"What do you want to be when you grow up?" - I'm sure we can all remember being asked this question at some point when we were kids. For some of us we still get asked it now even as adults. What I find interesting about this question isn't the answer itself, but how the answer changes with age. When we are kids most reply with answers that are seen as somewhat stereotypical - fireman, doctor, policeman, astronaut, etc these are really professions children can pretend to be when playing make believe. They won't necessarily be realistic and in almost all cases they won't be accurate in terms of what the child thinks that job actually involves.
Innocence and naïvety aside, as we grow we become more aware of the world around us, we become more aware of these professions, and we become more aware of what work they actually involve. The more aware we become of all these things the more you start to see the answer to the question change.
I was born in 1988, and throughout my life one of my loves has been video games. In the last 30 years they have changed a lot, in one area in particular they have made leaps and bounds, that is realism. That's not something I play video games for personally, I play games to do things I can't do in real life, but there is one area where that realism lends itself well and that is the experience of doing things that are possible in real life which you would like to do but probably never will.
There's a game called No Man's Sky which is a game where you explore space. You travel to planets, gather resources, build bases, upgrade your technology, and generally just mess about. There is a story mode but it's not really worth it in the end. The game itself is interesting, but the novelty wears off quite quickly, the grinding nature takes its toll, and the game as a whole is generally seen as being a disappointment by all but a few dedicated fans.
One of the professions children often give when asked the question above is to say astronaut - and one reason why this aspiration fades with age is the realisation of how much work is involved to actually become an astronaut, another is the somewhat cynical acceptance of the reality that where you were born, how much money you have, and what opportunities are presented to you are not things we get to choose and by the time we have influence over them it is often too late to make decisions that can have a deep and long lasting effect on our lives. In other words most kids realise quite quickly becoming an astronaut is a pipe dream which the vast majority of people will never achieve and very few actually have the opportunity to even try to become one never mind whether you succeed or not in the end.
No Man's Sky is a game that, in a way, lets you see what it would be like to explore space and visit other planets. Of course the game isn't life like, the realism it employs has its limits, but one of the things I find interesting about the criticism of the game is the fact that many people say there's nothing to do in it. That makes me think about the real world and what would actually be involved in the real world profession of space exploration. Most peoples' perceptions of such a hypothetical career are based around the depictions we have from science fiction, but being more realistic, whilst it is a mathematical certainty that alien life exists due to the size of the Universe being infinite and the statistical fact that 1 in infinity is a certainty, the likelihood you would ever encounter any such life is almost a certain impossibility - but again with both there is a chance.
If you were to explore space for real as a career, No Man's Sky isn't far wrong in one crucial point - it would probably be boring. No matter how much you love your job, no matter how much passion you have for it, there is always a routine, and an eventual monotony that is achieved. It might not become the entirety of the job, but it will eventually creep in. I do not argue that these careers give you the opportunity to see and do things that nobody else ever will, and I do not argue that there will be many experiences, and sights, that will make you feel incredible and remind you why you chose to do it in the first place - but that doesn't change the fact those experiences will be a tiny part of the job you do. That last statement contains the most pertinent point of all - "the job you do" - the keyword being, "job" - the moment anything becomes a job it becomes methodical and structured, and repetitive.
Long Time No See
Sometimes I Google people I knew in years gone by, just out of curiosity to see what I can find. I have a mild form of Prosopagnosia, which is a condition where it's difficult for me to recognise faces. I believe that is due to my Nystagmus but we can discuss that another time. In short though it means recognising people when I see them is difficult, to the point where I have passed my own parents and my brother in the street. People with this condition often end up using contextual clues to determine who people are, which is why when you meet people in unusual scenarios or in places you don't expect, you fail to recognise them even by those clues.
The Internet makes it easier to be sure you find the right person however because it allows you to find out other information in context beyond the picture alone. Profiles give you information depending on the site e.g. social networks usually give you a name, a rough location even if it's only the country, and a rough idea of age etc. Profiles on sites like LinkedIn give you a lot more specific information about a person that lets you pin them down even further.
I was looking up a guy I knew at University out of interest to see where he was now and what he is up to now. I scrolled through a few sites, and a countless pictures before I stumbled upon one, the location matched, as did the name the picture looked nothing like the person I remembered however. That's not unusual for me as I said above it's hard for me to recognise people at the best of times. I did some further digging and came to the conclusion that it was indeed him. The more I looked at the picture and the more I tried to stretch and fit the memory to it the more the face started to emerge. Slowly but surely I finally recognized the person in the picture.
It's been about 10 years since I saw him last, and one of the first things to come to mind, I must apologize, was to think "You look old" before remembering he's actually about six months younger than me if I recall correctly. I've spoken about ageing in past posts and how I find it hard to judge peoples' ages accurately, perhaps that's related to the Prosopagnosia, I've never actually made that link before, believe it or not. Regardless, he looks like he has grown up much more than I have. The site I found him on also stated his job which I won't state here for privacy reasons but suffice to say it's one I'd call a professional career rather than a job - the distinction between the two we can discuss another time but for simplicity I'll just say a professional career I generally define as one that requires certain qualifications before you can even apply for them.
All this combined made him seem more like an adult than I view myself. Yes, I am 30 years old, and yes that makes me an adult, but I don't really conform to what you expect an adult to be - or at least what I always thought an adult was when I was a kid. Someone who wears a suit, has lots of responsibilities, and "ticks the boxes" of what society expects you to do in your life, get married, buy a house, have kids, etc - although as a gay man I never really thought that applied to us that much even though we can do everything on that list. He's gay too but from the look of him you'd never know it - stereotypes aside he was never one I would consider "straight acting", as much as I hate that phrase.
We don't speak anymore it will come as no surprise given I had to search for him to find any of this information for myself; we don't speak anymore not because of any great rift or conflict etc, just because we grew apart, and even now I don't think we'd have that much in common - that was before seeing his picture, after seeing it I think I'd probably have even less in common with him, I couldn't be further from everything he is and does.
I do find it interesting how people change though with time. I do wonder whether he really did change and become the person he is now, or whether he is just doing what society expects of him? To try and put this in context if you've ever seen Will and Grace, he would always have been Jack when we were in University but he looks more like he's turned into Will now. It reminds me of that episode where Jack fears turning into Will by getting a real job, and settling down. That's another phrase I've always hated "settling down" - I don't like the implication that you have to give up on your hopes and dreams and settle for whatever you can get or whatever you have - I don't like the idea of being told to "know my place" and stay there. I really hate that and would encourage anyone to pursue their dreams and chase their passions, I'd hate for anyone to give up, probably because there are times I feel like giving up too but in the end I always manage to pull myself out of it. After seeing him I have to wonder if I didn't manage to pull myself out of it, is that where I would be? Not that there's anything wrong with it, he seems like he has a pretty decent life now, it's just not what I imagined, and I don't think it's what he imagined either.
The Internet makes it easier to be sure you find the right person however because it allows you to find out other information in context beyond the picture alone. Profiles give you information depending on the site e.g. social networks usually give you a name, a rough location even if it's only the country, and a rough idea of age etc. Profiles on sites like LinkedIn give you a lot more specific information about a person that lets you pin them down even further.
I was looking up a guy I knew at University out of interest to see where he was now and what he is up to now. I scrolled through a few sites, and a countless pictures before I stumbled upon one, the location matched, as did the name the picture looked nothing like the person I remembered however. That's not unusual for me as I said above it's hard for me to recognise people at the best of times. I did some further digging and came to the conclusion that it was indeed him. The more I looked at the picture and the more I tried to stretch and fit the memory to it the more the face started to emerge. Slowly but surely I finally recognized the person in the picture.
It's been about 10 years since I saw him last, and one of the first things to come to mind, I must apologize, was to think "You look old" before remembering he's actually about six months younger than me if I recall correctly. I've spoken about ageing in past posts and how I find it hard to judge peoples' ages accurately, perhaps that's related to the Prosopagnosia, I've never actually made that link before, believe it or not. Regardless, he looks like he has grown up much more than I have. The site I found him on also stated his job which I won't state here for privacy reasons but suffice to say it's one I'd call a professional career rather than a job - the distinction between the two we can discuss another time but for simplicity I'll just say a professional career I generally define as one that requires certain qualifications before you can even apply for them.
All this combined made him seem more like an adult than I view myself. Yes, I am 30 years old, and yes that makes me an adult, but I don't really conform to what you expect an adult to be - or at least what I always thought an adult was when I was a kid. Someone who wears a suit, has lots of responsibilities, and "ticks the boxes" of what society expects you to do in your life, get married, buy a house, have kids, etc - although as a gay man I never really thought that applied to us that much even though we can do everything on that list. He's gay too but from the look of him you'd never know it - stereotypes aside he was never one I would consider "straight acting", as much as I hate that phrase.
We don't speak anymore it will come as no surprise given I had to search for him to find any of this information for myself; we don't speak anymore not because of any great rift or conflict etc, just because we grew apart, and even now I don't think we'd have that much in common - that was before seeing his picture, after seeing it I think I'd probably have even less in common with him, I couldn't be further from everything he is and does.
I do find it interesting how people change though with time. I do wonder whether he really did change and become the person he is now, or whether he is just doing what society expects of him? To try and put this in context if you've ever seen Will and Grace, he would always have been Jack when we were in University but he looks more like he's turned into Will now. It reminds me of that episode where Jack fears turning into Will by getting a real job, and settling down. That's another phrase I've always hated "settling down" - I don't like the implication that you have to give up on your hopes and dreams and settle for whatever you can get or whatever you have - I don't like the idea of being told to "know my place" and stay there. I really hate that and would encourage anyone to pursue their dreams and chase their passions, I'd hate for anyone to give up, probably because there are times I feel like giving up too but in the end I always manage to pull myself out of it. After seeing him I have to wonder if I didn't manage to pull myself out of it, is that where I would be? Not that there's anything wrong with it, he seems like he has a pretty decent life now, it's just not what I imagined, and I don't think it's what he imagined either.
Political Persuasion
There are those that believe that politicians are people who reflect the views of others. People whose job it is to take the views of the people they represent and to argue their case and further their interests. I don't believe that is true. I think the only instance where this can actually be said to be true is in the case of lobbying, where a politician has been paid or has received donations from businesses and other interest groups to be a proponent of their interests. In most countries however this is illegal and can actually be punished with a prison sentence.
I would argue the real job of a politician is to influence people and change their point of view or control them, not the other way around. For as long as I have been politically aware, I have observed politicians very much campaigning on policies that were already decided. I have never seen a politician or their campaigners knock on a door and ask the constituent for input on their policies, I have however seen many knock on doors and try to convince the constituent that their manifesto is the answer to all of their problems.
