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This is why I read men's magazines.
A little over a week ago I wrote a post explaining why Neko Case is most awesome and why you should listen to her stuff. I don't think too many people saw it at first, which is my fault for posting it late on a Thursday evening. What bugs me isn't that people didn't see it at first, but that no one seemed to want to listen to it. I'm pretty sure that's because I wasn't speaking with the proper fandom vernacular - that is, bouncing off the walls and screaming and moaning, and generally not communicating very well. When I want someone to like something, I do my best to figure out why they'd like it, and explain that to them.
Turns out I'm still learning how to speak to people. It's still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that my methods of communication are fundamentally different from those of everyone else on the planet. Sometimes I think I should be used to that by now. When I wrote that post, I did it while thinking, "God, I hate it when people run around screaming like scared rabbits, if someone wants me to like something they should tell me why." So I did my best to describe what makes Neko Case so fantastic and wrote a post that, for me, felt like I was buckling at the knees and moaning in ecstasy the way some grown men have done at the mention of Doctor Who - and the post apparently came off as sedate and restrained. I should've just linked to a bunch of her songs and introduced them by saying, "Neko Case is awesome, and you'll be happier for listening to her."
What I should have said to myself before writing the post was something close to, "People actually like it when you can't speak because you're so happy. Write some more like that."
It would have worked, except I can't put myself in that space because I hate it so much when other people get there.
When other people are there, they're almost never telling me why I'd like something, or why it'd be great, or what makes it the most joyful deconstruction of common gender tropes this side of paradise or something. They're yelling and screaming that it makes them happy, and they're almost never using complete sentences or correct grammar. And most of the time, I can smile and yell along with them: they're yelling and shouting their joy to everyone to declare it, and that makes it easy for me to go along with them. I've done my share of yelling in delight myself. It's still confusing, especially if I don't have an emotional or intellectual connection to the text in question, but it's something I can sympathize with.
The cases that get under my skin are the times when people are yelling and shouting and insisting I'd like something without telling me why. Just that I'd like it. Or maybe they're saying why I'd like it because of why they like it, why they responded to something, not why someone else that doesn't live in their head would like it. It doesn't feel like an expression of joy: it feels like someone trying to convince me to like something without mentioning anything I'd enjoy about it. It's using an emotional vocabulary to communicate to someone using a more intellectual one. Not that one is better or worse than the other; more that it's too difficult to carry on a conversation between the two of those for me to bother trying, and I've just about given up on trying with face-to-face conversations when they come up. It's especially trying online - I'd been led to believe that the process of typing things out leads to people taking the time to consider what they want to say and end up using complete sentences. Turns out I was wrong about that.
Take the recent miniseries Sherlock. I plan on watching it once I'm done with the third season of Eureka. I've got two reasons to watch it: one, an offline friend of mine saw it already and I want to be a part of that conversation with her, and two, Martin Freeman who was naked in Love Actually and Arthur Dent in the Hollywood adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy plays Watson. And that's it. It took weeks for anyone to mention Freeman to me. Instead, all people seemed to talk about was...nothing. There wasn't much talk at all, just a lot of screaming. Which had me leaving the scene for a good long while. There didn't seem to be a reason to watch the show, much less listen to someone yell about it.
This can make it difficult if there's actual discussion or dialogue situated in between all the screaming - sometimes I go back and check and find myself surprised to see it's there. But I know that almost all the time, it's not present, so I tend not to bother. There's nothing there for me to hear, respond to, make sense of, understand, engage with. It's just a lot of noise and confusion. I end up getting confused at best and deeply angry at worst - for example, wondering why people are emphasizing the porn and not talking about the characters, the plot, the story itself, maybe the joyful deconstruction of gender tropes. Nothing else. And I just can't get myself there.
I know I'm not the single person in the audience that's trying to be reached. If I've got other things to do and worry about, I tend to be able to pass on by. But when I can't, this utter lack of a shared vocabulary burrows right under my skin - and the fact that I'm aware that someone who doesn't know me from Eve and has never spoken to me personally isn't trying to tell me anything make it even worse. Of course, if someone is doing the equivalent of shoving a book into my hands and swearing it'll change my life, all I can do is smile politely and think about running off to shower and get clean. Or if someone insists I'll love a movie without telling me anything about the content beyond what I could pick up from the posters in the theater lobby, all I want to do is punch them and run away. I'd have done that more in middle school if I'd started weightlifting earlier.
Someone giving me a strongly-plotted romance between two adults to read when I ask for a book that's "rich and tasty", that's good. Someone else suggesting a story because it's got a different perspective on an old situation or it's got a smart take on a character I like, that's good too. But these are few and far between, and so many times I'm left asking, "Okay, so you like it - and then? And then? Why? What are you trying to tell me?" And it's rare that I can get an answer, because it's rare that question gets asked. So it's common I'm left out of the conversation, and some days I'm worse at dealing with that than others.
