I don't relate to feminism

Thanks to the tablet I write this on's penchant for refreshing every time you go back to a tab in browser or switch between applications I was given the opportunity to rethink the title of this post, originally 'why I don't relate to feminism' a hard case to plead and had me feel the slight sense of foreboding that what I was going to write would be irresponsible. But pruned of the why it suddenly became a 'of course I don't relate to feminism, I'm a white cisgendered hetero normative male who was a former prefect at a private school in a non-diverse regional city, one of the most privileged members of the most privileged class, I don't really relate to being oppressed period.

But I do have a morbid fascination with feminism, and often serious feminist articles about serious issues posted by serious feminist friends amount to clickbait to me. I go read them to experience a small exhilarating horror at how much I (potentially) will dislike the content. (Like addictive behavior it isn't the 'having' but the 'getting'.

And to be sure I'll attempt to disclaim at this point. This post is a complaint, and while I'll no doubt through sheer laziness do a poor job of 'being specific' I am determined to follow rule number two of complaining and doggedly 'own my point of view' and point firmly that I'm talking about myself and myself only as an audience member, not on behalf of all men or 'real men' or any shit category I may belong to. My complaints are a statement of personal preference that I doubt can be expanded to people who share my myers-briggs INTP designation as much as anyone that shares my Libra star sign. Though if my complaints constitute arguments that wind up getting appropriated and repeated by loser MRAs to justify any 'male rights' etc I'll take responsibility for putting them out there but I'll never not think 'male rights' aren't up there as the most worthless things to devote energy to, speaking to the cost benefit analysis of the 'struggle'.

Which in turn, is disclaimer number 2, I devote little to no energy arguing against male rights activists (aforementioned MRAs) because I find them 'beneath contempt' in my behavioral practice though I think of them more as sad, sometimes tragic. I'm generally not in their line of fire so don't have any defensive pressure to engage either. I'll devote energy to complaining about feminist practices though because I want them to win, and step to. I'm in the audience because I want the team to succeed, though like a fan in the basketball stands for all my ideas/complaints I am not qualified to coach.

And this complaint is more or less already undone, I feel in my bones that at some point I read a quote by some civil rights leader the gist of which was 'you can't let the oppressor define the rules of acceptible resistance, that's crazy' I feel like Malcolm X is most likely to have said something to that effect, alas I can't find the actual quote and starting to wonder if I imagined it. But I feel the argument/sentiment has to be respected, oppressors need to recognise that they are only going to deem acceptable ways of resistance they don't feel threatened by and the oppressed need to recognise that oppressors are always going to try this tactic, and so here I go, read on if your morbid curiosity urges you to:

In a simplified binary world my preference is to practitioners and not academics. I've been instilled with a disrespect of academia at an early age, believing without needing a reason, that PhD's were quite useless. Now that I've grown, I have rationales to back my orientation, but my orientation hasn't changed. I've been walked through abridged versions of the history of women's rights movement once, possibly twice but the detail's haven't stuck. I'm left with the impression though, that feminism has a long standing seat in the couch of academia. 'Prominent' feminists are often academics, writing theses an impression reinforced when I read the Wikipedia article on rape culture in an attempt to disambiguafy what that actually is.

I know I'm not the first nor the last to notice that 'feminism' struggles with being an undefined term. I don't identify as feminist though if you define feminism as 'not shitting on women' ie not wanting to intentionally harm women and the simple act of committing not to doing so, then the shoe fits me. If your definition of feminism demands more, like a willingness to make personal sacrifices to stand up for the rights of women, I feel I've been tested with that glass slipper a few times in my life and I am honestly, feminists ugly step sister.

Furthermore, the most common definition I hear of the undefined term is a belief in equality between men and women. (Sometimes 'the sexes' and almost never 'genders') this definition featured on the light hearted ABC series 'Judith Lucy is all woman' and if that's the definition, I'm honestly not a feminist either, since I don't believe in equality so much as equal opportunity. (And equal opportunity may require affirmative action, which I'm all for, but don't personally believe that equality necessarily follows equal opportunity).

So I feel the least misleading and  therefore most honest personal identifier I can adopt is 'not-a-feminist' and thus far it has been my experience that it costs me nothing to do so. Like all my experiences with Johari window exercises. Symmetrically speaking though, I observe that it costs men nothing to identify as feminist too, and as such I have little respect for those that do, I have met one that I intuitively felt would actually pay the price of holding that identity at the expense of their own privelege and I respected him. Later the friend that introduced me to him revealed to me he was trans, which leads me to assume he lead his formative years without male privelege possibly explaining my intuitively extended credibility. Credibility I do not extend myself, based on experience.

I sense I've digressed but the digression has some relevance, it being how complicated undefined terms can be in creating an engaging conversation or even engaging an audience. For example, I've been told third hand that there are people that define all heterosexual sex as rape, something about 'women are oppressed by men' being the definition, Stephen Frye's unfortunate appearance on the Rubin Report (strategically a mansplaining disaster/minefield of a show no matter the intrinsic merit of any content) reported that there exist definitions of rape that include uttering the word itself, though I've never seen this definition exercised in internet land. But I have come across 'all porn is rape' firsthand and conversely there is Dick Dawkins tweet about a spectrum of rape and that there must be acceptable rape on that spectrum some where.

Dawkins probably identifies as a feminist himself, and feminism is to me sufficiently undefined that I believe he could believe it, while simultaneously fitting other definitions of misogyny, though probably not his own.

Part of my morbid curiosity with reading feminist articles like they are clickbait designed for me, comes from the carcrash/trainwreck that is the semantic civil war going on waged over these undefined terms resulting in purity tests and feminist critiques of feminist critiques.

But mostly what I'd complain about is the 'academic tone' most of the writing has. By academic tone, what I'm referring to is the degree of certainty, the 'here's all the answers, I have them and you need to listen' subtext I feel when reading these articles, often driven by sighting studies, reports and prominent academics. Which is not to say that it is the citations and practice of which I object to, its the presentation of the writers subjective reality as objective reality. Almost all perspectives are through a prism, and perspective taking is really hard, the most common hubris I find is when an author confuses projecting for empathy.

For example, the sexism of wolf whistling, has been explained to me as mens assumption that they control public spaces, hence they also assume the role of appraiser when they feel entitled to 'compliment' a woman on her appearance.

It's true, it blue my mind, and practice of projecting that women think about controlling communal spaces. I've been vaguely aware of this battle for control since I was in highschool and trying to predict the deferral rules as to who gets out of the way when students pass eachother walking home on the footpath (facial hair can trump size). It was news to me that women aren't attuned to this contest and don't play.

In an attempt to clarify what I object to tonally speaking though, is that when it was explained to me that 'men think they control public spaces' it was explained in exactly those words, which are wrong. Assuming control of some public space is for the most part no more an exercise in conscious thought than trying to get your shower's temperature just right. In fact I'm pretty sure the conscious brain isn't fast enough to handle the task, possibly why the kids formally diagnosed with aspergers get bullied so readily, lacking the social intuitons to navigate this contest.

Thus telling someone what they are thinking (deliberate oppression) when they witness their own thoughts as 'that wall looks good to lean against' to me just invites men to throw up a wall, because feminist descriptions of oppression almost never describe the lived experience of oppressing in so far as those kinds I can relate to. Admittedly the task of figuring out what thoughts drive behavior is to me impossible, but rarely do I see the concession, let alone explicit acknowledgement that the thoughts described are or are possibly not conscious ones.

Leaving a tone that I experience as descriptions of thought phenomena I know not to exist. This experience serves to explain to me why I come across educated thoughtful young men that feel inclined to share with me refutations of phenomena like mansplaining or manspreading.

Here selected with confirmation bias is a specific example of an article that possesses the academic tone I love to hate. Chosen simply because it was the first I found, and for no other reason. Though I feel I've read many articles in this exact tone, and I'm sure there are more, I would also not assert that this represents feminist writing definitively or generally, nor is the form exclusive to feminists, just that this is the domain I tend to collide with this written behavior most often.

The article 'has all the answers' I'm willing to accept that the history of male oppression of women has resulted in a felt need by feminist writers to try and present ironclad cases backed by research and citations so as to block the male part of the audience from poo-pooing what's presented much as all debaters try to preempt rebuttals of their opposition.

I discovered though, that what academics rigorously set about determining they know through years of primary, secondary research and literature reviews tends to produce poor descriptions of reality in the soft sciences.

Which made comedian Bill Burr a discovery, watch his Conan appearances on Caitlin Jenner or stand up bits about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods, or Rhianna and Chris Brown and you see a tone that I feel is more engaging and entertaining. The opposite of the academic tone.

Bill Burr suspects he is wrong, demonstrates humility regularly and quite articulately describes his struggles to hear the feminist message. I'm not quite sure how to describe his tactics, just state my own preference for listening to a dumb guy trying to figure out the answers while suspecting he is wrong than to a smart guy who is confident he has all the answers and here's what I need to know.

Hayek observed in 'the fatal conceit' that intelligent people tend to overvalue intelligence. A suscinct explanation of why I find all progressives annoying, but I suspect it can translate to academics overvaluing academia and subsequently/mathematically undervaluing practice. Yogi Berra said 'in theory, theory works in practice. In practice it doesn't.'

The rationale I believe that I do not conversely overvalue practice and undervalue theory is that I go to the martial artists for practitioner bedrock, the practices where if your theories are wrong you die and don't get to theorize.

Yes, to move from describing my complaint and owning my point of view to stating MY preferred solution, it would be that somebody write with me in mind as an audience member, somebody who likes ambiguity rather than answers and doesn't respect academia. I would be engaged if the discussions appeared to me as stepping to me rather than watching someone drown in their own hubris. Basically I want my feminism written in this tone. Aka written like a winner.

