assuredness that said that he knew he was hot and he knew you found him hot, too.  “Hi, I’ve just gotta say that that dress really does you justice!” he said.

Amanda flushed.  It was nice to get a compliment this early.  “And I know that if you and me got together, we’d be able to rock each others’ world!” he finished.

“Next, he’s an IT Specialist from Mountain View, California, let’s say hello to Alex!”, Erica continued.

The second man came out and stood by the luggage in the middle of the stage.  He was short, with a small goatee and where Steve was dressed to impress but in a comfortable manner, Alex was dressed “to the nines”, as it were.  He also seemed really nervous and excited for some reason.  “Hi, I like long romantic walks on the beach and picnics in the park, and if you pick me I’ll treat you like a goddess!” he said.

“And finally, he’s also oddly enough from Mountain View, California where he’s a software developer, let’s say hello to Tony!”

The final man came out stood by the last piece of luggage.  He was dressed nicely, but fairly casually, far less impressive than the other two.  Looks-wise, he was, well, kinda average.  Average looks, average height, average build, average musculature.  He wasn’t as hot as Steve and not as dorky as Alex, but fit someone in-between.  Surprisingly, his manner was somewhat subdued, as if he didn’t feel the need to impress her but didn’t expect that to just happen naturally either.  “Hi, I’m eccentric and more than a little dull, but I’m also responsible, reliable and loyal, and so if that’s what you’re looking for we could have a good time.”

Erica said, “So, as I said, good looking guys, but like all of us they have some baggage.  On stage we have their small, medium and large bags and they’re going to open them, starting with their smallest bags.  So, Steve, please reveal your smallest piece of baggage.”

Steve then went to open his bag, and Erica read out what it said, to the ooohs of the audience, “I don’t speak to any of my exes!”

Erica then turned to Amanda.  “So, what would be your concern about that?”

“Well, ” Amanda said, “I guess it’s good that he’s not too close with them, but then it seems like his breakups are always really, really bad ones, which says something.”

“So Steve, ” Erica said, “what about that?”

“Well, I’ve had some good and some bad relationships, ” he replied, “but when things end, well, there’s really nothing else I want from them, so I have no problem just never seeing them again.”

Amanda winced.  That was the sort of callous attitude that … well, that she kinda expected from men, actually.  So no surprise there.

“So now, Alex, please open your smallest bag, ” Erica continued.

Alex opened his bag, and again Erica read what it said, “I keep my bronzed baby booties on my nightstand”.

Erica turned to Amanda again, “So what are you thinking about that?”

“Well, it seems a bit childish, ” Amanda commented.

Erica turned back to Alex, “So what do you have to say about that?”

“Well, ” he replied, “My mother gave them to me when I moved out, and I keep them to remind me of my happy times as a child.”

“So  your mother passed away, then?” Erica asked.

“Oh, no, she’s still alive, ” he said.  “I talk to her everyday!”

“Maybe that should have been your smallest bag!” Erica commented.

The audience and everyone burst into laughter, even Alex, although it seemed a bit forced.  In fact, Amanda noted that the only one who didn’t laugh was Tony, who didn’t seem amused at all by the joke.  Although he didn’t seem offended either.  That was a bit strange.

“And finally, Tony, please reveal your smallest bag.”

Tony opened his bag, and Erica read, “I am asleep by 10 pm every night.  So, Amanda, what are your concerns there?”

“Well, I’m not sure that I want to date someone who can’t say up late enough to watch my shows!” Amanda quipped.

“Yeah, Tony, what’s with that?” Erica asked.

“Well, ” he replied, “they say that early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, and I have to admit that I like the fact that I can get most of my day’s work done before everyone else gets up.”

“So, three small bags, but don’t make up your mind yet because there are two more bags to open, and don’t forget that Amanda has her own baggage.  Has she had sex with more women than men?  Has the men she’s dated left her unable to trust men?  Or does she make her men dress up like the Easter Bunny in bed? We have lots more baggage to claim when we come back.”

And then the cameras and lights cut out to signify the commercial break.