Politics in general whilst at first can be viewed as a place to debate issues and a place that represents points of view that reflect voters, is not what it appears when you start to scrutinize it. Being disingenuous is one thing, but the job of a politician goes far beyond and actively involves manipulation. Issues are not debated with voters, they are decided by the party itself which is only a small number of people, and those people are almost always congruous in their viewpoints. A party will have a particular leaning in regards to key areas and those who are members will not deviate very far from that leaning. Even beyond the parties themselves, when you consider polling organizations and their job, one might at first buy into the belief that a polling organization carries out its job in order to inform policy creation, but again I would argue that is not the case. Polling organizations in reality are simply used to measure the effectiveness of the politicians' abilities to manipulate the view point of those who are potential voters. I have never seen a political party change its position based on polling, I have however seen parties ramp up their campaigning and their rhetoric in an attempt to win over public opinion to their side, and in some cases that proves successful and the polls shift.
While there are those that argue that you should vote and that you should always vote and that failing to do so is a failure on your part. The thing is, politics in general plays heavily on the idea of lesser evil. That their ultimate goal is to convince you the opposing side is entirely wrong and that there would be anarchy and economic ruin, and society would fall apart if the opposing side were to win. In other words you're pressured into taking a side that you might not even agree with just to avert disaster.
Personally I don't believe that voters are buying into that mentality anymore. I believe that the EU referendum in the UK and the 2016 Presidential election in the USA are two key examples of the failure of the lesser evil argument. There were people who campaigned intensively on the premise of convincing others that the opposing side would be a complete disaster, it didn't work though. In the case of the EU referendum there were those who did not want to leave who just didn't buy the case for remain. In the case of the US election there were those who did not want You Know Who to be President but they didn't like Hilary Clinton so they didn't vote at all.
Both of these things I think are demonstrative of the disillusion with politics that has been growing among those who could vote but choose not to. The argument of being the lesser evil option isn't enough, you actually have to be appealing now which hasn't been the case for many decades in politics if it ever was. You have to actually convince people to vote for you. The idea that voters are set in their view and will never change it is something which has been persistent in political commentary throughout my life, to the point where only those identified as "swing voters" are actually targeted. I don't believe that strategy has any merit any longer. I believe politics has now shifted to the point where a candidate has to appeal to as many people as they can, they can no longer depend on a traditional base to support them. The job of a politician is not to reflect the views of others, if it ever was, it is now a job of persuasion, and that persuasion needs substance. For people to shift from doing what they did before, you need to give them motivation to change, and the notion of lesser evil won't provide that motivation.
I would argue the real job of a politician is to influence people and change their point of view or control them, not the other way around. For as long as I have been politically aware, I have observed politicians very much campaigning on policies that were already decided. I have never seen a politician or their campaigners knock on a door and ask the constituent for input on their policies, I have however seen many knock on doors and try to convince the constituent that their manifesto is the answer to all of their problems.
Politics in general whilst at first can be viewed as a place to debate issues and a place that represents points of view that reflect voters, is not what it appears when you start to scrutinize it. Being disingenuous is one thing, but the job of a politician goes far beyond and actively involves manipulation. Issues are not debated with voters, they are decided by the party itself which is only a small number of people, and those people are almost always congruous in their viewpoints. A party will have a particular leaning in regards to key areas and those who are members will not deviate very far from that leaning. Even beyond the parties themselves, when you consider polling organizations and their job, one might at first buy into the belief that a polling organization carries out its job in order to inform policy creation, but again I would argue that is not the case. Polling organizations in reality are simply used to measure the effectiveness of the politicians' abilities to manipulate the view point of those who are potential voters. I have never seen a political party change its position based on polling, I have however seen parties ramp up their campaigning and their rhetoric in an attempt to win over public opinion to their side, and in some cases that proves successful and the polls shift.
While there are those that argue that you should vote and that you should always vote and that failing to do so is a failure on your part. The thing is, politics in general plays heavily on the idea of lesser evil. That their ultimate goal is to convince you the opposing side is entirely wrong and that there would be anarchy and economic ruin, and society would fall apart if the opposing side were to win. In other words you're pressured into taking a side that you might not even agree with just to avert disaster.
Personally I don't believe that voters are buying into that mentality anymore. I believe that the EU referendum in the UK and the 2016 Presidential election in the USA are two key examples of the failure of the lesser evil argument. There were people who campaigned intensively on the premise of convincing others that the opposing side would be a complete disaster, it didn't work though. In the case of the EU referendum there were those who did not want to leave who just didn't buy the case for remain. In the case of the US election there were those who did not want You Know Who to be President but they didn't like Hilary Clinton so they didn't vote at all.
Both of these things I think are demonstrative of the disillusion with politics that has been growing among those who could vote but choose not to. The argument of being the lesser evil option isn't enough, you actually have to be appealing now which hasn't been the case for many decades in politics if it ever was. You have to actually convince people to vote for you. The idea that voters are set in their view and will never change it is something which has been persistent in political commentary throughout my life, to the point where only those identified as "swing voters" are actually targeted. I don't believe that strategy has any merit any longer. I believe politics has now shifted to the point where a candidate has to appeal to as many people as they can, they can no longer depend on a traditional base to support them. The job of a politician is not to reflect the views of others, if it ever was, it is now a job of persuasion, and that persuasion needs substance. For people to shift from doing what they did before, you need to give them motivation to change, and the notion of lesser evil won't provide that motivation.
The Matrix Inception
There's something about the movie trilogy The Matrix that always bugged me. First off let me say I love the premise and it remains one of my favourite movie franchises of all time. I will still watch it and enjoy it, doubts and confusions aside. I love the series because of the questions that it raises, the debate it inspires, and the underlying philosophy that is carried throughout the three main movies of the Brain in a Jar.
I should point out now, this post will be heavily laden with spoilers for the movies so if you haven't seen them or have any intention of someday seeing them then I wouldn't continue reading unless you're content with spoilers.
There are many events that happen throughout the three main movies that all centre around Neo, and his ability as "The One" - the protagonist of the series. For those that haven't seen the movies, all of mankind live in pods connected to a massive machine that uses human bodies to generate electricity. The humans themselves are jacked in to the machine and in order to pacify them their minds are contained within a simulated world called the Matrix - a world modelled on the human world as it was at the end of the 20th century when the movies were made. The movies themselves take place in a hypothetical dystopian future where the machines rule the world and humans no longer have any control.
Neo possesses abilities within the simulation to be able to manipulate reality, to be able to modify it to his will. The ultimate purpose of this is not really explained, other than to say these abilities help him with his purpose fulfilling a prophecy which in itself was designed as a measure of control. There is however a point after he escapes the simulation and returns to the real world, where he appears to exhibit these powers in the real world. This scene I never fully understood. Some have argued that his power extends beyond the Matrix to the machines themselves and that is why he was able to control them - I don't accept that explanation. Instead, I can only draw two possible conclusions from that scene. The first is that the reason Neo possessed the powers within the Matrix is because the Architect who created the world within the Matrix was true to his word and created a world as accurate as he could - which would infer such powers are part of being human, that the psychic individuals that visited the Oracle - a character who can predict the future - were in fact humans who had realised their full potential. This explanation would mean those who are awake in the real world would be capable of the same abilities as Neo in the real world with time and effort.
The alternate explanation which I prefer, is that the real world in which Neo wakes alongside the others who have escaped the Matrix, is in fact a simulation. In the final Movie there are multiple scenes in which Neo, after being blinded by Agent Smith - the main antagonist - is able to "see" the world in the same way he saw the world as code within the Matrix. These scenes and the abilities which he shouldn't have in reality, make me conclude the real world isn't real. There are a myriad of plot holes and implausibilities associated with the movies to choose from that don't make sense but this one more than any other always stuck with me. If this were actually true then the Architect still would not have technically lied about anything, and the purpose of the One and their adventure would remain as a method of control. At one point in the movies it is explained that the first Matrix was a Utopia and that it was a disaster because humans rejected the programming because they needed to have a struggle to know they were alive. If this theory is true that the real world is also a simulation, it would conform to the concept that those who realise the Matrix isn't real also need a struggle to fight in order to be contained.
I should point out now, this post will be heavily laden with spoilers for the movies so if you haven't seen them or have any intention of someday seeing them then I wouldn't continue reading unless you're content with spoilers.
There are many events that happen throughout the three main movies that all centre around Neo, and his ability as "The One" - the protagonist of the series. For those that haven't seen the movies, all of mankind live in pods connected to a massive machine that uses human bodies to generate electricity. The humans themselves are jacked in to the machine and in order to pacify them their minds are contained within a simulated world called the Matrix - a world modelled on the human world as it was at the end of the 20th century when the movies were made. The movies themselves take place in a hypothetical dystopian future where the machines rule the world and humans no longer have any control.
Neo possesses abilities within the simulation to be able to manipulate reality, to be able to modify it to his will. The ultimate purpose of this is not really explained, other than to say these abilities help him with his purpose fulfilling a prophecy which in itself was designed as a measure of control. There is however a point after he escapes the simulation and returns to the real world, where he appears to exhibit these powers in the real world. This scene I never fully understood. Some have argued that his power extends beyond the Matrix to the machines themselves and that is why he was able to control them - I don't accept that explanation. Instead, I can only draw two possible conclusions from that scene. The first is that the reason Neo possessed the powers within the Matrix is because the Architect who created the world within the Matrix was true to his word and created a world as accurate as he could - which would infer such powers are part of being human, that the psychic individuals that visited the Oracle - a character who can predict the future - were in fact humans who had realised their full potential. This explanation would mean those who are awake in the real world would be capable of the same abilities as Neo in the real world with time and effort.
The alternate explanation which I prefer, is that the real world in which Neo wakes alongside the others who have escaped the Matrix, is in fact a simulation. In the final Movie there are multiple scenes in which Neo, after being blinded by Agent Smith - the main antagonist - is able to "see" the world in the same way he saw the world as code within the Matrix. These scenes and the abilities which he shouldn't have in reality, make me conclude the real world isn't real. There are a myriad of plot holes and implausibilities associated with the movies to choose from that don't make sense but this one more than any other always stuck with me. If this were actually true then the Architect still would not have technically lied about anything, and the purpose of the One and their adventure would remain as a method of control. At one point in the movies it is explained that the first Matrix was a Utopia and that it was a disaster because humans rejected the programming because they needed to have a struggle to know they were alive. If this theory is true that the real world is also a simulation, it would conform to the concept that those who realise the Matrix isn't real also need a struggle to fight in order to be contained.
