Misplaced Hate and Pointless Arguments

Two of my friends recently (independently) wrote blogs on conceptually similar subjects. And not liking to be left out, I thought I'd throw in my own opinion.

The subject in question is excessive hatred in inconsequential matters; in Aerliss's case tech-snobs, and in Andrew's case Gaga-intolerance.

[I'm simplifying. Read their blogs for the full stories.]

But I'm going to go with a slightly different approach. One of my better qualities is my willingness to admit when I'm wrong. And the truth is, I've been guilty of both those things, and I was wrong to.

So because I like to try and explain things - and like the sound of my own blog voice - that's what I'm going to do.


Rotten Apple

Time was, I had - at least what seemed like - legitimate reasons for disliking Apple, and iPods, and so on; their extortionate prices, the more obnoxious of the fanboys/girls, Steve Jobs' dickishness, and the fact that Apple products are treated as if they're some form of perfection that we should all be aspiring to... But that's beside the point.

Eventually it came to be that I was well known for my general dislike, to the point where people would (and still do) say thing like "if you get an iPhone, Chris will disown you". And was at one point mocked when I said,

"Today sees the release of the iPhone in American, and despite the arguments we had over at Andrews blog, I really would like one. It's just so smooth and shiney [sic]."

Of course, back then, there really weren't any other smart phones quite on the same level.

Strong followings create strong oppositions. The more devoted the fans, the more pissed off and irrational the 'haters'.

The sobering moment for me came when I was sneering at an iPhone advert, and was called-out for being just as obnoxious as the Apple-snobs I so despised.

Don't get me wrong, when fanboys get all Apple-snobbish around me, I still feel an overwhelming urge to slap some sense and humility into them. But otherwise, I've mostly just stopped caring.

And it does makes me feel a little uneasy, and guilty, when people expect me to automatically hate everything Apple-related. Also, Blackberry.


Attention-seeking, Talentless...

In fact, I have nothing against Lady Gaga. So I'm going to talk about Justin Bieber instead.

I didn't really care about his existence for a long time. And when I first heard his music, I found it not to my taste. Whatever. But when I started using Twitter more, his existence became somewhat unavoidable [until].

As Andrew points out, like it or not, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

So when I'm listening to, say, T-Rex and the little sister tells me to "turn off that crap music", while blasting some crappy dance music from her phone like a chav on a bus; while I may feel morally obliged to slap her for having such a disastrously wrong opinion, she is still (technically) entitled to that opinion.

Even if she is wrong.

Fact is, when it comes to celebrities, 'hatred' and disputes of opinion are seldom reasonable. You don't like their music? So what. Don't listen to it. But it's never that simple.

Justin Bieber is one of those particular divisive individuals - you either love him or hate him. Well, actually, there are people who occupy the 'couldn't care less' middle ground, but they can't be heard over the sound of squealing 14 year old girls, and the loud mockery of people who by all rights shouldn't give a damn and should know better.

And what goes for the Biebs, goes for the Gaga.

In these instances, there's a lot of herd mentality involved - you'll typically align your opinion of a divisive artist with that of your friends; even if you secretly have a few of their track on your 'guilty pleasures' playlist.

The other thing is, these artists tend to be very easy targets. If you're vocal about disliking someone like Beiber, and you make jokes about them, your friends will laugh and agree with you, and you get a sort of encouragement and reinforcement from it.


Unreasonable Reasoning

People often aren't as in control of their actions and their thoughts as they'd perhaps like to believe. Whether we like it or not, we're quite easily influenced, and manipulated.

First of all, otherwise reasonable opinions can become exaggerated over time. This might be the result of reinforcement from peers. Or your opinion can just plain be influenced by your peers.

Whether or not we like to admit it, there's sometimes a certain amount of jealousy and/or envy at the root of pointless hate as well. Similarly, other times, we dislike things because other people like them and/or they're popular. It doesn't make sense, but we do it anyway. Because we're all beautiful, unique snowflakes... *cough*. Or sometimes because a certain person or people that we don't like, likes them.

When these matters develop into arguments, another thing you get is escalation - even an argument that starts based in logic and reason can develop over time into a meaningless shouting match. And this usually reinforces and magnifies now empty opinions, as well as encouraging stubbornness.

And when that happens, your only hope is to call it quits and get out with your dignity in tact. Because when that happens, no-one ever 'wins'.


That's why I try not to get into arguments regarding Mac vs PC, religion vs atheism, conservative vs liberal, etc. It's a exercise in futility, and I have better things to do with my time.