Can Conformity be overcome?

I have a confession, while overseas I've allowed many personal disciplines to slip, including but not limited to not reading my facebook news feed. And for one particular reason:

Car-crash appeal.

Aka morbid curiosity. It began with the hashtag brexit incident. For those few that have randomly stumbled across this post. I come from Melbourne, Australia as does the vast majority of my social network and overwhelming majority of what fb algorithms allow me to see in my newsfeed.

I must also confess I don't actually know the pigeonholes, but my morbid fascination was around how such a large contingent of remote and uninformed people relative to an issue felt the need to opine on it. Obviously major world news brings with it a wealth of mildly amusing memes, and if it's a 'slow-life day'* sure share a joke.

But the amount of people opining and attempting perhaps to inform me about the brexit honestly baffles me and makes me a little sad. Flash forward not a fortnight and I woke up to the close of polls on election day, a process I'm sufficiently removed from that I've really enjoyed not having to hear anything about the election at all. The early election is a holiday bonus to me. And please don't worry about educating me on our nations preferential voting system and campaign contribution for first preference votes and all of that, I know it, and I am still glad to be spared the inconvenience of voting, in much the same way as buying cheap shoes in a foreign country is a perk above the sunk cost of spending hundreds of dollars on a flight.

What I ravenously picked over my newsfeed for was that which would satiate my appetite for conformity. And I found it in the democrasausage. The overwhelming coverage given to its presence or lack of at a polling station was the common thread to my newsfeed.

Now I'm often described as a cynic or at the very least cynical, whether I accept the charge or not, I get pegged with it and functionally it means that my opinions and observations can be immediately dismissed because everyone knows cynics are bad and that Oscar Wilde quote.

But for the record I'm aware that democrasausage is just a bit of good fun, an accessible way to celebrate Australian irreverence during the solemn duty of voting. At worst celebrating a sausage in bread, and how united everyone is in doing so is a slippery slope argument for Australian Nationalism. I don't think the progressives though are going to slip down that slope though. They'll be back on the streets of Fitzroy looking for 'authentic' Kim Chi before the votes are tallied.

What fascinates me is the inability of technology to transform our lives. We should be, thanks to social media living in an unprecedented age of self awareness, and perhaps we are. What sparks my curiousity is that we behave as if we don't.

Fb changes are most often unwelcome to fb users, and full disclosure, my battle to not install fb messenger is still ongoing, and I'm still hashtag winning. One change I did welcome though was the little box in the upper right hand corner of browser based fb that told me what was trending.

It was a handy salient guide on what not to post about. If the number one trending topic is the x factor finale then that box told me it was covered, for the first time in history (as far as I know) I had something that informed me what topics my opinion was most devalued on. Imagine if you will, planning a holiday overseas and seeing a table of currency exchange rates. Like a true economist lets assume you are indifferent to which country you holiday in, you can see plainly that your money is worth 10 times as much in China as it is in the UK (even post Brexit vote).

The foreign currency market is actually a shitty analogy because it is far more complicated than what 'trending' tells us. Trending tells us how many voices are talking about the same shit, I'm asserting of course that despite all the marketing material out there, social media is not where conversation takes place. Trending tells us what people are shouting, not conversing about. It tells us simply on what topics our opinion is worth dick all.

I don't feel like I was ever particularly prone to posting topical world news related status updates, but admittedly I'm not going to go validate that feeling by trawling through my data. What I'll simply say is that I appreciate the reminder 'trending' gives me to keep statuses personal or fantastical.

I've sited many times the fantastic art/social anthropological project of exactitudes
The Amsterdam based photography project exploring the phenomenon of why people in expressing themselves wind up dressing exactly the same.

This is what I see in the newsfeed, and the interesting paradox offered by the trending/self-awareness age we live in. So I'm a contrarian, my behavior is pretty predictable, whatever people on aggregate find most interesting I find least interesting.

Attention being focused though, as a practice it's easy to determine what is most interesting to the aggregate, but the inverse doesn't really work, there's a multitude of thing people aren't interested in at all. Just like there's millions/billions of people who shae the title of 'world's poorest person' vs the one title holder of 'world's richest person'

What though if there was conformity around contrarian thinking. If you reading this were persuaded to follow my practice of never posting about anything that was 'trending' and this idea went viral?

Well nothing could ever be 'trending' if everyone was anti-trend. Which historically has been a trend before with the rebellious hippies (who all dressed the same) and the punk rockers (who all dress the same) and returning to the springtime of my youth - grunge (who all dressed like lesbians still do) which is to say that being anti-conformist generally results in conformity.

Alternatively though, if everyone actually just kept their status updates and tweets personal, local and possibly non-topical, the trending threshold could be theoretically set real low - like 3-5 people discussing the same thing could be the trendingest topic in the world (presumably all the guests at a dinner party)

But if I can wax cynical, that low threshold is probably only ever going to be a theoretical one. My suspicion is that we are actually on average, not very self aware.

When we watch a Jon Oliver or Seth Myers clip on youtube explaining the Brexit to us, feel a swell of emotions and log onto social media to share that emotion, we don't seem to catch ourselves and laugh saying 'oh gee whiz, I'm acting like a 12th century village peasant running to the town square/tavern whatever to repeat the news I just heard out on a country road, and not like a person living in the 21st century who watches entertainment content not even intended for me as an audience from half a world away through means available to 98% of people I can personally reach in a medium that applies algorithms to ensure that not only I but everyone connected to me tend to see content that already agrees with their opinion. What a quaint waste of my time.' 

It doesn't happen and it probably won't. I will remain fascinated by conformity in the light of self-awareness though because there is no answer and I can't relate to those who derive some small pleasure or comfort to conforming.

I'm sure also there is an exactitudes set for me, my tribe of people who have somehow wound up all dressing the same despite no coordination whatsoever. I'm sure this post has been written and posted by people other than me over recent weeks and years also.

I'd just rather spend an hour writing this than 30 seconds posting a link about the brexit or how my vote is never wasted in the Australian Federal election.

And I'm going to eat whatever the hell I want today. My vote's going towards hamburgers.


*a day where nothing of particular interest happened in your daily actual or mental life.

The Interview

A disadvantage of taking a flight at 2.40am out of Melbourne is that when going through customs you get 'randomly' selected for everything they can throw at you, because you are just about the only person going through customs.

One thing I've never had before is a police officer stepping out after I clear customs and he asked me a bunch of questions about my trip. I was wondering as a lone traveller with occupation 'artist' etc if I fit some profile, and it was the only time in all the 6 month lead up to my trip this officer was the first to question what I was doing.

Afterwards, assuming that I had passed the test, whatever it was and I should have because I have no other agenda aside from exactly what my trip is.

It occured to me though that nobody had questioned my trip on psychological grounds. I mean, I had a good life, sitting in a studio eating doritos and watching tv, taking it easy for 8 months a year and working intensely 4 months a year, which is ideal for me. I had good friends, an easy job. Shit was going on. I'd worked hard to get that life.

Then last week I basically dismantled it, left my studio, my job and flew out of the country to spend my savings. Hitting the reset on the whole thing. I mean I don't anticipate losing my friends. But why? Nobody questioned my sanity. I was able to say, that lacking responsibilities I was able to answer the why question. But really was it sane for me to do what I'm doing?

My rationale is that the comfort of my life was getting dangerous. That old philosophical problem of when a few stones become a pile. It isn't one, or two, or three, but eventually you get an ambiguous number of stones that make up a pile, but even if you empirically literally added stone by stone until somebody said stop, that number you had would not be a definitive answer.

So too, at 32 there was no real problem with continuing my lifestyle, as is, for anotyher day, a few more weeks, a couple of years maybe. But one day it would have become sad. I had to blow it up, and I was never going to make that call for myself. No, tohm of 6 months ago had to make that call for myself.

So when I come back, I'll be changed, probably slightly, and I'll have toi rebuild. Hopefully something better.

Collaborated

Today is a new day. Today I am someone who has succesfully collaborated with another artist. It is a weight off of my mind.

Age of the Anxious

Today, needing something to get me to sit at my studio desk for the last ten minutes to get the last drawing of the day done, I started watching the series 'Luke Warm Sex' on ABC iView ('A' for Australian in this case)

I like it, and I like the host. Having just seen anomalisa Kaufman's latest film, I've now seen two things in quick succession that are positively dealing with people who are awkward at sex.

Now, I should disclose, I have a gripe. I'm tired of awkward protagonists. Put them away. My overwhelming feeling after I watched season one of Mr Robot, was that the main character was shitty, more so than the shitty twist (spoiler alert it's Tyler Durden) in an otherwise entertaining and interesting show.

I found that character shitty because he was a drug dependent dude that had social anxieties. But I understand the rise of these anxious protagonists that are only going to populate TV screens as much as they dominate slice-of-life indie comics now. Because we live in an age of anxiety, and it doesn't seem like the one-eyed-man is king.

Interestingly, this podcast from YANSS corelates the sudden explosion of interest in mindfulness to the rise of the smart phone - and posits that it has become a necessity because we for the first time in the western world we have an anxiety inducing addictive device in our pocket at all times. Which was interesting.

To jump about again, (and I don't know if I'll be able to circle back) I was watching a clip from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert where he took a Myers-Briggs personality test. Nothing about that is relevant except that it reminds me of a common failing of personality tests - Myers-Briggs describes the stable behaviors that make up a 'personality' being that 'we are what we do' and as such it measures preferences. The common failing of having your own personality described is that you focus on your personality whether it is one of the 16 nuanced personalities of Myers-Briggs or one of the more general 4 personalities of most quick-and-dirty and generally reliable personality tests administered in many business settings - is that it's just preference, it's how you tend to behave. That's what your personality is, it isn't a medical condition other people need to be sensitive to so if a test describes you as a task-oriented extrovert, doesn't mean everyone else should get the fuck out of your way.

