

Sad as Hell - wundie
http://nplusonemag.com/sad-as-hell
An intresting book review of 'Super Sad True Love Story'.
======
derefr
> “Maybe you keep the wrong company,” my mother suggests. Maybe. But I like my
> friends! We can sympathize with each other and feel reassured that we’re not
> alone in our overeager consumption, denigrated self-control, and anxiety
> masked as ambition.

This is Gametalk[1], and you are a Loser (a term from [1]: basically one who
is not Playing to Win[2] in the game of life.) You are finding no meaning in
what you see around you because the things you are likely surrounded with are
not real, raw art with messages to communicate, but rather tranquilizers and
peptics to calm mutual nerves.

Do not do for what will happen if you do not—acting in fear to return the dial
from its painful drift back to the sacred reference point[3]; instead, simply
do for what will happen if you do, moving the dial to a new place and
observing the change.

[1] [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
principle-o...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
the-office-according-to-the-office/)

[2] <http://www.sirlin.net/ptw>

[3]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/dj/what_is_control_theory_and_why_do...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/dj/what_is_control_theory_and_why_do_you_need_to/)

~~~
Ixiaus
This is a great comment.

All of the tools, gadgetry, and connectivity referenced by the author as the
harbinger of his decline from individuality (loss of personality) do indeed
usher forth his dystopia because he is using them to fill the hole that was
created by his leaving the stimulating environment of college. A place where
learning is efficient and discovery nil (this is what college is good for, but
it isn't the _whole_ equation - I'm obviously leaving research an exception).

College is an intellectually artificial environment whose culture is curated
by those who decide _what_ should be taught about what. The ability to
cultivate a stimulating life, a life rich in thought and contemplation, rich
in actionable accomplishments (finishing that basement, building that open
source project, etc...) is not something that can be taught! It is often a
quiet and solitary road too - my mind, my books, my notes, and my Self are all
I need to have a fulfilling and deep life. Friends make it better. But as the
author noted, there are few "self aware" people in the world. That hole is
filled by deliberately choosing your thoughts, by being firm with what you
choose to believe, by transmuting information (lead) into knowledge (gold).

I hope to see another essay detailing his journey from the state conveyed in
this piece to a state chosen of his free will (we all have free will but he's
using technology as a scape goat); because, he is an excellent writer.

~~~
jholman
> his

her

If you can't check your sexist assumptions, then you could check the byline.

~~~
jacoblyles
As long as we are going to share the same internet, we can acknowledge that
the use of the masculine as the default gender for an anonymous person is a
longstanding tradition in the English language, and not every person checks
every byline of every article she reads. Norms are changing, but I wouldn't
call someone wrong or sexist for using a convenient idiom instead of more
awkward and somewhat forced modern formulations (although in this case, she is
indeed wrong).

~~~
bouncingsoul
Norms will only keep improving if people keep complaining.

Here's an article about the forgotten tradition of _they_ as a singular
pronoun: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723184>

Also, because of the _he,_ I assumed Ixiaus was referring to Gary Shteyngart,
the author being reviewed.

~~~
lionhearted
> Norms will only keep improving if people keep complaining.

This may be controversial or offensive, but it's the truth so I'll take the
heat for saying it:

None of the most successful women I know really care or complain about things
like he/she in the English language. For the most successful women I know -
I'm thinking of an investment banker, lawyer, and chief editor of a magazine
in particular - the idea of causing a fuss over pronouns is so low on their
radar that it wouldn't happen.

Again, I'll take heat for this, and so be it - but I think people who complain
about that sort of thing need to go do more relevant stuff in the real world.
Most people who are actually hard working, enterprising, expansive and
successful (professionally or in other worthy endeavors) simply don't have
time to be upset and pedantic over this sort of thing.

Anyway, I'll take the heat for this now. It's not 100% the case, but the
general pattern certainly holds.

~~~
michael_dorfman
We're drifting from the topic at hand, but _None of the most successful women
I know really care or complain about things like he/she in the English
language_ misses the point completely. The effect of sexist language on
successful women is not the source of people's concern. Rather, it is the
(subtle) effect on women who are not yet successful, and the reinforcing
effect on men.

