And Laughter is Contagious April 7, 2009
Posted by wanderlustor in marketing, musings, psychology, social media.Tags: viral
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We’re all in the same silly boat, together.
In my last post, “No Gen is an Island,” I posited that, despite the ways in which the landscape of social networking must present itself differently to various generations, these are social platforms where a broad (and widening) audience of people gather to communicate with one another. Certain facets of human communication are almost universally interpretable, participable and, moreover, prone to propagation. Specifically, little attention has been devoted to humor as a catalyst for sharing behavior or, macrocosmically, its impact on the realm of viral marketing.
On a practical level, there’s no doubt that the online medium serves as an impediment to grasping some nuances in tone and content (whether through the constraints of text or other online media, user interface design, etc.), especially for some Gen X-ers and the generations prior. 
But, I suspect, that “internet” fluency happens much like general language acquisition; if you aren’t immersed in the language and culture from a young age, you can still become fluent (or conversant, at least) through practice and experience. That being said, I’d like to leave these more practical concerns behind for now; what my previous post, “No Gen is an Island,” advances is the notion that the psychological barrier between Gen Y and older generations with regard to the social networking experience may not be as solid as mainstream media suggests.
On the marketing front, fine-tuned audience targeting is useful, effective and revealing. But a return to core aspects of human communication suggests that there are some very simple tactics which can engage a much broader audience of people, incite positive sentiment, and get them talking to others.
Reuters insists that (in the context of the workplace) Gen Y-ers “speak a different language; [they] respond to humor, passion, and truth.” … Because all the generations to come before only spoke and reacted to communications uttered in some archaic parlance, which best channeled the solemnity, lassitude, and dishonesty, respectively, that ultimately motivated its workers.
The vicarious laughgasm:
To this point that Reuters rather absurdly articulates and, thus, I can’t resist prodding at above (perhaps then I’ve chosen here the characteristic best suited to my Gen Y-ness), I’d like to discuss the universally infectious quality of humor.
I had just come through the little fishing village of Sausalito, and the first thing I said was, “There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito.”
“There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Aaaaah!” He pounded himself, he fell on the bed, he almost rolled on the floor. “Did you hear what Paradise said? There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito? Aaaah-haaa! Hoo! Wow! Whee!” He got red as a beet, laughing. “Oh, you slay me, Paradise, you’re the funniest man in the world, and here you are, you finally got here [...]. Aaah! Hooo!”
The strangest thing was that next door to Remi lived a Negro called Mr. Snow, whose laugh, I swear on the Bible, was positively and finally the one greatest laugh in all this world. This Mr. Snow began his laugh from the supper table when his old wife said something casual; he got up, apparently choking, leaned on the wall, looked up to heaven, and started; he staggered through the door, leaning on neighbors’ walls; he was drunk with it, he reeled throughout Mill City in the shadows, raising his whooping triumphant call to the demon god that must have prodded him to do it. I don’t know if he ever finished supper.
When I read this passage from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road several months ago (before this post was even a twinkle in my eye), I laughed out loud– and then I sent out a tweet:
The psychologist Robert Provine found that individuals laugh thirty times more often when they’re in the company of other people than when they’re alone. There’s no obvious reason for the physiological response that manifests as laughter; in fact, it’s “expensive” for the body (the brain goes out of its way to express the ingenuousness of an internal state externally to an audience), which suggests that laughter is a form of communication. Moreover, it’s contagious. Per psychologist Steven Pinker in his book How the Mind Works: “Even when people laugh alone, they are often imagining they are with others: they are reading others’ words, hearing their voices on the radio, or watching them on television. People laugh when they hear laughter; that is why television comedies use laugh tracks to compensate for the absence of a live audience.”
