No Avail | Thinking Out Loud For Real @No_Avail | Uploaded July 2022 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
Timestamps and menu:
00:00-06:51 Mostly Intro. Interrogating the seemingly trivial can lead to fresh observations and self-exploration. Call it the Triviality/Novelty pipeline. Brief overview of a few social implications this carries and how it should shape the future of this channel (and ideally all serious channels).
06:51-09:33 Beware the figurative “We” usage. If you’re not guilty of X, never describe issues with X using “We”. Even I slipped up once later in the video and used it in the way I hate seeing it used. Rant segues to thoughts on non-judgmentalism as a presentation style, or as insincere flattery. Be on the lookout for “chummy” communicative strategies. There are so many critics of Suits and Corporate Culture utilizing suit-like tactics for their own PR purposes. They keep getting away with it because the question “Why even care that someone uses “We” figuratively?!” has a down to earth vibe and just seems punchy. Perfect example of a complaint I have that is deceptively trivial.
09:33-19:30 The worthlessness of nearly all conversations in the wild. Issue loops into the above gripes.
19:30-27:04 Try your hand at a more socially courageous version of you whenever (or if) you’re around the breed of person I’m stuck being around. It might build you up from within. Not long after I began blurting out unspoken thoughts and risking backlash, new unaired intuitions and dormant negative judgments began to slide into my conscious thought stream. Free up space in your mind by uttering your thoughts more often in social settings and the same might happen. Or even when no one else is around (yeah, technically talking to yourself, big deal), mouthing along may prove effective.
27:04-31:48 Prevalence of low-quality banter, casual gossip and forgetfulness vs. The Loss Of Community. I question what people commonly attribute as the main drivers of America’s mental health crisis, and speculate that too much is made of the loss of community and not enough on the need (some have) to escape community further still. People are unreliable and boring and dealing with them is often a stressor. I’ve always found stress to be among the biggest drains on mood and mental health. Social isolation, particularly in adulthood, was never a factor. Here too, I'm suspecting that a silent plurality resembling my isolation-tolerance may well exist, maybe even a silent majority. This is what “social studies” textbooks should actually teach in elementary school: individual differences leading to tolerance or intolerance of one's own mind. But no one demands this, because they’re boring, unimaginative and epistemically unreliable. Evidently, curricula crafters aren't immune.
31:48-38:50 Siblings and crowded upbringings as fail-proof firewalls against independent thought. Speculation only, personal anecdotes, unavailable data.
38:50-48:30 Creative musicians and artists vs. musical entertainers. Analogized to: Creative vloggers vs. vloggers led by “How To Succeed On YouTube” tutorials. Includes angry rant on inconsistent standards in digital culture.
48:30-51:34 The Right To Promulgate Anything.
51:34 TOS complaints and YT’s lackluster competitors.
53:25 Insight vs. Impact. Further contextualizing some things I’ve said before about the clear demarcations everyone should have in mind here, as my earlier comments on this were incomplete.
56:40 The urgency mindset creates dignity compromisers. Don’t give in.
59:25 The Dobbs ruling and my whiffs of schadenfreude. Because “Friends Of Religion” who are nonbelievers would fail to diagnose the root of this problem if their lives depended on it, which is sometimes literally the case.
1:09:43 More on “siblings vs. independent thought” implications in early childhood.
1:13:46 The Jacobin’s Bhaskar Sunkara’s vs. Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death. Spot the though-lines.
I decided to spare you the prelude I planned to attach at the end. Video is long enough already.
Dobbs' dissent: documentcloud.org/documents/22067295-dobbs-dissent
Audiobook version of Postman’s book: youtu.be/5Ln9IvjSXBs
Ezra Klein interviews Bhaskar Sunkara:
nytimes.com/2022/06/10/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-bhaskar-sunkara.html
Then & Now's tiptoey video on consumerism: youtu.be/wmDoUa4f-NM
Random plug: youtube.com/user/AntiBullshitMan/community
Pretty much where I “blog” now, in that I’m too lazy and impatient to sacrifice the time and nerves required to complete any of my longer draft posts. With the community tab, shorter writeups somehow feel acceptable in a way they never did when I’d formally blog. Probably all subjective.