What it means is that you are going to get tripped up in predictable ways if you fail to adapt, which is to say, work on adjusting your non-preferential behaviors in order to accomodate other people's preferences. That's where a lot of personality tests fail - to really drive home the point that you need to adapt your behaviors where your personality lets you down. Everyone will have to even with the weakest preferences.

In the same way consider this:


This video, like Mr Robot, left me with a shitty impression. Because even though I too wish that Airlines would fucking get rid of the reclining capacity of any cattle-class seats, it's perplexing to me both that these features exist and how adamant passengers can be on reclining as soon as their ass hits the seat. As a person who can be awkward but would never use the word 'awkward' to describe myself - the world should not be catering to awkward people. Awkward people need to actually engage the world until they aren't awkward anymore.

Conversation is a skill, a practice, it can be practiced and you can get better at it over time. Joining a group is a skill that can be learned, everything social can be learned. 'Neuroplasticity' the amazing scientific breakthrough that discovered that practice results in changes in the brain. Resulting in us having a fancy name for the word practice.

But it has also been on the backs of discovering the brain is more changeable that many people assume. Such that I posit that 'Awkward people' don't exist, just people who got discouraged and gave up early on the necessary practice required to attain social competence and confidence.

So I don't like Mr Robot's sexy protagonist that does drugs to stave off his depression and anxiety while working for psuedo-anonymous hacker group trying to take down corporate something something-blah-blah. Interesting TV yes, good for my mental health no.

But I don't mind an awkward person like Luke McGregor hosting Luke Warm Sex, it's perfect because he's actually getting homework and shit to practice and doing shit to get comfortable with sex and have better sex. That's better than the ABCs other show 'Redesign My Brain' interesting though it is, featuring a handsome can-do go-getter amassing a carbon footprint to demonstrate in seemingly the most expensive way possible that neuroplasticity is actually just practice shit and you'll get better at it.

It's hard to say that watching a successful graphic designer supposedly improve his creativity is more therapeutic than luxurious, whereas watching Luke meet a group of nudists and how often he apologizes during a ten minute segment for who he is and for wearing clothes or not wearing clothes or not being in shape etc. It's clear that this guy is doing what almost nobody I feel, is recommending, which is rather than accommodating anxiety, overcoming it.

Anti-Porn

It is hard to defend the porn industry as it exists, and I certainly would throw in with those who advocate individuals quit porn. However, I am not generally a consumer activist. To me, pornography is simply a good habit for an individual to break. I could almost expect some period of porn curiosity to be indicative of healthy sexual development, particularly in young teenagers. The caveat attached to almost is that the standards of pornography are not static, I personally feel the on camera misogyny has increased over my lifetime of pornography consumption.

I got told by a friend that some study had found that close to 100% of pornographic video depicted some form of violence against women. I would refute that from personal experience, but only if using a narrow definition of 'violence' include spitting (even for lubrication purposes) and manhandling and yeah, pretty much 100%. It would still be very high if you narrowed the definition to include violence that appears part of 'rough play' because even as play, it doesn't matter, you are depicting violence.

But consumer activism I reject, also an end goal of eradicating the supply of pornographic content seems unfeasible and impractical. Addressing the existing problems of the porn industry, is going to be really difficult one way or another. Consider by analogy the problem of music piracy, I don't believe that abolishing digital theft is ever going to be feasible. Providing legal alternatives to piracy like iTunes thru to Spotify style streaming services are not ideal but are going to be similar forms of solutions to those that are the problems of the porn industry.

For example the post-porn pornstar career. As far as I can discern as an observer, the biggest improvements made regarding the negative legacy of being a porn star, have been in de-stigmatizing the adult industry. (a process that comes with it's own new problems). But I'm sure I'm repeating myself blog wise, but for me the porn industry calls into question the entire concept of consent. Putting on my economist hat (for illustrative purposes, economists should generally not be listened to) trying to figure out the wage at which a young actress should book a shoot at is quite a difficult undertaking.

You'd need to consider your industry appropriate working lifespan, and then forecast your post working income requirements. Also your medical expenses given a calculation of the occupational risks. Potentially you could offset this by the expected value of fringe benefits derived from your celebrity - basically your ability to profit from your fan base. Reducing the stigma of being a pornstar may for example increase the expected wages earned in your post-porn career, meaning that pornstars of the future may accept less wages. Then you would have to figure out the supply and demand premiums of specific acts you are agreeing to in shoots.

I would extend full credit that most young actresses intuitively understand that work as a porn actress should be compensated at much higher rates than work as a waiter. But as an economist my suspicion is that earning $1500 for a days work as an 18 year old, is actually not much money. But I have no idea how much money for a shoot is enough to compensate an individual for the costs/risks of doing that shoot. I sincerely doubt an 18 year old (or 17 year old making bookings for their 18th birthday) is capable of figuring out these complex equations.

And that's just the money, economists in reality simply assume that the market has determined the most efficient wage that all the rational individuals mutually consent to. We as a species though, are all afflicted with a really poor ability at 'affect forecasting' or predicting future emotional states. It's why we believe our new car will make everything better forever, but after two weeks we stop noticing any of the differences between it and the old one. Or why so many marriages end in divorces. It's also how a lot of young girls sign up to star in porn, and 6 years later are anti-porn advocates. Mainly though, to me it throws a cloud over the concept of 'consent' because it fundamentally questions whether an individual knows how the decision they are making is going to affect them emotionally for the rest of their life.

Here is a string of spaghetti I will throw at the wall as a suggested fix. Make the porn industry, or agents, cover the healthcare costs of the actors and actresses they employ including mental health cover for up to 10 years post their retirement from the industry. Or if not outright, at least the health insurance. The target being not just to improve the welfare of those working in front of camera, but to erect a cost to exploitation. At the moment an agent can recruit a large number of vulnerable teenagers, book them solid until they are used up or burnt out, at little to no cost. They can treat their talent like light bulbs.

Better yet, utilise the same accreditation/regulation scheme for mental health as they do sexual health. I would suggest, have a mandatory requirement that all adult industry actors complete 6 months to a year of psychotherapy before they can shoot. And similar to sexual health, if an actor is found by their therapist to be a sadist or self-destructive etc. It should disqualify them from shooting just as syphilis would.

Consider the current industry. Somebody of age and that can prove a clean bill of sexual health can book a shoot for tomorrow to star in a 'gang-bang' scene. That means it is an open avenue to people who are vulnerable because of finances and also vulnerable due to trauma or mental health issues. That many adult actors have histories of abuse I don't doubt. But again as the stigma reduces I find it increasingly possible that more women may enter the industry with no history of abuse. Here is one of the points where I find Anti-porn campaigns make a common tactical error, they will have former industry members report that 'almost all' actresses and actors have histories of abuse, and 'almost all' are often high and dissociated during their shoots.

Doubt is all that's sufficient to change the viewing experience, and I personally feel it would be much more effective if former adult-industry anti-porn campaigners spoke exclusively for themselves. That one self-medicating former abuse victim can enter the industry substantiates a problem that needs addressing, it is not a stronger argument to generalize.

I feel even with non-nude modelling careers, it would be interesting to see a study that tried to identify from the photo output at what point the models start depending on cocaine to perform their job. Prior to quitting porn myself, I feel there were a few actresses where I could see written into their facial features a dependency on some drug of choice.

Thus the current industry has a current solution to the problems that arise from affect forecasting leading young people into consenting to unforeseen costs. Self-medication through drugs. There's an interview with former porn actress Jessie Rogers that is actually not good enough to embed here, largely because the interviewer did more talking than asking. But she did make some succinct illuminating statements. The first being that to earn the kind of money touted by the craigslist ad she responded to an actress would more or less have to book shoots every day of the month. Also that that was only possible with an agent, however the agent would take a cut of your fees, meaning the figure was still inflated (yet, that inflated figure was used to recruit her into the industry). The second major point was that she was still paying medical bills from her brief time as an adult actress.

Thus despite the high wages, given the equally high workload, the high incidence of medical expenses (in the US's admittedly terrible health care system) meant that she acquired debt rather than savings as a result of her work in the industry.

My hypothetical reforms, would no doubt drastically change all the equations currently used in the industry. However being that they represent drastic changes, they are highly unlikely to be adopted, and they still have limitations.

Though an advocate of psychotherapy, I would earnestly say, it is pretty ineffective. Where it is of great effect, is in making salient our issues rather than resolving them or relieving them. To me there is a huge difference between being an alcoholic and not being aware that your are and being an alcoholic and being aware that you are one.

Also, such reforms inevitable create demands for workarounds to reduce costs. Thus maybe you wind up with a sudden influx of 'specialist' psychologists, that are great at doing bullshit sessions and signing off on forms for a small fee. In much the same way that Australia's permanent visa requirements fertilised the ground for a bunch of bullshit 'schools' to certify people in whatever helped them land a visa at exploitation prices.

The thing is, the current porn industry is problematic and unethical in practice. I can't jump on bandwagons such as 'all porn is rape' and many anti-porn arguments to me seem so fallacious as to be counterproductive. I also simply believe that the demand is clearly there, and attempts to eradicate such an industry no matter how better off we'd all be in its absence are unlikely to succeed. Or by comparison, as likely to succeed as the war on drugs.

Thus we are left with moving porn to ethical porn, and I'd rather see this achieved through top-down regulation rather than grass roots consumer activism. Simply because consumer activism is where you drive demand for vague and poorly defined non-legally binding terms like 'certified organic'. I know there are production houses engaged voluntarily in making ethical porn. I do not personally know enough to vouch for it having produced many successful prototypes.

