New Testingstan

you know how guys like fattie slike to make huge wikis about all the daft shit in various properties to the extent of making pages that are literally blow by blow descriptions of everthing that happens

how is it that the level of actual analysis is so terrible? i don't just mean technical (BEAM RIFLES EQUIVALENT TO BATTLESHIP GUNS BECAUSE A GUY WHO SAW A MULTI-MEGATON REACTOR COOK OFF PANICKED) i mean thematic

where the synopsis of the plot basically totally misses the core elements of that plot in preference of just regurgitating endless quotes

like i know wikis are bad and shit

but if you read a wiki by obsessed fans you'd expect someone to have some actual understanding of the shit they're obsessed with y'know???

i dont think thats relevant

'm talking about people who can obsess over something and watch it all the time etc etc etc

and yet not actually see what they're looking at beyond the most superficial level

they didn't do literature in high school

but when you watch something a bunch

what are you doing if you're not exploring layers of meaning

is it just white noise or something

memorising quotes

duh

maybe they just have defective personalities explain why they tend to aggregate in certain areas with their ilk

thejester wrote:memorising quotes

duh

but this is what i don't get

like they are happy to parrot shit from whatever bullshit they're watching

but if you say

waht do you think this part of the show is saying about duty and obligation and how this can be a positive or a negative thing

they're just like

OMG TEH PEWS AND THE MAN WAS BAD

I think that there are several reasons here

one is that it's quite possible to get a high school education in america w/o ever developing the tools necessary to extract meaning beyond the broadly didactic. this may well be a brain problem. search tvtropes for "aesop" to see evidence for this point

the more important to my mind is that most nerds involved w/these sorts of things actively hate literature and thus resist anything that smacks of't, especially meaning

typin' this from a kindle 4 so further evidence and blather will have to wait a bit but look at lotr discussions online for an example

[unverified?]

[original research?]

[citation needed]

starku wrote:

thejester wrote:memorising quotes

duh

but this is what i don't get

like they are happy to parrot shit from whatever bullshit they're watching

but if you say

waht do you think this part of the show is saying about duty and obligation and how this can be a positive or a negative thing

they're just like

OMG TEH PEWS AND THE MAN WAS BAD

because they're not thinking critically about the material they're watching, because a lot of people just passively consume a lot of entertainment and value material that's safe and comfortable
(bonus question: why do people listen to a song multiple times?)

why do people spend time arranging a bunch of meaningless information on wikis? fuck man, why do people ever learn sports statistics? how many people memorize shakespeare quotes without being able to hold a meaningful discussion about the plays they're from? i don't know what brain mechanism encourages that behavior, but i'll admit i don't spend a lot of time pondering why some people think differently from others.

u- okay, but there's generally something wrong/mockable about people who memorize sports statistics without knowing anything about the game- and that's the closest equivalent to this behavior. if somebody (a neurotypical somebody) memorized hockey statistics without knowing what checking was, wouldn't you laugh?

anyways, continuing on, this hostility is prevalent even in the works of published genre authors, more commonly in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. not as much in the text, but in introductions and the like, there's plenty of ripping on english lit

i think this is because genre lit is generally dismissed from literature as a whole, for very good reasons that actually don't suggest inferiority on the part of genre stuff

but some people take this as an affront, feeling that it delegitimizes their tribe, and thus them, and so they actively reject literature as stupid bullshit in order to set their world in order

and many of them actively rejected this from the day literature classes made them read books they didn't instantly like, and they also began to reject everything taught in those classes

and perhaps it's not as easy to find meaning without training- like, i can say that it's almost impossible to not get that lord of the rings is an antiwar novel, a christian and catholic novel, etc. but a lot of people don't get that

I'm not saying "learning sports statistics" is a cool thing to do, I'm saying that amassing meaningless trivia isn't restricted to nerds going on about genre fiction.

I guess my basic assumption, which may be wrong, is that people who uncritically consume entertainment product (in whatever form) are actually in the majority.

