The Polar Express

In a rapidly polarizing world, there is no tolerance for centrists, they say.  Apparently that polarity has hit opinions and experiences too.  We classify as all our experiences, all that we consume as either amazing or incredibly disappointing.  Because we go in with no or low expectations or heightened expectations.  Nothing is good enough (not that it ever was).  Like a stereotypical Asian parent judging their child's achievements, what could be okay is disappointing.  And what has been deemed acceptable by aggregate keeps sliding down the disappointment scale as time passes.  We may be the sum total of all our experiences, but the sum average of all our experiences comes up shorter than its parts (there is a sumif, some/if, if/average ifaverage excel joke in there, but I can't be bothered right now).

   Good gets moved to a different category.  If a movie is just good, it will be streamed or viewed while doing chores.  Theater is only for greatness - how dare the anticipation of greatness disappoint.  But hype follows Netflix too.  So now there is disappointment in the good to decent even there.

  They say good art or anything memorable generates discussion.  Discussion has been replaced by debate.  And for debate, we assume there needs to be polarity.  Especially if there is polarity towards one end, our middling experience compel us to pull the polarity down the other end.  Ironically, the net average of the polarities would bring it right back to where it originally belonged (good to decent.  I didn't do the math - I never do the math).  But decent for everyone is not the same as averaging out to decent.

It is like we cannot let something wither away in average-ness or mediocrity.  We will either immortalize them, or turn them into rotting zombies of what they are.  Merely good has no place in this hyped up, amped up world, always waiting to be blown away or shocked and repulsed.  Another aspect, is our inability to compartmentalize.  We cannot absorb the bad and enjoy the good.  We feel compelled to make an overall judgement, ignoring the individual aspects.  It causes a dissonance in our collective memory.  If society is a collective organism, it is suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance.

What the Frack

Overuse of a resource that upsets the landscape and changes the balance.  NOPE. This is not about fracking.  No this is not about overexposure to not immediately visible dumb tropes propagated by the marvel movies.  This is about language.  Linguistic Fracking is what I refer to as the overuse of hyperbole and exaggerations to spotlight a thing we deem important.  Not everyone, maybe not anyone else - just we.

  It is one of the bigger human follies - The greatest and grossest of our fallacies (see what I did there?) is that we assume our opinion is of the utmost importance and must be broadcast to the world at large, at once.  YouTube, Instagram but especially Twitter thrive on this basic human flaw.  And we all know what fracking does.  For the benefit of the few, the ground is rattled and shaken for everyone.  For the benefit of a few people sounding cool or important for a few seconds, language for everyone takes a hit.

  Let's extend my awesomely (another word fracked out of its mind) ludicrous (another fracked word) analogy - eventually we start borrowing words outside the original language - for emphasis and gravitas (stealing other resources when fracking has peaked).  Eventually we have several people using similarly urgent sounding language for the most mundane of statements or (horror of horrors) opinions.  All trying to fit into limited alphabets, like street hawkers on crowded streets shouting to call attention to their wares trying to drown out others selling THE EXACT SAME THING.  Hmm.  Makes me thing which is how the whole exaggeration cycle probably started.  Guess when you don't have different content, you change the presentation (shhh... that is a consultancy secret!)

Anti Word

There is a new kind of word out there.  Put the word out - about the word (cue Surfin Bird parody).  I call it the anti-word.  It is something that shape shifts and transforms like a ninja-chameleon-contortionist to mean whatever you want it to mean.  Like a comic book character invented and reinvented over the ages - until it is an amorphous template - mirroring the thoughts of the reader and creator.  But like a shitty comic book character.  A tier two nameless avenger, not a Justice League powerhouse.

Feminism is one.  Anything not rooted in male comfort is feminism.  People assume it to mean everything negative that is being propagated by "neoliberals" to curb male freedom, tagging it to all sorts of negative connotations. Speaking of Liberals - Liberal is another word taken to mean everything that is against harsh, stark, practical reality - someone easily offended and living in an idealistic bubble.  It's like a marketing term - twisted, wrangled and mangled to suit any purpose.  The idea is to cloud judgement so that there is no right interpretation and everyone can be simultaneously right and wrong.  In a post fact world, truth and facts become hypothesis. And like a guilty till proven innocent type of perverse hypothesis, until proven incorrect, it is taken to mean everything contrarian to an opposing ideology.  So liberals want to take away all freedom and be completely socialist hippie commune.  And feminists want all men to be chained and castrated.  This is what they would have you believe.