But just because ethical porn may not exist, and the industry does not produce it, doesn't mean it can't exist and can't be produced by an industry. The challenge is in finding means to enforce ethical standards on producers in a manner that is more appealing than ignoring those standards, or going black-market. In other words its shifting costs around, to create an ethical practice and incentivise ethical behavior, without threatening profits sufficiently that the industry collapses.

For example, assuming you like me feel moving the cost of injury to the actors off the actors themselves and onto the production companies is a step towards ethical porn, say California introduces this as a legal requirement but Florida does not. Adoption of this standard will eat into the bottom line of the production companies, they then need to decide to pay the cost of being ethical or paying the cost of relocating to Miami. I would dare say you are comparing some relatively negligible one of cost of relocation, vs a not insignificant ongoing cost. And the US is fucked because State rights mean it's hard to get a coast to coast regulation on a non-constitutional issue.

Having said that, I believe it to be the best way to address the problems inherent to the porn industry.

As for 'consumer activism' I'm never going to believe in having conversations to try and mobilise bazillions of nodes in a network of consumers to all switch off a product as the best and most effecient way to address real world problems. What I can say is that any individual is simply intrinsically better off without porn in their life. It is a behavioral addiction, and the adverse effects are in my own case quite noticeable. By contrast quitting porn (insofar as one can in the western media culture) has had quite noticeable benefits. I'd recommend it.

Just Like Run DMC said...

The line isn't blurred. Sex and really, all intimate physical contact requires consent. And sure, much of this consent can often take a non-verbal form. But I am not really qualified to expound the details of this consent, I would simply say - if in doubt, don't. And if you've ever been accused of sexual harassment, try doubting.

Now, beyond the line, there is a hazy terrain called flirtation, and I would argue is problematic. At the very least, tricky like Run DMC said.

A friend of mine tagged me on facebook soliciting my comment on a news article from some tech news site type thing. fb no longer seems to have an easy way to navigate through old posts so I couldn't really trawl it up for yall. But the article wasn't that interesting, just another iteration of what Chris Rock called 'dumb guys trying to get laid' I think in the same bit Chris Rock defined sexual harassment as 'sleep with me or I'll fire you' and the rest just dumb guys trying to get laid. I'm sure the law and most of society would at this stage of the game reject Rock's definition, and furthermore. Being no longer a business person, I can now say with luxurious ease, is that I would fire an employee for being a dumb guy trying to get laid.

Which is what happened in the article, a dumb guy commented on a lady's linked in profile pick when she solicited an 'endorsement' or whatever it is and he was like 'sweet cakes' and worse. She went to the press, guy got fired.

That ain't interesting, nor may I ad, incorrect in any way. As my old Director used to say to his sales reps on the issue of accepting gifts 'think how it would look in the papers' which I actually think in the absence of a robust moral compass and sense of professionalism, is a good test for us mortals to question our own judgement - how would this look in the public sphere?

Same same if you accidently cc'd all on a steamy email you wrote to a colleague.

What I do want to comment on is a comment that was made by my fb friends' fb friend who wasn't solicited for a comment. He said, and I paraphrase 'it's because this dumb guy was an old dumb guy, if he was a young handsome guy there'd be no issue.'

For the record, I submitted to the record, the observation that commenting on somebodies reproductive value is never professional (unless you work in the adult industries I guess, but it's not like that industry isn't riddled with a lot of problems beyond professionalism).

What I did have to concede, is that the same behaviors can illicit different responses depending who they are coming from. But because some people can get away with murder, and others don't doesn't make it okay for those who can to do it. Know what I'm saying.

Enter flirtation, a largish smallish part of the spectrum of interaction between people's of all gender identities and orientations. From the conscious and calculated to the subconscious and involuntary. It's both enjoyable, but can lead to trouble and it is tricky even when you are a natural at it.

I flirt with far more people than I ever intend or even desire to be physically intimate with to any degree. I imagine I am not alone, part of this is that walk or sit long enough in any public place, I hear people trying to decipher the meanings of behaviors of somebody they probably flirt with.

I don't wish to delve at all into the impact of technology, text based communications and constant access to communication channels has done. I have listened to Aziz Ansari's book 'Modern Romance' and it gives a good coverage of much of that shit.

But I don't think these conversations between people about whether other people are into them or not is new. At the very least not as new as the adoption of the internet. Getting fired for sexual harassment is perhaps newer, and actually choosing a partner is probably the new thing that started to spark these conversations.

Maybe contraception? When the Marriage market and Sex Market divided, empowering men in the marriage market to a far greater extent than the gains women made in the Sex Market.

Anyway, I've sidetracked quite a bit. There's a simple solution to sexual harassment in the workplace, and that is a zero-tolerance policy. A hard, sharp, distinct line. Which makes things like somebody writing in electronic form their harassment to you - an easy problem to dispense with. Conceivably even with IM services it's as simple as grabbing a screen print. I don't use LinkedIn but with the cost of data storage way down, I don't know too many IM platforms that don't archive conversations anyway.

Slightly trickier when you are cornered in the break room or copy room with no body around, for a he-said-she-said debate over 'serious allegations' but I've heard enough stories now to be assured that the future promises more managers of moral courage to actually take a complainants word and dismiss an employee for their unacceptable behavior. I doubt though this is the norm yet.

This is an ideal solution to the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, and this would also have I believe an actual powerful effect on the culture of sexual harassment outside of the office. The culture would bring the message home, it'd get taught in schools and so on.

This then though, creates problems for desirable flirtation, which I will simply describe as the flirtation that occurs in the presence of reciprocal (though not necessarily exclusive) attraction.

Though I won't be ageist, here that random fb friend of a fb friend made a in part valid observation. We tolerate or even welcome a set of behaviors from people we find attractive that we don't from anyone else. I would assume it follows a spectrum, and if you consider the very idea of a 'relationship' this observation becomes obvious - albeit formalised.

A relationship between two or more consenting adults consists entirely of privileged behavior towards one another. That's what a relationship is.

I'm not an expert, I'm not sure what the actual expertise is - social anthropology, evolutionary psychology...? But I will assert here that flirtation is at least in part, preamble to physical intimacy. A fact finding, data gathering phase for two people to gain the confidence to actually overtly approach each other.

How much confidence? Depends on the context, a platform like tinder or a singles bar in the physical world require a lower threshold of confidence because there's a tacit assumption that there's a reason to be in these consequences. At work, particularly with a zero tolerance of sexual harassment in place, you'd need to be extremely confident.

Here though, it gets tricky and cruel. I can only testify to heteronormative relationships, and unforch, most data and research on sexual interaction and behavior is heteronormative too. Making it hard for me to find out 2nd hand with any confidence.

But I was progressive, but after learning a bunch about body language, actually conceded to old-fashioned thinking. It falls to men to take the risk of asking outright for a date (or whatever) simply because the subconscious cues are skewed to make an attuned male much more confident than an attuned woman to the reverse.

It is oft reported women's body language gives some 50 cues that they are attracted. Men are reported to have 10. A few I can vouch for is the torso orientation (or honest feet) they will be oriented towards the woman they like even from a distance and even while engaged in conversation with others. Jealousy also, but I would have to say is a perilous one to test. Jealousy can drive a guy really stupid and is really not the most flattering way a guy can betray his affection.

Whereas women provide a wealth of data with which you can build a constellation of confidence. You really only have to discount contexts where it might be somebodies job to butter you up a little - like a retail assistant.

Even so, asking someone out is never not a risk. Someone may betray that they find you attractive, this does not mean their conscious mind is on board, and doesn't have any pull. People for example are pretty resilient (despite angry rants on the internet) to cheat on their partners. And they can be quite pragmatic too about getting involved with certain people, much as they want to because of complications or conflicts that may arise.

But while I do think it at the very least natural, that men assume the risk of approaching women (risk of rejection) this starts to clash with the statistic that men (I assume) are the primary instigators of sexual harassment.

Drop in a zero-tolerance policy that is effective in stamping out sexual harassment, you will reduce approaches by men to only those emotionally competent enough to know and intuit when the attraction is reciprocated, and reciprocated in that way - and that is I suspect, a minority.

I would expect that the men who do best, simply in this domain are the most risk seeking ie. they don't feel the hurt of rejection to any extent they really care about. I would suspect those men good at reading the emotions on another persons face do next as well but for different reasons, and I would speculate that they may not even correlate.

(My speculation is thus, that the men/women who feel the least aversion to the risk of rejection do so not in most cases by higher order thinking and rationalization, but because they do not invest much of themselves in each solicitation. It is not important what that person thinks of them, they just think it would be fun to go on a date or have sex. Conversely people who are good at reading the emotions on other people's faces are for reasons I can't really justify the same kind of people who discriminate to a higher degree the people they want in their lives, and also form attachments easier, ratcheting up their investment in their potential partners.)

What's cruel is that the adoption of a zero-tolerance sexual harassment approach (society wide, and an actual functional one - as in practiced, not just preached) to me necessitates that women start approaching men, as in initiating the formal recognition of a relationship, not just being more overt in their flirtations.

And that is cruel, because though women are I'm told, proven to be better at reading the emotions on other people's faces, men simply give off less signs that they are attracted to somebody. As in to a greater degree, when women ask out men, they may be not just uncertain, but blind. The fallback may be observing that men are much more up for sex (even with a stranger) than women are, so they are likely to say yes even in the absence of a previously felt attraction.

But women that have asked me out have reported that the act is terrifying, and that having to do so, sucks. Most of us I feel would naturally prefer to recieve an offer that we are free to accept or reject, even if this preference left us culturally deciders rather than choosers.

