self-torture made easy

New communication media provide an entirely new means to torture oneself. What - generations ago - was the daily wait for the postman (limited, cause he passed once a day, at a fixed hour), now is the frantic 30s click on either the mailclient's or social network's refresh button - with the advantage of them being available 24/7.

I'll attempt to summarize the problem as follows: we all like to share things that we consider interesting or important. If they are personal details about our own life, of course they are very relevant to us (and, we might conclude from our limited poit of view, also to aaaaall our 'friends' on whatever lists they might be). Of course, they are all just waiting to share their viewpoints on these matters!

Now the great delusion hits: the number of people interested in our little personal stories is inversely proportional to the number of details we share. In other terms: hardly ANYONE out there is going to be interested in ALL the things we want to share with them. And to make it worse: the few that are might not even be the people we WANT to be interested in our lives (like stalkers, ex-partners, secret admirors, employers, parents-in-law, etc).

Ensuring the desired dose of misery, one might end up being bothered by the good advices of people one finds annoying, and observing the people one cares for displaying a lot of interest in the lives of - OTHERS!


Have a nice evening!


Ps: Why did I write this? Is it not contradictory in itself? I don't think so, cause the reason is: Just for fun, and for the few who might actually enjoy reading it... if you are, I wrote it for entertaining YOU ;)

Pps: Thanks to the people who inspired me - there are only very very few, but they are real!

Internet Amnesia

A very common illness severely impacting productivity when fulfilling tasks based on services available on the Internet.

Symptoms:
The patient chronically starts up the computer and opens a browser window to accomplish a certain task. By doing so, they get flooded by an unmanageable amount of stimulating information, causing them to completely forget their original aim. This behaviour is especially to be observed in the presence of tabbed browsing habits combined with session restore settings. Internet Amnesia can be very brief, leaving the patient capable to finish their tasks. However, in extreme cases, it is of longer duration and inflicting a trance-like state on the patient. This trance can be observed to last at least until the computer has been shut down. In some instances, the patient then suddenly becomes conscious of their aim again.

Consequences:
A huge loss in productivity, electricity, and an increase in absentmindedness have been observed.

Le Bain de Soleil

Informationserhaltendes Aufräumen

Die Assoziationen die mit dem Wort 'aufräumen' einhergehen beschäftigen sich meist mit dem Zurücklegen von Dingen an ihren Ort, so dass sie gleichsam 'von der Oberfläche verschwinden'. Implizit findet in diesem Fall ein enormer Informationsverlust statt, da die Spuren stattgefundener Vorgänge entfernt werden. Oft ist dieses Vorgehen gekoppelt an die Sorge Außenstehenden nicht zu viel über das persönliche Innenleben zu verraten, gleichsam um eine gewisse (respektvolle) Distanz zu wahren.

Beobachtung hat jedoch zu Tage gefördert, dass diese Assoziationen viel zu eng gefasst sind: Aufräumen kann nämlich durch geschicktes Drapieren der Objekte zu einem Mittel werden, mit dem Informationen nicht verschwinden sondern präzisiert und möglicherweise auch manipuliert werden.

Mangels kreativer Einfälle nenne ich dieses Verhalten:

Kommunikation durch informationserhaltendes Aufräumen

Bewertung:
Generell ein geniales Manöver da es die Schaffung eines höchst plastischen Gesamteindrucks ermöglicht ohne Besucher durch explizite Unordentlichkeit zu abzustoßen. Der Eindruck kann durch wenige gezielte Anmerkungen enorm in Szene gesetzt werden oder ohne diese den Betrachtenden in erhebliche Verwirrung stürzen.

Verstörend ist für den Betrachter die unbeantwortete Frage ob derart intime, unfreiwillige Einblicke in das Leben des Gastgebers ein Versehen oder tatsächlich von diesem beabsichtigt sind. In der Konsequenz gerät der Betrachtende unter Zugzwang: er muss sich entscheiden zwischen explizitem Ignorieren oder Artikulieren seiner subjektiven Wahrnehmung. Jedoch begiebt er sich auf Grund der unklaren Situation mit beiden Alternativen auf dünnes Eis.

