Yes, we are still on for the thing tonight, just like we said, god dammit.

Continuing my descent into old fogey-ness, I seem to have encountered another shift in the zeitgeist that marks off my age. The first one was the enormous increase in the number of text messages sent by the average teenager. But this was something that one mostly would only see if one actually has a teenager around the house. Since this doesn't apply to me, I only find out about it in odd magazine articles.

But there is another trend that I have had cause to experience firsthand - the proliferation in confirmatory text messages over every social arrangement.

Up until recently, my general presumption was that things worked as follows:

-You and person X would agree to do activity Y at time Z.

-If one of you couldn't make it, you would inform the other ahead of time.

-Absent that, it is assumed that the arrangements stand and you both turn up at time Z.

You, like me, might presume that this is how things still work, yes?

You, like me, might end up being rather surprised.

These days, a lot of people, particularly young people, seem to have decided collectively that they're switching from an opt-out system of arrangements to an opt-in one. In other words, plans to do things in two days time are merely a suggestion, a vague agreement-in-principle. If you actually intend to follow through, you have to confirm this.

I found this when I'd start getting messages asking if we were still on for what I considered agreed-upon plans. I used to respond with 'of course' or something like that, wondering vaguely why this was now the thing that people did, but dismissing it as evidence of their neediness or insecurity. Confirming to them would seem pointless, but not a big deal.

I remember complaining to a friend, and saying that it was refreshing to find people who didn't need this. I was meeting someone new for coffee that evening, and was glad that we hadn't done the obligatory text message dance, which seemed like a good sign. That is, until she didn't actually turn up. Apparently she had decided that not receiving a confirmation was an indication that things were canceled, so much so that she apparently hadn't bothered to message me to check.

To paraphrase Frank Costanza, as I rained abusive text messages on her, I realized there had to be another way. After my rage subsided, it became pretty clear that my attempts to fight a rearguard action against the culture were as doomed as the 50's protests against rock and roll. So I now suck it up and send confirmatory messages. Sometimes one still isn't enough - I've sent a confirmation the night before, only to get another query confirming things an hour before. Who are these people, and what on earth is wrong with them?

I think the reality is that people have become so flaky that this is actually the more efficient social arrangement. When enough people become sufficiently inconsiderate that they just cancel all the time at the last minute, confirmations are actually time-saving. They're only a net drain when the probability of last minute cancellations is politely low, at which point they're a nuisance. This was what I assumed was the case, but apparently not. The real shift will have arrived when cancelling is so common that it's not even considered that impolite. Once again, I'm pretty sure this is a generational thing.

If narcissism and self-centredness are the psychological traits of our age, then flakiness is merely the natural result. Everyone else's time is less valuable than mine (one reasons), so what difference does it make if I change plans on someone at the last minute? Actually, it's probably worse than that - the median reasoning (such as it is) is probably closer to 'I have something better on, or can't be bothered. Ergo, I won't go'. To that extent, expecting confirmatory text messages at least indicates an ability to escape from pure solipsism and anticipate everyone else's self-centredness too. Which, at the margin, I guess is a good thing, even if the need for such anticipation is ultimately depressing.

Plus I just hate sending zillions of text messages, which annoys me too. Why? Same underlying reason.

All the world's a little peer influenced, except for thee and me...

Baaaaa.

Why do you do the things you do?

If you're ever in some trendy cocktail lounge or bar, chances are you'll see somebody drinking an Old-Fashioned. Muddle sugar with bitters (or use simple syrup and bitters), add whisky and a twist of citrus rind (wiped around the edge of the glass, and set on fire with a lighter if the place is fancy), and there you go. I'm not a drinker, but people tell me it's tasty.

Why do they drink it, as opposed to some other cocktail? 

Easy - they like the taste.

Okay, sure, but why did they try it in the first place to find out that they liked it? There's zillions of cocktails, and most people haven't tried most of them.

Probably their friend ordered them one once, or they saw someone drinking one and it looked interesting. 

Okay, so why did that friend order one?

Well now we're into the question of how social trends start. Usually we just have to throw up our hands and say 'peer effects' or 'opinion leaders' or 'fashion' or some equally unsatisfying explanation.

But in this case, we actually have a very definite answer of why you drink Old-Fashioneds.

You drink them because some time in 2006, a writer for the show Mad Men decided that Don Draper, the charismatic man's man main character in the show, would drink them as his drink of choice. The show became a hit, people started asking for them, and a heretofore archaic cocktail was suddenly restored to newfound celebrity.

I would wager that out of the people who drink them, at least 98% of them would swear on a stack of bibles that they drink them only because they like the taste, and not because of a desire to appear trendy.

And yet we reach a very stark conclusion. If that writer had decided that Don Draper would drink Mint Juleps instead, there's probably a high likelihood that you'd be drinking that right now, swearing equally that you just liked them for the taste.

The alternative is that some time around 1960, people's taste buds suddenly changed such that a previously tasty drink became unpleasant, and some time around 2007 they magically reverted back to enjoying them. Want to wager on that one?

Nobody likes to think that their personal tastes are actually fashions dictated by people whom they never met. But, more than we'd like to admit, they are.