Money
"People are funny about money"
I'm not rich by any means, but I am not poor either. I don't have enough money that I can buy things without looking at the price tag, but I can afford more than just the basics in life. I'm somewhere in the middle when it comes to the UK. However the fact I was born in the UK to begin with already puts me quite high up the ladder compared to most of the world. There are only a handful of nations that are developed and have a quality of life above what I have simply because of where I was born. That's not to say the UK isn't without it's problems, our economy is by no means top of the class and there are a lot of domestic issues that impact me and everyone else who lives here. Still, in the grand scheme of things we're quite well off as a nation and I think many people tend to forget that.
The thing about wealth is that it's a game of follow the leader, where you are encouraged to constantly look forward and look to whoever is doing the best and compare yourself to them, rather than look back and see how many people in the queue you're actually ahead of with what you already have.
I've gone through periods in my life where my wealth has fluctuated in the extremes. I've been homeless before and had to live in a caravan for a time as temporary accommodation. I've been so poor I couldn't afford to buy food, pay for utilities, and even for a time had to live without electricity or running water - that was perhaps the lowest point. In the extreme opposite I've also experienced the life I alluded to above, the amount of wealth to the point where I could walk into a shop pick whatever I wanted, go and pay for it without ever looking at the price and knew I'd not have to worry about having enough money to afford it. That was liberating to say the least having experienced the days walking around Sainsbury's with a calculator on my phone adding up everything as I went to make sure I got as much as I could for what little I had.
One thing I have learned from moving back and forward between the extremes - more than once I might add - is that through it all money never made me happy. It's true to say that having more of it certainly made some parts of my life easier and took certain worries away, but in their absence other concerns filled their place. The only thing that changed really was what you focus on in life. This made me realise that if you have the mentality of someone who worries about things a lot, no matter what they are, that is the mentality you will always have. Take those worries away and you'll fill their place with something else. In contrast if you are a person who never worries about anything, even if you lose it all and find yourself at the bottom, you're not likely to change your mentality, you're still as likely to continue wilfully ignorant of everything in life that you should be tending to - the problem with that, is that the things we use to drowned out the world, it has to be said are more dangerous the cheaper they are. We can argue about value for money another time but we can at least agree that the cheaper something is, the more likely it is to be poor quality - whether that be junk food, alcohol, drugs, or whatever else you try to use to escape the reality of your life.
Coco Chanel once said "The best things in life are free" - a quote many people know quite well, the thing is that's only half the quote, she actually said: "The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive" - that's the reality of the world we live in, only a handful of things are free that won't negatively impact your life, the rest you'll have to fork out for if you want it.
I've come to a point in my life where budgeting plays the biggest part of my finances. I have separated my money across three accounts, one for bills, one for savings, and one for disposable income. Over time I've managed to slowly but surely build up the account I pay my bills from and managed to give myself breathing space. Whenever I get any money the first thing I do is put some in there and mark off which bills it covers. Everything is paid by direct debit and I have a set amount for each bill budgeted, if ever a bill comes in that's higher than I expected I need only add in the difference, and any time a bill is lower I transfer out the difference. Over time I've managed to bank a few months ahead. Any time I add money to that account I forget about it afterwards and just pretend that account doesn't exist so I am not tempted to spend it.
The savings account I make it a point to put something into it every time I get money, no matter how big or how small as long as I move something into it. The rest stays in the main current account as disposable income and I can be safe in the knowledge that I can spend whatever is in that account without impacting my bills or savings. There have only been a few times in the last few years now that I've had to dip into my savings and those were mostly due to my health impacting my income and disrupting my budget.
I'm lucky to live in a country where I don't have to pay a penny for healthcare, but health can still impact your finances when it stops you from earning as you would have before. Given how adversely I've been affected in the past year and a half now with my health I am somewhat grateful I got a handle on my finances when I did, things could easily have turned out a lot worse for me financially right now if I hadn't.
The thing I find infuriating about finance in general however is that you are never taught these things - or I wasn't at least - in school or anywhere else really. We're expected to learn it for ourselves or from our parents. Neither of my parents were savers when I was a kid however and when it came to finance that was never really discussed with me. I never asked about my parents financial "health" as it were. I was a teenager before I got a glimpse at anything relating to it when I had to start managing my own. It was only really when applying to college that I first saw details of my parents finances when I had to fill out forms relating to it, my Dad had started a business several years earlier and by that point most of his finances were managed by an accountant - that was when, for the first time, I started to hear professional advice about managing money. A few years later applying to University I had another glimpse, at that point through a different accountant as my Dad's business had been growing. A few years later things took a turn for the worse around the time of the great recession, Dad lost his business and everything hit a new low.
Through all of this though, one thing remained - there was no guide, no handbook, no preparation. My parents didn't come from families that had a lot of money, they didn't know that much about money and finance. My Dad was the first in his family to start a business and Mum was the first in hers to even go through further and higher education. None of my schools despite being private actually covered money or finance in any depth, the closest thing to it was how to calculate tax and insurance in Maths class as well as learning about compound interest but that's about all I recall. As a nation with a population of about 66 million we collectively owe £1.6 trillion with no formal education in managing money or finance effectively, it's not hard to see why. Even the topic of money in general is something we're discouraged from talking to one another about. We live in a society where it's still considered a taboo to talk openly about wealth other than our aspirations to have more - the second you ask about what people actually have, the conversation runs dry. People don't like talking about money, and without talking about it you'll never learn how to manage it more effectively or how little things can change your life.
I'm not rich by any means, but I am not poor either. I don't have enough money that I can buy things without looking at the price tag, but I can afford more than just the basics in life. I'm somewhere in the middle when it comes to the UK. However the fact I was born in the UK to begin with already puts me quite high up the ladder compared to most of the world. There are only a handful of nations that are developed and have a quality of life above what I have simply because of where I was born. That's not to say the UK isn't without it's problems, our economy is by no means top of the class and there are a lot of domestic issues that impact me and everyone else who lives here. Still, in the grand scheme of things we're quite well off as a nation and I think many people tend to forget that.
The thing about wealth is that it's a game of follow the leader, where you are encouraged to constantly look forward and look to whoever is doing the best and compare yourself to them, rather than look back and see how many people in the queue you're actually ahead of with what you already have.
I've gone through periods in my life where my wealth has fluctuated in the extremes. I've been homeless before and had to live in a caravan for a time as temporary accommodation. I've been so poor I couldn't afford to buy food, pay for utilities, and even for a time had to live without electricity or running water - that was perhaps the lowest point. In the extreme opposite I've also experienced the life I alluded to above, the amount of wealth to the point where I could walk into a shop pick whatever I wanted, go and pay for it without ever looking at the price and knew I'd not have to worry about having enough money to afford it. That was liberating to say the least having experienced the days walking around Sainsbury's with a calculator on my phone adding up everything as I went to make sure I got as much as I could for what little I had.
One thing I have learned from moving back and forward between the extremes - more than once I might add - is that through it all money never made me happy. It's true to say that having more of it certainly made some parts of my life easier and took certain worries away, but in their absence other concerns filled their place. The only thing that changed really was what you focus on in life. This made me realise that if you have the mentality of someone who worries about things a lot, no matter what they are, that is the mentality you will always have. Take those worries away and you'll fill their place with something else. In contrast if you are a person who never worries about anything, even if you lose it all and find yourself at the bottom, you're not likely to change your mentality, you're still as likely to continue wilfully ignorant of everything in life that you should be tending to - the problem with that, is that the things we use to drowned out the world, it has to be said are more dangerous the cheaper they are. We can argue about value for money another time but we can at least agree that the cheaper something is, the more likely it is to be poor quality - whether that be junk food, alcohol, drugs, or whatever else you try to use to escape the reality of your life.
Coco Chanel once said "The best things in life are free" - a quote many people know quite well, the thing is that's only half the quote, she actually said: "The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive" - that's the reality of the world we live in, only a handful of things are free that won't negatively impact your life, the rest you'll have to fork out for if you want it.
I've come to a point in my life where budgeting plays the biggest part of my finances. I have separated my money across three accounts, one for bills, one for savings, and one for disposable income. Over time I've managed to slowly but surely build up the account I pay my bills from and managed to give myself breathing space. Whenever I get any money the first thing I do is put some in there and mark off which bills it covers. Everything is paid by direct debit and I have a set amount for each bill budgeted, if ever a bill comes in that's higher than I expected I need only add in the difference, and any time a bill is lower I transfer out the difference. Over time I've managed to bank a few months ahead. Any time I add money to that account I forget about it afterwards and just pretend that account doesn't exist so I am not tempted to spend it.
The savings account I make it a point to put something into it every time I get money, no matter how big or how small as long as I move something into it. The rest stays in the main current account as disposable income and I can be safe in the knowledge that I can spend whatever is in that account without impacting my bills or savings. There have only been a few times in the last few years now that I've had to dip into my savings and those were mostly due to my health impacting my income and disrupting my budget.
I'm lucky to live in a country where I don't have to pay a penny for healthcare, but health can still impact your finances when it stops you from earning as you would have before. Given how adversely I've been affected in the past year and a half now with my health I am somewhat grateful I got a handle on my finances when I did, things could easily have turned out a lot worse for me financially right now if I hadn't.
The thing I find infuriating about finance in general however is that you are never taught these things - or I wasn't at least - in school or anywhere else really. We're expected to learn it for ourselves or from our parents. Neither of my parents were savers when I was a kid however and when it came to finance that was never really discussed with me. I never asked about my parents financial "health" as it were. I was a teenager before I got a glimpse at anything relating to it when I had to start managing my own. It was only really when applying to college that I first saw details of my parents finances when I had to fill out forms relating to it, my Dad had started a business several years earlier and by that point most of his finances were managed by an accountant - that was when, for the first time, I started to hear professional advice about managing money. A few years later applying to University I had another glimpse, at that point through a different accountant as my Dad's business had been growing. A few years later things took a turn for the worse around the time of the great recession, Dad lost his business and everything hit a new low.
Through all of this though, one thing remained - there was no guide, no handbook, no preparation. My parents didn't come from families that had a lot of money, they didn't know that much about money and finance. My Dad was the first in his family to start a business and Mum was the first in hers to even go through further and higher education. None of my schools despite being private actually covered money or finance in any depth, the closest thing to it was how to calculate tax and insurance in Maths class as well as learning about compound interest but that's about all I recall. As a nation with a population of about 66 million we collectively owe £1.6 trillion with no formal education in managing money or finance effectively, it's not hard to see why. Even the topic of money in general is something we're discouraged from talking to one another about. We live in a society where it's still considered a taboo to talk openly about wealth other than our aspirations to have more - the second you ask about what people actually have, the conversation runs dry. People don't like talking about money, and without talking about it you'll never learn how to manage it more effectively or how little things can change your life.