This is weird when you think about it.  Having something equally right, having something to be a hypothesis constantly in need of validation by hard facts is something liberals are more prone to do.  But that is the issue, I guess.  The facts, when you look for them aren't there having been quickly converted to opinions and hypotheses.  but broad spectrum, one size fit all cannot be words rooted in true meaning.  Hell it can barely apply to an internet broadband plan.  Which is why I often feel we need to go back to one or two syllables.  Use basic words.  when you start throwing around terms which others don't understand - but more importantly that WE OURSELVES can't explain properly - things tend to get out of hand.  Like a game of Chinese whispers played in a hurricane hit by a tsunami in a town of fishmongers.  Or like the third act of a transformers movie.  Completely out of hand, totally incomprehensible and everyone goes away with a different interpretation but similar headache.

Of Factoids and Figurines

1 - Locked and Overloaded

We live in a time of sensory overload - brain, intuition, instinct, smell, sight, sound - all overwhelming us like an old timey South Indian movie on steroids and hallucinogenics.  So we skim through - songs, news, food, articles, lists.  We skim and save for later, fooling ourselves that we will get back to it later.  Picking one thing and diving deep will trigger FOMO of other things.  So we try to engage everything.  And gain nothing.  We might as well be absorbing Taran Adarsh movie reviews for all the enrichment this skimming gives us.

And we end up with wrong notions of arts or stories or events.  So we fight and debate and argue.  Not even content to let someone hold onto their perceived value to an object/piece.  And then we re-evaluate and notice "hidden depths".  Like easter eggs discovered by chance on repeat viewings.  But subtlety may end up being a dying art.  Loud popping colors and noises are the order du jour.  Like a market place screaming for attention.  Everything out of ordinary, out of place, even out of decorum is thrown at us, all in order to be noticed.  And we do notice.  In an overloaded assault on our senses, only the improper and boorish will stand out.  At least for a while.

So overload breeds excess.  And we keep getting excessive.  And stupid.  Like bad firecrackers, like Donald Trump, like Rohit Shetty movies.  Shallow and devoid of depth, we consume the bare minimum from each so that we can move to the next and we end up becoming the lowest common denominator in all.  The standards and quality keeps getting lower.  But louder.  Always louder.


2 - Graphic Unreality

We live in between the tweets and retweets.  A glance at a feed tells us all the "facts" about our world.  Facts and figures and statistics.  That is what we reduce events, incidences and tragedies too.  Perhaps it is us turning into machines.  Perhaps a coping mechanism.  Or perhaps it is us on the verge of the next step of evolution.

This is perhaps, our way of insulating ourselves from something that could potentially overwhelm us to the point of causing irreparable damage to our brain.  So our brain switches off.  Like watching a Rohit Shetty film.  We look at things in terms of graphs and charts and numbers.  We quantify it into pockets of easily digestible information.  Flour churned into fine fluff to create an airy croissant of infographic.  Convenient that as we try to inject our machines with emotions, we are turning ourselves more and more mechanical - just to be able to function.  Outsourcing our emotionalism.

This feeling of insulation carries over when we experience other things that should feel more personal.  Art, relationships, conversations.  What could be rich evocative and operatic becomes a tinny instrumental background score churned through second grade airline speakers.  As the world keeps rapidly moving around us, we are cocooned and numbed into a lassitude as if in slow motion - like the Scorpio vs protagonist in a Rohit Shetty film.  Ultimately, having glanced at everything, we are unable to comprehend nothing.  Left with a feeling of vague emptiness that we can't quite put a finger on.  Like after having seen a Rohit Shetty film.

This will have long term implications.  We will process the data and run the numbers.  But we can't comprehend the implications.  The dissonance becomes evident as our forecasting abilities get weaker and we keep going off the mark.  Unlike a gunshot, fired by a protagonist, in... yep.  A Rohit Shetty film.


3 - Mercator in Effect

when we live life in terms of facts and figures and numbers and graphics, we tend to imagine connections where there may be none.  And tend to distort others that may exist.  Our grasp on scale and size tends to become tenuous and we make false equations.  We think of millions and billions in terms of transactional and transitional value - often an arbitrary number not very different from the other.  The scale of a thousand to million, of a million to billion is lost on us. Much like the scale of each incremental effort to move from one phase of life to the other.