Abschließend wird festgestellt, dass das Konzept für den Sender der Informationen viele Vorteile bietet - er kann den arglosen Empfänger in jede beliebige Richtung manövrieren. Beispielsweise kann jede Bemerkung des Empfängers der Subjektivität (und damit Fehlerhaftigkeit) seiner Wahrnehmung zugeschrieben werden. Zur effektiven Klärung von Sachverhalten ist das Verfahren allerdings nicht immer geeignet und wirkt durch seine Subtilität unaufrichtig. Dadurch stellt es gleichsam die verbal-kommunikative Sozialkompetenz als auch die Absichten des Senders in Frage.

it's just about you

well, this is at least what advertising tells to all of us, be it guys or gals, old or young. we are so important, our needs absolutely need to be fulfilled immediately, otherwise - well, probably nothing, but possibly the world would end.

so what is just about us? the whole world around us? - i don't think so, even though sometimes it would be nice to believe that everyone else existed just to make our own life as pleasant and interesting as possible. but who seriously believes this?

all this stuff they are trying to make us buy? because afterwards we will be happier? more beautiful? more intelligent? more loveable? - if it would work, one wouldn't need advertising in the first place, nor would one need all the subsequent products as their predecessors already made us happy, beautiful, fulfilled etc.

now i wonder: which interest do advertisers and producers have in selling us things that really make our lives better? i daresay NONE.

everything that could possibly lead to a more sustainable happiness would be deadly for their business. so instead of making people discover their uniqueness, their individual strengths and their place in the world (which admittedly can be a cumbersome and exhausting process) the strategy is to keep them in their self centered bubble and to keep their emotional emptyness EMPTY. and - in the absence of former enforced role models - why not use the chance to draft one which the good customer will willingly follow and buy whatever one places in front of them?

of course people are not stupid - they still have their intuition left and feel they are lacking something. but following the loud consumeristic advices they are told wherever they go is so much easier than listening to that little voice of doubt. apart from that, distracting people from thinking about anything serious by flooding their perceptional capabilities seems an effective way to go.

look around - it works.

anti - consumerism

My new happy phrase: "I really don't need this." It's totally efficient when browsing through stores (either virtual or physical). Ok, sometimes it can get frustrating when my mind tries to make me be a good customer - I nearly feel guilty for not buying anything. But most of the time it feels so liberating laughing at all the ads :D

your language or my language?

i'm ever again amazed how queezy i feel about speaking somebody's language when i'm at home if they don't know that i am capable of doing so. i really wonder why it makes me feel that awkward, and also if i'm the only person with that problem..

Loosing track of time

I am currently observing an interesting phenomenon: loss of temporal orientation. It feels like some kind of overflow in my brain, where suddenly I can not even remember that I wanted to do a certain thing at a certain point in time (like go to the shop on my way home from work). I just forget about them. In addition, I have to really pull myself together in order to not get lost between the days of the week (and consequently to be in the right places at the right times). It is like being completely alone in a silent bubble, sharing life just from the perspective of an observer, just seeing but not hearing, who does not really understand what is happening around them.

Even though I have a lot of explanations for this confusion, I still am amazed that it can happen. I still don't know if I actually even like it - sometimes it makes me feel very relaxed, loosening the mechanisms of control I usually put around my activities - but on the other hand, the moment where you just in time realize you nearly skipped something is never too pleasant..

off track

sittng in the underground or train these days i get funny thoughts about life. i don't know why, but somehow at times the world just seems to pass me by. it is as if everything is moving in a certain way, just i don't know the rules so i stay where i am. very strange feeling (but then very much the feeling of being in transit in a train for example. you stay still but still everything around you is moving on..). i wonder though if this effect is coming through in the rest of my life? maybe being on the train is deeply influencing my subconscious?

maybe i should stop breaking routines all the time. it just causes confusion, because nothing can be relied on. but then, going accross all the time could also be a way of getting along - just always as a stranger.

parallelization

seems it's not possible for win to install more than one app simultaneously.. :P could have thought of it before

how to detect a hypocrite

seeing that so many people complain about hypocrites i was wondering how to detect them..

the first obvious step to me seemed to look up what the word itself actually means. here are my findings:



so, if i understood correctly, hypocrites are people whose behaviour seems to diverge quite noticeably from their stated opinions about how one should behave. of course this seems to be bad - especially in situations when a person is expecting things of others, which they are not willing to provide for themselves. so i understand people, who get very annoyed or frustrated by this behaviour.