Remember Tom?
A few months ago an article popped up on the Washington Post about plans that Twitter had to experiment with how tweets were fed to people through their timelines on Twitter. The motivation of such plans was to attempt to reduce online echo chambers and expose users to a greater variety of view points.
Whenever you see a product advertised, you generally expect it to do what it said it would do in the advertisement. If it doesn't, not only would you feel disappointment but you would also be able to sue the advertiser for false advertisement. There are regulations that govern what you can and cannot claim in an advertisement. In its most basic terms the advertisement has to be realistic about what you can expect and can only stretch the truth so far.
Twitter is a product which you consume, and which you do actually pay for. You don't fork out money for the service but you pay for the service through the data you give it, and the monetization that Twitter and others generate based on your activity on the platform. In order to convince you to use the service, it tells you what it does and what to expect from it. Twitter is a social network, and efficacy of its use aside, it is intended at least to be a place where you can be social and network with other people. In doing so you connect with people who share your interests, who you have things in common with, or who you elect to follow in order to consume what they contribute.
The whole point of a timeline, and the ability to follow people on Twitter is to be able to cater the content you see based on your interests. This is the same reason why YouTube has a subscription feature for you to follow channels and see the content they upload. However, that functionality which is fundamental to the functioning of the entire site is being increasingly manipulated. YouTube no longer shows you every video that a channel uploads even if you are subscribed, and the experimentation by Twitter is leading its users in the same direction. Twitter has already been inserting tweets into your timeline based on the activity of others, tweets which are liked or it thinks might be relevant to you are inserted into the feed - this was a major point of contention for many. By going further and inserting content into your timeline from sources you aren't even interested in at all, Twitter is effectively breaking the entire functionality of its site. In other words the product no longer does what it said it did in the advertisement.
Younger users have already been leaving Twitter for other social networks. Those that remain are people who have been on Twitter for some time or have a vested interest in using the platform. By reducing the functionality of that platform you will further drive away users as even those with vested interests will realise that the platform is no longer fit for purpose when it doesn't do what you need it to do.
The ultimate issue here is that Twitter, and YouTube, and other tech companies are now ignoring their users to the point where their pursuit of revenue has compromised the integrity of the product they were selling in the first place. This is like a farmer paying so little attention to his crops and no attention at all to what his customers want to buy, ultimately there will come a point where customers will leave and you will be left with a mountain of produce that you can't sell and you will pay the price for it.
Twitter and many other tech platforms are resource hungry and require a lot of infrastructure to support them, in the form of data centres etc. Those are not assets that are easy to dispose of and very few people would want to buy. If Twitter and other tech companies like it have to downsize their operations, quite a few of them will find that incredibly difficult to do. Their expansions were made with the belief that growth would continue and no thought was made of the possibility that they would have to deal with shrinkage too.
Twitter is on the brink of becoming another MySpace, a website that we look back on that was popular for what seemed like forever, which we didn't imagine going away, and yet we realise we've not used it in 10+ years because of the stupidity of those who ran it making decisions that took away each and every reason why people actually used it in the first place.
Whenever you see a product advertised, you generally expect it to do what it said it would do in the advertisement. If it doesn't, not only would you feel disappointment but you would also be able to sue the advertiser for false advertisement. There are regulations that govern what you can and cannot claim in an advertisement. In its most basic terms the advertisement has to be realistic about what you can expect and can only stretch the truth so far.
Twitter is a product which you consume, and which you do actually pay for. You don't fork out money for the service but you pay for the service through the data you give it, and the monetization that Twitter and others generate based on your activity on the platform. In order to convince you to use the service, it tells you what it does and what to expect from it. Twitter is a social network, and efficacy of its use aside, it is intended at least to be a place where you can be social and network with other people. In doing so you connect with people who share your interests, who you have things in common with, or who you elect to follow in order to consume what they contribute.
The whole point of a timeline, and the ability to follow people on Twitter is to be able to cater the content you see based on your interests. This is the same reason why YouTube has a subscription feature for you to follow channels and see the content they upload. However, that functionality which is fundamental to the functioning of the entire site is being increasingly manipulated. YouTube no longer shows you every video that a channel uploads even if you are subscribed, and the experimentation by Twitter is leading its users in the same direction. Twitter has already been inserting tweets into your timeline based on the activity of others, tweets which are liked or it thinks might be relevant to you are inserted into the feed - this was a major point of contention for many. By going further and inserting content into your timeline from sources you aren't even interested in at all, Twitter is effectively breaking the entire functionality of its site. In other words the product no longer does what it said it did in the advertisement.
Younger users have already been leaving Twitter for other social networks. Those that remain are people who have been on Twitter for some time or have a vested interest in using the platform. By reducing the functionality of that platform you will further drive away users as even those with vested interests will realise that the platform is no longer fit for purpose when it doesn't do what you need it to do.
The ultimate issue here is that Twitter, and YouTube, and other tech companies are now ignoring their users to the point where their pursuit of revenue has compromised the integrity of the product they were selling in the first place. This is like a farmer paying so little attention to his crops and no attention at all to what his customers want to buy, ultimately there will come a point where customers will leave and you will be left with a mountain of produce that you can't sell and you will pay the price for it.
Twitter and many other tech platforms are resource hungry and require a lot of infrastructure to support them, in the form of data centres etc. Those are not assets that are easy to dispose of and very few people would want to buy. If Twitter and other tech companies like it have to downsize their operations, quite a few of them will find that incredibly difficult to do. Their expansions were made with the belief that growth would continue and no thought was made of the possibility that they would have to deal with shrinkage too.
Twitter is on the brink of becoming another MySpace, a website that we look back on that was popular for what seemed like forever, which we didn't imagine going away, and yet we realise we've not used it in 10+ years because of the stupidity of those who ran it making decisions that took away each and every reason why people actually used it in the first place.
Do It Again
In one of my previous posts about originality, I said that one of the reasons remade content finds success despite being done before is simply because there's an entire generation that never witnessed it before. There are several movies and TV shows from my childhood that have not aged well, productions that I would love to see redone, so I've decided to make a list here of what I want to see and why I think it could work. I will avoid spoilers as best I can.
First off, to my surprise I have learned in 2010/11 Leonardo DiCaprio's Production company Appian Way Productions, alongside the Kennedy Marshall Company had planned to create a new movie based on the novel The Neverending Story. The movie trilogy that adapted and extended the original novel by Michael Ende are some of my favourite movies from my childhood. However the production that was planned wasn't to be a remake but was intended to create a new story based on the novel - I don't know how I feel about that. I would like to see the original trilogy redone but only if they stay true to the story, I wouldn't want it to diverge significantly. So the first three movies on my list are the original movie trilogy. The reason I think it would work today is because the movies are still referenced in pop culture, despite it being 34 years now since the first was released. The concepts and the story that the movies touch on I believe are just as relevant today as they were back then. The only part of the whole production that hasn't aged well are the visuals. It's hard to ignore the dated nature even with the nostalgia induced warmth they still inspire.
Next, one of my favourite TV shows when I was younger was Charmed. A series that followed a coven of Witches, all sisters, set in modern day. I loved this series so much as a kid but I have to say I have tried many times to go back and watch it again from start to finish and I just can't. It hasn't aged well, the acting at times feels awkward, some plot points don't make sense anymore given how much the world has moved on. I would like to see the series redone, but with a new cast. Unlike the Neverending Story, I would actually prefer it if the story-lines of the new series were entirely new, rather than trying to retell the originals as I don't believe many of them would hold up to a modern audience, even with references updated and modern plot holes filled.
If I can't have a remake of Charmed, then perhaps a series based on The Craft - the 1996 film about 4 girls who explore their magical abilities as a newly formed coven. The problem with this one is that a sequel was announced a few years ago but it was met with a tide of negative comments which I believe nixed the whole thing. I believe the reason it was met with such hostility though is because a sequel attempts to follow on from the original, and without the original cast that can be difficult and generally proves to be a bad idea. That, and most sequels unless part of a larger saga, prove to be disappointments. A TV series might be different, if not featuring the original characters, then loosely based on the premise of the original movie. The original cast would be unlikely to participate since they were among those that voiced objection to the sequel. I do believe the premise could still work though, in fact there are many similarities between the Craft and Charmed to the point where many believe the latter to be a whitewashed imitation - the latter even uses the same track for its title sequence as was used for the former - How Soon Is Now performed by Love Spit Love.
Finally, a series I loved as a kid which, I have actually rewatched and I think still holds up both in production and story - Popular. Its original run was from 1999 to 2001 and followed the lives of teenagers at High School and their struggle for or aversion to popularity with a particular focus on Brooke McQueen and Sam McPherson, one popular, and one not, who hate each other, whose parents meet and marry forcing the two together. Popular covered a wide range of story lines that I believe are still relevant today, that, and the extent to which the world has changed in the last 20 years almost since it was first aired, I think opens up a whole new world of opportunity for writers to explore with the characters. I would like to see the story retold in a more modern setting with references that are up to date. Popular at its core was about social interaction and the complexities of it. I think that is as relevant today as it ever was.
First off, to my surprise I have learned in 2010/11 Leonardo DiCaprio's Production company Appian Way Productions, alongside the Kennedy Marshall Company had planned to create a new movie based on the novel The Neverending Story. The movie trilogy that adapted and extended the original novel by Michael Ende are some of my favourite movies from my childhood. However the production that was planned wasn't to be a remake but was intended to create a new story based on the novel - I don't know how I feel about that. I would like to see the original trilogy redone but only if they stay true to the story, I wouldn't want it to diverge significantly. So the first three movies on my list are the original movie trilogy. The reason I think it would work today is because the movies are still referenced in pop culture, despite it being 34 years now since the first was released. The concepts and the story that the movies touch on I believe are just as relevant today as they were back then. The only part of the whole production that hasn't aged well are the visuals. It's hard to ignore the dated nature even with the nostalgia induced warmth they still inspire.
Next, one of my favourite TV shows when I was younger was Charmed. A series that followed a coven of Witches, all sisters, set in modern day. I loved this series so much as a kid but I have to say I have tried many times to go back and watch it again from start to finish and I just can't. It hasn't aged well, the acting at times feels awkward, some plot points don't make sense anymore given how much the world has moved on. I would like to see the series redone, but with a new cast. Unlike the Neverending Story, I would actually prefer it if the story-lines of the new series were entirely new, rather than trying to retell the originals as I don't believe many of them would hold up to a modern audience, even with references updated and modern plot holes filled.