Distance, cost, opportunity are all distorted.  And we end up chasing things that cost us much more in the long run, for a brief present respite.  Vision is lost in this weird in-between world of numbers and graphics.  We are unable to truly grasp the scope of things, good and bad.  

Numbers and data get tossed around, unchallenged and misunderstood.  And we often, knowingly and unknowingly, transfer our delusions to others.  We create a language around these arbitrary denominations that obfuscate all scope and scale.  And no one stops to challenge any of this.  Like how in a Star Wars galaxy of 1000 planets, all things seem to happen to only Skywalker and friends.  And we fail to realize that the jump from millionaire to billionaire is not a straight road but an exponential leap.  That the mechanics and logistics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will all go for a toss once someone with a calculator and time sits down to audit.

This so called Mercator Effect of numbers is why we tend to experience a dissonance when reality presents itself.  We seem oddly perplexed when the actual status of affairs don't match the conclusions we arrive at.  And it doesn't help that needless numbers like frame rates, hertz and frequency, refresh rates, upload speeds are thrown into the mix to further confound us.  I guess this is why they keep asking you to shoot for the starts.  They probably have the distance and scale wrong in their head. 

MetaCritical Post on Rotten Perspectives

History, they say, is written by the winners.  When I say written, I mean the original writing.  I am not talking about the bad rewrite/remix/remake of the original.  That is a whole different story (see what I did there?).  Rewritten history is like a lazy cash grab revisionist effort on a classic movie (when you combine the two, it's called pulling a Padmavat).  Anyway, so History.  Winner's perspective.  Or at the very least, the survivor's perspective.

While our history is being revised or messed with though, spare a thought for our present.  Our present is also a narrative that is being chronicled.  And the perspective being given to it matters.  A lot of our most historic and landmark judgments are being made, for better or for worse (usually for worse, but depends, as will be highlighted further, on who you ask), by a small group of homogeneous individuals.  I am of course, referring to movie reviews.  Oh, and I guess it applies to the highest courts of law in all the countries as well.

They bring a certain perspective.  A very specific, certain perspective, common to each or most of them. It's like ordering an assorted platter of steamed plain paneer, and steamed plain paneer, with steamed plain paneer and more steamed plain paneer. It's not just about documentation of the present.  Most times, they also have future implications.  By validating that which is comfortable to them, and often only them, they ensure that more such trends are prevalent.  Whether they be actions, laws, or artistic creations.

And so the marginalized come up with their own art forms.  Which is often great, as it gives them a speaking voice.  But there can often be an exclusion from true inclusion (Yes, I type the way Nolan directs).  Meanwhile, the various avenues of propriety and political correctness keep getting narrower, limiting the already narrow perspective that the evaluators (Auto-correct tells me that is not a word) bring (like wearing screen darkening 3D glasses to a shaky cam, low lit movie).  A lot of this is known.  And so doubts and aspersions are cast on the evaluation itself.  These are quite often justified.  But a lot of mediocre voices take advantage of this crises, pinning their poor reception and fallacy of the evaluation itself (I say evaluate and voices and art forms - But I'm thinking movies, reviews and Rotten Tomatoes).  Mediocrity also creeps into the marginalized art form.  But for those starved of seeing their own reflection, they gobble those up.  So we end up with massive over-hyped and decidedly mediocre efforts capturing the collective zeitgeist.

This post itself proves the point against limited perspective - I am unable to muster viewpoints across different platforms and am filtering everything through a movies and reviews lens.  I guess,the point I am really trying to make is, can we make it so that we have fewer of those horrendous Tyler Perry Madea movies?

Ultra-High Definition Resolutions

New Year trends to bring in a lot of resolve.   A lot of resolutions.  And a lot of quitting.  Usually the good kind.  But there are other kinds of quitting.  Where we tend to swear off something completely.  If you look at life like binaries, it’s shutting off one avenue completely, which could lead to near-infinite more possibilities.  In many cases it is justified.  There is logic and rationale behind it.  In some cases, a little more evaluation is required.

We tend to shut things off completely.  Out of anger, outrage, indignation, or it’s vocal and vehement support by opposing ideologies.  The more rabble-rousing done in favor of something particular, the more vehement is the opposition for it, by those who oppose the rabble-rousers themselves (Think about it, the shriller the alarm clock, the more likely we are to clock it with a sledgehammer).  And so we let other fools decide our paths for us (much like we let RottenTomatoes dictate our movie viewing).

