Posts tagged with "social commentary"

The most private thing I'm willing to admit here: A Social Experiment

A social exper­i­ment to get peo­ple to open up about them­selves, because it’s our lit­tle idio­syn­crasies that make us unique. Maybe peo­ple will learn that they’re not alone in their inti­mate ways as well. In the process, it’s also a way for me to open up more, as I seem to be too care­ful about watch­ing what I say here in recent years, and not writ­ing with the same hon­esty that used to char­ac­ter­ize my entries.

For every per­son who adds a com­ment with the most pri­vate thing they’re will­ing to admit here, between now and Sunday night, I will (try) to add a pri­vate detail about myself. Include a name instead of remain­ing anony­mous1, be as hon­est and open as pos­si­ble, and only one “thing” per per­son please. I don’t have that many secrets. Or do I?

I’ll start every­one off with a bonus one:

I hate mak­ing my bed. I get it messy (I do a lot of toss­ing and turn­ing) in anoth­er 16 hours, so I don’t see the point of mak­ing it. I clean my house in gen­er­al when peo­ple are com­ing over because I want them to be com­fort­able, but the bed is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. The only rea­son why I make it is because I feel self-con­scious about it, not because I care if it makes my guests feel more com­fort­able. This makes me feel like a pho­ny.

  1. Without some sort of iden­ti­ty to bind a detail to, there’s no point to the exper­i­ment. [↩]

Diagram For Heartbreak

I love mak­ing these lit­tle dia­grams. It’s so cathar­tic. I remem­ber read­ing this xkcd com­ic (Do you know the func­tions? Answers in the foot­note1.) a long time ago, and think­ing, “Yeah, I don’t get it either”.

Diagram for heartbreak: Why won't you let me get over you?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Why won't you let me get over you?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Might as well not even try

Diagram for Heartbreak: Maybe I should be an asshole

Diagram for Heartbreak: Kissing ratios?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Lose-lose situation

I’ve always been a visu­al per­son, but I nev­er real­ized that doing some­thing like this would make things so much clear­er. All those years earn­ing a degree in com­put­er sci­ence — learn­ing Venn dia­grams, flow charts, and the like — have final­ly come in handy.

  1. From left to right, top to bot­tom: square root of love, cosine of love (trigonom­e­try), deriv­a­tive of love (cal­cu­lus), matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of love (lin­ear alge­bra), and some­one help me out with the last one, it seems like anoth­er cal­cu­lus equa­tion with some con­stants thrown in the Fourier trans­for­ma­tion of love (Hat tip to Edd Sowden for this one). [↩]

The Appreciation Paradox

Often, when some­one thanks me, I find myself say­ing “Don’t men­tion it” or “No need to thank me”. Yet when some­one does­n’t thank me for a favour, I feel like I’m being tak­en advan­tage of.

It’s a fun­ny thing that I feel like a thank-you is unnec­es­sary only after some­one has said it. Maybe it’s because as long as the per­son appre­ci­ates the favour, that’s all that mat­ters.

It’s sim­i­lar to the way Pat once offered to let me stay with him and Jen if I ever find myself with­out a job and a house. I’d prob­a­bly nev­er take him up on the offer because I nev­er want to be a bur­den any­one. At the same time, he knows this and does­n’t expect me to take him up on it, but he offered any­way because he knows I would­n’t take it for grant­ed, and would still be hap­py to take me in if the sit­u­a­tion war­rant­ed it.

Perhaps such acts become more of an acknowl­edg­ment than a prac­ti­cal ges­ture. As long as I know that some­one is appre­cia­tive and rec­og­nizes a favour, that’s all that mat­ters. But real­ly, isn’t that what a thank you is — an acknowl­edg­ment through thanks? At the same time, with­out a thank you, how would we know that some­one is appre­cia­tive?

It’s like the act itself is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly nec­es­sary and unnec­es­sary.