If I can't have a remake of Charmed, then perhaps a series based on The Craft - the 1996 film about 4 girls who explore their magical abilities as a newly formed coven. The problem with this one is that a sequel was announced a few years ago but it was met with a tide of negative comments which I believe nixed the whole thing. I believe the reason it was met with such hostility though is because a sequel attempts to follow on from the original, and without the original cast that can be difficult and generally proves to be a bad idea. That, and most sequels unless part of a larger saga, prove to be disappointments. A TV series might be different, if not featuring the original characters, then loosely based on the premise of the original movie. The original cast would be unlikely to participate since they were among those that voiced objection to the sequel. I do believe the premise could still work though, in fact there are many similarities between the Craft and Charmed to the point where many believe the latter to be a whitewashed imitation - the latter even uses the same track for its title sequence as was used for the former - How Soon Is Now performed by Love Spit Love.
Finally, a series I loved as a kid which, I have actually rewatched and I think still holds up both in production and story - Popular. Its original run was from 1999 to 2001 and followed the lives of teenagers at High School and their struggle for or aversion to popularity with a particular focus on Brooke McQueen and Sam McPherson, one popular, and one not, who hate each other, whose parents meet and marry forcing the two together. Popular covered a wide range of story lines that I believe are still relevant today, that, and the extent to which the world has changed in the last 20 years almost since it was first aired, I think opens up a whole new world of opportunity for writers to explore with the characters. I would like to see the story retold in a more modern setting with references that are up to date. Popular at its core was about social interaction and the complexities of it. I think that is as relevant today as it ever was.
At The Same Time
The Human Eye is an incredible piece of technology, but the eye itself plays less part in your vision than you might think. For one, most of what you see, including that which is right in front of you, is pieced together by your brain guessing what should be there, not by what you actually see. Most people find this hard to believe when they first start learning about how the human eye works, but it is true, each eye has a blind spot which is almost straight in front of you. What you see in that region of your vision is filled in by your brain.
More than this, it is surprising how little detail we actually see until we stop and make a conscious effort to observe as much as we can. The concept of abstraction is one that is prevalent in the human mind - the idea that you do not need to know how everything works, you need only know how to use it - this concept is taken and extended and applied to almost everything we do. To process everything we can sense at every moment would overload our brains in an instant, instead the brain creates layers and uses abstraction to hide away the intricacies of those below. We are conscious of our breathing only when we focus on it, the same for the blinking of our eyes, these are functions that we don't notice in general, only when we stop and think about them. Your vision doesn't go black every few seconds when you blink, instead you see a constant image, you only see darkness when you start to pay attention to your eyes blinking and you actually notice the moments when you can't see. When you are ignorant of this mechanism, your brain shows you whatever it thinks you would see in that moment.
The remarkable thing about this whole process is that what we think and how we interpret the world, begins to shape how we literally see it. This can become so extreme that we can miss things entirely for long and many a day before we actually take the effort to see it. Like watching a movie when enough time has passed that we don't remember the detail, watching it again we often notice things we never noticed before.
One thing I like to do is multi-task, whenever I write I listen to ambient music, whenever I play games I listen to podcasts or music, I combine things that use different parts of my brain. If I play a game that doesn't require much thinking then I listen to a podcast that involves a discussion. If I want to play a game that requires concentration then I play music similar to that when I write. Whilst combining these together I have noticed things that I never noticed before because I am being forced to process things in a different way.
I have two screens on my desk and I usually play games on the first, and have other applications on the second. The game occupies my main focus and the second monitor occupies the periphery. If I play a game that requires some focus, and play a video series on the second for background, I tend to notice things in the video in my periphery that I never noticed when I actually watch the video. To give another example some games are repetitive and don't require much focus so sometimes I listen to audio books whilst I play, and often I end up taking in more of the story when listening with my subconscious whilst playing a game than I do when I just sit and listen to the audio book on its own.
This has got me wondering what other behaviours or tasks can be combined to create new experiences and how might that affect how I process them.
Music and writing are one of my favourite combinations, often I find inspiration in the music. There are a few of my short stories that I wrote almost entirely by playing a single track on repeat whilst writing each - which incidentally has caused an association between the two to the point where those tracks and those stories instantly make me think of the other.
More than this, it is surprising how little detail we actually see until we stop and make a conscious effort to observe as much as we can. The concept of abstraction is one that is prevalent in the human mind - the idea that you do not need to know how everything works, you need only know how to use it - this concept is taken and extended and applied to almost everything we do. To process everything we can sense at every moment would overload our brains in an instant, instead the brain creates layers and uses abstraction to hide away the intricacies of those below. We are conscious of our breathing only when we focus on it, the same for the blinking of our eyes, these are functions that we don't notice in general, only when we stop and think about them. Your vision doesn't go black every few seconds when you blink, instead you see a constant image, you only see darkness when you start to pay attention to your eyes blinking and you actually notice the moments when you can't see. When you are ignorant of this mechanism, your brain shows you whatever it thinks you would see in that moment.
The remarkable thing about this whole process is that what we think and how we interpret the world, begins to shape how we literally see it. This can become so extreme that we can miss things entirely for long and many a day before we actually take the effort to see it. Like watching a movie when enough time has passed that we don't remember the detail, watching it again we often notice things we never noticed before.
One thing I like to do is multi-task, whenever I write I listen to ambient music, whenever I play games I listen to podcasts or music, I combine things that use different parts of my brain. If I play a game that doesn't require much thinking then I listen to a podcast that involves a discussion. If I want to play a game that requires concentration then I play music similar to that when I write. Whilst combining these together I have noticed things that I never noticed before because I am being forced to process things in a different way.
I have two screens on my desk and I usually play games on the first, and have other applications on the second. The game occupies my main focus and the second monitor occupies the periphery. If I play a game that requires some focus, and play a video series on the second for background, I tend to notice things in the video in my periphery that I never noticed when I actually watch the video. To give another example some games are repetitive and don't require much focus so sometimes I listen to audio books whilst I play, and often I end up taking in more of the story when listening with my subconscious whilst playing a game than I do when I just sit and listen to the audio book on its own.
This has got me wondering what other behaviours or tasks can be combined to create new experiences and how might that affect how I process them.
Music and writing are one of my favourite combinations, often I find inspiration in the music. There are a few of my short stories that I wrote almost entirely by playing a single track on repeat whilst writing each - which incidentally has caused an association between the two to the point where those tracks and those stories instantly make me think of the other.
Write About This
I sometimes share my blogs with people I know and let them read what I write. When I do, there is the inevitable comment that always pops up, "You should write about this" and some topic they are interested in.
First off, I appreciate the sentiment, and I am always open to ideas, suggest whatever you want, I will think about. That's not me being flippant, that's an honest remark, I will actually think about any idea that people suggest. However that doesn't mean that I would write about it.
This blog serves a purpose, as do my others. They each have a specific "need" that they fulfil for me personally. They essentially serve as creative outlets for ideas and for thoughts that are rolling around in my head which I write down in an effort to process them and give them structure. Everything I write about is something that has been floating around in my head and has given me a lot to think about. When it comes to ideas that other people suggest for me to write about, the real determining factor is whether or not that idea hangs around in my head or not. I write about things that I have opinions on, or things that I feel a certain way about. Often when other people suggest things to me to write about, they are things that I either know nothing about or things which I don't actually have an opinion on - I know that might be hard to believe but it is actually true. I don't form an opinion on everything in life, there are many things I see and find curious but simply stand back and watch.
There are some things too though that I choose not to write about, even though I do have opinions on them, and for the most part they are issues where I know my point of view is contentious or controversial and that most people probably wouldn't want to hear it. Likewise I know that some opinions if expressed would attract certain people I don't want to attract. To give an example, I tend to avoid going into specific issues when it comes to Politics, my commentary when it comes to politics remains to be somewhat generalized. That's not because I am trying to hide my point of view on policies it's just quite simply that I don't want this to be a political blog, if it became that it would attract specific readers who would be here for politics alone and have no interest in anything else. There is also the fact that any time anyone ever expresses a political opinion about anything online it almost always descends into an argument usually with people you don't even know who never engaged with you before - those and the endless cacophony of bots that have been programmed to seek out key political terms and post nonsensical arguments about them.
There is no overarching theme on this blog, there is no common thread to every post, there really isn't anything that ties it all together apart from me as a person and the fact that everything here is an expression of my thoughts and my observations. I made that decision consciously so that this blog would attract a wide variety of readers rather than readers that only came and read posts about a specific topic. Add to that the fact that much of this blog is a form of self-therapy and what I write is as much for me as anyone else. Even if nobody ever read a single post on here it would still serve a purpose for me personally and still be useful. I would still write posts for it and I would still go back and read them every now and then as they give me an insight as to how my thought process evolves and how certain things consumed my mind at the time.
First off, I appreciate the sentiment, and I am always open to ideas, suggest whatever you want, I will think about. That's not me being flippant, that's an honest remark, I will actually think about any idea that people suggest. However that doesn't mean that I would write about it.
This blog serves a purpose, as do my others. They each have a specific "need" that they fulfil for me personally. They essentially serve as creative outlets for ideas and for thoughts that are rolling around in my head which I write down in an effort to process them and give them structure. Everything I write about is something that has been floating around in my head and has given me a lot to think about. When it comes to ideas that other people suggest for me to write about, the real determining factor is whether or not that idea hangs around in my head or not. I write about things that I have opinions on, or things that I feel a certain way about. Often when other people suggest things to me to write about, they are things that I either know nothing about or things which I don't actually have an opinion on - I know that might be hard to believe but it is actually true. I don't form an opinion on everything in life, there are many things I see and find curious but simply stand back and watch.
There are some things too though that I choose not to write about, even though I do have opinions on them, and for the most part they are issues where I know my point of view is contentious or controversial and that most people probably wouldn't want to hear it. Likewise I know that some opinions if expressed would attract certain people I don't want to attract. To give an example, I tend to avoid going into specific issues when it comes to Politics, my commentary when it comes to politics remains to be somewhat generalized. That's not because I am trying to hide my point of view on policies it's just quite simply that I don't want this to be a political blog, if it became that it would attract specific readers who would be here for politics alone and have no interest in anything else. There is also the fact that any time anyone ever expresses a political opinion about anything online it almost always descends into an argument usually with people you don't even know who never engaged with you before - those and the endless cacophony of bots that have been programmed to seek out key political terms and post nonsensical arguments about them.