Currently though, all of us can choose who to flirt with. Personally, I do think that men should remove the dimension of touch from their flirtation. I feel that is the hotbed of sexual harassment. But even bawdy talk etc. Not everyone has the tact to not make this a potential powderkeg, it is not really safe to experiment with.

I personally have been sexually harrassed, and I'm sad to say, that as a man my earnest reaction was vicarious embarrassment. For me though, being sexually harassed by a woman does not come with it, a sense of loss of control, nor physical danger. It is for me, really, a non-issue. Only women with histrionic personality disorders scare me, and I try to distance myself from crazy. Fortunately, I've met only one that I know of.

That to me, says that part of the solution to sexual harassment demands a redefining of gender roles. Demand is a strong assertion, and I'm not confident I can back it up. But can you imagine how long sexual harassment induction videos would have to be to preserve office romance as a possibility when initiated by men. "If you make eye contact and she looks down and then back up, consider talking to her. If she sustains eye contact for longer than normal durations, you may experiment with flirtatious banter, if she..." (more important than that long list is the extra long list of tacit do-not-approach signals).

So, to me if you want to keep office romance possible in society, rather than depending entirely on online match making services (and maybe you do) it would mean women have to overtly initiate the romance. Assume the risk of rejection.

Perhaps what makes that trickiest of all, are that we are living in the age of anxiety, and I believe some 60% of women suffer from it (beyond the anxiety that is normal to the spectrum of human emotion). The most anxious thing I do, is ask women out. And I do it. 

Untrue Crime

Fargo the tv seriesis entertaining, but ultimately does not work as well, I feel, as the original movie did. Where the movie needed only William H Macy's character to be a singular incompetence to spread out like a contagion, the first series of fargo needed multiple incompetent characters to screw and counter screw up everything for the prolonged duration of the series. Same same but to a lesser extent with season two.

That said, Fargo is entertaining, the one thing that annoyed me everytime is leaving in the affectation of 'This is a true story, out of respect for the survivors the names have been changed, out of respect for the dead everything else has been told exactly as they happened' which was not true of the original film, and is not true of the fargo universe. Painting Minnesota as a place more dangerous than cartel controlled territories in Mexico.

Hannibal, is also entertaining enough. But those lauding a golden age of television needs must keep in perspective that a golden age of television is still far short of a golden age of cinema. There is a great show in Hannibal, it spans from midway in season 1 to midway in season 2.

Having never seen the movie 'Hannibal' as in, the third of Harris' novels, nor read said novel, I can't really tell if anyone ever did a good job of turning Hannibal into an anti-hero, or 'Dexterising' him.

But (spoiler aler - Hannibal does what is in the book) in the latter half of the second season, that tells the backstory of Mason Verger, we find a typical device of writers dealing with an anti-hero. Create somebody worse.

So we have the tasteful and elegant Hannibal, who by this stage of the series has done some evil things set against Mason. Who upon entering makes a child cry and absorbes his tears with a piece of paper. Which he collects. His history as a peadophile and abuse of his sister are alluded to, but not shown. Presumably due to it being a tv show.

Then he does more horrible stuff to his sister, and in steps Hannibal. Whom partly through self defence abducts Mason, disfigures and cripples him. We are as an audience at least, invited to feel conflicted, in part some visceral satisfaction that somebody did something horrible to horrible Mason, but also that that horrible thing is quite horrible.

But still, I struggle to enjoy or engage with Hannible, or Harris' greater universe of FBI profilers. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great article of how the profession of profiler is essentially reducible to that of psychics, and indeed based on the same 'cold readings' that clairvoyant charlatans use. The article is much more worth a read than this blog post if you can find it in the New Yorker, or get yourself a copy of 'What the Dog Saw'.

The other is that it much like Dexter, celebrates a portrayal of serial killers that makes them seem like eccentric artists. If you watch any serial killer documentaries, they are generally not at all admiral, captivating or even really interesting beyond the gruesome details of some of their crimes.

And as one tumblr feed of one of the more activist artists I follow once pointed out, in TV and movies if crimes are being committed by a white person, they become an 'anti-hero' somebody for audiences to try and identify with and root for. Sympathise with even, but not for people of colour. The closest we've ever been invited to sympathise with african american criminals by the post - was the Wire. Even then while The Wire brilliantly frustrates the viewer with all the short sighted frustrations within our society that block simple and viable solutions to crime, and makes the problem of drug related violence in Baltimore (and presumably, places like Chicago, Phillidelphia et al.) as a never ending multi-generational cycle, the ultimate rewards of the drug trade, for any individual gangster are prison or death.

Which brings me to Walter White of Breaking Bad. And here, there'll be spoilers galore. Thus if it's taken you longer to watch the finale than me, perhaps you should just go and watch it.

Thing is, that Vince Gilligan I believe set out wanting to do a series on the 'unmaking' of a man. Something like 'Mr Chips into Scarface' was the ultimate story arc. An interesting thought experiment, made for an entertaining narrative.

For me the last time I felt sorry for Walt was when he found out he was in remission and was going to live. He had a form of breakdown at that moment realizing his desperate measures to secure his families finances, were undertaken in vain.

After that I never really felt challenged about whether I was rooting for Walt or not. Walt had to die. Logic told me he would make it to the finale though.

There's a bunch of problems with Breaking Bad, non of them writing, directing, acting or even cinematography. But rather, the 'true crime' aspect. For example, the numerous arguments Walt and Jesse have about the people that get hurt from the conduct of their business. These people are never the numerous end users of their product. Though there are some episodes where the impact of meth on individuals and communities is portrayed. Jesse for example, is more concerned with the peripheral people in his life that get hurt by Walt and others (via poisoning and what not) or various other players they've had to kill.

Part of what makes Walt so evil, is that he does not operate exclusively in the criminal world, like most of the people he kills throughout the series. But is living a double life so we get to see the impact his choices have on people the mainstream audience presumably can identify with.

Otherwise, the main offended by the actions of Walt and Jesse, are kept at quite a distance. Though Jesse himself struggles with addiction, he also receives fat stacks of cash through his illicit activities. Thus his struggles with addiction are more reflective of a rock star's struggles than those whom are not in a socio-economic position to sustain their habit.

My understanding, is that Meth is horrible. I've read a few articles by one Australian journo that demonstrates how quickly one can descend into delusional psychosis while using meth. Louis Theroux's documentary on meth is pretty illuminating as well.

Much as we may have felt some sense of satisfaction as Walt found a way to use his old friends turned billionaire owners of Gray Matter that Walt sold out of, amusing. Where Walt used his gritty street smarts to convince them their lives were in constant danger should they not deliver his cash for him to his children. A fat cat Meth cook being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for producing a product that does as much damage as meth is probably far more reprehensible than overpaid CEOs actions that indirectly impoverish peoples or reap economic devastation on communities.

I feel Walt ultimately does take responsibility for his choices, and he feels a lot of pain resulting from the consequences. But Gilligan also used the 'someone worse' device to make Walt into a finale anti-hero. Introducing Todd and his Uncle, a gang of white supremacist bikers that don't just hurt Hank (like Walt and Gus did) but kill him. And don't just manipulate Jesse into being a cook, but actually imprison him. And don't just poison someone Jesse cares about to motivate him, but kills them in front of him.

After 6 months to a year (whatever the Time-skip is) it allows Walt to cruise in as a relative hero, a much lighter bad guy to rescue Jesse.

I can't help but feel that if it were the Wire, the series would have ended with Walt's arrest by Hank. Being stripped of his wealth, family, freedom and made account most of all to Jesse.

Instead, we have this extra bit tacked on, with extra bad guys, that Walt tidily resolves as a lone gunman against a crew of Bandits. Getting back everyone who fucked with him and granting Jesse his freedom.

Just before he dies. No good. No good at all.

At least Marlow was left in the Wire with the promise that his thug nature and personal ego virtually ensuring he would wind up in prison like his predecessor Avon Barksdale.

There's a place for crime in entertainment. Under a limited scope, a place to glorify it. I don't want to see nothing on TV but CSI Miami, where bad one liners and sunglasses acting result in proving criminals can't get away with anything, ever, anymore.

Just that criminals that do often get away with shit, pay a tremendous personal cost - which the Wire did brilliantly and Breaking Bad did well up until it's finale. Despite the fact that you run a tight criminal operation, the risks have to be ratcheted right up and this makes you constantly vulnerable (or fragile) to your whole world falling apart. Game over needs to be game over, and more or less the only things that fucked up Walt's attempt to retire and walk away, was that he was a family man, with a brother heading up the DEA.

Tomorrows future cooks can watch breaking bad, dream of turning some barrels of chemicals into millions of dollars, and the fact that they are young unattached university students means they don't have to worry about having their brother in law snoop around their house and discover a crucial batch of evidence.

Lacking from Breaking Bad, where the 'three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead' wisdom of Ben Franklin that would inevitably lead to any of the various arrangements the two get going coming undone.

Same goes for Hannibal, that while set in the modern era, doesn't appear to have him encumbered by all the various public surveillance that might prevent somebody from moving their people dismantling equipment into somebody elses basement, or even basic precautionary risk management from their FBI captain, deciding to pull everyone from future cases that has an existing relationship with an agent that is incarcerated pending trial for a series of murders.

The suspensions of disbelief are getting subtler. You have to notice how ludicrous it is that Gus would let Walt or Jesse into his home where he lives by himself. Or talk on mobile phones to any of his business associates. Or that the Cartel would bring their entire membership together to meet with one distributor from New Mexico. Or that Gus could walk into a nursing home and repeatedly visit one of the most distinctive residents and not be noticed or known. Or that Billy Bob Thornton can repeatedly walk in and out of his crime scenes, on foot. Or that it's possible to drive away from any crime scene without hitting some kind of police cordon.