So, not only is laughter contagious, but the physiological reaction is involuntary– which then gets passed along to other people, who often can’t help but laugh themselves after having heard the sound of another’s laughter. If you disagree, I dare you to try and resist “The Giggle Loop” [YouTube requires that you view the clip on its site-- click on the textual link to be transferred]:
The Giggle Loop: the viral pass-along –> LOLing, and vice versa:
In the online sphere, we feel compelled to inform others textually that we are “LOLing,” because that qualification somehow buttresses the sincerity of our expression. In the absence of auditory release, it seems we still need to communicate our experience of laughter to others. Why? Steven Pinker suggests utilitarian uses for humor on a social level but, more simplistically, it’s perhaps because we’ve felt a positive sensation and want to share it (not that this is wholly altruistic– there is no doubt that we enjoy serving as the emissary of “original” and amusing content, and the credit of conjuring positive emotions in others).
Perhaps the most successful viral marketing “case study” is Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” music video (who would have guessed?). It’s an amalgamation of all the (already) most viraled YouTube videos, rolled into one, including the “’stupid ninja guy,” and a guy who made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for wearing the most t-shirts at one time, along with several other “internet celebrities.” One incidence of the video has nearly 17.5 million views (and counting) on YouTube [YouTube requires that you view the clip on its site-- click on the textual link to be transferred]:
So, maybe you’re thinking that hit home primarily with the Gen Y demographic. But how many moms of varying ages do you think tuned in for the notorious, (accidental) viral phenomenon “Charlie Bit My Finger” home video, which is presently killing even the aforementioned “Pork and Beans” music video in user views, with over 90 million to date:
So, my suggestions here are that:
1) Humor holds universal appeal.
2) Laughter is involuntary and contagious.
3) Online, where we can’t audibly communicate our laughter, we substitute other modes of expression to gain the release laughter affords: aside from textually expressing our appreciation (LOLing, for example), the most effective thing we can do is spread the laughter remotely by passing along the stimulus. In some contexts, this is called viraling.
4) Currently, humor is an under-appreciated component of viral marketing campaigns (not just to Gen Y-ers, but for all demographics).
In my next post, I’ll explore more specifically the mechanism of humor: what constitutes “funny” in a fairly universal sense, and the role that humor plays in social relations– a role which does transfer largely, for our purposes, from the offline realm to that of online social interactions and networking.
Long Live the Independent Bookstore March 3, 2009
Posted by wanderlustor in literature, local, noteworthy encounters.2 comments
Perhaps the closing of retail establishments isn’t exactly what Ferlinghetti had in mind for these lines, but as a founder of the famous City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, I hope he wouldn’t object to them being used for this particular purpose.
“The independent bookstore is dead; long live the independent bookstore,” wrote The New York Times in September of 2008. The big “chain booksellers” (namely Barnes & Noble and Borders) have been cited with killing off the smaller, independent stores at a rate of three per week for years, even prior to 2008. But given the recession, the giants are struggling too; the value of Barnes & Noble’s stock fell 30% from 2007 to 2008, and Borders‘ a whopping 60% over the same time period. Borders (relieved of its Amazon alliance in 2008) is now in debt and trying on a new CEO after a significant drop in holiday sales.
So, it seems surprising that the off-the-beaten path independent bookstores with a cool but quirky and wondrous but sometimes unreliable selection of merchandise are still in existence at all. As I walk down Massachusetts Avenue towards Harvard Square, I’m shocked at how many businesses have closed up shop (”The People’s Republic of Cambridge” is especially proud of its high density of local, independently-owned businesses).
The other weekend I visited Grolier’s Poetry Book Shop, recommended to me by a friend. It’s located right near Harvard Square off the main drag and shouldn’t be a difficult find at all, but Cambridge is full of shops stuffed into side-streets, alleyways, and other subtle nooks-and-crannies prone to being overlooked.
The idea of “walking a neighborhood” (which many communities have traded in for strip malls, and which Merill Reports suggests may be one factor tipping the scales in favor of online retailers like Amazon), certainly isn’t dead in Cambridge. With foot traffic up, it seems more important than ever to have high visibility and great word-of-mouth. Afterall, I’d walked by the shop countless times, and had never known of its existence until a friend pointed it out.