Really, the best response to all this, and the people who insist on bothering you with this nonsense, is to say "So fucking what. Go bother someone who gives a damn".

And if you're really dead set on having pointless arguments, you'll find the Pointless Internet Argument Forums here. Otherwise, for the love of God, keep it to yourself.


Oatzy.


[Learned the error of my ways. Mostly.]

NaNoWriMo

Or National Novel Writing Month, for those unaware and curious.

Basically, for the duration of November you attempt to write (at least) 50,000 words worth of novel (~1,666 words a day). I considered doing it last year - which would have made more sense, given I was on a whole "I want to be a writer" thing - but I didn't for some reason. What's different this year? Mostly the competition. Nothing motivates me more than competitiveness :D

Hurray for Twitter.

A novel, by their definition is a long work of fiction, and under that definition a collection of short stories can count if they share a common theme. Which is good, because I could not think up a novel worthy plot. Plus I'd probably lose interest and give up part way through.

I had a collection of old ideas (and one that came to me in a dream a couple of weeks ago) but had to come up with some dubious link.

Anyway, I chose mental disorders.

But not in a "this person has this condition, look how weird they are" sort of way. More in the way that Fight Club is 'about' Dissociative Identity Disorder, how Memento is about Anterograde Amnesia or how Truman Show could be about paranoid schizophrenia (think about). It's more a plot device. Or something like that. I'm not savvy to the literary lingo.

I called it "Twisted Smiles & Fractured Minds" partly because it fit, but mostly because it sounds cool.

The stories so far are:

Day 1) His Missing Face - Body Integrity Identity Disorder (based on the dream)
2) My Beautiful Eyes - Narcissism, and the opening to a series
3) Prologue - a flowery vignette (see below for extract)
4) My Imperfect Rock - continuation of narcissism, with mild codependency
5) My Broken Mirror - either Anorexia or Bulimia. Possibly. The third in the narcissism series.

(Titles subject to change)

I'm being vague in the off chance I let you read any of them. I don't want to give any spoilers :]

Much beyond that, I'm going to be scraping the DSM-IV and wikipedia for ideas - which is another bonus to having mental illness as a 'theme': plenty of potential jumping off points. Also, mental illness is just plain fascinating.

I am finding, though, that the ideas seem better in concept than in execution. Not that that's too much a problem, since quantity matters more than quality in NaNo.

You can find my profile here, and watch my word count if you're so inclined. Or, since the site's a bit slow and unresponsive at the moment, you can see the 'novel' summary and an extract in the screenshot below.

NB/ It's not all written in the style of the extract.

Click to embiggen. Cover art uses this stock image. Font based on my handwriting. It could be better, but it'll suffice.

And if you're also doing NaNo, feel free to add me as a buddy.

Whether or not you'll ever get to see what I write for NaNo will very much depend on how I feel about them once it's over and whether or not I can be bothered to edit them to bring them up to an acceptable standard. I'm a poor judge of the quality of my own work and usually end up hating it, so that may never happen.


Oatzy.

Procrastination, Dieting and Will Power

As a follow up to the previous procrastination post, it's worth noting that, in fact, the 'Principle of Procrastination' is a special case of a more general will power principle.

To demonstrate this, lets look at a more general example of temptation verses will power - Dieting.

Okay, so imagine your food options are chocolate, curry, pasta and salad. Your diet food is pasta, so call that f_0.

For the other three foods, put them in order of desirability - curry, chocolate, salad. Your preference may vary. Then label the foods accordingly - so curry would be f_1, chocolate f_2, and salad f_3.

So going back to the equation from last time:

D(f_0) is then the desirability of the pasta, relative to the other three.

So say you want curry more than pasta, but pasta more than the other two. The above expression basically says, how many foods do you want more than the one you're supposed to have. In this case, there's only one, so the total number of temptations, T = 1.

And that's basically it. And further to that we can say that T is inversely proportional to the desirability of the f_0 - i.e. the less you want what you're supposed to eat, the more things there are that you'd rather eat.

And this can be written mathematically as

Where k is the constant of proportionality, which will usually depend on the total number of options, among other things.


So as you may have noticed, the equations are the same as last time, with slightly different symbols. And this is how we get our general case:

Where t_i are temptations, T is total temptations, t_0 is the required thing and D(t_i), as before, is the desirability of t_i.

So what were left with is this same question - how do you quantify D(t_i)?

In the case of dieting, it'd be dependent of things like: calorie content, how filling the food is, how much you like it (tastiness, etc). But I'll leave working out an exact formula for D(f_i) as an exercise for someone else.