Increasingl, the audience is required to notice an absence, in the implausible, rather than the presence of the implausible. Which is good writing, but if you are writing a show with criminal anti-hero's and you wipe away some of the commonplace things that would render their activities untenable in day to day life, you are to some extent being emotionally and socially irresponsible as a writer.

Dispensible

Think about it man, you get in traffic behind somebody. *Honks* *Honks* *Honks* *Honks* *Honks* *Honks* *Honks* *Honks*

Shut up and smoke that, it’s the law.

Oh, sorry. I was taking life seriously.

Is a relevant excerpt from a Bill Hicks rant on drugs. Every day (just about) I go to my studio and work furiously on drawings. Working furiously, is actually slowly and methodically, while watching TV shows on my tablet, but none the less, I generally do upwards of 5 hours a day at the moment. In fact I've figured out ways to more or less be working on art round the clock. Even at home, for which I'm now taking a break to write this post.

A rare privilege I have as I work away, is a very salient awareness that absolutely nobody is sweating on the output of my practice. The closest I come, is me. And should I die in my sleep tonight, at most the grieving stakeholders in my life would be inconvenienced by the unfinished work I leave behind.

Though I'm often impatient to leave for the studio, and reluctant to leave it for other commitments, I just can't feel stressed about the work I do. I could never convince myself that anybody was depending on it.

People enjoy my work, some even have a seemingly ravenous appetite for it. People have an insatiable lust for art and entertainment worldwide.

But it's easy for me to perceive a basic truth about the nature of what I do. Nobody is actually depending on it.

Then I re-watched Carpenter's 'Escape from New York' and the part of the premise I struggled most to suspend disbelief over, was accepting that the US President was vital enough to warrant Snake Pliskin's rescue effort. As compared to it's inferior sequel where the presidents' daughter steals a weapon to put in the hand of terrorists, I really can't see why the US President is regarded is indispensable.

And this leads to a fact I feel everyone should embrace. If you are currently reading this, it means that nobody that ever died, ever, was indispensable to our civilization.

I do not mean that individuals lives have no value, or that they are unimportant. Just that we can, and will take the hit of losing certain members.

What we shouldn't do, is maintain an illusion of importance. At least I don't feel so. I like to think of 'the stressed executive'. For me he is the driver of that car honking at the somebody in front of him. My particular favorite is the executive that works for a distributor of manufactured plastic garden hose attachments.

I know nothing about the industry, I don't need to. I can imagine that there are dominant players in the business, that move enough units through enough retailers, that their executives could drive Audi's or Mercedes and stress about Unit Sales, the threat of disruptive technologies, forecasting sales to meet production and shipping order deadlines etc.

I can see the person, that through the combination of limited promotion opportunities, mortgage stress and other economic pressures. Feels highly stressed about meeting some arbitrary sales target, achieving some bonus or landing some retail distribution deal.

This executive lives most of his/her days in a world populated by people that also think these things important but may have conflicting agendas.

Yet never in their lives will any of these people see a TV show in which there is a post-apocalyptic scenario caused by a worldwide scarcity of their product.

You and I, hopefully have the capacity to imagine that the world would indeed by inconvenient if we could never attach garden hoses again. Plastic attachments certainly have value, and though I would never describe myself as a gardener, or even somebody who plays under sprinklers in summer, I have experienced the inconvenience of a broken hose attachment in my life. I can envision a future where I buy these devices.

And my purchases in the marketplace send a signal to strangers to keep producing these things because people want them.

But I don't need them. A lot has to go wrong before I would truly bemoan the disappearance of this industry.

The storeowner (or increasingly, franchisee) that loses a sale due to being stocked out of a hose nozzle, that gets on the phone to blast his sales rep about their stock out, who kicks it up the line to the executive that sat in on the forecasting meeting that chose conservative figures based on a forecast of a wet summer three months prior, are all suffering from a collective illusion.

That these things matter is not the illusion. That they matter enough to get angry about is an illusion. Our lives are robust, as is our civilization. Much of what has made it so is a lot of inherent redundancy. It's not just likely, but actually essential that most of us will spend our lives on causes that actually don't matter at all. In part, because predicting what will actually be important or matter is incredibly hard.

While there's definitely a suggestion, but hard case to argue coherently, that art is somehow essential (many of us treat it as such), I'm aware that what I do is not very important in the grand scheme of things. And I enjoy what I do. It maintains the capacity and potential to be quite lucrative as well. Would the world notice it's absence? No. At best it might feel it. As I feel it, the very motivation to try and create what I want to.

I'm not arguing to find and follow your passion. I'm making the argument that accepting some humility can help you relax, and also help arrest a contagion of urgency highly likely to come both down and up the value chain of whatever it is you do.

One simple distinction that helped me when I was corporate was 'to know the difference between urgent and important'. Few do, they oil the squeaky wheel, feed the crying child.

Few people in my experience pull back to the large picture and think things through to their consequences. As such many people are stressed and anxious beyond any level that is actually useful.

I could relate this to the epidemic of anxiety we appear to be living through, but that feels like a separate post.

My defenses of Pin Up Art

2 years have passed since I quit KFC, with no backslides. It was a habitual, behavioral addiction, but note that I quit a particular franchise, not Fried Chicken. Not fast food. In the following months I escalated my commitments to behavioral sobriety by quitting McDonalds, caffeine, alcohol, refined sugar and pornography.

Those last two are tricky though, refined sugar is really a shorthand for 'confectionery, desserts, cakes, soft drinks etc.' I will for example, use condiments like tomota sauce and bbq sauce, I will eat bread but not donuts. etc. My 'no refined sugar' creates some confusion, but is more convenient in explaining to people why I won't accept whatever treat or beverage is being offered me.

Similarly, 'pornography' suffers from being an undefined term. Like sugar, it is in some form or other, everywhere and perhaps if one was to go absolutist and hardcore, it would be even harder to remove from your consumption than sugar.

What I quit is probably quite a narrow definition - the content of pornographic sites and materials. Everything explicitly marketed as porn, and generally labelled as the 'adult' industry.

The broadest definition I can think of is 'masturbatory aids' which would include things like lingerie catalogues (and subsequently a lot of outdoor advertising) in fact it would include anything that alludes overtly or even subtly to reproduction, including the cut of some garments hung on mannequins - that emphasize hip to waist ratios or cleavage.

My suspicion is that most post-tween males, consume pornography of the 'narrow' definition I quit. I also suspect women increasingly consume porn, even that created explicitly for a male audience for a range of reasons. But I also suspect there is a sizeable minority of women who do not, and possibly have never consumed pornographic material, but are none-the-less exposed to the ideas of porn, certainly affected by the broader definition of masturbatory aids.

I will not defend the adult industry as it exists, though I could certainly criticize much of the anti-porn arguments presented, not for their validity but for their execution and effectiveness in regards to the stated aims.

I would almost certainly recommend that men quit their consumption (and almost certainly addiction) to porn. Particularly adult video, that I would have to say, is more or less indefensible for 98% of the existing content.

Furthermore, in the internet age, the adult industry calls into question for me, the very notion of consent. Given that all people are terrible affect forecasters, and also it being a domain where the decision to enter porn is probably mostly driven by subconscious decisions, and conscious consent is largely rationalization. If that was a parade of meaningless words to you, essentially what I'm saying is, I question the validity of consent given by an 18 year old, on behalf of the same person that lives with those consequences. It's the most extreme version of Daria's "My goal is not to wake up at forty with the bitter realization that I've wasted my life in a job I hate, because I was forced to decide on a career in my teens." except that girl wakes up at 19 not forty.

But what of the broader definition? All body ideals that allude to a woman's fertility. The spectrum of pornographic photography - from porno stills to 'gravure' photo sets, to erotic art, to lingerie billboards? And particularly in the genre of art I myself create and contribute to - being pin up art.

I don't know if I could or would defend these, if seriously under threat. But here are my defenses, many of which are not intelligible arguments but simply the incongruities I struggle with.

1. Pin Up Artists

The Golden Era pin up artists, like Gil Elvgren I don't know much about except that he painted from live models or reference photos. That I presume were paid gigs for the models and if he was not the photographer, I see little evidence of exploitation. But I have no idea what he was like as a person, nor any of the others of his time. The same goes for Dean Yeagle, who started much earlier than many other contemporary artists. But when I look at Bill Pressing, Chris Sanders, Luis Gadea, Shane Glines, Tim Sale etc. I see artists that aren't misogynists, or overt chauvinists, often happily married and as far as I have materials to form an impression of their personalities, none are sleazy or creepy.

In short, being a pin-up artist does not appear to require one to be, or associate with negative people, nor even have the ideals portrayed in pin-ups with their overall attitudes toward women.

I also find the anti-porn argument that rapists and violent offenders towards women are often found to have hard drives full of porn to be a weak one. I'm sure the content of the argument is all true and valid. I would be super surprised if rapists and violent offenders proved the exception to the consumption of porn rule. And I'm sure the marketing of pornographic videos does not help, and possibly escalates the incidents of these kind. I just reject it as confirmation bias, I would have to see the statistics as to what percentage of men consume similar amounts of porn and never sexually assault or harass anybody. I suspect I know people that would make this argument while simultaneously making the equivalent counterargument as regards recreational drug use.

2. Sunk Costs and/or Absence of Evidence of Exploitation.

One arguable form of pornography along the spectrum I haven't quit are the photographic offerings of Van Styles and Cherie Roberts (potentially NSFW) whom shoot a lot of scantily clad models, with a similar lack of graphic content and most notably an absence of violence towards women, as pin up art.