Curling Free Agency Period

So after the last Grand Slam event, the curling free agency period started.  Now, usually the most interesting moves happen at the start of the four year Olympic cycle, but you also often get some interesting moves at the half way point as teams that aren’t working out reshuffle to get time to play together as a team before going into the Olympic trials.  This is somewhat unique to Canada since there are so many good teams and so the trials are large and competitive and getting any advantage you can is important.  I mean, when you’re going to face Kerri Einarson and Rachel Homan and used to have to face Jennifer Jones, that’s bad enough, but the other teams are going to be teams that are capable of beating those teams and could easily go on a run.

There aren’t any big moves on the women’s side so far, but there is a big move on the men’s side, and Brendan Botcher’s team has split from him and picked up Brad Jacobs — who used to play with a number of them — who leaves Reid Carruthers’ team who needs to pick up a third.  This cascade — which was likely planned because commenters predicted it once Botcher left the team — is interesting itself, but what’s more interesting is that it happened to Botcher, as many people are saying that it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Now, I don’t like Botcher.  I didn’t really have any strong opinion on him — other than that he looked like someone I was in the debating society with in university (but wasn’t him, clearly) — that wasn’t someone that I was great friends with but wasn’t someone that I hated either.  I think our personalities clashed a bit as he considered me right wing, I considered him left wing, and we both thought of ourselves as centrists.  But that wasn’t enough to really colour my opinion of Botcher that much, but during the “bubble” Briar during the pandemic I came to dislike him from one incident.  At various times during the game, a team can call a timeout and in general that team hangs around the rings discussing their options while the other team moves a bit away to let them talk about it without them hanging over their shoulder.  While Botcher wasn’t standing behind them, he stayed right beside the rings with an annoying smirk on his face.  Yeah, given that there was no audience you’d be able to hear everything they were saying even at the normal distance, but it just seemed so deliberate that it annoyed me, and the smirk really made him look like a jerk.  So I might agree with the above sentiment.

But that’s not why many people would say that, and it comes from something that at the time made me think “I find it to be entirely in keeping with what I know of him”.  A while ago, Botcher’s team jettisoned Darren Moulding, but tried to make it sound like he had said that he didn’t want to play, prompting Moulding to say that he was completely willing to play and so that was completely false.  That way of getting rid of a player rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, and was worse than Homan with Lisa Weagle, which a lot of people didn’t care for either.  So a lot of people are saying that it’s just what Botcher deserves.  Add in that this wasn’t the same team that did that and people are thinking that Botcher is not someone who is good to play with, which, again, I find to be entirely in keeping with what I know of him.

Anyway, that’s on the men’s side, which I pay less attention to, so I’m only commenting on it because of the odd circumstances.  I’ll make another post if there are any really interesting changes on the women’s side.

NHL Playoff Predictions: Round 1

And my April/May tradition continues, where I try to pick who will try to win each series in each round and hope to do better than a coin flip or simply picking the team with home ice advantage.  This is not a bracket, as I repick every round for each new series.  So let’s get this party started!

Eastern Conference:

Washington vs Rangers:  The Rangers are a top seed and so are primed to be one of the upsets, as upsets always happen.  But this is a Washington team that limped into the playoffs led by Alexander Ovechkin who has played well in the playoffs but hasn’t generally been able to simply carry his team through a series, and the surrounding cast isn’t as impressive as it once was.  The Rangers should be able to pull this off, especially since they do seem to have the clearly better goaltender.

Tampa Bay vs Florida:  Tampa Bay is not the team they used to be, and Florida went far in the playoffs last year and so should know how to play and win in the playoffs.  Their goaltending is probably more reliable, too.  Florida should be able to pull it off.

Islanders vs Carolina:  I have a soft spot for the Islanders, and they’ve always been able to surprise teams in the playoffs, and Carolina has underachieved in the playoffs the last few years, and so this is one where it might be worth betting on the Islanders.  But Carolina still has something to prove and is probably the better team, so I think in this case I’ll stick with them.