There is no overarching theme on this blog, there is no common thread to every post, there really isn't anything that ties it all together apart from me as a person and the fact that everything here is an expression of my thoughts and my observations. I made that decision consciously so that this blog would attract a wide variety of readers rather than readers that only came and read posts about a specific topic. Add to that the fact that much of this blog is a form of self-therapy and what I write is as much for me as anyone else. Even if nobody ever read a single post on here it would still serve a purpose for me personally and still be useful. I would still write posts for it and I would still go back and read them every now and then as they give me an insight as to how my thought process evolves and how certain things consumed my mind at the time.
Deltarune
Released in September 2015, Undertale was a game for PC that was humble in design and focused primarily on storytelling, empathy, choice, and the captivation of the player. The game went on to become a phenomenon that would come to dominate most of the internet for a few years before it was abandoned by the mainstream. Those who fell in love with it never left the game, and always held out hope that one day they could return to that world, now they kinda sorta almost possibly perhaps maybe but not really could... yeah, it's complicated.
Undertale took almost 3 years for the developer, Toby Fox to create. A mammoth task which he managed to complete almost entirely on his own. The amount of work that goes into developing a game is immense and the fact he did it almost entirely on his own, save for help from and a few others, most notably Temmie Chang, is quite incredible. As for the development process, Toby created a demo which was presented via Kickstarter in 2013 and raised just over $50,000 to fund development. After release the game went on to become a massive hit and has sold over 3.5 million copies, not bad for a game developed independently in its entirety, with no help from the established games industry at all. Undertale even went on to win several awards and gain widespread recognition from the games industry, in other words it held its own and was met with critical acclaim.
Bearing all this in mind, you can imagine the bar was set pretty high for Toby if he was ever to produce another game the expectations alone were always going to be something that would prove potentially insurmountable.
Along came Deltarune.
In many ways replicating his past actions, Toby has now released a demo for a new game titled Deltarune, available for free for anyone to try although without a Kickstarter this time around and seemingly no plans to launch one, although given the success of the first game, I don't think finance would really be a problem at this stage as the first was developed for $50,000 and the sales have dwarfed that figure. Along with the demo's release Toby has tweeted some anticipated questions and their answers in an attempt to pre-empt the onslaught of attention he will likely be inundated with already. Nevertheless, this short list is worth reading before you venture further as it may stem some of the theories that are bound to develop given the Internet's obsession with the first game.
I have a lot of thoughts about Deltarune, this post won't contain any spoilers per se but I'll say for now, fair warning, I will be discussing what Toby Fox has already said publicly above, so if you are sensitive to spoilers then don't read on.
The very first question people have is what exactly will the game be, a prequel, a sequel, or something else? There are a number of terms used to describe stories from shared universes but none of them quite fit what this game is intended to be. Even Toby acknowledges he doesn't know what this type of game would be referred to as. My own interpretation is that this is something of a multiverse scenario - although the fact he hasn't stated that given the first impression leads to that obvious conclusion, this leads me to think there's something more to the story.
A number of characters from Undertale do appear, with the same names, and same personality traits and mannerisms, however they are different to those that appeared in Undertale. For example, Toriel and Alphys are both present but these versions have no past or future shared with the same characters from Undertale. To that end I would consider this story an alternate reality to that of Undertale, although on a more meta level most will notice quite quickly that "Deltarune" is an anagram of "Undertale" and as one Reddit user simply said "Deltarune is anagram: the game tbh" and that pretty much sums up a lot of Deltarune quite succinctly, it's the same components but in a different configuration as the basis.
Obviously though, releasing the same game over again wouldn't impress many, and by no means are the two identical. Deltarune has the potential to be much more expansive than the first game, with the initial demo representing only Chapter 1 of the story, creating a world that is far more complex and dare I say it, much more complete. As much as I love Undertale, there were parts that alluded to things that were cut, things that were planned but never included, and things which were never fully explained and perhaps never will be, for one, given the nature of Deltarune, any revelations made within it arguably can't be considered cannon to Undertale since they aren't directly linked - unless some theories that have already emerged prove to be true.
That last point is my main gripe with what I have seen so far. I am generally not fond of games, movies, or TV shows or anything creative that takes place in the same universe as another, unless there's a good reason for doing so. The only exception is anything that's intended to be the real world in which case everything is meant to be part of our own universe. Nevertheless, the fact that Undertale and Deltarune share so much induces both nostalgia and consummate confusion. As yet, the only reason for sharing the character names and models of existing Undertale characters appears simply to be fan service, which to me feels cheap - which is why I believe there has to be more to the story, a real reason why they overlap so much, if not then this feels like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the first game.
Toby Fox wrote a lot in his list of questions about his apprehension at creating another game. Whilst I can understand the desire to please existing fans of Undertale, I can't help but feel that Deltarune should have been entirely new, without using anything that crosses over with Undertale. As I said above, unless there's an explicit reason as yet untold for connecting the two, I think they should have been fully cleaved. I want to see more, I think Deltarune has a lot of potential but I have reservations and they are based on a number of personal observations.
Firstly, Undertale was created in Toby's vision, everything in the game was by his design, his creation, his imagination and ultimately his choice. I can't help but feel Deltarune has had constraints placed upon it that will limit his creativity. By having the two games linked, I believe perceptions of Undertale will ultimately frame everything within Deltarune. There was always a risk that this would happen with any game Toby would develop after Undertale, but consciously linking the two actively encourages this. As someone with a creative mindset, placing constraints like this on my creative process for me personally would create a mentality that would discourage me from working on the project as the weight of the past would be deciding my future.
Secondly, Toby acknowledges that he's probably never going to develop a game that will connect with people, influence them, and become such a part of their life as Undertale did, and that people shouldn't have that expectation - I can't help but feel that's yet another reason why Deltarune shouldn't have been linked with Undertale so heavily, the comparisons are being encouraged and ultimately the success of Deltarune will be measured against Undertale more so for that reason.
I therefore have to conclude that the two games will actually cross over, there's no other reason why Toby would actively contradict himself by professing not to want the two to be compared, and still reuse characters in this way. As I mentioned before there are theories as to how they are linked, one in particular stands out in my mind as the most likely way the narratives will collide and the reasoning behind their similarities will become obvious; if this proves to be true, then perhaps some of the unanswered questions from Undertale will finally be resolved.
I have one last hope for Deltarune and that is that despite the fact that Undertale's brilliance came from the fact that it was created in Toby's vision, that he will relinquish some authority over the development process and open up to the idea of working with others. As someone with a creative mindset I understand how you can be reluctant to involve others when you have a clear vision you want to realise. Also as someone who has been programming since he was 6 years old, and has a degree in Computer Science and Games Technology who has developed video games for multiple platforms I have an intimate understanding of how complex the development process becomes and the difficulty that arises when you try to coordinate development especially when you are used to working on your own, integrating others can be a pain.
Despite that pain however, I do believe in order for the extent of the vision Toby now has to become a reality, he can't do it all on his own, and he acknowledges that in his tweet. A word of advice I would have to that end is to find people who aren't fans of Undertale to work on Deltarune - I say that because fans will have too many ideas and preconceptions of the game based on their experience and that will inevitably conflict with the development process. There is such a thing as being too close - there's a reason why having a Therapist that's related to you is an incredibly bad idea, you need someone who is going to be objective, and give Undertale's reach I think that might actually prove hard to find.
I want to see more and I am encouraged by the potential Deltarune has, I think there are ways the two games can cross over without contradicting anything that has already been established, and I think that is the most likely outcome as I can't fathom why they would be so heavily linked if they won't actually connect within the narrative.
One last thing I would like to say is that often sequels are dismissed as a bad idea, and that they never live up to the original creation. I would argue there is an exception to that belief and it comes when the original idea was one that never got to be all that it could be. I think this could apply to Deltarune. I think it has the potential to be everything that Toby had envisaged for Undertale but just didn't have the time, energy, expertise, or determination to make a reality. What Deltarune already portrays in its demo form, is an level of growth and personal development, it's clear that Toby has expanded his expertise and it's quite apparent that he's allowed others to have greater involvement in the development process. I hope that continues.
Undertale took almost 3 years for the developer, Toby Fox to create. A mammoth task which he managed to complete almost entirely on his own. The amount of work that goes into developing a game is immense and the fact he did it almost entirely on his own, save for help from and a few others, most notably Temmie Chang, is quite incredible. As for the development process, Toby created a demo which was presented via Kickstarter in 2013 and raised just over $50,000 to fund development. After release the game went on to become a massive hit and has sold over 3.5 million copies, not bad for a game developed independently in its entirety, with no help from the established games industry at all. Undertale even went on to win several awards and gain widespread recognition from the games industry, in other words it held its own and was met with critical acclaim.
Bearing all this in mind, you can imagine the bar was set pretty high for Toby if he was ever to produce another game the expectations alone were always going to be something that would prove potentially insurmountable.
Along came Deltarune.
In many ways replicating his past actions, Toby has now released a demo for a new game titled Deltarune, available for free for anyone to try although without a Kickstarter this time around and seemingly no plans to launch one, although given the success of the first game, I don't think finance would really be a problem at this stage as the first was developed for $50,000 and the sales have dwarfed that figure. Along with the demo's release Toby has tweeted some anticipated questions and their answers in an attempt to pre-empt the onslaught of attention he will likely be inundated with already. Nevertheless, this short list is worth reading before you venture further as it may stem some of the theories that are bound to develop given the Internet's obsession with the first game.
I have a lot of thoughts about Deltarune, this post won't contain any spoilers per se but I'll say for now, fair warning, I will be discussing what Toby Fox has already said publicly above, so if you are sensitive to spoilers then don't read on.
The very first question people have is what exactly will the game be, a prequel, a sequel, or something else? There are a number of terms used to describe stories from shared universes but none of them quite fit what this game is intended to be. Even Toby acknowledges he doesn't know what this type of game would be referred to as. My own interpretation is that this is something of a multiverse scenario - although the fact he hasn't stated that given the first impression leads to that obvious conclusion, this leads me to think there's something more to the story.
A number of characters from Undertale do appear, with the same names, and same personality traits and mannerisms, however they are different to those that appeared in Undertale. For example, Toriel and Alphys are both present but these versions have no past or future shared with the same characters from Undertale. To that end I would consider this story an alternate reality to that of Undertale, although on a more meta level most will notice quite quickly that "Deltarune" is an anagram of "Undertale" and as one Reddit user simply said "Deltarune is anagram: the game tbh" and that pretty much sums up a lot of Deltarune quite succinctly, it's the same components but in a different configuration as the basis.