So for procrastination, we just replace food with activities, and the same basic formula holds. But what made it a special case was that we could define another feature of the required task - its importance. We could then define desirability of that task in terms of its importance and got a slightly different looking, but equivalent equation:

Obviously, though, the D-functions are different for any given 'problem'. So for procrastination, the D-function was time-dependent - the importance of a required task increased with time, meaning desirability decreased with time.

The desirability of food, on the other hand, may vary over time. But when it does, it usually fluctuates, more than it having a definite increase or decrease.

(NB/ I'm not talking about your wanting a given food decreasing over time due to, e.g. the food spoiling.)


So the other thing to consider, for general will power situations, is the 'Temptation Threshold'. And again, this is just a generalisation of the one of the old statements

Where q is some quality of t_n, whether it be how time consuming it is, how bad for you it is (calorie content), etc. - which is dependent on the specific required activity. w is a quantification of the lower limit of your will power (w.r.t. quality q). And finally, t_n (with n satisfying the above) is the 'Temptation Threshold' item.

If we go back to the diet example, then - say you've eaten recently, so your desire for more pasta is decreased (as is your desire for curry). But you're still peckish. The chocolate, being a snack food, is now more desirable, and, in fact, the most desirable (t_1).

Now, say that the quality, q is calorie content - in this case 100 calories. If your will power won't allow you 100 calories then you won't eat the chocolate. BUT, if you will allow yourself those 100 calories, the chocolate crosses the 'temptation threshold', and you can feel guilty about it later.


And that same sort of logic applies to procrastination and indeed to any other test of will power. But what that also demonstrates is that D-functions and w can be very fluid, which makes them harder to given an absolute definition to.

For example, will power may depend on the importance of sticking to a diet; your will power might fall over time (as you get hungrier); it'll depend on what you've already eaten.., and so on.

And similarly, D-functions will depend on things like what you've already eaten; relative healthiness; feelings of guilt or of rewarding yourself.., and so on again.


And the important thing to keep in mind is that these things can be very person specific. They can also be hard to quantify. So in essence, these equations do nothing more than to put into mathematical terms, facts of life.

And that's an intellectual exercise more than anything useful - except for in instances when doing so can provide new insight. So that final question is this,

Have you gained any sort of insight from any of this?


Oatzy.

How do you categorise tweets?

Obviously there are several different approaches. But the three main ones I'll be focusing on are "Content", "Originality" and "Audience".

It can be difficult to categorise tweets in terms of these individually, though. So the easiest way to start off is to look from an outside perspective - how followers may interact with a tweet when it pops up in their time-line.

To demonstrate the different interactions, I've put together this sort of flowchart,

So what this does, is show the different ways a person may interact with someone through a tweets. As you go down the levels, you start to interact more directly with the tweeter.

Level 1 is deciding whether to read the tweet or not, usually based on who tweeted it, or a quick glance.

Most tweets will stop at Level 2. Personal response is how you react emotionally; whether it be laughter, anger, an uplifting feeling of inner joy... Whatever. The important thing about Level 2 is it still involves no direct interaction with the tweeter.

When you get to Level 3 interaction, things can get a little more complicated. Level 3i gives the different ways a user might interact with the tweeter, numbered one (least direct) to five (most).

NB/ Passive responding is posting in response to, but not directly at the original tweet(er). For example, if you post your own tweet inspired by the original user's.

Like if someone posted something about Tabloids, which in turn made me rant about mass media, but not retweeting, quoting or @-replying the original tweeter.

Intention.

What this means now, is that we can look at the above in reverse - what we get is a way of defining tweets in terms of how the writer intends them to be interacted with, (ordered by increasing degree of interaction).

[Keep in mind though, that intention doesn't always match up to real response.]

Type 1) Ignore/Disregard

Content: Venting, or thinking out-loud. Whether tweeting for tweeting's sake, or just trying to get something out of your mind or off your chest.

Originality: Generally, 100% original.

Audience: No-one

Type 2) Consume

Content: To inform, entertain or inspire. Jokes, news, interesting thoughts, etc; But things you don't necessarily want or expect a response to. Retweets (of other sources) and shared content/links also fall into this category (as do quotes).

Originality: Can vary from completely original, to entirely someone else's work.

Audience: Anyone and everyone. Though some content may be targeted at a more specific group.

Type 2i) Promotion

Content: Like informing, only indirect. Usually, it involves linking to something of your own - e.g. a blog or a creative piece. In the case of celebrities, this may also include new products, up coming events, etc.

