Conversations I’ll be avoiding in 2009
Posted by Chris Clarke on January 8, 2009
Talking to all different kinds of people is important, and I enjoy it most of the time. Modern life offers plenty of chances for insularity, parochiality, echochamberosity and related plaints, and it’s good to avoid those. And the exigencies of surviving in this society demand at times that you talk to people you’d rather not talk to, and do so as pleasantly and constructively as possible. But there’s necessity and then there’s time-wasting. There are people with whom talking is not exactly productive. They are a tiny minority of the world’s people, but I have wasted enough time. And thus, in 2009, I’m going to try not to spend unnecessary time conversing with people who:
• Spend more than a sparing and reluctant amount of time trashing mutual acquaintances. Amazing how long it’s taken me to figure out what sorts of things such folks say to their other friends about me.
• Send email or leave comments entirely in all-caps. If they haven’t mastered the notion that capital letters are for beginning sentences and proper nouns, acronyms, and occasional emphasis or exuberance, then it’s unlikely they’ve put enough thought into what they say to me to merit my spending a lot of time crafting thoughtful responses. Spelling errors may well be a result of disability, and both spelling and grammar problems might come from unfamiliarity with the language, so neither of those serve as a reliable marker of carelessness. But there’s no reason for all-caps all the time.
• Insist that complex political and sociological phenomena can be explained by lumping 20-year age cohorts into “generations” and assigning virtues and failings en masse to members of those “generations.” My favorite one of these took place recently over at Michael’s joint in comment five on this post. (You reject everything about the Baby Boomers? Way to be totally unlike the Baby Boomers there, pal.)
• Slag me for not fitting in to their crowd, clique, or world-view. Thing is, I realized this year I’ve never fit in anywhere — except by myself, in wild surroundings. People are free to think what they want about me being unhip, the wrong kind of activist, the wrong kind of writer, writing about the wrong topics, not traveling in the right circles, linking to the wrong people, not linking to the right people, or for that matter having the wrong brain chemistry. They might even be right. I don’t care anymore. I know what I want to do, and I’m doing it.
• Have only one apparent setting. Don’t care whether it’s snark, outrage, drama-seeking, passive-aggression, reflexive mockery, piousness, or self-conscious irreverence. There are people who can shift from one setting to another, and I like them better.
• Go out of their way to describe to me the multifarious ways in which I am worthless. The necessity of avoiding these people has been a surprisingly hard lesson to learn, and in fact I have on occasion felt a strange compulsion to get to know them better. This may be because being told in agonizing detail how I fail to measure up brings up all kinds of happy childhood memories. The Gestalt therapists call it “unfinished business.” Well, you know what? I’m finished.
• Are currently middle school students, or act like they are.
I think that’s it. Fortunately, that leaves about six billion people I can still talk to. Some of them are even on the Internet.
Comments
Phew, you didn’t mention totally neurotic blogger chicks, so I think I’m OK
I reserve the right to edit posts after publication, though.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 01/08 at 05:32 PM
AW DAMN MAN YOU FORCED MY hand.
goooooood list. goodlist. ::pets list::
a few times i hear the disdain for the stultified, the polarized, the unoriginal, the FAKE. that’s a big one for me. let’s let ourselves be ourselves. yanno?
Is it ok if we have two settings?
Yes, but you know this neurotic blogger chick
would never tell you you were worthless or the wrong
kind of writer. In fact it’s more likely she’d
embarrass you with excess praise.
Here’s to excess!
Posted by Chris Clarke on 01/08 at 05:46 PM
Good list. But I have a Junior High student (well, he will be next year) who you’d probably enjoy talking to (that is if you could get a word in!)
Hey, I like that “sidelong glances” sidebar thingy. How’s that work? (and thanks for including DesertBlog and that CBD alert on Desert Cahuilla).
Posted by Larry Hogue on 01/08 at 06:28 PM
Well, Larry, that wouldn’t be unnecessary conversation then, would it?
The Sidelong Glances thing is essentially the same thing as the blogrolls: the LinkList module for Expression Engine set up with a bookmarklet link. I find a good page and click and type in a descriptive title and click and it’s done.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 01/08 at 06:40 PM
IDIOT THAT SHE IS, RONNIECAT WOULD PROBABLY DISAGREE WITH YOU ABOUT THE CAPS THING, BUT SHE’S PROBABLY A FRICKIN’ BOOMER LIKE YOU ARE, AND YOU CAN’T CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE, YOU SIMPERING WHIMPERING TREE-HUGGING PINKO MULTIFARIOUS WORM. Could you please print this out and sign it for me? It’s part of a school project.
There. I think I hit all of them.
Excuse me, Chris, but why aren’t you writing about the paint peeling off my patio fence? I’m shocked someone like you, one of those uppity blogger types, wouldn’t use your fame and high traffic to address the greatest challenge the world has ever faced. What if all the paint peels off? What then? I’m so disappointed…
No, wait, let me restate that: I’M SO DISAPPOINTED!
That’s what’s wrong with your whole generation. You people just don’t care about what’s important to me.
Isn’t the middle school thing contrary to your hostility towards generation stereotyping?
Posted by Amanda Marcotte on 01/09 at 09:10 AM
Goddammit!! Now I have to shift away from my one and only setting?? That would be so…multi-dimensional
Isnt the middle school thing contrary to your hostility towards generation stereotyping?
Dammit, busted.
No wait! Middle school isn’t a generational thing, it’s a Developmental Stage. People of all generations go into that stage at one point or another. Some of them emerge at the far end.
I actually like most of the people of middle-school age I meet just fine. But that is when hormone overload, and the emerging sense of self as a potential self-sufficient adult, and the scariness of both those things to the unprepared, tends to make cliquishness and pettiness and backstabbiness reach their full flower in many of us. It’s cute and annoying and yucky in a child. In an adult it’s not cute.
On the generational thing: A kind soul sent a link to this piece from September by William Wolfrum, usually known as a kinda level-headed guy over at Shakesville. He’s apologized for some of the more intemperate stuff since. Still, really glad I didn’t read it in September. Really, really glad.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 01/09 at 12:21 PM
Gosh. I like your new year’s resolutions a lot more than my own.
Whew, now that the heavy lifting is done, nothing but blue skies and smooth sailing.
There. I think I hit all of them.
FAIL! You used more than one setting. L00zR!!!1!!!
I do have only one setting, but it goes to 11.
What, stupid isn’t a setting?
What, stupid isnt a setting?
OK, I’ve got two.
OK, Ive got two.
Binary FAIL!! If it goes up to 11, then you’ve got three, not two.
