I must wear a default look of disgust. The other day when dropping off some dry cleaning I managed to anger the lady who ran the place - without saying a word. She was explaining that the item to be cleaned didn't have any care instructions sewn into it. None of the usual hieroglyphs that indicate what level of cleaning torture can be withstood before it all falls apart. Without these, she explained, the garment would have to be cleaned at my own risk. Then she took to rage as she angrily chided me for not believing her and saying that any dry cleaners would act the same. I still hadn't said a thing. I asked why she was so upset and she said that I looked at her with disgust. So I need a new face, or at the very least a new default expression. What I thought was: patiently listening, while showing interest; turned out to be an ugly visage of contempt. That's not good.
You see it's all about perception. We go about the world with knowledge of our true intentions, sometimes the outcomes are not those we expected nor intended, but we are often judged by others who see the effect of our actions as intention. We should never judge another on our perception but try to understand their intention.
That said you have to accept how you've affected others - even if unintentionally. So, like I say, I need a new expression.
Saturday 11 June 2011
Twitter it's ok, nobody can hear you
Twitter. It's like Eastenders. It looks tatty. The content is deplorable. It's reason for existing questionable. Yet in a gossipy kind of way its oddly addictive.
What's wrong: lists of micro-blogs which people try to use as conversations, largely to try to be in-touch with some celebrity. Yet you can't make sense of what statement triggered which reply.
What's it for: (a) self promotion; (b) confirmation that you've connected with an audience. It's also just a great way to see who likes you. Most famous users will find themselves followed by thousands. For others its kind of like buying a 60GB iPod and finding out you've only got 10GB of music. All those years building a music library, thinking it was impressive and only to find out its insignificant.
Who it works best for: media types with things to promote and egos to bolster. Or to put in another way creative people who need to get their output noticed.
Why it's so successful: it's used by people in the public eye which gets it noticed. Plus the followers feel in-touch with their heroes.
It's so odd watching successful people with interesting day jobs tweeting endlessly throughout the day. I mean I'm a boring bastard with nothing happening in my life but you'd think Graham Linehan would have something better to do, wouldn't you?
Odd too that these 'famous' people don't seem to hold with private messaging systems, like MSN, as they're much happier holding open conversations with each other over the interwebs. Such as this following conversation between two funny female comedians and frequent Radio 4 botherers:
@SusanCalman would you like to go out Friday?
@SarahMillican75 sure. fun will be our middle names.
It's this eavesdropping on conversations that makes it the digital equivalent of holding a glass up to the wall to hear the neighbours, only now your neighbours are much more interesting people.
You can even attempt to shout back at your online neighbours. Tweet a little reply. Well, they call it a reply but it's just another entry in your own personal timeline. It might appear in the person's timeline whose tweet you're replying to. But that all depends on their filters. Anyway they won't be able to make sense of it and since they'll get 60 tweets a second the chances are they won't notice it.
You see your glass is pressed up against the walls of so many neighbours that you can't tell whose talking to who and if you try to get a word in they can't hear you above their own noise.
But it is a great place for mutual agreement and that sort of positive reinforcement can be quite refreshing, I imagine, particularly for people who get a regular mauling in the public media. Consider the excitement of discovering that your every utterance is meeting with the instant approval of people happy to call themselves your followers.
"I love coco."
"You're so right, I love it too. I'm glad you exist. Please, please keep on existing."
Me too. I'm glad they all exist. I'm glad twitter exists. I'm loving it.
What's wrong: lists of micro-blogs which people try to use as conversations, largely to try to be in-touch with some celebrity. Yet you can't make sense of what statement triggered which reply.
What's it for: (a) self promotion; (b) confirmation that you've connected with an audience. It's also just a great way to see who likes you. Most famous users will find themselves followed by thousands. For others its kind of like buying a 60GB iPod and finding out you've only got 10GB of music. All those years building a music library, thinking it was impressive and only to find out its insignificant.
Who it works best for: media types with things to promote and egos to bolster. Or to put in another way creative people who need to get their output noticed.
Why it's so successful: it's used by people in the public eye which gets it noticed. Plus the followers feel in-touch with their heroes.
It's so odd watching successful people with interesting day jobs tweeting endlessly throughout the day. I mean I'm a boring bastard with nothing happening in my life but you'd think Graham Linehan would have something better to do, wouldn't you?
Odd too that these 'famous' people don't seem to hold with private messaging systems, like MSN, as they're much happier holding open conversations with each other over the interwebs. Such as this following conversation between two funny female comedians and frequent Radio 4 botherers:
@SusanCalman would you like to go out Friday?
@SarahMillican75 sure. fun will be our middle names.
It's this eavesdropping on conversations that makes it the digital equivalent of holding a glass up to the wall to hear the neighbours, only now your neighbours are much more interesting people.
You can even attempt to shout back at your online neighbours. Tweet a little reply. Well, they call it a reply but it's just another entry in your own personal timeline. It might appear in the person's timeline whose tweet you're replying to. But that all depends on their filters. Anyway they won't be able to make sense of it and since they'll get 60 tweets a second the chances are they won't notice it.
You see your glass is pressed up against the walls of so many neighbours that you can't tell whose talking to who and if you try to get a word in they can't hear you above their own noise.
But it is a great place for mutual agreement and that sort of positive reinforcement can be quite refreshing, I imagine, particularly for people who get a regular mauling in the public media. Consider the excitement of discovering that your every utterance is meeting with the instant approval of people happy to call themselves your followers.
"I love coco."
"You're so right, I love it too. I'm glad you exist. Please, please keep on existing."
Me too. I'm glad they all exist. I'm glad twitter exists. I'm loving it.
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