Originality: Generally original/links to original content. Can include quoting another person's praise/promotion of your content.

Audience: Anyone who's interested or willing.

Type 2ii) Retweet

Content: As in Type 2, but created with the hope or intention of being shared and spread around. These tweets my include phrases like "RT if", "please RT", or "RT to win" (but won't always be so direct).

Originality: Usually original, unless already retweeted from original source.

Audience: Anyone who'll play along.

Type 3) Reply

Subgroup a) Direct

Content: Could be potentially anything (including any Type 2 content). But usually more personal and conversation specific.

Originality: Content dependent. Original, more often than not.

Audience: Clearly directed at a specific individual or group, either by name or @user

Subgroup b) Passive

Content: Also known as "baiting" - a tweet engineered to provoke a response (positive or negative) from it's intended audience. This can include things like open question or requests, flame-baiting, cries for attention, sympathy seeking, etc. Outwardly, these tweets can appear as though they're Type 2.

Originality: Tends to be more original, but not always.

Audience: Varies with the poster's intention. Can be a specific person or group, or just anyone who'll take the bait.

Fringe Cases.

Obviously, these cases aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Where multiple categories overlap, we get the below:

NB/ Type 2ii may be seen as the overlap of Type 2 and Type 2i

Case 1-2) Biographical

Content: This happens when a user over-estimates their followers' interest in the details of their personal life. As a result, these usually get ignored.

Originality: 100% original

Audience: Intended, anyone and everyone. Actual, approaches zero.

Case 1-3b) Passive aggressive.

Content: Directed at a specific user or group without explicitly saying who. Usually malicious.

Originality: Almost always original. But, may include quotes, either from the "target" or from e.g. a song - expressing the poster's emotion.

Audience: Not intended to get a response from the "target". Sometimes directed at a specific user or intended to gain sympathy from a wider audience.

Case 3a-b) Indirect

Content: An open tweet (visible to all followers) not directly aimed at, but mentioning a specific user or group.

Originality: Usually original, but can include shared content.

Audience: Anyone and everyone, but with emphasis on the mentioned user(s)

Case 2i-3a) Directed Spam

Content: Junk. Links to spam sites. Tends to mention several @users.

Originality: Usually nonsensical junk.

Audience: A spam-bot will usually scan tweets for mentions of a given word of phrase and target those users. Almost anyone is a potential target.

Case 2i-3a-b) Friend Promotion

Content: This case covers things like Follow Friday or any instance when you praise or promote another user.

Originality: Completely original, unless retweet-based.

Audience: Usually everyone. But can be a specific group (usually with a common interest.)

Of course, don't assume this is a comprehensive list of tweet types. These are just the ones I could think of. Feel free to post others you think of in the comments.

Twitter Celebrities.

Using these categories, we can (to an extent) define a twitter user by which type of tweet they post the most. With your standard everyday user, this isn't always easy. Celebrities on the other hand, tend to fall into one category more than any other.

So here are some examples:

The Entertainer/The Joker

Comedians in particular; most of what they post are jokes, amusing anecdotes or links to funny stuff.

A sub group of this is The Spoof/Parody account. These are, as the names suggest, accounts claiming to be famous people (real or fictional), organisations, or even animals or inanimate objects. Almost everything they tweet is a joke (with varying degrees of quality).

"One of Us"

Also known as The Biographer, they remind us that sometimes, the lives of celebrities are just as boring as our own - albeit with more round the world travel and encounters with other celebrities. Okay, so some have interesting lives. But that's often not the case.

Also in this group are those who will frequently interact with fans, or even with other celebrities - a truly surreal experience to observe. Especially when the fight.

The Shameless Self-Promoter

Everything or almost everything they tweet is an advertisement for their new product, there next gig, their next TV appearance, their new column, etc. While occasional promotion is okay, and sometimes welcomed, too much will have you reaching for the unfollow button.

The worst example of the is The RSS Feed, an account where the only posts are links to the user's latest blog entry.

The Opinionated/The Activist

When you follow certain people, you pretty much expect this sort of thing - the politicians, the satirists, etc. The majority of what they tweet are their opinions, and in particular (but not necessarily) their opinion on matters of or relating to politics.

The Sharer/The RT'er

This category often overlaps with The Entertainers and/or The Opinionated. In special cases, if you @reply them with something funny or interesting, they will retweet you - instant fame!

[But keep in mind, a general unspoken rule of Twitter is not to pester the celebrities. It's just common courtesy.]

So, now you know. Go forth and tweet, my friends!

Oatzy.