That said, I think your "brain problem" idea ties in fairly neatly with the lit class thing. If the person's brain structure simply doesn't lend itself to finding deeper meaning in texts, it's not a large leap to suggest that when they're told in lit class that "well actually this book is about being against war" they're going to react negatively because they still don't see it and subsequently have a reactionary stance against finding meaning in literature.


Of course the downside is that if it really is a brain structure issue then just flat mocking them about it becomes a bit crueler

uraniun235 wrote:I'm not saying "learning sports statistics" is a cool thing to do, I'm saying that amassing meaningless trivia isn't restricted to nerds going on about genre fiction.

I guess my basic assumption, which may be wrong, is that people who uncritically consume entertainment product (in whatever form) are actually in the majority.

i think that this isn't really the case, though

i mean, talking with people on the street and at work, most people get meanings and the like on basic levels (e.g. this book is about war/not about war)

and some freaks, such as myself, love to roll in the meaning and take meaning baths

while most people might absorb stuff uncritically, that doesn't mean that they don't absorb meaning because lots of things have meanings they're trying to express

hell, truffaut's maxim is about how visual methods work against anti-fascist meanings because most people are capable of discerning, unconsciously at least, the coding inherent in set and costume design. same thing with black hats and white hats

but that's just my opinion, and i am an optimist here

and brain problem was more cruelty than anything else

uraniun235 wrote: (bonus question: why do people listen to a song multiple times?)

Because the radio DJ played it for the 2315324624562536457623t82345346582394573809576423827523587230587320845923578236450823645234582378405234523947852304572304587234098573248956723485234805723485762384756234895723645872365872345283756238765238945723487652384756234857234805972345238975238047562308945723487572375237457823845384756234765234785638274562387465238745238453928456327452384752348523745892347523745772345342875734275234985723485238532894572349857234985723984572349857234895234582394523523495234562345234523456456457564th time this month?

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote: while most people might absorb stuff uncritically, that doesn't mean that they don't absorb meaning because lots of things have meanings they're trying to express

hell, truffaut's maxim is about how visual methods work against anti-fascist meanings because most people are capable of discerning, unconsciously at least, the coding inherent in set and costume design. same thing with black hats and white hats

yeah but the crucial thing is not whether they are absorbing the meaning, but whether they are conscious of it and therefore able to recognize and point to it

i mean some people might laugh whenever the lone black guy in a movie gets killed, but i think there's a really good chance they only know to laugh because someone else already told them "hey if there's one black guy in a movie and someone's going to get killed, odds are it's him". if they didn't know that going in, they might well never have consciously thought about it in their lives.


edit: fuck, not that black guys getting killed is funny, but rather the absurdity of it being a thing that keeps happening in cinema

Questor wrote:

uraniun235 wrote: (bonus question: why do people listen to a song multiple times?)

Because the radio DJ played it for the 239...264th time this month?

okay smartass how about why do people purchase albums/mp3s and listen to them multiple times

overall though i'm inclined to agree that finding meaning in text is probably a skill that has to be exercised, and if you don't find it rewarding you're not going to exercise it and be good at it


and i'm a bit more of a pessimist and assume that a lot of people are just too lazy to give a damn

uraniun235 wrote:

Questor wrote:

uraniun235 wrote: (bonus question: why do people listen to a song multiple times?)

Because the radio DJ played it for the 239...264th time this month?

okay smartass how about why do people purchase albums/mp3s and listen to them multiple times

how dare you make fun of retrograde amnesiacs

that is memorial privilege and brain-shaming

i bet you think otherkin soulbonders are "nuts" too bigot

i will report you to tumblr, livejournal, and kickstarter posthaste

uraniun235 wrote:

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote: while most people might absorb stuff uncritically, that doesn't mean that they don't absorb meaning because lots of things have meanings they're trying to express

hell, truffaut's maxim is about how visual methods work against anti-fascist meanings because most people are capable of discerning, unconsciously at least, the coding inherent in set and costume design. same thing with black hats and white hats

yeah but the crucial thing is not whether they are absorbing the meaning, but whether they are conscious of it and therefore able to recognize and point to it

i mean some people might laugh whenever the lone black guy in a movie gets killed, but i think there's a really good chance they only know to laugh because someone else already told them "hey if there's one black guy in a movie and someone's going to get killed, odds are it's him". if they didn't know that going in, they might well never have consciously thought about it in their lives.