The shop itself is surprisingly small and the interior bears an uncanny resemblance to Ollivander’s wand shop in the Harry Potter films, with tall wooden shelves and diffuse, yellowish lighting. As far as book shops go, Grolier’s carries exclusively poetry… but they carry a lot of it. Dan Wuenschel, the general manager, is a vault of pleasantly dispensed information, serving much the same function as the iTunes Genius. He let on that Charles Simic (previously, not much known to me) shares the same dark humor as Billy Collins, which the two use similarly in “extrapolating the universe” from their immediate physical surroundings.
Aside from the quaint charm of the store’s atmosphere and the helpful personnel, I learned that there’s a nice feeling of community happening around Grolier’s, with the occasional, casual “celebrity” drop-in. My friend loves Irish literature, so was interested to hear that Seamus Heaney stops by the store when he’s working at Harvard. Among many others, Elizabeth Alexander, who wrote and recited the inaugural poem, is also a frequent guest at the store.
Grolier’s keeps tabs on all the literary events happening in the Boston area. Mr. Wuenschel informed me that between the AGNI Magazine (run by Boston University) e-mail list (sign up for alerts relating to Boston or New York events here) and another local literary e-mail list (organized by a gentleman named Daniel Bouchard — send a note to bouchard [at] MIT [dot] edu and request to be included), it would be nearly impossible to miss news of a literary event in the area.
Given the competitive pricing and selection of Amazon and the rise of Half.com and eBay in recent years, it is compelling to forego on the small bookstore experience (mostly, the ever-so-slightly inflated prices that go along with it, by necessity). But there is something to be said for standing in a charming little “niche” store with books calling down at you from packed shelves that seem to go on forever, and the helpful employees that have something more like a very astute conversation with you than a sales-pitch. Call me old-fashioned, but Amazon’s recommendation engine couldn’t compete with Mr. Wuenschel, even if we discounted the pleasantries of person-to-person engagement.
Some other notable local booksellers:
I’d written previously in my Midnight On Your Left posting about two of my favorite local, independently-owned bookstores in the Boston area:
Brookline Booksmith (in Coolidge Corner, Brookline)
Rodney’s Bookstore (in Central Square, Cambridge)
I’m particularly fond of used books, so both shops carry them; however, Brookline Booksmith dedicates its top level exclusively to new books (and Rodney’s Bookstore doesn’t stock new books at all). Both are definitely worth a good perusin’.
Dress You Up in Web-Geek Love January 4, 2009
Posted by wanderlustor in noteworthy encounters, social media.5 comments
In keeping with my New Year’s resolution to be more punctual– some might say I am destined for lateness– this is not an expired Christmas post; it’s an extremely early Valentine’s Day post.
So, in lieu of flowers, cards and candy, I have scoured the Internet to bring you the best web-geek wear (OH: do keep the Valentine’s day sex, so you’ll need to remove these items prior) and miscellaneous other geeky chachkas as viable gift options.
Social Media & Internet Fads
After wading through an assortment of “I Facebooked Your Mom” and “Tom is NOT my friend” shirts for the mainstream social media giants– gosh, I’m sorry to say, but I have no nominees for these two. Or maybe they’re just not niche enough for me to ever consider them cool on a t-shirt, no matter how saucy the commentary.
#1 – Craigslist Missed Connections Wall Print ($12)
Speaking of niches, I’ve never been shy about my rampant enthusiasm for craigslist’s missed connections or, the young professionals’ obiturary column, as I like to call them. I read them with my NetNewsWire and coffee. Please take a moment to appreciate the geographic accuracy, reflected artistically, in this print (it was also once offered as a shirt at the same site, but seems to have disappeared– so write and ask for one, if you want one). Prints are also available for the m4m, m4w, w4m, & w4w subcategories. That’s almost enough to make a cynical, pop-culture-lovin’ analyst weep.
#2 – LOLSpeak Poetry Magnets ($12)
These need no introduction. kthxbai.