Timestamps and menu:
00:00-06:51 Mostly Intro. Interrogating the seemingly trivial can lead to fresh observations and self-exploration. Call it the Triviality/Novelty pipeline. Brief overview of a few social implications this carries and how it should shape the future of this channel (and ideally all serious channels).
06:51-09:33 Beware the figurative “We” usage. If you’re not guilty of X, never describe issues with X using “We”. Even I slipped up once later in the video and used it in the way I hate seeing it used. Rant segues to thoughts on non-judgmentalism as a presentation style, or as insincere flattery. Be on the lookout for “chummy” communicative strategies. There are so many critics of Suits and Corporate Culture utilizing suit-like tactics for their own PR purposes. They keep getting away with it because the question “Why even care that someone uses “We” figuratively?!” has a down to earth vibe and just seems punchy. Perfect example of a complaint I have that is deceptively trivial.
09:33-19:30 The worthlessness of nearly all conversations in the wild. Issue loops into the above gripes.
19:30-27:04 Try your hand at a more socially courageous version of you whenever (or if) you’re around the breed of person I’m stuck being around. It might build you up from within. Not long after I began blurting out unspoken thoughts and risking backlash, new unaired intuitions and dormant negative judgments began to slide into my conscious thought stream. Free up space in your mind by uttering your thoughts more often in social settings and the same might happen. Or even when no one else is around (yeah, technically talking to yourself, big deal), mouthing along may prove effective.
27:04-31:48 Prevalence of low-quality banter, casual gossip and forgetfulness vs. The Loss Of Community. I question what people commonly attribute as the main drivers of America’s mental health crisis, and speculate that too much is made of the loss of community and not enough on the need (some have) to escape community further still. People are unreliable and boring and dealing with them is often a stressor. I’ve always found stress to be among the biggest drains on mood and mental health. Social isolation, particularly in adulthood, was never a factor. Here too, I'm suspecting that a silent plurality resembling my isolation-tolerance may well exist, maybe even a silent majority. This is what “social studies” textbooks should actually teach in elementary school: individual differences leading to tolerance or intolerance of one's own mind. But no one demands this, because they’re boring, unimaginative and epistemically unreliable. Evidently, curricula crafters aren't immune.
31:48-38:50 Siblings and crowded upbringings as fail-proof firewalls against independent thought. Speculation only, personal anecdotes, unavailable data.
38:50-48:30 Creative musicians and artists vs. musical entertainers. Analogized to: Creative vloggers vs. vloggers led by “How To Succeed On YouTube” tutorials. Includes angry rant on inconsistent standards in digital culture.
48:30-51:34 The Right To Promulgate Anything.
51:34 TOS complaints and YT’s lackluster competitors.
53:25 Insight vs. Impact. Further contextualizing some things I’ve said before about the clear demarcations everyone should have in mind here, as my earlier comments on this were incomplete.
56:40 The urgency mindset creates dignity compromisers. Don’t give in.
59:25 The Dobbs ruling and my whiffs of schadenfreude. Because “Friends Of Religion” who are nonbelievers would fail to diagnose the root of this problem if their lives depended on it, which is sometimes literally the case.
1:09:43 More on “siblings vs. independent thought” implications in early childhood.
1:13:46 The Jacobin’s Bhaskar Sunkara’s vs. Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death. Spot the though-lines.
I decided to spare you the prelude I planned to attach at the end. Video is long enough already.
Dobbs' dissent: documentcloud.org/documents/22067295-dobbs-dissent
Audiobook version of Postman’s book: youtu.be/5Ln9IvjSXBs
Ezra Klein interviews Bhaskar Sunkara:
nytimes.com/2022/06/10/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-bhaskar-sunkara.html
Then & Now's tiptoey video on consumerism: youtu.be/wmDoUa4f-NM
Random plug: youtube.com/user/AntiBullshitMan/community
Pretty much where I “blog” now, in that I’m too lazy and impatient to sacrifice the time and nerves required to complete any of my longer draft posts. With the community tab, shorter writeups somehow feel acceptable in a way they never did when I’d formally blog. Probably all subjective.