edit: fuck, not that black guys getting killed is funny, but rather the absurdity of it being a thing that keeps happening in cinema

i think that this varies a bit, but i'm of the opinion that a lot of thought goes on below our ability to recognize it as part of socialization, which is for example how i could recognize frankenstein's monster, dracula, the wolfman etc before ever familiarizing myself with source materials on them

so while people may not consciously think about such cliches, unconsciously/subconsciously they tabulate the patterns and accumulate the background knowledge, and then they laugh when it comes up and may say, "you know, I've never really thought about it before"- but you're right, im not sure if this is comparable.

jesus christ questor, way to break the page formatting by posting that stupidly long number

anyway i'm with uraniun on this, to critically evaluate a text was often met with derision and resistance from most of the kids i shared a class with back in high school, and i feel that attitude is basically the majority opinion on responding to any text

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote: i will report you to tumblr, livejournal, and kickstarter posthaste

this made me laugh, thank you

i think that this varies a bit, but i'm of the opinion that a lot of thought goes on below our ability to recognize it as part of socialization, which is for example how i could recognize frankenstein's monster, dracula, the wolfman etc before ever familiarizing myself with source materials on them

so while people may not consciously think about such cliches, unconsciously/subconsciously they tabulate the patterns and accumulate the background knowledge, and then they laugh when it comes up and may say, "you know, I've never really thought about it before"- but you're right, im not sure if this is comparable.

that's a really good point, things can certainly add up in the mental background.

i think part of it can also be simply lacking the background necessary to draw certain connections. like your LOTR example: i never picked up on the christian/catholic thing when i read it as a teenager, but i also didn't pick up on it when i read The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe as a kid, so maybe i just absorbed "dude dies and comes back to life" as just another storytelling convention, and didn't associate it with the resurrection of christ at all (in part because i was never a christian and the jesus story was never particularly special to me; if anything i tended to really resent ever having to hear about it or anything else pertaining to christianity, in large part because i associated christianity with being bored off my ass as a kid and dismissed everything about it as boring and uninteresting and irrelevant)

in fact even now thinking about it i'm struggling to figure out what the catholic connection is with LOTR, in part because it's been so long I'm not remembering it all, and in part because i still have a very, very rudimentary knowledge of christian mythos. is Saruman the Pope, making a covenant with the devil Sauron? or is it something else? this isn't to say i'm at all skeptical that there is a christian/catholic connection in LOTR, just to highlight that i'm still somewhat ignorant of things.


anyway i do appreciate your being patient with me, i know i've been a bit difficult in this thread.

Jose Arcadio Bakendia wrote:I think that there are several reasons here

one is that it's quite possible to get a high school education in america w/o ever developing the tools necessary to extract meaning beyond the broadly didactic.

When I took an AP lit class, we read shit but never analyzed it. Fast forward to the end of my first year in university: I never made a grade higher than a C on a paper. Fast forward seven years and when I took another lit course and I got perfect scores on every paper because I learned that just watching shit for surface-level entertainment is stupid. Writers take the time to put themes in their work and ti simply disregard them is insulting.

uraniun235 wrote:(bonus question: why do people listen to a song multiple times?)

I play an instrument and when I learn songs by ear or by tablature (many are wrong, so I go by ear again), it takes multiple listens. I also like analyzing lyrics too and figuring out the time signatures. I'm still not good with time signatures, so I keep trying to learn.

Stofsk wrote:anyway i'm with uraniun on this, to critically evaluate a text was often met with derision and resistance from most of the kids i shared a class with back in high school, and i feel that attitude is basically the majority opinion on responding to any text

My best friend still feels this way. I actually told him, and it was pretentious as shit, that he has no idea how to analyze art. He only looks on the surface of what he sees and makes comments like "This is fucking stupid. The explosion would not do x and y, that fall would have killed him, these young children are idiots, etc."