Casual minor acts of racism probably have very little effect on Michael
Jordan. That doesn't make them ok.

~~~
lionhearted
> We're drifting from the topic at hand, but None of the most successful women
> I know really care or complain about things like he/she in the English
> language misses the point completely.

No, I understood your point. I think you missed mine though - my point is that
you have a limited amount of time each day to direct your attention. If you
want to be more successful, or want women to be more successful, then focusing
on he/she pronouns is a very bad use of your time. Focusing on creating
wealth, learning management, networking, investing, saving, become more
disciplined, fit, healthy, exercising are all good uses of time.

After the majority of women are well-informed and well-educated on the topics
of nutrition/fitness, finance, investing, negotiation, accounting, self-
discipline, goal setting, etc, etc, etc. - after all that's done then let's
turn our attention to pronouns. In the meantime, it's rather like stepping
over dollars to pick up pennies. Learning more personal finance, investing,
and negotiation will massively help anyone's career success, including women.
Having everyone switch to singular they will not make so big of a difference.

> Casual minor acts of racism probably have very little effect on Michael
> Jordan.

I'm getting better at predicting what people's responses to my comments will
be - I knew someone would play the racism card. Well done. Comparing the
historical use of "he" in English for a singular pronoun to racism smacks of
_really_ missing the point though - the point is, pronoun usage is going to
have a trivial impact, if any, on people's successes. There's much better
places to deploy your energy and resources if you want women to be more
successful, either individually or as a group.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_If you want to be more successful, or want women to be more successful, then
focusing on he/she pronouns is a very bad use of your time._

I respectfully disagree. I think that language matters, and I am concerned
about the influence of language on my four daughters (aged 3 to 13). I'm not
saying that this is the most important issue, of course-- but I also don't
think that sexist language should get a free pass in the name of some higher
efficiency.

 _Learning more personal finance, investing, and negotiation will massively
help anyone's career success, including women. Having everyone switch to
singular they will not make so big of a difference._

It's not just about career success.

 _Comparing the historical use of "he" in English for a singular pronoun to
racism smacks of really missing the point though - the point is, pronoun usage
is going to have a trivial impact, if any, on people's successes._

Again, I beg to differ. Attitudes like racism and sexism are maintained though
a variety of means, including casual acts that have largely symbolic value. If
you reject the parallel to race, how about we draw an alternative parallel to
sexual orientation? I know that in my lifetime, there have been major shifts
in both the discourse around homosexuality and the rights gay people have won.
I firmly believe the two are related, and that using "gay" as a perjorative
has a (subtle, but real) damaging effect on society. Similarly, pretending
that "he" is gender neutral supports unconscious assumptions that do women no
favors.

The historical use of "he" to refer to both genders should, in my opinion, be
relegated to history.

------
neilk
I constantly see my peers lamenting how technology has "taken" their time and
space for reflection away and have no idea what they're talking about.

It may be uncool to admit but I have no trouble at all keeping my inbox to
zero unread items. And I do have a social life -- less active than many, but
more active than a lot of people. I even read books, actual physical things
made of paper, in my spare time.

How do I do this? I think maybe I instinctively understand that my personal
information processing abilities are limited. I know I'm not a computer; I
don't try to be like one. First of all, I subscribe or commit to relatively
little, and of what I do follow, I don't feel any obligation to read
everything. Mailing lists are aggressively filtered, even when I read them I'm
culling entire threads left and right. Facebook I avoid unless I want to keep
up with invitations and so on. Quora was starting to become a bit addicting,
so I've curtailed that.

Am I abnormal? Do the rest of you just... let the machine take from you what
it will? Why? Is there some ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: I READ THE INTERNET that I'm
unaware of?

P.S. I'll admit that I failed rather badly a company where everyone was
expected to read hundreds if not thousands of mail items daily. But I still
blame that not on the fact that I didn't read EVERYTHING, but that I didn't
prioritize effectively.

P.P.S. It even grinds my gears that this person laments random connections
with people on the subway have now, in the Facebook era, somehow become an
impossibility. It's not! I've done it! It's really not that hard. And yes I
live in San Francisco, not Iowa.

~~~
zephyrfalcon
I don't know if you're abnormal, but for me personally, the problem is more
that there are _so many_ things online that are interesting. It's so easy to
get caught up, click another link, open another tab, or two, or ten, then
spend another hour reading, or two, or the whole morning. Then at some point
you realize, oops, hours have passed, I haven't done a damn thing, and yet for
some reason I'm drained and exhausted.

Maybe this effect is stronger in those who remember when information was
scarce, especially information on subjects that used to be obscure, like, say,
programming languages. :) You instinctively try to eat up as much as possible.
Except that strategy is actually harmful nowadays, because there simply is too
much information on just about anything, for one person to process. That
concept is easy to grasp, but it's not so easy to actually change our habits.