At this point I'd like to acknowledge that specific differences of opinion would arise. At one extreme, I'm told there exists feminists that view all sex between men and women as rape, I can't present this argument myself, it was something like the patriarchy exists, therefore all women are oppressed therefore all sex is rape. I can't drive the premises to the conclusion, I feel and assume that even in gender studies academic circles, this would be a fringe position. But I would acknowledge that there's going to be people out there that will quite easily and readily reject the idea that there's a spectrum or continuum of porn, where some is okay and some is bad. I can't argue against people who object to the broad definition of porn in its totality.

The other difference of opinion, is that while I believe in consumer preferences, I don't believe in consumer activism, I'm firmly in the caveat vendor camp, not emptor camp. Of course, where consumption is a crime in and of itself, vis-a-vis theft, or street narcotics or snuff porn. But speaking to the general case, I don't envision a world where the onus is on the consumer to do the research many if not most consumer activists do, to consume ethically.

In that regard, there are photographers in a similar vein to Van Styles and Cherie that do what I will simply call the 'creep shot', I believe Terry Richardson to be a reputed creep photographer of women, but I've never checked out his work to see if he does it, and I won't name other offenders because I'm not speaking to their market. It basically involves the photographer reaching in and touching the model - pulling on their underwear or pinching their nipple, touching their ass etc.

I personally just find it creepy. That for me is the line, between a photographer being a professional and a creep. Even if it is some premeditated performance consented to by the model, what the performance conveys I don't like.

In it's absence, I cannot conclude with certainty, that the photographer is a professional, that the model is consenting is an equal collaborator in the project and fairly compensated. I can believe it though.

Thus there's much material out their that involves celebrating women's reproductive value that I at least, am okay with, and okay with consuming. I'm okay with it on the absence of evidence that it belongs with the body of pornographic material that I personally prefer not to consume.

But then you move onto pin-up art. Drawings, that do not necessitate a live model, nor actual woman to be objectified. You are creating a symbolic representation and literal object. That this can impact given people's sensitivities on viewers can't be ignored. But I am not in the censorship camp or game. The producer however can do so, without harming a woman in the production process.

Which is optional, there is still scope for pin up artists to employ live models, sexual harass them or harm them in other ways. It's just wholly unnecessary.

Now least you be a layman in terms of art and unaware, many if not most artists draw from reference materials. I myself when drawing pin ups most often use photo reference, more occasionally I draw women from memory.

While I generally avoid references drawn specifically from the adult industry, preferring reference mainly drawn from lingerie, swimsuit and fashion photography, here then an image exists - and there is an argument that this reference material used to inspire pin up art, is a sunk cost. Even if there was some exploitation or harassment involved in the process of creating the images I and other artists use as reference, it is in economic jargon, a sunk cost.

The artist using the reference in other words has no power to undo the harm done to the model, should that harm have occurred. I would like to think that if a reference image of mine were created involving harassment, psychological abuse or even physical violence, that it would taint the image. But I don't and can't know. I'm not going to accept the blanket solution, which is to draw pin ups entirely from memory.

Similarly my actions going forward will never erase the history of the pornographic industry which I have in part been exposed to, along with most of our society. Milt Kahl the arguable greatest of the Golden Era Disney animators urged artists to know their reference so well, that they didn't actually need it anymore. I'm sure I could draw many pin ups till the end of my days without actually having to look at a single reference image. Why don't I? Because I believe my creative output would narrow. Reference helps me break out of ruts.

3. GJ

I occupy a very priveleged position in this world. Having a practical if not divine dominion over pretty much every animal on earth. I'm also a cis-gendered Caucasian heterosexual male. Thus, though I believe evolutionary psychology to have valuable things to say on the matter of sexual politics, I acknowledge that it is distasteful for somebody as privileged as I am to make arguments along the lines of evolutionary determinism etc.

I believe in the modern technological era, the vast majority of gender is culture, or a social construct.

But in the crime drama 'Top of The Lake' by Jane Campion, there features a scene where GJ informs an underage girl that is pregnant and coming to full term 'there is wisdom in the body, it will know what to do.' or something to that effect, that's an argument people can't have both ways.

I concur with GJ, but to me that carries an obligation to acknowledge in the superficialities (and pragmatism) both genders exert in partner selection, the wisdom 'of the body' has to be respected.

For example, the obsession with youth, in women particularly the working life of most models happens to coincide with their peak fertility - 18-25. Most of what gets emphasized and in the case of pin up art, exaggerated, are fertility cues with women, followed closely by health cues.

Long lustrous hair 'average' faces (somewhat of a misnomer, given that the ideal average faces are actually the ones with high levels of symmetry, indicating a lack of gene defects - ie healthy complete chromosomes) ample bosoms, large hip to waist ratios, are not mere cultural indoctrinations. They have a biological basis, all suggesting the healthiest genes to pass onto your children.

Pin ups can create super-normal stimuli, which is to say hip to waist ratios that can't exist in nature yet nevertheless can hijack the viewers biology and turn them on. Same with the gravity defying breasts of female comic book characters and so on.

What I believe is generally lacking 'out there' in public awareness, is an awareness of the limitations of our biology as regards the consumption of erotic imagery. Not that there aren't enough plus sized models, overweight models, fat pin up girls etc. Because attempts are made to create these products and they don't succeed because they are created under the assumption that marketers have decided the market wants iddy-biddy waists and big butts, double d breasts and cherry red lips.

Our biology decided we like these things, the adverse health effects are in the saturation of the market, much like the refined sugar added to all foods.

The one person I know to speak of a preference for drug free, Midwife driven births, does not appear to have objections to pornography.

Thus it is only in my imagination that I see a population of people that are pro-standing water births, natural births etc. but anti-modern day fertility idols and iconography.

...

As I said, these aren't wholly formed, and fully intelligible arguments or defenses as to what I do, but these are the general themes and sticking points that I haven't reconciled yet with how I feel about some of the art I create.

Street Fighter 5 a lesson in diminishing excitement

Street Fighter II seemingly came out of nowhere and conquered the world. It blew my young mind. It was just a quantum innovation in gaming. We'd never seen such amazing character design. It was like a cartoon you could play. It had these 80's hangover characters in karate gi's but amazingly they could throw fireballs. It's hard to recall with the hindsight of history. But really the Hadouken had the same impact then as the Matrix's bullet-time sequence did years later.

The flaw of that analogy, is that the Matrix is similarly dated, though it's effects hold up better than SFII's frame rate. I would guess, but am not old enough, that SFII had a similar impact on young minds as Star Wars did when it premiered in the 70s.

Then came SFII Turbo, SF Alpha ... more importantly Mortal Kombat came out with it's more adult graphic violence and SF franchise kind of faded at the same time the fighter genre was swarmed with imitators, many of the me too franchises surviving to this day.

I liked Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. But I never liked it as much as Street Fighter. Largely because the artwork sucked. And that is something that I feel Street Fighter has never been eclipsed in. Street Fighter II broke into western markets long before Japanese animation or comics did. The influence Akiman has had on multiple generations of artists since the release of SFII is probably unparalleled, and behind only Jim Henson (The Muppets and Sesame St) and Dr Suess for capturing kids imagination both universally and early in their psychological development.

The difference being that it will remain true for a long time for Suess and Henson, I'm not so sure that any 12 year old kid would be particularly blown away by seeing Street Fighter 4 or 5. Kids get into it sure, I wouldn't be surprised but it must be like discovering Zeppelin at 16, from following back the genealogy of music that kid is into on the market of the moment back to its roots.

The real hidden gem, is perhaps the most perfect video game ever made - Street Fighter III: Third Strike. The peak of the franchise, though not the most popular. I myself overlooked 'the next generation' for quite some time, until I was standing in an arcade and saw how Necro moved across the screen.

That was like seeing a video game with a studio ghibli amorphous blob on screen. It's graphics were just superb.

It then took a long time for SFIV to come out. Perhaps in part because within the gaming community SFIII had so much longevity, it didn't cry out for a sequel, when it had a loyal fanbase still playing it.

I don't know and I imagine there are articles you can read on what caused the delay. SFIV has a lot to merit it in terms of game design, it's just not special and in the end kind of boring.

I first played it after SFIV: Ultra had long been in release. Which meant I had a roster of about 32 players to select from, very few of them new. I'm going to say this - SFIV was basically a reboot of SFII, the original cast were all in the first release of the game, plus some new characters none of which were particularly inspired. By Ultra, you had Ryu, Evil Ryu, Akuma/Gouki and Oni unlocked as playable characters, an evil clone of Cammy and really the only new cast member whose design worked was Juri. You also had a littering of characters from Alpha and Third Strike, and I later learned that SFIV was set after SFII but before SFIII in the timeline, so none of it really made sense.

It was basically a 'lets see what this looks like in 3d' which made for a very boring game, conceptually speaking, propped up only by a love of SF itself. Returning to SFIV from SFII were the car and barrel smashing rounds for the arcade play while dropping things like the parry system from SFIII.

I maintain that spiritually it was a reboot, a software upgrade, of the SFII concept. And it brought us the least inspired end boss perhaps ever - Seth. His design was boring, a bald muscle bound man, with a Chinese Zodiac orb in his stomach being the only point of interest. To be fair, Gil wasn't that interesting either, except having a half red-half blue sprite that actually alternated was the threshold of technological limits when SFIII was released. Gil also made sense, being styled after a greek god, he was the messiah of a cult after all.

Seth just copied everyone else's moves, so combat wise he was a mash up, and really to me I see his precedent in Shang Tsung of the Mortal combat franchise and Gorro, Shang Tsung's champion. Game play wise he was Shang Tsung and appearance wise he was Gorro, almost what you'd expect if those two had a love child.

I realise I haven't gotten to SFV/5 yet, but that's because crucially SFIV was the misstep by Capcom. The let the fandom run the asylum. A problem of this era. SFV stands to be worse.