Word List: 2, 2, !!1!, !!1!, ?, <3, a, and, and, awsum, bed, borked, brb, bukkit, bunneh, but, cake, can, cat, cat, catnip, caturday, ceiling, cheezburger, cookie, danse, dere, dey, diabeetus, did, dis, do, dog, doin, eated, emo, fail, flavr, frozn, fud, goin, gud, hai, happy, harbl, has, has, hotdog, hover, i, i, in, intarwebs, invisible, it, iz, iz, k, kitteh, kthxbai, kyoot, lazer, lie, lol, lolrus, luv, maded, mah, mai, me, moar, monorail, nao, noes, nom, not, o, omg, pew pew pew, plz, purrito, pwned, r, r, rly, s, saw, sez, show, so, srsly, sum, taek, teh, teh, thx, u, u, ur, ur, want, what, wif, wrong, wtf, wuz, y, z, 
, 
Available from the LOLMart.
#3 – “wearing my twitter shirt” Shirt ($19+)
While there was the punny, “Show us your tweets” option here, there’s nothing like a good ol’ tongue-in-cheek #generaltweet joke for any avid twitter user.
buying my twitter shirt here.
#4 – Bathroom Blogger T-Shirt ($19+)
Oh, yes you do. What with society becoming more fast-paced everyday, how many people actually have time to blog at their desks? Time = money, baby.
Also, I’ve recently coined the term “iPhanal retentive” to describe those of you who can’t go to the bathroom without taking your iPhone. Use it; love it– spread it like confetti.
Next time you’re on the throne, you can order your “bathroom blogger” t-shirt here.
Web Acronyms & Memes!
#1 – “LMAO” T-Shirt ($16-$18)
When I really do “LOL” at text, I like to qualify to the other person in appreciation: “I just LOL’d at that– like, OL.” The growing gap between exaggerated emoto-web-expressions and the reality of what people are doing on the other end of their laptops and cell phones never ceases to amuse me. So, when I rarely “LOL OL” at text, do people, like, laugh their asses off at it? Srsly?
Apparently, they do.
Get your ass here.
#2 – “FTW!” T-Shirt ($16-$18)
“FTW!” had a huge year, knocking out “Web 2.0″ FTW to take meme of the year just before 2008 closed out.
Hurry, though– memes move fast.
Available at Thinkgeek.
#3 – “WTF?” Mug ($7)
Who could’ve ever doubted than an expression like “WTF?” would stand the test of time? I mean, WTF? Great ideas got stayin’ power.
And here it is, fittingly branded where you’ll probably need it most.
Once you go Mac, you never go back
#1 – “God Uses a Mac” Shirt ($22)
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Projection is the quickest path to ego-inflation.
… but so irresistible.
Feel closer to God here. (Or visit the Apple Store, if you’re not yet one of the Chosen People.)
#2 – “Slide to Unlock” iPhone Ladies Thong ($13)
‘Nuff said. Come and get ‘em.
If you’re really an Apple enthusiast, or you’re just keen to get “unlocked,” order the matching babydoll shirt ($19) here.
Miscellaneous nerd shirts that may, or may not, have web / tech flair:
(Click on the photo to be magically transported to the store’s website.)
#1 – “Reading is crazy” T-Shirt ($18)
#2 – “Sudo” T-Shirt ($17)
#3 – “Science” T-Shirt ($17)
The Rise of the Intuition Architect December 12, 2008
Posted by wanderlustor in musings, psychology.6 comments
Before we begin, it’s imperative that you click here and put this song on loop. Don’t ask; just do.
Have you really done it? It’s important.
Okay, good.
This post is especially relevant in mid-December, as we are at the zenith of festive retail ambiance. Thank God we have something to listen to while trying to locate: [] holiday cards, [] Christmas lights, [] Greta Garbo movie (*any, DVD, widescreen), [] yet unread Gabriel García Márquez works (so, basically, unpublished manuscripts procured via the literary black market), [] miscellaneous other bizarre and way-too-specific gifts that we should’ve ordered online in advance, [] small pile of iTunes gift cards, [] world peace, and– what the hell– one of those silly little lawn elves, you know, just for shits and giggles… if we happen to pass by one.
