Dynamic Hypocrisy

We’re in this strange middle ground of almost omni-surveillance. Not saying that the ideal is that. But in these early days of social sharing, the limited bandwidth of which we have — we choose to transmit the curated high moments.

But to extend the thought experiment, say a world where there’s enough bandwidth to transmit radical transparency. Then instead of just a snapshot of big moments. We would collectively also have a picture of people just straight chillin’ in addition to.

It would paint a more accurate picture of the state of things.

We have lag indicators in overall consumption trends and tracking the economy, but it’s more the tracks of an animal rather than the deer itself. Or in the arts and music, is the mood sullen or full of pop music?

But to get a full resolution snapshot of people just pretty content laying on the couch, would probably lower the general angst and anxiety of this current state where everyone else seems to be having a better time than you.

Videogames have been in my life since I was kid starting with the Gameboy and Super Nintendo. I’ve invested a lot of hours in playing, reading, and talking about them. I have entire friendships that started with a controller.

And yet these days, I play cribbage on my phone.

Maybe part of that is growing up into a career and life that doesn’t revolve about videogames.

But also part of it is that I think a lot of games are in the uncanny valley for me. The ability for a game to replicate realistic landscapes and worlds is incredible if I think back to those 16-bit days and all the blocky pixels.

And yet the closer they get to reality, the more unsatisfying and detached I get.

I think about my 10th grade English teacher. Who was known for being harsh. And she had an interesting grading philosophy. If you shoot for the B, she’ll grade you sorta whatever. But if you shoot for the A, then she’s grading you on a whole another caliber.

I think I’m the same way for “realistic” games. If you’re closer to an abstract end of things then it’s kind of like cartoons for me, you’re allowed to certain amount of slack to build your universe and get me involved.

But if you start getting closer to what reality is then I just expect so much more.

I’m watching a “Let’s Play” of someone playing a brand new AAA top-tier game released, and it’s one of those “kill all the things” games. It’s known for its high-level of difficulty and creative bosses.

So I’m watching this great set up of the hero having to defeat mounted knight on a horse. And you can slash your sword, and jump around with a rope. It’s great mechanics, but I’m just not into it.

Why?

It’s one “health bar” for both the knight and the horse. Slashing the horse or the knight does collective damage to this one magical metric of health. And the knight never falls off. Slashing the knight’s neck or horse’s butt has the same effect.

Now to the what I grew up on, that’s fine. Mario jumping on Bowser’s head or throwing a turtle at him does the same time — sure why not.

But when you make the creative decision to be closer to reality than to cartoon physics…my brain switches expectations. I hold Jack Kirby to a different set of criteria than Vermeer. And when it comes to Alex Ross, then I put him closer to Vermeer’s expectations than the former.

As a extension of the thought, but looking at the other end of the spectrum I played Super Mario Odyssey when it came on the Switch. And I was enthralled. Not because of nostalgia because truth be told I suck at platforms, and never even could finish Super Mario World. But I think Nintendo intuitively knows the limits of its resources and its technology. From the fluidity of the movements to the physics and dynamics that feel good to play in.

It made me think of the recent film of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” as compared to 1) Toy Story and to say any cutscene in a video game where characters are talking. Spider-man the film knew itself so well in terms of a visual coherency but to play with its medium. It’s a 2-D projection onto a large flat wall. And knowing that, it made confident odes and homages to its history with using Kirby dots and offset registrations as composition tools. Which is a markedly advanced and complex usage from the early days of Toy Story. But Toy Story did the extraordinary thing of both pushing the limits of rendering technology of the day, but by pushing it — it knew its boundaries like Nintendo. Pixar knew skin and water and fur were hard to do well, so hence plastic toys.

Meanwhile, the gulf between a video game dialogue cut scene and any two human actors in a scene is so wide, that for me the strength of that cut scene relies heavily on the player being invested into the game already and the momentum of whatever happened before it. The limits of facial expression and emoting limits the range of characters to basically “anti-heroes who bottle up their feelings.” Which for this era is still the primary trope protagonist.

Anyways, I both marvel and expect more simultaneously for the medium of videogames.

By high school, I’ve never gone to a concert. By college graduation, maybe two? By 30, I had been to hundred.

By all accounts, I wouldn’t have suspected concert shows to be a thing. I was a quiet unassuming kid growing up. More into video games than anything.