On the other hand, i felt occasionally, as if people complaining most about hypocrites fail to understand that it can be very difficult to live up even to one's own expectations of a good life. even people having very high ideals in life and trying very hard to fulfill them might not be able to close the gap and perfectly practice what they preach. so i wonder if it is really possible for anyone to judge them for it?

i guess we are never really in the position of finding out how much someone is putting into being sincere in their behaviour, so i find it very hard to just hate so-called hypocrites so much.. especially as this hate could quickly turn the hater in a hypocrite as well (except in the presence of very low expectations to behaviour ;) and this really isn't helping. probably exactly the opposite - non-judging - behaviour could improve the situation: if somebody aware of failing his own standards still feels accepted by another person, they will much easier admit that they are not perfect, and maybe even reflect what is causing this gap. quite a chance for improvement, i'd reckon.

melting chocolate

i'm surprised that it took years for me to commit this stupidity: i absentmindedly placed a chocolate cookie directly next to my notebooks fan...
it WAS an interesting experience (the cookie was actually very tasty) and luckily there was no cloth on the table so the dripping chocolate did not do any harm ;)

minimal changes

Sometimes life is like a tricky differential equation - if you only vary one parameter a tiny little bit, the outcome might change drastically.

I don't know if I am more amazed or scared by this.

However, there could be another phenomenon connected to it: different people seem to sense this potential for rapid change in some situation of their lives and then to collectively decide to escalate - or to do nothing and keep as quiet as possible..

choose.

do you want the attention of all people in the room? or all the attention of a particular person?

no need to be arrogant

there is hardly anything in life which we do not learn from someone else.

blow your mind

By now it is a well-known trick to break obsessive perfectionism: Do something out of your routine. Like taking the wrong bus, remain in your train one or two stops too long and see where it takes you to, take the other turn on your way home.. or the other staircase.

On my hitlist these days are: inviting a stranger for tea (to be precise, someone who thinks you are your own sister), going to perform music knowing only place and time but not people and pieces, playing scotland yard with the public transport, greeting someone with good wishes without needing anything from them, not even information. Probably most of these things sound rather trivial. Maybe they are, but one thing i've learned is that doing simple things you're not used to can be quite difficult.

The results of this study are quite varied, with one common element: the outcome was always interesting and positive, as well as relaxing. Like fresh air blowing through my head, taking away all the dullness and over-focussedness of everyday life. The best experience was being surprised by the world, even sometimes surprising myself (which usually proves even more difficult). And as surprises are, one remembers them and the special aspect of the world which made them happen.

Baseline of the whole thing: I warmly recommend you to try breaking your routines (that is, if you do have them). One thing to keep in mind though is to try this when you're alone - you can't coordinate so well when you don't know what you're going to do next!

munich north

stupid lecture passtime

imagine how all the people would look if they were bald - and don't laugh ;)

2nd December

well... at least still for me, as i havent slept yet..

the reason - as you could probably guess - is some piece of badly coordinated team work... but anyway, this situation hopefully will give me some incentive to take some more responsibility next time and organize it better..

apart from that.. there were a good amount of interesting impressions today which i realized because i decided to leave my earplugs out for the next time (let's see if i will manage till christmas). i tried this before and it was an interesting period, as breaking one habit often brings you to try completely 'random' things alongside your daily paths. (it starts from literally changing paths by taking another road on the way to the station, or taking a train one stop too far even when not exactly knowing the direction, but also just doing things differently can be really interesting..)

the most interesting encounter i had today:
a woman selling chestnuts offered me one as a present after i had finally managed to unlock my bike at the station in that terrible cold. she told it would warm my fingers.. it was really sweet and at the same time a clever move: she actually wanted to talk to me and ask me to not put my bike too close to the stand as it had been blocking the electricity box... of course this was not a problem at all, but i really admired this way of bringing some stranger into a good mood before asking some favour of them..

CRACK!

... and I really got a scare from that unexpected and loud noise.. but actually it was just a pine cone I had put on the heating exploding and spitting kernels all over the place :)