Obviously though, releasing the same game over again wouldn't impress many, and by no means are the two identical. Deltarune has the potential to be much more expansive than the first game, with the initial demo representing only Chapter 1 of the story, creating a world that is far more complex and dare I say it, much more complete. As much as I love Undertale, there were parts that alluded to things that were cut, things that were planned but never included, and things which were never fully explained and perhaps never will be, for one, given the nature of Deltarune, any revelations made within it arguably can't be considered cannon to Undertale since they aren't directly linked - unless some theories that have already emerged prove to be true.
That last point is my main gripe with what I have seen so far. I am generally not fond of games, movies, or TV shows or anything creative that takes place in the same universe as another, unless there's a good reason for doing so. The only exception is anything that's intended to be the real world in which case everything is meant to be part of our own universe. Nevertheless, the fact that Undertale and Deltarune share so much induces both nostalgia and consummate confusion. As yet, the only reason for sharing the character names and models of existing Undertale characters appears simply to be fan service, which to me feels cheap - which is why I believe there has to be more to the story, a real reason why they overlap so much, if not then this feels like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the first game.
Toby Fox wrote a lot in his list of questions about his apprehension at creating another game. Whilst I can understand the desire to please existing fans of Undertale, I can't help but feel that Deltarune should have been entirely new, without using anything that crosses over with Undertale. As I said above, unless there's an explicit reason as yet untold for connecting the two, I think they should have been fully cleaved. I want to see more, I think Deltarune has a lot of potential but I have reservations and they are based on a number of personal observations.
Firstly, Undertale was created in Toby's vision, everything in the game was by his design, his creation, his imagination and ultimately his choice. I can't help but feel Deltarune has had constraints placed upon it that will limit his creativity. By having the two games linked, I believe perceptions of Undertale will ultimately frame everything within Deltarune. There was always a risk that this would happen with any game Toby would develop after Undertale, but consciously linking the two actively encourages this. As someone with a creative mindset, placing constraints like this on my creative process for me personally would create a mentality that would discourage me from working on the project as the weight of the past would be deciding my future.
Secondly, Toby acknowledges that he's probably never going to develop a game that will connect with people, influence them, and become such a part of their life as Undertale did, and that people shouldn't have that expectation - I can't help but feel that's yet another reason why Deltarune shouldn't have been linked with Undertale so heavily, the comparisons are being encouraged and ultimately the success of Deltarune will be measured against Undertale more so for that reason.
I therefore have to conclude that the two games will actually cross over, there's no other reason why Toby would actively contradict himself by professing not to want the two to be compared, and still reuse characters in this way. As I mentioned before there are theories as to how they are linked, one in particular stands out in my mind as the most likely way the narratives will collide and the reasoning behind their similarities will become obvious; if this proves to be true, then perhaps some of the unanswered questions from Undertale will finally be resolved.
I have one last hope for Deltarune and that is that despite the fact that Undertale's brilliance came from the fact that it was created in Toby's vision, that he will relinquish some authority over the development process and open up to the idea of working with others. As someone with a creative mindset I understand how you can be reluctant to involve others when you have a clear vision you want to realise. Also as someone who has been programming since he was 6 years old, and has a degree in Computer Science and Games Technology who has developed video games for multiple platforms I have an intimate understanding of how complex the development process becomes and the difficulty that arises when you try to coordinate development especially when you are used to working on your own, integrating others can be a pain.
Despite that pain however, I do believe in order for the extent of the vision Toby now has to become a reality, he can't do it all on his own, and he acknowledges that in his tweet. A word of advice I would have to that end is to find people who aren't fans of Undertale to work on Deltarune - I say that because fans will have too many ideas and preconceptions of the game based on their experience and that will inevitably conflict with the development process. There is such a thing as being too close - there's a reason why having a Therapist that's related to you is an incredibly bad idea, you need someone who is going to be objective, and give Undertale's reach I think that might actually prove hard to find.
I want to see more and I am encouraged by the potential Deltarune has, I think there are ways the two games can cross over without contradicting anything that has already been established, and I think that is the most likely outcome as I can't fathom why they would be so heavily linked if they won't actually connect within the narrative.
One last thing I would like to say is that often sequels are dismissed as a bad idea, and that they never live up to the original creation. I would argue there is an exception to that belief and it comes when the original idea was one that never got to be all that it could be. I think this could apply to Deltarune. I think it has the potential to be everything that Toby had envisaged for Undertale but just didn't have the time, energy, expertise, or determination to make a reality. What Deltarune already portrays in its demo form, is an level of growth and personal development, it's clear that Toby has expanded his expertise and it's quite apparent that he's allowed others to have greater involvement in the development process. I hope that continues.
Truth and Trauma
I mentioned in my post about ASMR that one of the reasons I felt it was so popular was because of the escape it provides for those that feel it. I think that desire to escape the world if only for a while is driven by the fact that every day we are bombarded with stimuli that are really designed to make us feel worse about our lives. Take the news for example, something which as children we generally avoid, either because we find it boring or because adults try to hide it from us. As we grow older however there comes an expectation with age that you should watch or read the news regularly. The question is why? For the most part what you see will be events that have already happened, or developing stories all of which you personally can't do anything about. There are only a handful of stories that will make the news that you could actually get involved with and do something about.
Despite that fact, almost every story you read or see on the news is something negative, or something that makes the world seem like it's worse than it really is, or to make you feel like the world is in a constant state of decline. People have felt this for decades and the world has not ended, it has not fallen apart, it keeps turning and society keeps going. Every now and then there's a story that obsesses a nation or even the world over for a while but they all pass in the end. No matter how endless it may seem, it will come and go no matter what it is.
There will be an immediate, predictable response to these statements that to avoid the news is ignorant, and to live in ignorance is bad, etc. I would ask you to stop and ask yourself why you say that. Children every day live their lives in complete ignorance to it and you don't demonise them for it. At what point does not caring about what is on the news stop being something of innocence and start being something of ignorance? For every story you have read today, and every news report you have watched today, how many of those will you act upon? Beyond making conversation with people about how bad it is and how horrible the world has become, how long will it be before you return to your life and continue to live it exactly as you did before? What are you really gaining from watching it, reading it, and most importantly, coming back to it over and over looking for more?
If it was anything else, a food or a drink that made you feel bad, and you came back to it every single day, multiple times a day, continued to consume it knowing it would make you feel unwell, but consuming it anyway, would you not consider that a destructive behaviour? When you think about addiction, one thing that sets it apart from every other behaviour is the fact that the addict continues to indulge their habit despite the negative impact upon them it has, to the extent where they feel like they could not live without indulging in their habit. Ask yourself how long you could live without reading or watching the news and then ask yourself if you are addicted to it. If you even think for a moment that you might be, then you should ask yourself what you really get from doing it.
Is the desire to be informed, and know what's going on in the world, worth the negative feelings and control it has over you all the while knowing you can not, will not, or simply do not want, to do anything about it?
The Black Eyed Peas song 'Where Is The Love' suggests the whole world is distracted by the drama, and addicted to the trauma. I can't help feel with everything that has happened in the last few years that this might actually be true to a far deeper extent than those lyrics first said. Could you give up on the news?
Despite that fact, almost every story you read or see on the news is something negative, or something that makes the world seem like it's worse than it really is, or to make you feel like the world is in a constant state of decline. People have felt this for decades and the world has not ended, it has not fallen apart, it keeps turning and society keeps going. Every now and then there's a story that obsesses a nation or even the world over for a while but they all pass in the end. No matter how endless it may seem, it will come and go no matter what it is.
There will be an immediate, predictable response to these statements that to avoid the news is ignorant, and to live in ignorance is bad, etc. I would ask you to stop and ask yourself why you say that. Children every day live their lives in complete ignorance to it and you don't demonise them for it. At what point does not caring about what is on the news stop being something of innocence and start being something of ignorance? For every story you have read today, and every news report you have watched today, how many of those will you act upon? Beyond making conversation with people about how bad it is and how horrible the world has become, how long will it be before you return to your life and continue to live it exactly as you did before? What are you really gaining from watching it, reading it, and most importantly, coming back to it over and over looking for more?
If it was anything else, a food or a drink that made you feel bad, and you came back to it every single day, multiple times a day, continued to consume it knowing it would make you feel unwell, but consuming it anyway, would you not consider that a destructive behaviour? When you think about addiction, one thing that sets it apart from every other behaviour is the fact that the addict continues to indulge their habit despite the negative impact upon them it has, to the extent where they feel like they could not live without indulging in their habit. Ask yourself how long you could live without reading or watching the news and then ask yourself if you are addicted to it. If you even think for a moment that you might be, then you should ask yourself what you really get from doing it.
Is the desire to be informed, and know what's going on in the world, worth the negative feelings and control it has over you all the while knowing you can not, will not, or simply do not want, to do anything about it?
The Black Eyed Peas song 'Where Is The Love' suggests the whole world is distracted by the drama, and addicted to the trauma. I can't help feel with everything that has happened in the last few years that this might actually be true to a far deeper extent than those lyrics first said. Could you give up on the news?
You Look Like Twins
The genetic diversity of the Human Race is surprisingly limited. I came to this conclusion when I was looking at a video of someone on YouTube who looks like a guy I knew from primary school. It's not the same person, of that I can be sure as this guy is French and the guy from my primary school is not. They're also almost ten years apart in age. However the fact they look so alike and live hundreds of miles apart from one another in different countries with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds made me think about how limited in diversity of appearance we really are.
When you stop and take someone's appearance and break it down, there are a few characteristics that we use to distinguish one another. The easiest way to demonstrate this is to look to video games, in particular The Sims, which includes a character creator called Create A Sim that lets you create Sims, which are characters that are used to simulate people. The character creator lets you manipulate these characteristics. Hair colour, hair style, eye colour, eye shape, skin colour, level of ageing, nose shape, lip shape, mouth shape, chin shape, and ear shape - you can also manipulate size and position but that's pretty much it for the face other than some aesthetic features. That's not far from reality however in terms of how close our actual features are to conforming to a template.
If you think of real life and think of hair colour, in terms of natural hair colour, everyone is pretty much blonde, brown, black, red, or white haired. You can then manipulate the intensity of those colours. That's quite a limited selection when you think about it. Of all the colours of the rainbow and the ways they could be combined, almost everyone conforms to one of those 5 colours - or they have no hair at all. Skin tone too despite varying by race is mostly a gradient between white and black - although I never actually understood why white people and black people are named as such as most white people are actually a kind of pink and most black people are really brown skinned.