I never really stopped to think why I was going to so many. First it was probably to go with friends. Then see a band that I found on the radio. For awhile, I was into photography and it was really beautiful and kinetic to capture. Sometimes I danced, sometimes I didn’t.

At this point, I still go more than most, but in some ways, got more picky. Not because my tastes narrowed, or got more disdainful.

Not at all, but I realized that I really want to be in a place with good vibes.

Years ago, I went to see this band called the Dodos. They played this tiny venue in St. Paul, Minnesota called the Turf Club. It was spectacular. They went on musical tangents, switching instruments, getting themselves and the place all sweaty. And there were maybe dozens of people? It was right before they even got indie radio play. So everyone there were people who stumbled onto them, and loved them enough to drive over to this tiny bar.

Then a few month passed, and the band were actually coming back to play in the city. This time they were at the Cedar Cultural Center. Not the biggest, but much bigger than the Turf Club. It could fit hundreds instead of dozens. And I was stoked to see them again.

That was until I saw them again. The band was still good. But the crowd was terrible. At this point, they were getting noticed. Which is great, so the crowd was bigger but it was at an awkward turning point. The number of people who really enjoyed them were probably still just dozens, but now there also people liked them or maybe one or two songs. Which are fine. That doesn’t ruin the vibe. But what I realized was everyone else. The sorts who went because their friends wanted to. So those people would chatter the whole time, or check their phones. Bad vibes. Or the people who really only liked one song, and were grumpy until that one song was played. More bad vibes.

So with the same band in the span of months resulted in one of my favorite concerts I’ve been to, and also one of the worst concerts I’ve been to too.

So I’m pickier now, but it’s all about the vibes. Billy Joel in a stadium is fine because Billy Joel is what Billy Joel is in this era. But when I saw the Arctic Monkeys in stadium, it only made me wish I had been in those London clubs when they were just starting out.

But catching the Bad Bad Hats at the Williamsburg Hall of Music. Where they slowly won over the crowd with awkward story-telling. Or NAO at Terminal 5, and getting see her get the crowd that she’s been working so hard for? Spectacular.

My friend reminded me recently that even professional creatives suffer from the anxiety of getting started.

The blank page is intimidating. I’m not the first one to ever write about this, or to give solutions.

But for me, it’s a topic worth reminding myself of because it happens so often that I forget that I’m doing it. It rears its head in the form of getting distracted, or making excuses with the auspices of research or letting it stew.

Before I know it, days or weeks go by, and I haven’t touched it. And then usually…it dies. It withers under the weight of having to exist, and to exist as a form good enough to the time I spent avoiding. It dies under the dark speculation in my head that nobody will like it.

So the blank remains blank.

But I think about my first actually decent car in my adulthood. It was pure white, and drove great. But one day in Minnesota, I was backing up from a driveway, and misjudged a low snow bank behind me. So I hit it, but it’s just snow so I didn’t think much of it. Up until I looked, and realized I cracked my bumper. I felt so terrible. I barely had it for months, and I already damaged it. Worst still, my parents had helped with money, so I felt like I disappointed them too.

But after I chilled out a bit. I realized it was fine. That as long I changed the oil, and checked the tires–the car was beastly. During the ten years I drove it, I took it around the country, banged it some more, and even had it try to survive LA traffic for two years. It was valuable to me, but no longer precious.

So that’s what I do now to new sketchbooks and new blank pages. I crash my pencil into it, and mark it up. It’s just paper. It’s fine. I just need to chill out.

We lament how bland the music is today. Too commercial, too monotonous, too manufactured.

But say for a moment, we deleted all of those. So all we’re left with are the “good ones.”

At which point, do we let anyone else write more songs? Even if they’re good?

What would that mean? Could it be another love song?

Or would that be too derivative? Yet another long song.

What would make it original enough? We already have songs about young love, crushes, eternal love, unrequited love, finding love, losing love, finding love again, and so on.

So why would we let the 14-year old in her bedroom waste her time writing one? Why wouldn’t we just email her a link to a couple great ones already written? Isn’t that good enough for her?

What I love about the name of my blog is that true to my spirit. My hypocrisy is ever-changing and fickle.

While writing the last post, I was thinking it wasn’t the right angle or tone that I was feeling.

I wanted to speak more on the tension and dourness that permeates the whole lead-up. And the very notion of a “wrong” choice.