OMG. Don’t even forget the [] for-entertaining munchables. And those [] M&Ms (red and green only) that we’ll put in a candy dish under the pretense that they’re for company, but we know there’s always most of the bag left over. And we look forward to that.
I mention the holidays, but those really just account for factors 1 & 2 on my list of Irksome Facets of Retail Time-Suckage. I needn’t mention modern society’s growing affinity– nay, enthusiasm! for “one stop shop” establishments (like… Walmart), but I do anyways.
1. Wham! (if you followed my initial instructions), and other holiday favorites. [I should qualify that Wham! is the lesser of many evils here. Also, holiday soundtracks are clearly not a cause of Retail Time-Suckage, unless you stand around to listen to them, which is just weird. They're just too legitimately, however cliché the mention is, annoying to omit.]
2. Aisle congestion & longer check-out lines.
3. The Never-Ending Megastore (Walmart, Target, etc.). You can check out (if you can find the check-out), but you can never leave.
4. And in a fit of non-substantiated factor-analysis, I postulate that unintuitive store layout is the primary underlying cause of Irksome Retail Time-Suckage (as it also correlates positively with high scores on factors 2 & 3). And it’s something we can celebrate year-round!
After it took me in excess of 20 minutes, some months ago, to find fizzy flavored water and a package of Q-tips at my local grocery store, I learned to relax, and try to reserve these trips for when I have time to really relish the store layout experience:
I wonder who decided that fizzy flavored water is such a different beast from regular bottled water that it should be housed 5 aisles away. Why are protein / energy bars considered “pharmaceutical” and not “grocery” items? Why must Kashi products only exist in the special natural foods aisles? Could they not be tagged generally as “cereal” too? God forbid some common Fruit Loops catch on the branches of my Kashi GoLean crunchy fiber twigs. In the vast expanse of deli-region, I was so sure that somewhere near 20 varieties of pita and a plethora of spreadable toppings, hummus must be around too, but it was lurking on some inconspicuous end-cap clear across the store. And about a week prior to Thanksgiving, a 5′3″ vegetarian could be seen standing on the refrigerator case ledge, looming over a trough of turkey carcasses, to reach the meat substitute products stocked on the shelves above.
The Megastores are a whole different blog.
Even for the sloppiest human beings, “contiguous” order is natural. Some stuff just outta go next to certain other stuff:
This is a map of the human sensory / motor cortex (homunculi) in the brain. [Since hands, feet, lips, & genitalia (absent here) have more sensory neurons, they are emphasized in the illustration.] So, if someone were to reach into your head (your brain has no sensory neurons of its own) and poke it with a finger, down the line, you would feel a sensation in each of these corresponding regions of your body, progressing through you in a surprisingly orderly manner– shoulders, then elbows, then wrists, then fingers, and so on. Therefore, spring water should be located next to fizzy, fruity water. If evolution can do it, so can your grocery store.
For the purpose of reducing Irksome Retail Time-Suckage year-round, and for deterring consumer-related violent crimes this holiday season, I propose that all retail establishments consider the hire of an Intuition Architect to correct flaws in unintuitive store layouts. Ideally, this person would possess [] average (or above) common sense and [] “mock trial” shopping lists (comprehensive, a dozen or more) which he or she would utilize in actually engaging with the wild, untamed landscape of physical Retailatia from a consumer perspective.
[You may disengage from Wham! now. If you want.]
The Only Place People Stand in Line to Read Advertisements, or The Fine Art of Timing November 27, 2008
Posted by wanderlustor in marketing, musings.2 comments
In our increasingly ADD-conducive culture, advertisers are scrambling to grab a piece of the attentional pie. Even with SEO and targeted ad campaigns, brands still constitute small fish in one big whoppin’ virtual pond. Maybe I represent a very small Internet consumer demographic, but Google Adsense, to me, is much like driving a route I already know with my GPS turned on. Thanks, but no thanks.