Toronto vs Boston:  This one might be between the teams that on paper should be closest match, and Boston has lost a fair number of important players since last year, so they might be vulnerable.  But they have a completely solid goaltending tandem and the Leafs have one that’s not particularly reliable.  While Boston may not be as offensively capable as they used to be, the Leafs’ defense and goaltending are a bit suspect and the Leafs have to win by scoring goals, which might be hard to come by against the solid defense and goaltending of the Bruins.  So I’ll take Boston here.

Western Conference:

Vegas vs Dallas:  Vegas struggled early on in the season and kinda squeaked into the playoffs, but they made a huge push to get in and made some deals at the deadline.  Whatever you think about their use of the Long-Term-Injury-Reserve, some of their big players who were on it might be able to make it back for this series, and their pickups seem to be working.  They’ve won it all before — and very recently — and so know how to win in the playoffs.  They are a scary team for anyone and I think they’ll be able to beat Dallas here.

Nashville vs Vancouver:  Nashville might be a surprising team, and Vancouver is a surprising team, having done much better this season than expected.  But they also managed to play like a team in the position they are in for the entire season, which means that they might actually be for real.  So it’s worth giving Vancouver the benefit of the doubt here.

Colorado vs Winnipeg:  I hate to count out a team like Colorado, especially with the stars they have, but Winnipeg has a talented team and home ice advantage.  They’ve had to put up with a lot the past few seasons but have managed to weather it, and have a fan base that is thirsting for them to have playoff success.  This one should be close, but I’m going with Winnipeg this time.

Los Angeles vs Edmonton:  This is another tough one, because Edmonton had to overcome a really bad start to get here, which suggests both that they have vulnerabilities and that they have potential.  But they have actually won a number of series in the past and so aren’t facing the huge pressure that teams like Toronto and Carolina are, which might let them remember that they managed to put it all together after their disastrous start.

Summary:

Eastern Conference:

Washington vs Rangers
Tampa Bay vs Florida
Islanders vs Carolina
Toronto vs Boston
Western Conference:

Vegas vs Dallas
Nashville vs Vancouver
Colorado vs Winnipeg
Los Angeles vs Edmonton

Comments on “Tightlacing and Abusive Normative Address”

So the next essay from Ergo that I’m going to look at is “Tightlacing and Abusive Normative Address” by Alexander Edlich and Alfred Archer.  Here, they focus on introducing a new category of psychological abuse called “Tightlacing”, which is basically when someone attempts to make some kind of normative pronouncement on someone and/or their behaviour that would force them to change in ways that violate their identity.  They link this to Gaslighting, which is where someone causes someone else to doubt their own beliefs or knowledge and, more importantly, their own capacity for forming valid beliefs and knowledge by contradicting them.  Their first example of Tightlacing is this one:

CHILD AGGRESSION

A father approaches his 10-year-old son in the son’s room. Earlier, when the family was having dinner, the son, who does well at school and is not normally grumpy or confrontational, angrily recounted how his teacher had been criticising him, and he expressed a degree of annoyance that from the parents’ perspective was exaggerated and unfounded and put everyone in a bad mood. Father to son: “Why do you have to behave like that? Your mother comes home late from work and has so many things that trouble her, why do you have to make her feel even worse? Can’t you behave enjoyably? Keep your ridiculous anger to yourself, that’s not helpful for anyone.” The father leaves the room, leaving the son devastated.

They say this about it:

We are not going to argue that this is an instance of psychological abuse; we take this to be clear enough.

Well, they probably should have argued for that more, because it isn’t that clear to me.  Could it be an overreaction?  Perhaps, but an overreaction isn’t abuse.  They talk about it possibly being recurrent, but that doesn’t follow from it being said this one time.  Perhaps the father put it more as controlling all anger than simply controlling it at an appropriate time, or measuring the child’s anger instead, but that doesn’t follow from this artificial example.