Food poisoning is a bad thing. Feeling cheated out of your money is a bad thing.

But in looking so hard for the correct, or worse perfect, experience, I wonder how much we lose in getting our own personal experience or story out of it?

I don’t how often I’ll talk about the 18 hours of vomiting in Ho Chi Ming City as opposed to the pitch-perfect taco in Mexico City. But I don’t dismiss either experience. And both were the result of passing through a place, and giving it a shot. It was in the spirit of “why the fuck not?” and it feels much more satisfying in the grand scheme of things.

I’m in one of the food capitals of the world, and I want to start going to more bad restaurants. Not trying to be an iconoclast, but there seems to be something lost in this particular tech era.

Not trying to be a Yelp luddite either, but there’s something missing in our Google-filled searches for five stars and well-photographed dishes.

Beyond FOMO, there’s a huge tension to not pick the wrong restaurant, and then we’re there–there’s a stress to not pick the wrong dish. How foolish would we be if we didn’t order the famed duck at said French restaurant?

What a disaster it would be.

But I’ve been finding it’s more fun to walk into a place because I just happened to walk by it. It’s been more fun to think about what mood I’m in, and match it up to the menu. It’s also been more fun to be go home with the feeling that the meal was surprisingly “alright.” Or “fantastic” or “terrible.”

My own rebuttal is that I get to exercise great privilege in what I choose to eat. A crazy expensive meal is something that gives me pause, but not necessarily a thing I have to save up for in-lieu of other things.

I just remembered that the top 100 charts would differ from country to country. Of course, Japan has a lot of Japanese artists singing Japanese songs. Likewise with Korea and its K-Pop machine. And so on with Germany, China, Australia, etc.

But are they as different as we would think?

At the time of writing this, Carly Rae Jepsen’s new single in #67 on Japan’s Top 100. While Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s “Shallow” single is #20 on Mexico’s. Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” is scattered throughout the charts.

So the thought experiment is this: is there a moment in time when all the charts will be roughly the same simultaneously?

If never, then why not? And if so, what does that mean for the spread of culture, and the scale of which we release media and creative projects?

I could be wrong about how I’ve been answering this question, but it feels right to me.

Designers often ask me “Do I need to know how to code?”

And I started answering with an analogy: “If you were going to Spain for a vacation, how much Spanish should you learn? More than “hello?” Or enough to read Don Quixote in its original form?”

Somewhere in between, right? Probably enough to order a taxi, or read a menu. But probably not enough to decipher literature.

If you find that you love it, then by all means go for the gusto.

But when you’re at the table, and you’re responsible for delivering designs and ideas to your developer, knowing enough to talk to them coherently and to roughly understand why they’re say “no” or ask questions is a great start.

For example, if they say “This is really difficult to do because how responsiveness and CSS works from desktop to phones.” You don’t have to imagine all the Matrix in your mind, but roughly knowing that they’re referring to media queries is a start. And you can respond with asking more pointed questions of where your design is causing issues. Instead of assuming they just don’t want to do it, or that they hate your design.

A thought experiment I think about is what a society looks like with a brain that is scaled to the complexity of our world.

I keep imagining a chip in our brain that lets us google immediately. Effectively enlarging our working memory to scale of the global happenings and past.

But it also means a super-layer (and importantly, trusting a super-layer) to sort and comprehend that effectively that’s “true” to our matrix of values. But what that mean when we all collectively share all experiences and moments?

Do we all coalesce towards the same answer, or do we still diverge? I would imagine the collective would agree towards the latter as innovation depends on that sort.

Do we allow for interior thought, for things not shared to the collective? How would that be judged?

In one scenario, we could Minority Report and we all could collectively stop someone from committing a crime because we would all “sense” their actions as they thought them.

Or do we allow for the crime to occur, but collectively judge and divine punishment?

Given access to all knowledge and experience, would that mean perfect empathy?

Would child pedophilia even happen as everyone would instinctively “know” and “feel” the past experiences of victims? Would that be deterrent?

What would Tinder be like with perfect information? Could it/us find complimentary partners for whatever we needed at the moment? If I was lustful, could I be matched with others of which we were matched in attraction and mood? And would it end cleanly as we changed moods or changed our minds?

In many ways, this is a fool’s errand of a thought experiment because there’s too many variables changed. But it still fascinates me still.