Irony

The Mask




The face behind the mask:

"Excess ain't rebellion,
You're drinking what they're selling.
Your self-destruction doesn't hurt them.
Your chaos won't convert them.
They're so happy to rebuild it.
You'll never really kill it."

Cake, Rock and Roll Lifestyle

Short Answer Exam Technique

If confronted with an exam question of the following form:

"Two friends are having a discussion. Simon say that [ABC]. Sally, on the other hand, claims that [XYZ]. Who do you agree with? Why?"

and you are unsure of the answer, assume that the female is right. Social rules in exams follow television ads - in a mixed sex group, the man is almost always depicted as the stupid one. This is the mirror image of the default assumption in TV ads in the 50's and 60's, where the silly housewife was the staple reason why you should buy a given product, and society seems to have been furiously overcompensating ever since.

There's another similar rule on TV - in a mixed race group of males, the white guy is depicted as the stupid one. The latter case oddly doesn't seem to feature as commonly in exams, as Marmeduke isn't frequently in discussion with Jamal. But if he were, I'd bet that way too.

Two Hundred Millionth Verse, Same as the First…

So much has been said on the Trayvon Martin case already. It feels a little bit like World War I – when you try to explain that France is fighting Germany because a Serbian nationalist shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, it’s not immediately clear why either of the two belligerent parties would give a rat’s @$$.

So it is here – a Hispanic wannabe cop shoots a teenage black thug, but as always, the fault is white racism. Goyim kill Goyim, and they blame the Jews. And so everyone must take up cudgels again to defend their accustomed sides.

After almost a decade of living in this country, it’s hard to express just how dreary all this is. Lordy, I am sick to death of race, and the peculiar American preoccupation with the subject. The faux outrage, the sheer humourlessness, the constant walking on eggshells, the pissant cowardice it inspires, and the way it paralyses people from making even the most straightforward observations about the world around them.

This is the most uniquely American of pathologies. Not racism, of course. America today is perhaps the least racist country on the face of the earth. You may seem surprised, but honestly, who else would lay a claim to the title? The only other contenders are small, mono-ethnic  countries for which issues of race simply don’t arise in daily life.

No, it is the paranoia about racism, regardless of the absence of any actual racial animus, that is America’s most appalling invention. Even if you disagree with my claim that America is the least racist country on the planet, if you formed the ratio of Race Paranoia = (Worrying About Racism) / (Actual Racism), I defy anybody  to claim that America doesn't lead the world on this metric by miles and miles.

The question is not whether racism (that is, racial animus) is a problem. Like the Copernican view of the solar system, it’s absurd to pretend this is still any kind of social controversy. It is a problem, where it occurs. Rather, the question is whether you choose to see expressions of racial animus in ever more innocuous speech and actions. The question is whether you continue to view the possibility that someone, somewhere, is harbouring racial animus as the single most important problem in the world, even as the actual level of racial animus in society drops precipitously.

And what has all this brought? Has being ever more exquisitely sensitive to people’s possibly hurt feelings about the matter of race actually, you know, produced more social harmony? If it has, I can’t see much evidence of it. All I can see is what John Derbyshire memorably described as ‘an evolution towards the ever thinner-skinned’.

Like all American cultural traits, good or bad, race paranoia is slowly taking over the world.  When I left Australia, it was mercifully a place where one was largely spared the constant, relentless hand-wringing, the non-stop ‘Serious You Guys This Is The Most Important Issue In The Whole World’ evangelism of race hucksters, do-gooders and fools.

I suspect, with considerable resignation, that when or if I return, Australia will have become America in my absence.

The more things change...

In Egypt, a Dutch female reporter who was reporting on demonstrations in Tahrir Square was savagely raped. Apparently she was an intern covering the protests for Egyptian TV.

Lest you think this is just targeting western female reporters, the protesters are sportingly equal-opportunity when it comes to their rape targets. They've raped up to 91 women in the past 4 days, with reports saying they attacked a grandmother and a seven-year-old child.

This kind of thing is obviously tragic and repulsive.

And yet, this has happened so many times now that it's approaching a farce.

Back in October, I reported that female reporters covering protests in Tahrir Square were getting raped. And this was already thoroughly predictable at that time. It had already previously happened here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

Are you starting to see a pattern?

What in the name of all that is holy are news organisations doing sending female reporters into Tahrir Square? I know that the modern zeitgeist is that apparent differences between the sexes are entirely due to discrimination and that women are entirely as capable of doing any job as men.

Purely for the sake of argument, let's assume that this statement is largely true.

Do you think that at some point the equality fetishists might consider that men and women reporters at least may not be equally attractive rape targets for vicious third world mobs?

Or even if this possibility didn't occur to you immediately, do you think that after, what, the hundred-and-something-th such occurrence, you might at least partly reconsider your hypothesis?

I can only think of two possible reasons why as a female reporter you'd still sign up to report on protests in Tahrir Square.

One is that you're tragically and hopelessly naive about the darker aspects of human nature.

The other is that you have been paying no attention whatsoever to what's been going on at these protests.

Both possibilities suggest that you're probably in the wrong line of work.