We need to take a more informed call.  Not the ill-informed one we tend to make.  Learn about something before swearing it off completely.  We don’t need to burn ourselves to know that we need to avoid fire.  I don’t believe in the experience everything once mantra.  But we sure as hell need to know what the deal with Fire is.  Like when you googled to find out what the deal with Arcade Fire was (I know you did).

Here's a Little Tip

2017 was a year the world collectively stumbled.  In my opinion.  The stumble was probably a collective over-tipping.  A lot of things reached a tipping point, and then toppled over.  Crossing the tipping point, in socioeconomic terms has always assumed to be a good thing.  Thanks for nothing, Malcom Gladwell.  Tipping over, if physics has taught us anything, can be a frustrating phenomenon.  Specially when the key is moderation.  And Balance.  You don’t hear of shoes branded as New Tipping-Over.  Tipping over also occurs in innovation and gravitas, in movements and revolutions.  Rebellion when overdone, becomes whining.  Opinions, when overstated become trolling.  Not every gap needs to be filled.  We aren’t motorcycle riders in Hyderabad after all.  Silence and moments to absorb are essential.  As Claude Debussy (no clue, just googled his name) stated:  Music is the silence between the notes.  A constant cacophony like tinnitus ringing in your ears will eventually get tuned out.  

This leads to supposed “improvement” where things didn’t need them.  Moviepasses, higher resolution on tinier screens (a perfect metaphor for the digital age ego), Juicero, sleeping tents with legs etc.  The collective cyclic redundancy in shiny packaging was as if the world itself was a simulation sponsored by Apple.

The point of it all being, treat things like you’re making a smoothie.  Know what to add, know when to crank it up, but also know when to stop.  Not everything needs an over-saturated filter.  Flavor over spice.  Lucknowi Biryani over Hyderabadi Biryani.  Seasoning over dousing.  Stepping onto the treadmill is an important step.  But know when to get off, so you can go through the day and come back to step on again.  We need to remember not to let the things driving a better life to become or overtake life itself.  If we just took some time to step back and take in the larger view, there are other things that deserve some attention compared to the laser-like focus we tend to give a few particular things.  In 2018, be like a little master, a little Jack.

Lazo-pallooza

Laziness can inspire great inventions they say.  Shortcuts around mundane tasks, routes previously unimaginable and what not.  Great inventions that benefit everyone in the long run.  But not everyone has a Eureka! moment.  Some people just jump out in the privacy of their own bathroom, keeping their lightbulb idea to themselves.  The 'selfish' inspiration.  The kind that has given rise to a new kind of economy.

This kind of laziness hinges on the laziness of others.  It capitalizes on the herd mentality that brings people into the same cattle ranch, like good cattle (good behavior good, not beef good obviously!) who will stay there as long as they get something even absolutely bland, banal, mundane and milquetoast to munch on.

And so this trend of mediocre "entertainment" via lazy videos, memes, reviews, even reactions.  Yes, reactions to products, services and even other videos.  Their unsolicited inexpert stamp of approval.  And the only criteria to success is view count and eyeballs.  Like lazy toads we are fed one mediocre video, short enough to hold our attention, after the other.  They thrive because we are too lazy to navigate away to another attempt at potential mediocrity.  Or at best, average and mediocre stuff sandwiched between passable stuff stretched too far apart like some record setting sandwich with breads like estranged cousins.  Or like the subprime debts sandwiched between a few good ones to form a hideous imitation of a Collateralized Debt Obligation (smartypant reference, FTW!)

This entertainment constantly keeps setting the entry barrier lower and lower, and keeps our expectations grounded (always a good lesson for the real world).  No wonder then, we all turn into cynics.  This is a service industry based on entertainment and not joy.  Contrary to what we may have thought, joy and entertainment are not synonymous.  Delivering joy is a parameter and benchmark for the highest echelons of service providing industry.  Entertainment, well you could put Akshay Kumar and a dog together for 2.5 hours and call it that.  Literally.

That's what happens when you turn something to a 24 hour cycle.  Be it work, news, food or entertainment.  If it has to be non stop, the quality will suffer.  So in our vulnerable state after an extended work day, we have our guard down and laziness up for sub quality entertainment and sub quality food, occasionally flipping through "news" while completely unaware of and unaffected by important EVENTS.