------
umtrey
_Gone are the tacit alliances with fellow subway riders, the brief evolution
of sympathy with pedestrians. That predictable progress of unspoken affinity
is now interrupted by an impulse to either refresh a page or to take a
website-worthy photo._

It's sentences like this that I would imagine to be under a dictionary
definition of "nostalgia." I read this, immediately look off into the distance
in an oh-so-subtle way, and then wonder quickly how this type of thing could
be changed... and if it would be changed.

Think of the last time the bus or the subway car stopped more suddenly than
anyone expected. Most everyone will look up, look around, and make brief eye
contact with another person to make sure that someone else felt it too.
There's that initial panic that sets over a number of people, then, seeing how
others have this same, shared experience, everyone is immediately partially
comforted. Why wouldn't we be? Someone else is here, they know what's going
on, we'll get through this together.

The instant connectivity means that this period of worry before we make the
most fleeting of eye contact is even shorter - we're getting rid of that
terrifying low in order to have a constant sense of stability. When we do
this, we don't feel that euphoric positive delta of connection and of
community. The internet, the tubes, the twitters, the facebooks, the pictures,
everything is just a numbing agent so we don't have to fret for that initial
period of time.

We've advanced as a society to avoid the great pains of life as much as
possible - fighting to remove hunger, distance ourselves from war, medicine to
cure the sick. Why do we think it unreasonable or unexpected for society to
also inadvertently make progress towards avoiding the emotional pains of life?

~~~
protomyth
"You know the good ole days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as
it seems" - Billy Joel - Keeping the Faith

to add, a lot of people used to read books or magazines on the subway, now
they can read off a device, plus for a lot of users our physical location no
longer dictates who we can make contact with.

It maybe shallow, but at least technology reminds us that there is someone out
there when we might not be the type to connect casually with those in front of
us.

------
astrofinch
As I was reading, I was having a hard time empathizing with the author. Then I
realized that I had assumed the author was male, and checked. Sure enough the
author was female. I feel like maybe men experience this stuff differently.
For example, take this passage.

>Same with all-or-nothing friends: they’re only compelling if you talk to them
all the time; when the chatty, daily interactions end so does the prospect of
an interesting expository conversation. Without consistency, a long phone call
seems not only daunting but also profoundly dull.

I have friends I meet with rarely and have great conversations with. We don't
talk about each others' lives quite so much though. We talk about _stuff_ :)

~~~
Psyonic
I'm male and I empathized quite strongly with the article. I have friends that
I only speak to on the phone rarely, and I have that exact feeling... that we
need to catch up, but since we're so out of synch, catching up is kindof
boring.

------
throwaway99
I sympathize with this:

 _Opening Safari is an actively destructive decision. I am asking that
consciousness be taken away from me. Like the lost time between leaving a
party drunk and materializing somehow at your front door, the internet robs
you of a day you can visit recursively or even remember._

I struggle with internet addiction. On my bad days, I feel like a walking
corpse. I breathe, I eat, and nothing memorable or valuable happens. I wonder
what made me think I could handle a career in technology. I admire engineers
and wanted to be one. But I need to flee from technology to take a piece of my
life back, to reawaken to autonomy. I envy you who can ignore the internet and
manage to be productive.

------
SourPatch
"It is my firm belief, and I say this as a dictum, that all these tools now at
our disposal, these things part of this explosive evolution of means of
communication, mean we are now heading for an era of solitude. Along with this
rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal — be it fax, phone,
email, internet or whatever — human solitude will increase in direct
proportion." -Werner Herzog

~~~
jamii
Thanks to the internet I can work anywhere in the world. Thanks to HN, Reddit
and my RSS reader I can keep up with the cutting edge of my profession
whereever I go. Thanks to email, jabber, skype and facebook I can travel the
world without losing touch with my friends and family. Thanks to
couchsurfing.org I've made friends all over the world and experienced dozens
of different cultures. If the internet is making you lonely, you're doing it
wrong.

~~~
Psyonic
I don't understand the obsession with working anywhere in the world. Yes, you
can... and? Do you really want to be traveling all the time? If so, that's a
good thing to have... but I just can't sympathize. I like to travel, but it's
also nice to feel home.

~~~
jamii
> Do you really want to be traveling all the time?

Personally, yes. I'm aware that this is unusual. Maybe I will settle down one
day but the few times I have tried so far I have experienced what I can only
describe as cabin fever.

> ... it's also nice to feel home

I suppose that I do have the same instinct to seek out
shelter/security/safety, manifested in an irrational fondness for my tent and
the few other belongings I carry with me.