Social trends I do not understand

Bumper stickers that announce 'My Child is an Honor Student at [XYZ] Elementary School'.

To me, this just seems to be the height of poor manners on so many levels.

Every time I see these stickers, I wonder 'Who exactly is this for?' The random guy behind you in traffic? Why the hell would he possibly care? At least with political bumper stickers, there's the justification of the theory, however misguided, that you might change someone's vote by implicit messaging (although to even state that idea out loud is to realise how ludicrous it is.) But here, it is impossible for the owner of the sticker to not realise that the world couldn't possibly care less.

And what message exactly are you trying to impart to John Q. Citizen, even supposing they do listen? There's two obvious implications of the sticker:

1. I am very proud of my child, whom I love dearly.

2. My child is very intelligent (and yours is not).

My responses to these would be:

1. No $#!7. That's so unusual for parents! Why not just get a sticker that says 'I love my children'? What's that, you say? Because it would sound ridiculous and obvious, like boasting that you always flush the toilet?

2. You're bragging about your child's grades? Do you realise how pathetic that sounds?

The second one, which I suspect is the point of the stickers, just seems so loathesomely gauche and shameless that it's hard to know where to begin. Suppose you're the type of person who loves to mention how much money they make, or how many women they've slept with, or what type of car they drive. You reach middle age, and every interesting thing you've done is getting further and further in the past. You need to justify your insecurities to a world that is passing you by. But sadly, it is getting harder and harder to find opportunities to just insert monologues about your accomplishments into conversation like a misguided V2 rocket aimed roughly at London. People are sick of the same stories about your long-ago glory days. How might you make up for the failed dreams of your youth?

Easy! Just get into vanglorious sloganeering about your child's accomplishments! Better yet, launder it all through the a cheap, see-through veneer of parental love and adulation. Nobody will ever spot the hidden subtext.

Putting a child's A+ test on the refrigerator is a sign of pride and love that the child will see.

Putting a crude boast about the same on your car is tacky and classless.

Girl Eats McNuggets! British Plebs Outraged!

The Greek sent me this story from the UK Daily Mail about a girl who had to be transported to hospital after collapsing at a McDonalds. It turns out the girl (apparently) hasn't eaten anything except Chicken McNuggets and chips since age 2. She's now 17.

First off, this story has a decent chance of being a hoax, but let's get past that. The British tabloids understand keenly that nothing sells quite as well as feeding people's sense of righteous indignation, and this story has that in spades. So unhealthy! Where are the parents? We need to do something about this! etc. etc. etc.

But let's take the story as true for the time being, because everyone prefers their morality tales to be true.

There's two things that are remarkable about this story, and neither of them is the fact that there are parents in first world countries who will let their children eat nothing but Chicken McNuggets every day for 15 years.

Make sure you click on the story first to see if you can guess what I'm going to choose.

The first remarkable thing is this - why on earth would you agree to be interviewed and photographed for this story? Isn't it obvious that they're going to make you out to be some sort of repulsive monster, and an indication of everything that's wrong with society? I mean, even if you aren't actually sure of what you did that's so bad, here's a red hot tip. When you're Johnny Nobody and the tabloids want to interview you about anything other than saving a small child or scaring off a burglar, you should refuse. Really. You can thank me later.

There's either two possibilities here, none of them flattering. The first is that the girl was so desperate for her 15 minutes of fame that she didn't care that the paper would make her look like a weirdo. The second is that she was gullible enough to believe their silver-tongued promises that they'd write a really nice article about her, and honestly McDonalds was really to blame, and she'd be the innocent victim, etc. Uh huh.  Oh look, they've written about how I'm a hoarder of the thousands of toys I've collected, which for some reason I'm reluctant to throw away. Here's a photo of me looking creepy in front of an enormous collection of McDonalds junk kids toys.

Either way, it's not a good sign. Add this to the fact that you thought eating nothing but Chicken McNuggets for 15 years was a good idea and that's two pretty big strikes against your character.

The second remarkable thing is that given her diet over the past 15 years, how thin the girl is.  It's possible that she's an exercise freak on the side, but I'm going to go ahead and bet against that possibility, based if nothing else on her hilarious disregard for her health.I think everyone expected her to be some whale, but she's not. And when you look at the nutrition breakdown that the Daily Mail provides, you start to see why - three meals of six chicken McNuggets and small fries only clocks in at 1530 calories per day, relative to the recommended intake of 2000. They try to make a big scare out of it - 'Twice the recommended fat! Twice the recommended salt! A third of the recommended vitamin C!' - but it doesn't seem to work. Hilariously, it seems like a base of mostly chicken McNuggets and fries isn't actually that bad - her problem was not getting enough other things like calcium, iron and vitamins other than C.

Interestingly enough, this fits in with the point made by Robert Lustig that I talked about a few days ago. He goes through the McDonalds menu to find the 7 items that don't contain any fructose. Guess what three of them are? Chicken McNuggets, Fries, and Diet Coke. If you eat nothing but that, you end up sick. But apparently you don't end up especially fat.

If that isn't an advertisement for a low-sugar diet, I don't know what is.