Dismissive Naysayers (Rant)

Ok, I must really be in a ranting spree…

Feels kind of good.

Don’t worry, it won’t last.

So… Why is it that people occasionally seem forced to be dismissive with people who like something that they themselves happen not to like? You know, in culinary articles, movie reports, political rallies, book reviews… Quite frequently, a negative description of a cultural item will read like “if you like this, you must be an idiot.” Instead of the more useful: “I don’t like this and I think it’s flawed in some ways but if you’re in the mood for this kind of book/meal/movie/experience, you might enjoy it. I respect your tastes, I just don’t share them.”

Now. Some people who know e might think I’m talking about them. I’m not. Really, I’m not talking about anyone in particular. Not even about a category of people. I’m just describing a behavior. At least, I’m trying to.

Even though this is (yet another) rant, I don’t think I’m even really complaining about this kind of behavior. I’m just talking about it. Venting, yes, ok. But not really whining/complaining/dismissing. I know it sounds like something else, but I’m pretty sure I know how I feel about the whole thing. No, I don’t particularly enjoy this behavior. But I can deal with it. I’m fine. I don’t want to eradicate the behavior. I just elucidate.

I’m mostly talking about my puzzlement at this behavior. IMHO, if you don’t like something, there’s really no use in ruining it for other people. I mean, is it supposed to be funny, or something? Is it a way to brag about having a sophisticated palate, about being well-read, about having attained a high degree of media literacy?

Now, I’m sure I’ve done exactly the same thing on occasion. If I don’t enjoy it too much from other people, I hate it coming from my own sorry self. It just doesn’t correspond to my way of thinking about basically anything. If I’ve done it, I guess it might have come from a weird dynamic in which I entered by mistake. Not that it’s an excuse. I don’t need an excuse for something which is not inherently bad. But I do want to understand what’s going on.

I keep wondering how people would react when they are told something like “you’re an idiot for loving a person like this.” That, I’m pretty sure I never said to anyone. If I ever did, something really strange must have happened. But it does happen occasionally. And I wonder how people feel because it might be a path to awareness. Not that an appreciation of “a thing” is in any way similar to an attachment to a human being. But the dismissive sentiment seems to me relatively similar in both cases.

Maybe I’m wrong. About the whole thing. Maybe I just don’t get it and some people just have “superior taste” about everything than anybody else and when they say “it’s bad,” it really means that there’s no way to ever appreciate this thing in any context if you’re a worthy human being. Sure, it’s possible.

I just prefer being an hedonist.

And I prefer venting occasionally. Not on a regular basis.

Cultural References and Mass Media

An effect of my not having a television is that I occasionally miss “references to popular culture.”

Euro-American?

Rex, over at anthro blog Savage Minds, was questioning (or just asking about) people’s use of “Euro-American” as a label for different groups of people. He was concerned about ethnic and/or “racial” connotations.

Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » No but seriously: Euro-American?

Looks like I did use “Euro-American” here. On purpose, no less. 

So… What do I mean by “Euro-American,” you ask? Well, it depends on context. And as I like to talk about context and terminological precision, I wrote a lengthy comments on Rex’s blogpost. Here’s an edited version. (The original version is on Savage Minds.)

Obligatory New Feature Test

Yeah, I know, everyone is probably tired of WordPress.com blogs having test posts. Here’s mine.

Basically, I want to make sure editing in Safari 3.1 works as advertised, without garbling linebreaks and such.

So… Erm… About that WordPress.com update…

I’d say the update on WordPress.com is less significant than the 2.5 update for the WordPress package itself. But it’s interesting to have the whole blog updated without our intervention. The interface is different enough that I kind of wish they could have allowed us to keep the old version.

Ah, well…

Still, there’s a few neat new features.

I like the fact that tags can be edited. So they end up being fairly close to categories while remaining distinctive enough. I might convert more categories to tags, to finally clean up my blog (I really have hundreds of categories). Still, tags aren’t added in the del.icio.us or Blogger way.

The new category support makes sense, in context. It actually clarifies the difference between tags and categories.

I also like the new design of the main dashboard page. Quite efficient to see, at a glance, what’s been going on. I tend to not obsess on my stats that much, but I do enjoy looking at them. And I do care about pings and trackbacks.

The new media library features are quite cool too. Let’s try an MP3. Nah. The upload happens but it ends up saying the file type doesn’t meet their security requirements (meaning that the paid upgrade is needed).

Ah, well… It could have been fun. I eventually would like to be able to podcast using WordPress.com.

Overall, the update is mostly striking because of the interface. The new features are fairly light, when you get down to it. Isn’t there a saying about the Emperor’s new clothes?