numb3r_5ev3n | Three videos for this week.

First: The Rise And Fall of Kitschy 90s Restaurants. This is apropos of nothing, except that I feel like the "fall" of these kinds of establishments and their replacement by the "grey/beige/greige late 2010s Millennial Air B&B Aesthetic" is part and parcel of the 2020s Enshittification Of Everything.

2: This echoes my thoughts exactly right now. And it gives me anxiety that all of the Worst People have truly won, if it means that I am pulling back from Web 2.0 social media altogether. Because, as The Functional Melancholic says, it's becoming impossible to tell what's real, in a way that feels dangerously destructive to civilization as a whole right now. This is literally one of the goals of Active Measures, and it appears to have succeeded.

III. Vera of The Council Of Geeks also echoes my thoughts perfectly right now. As well as those of many others, I suspect. This is also my Current Mood for this post. I also just let this loop for like 10 minutes yesterday. That's how spot-on it is.

Also, Sinners is out on streaming, for those who have not seen it yet. Just please, I'm begging you, watch it on a screen bigger than a phone screen if you have any other recourse. I'm serious.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The start of video #1 seems to make a strong case that the reality we lie in is a constructed one, like those of The Matrix (yes, I contend all worlds in it are constructed realities, in part illustrated by how Neo never did anything in the utopia world that broke the rules of that program), and then he goes to Plato's cave metaphor, sort of, because he doesn't address several important things in how the metaphor works. It gets used for all kinds of things, but many of those aren't what Plato was getting at; I guess it's use in multiple contexts shows its utility.

The world he's describing is one experienced by a subsection of human society -- there's a healthy measure of FWP in it, and it's also, at least to appearance and my personal experience, subjective. What he described is a huge risk to introverted people who use Web 2.0 sources for their interactions -- that is not my experience at all. The reality is that introversion is a majority condition among the nerds and geeks from the time of the creation of the World Wide Web, and also in those who propagate it, and for those not of that social orientation the web requires people to function from that angle. I've been described as someone who can code switch with not much effort as long as I know the code, and three decades of web interaction along with the five years before that of BBS time taught me the way of the introverted. So much of what he describes is not a part of my reality at all. But then again, I refuse to use most short cycle news sources, the one holdout a newspaper, and my other news sources are weekly or monthly publications. And I'm not feeling that existential angst that he's describing -- this may be a generational factor, because I remember a lot of years where we wondered if the next IRL day was going to show up or if we were going to get nuked from orbit, because it was the only way to be sure.

The condition you describe is one I feel, regarding restaurants -- I try hard not to think of the Snuffer's next to The Granada, the original location, because the new one they built in the same spot lacks the cool and funky spaces the original one had, especially the back room that was full of wood paneling and plants.

Also, I get a consistent anchor -- petting the Holy Terrier is a multiple times a day thing, and the physical world is a screaming reality in my life because I have to check where it is so often when not at home; I've given up on using a public restroom, because they're like totally too much, ya know? Still, I notice people disengaging from the physical world, and back in college (my successful time in one, since I managed to perform a degree) my state and local government teacher admonished the guys in the class because they were walking around campus on their phones and overlooking all of the attractive women -- for his Boomer mind that didn't make sense at all, and for all the current doom-saying and counter-Candide sentiments this was back in 2005, so it's been with us for a while. The guy on YouTube mentions doom scrolling cat videos, and that screams distraction to me -- the web very may well be a drug.

I need digital communication as a survival medium -- there's so much I can't do without it, thanks to my physical disability. Other people seem to think they need it as much as I do, but I wonder about that -- is it for real survival, or is it a fix?

One more observation -- it wouldn't surprise me if the guy on YouTube spouted some Emo poetry, because his tone, vocal energy, and cadence evoked that kind of vibe. I don't know if that was him tailoring his delivery to the audience he wanted to reach or if it's his normal engagement style, but it had copious amounts of doom and darkness underlying it. I hope he finds his connection to some sort of Real World (TM) he can feel comfortable with.

Not a week goes by that I don't think about that Snuffers or what a fun place it was to go during the 90s. Some things really are a case of "remember what they took from us."

Learning to code switch is something I've never really gotten a handle on. I feel like I'm still flubbing social interactions all over the place.

I think the guy talking about how our sense of reality is being skewed is referring to the majority of younger (30s and under) people who get most of their news from fast social media, and don't go to any other news sources. Divesting from those has been hard, and I have missed out on some breaking news (like the stuff going on in Southern California right now) until a day or so after the fact. But that's how things used to be.

I loved grabbing a late meal after a show at The Granada, because it was right there and the Granada parking lot behind the venue was sort of a flaming dumpster until people got out of the local area and on to Matilda or Greenville. There are so many places where my brain falls into the "This is why we can't have nice things anymore" mode.

Code switching was a survival trait, because of my brother and my extroversion -- I had to learn it because I was in a lot of different situations, and early exposure to several subgenres also helped me to learn how the lingo worked and how others saw things and interfaced with the world. Music helped a huge amount too -- the code for piano is way different from wind instruments, which have their own codes too, and my brain is wired to extrapolate and find patterns.

I figured he was aiming at much younger people. He outlines a small part of what's messed up about younger folks because of their overreliance on digital interaction and information sources. The brittleness, judgmentalism, black and white thinking, overreacting, and catastrophizing all stem from that.

I mean, to be fair, kids the last 15 years have beee living in a world that is not designed for their needs. They’re not allowed to climb trees, they’re allowed to go outdoors but most of them only within sight of their houses, they’re not encouraged to bond as groups unless they’re buying something or at someone’s house but only if they don’t get noisy … Society has really done a number on the mental health of young people by denying them many of the load-bearing freedoms that you or I grew up with.

This is very true. They have no concept of riding a bicycle without massive padding, or heading down to a local creek to mess around in surface water. Their lives as kids were regulated, filled, and overwatched, and their only sense of freedom was online in an Eternal September environment. This sort of looks like what might happen if a cadre of young people were socialized almost to death, but in an artificial setting where true connection is much harder.

I mean, that’s what happened? Or that’s what it looks like to me.

Three videos for this week.

It's Matrix Reality Time Again

Re: It's Matrix Reality Time Again

Re: It's Matrix Reality Time Again

Re: It's Matrix Reality Time Again

Re: It's Matrix Reality Time Again

Re: It's Matrix Reality Time Again