Let’s take a look at another example to see a bit of a contrast:

MORALISM

Moralism is the vice of overdoing moral criticism of others. Imagine your colleague calls you out for every tiny piece of everyday behaviour that is not perfectly saintly. He starts the day by criticising your take-away coffee (“This produces so much waste”), comments on your shirt (“Have you made sure there was no child labour involved?”), questions your lunch choice (“Is this vegan and organically grown?”). You are criticised for printing too much, being a bad parent for working too much, being a bad colleague for sometimes making others feel inferior, and setting a bad example by occasionally using colloquial language. In short, your colleague brings up every aspect of your behaviour that can from some perspective be morally criticised. While none of the criticism may be completely misguided and possibly all worth considering, the constant demands put you under pressure always to hold up maximally high standards and never to make the smallest moral mistake. You are demanded to be something like a saint, morally perfect regarding even the tiniest part of everyday behaviour, and you find it very difficult to reject this demand because, after all, none of the points your colleague brings up is wrong.

It is interesting to note that they say this about this example:

To some, this example may seem less problematic than the others, and they may view the colleague’s moralism as merely annoying, not abusive.

But this strikes me as being more likely to be abusive rather than less, which makes it seem to me that they have it backwards.  Why this disconnect?  Well, as they themselves admit, the father is in a position where they do need to teach the child how to behave and how to act, and that might include teaching them to control their emotions and, in particular, their anger.  On the other hand, my moral status is none of my co-worker’s business unless it directly pertains to the work we are doing together.  So we would tend to believe that the father may be being a bit harsh and that that harshness might cross into abuse, but that the co-worker has no other reason to keep harping on those moral claims than to target me for some reason, which seems abusive in and of itself.  Thus, if the father is constantly that harsh then we would be willing to believe that this is abusive, but then it’s not the normative tightlacing that’s the problem, but instead that harshness.  And if the co-worker acts like that towards everyone, then they would just be sanctimonious and annoying, but if they only act that way towards me then it’s targeted and abusive, and it’s the targeting that makes it abusive, not the normative status of their claims.

It seems to me that when considering abuse we lose a lot in this current consequentialist climate where we consider outcomes and not intentions when determining the morality of something.  With both tightlacing and gaslighting, it is often considered to be abusive if the person on the receiving end feels that the charge is making them do something that clashes with who they are or if they feel that their cherished beliefs are being challenged or feel that they are being made to feel “stupid” and incompetent by someone correcting them.  The big problem with this is that valid attempts to correct someone can be reclassified as “abusive” if the person on the receiving end is sufficiently sensitive.  They can claim that a certain moral complaint clashes with their identity — as Richard Carrier did for polyamory — and then insist that any criticism of that in their hearing is abusive, no matter how strongly the person making the criticism feels about the morality of that thing and even regardless of whether or not they are correct about that.  For gaslighting, correcting someone who has a lot of false beliefs can be declared abusive just because it makes them feel bad.  In both cases, the accusation of abuse can be used to avoid that person ever having to correct their behaviour or change themselves to align with a proper morality or to form proper beliefs.  It can make them immune to criticism, which would be taking this sort of thing far too far.

So if we look at the examples, we can see that the case of the father is abusive if the reason for saying that is not a genuine attempt to change the boy’s behaviour for the better, but is instead done, say, as an expression of frustration or anger (as the last part of it suggests).  And we can see that we are willing to treat the co-worker’s moralizing as annoying instead of abusive if it is seen as a genuine attempt to correct the moral failings of others as opposed to them targeting someone with pointed criticism.  Even their comment that in the case of the father the issue is that it would demand that a human being completely control their emotions when we as human beings are not capable of that comes down to intent.  If they believe or know that the behaviour can be changed, then they are not demanding the impossible no matter how much the person on the receiving end insists that they are demanding the impossible.  If the behaviour cannot actually be changed, whether in general or for that individual person, if the person criticizing genuinely believes that it can be then that person is wrong, and not necessarily abusive.  It’s only if they know or ought reasonably to know that they are demanding something that cannot be changed that we could legitimately charge them with tightlacing … but then the issue is the intent to either ignore that it’s impossible for them to act otherwise or to refuse to accept that this is something that cannot be changed.  Either way, the issue is that they are intentionally demanding that they change something that they know cannot be changed, just as with gaslighting the paradigmatic cases are ones where the person’s intent is to get them to doubt themselves so as to make them more easily manipulated.