And Neko Case really is that awesome, and you should listen to her, and I can reupload anything if anyone wants something.
Turns out I'm still learning how to speak to people. It's still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that my methods of communication are fundamentally different from those of everyone else on the planet. Sometimes I think I should be used to that by now. When I wrote that post, I did it while thinking, "God, I hate it when people run around screaming like scared rabbits, if someone wants me to like something they should tell me why." So I did my best to describe what makes Neko Case so fantastic and wrote a post that, for me, felt like I was buckling at the knees and moaning in ecstasy the way some grown men have done at the mention of Doctor Who - and the post apparently came off as sedate and restrained. I should've just linked to a bunch of her songs and introduced them by saying, "Neko Case is awesome, and you'll be happier for listening to her."
What I should have said to myself before writing the post was something close to, "People actually like it when you can't speak because you're so happy. Write some more like that."
It would have worked, except I can't put myself in that space because I hate it so much when other people get there.
When other people are there, they're almost never telling me why I'd like something, or why it'd be great, or what makes it the most joyful deconstruction of common gender tropes this side of paradise or something. They're yelling and screaming that it makes them happy, and they're almost never using complete sentences or correct grammar. And most of the time, I can smile and yell along with them: they're yelling and shouting their joy to everyone to declare it, and that makes it easy for me to go along with them. I've done my share of yelling in delight myself. It's still confusing, especially if I don't have an emotional or intellectual connection to the text in question, but it's something I can sympathize with.
The cases that get under my skin are the times when people are yelling and shouting and insisting I'd like something without telling me why. Just that I'd like it. Or maybe they're saying why I'd like it because of why they like it, why they responded to something, not why someone else that doesn't live in their head would like it. It doesn't feel like an expression of joy: it feels like someone trying to convince me to like something without mentioning anything I'd enjoy about it. It's using an emotional vocabulary to communicate to someone using a more intellectual one. Not that one is better or worse than the other; more that it's too difficult to carry on a conversation between the two of those for me to bother trying, and I've just about given up on trying with face-to-face conversations when they come up. It's especially trying online - I'd been led to believe that the process of typing things out leads to people taking the time to consider what they want to say and end up using complete sentences. Turns out I was wrong about that.
Take the recent miniseries Sherlock. I plan on watching it once I'm done with the third season of Eureka. I've got two reasons to watch it: one, an offline friend of mine saw it already and I want to be a part of that conversation with her, and two, Martin Freeman who was naked in Love Actually and Arthur Dent in the Hollywood adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy plays Watson. And that's it. It took weeks for anyone to mention Freeman to me. Instead, all people seemed to talk about was...nothing. There wasn't much talk at all, just a lot of screaming. Which had me leaving the scene for a good long while. There didn't seem to be a reason to watch the show, much less listen to someone yell about it.
This can make it difficult if there's actual discussion or dialogue situated in between all the screaming - sometimes I go back and check and find myself surprised to see it's there. But I know that almost all the time, it's not present, so I tend not to bother. There's nothing there for me to hear, respond to, make sense of, understand, engage with. It's just a lot of noise and confusion. I end up getting confused at best and deeply angry at worst - for example, wondering why people are emphasizing the porn and not talking about the characters, the plot, the story itself, maybe the joyful deconstruction of gender tropes. Nothing else. And I just can't get myself there.
I know I'm not the single person in the audience that's trying to be reached. If I've got other things to do and worry about, I tend to be able to pass on by. But when I can't, this utter lack of a shared vocabulary burrows right under my skin - and the fact that I'm aware that someone who doesn't know me from Eve and has never spoken to me personally isn't trying to tell me anything make it even worse. Of course, if someone is doing the equivalent of shoving a book into my hands and swearing it'll change my life, all I can do is smile politely and think about running off to shower and get clean. Or if someone insists I'll love a movie without telling me anything about the content beyond what I could pick up from the posters in the theater lobby, all I want to do is punch them and run away. I'd have done that more in middle school if I'd started weightlifting earlier.
Someone giving me a strongly-plotted romance between two adults to read when I ask for a book that's "rich and tasty", that's good. Someone else suggesting a story because it's got a different perspective on an old situation or it's got a smart take on a character I like, that's good too. But these are few and far between, and so many times I'm left asking, "Okay, so you like it - and then? And then? Why? What are you trying to tell me?" And it's rare that I can get an answer, because it's rare that question gets asked. So it's common I'm left out of the conversation, and some days I'm worse at dealing with that than others.
And Neko Case really is that awesome, and you should listen to her, and I can reupload anything if anyone wants something.
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