~~~
Psyonic
Fair enough. Enjoy traveling!

------
tobtoh
_It’s like being demoted from the category of thinking, caring human to a sort
of rat that doesn’t know why he needs to tap that button, just that he does._

I can't think of a better explanation for the rise and rise of Farmville. The
author mentioned Twitter, Tumblr as examples, but I think Farmville is a far
better example.

------
bobf
_Days seem over before they even begin, and I have nothing to show for myself
other than the anxious feeling that I now know just enough to engage in
conversations I don’t care about._

To me, this was the most striking sentence in the article. It seems to be
something that has increased from the time pop culture began to the present.
Each of us probably hears more about Justin Bieber than we would ever truly
care to, for example.

~~~
Semiapies
This is entirely voluntary.

For instance, I know that Bieber exists, and I can probably count on my
fingers how many times I've seen pictures of him. I found the one or two songs
of his I've heard innocuous and utterly forgettable - I probably couldn't
identify him if I heard those very same songs again. I'm not even aware
precisely why he's the go-to example of annoying celebrity, lately.

I'm not utterly isolated from the world or media, though. I just actually
choose what media I consume.

~~~
bobf
And how many times would you care to have seen pictures of him, or heard
anything about him? Probably zero. So it isn't exactly _entirely_ voluntary,
right?

~~~
Semiapies
I chose to learn what I did about the guy because I encountered an friend's
histrionic dislike of the singer and was curious.

So yes, entirely voluntary.

Now, if you'd like to argue that I was "forced" to encounter information by
talking to someone I know, then you're going beyond even trying to make
victimization out of exposure to media and just showing yourself to long for a
hermitage. :)

~~~
bobf
Of course. It is important and useful to be a part of society, be conversant
with the issues of the day, etc. The author's point seemed to simply be that
constantly being conversant with popular culture is capable of becoming a
timesink.

------
PakG1
We're only catching up to Japan, that's all. ;) For better or worse....

"It used to be you would get on the train with junior-high-school girls and it
would be noisy as hell with all their chatting,” Yumiko Sugiura, a journalist
who writes about Japanese youth culture, told me. “Now it’s very quiet—just
the little tapping of thumbs.”

<http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/03/realtime_kills.php>

------
peng
To someone who recently bought and then gave up an iPhone, this essay really
strikes a chord. I actually have time to think again.

------
madair
When N+1 is good, they are really good.

When N+1 hosts writers just out of college, this is what we get. It happens.

This is your typical "we're special because of xyz" conceit.

We all know what that is. We've all been there, and fortunately many of of
have noticed and the next time is less severe.

The "we're special because humans never before did x" has been around since
the beginning of time, and it's always right on some vapid level. The exciting
thing is, we all still have blood, and thin skins, and bacteria who want to
live in us but also want to eat us, and viruses who just want to subvert us.
That doesn't change that much. Sure, lifespan doubles, hurrah.

This conceit is a cousin of ludditism, a 1st cousin that is, just with a
different twist.

Enjoy your college writers. They are great entertainment. Nothing more.

~~~
astrofinch
You realize that your post only discusses the fashions in writing that the
essay may or may not be part of and not its actual thesis, no?

Personally I prefer to discuss actual reality as opposed to social reality.

~~~
madair
my post discusses _exceptionalism_ , a conceit which blinds us from reality by
convincing us that we are _different_ , a notion frequently addressed:

 _\-- everything is new again just like before_

 _\-- there is nothing new under the sun ~ all is vanity_

 _\-- the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn_

for a more culturally correct critique, though less direct, i.e. more
metaphorical: this article is a micro-benchmark with a sample size of 1 and
not having adequate controls when measuring in a noisy environment.

this is more or less a cousin of what you're saying to me. although it's
humorous that you're making it as a critique of _me_ and not of the _article_
when in fact it and i are both painted with that brush.

and while i can just as easily make the same critique, i dispute it as a
another conceit: the physical sciences' over-reliance on rationality in a
universe that is not fully understood. an old philosophical problem, and one
at the core of feynman's overestimated notions of superiority, brilliant as he
was, he'll gladly cut down the social sciences and simultaneously provide us
with high-quality tools for mass devastation.

ah, the fraternal sciences, one of whom is convinced it is no sibling, but
rather the ubermensch already come.

but, yeah, that sort of micro-benchmark metaphor can be popular when
misapplied to the humanities. and what do we get out of that?: economics.
woohoo! i'm on fire! now, peeps, hurry with the down votes.

so, explain to me reality again, social what? ;)