There’s a reason that most users, say, prefer to scour search results before calling tech support when they need troubleshooting help— and it really boils down to what I call the “self self” effect (an expression I coined when I was 3, and has continued to serve me well over the years): not only am I doing an a-okay job on my own without your help, but, furthermore… bugger-off.
Now, I am a groundswell movement enthusiast; and I firmly believe that this movement succeeds largely because it presents as a less intrusive conversation, (rather than a relentless series of, likely, less-than-relevant suggestions after I’ve mentally declared that I don’t want any suggestions at all, thankyouverymuch). But, let’s face it, there’s so much going on in cyberspace, that sometimes I don’t want to have a conversation either. I love that someone’s listening to me, but I’m, like, busy doing something else. Can we talk about motor cars and movie rentals later?
So, lying on my gym’s floor after a 3-mile run, somewhere around set 2, rep. 24 of my crunches, I noticed on an upswing an enormous billboard out the window I happened to be facing. And I should’ve… 3 weeks ago. The window is really an entire wall with a panoramic view. Sitting on my purple, cushy mat, and leaning an arm against a bright pink exercise ball (did I mention that my gym happens to be for women only?), I pondered the advertisement,
“Bud Light: The Difference is DRINKABILITY”
as I reached for my 20 oz. bottle of… Aquafina.
Thought #1: “That billboard is enormous! I’m vaguely aware that it’s been there… but I wonder why I’ve never read it until now.”
Thought #2: “Now that I have, what a terrible place to put that particular advertisement!”
I guess Budweiser gets points for attempting to peddle something light to a demographic of women who are sporting sweat-beads and red faces and, most likely, deeply engulfed in a motivating fantasy where they have Pink’s body and are using it to some empowering end. To Budweiser, l concede, light holds a certain appeal for women (even if it has no practical place in my present reality). In truth, women are probably at the gym now, perspiring and rehydrating with spring water, so they can look their best when they go out to the bar on Friday night to enjoy a Bud Light (or, more likely, a Sam Light… or a rum and diet coke).
[Roll clip related to women, weight-loss, and timing-finesse]:
Analysis: The problem with Budweiser’s advertisement (and so many others– especially online ad campaigns) lies in the timing (which, in the case of advertising, is inextricably tied to placement).
I like carbonated, alcoholic beverages, and I even think they can jive with the image of a fit, empowered woman… but all I wanted to see, sweating, sitting on a mat covered in 50 other people’s sweat (I imagine) was a shower, dinner, and 20 more oz. of cool, smooth, spring water.
So where would I be mostly likely to pay attention to a Bud Light advertisement? Gosh. There’s a form of advertising that I’ve always felt was particularly underrated, and it popped up in my mind, at that moment, as especially applicable.
The answer is: a public restroom.
[A brief history: when I was in college, kids used to post sublet, roommate, and furniture-for-sale advertisements, as well as concert and social / cause group notifications on the inside of bathroom doors. In short, if craigslist had cost money, this would have been the poor man's craigslist. (Craigslist was around and kickin', but kids still did this-- which makes a statement). In the freshman dormitories, kids posted magazine content, and changed it weekly, just to have something to read while doing their business, and it sparked conversations in the communal bathrooms about new personal care products or whatever astute bit of advice Cosmopolitan had to offer that week.]
Advertisements placed on the back of a stall door, or above a urinal, probably have the potential to grab (at minimum) about 20 seconds of someone’s undivided attention– and a good advertisement might just keep someone hanging out longer. The National Sleep Foundation suggests that individuals who are not sleep deprived will experience boredom (i.e. they will seek stimulation, not exhibit lethargy or desire to sleep in the absence of stimulation). So, to begin with, advertisers have got a brief, paid-for commercial break and a rapt audience with little or no distractions. “Viewers” (bathroom users) decide proactively to engage in reading the advertisement, simply because they have nothing better to do at the time. Thus, there’s an argument to be made for the viewer receiving the advertisement more positively since he’s taken up with it himself (rather than swatting away unsolicited ad suggestions in a Google sidebar while trying to navigate his own quest).