We can argue for some sort of unintentional abuse, as some people do have abusive personalities but don’t think of themselves as abusive.  But the cases given in the essay don’t rise to that level, at least as presented.  And so as we work through the essay it really appears that the issue is with what feels like an attack on a person’s identity, not with an excessive comment on them.  And as noted, to move down that path risks leading us to making people immune to valid criticism, which cannot be the original intent.

Thoughts on “Belzebuth”

Surprisingly, for this movie the description is actually mostly accurate:

On the U.S. / Mexico border, special agent Emanuel Ritter leads a police investigation into a series of shocking deaths involving young children. When a priest from the vatican links the ancient demon Belzebuth to the murders, a descent into horror ensues.

Although it is a bit sparse.  See, the main thrust here is that the Messiah’s Second Coming might have happened, and the demons are trying to prevent that child from growing up and defeating them.  They start by killing all the children born in a certain hospital at a certain time, which includes Ritter’s newborn son, and then we fast forward a number of years later where they are wholesale slaughtering children in that village, aiming for the child (and missing due to conveniences).  The priest is actually presented as a paranormal investigator for most of it and his priest background is only touched on in the movie until the very end where he reports to the Vatican on his measures to protect the child.  There’s also a cult leader who is presented as a fallen priest of some sort who consorts with demons.  Ritter gets possessed by the demon, tries to kill the child, is stopped and some kind of exorcism is attempted, which fails, but that was all a trap by the cult leader in a bit of a twist where we switch between thinking he’s on the side of the heroes, to betraying them, to saving them.  But ultimately Ritter, purged of the demon, goes away with the child and his mother to hide until the Second Coming.

One issue I had with the movie starts right from the beginning, where it shows the cult leader with blood on his hands and talking about things being necessary and things like that, before transitioning to what ends up being the past with the killing of the babies and then moving forward to where most of the movie will take place, revisiting that scene at the very end.  This, of course, is a not uncommon move to set up a scene at the beginning that we will have a different impression of at the end, although I think here both scenes are a bit too ambiguous to work that way.  But the issue here is that it sets up the supernatural aspects and a demonic story, but most of the rest of the story is more of a mystery story where they try to figure out exactly what’s happening.  Given the intro and narration, we know that demons are involved but without them we would have started with a strange and creepy murder of babies by a nurse who slashes her own throat when she’s done, which then would have sustained interest through the investigation and further murders.  Here, we’re just waiting for them to connect the dots to the first scene instead of wondering what in the world is going on here.

The movie also fails to develop most of the things it does have.  Ritter is a bit bitter due to the loss of his child and later his wife to suicide, but the movie drops these things on us — especially the latter, which is a throwaway line later in the movie — and expects us to care about him and really feel for why he accepts the demon’s offer to restore his wife and child if he kills the child.  But we don’t know him that well and he’s a bit of a jerk, and so it’s hard to really feel that much empathy for him.  The demon also taunts the mother of the child by mocking her for thinking her child was the Messiah, but the movie didn’t establish that she really did feel that way.  For the most part, she was unaware of it, and by the time it was stated to her she was far more interested in keeping the child alive than in how special it was, so the insult falls flat.  We also don’t find out much about the priest or the cult leader, even though they are important but do little outside of a few key things.

Which is sad, because outside of that there really isn’t much to the movie at all.  Not much happens outside of the perfunctory investigation and the ending action scene that I felt dragged out a bit too long.  That meant that the movie was, for the most part, simply boring.  I didn’t care about the plot and didn’t care about the characters, and so had no interest in watching what was happening, especially as it dragged a bit and added in some irrelevant things.  Developing an arc or a mystery to drag us along would have helped this movie immensely.

But as it was I was emotionally disconnected, bored and felt the movie dragged overmuch.  I won’t watch this movie again.