Firstly, fuck 3d. From the get go. A franchise built on the strength of it's artwork, the Street Fighter 5 characters look like claymation, or worse Clay Fighter-esque. The specials or V-trigger attacks are much like SFIV, using the 3d to change up camera angles and some sfx to create mini pieces of theatre in the fights. These look good presenting a reveal clip in a convention, but I found became annoyingly repetitive in actual gameplay.

Contrast these to the special attacks in 3rd Strike, the screen freezes and gives the player a mere moment to say 'Oh Shit' In fact, let's just compare them now:





Now I deliberately chose the R.Mika reveal just because hers is whimsical (the super art equivalent is right at the end of the trailer) and you can see, I need to actually use cinematography terms to describe what happens graphically when the skill is executed. Minus a parry system too, there's really only seconds of frustrated helplessness if the attack is landed, if you are playing the recieving party of the super art. In Third Strike, even if you weren't the instigator, you could get excited by the prospect of parrying the attack Daigo style.

The streaky streams of watery effect don't do much for me. They seem to have evolved out of the 'inky' effect in SFIV which at least was an acknowledgement that they had moved from 2D drawings to 3D sculptures.

I don't like 3D, I don't even particularly like 3D animation, many a 3D animated Movie I've seen the concept art for, video games too and marvelled at how much has been lost translating the 2D design to 3D rig. That's certainly the case with Streetfighter 5 and is probably the major plughole that drains my excitement.

But that's not all. Even though SFIV featured the entire roster of SFII fighters, Capcom once again drew on that same stable of characters for the initial release. Ken now wears a compression singlet, Cammy no longer paints camo on her legs, Chun Li and Ryu haven't changed, M Bison has gone grey and has tails on his coat, Vega is wearing a shirt... who cares, these characters may be beloved and there may be an extant fan base that wants characters they 'know how to play' but it isn't exciting.

The new characters are also not exciting, with the possible exception of the Maori character. Unforch he seems to have been inspired by Dragonball Z, and I can't see past that.

More unfortunate is FANG the endboss revealed this week. He is more interesting than Seth, and a departure from the Sagat-M.Bison-Gil-Seth hulking tank like endbosses of the series so far. But FANG appears to have been inspired by the Peacock character from Kung Fu Panda 2. Same archetype, insidious, lythe, gaunt, slightly mad, a little aristocratic and very very avian.

The rest of the diminishing excitement, is not intrinsic design flaws, or thought processes, but the product of our times, particularly when dealing with nerds.

SFII comes out, and you have this amazing new feature of having 8 characters to choose from. Ken, Ryu, Chun Li, Guile, Blanka, Zangeif, Dhalsim & E Honda. Which was crazy, its predecessor and most games up til that point gave you an option of 2. Ken in fact was just the 2P carbon copy of Ryu in the original Street Fighter. On your own you pretty much had to be Ryu.

Then the amazing thing was, that after you fought your way tournament style through the roster you had to fight Balrog, Vega, Sagat and the end boss M. Bison. 4! 4 fully formed, concieved and designed boss characters. It was unheard of and nobody imitated it really, no major players. MK just had two and the top boss morphed into all the other players on the roster.

The real innovation though was expanding the player roster to 8, not the 4 unplayable bosses. Street fighter had 2 fighters for each country culminating in the end boss Sagat. So there were effectively more unplayable characters in its predecessor. I suspect the decision to have four executive bosses to fight was a transition.

And sure enough by SFIII you had one boss Gil, and later they added Urien as a sub-boss. And I suspect since Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, the mentality has been if we develop a character we may as well let people play them.

But what will never be captured again is the surprise and mystery of these unknown boss-characters that came with SF2. Even Gil the first time I saw somebody good enough to actually reach him in third strike was still surprising, because SF3 wasn't released in a convention driven era.

The current era now has teaser trailers for teaser trailers for movies. Drip fed to nerdfans who just cannot possibly go without in order to increase their pleasure on release.

I suspect this happened with SFIV but to be honest, I actually paid less attention to IV because of the 3d thing. V I can't ignore though. And it seems they've doubled down on the oversharing by adding the net-release beta versions this time round.

So not only do we have a convention tour where new characters from the roster got revealed or announced each time, but the game gets released for testing by the actual fanbase, and people hacked it and got even more info. Such that FANG who was revealed earlier this week, had had his voice files ripped out and listened to weeks prior to his actual announcement.

Why do nerds do this to themselves? I feel by experiencing the frustrating excitement of 'that looks cool' today, we diminish the actual pleasure we derive from discovering it at a time where we can play it for what it is.

I suspect this is even true of beta testing. With the exception of whether you are playing the betas to gain a competitive advantage in future tournaments. If so, do your beta testing as tournaments at conventions, rather than world wide releases downloaded onto a bunch of nerds computers.

I already know which characters are going to be DLC for a game that hasn't actually been released yet. I know everything there is to know except the experience of actually playing it. And those doing the beta testing, don't even have that to look forward to. Just a continuation of an experience they've had trickled out to them and restricted. Surely making it the most boring way to learn the game.

Street Fighter III is a near perfect game because it was risky. They had one of the best known franchises in the world, they had been eclipsed by then by the Mortal Kombat franchise and Capcom
some how looked inwards and said 'it's the next generation' they went in with a roster of unknown players (they later appended Ryu and Ken onto the roster, but they weren't initially intended to be in it) Designed the shit out of them so they looked and played unique. Kept it 2D, backed their artists and animators and launched it.

What happened to that Capcom? Now SFV looks like a me-too product, a 'sequel' that breaks as little new ground as Fallout 4 does over Fallout 3. The new aspects aren't very inspired. They ask the fans what they want and try to give it to them, the trouble being that fans rarely say 'I want to be surprised' what they say is 'I want Ryu and Ken, and R Mika, and Zangeif and ooh ooh...' And this is what we've got. And they can't let it just drop and see the reaction, they have to tease it out and test it and focus group it and have it trialled by fandom.

I hate this new era of game design. I'd share my suggestions as to what I'd do to make an awesome SF game but it would be hypocritical as a fan to say Capcom should listen to me, when I'm asking them to stop listening to fans.

Intimidating

I don't actually know how common this situation is, because it tends to be exchanged between two people in private. If at all. And at least in my case it is very assymetrical, as in I tend to be on the recieving end of the confession rather than the confessor.

But it happens to me periodically, which is to say I have somebody confide in me in a quiet moment after a period of knowing (or knowing of me) that they find me intimidating. I do experience a feeling of intimidation, but most commonly it relates to approaching artists that I actually admire, the thing is that I have a professional need to cross that line and put myself out there. To back down is to betray my craft and if not lose, forestall all I've invested.

Aside from that, the notion of finding somebody intimidating, particularly somebody like me, is very strange from the inside looking out.

I think perhaps best captured by Omar's trip to get Cheerios. Though obviously I am not a rip-and-run gangsta. I'm a call center employee and artist, who has probably earned less than the street value of the package Omar picks up at the end of that clip.

But recently through some correspondence, I had the good fortune to actually get walked through the cognitive side of being intimidated, by me particularly. it's as fascinating as it is frustrating.

There are certainly behaviors I have that are consistent with intimidation. I tend to unconsciously dominate the spaces I am in (once comfortable) and rarely adobt sumbmissive body language. There are times I consciously do this as well. I also have habits of being dismissive of people, terminating conversations etc. That part I can own, and have owned for years.

But the insight was, how much of intimidation just happens in the observers mind. Kind of like this old Gregory Peck movie 'The Million Pound Note' which I just wikipediad and learned it was of course based on a Twain short story. But basically, because this guy has a million pound note back at the turn of the century, he never has to actually spend any money, his wealth never gets tested.

In the same way, having the rationale of somebody who wants to approach me but can't, spelled out for me is an exercise in not even testing the basis of my intimidation. I'm very grateful to this person for writing to me, and in this specific case, it had no basis.

Changing all the deets, the process worked like this. They observed me and concluded that central to my life was a love of pottery and ancient persian history. They felt they knew nothing about these topics and thus would not have anything to offer on them conversationally. So they didn't converse with me.

If these two fields were truly my heart and soul and domain of expertise, then I don't actually need anyone I interact with to know shit about them. This is how I presume everyone works. We all seem to have the intuition that we don't need to hold a medical degree ourselves to converse with a doctor. And some doctors presumably are passionate about what they do.

Indeed, I don't actually need anybody to be anything. Particularly not for me. What I need is to find what is interesting about other people.

I'd like to know more about intimidation. The psychology of it. This isn't the healthy application of anger I am talking about where intimidation is used to avoid potentially costly conflict. But where people find other people unapproachable. I suspect it might be akin to judgement in some way, perhaps its reverse. Judgement is employed most commonly to find people who are even worse than us at things we are insecure about. Perhaps intimidation is where we find people who by their existence emphasise our own felt deficit.

It would apply to my relationship with artists I admire, and possibly fit my friends description as well.

There is of course a self-fulfulling prophecy about being intimidating though, in that I don't actually desire the company of people that cant step to me, or converse with me. Of course, if people can merely enact these behaviors, they are no longer the people I don't desire the company of, they are people I would readily befriend.

Living the Montage

I just finished my third 12 hour day in studio in a row. I'm currently doing a bunch of painstaking practice, the sort of work that gets covered in 30 seconds - 2 minutes in a movie. It'd be interesting to see an actual montage of a kid going away to get good at being an artist. Like they show him hitting a note book at age 12, and then a bunch of select crops as he learns contour, rendering, massing, construction, foreshortening, perspective, composition, colour etc. And then at the end of the montage he is 40 years old, but a master illustrator/painter whatever.

And while I say painstaking, it's where I want to be, and I think that's the secret of the montage. Not that they take a long time in real time, but that they require you to actually love doing that work.