I am aware that this is getting racial and at this point I'd like to say this isn't specific to any race, this is an observation of humanity as a whole that I have. There's a photo that trended on Twitter shortly after You Know Who was elected showing a panel on a US News network which was 4 white men with greying hair and it looked like someone had just taken the same model and stuck it in the Sims creator and changed one or two minor things - they all looked like the same person.
When you are younger and you have limited exposure to people in terms of volume, it's easier to see diversity and see the differences between people, but it seems the older you get and the more people you see and come into contact the more you start to see the same faces over and over again. "You look just like X" becomes common, once something you only heard relatives say about people in the family you look like, it becomes more widespread. You eventually reach a point where you realise that the number of characteristics you can tweak on that character creator is limited and with a population of seven billion and rising, it was inevitable that you would start seeing the same thing reappear time and again.
I've said before that we are not that different when it comes down to it and that "you're unique just like everybody else" is rather fitting; it's not something I ever applied to appearance before but the more I dwell on it the more I can start pairing people up who I have met in my life who look very similar, even people I have never met I can start pairing up in my mind.
When you stop and take someone's appearance and break it down, there are a few characteristics that we use to distinguish one another. The easiest way to demonstrate this is to look to video games, in particular The Sims, which includes a character creator called Create A Sim that lets you create Sims, which are characters that are used to simulate people. The character creator lets you manipulate these characteristics. Hair colour, hair style, eye colour, eye shape, skin colour, level of ageing, nose shape, lip shape, mouth shape, chin shape, and ear shape - you can also manipulate size and position but that's pretty much it for the face other than some aesthetic features. That's not far from reality however in terms of how close our actual features are to conforming to a template.
If you think of real life and think of hair colour, in terms of natural hair colour, everyone is pretty much blonde, brown, black, red, or white haired. You can then manipulate the intensity of those colours. That's quite a limited selection when you think about it. Of all the colours of the rainbow and the ways they could be combined, almost everyone conforms to one of those 5 colours - or they have no hair at all. Skin tone too despite varying by race is mostly a gradient between white and black - although I never actually understood why white people and black people are named as such as most white people are actually a kind of pink and most black people are really brown skinned.
I am aware that this is getting racial and at this point I'd like to say this isn't specific to any race, this is an observation of humanity as a whole that I have. There's a photo that trended on Twitter shortly after You Know Who was elected showing a panel on a US News network which was 4 white men with greying hair and it looked like someone had just taken the same model and stuck it in the Sims creator and changed one or two minor things - they all looked like the same person.
When you are younger and you have limited exposure to people in terms of volume, it's easier to see diversity and see the differences between people, but it seems the older you get and the more people you see and come into contact the more you start to see the same faces over and over again. "You look just like X" becomes common, once something you only heard relatives say about people in the family you look like, it becomes more widespread. You eventually reach a point where you realise that the number of characteristics you can tweak on that character creator is limited and with a population of seven billion and rising, it was inevitable that you would start seeing the same thing reappear time and again.
I've said before that we are not that different when it comes down to it and that "you're unique just like everybody else" is rather fitting; it's not something I ever applied to appearance before but the more I dwell on it the more I can start pairing people up who I have met in my life who look very similar, even people I have never met I can start pairing up in my mind.
Unwanted Content
There are websites online dedicated to just about everything you can imagine. That's a wonderful thing, if you imagine wonderful things, but it is also a horrendous thing if you imagine horrendous things and realise there are websites dedicated to those too. Knowing this fact, there are places on the internet neither I nor most of you, will ever visit. There is an understanding that those sites exist, we don't like them, if we could we would take them all down, but for most of us we don't have the power to do that, and those that do have the power have seemingly no motivation to do anything about them.
Therein lies one of the growing concerns people have with the internet and the wealth of content that can be found on it - that it encompasses all of human nature and not all of human nature is kind and caring and basked in rainbows and sunshine. The presence of such darkness online is a reflection of the presence of darkness in our society, and again whilst we don't like it and we want it to disappear, the vast majority of us have little power to actually tackle any of it - that's what law enforcement is meant to be for.
In both of these scenarios, often the darkness as a whole is not something that law enforcement actively seeks out, but rather it is something they respond to when reported. The limitations of reactive policing is that it relies on someone to actually see it as bad and report it for them to become aware of it. We can leave the debate about effectiveness of enforcement for another time as that is a real problem both online and offline which is an entire issue onto itself. No the major problem beyond effectiveness is that prerequisite of seeing it as bad enough to report. The bulk of this content is such that you have to go out of your way to find it, you won't do so by accident. If you went out of your way to find it, then you probably have an interest in it or a motivation to see it. That makes you much less likely to report it by simple consequence of your seeking it out is in itself a crime in most cases.
We then come to the conclusion that if you want to tackle this problem then you really need a proactive policing policy which requires law enforcement to hire people who will actively seek it out. The trouble with that option is the simple question - who would want to?
I spent three years as a moderator on a popular online forum and in that time I had to read thousands of posts and review content that was uploaded by users and throughout my time in that post one thing was apparent - it was depressing. Not because of the monotony but because people are vile. I was lucky enough in my time to never have observed anything that in itself was illegal, just things that broke the terms of use and community guidelines that users had agreed to when they signed up. Even at that though, some of the things people said which had to be removed were disgusting. I've been a moderator on a few forums over the years, some were a lot happier than others. From best to worst I gained enough of an understanding of people to know that anyone is capable of anything and to imagine someone as incapable of anything is naive. It's often the people you least suspect who turn out to be the worst offenders.
You don't have to look very far online to see some of the hate and abuse that people post. The comment section on YouTube alone provides an abundance of content that contains so much negativity that you eventually come to associate it with negativity so much that you actually avoid it entirely. One argument I often hear for allowing all forms of comment is that of free speech and seeing both sides of an argument - I don't accept that as valid. Up until this point you have probably agreed with almost everything I have written and considered the content I referred to - whatever you inferred from it - to be content that needed removed, yet when you reach this point there is resistance. Moderation it seems is only tolerated when it is something you personally do not agree with being moderated, not something people in general would want to be moderated. Everything up to this point in this post would be content people in general agree should be removed, yet at this point you now likely challenge that concept because it could infringe upon what you can post.
The limitation has to come from you not from society, that limitation has to be the recognition that whilst you have the right to think and feel and say whatever you want, you don't have the right to act upon it or to direct it at other people when they don't want to hear it or when it breaks the law. You have the right to free speech, but I and everyone else has the right to ignore you and not listen to you. If I don't want to hear it nor does anyone else, then we have the right to remove that content.
There's a growing challenge to the long held position that many tech companies have had that their websites are platforms not publishers and should be exempt from the rules that apply to publishers. That challenge is based on the fact that they as websites, particularly those such as Facebook and YouTube, host the content, and distribute it to those who come to see it, the same way traditional publishers put out content for people to purchase. The argument that Facebook et al are not responsible for the content stored on their own servers cannot be held any longer, that same argument could be used by all of those who publish the content I mentioned at the start of this post, the content you likely agreed should be removed. If it's not legal for you to print it and sell it then it shouldn't be legal to display it on a website, serve ads next to it, and make money from it.
Therein lies one of the growing concerns people have with the internet and the wealth of content that can be found on it - that it encompasses all of human nature and not all of human nature is kind and caring and basked in rainbows and sunshine. The presence of such darkness online is a reflection of the presence of darkness in our society, and again whilst we don't like it and we want it to disappear, the vast majority of us have little power to actually tackle any of it - that's what law enforcement is meant to be for.
In both of these scenarios, often the darkness as a whole is not something that law enforcement actively seeks out, but rather it is something they respond to when reported. The limitations of reactive policing is that it relies on someone to actually see it as bad and report it for them to become aware of it. We can leave the debate about effectiveness of enforcement for another time as that is a real problem both online and offline which is an entire issue onto itself. No the major problem beyond effectiveness is that prerequisite of seeing it as bad enough to report. The bulk of this content is such that you have to go out of your way to find it, you won't do so by accident. If you went out of your way to find it, then you probably have an interest in it or a motivation to see it. That makes you much less likely to report it by simple consequence of your seeking it out is in itself a crime in most cases.
We then come to the conclusion that if you want to tackle this problem then you really need a proactive policing policy which requires law enforcement to hire people who will actively seek it out. The trouble with that option is the simple question - who would want to?
I spent three years as a moderator on a popular online forum and in that time I had to read thousands of posts and review content that was uploaded by users and throughout my time in that post one thing was apparent - it was depressing. Not because of the monotony but because people are vile. I was lucky enough in my time to never have observed anything that in itself was illegal, just things that broke the terms of use and community guidelines that users had agreed to when they signed up. Even at that though, some of the things people said which had to be removed were disgusting. I've been a moderator on a few forums over the years, some were a lot happier than others. From best to worst I gained enough of an understanding of people to know that anyone is capable of anything and to imagine someone as incapable of anything is naive. It's often the people you least suspect who turn out to be the worst offenders.
You don't have to look very far online to see some of the hate and abuse that people post. The comment section on YouTube alone provides an abundance of content that contains so much negativity that you eventually come to associate it with negativity so much that you actually avoid it entirely. One argument I often hear for allowing all forms of comment is that of free speech and seeing both sides of an argument - I don't accept that as valid. Up until this point you have probably agreed with almost everything I have written and considered the content I referred to - whatever you inferred from it - to be content that needed removed, yet when you reach this point there is resistance. Moderation it seems is only tolerated when it is something you personally do not agree with being moderated, not something people in general would want to be moderated. Everything up to this point in this post would be content people in general agree should be removed, yet at this point you now likely challenge that concept because it could infringe upon what you can post.
The limitation has to come from you not from society, that limitation has to be the recognition that whilst you have the right to think and feel and say whatever you want, you don't have the right to act upon it or to direct it at other people when they don't want to hear it or when it breaks the law. You have the right to free speech, but I and everyone else has the right to ignore you and not listen to you. If I don't want to hear it nor does anyone else, then we have the right to remove that content.
There's a growing challenge to the long held position that many tech companies have had that their websites are platforms not publishers and should be exempt from the rules that apply to publishers. That challenge is based on the fact that they as websites, particularly those such as Facebook and YouTube, host the content, and distribute it to those who come to see it, the same way traditional publishers put out content for people to purchase. The argument that Facebook et al are not responsible for the content stored on their own servers cannot be held any longer, that same argument could be used by all of those who publish the content I mentioned at the start of this post, the content you likely agreed should be removed. If it's not legal for you to print it and sell it then it shouldn't be legal to display it on a website, serve ads next to it, and make money from it.
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