Lastly, and certainly not leastly– timing. The human memory is a fragile mechanism, and conviction (especially, purchasing conviction), erodes over time; if a Bud Light advertisement was the last thing a girl saw before she exited a bathroom stall, (hopefully washed her hands), and arrived at the bar for a drink refill, she would be more likely to reach purchasing-fruition (per the recency effect), than the girl who read the Bud Light billboard, panting quizzically on her gym floor, far removed from any Bud-Light-relevant situation.
In conclusion: I love the social media revolution as it pertains to brands, but today, I’d like to reintroduce the notion that people also exist offline. There’s a big world to be exploited by “dead-time” marketing, as quite frankly, I’m just overbooked online. I’m hesitant to add to the pool of people who may be noticing the same thing because I don’t want advertisements in every nook and cranny of my life, but I simply couldn’t resist.
Maybe y’all should think about going retro?
The Adventures of Rebus Abbrevus in Cyberspace and Beyond October 15, 2008
Posted by wanderlustor in Psychology & Language.1 comment so far
Admittedly, I’ve always been arbitrary about which modifications to the English language I think are acceptable. Deep down, I know that language is organic, and I should derive joy from its wondrous plasticity; I’ll let the colloq. folks party with the King’s English in most circumstances, but I keep in mind that they snuck in the back door without a formal invite. We’ll dance and we’ll drink, but I certainly won’t invite them to any of my Scrabulous games.
Recently, I was reading an article by David Crystal, a natively Irish academic who’s been publishing in the field of linguistics since the ’60s (and is still at it). He explains in his 2008 article, “Texting,” how “TextSpeak” has become widely prevalant, spilling over from SMS messaging into blogs and various other forms of online communication– then ends on the frilly conclusion that “b4″ and “roflmao” are manifestations of a second, functional (and delightfully creative!) language in “young people” that is “[unlikely] to have an effect on language as a whole.”
Hank Moody disagrees.
Hank Moody is a little moody, though.
Using social media sites and enjoying the charm of technologies that restrict the number of characters you can employ in a single communication (text messaging, 160; Twitter, 140) in our hyper-connected world is something like owning a car and moving to Massachusetts; if you want to survive, you’re going to have to break some rules. Throw in an “&,” “w/” or a “re:” — an “lol” by all means, and a “b4″ only in dire situations.
A lot of people seem not to recognize this, but, the trick here is versatility. Get a bigger linguistic closet. If you must, you can own that fugly too-short “b4″ without tossing out your classic little black dress of a “before.” God knows the latter is a better choice for most occasions.
Once you’ve established your bilingualism, it’s okay to have some fun with it for the sake of wits and giggles (but someone ought to tell Mr. Crystal that kids should grow up first on the OED, not the SMS). For example, the majority of LOLcat enthusiasts comment on posts in LOLSpeak, for which the site now provides a definitive guide. And I think that’s a-okay, probably a bit excessive, but non-irksomely festive nonetheless.
When not working within the confines of 140-160 characters, or impressing at parties with “foreign” utterances (alongside tongue-in-cheek awareness of their silliness), I suppose there are other implications for the evolution of language when we opt for less traditional linguistic forms. One of the pat “quick texts” on my cell phone is, “Whacha doing?”. While I understand that, “What are you doing?” can seem a little demanding, “What’s up?” or “What are you up to?” might have sufficed, alternatively, for tone, content, and orthographic correctness. Instead, tens of thousands of Verizon customers are propagating the quick text of a word that doesn’t exist, needn’t, and probably shouldn’t.
And I’m thinking that this is what Mr. Moody, and many other staunch traditionalists, object to.
It’s difficult to say what the full-scale implications of technology will “seriously” be for language (Dr. Crystal vs. Hank Moody on “the point of no return”) but it seems silly to think that some kind of evolution isn’t already well underway. Personally, I stand somewhere in the middle of the great pendulum swing– but maybe a little Moody, afterall.
Language evolves quickly in cyberspace; I embrace bilingualism because it’s a functional adaption, but I still prefer classic little black dresses and the OED.
Midnight On Your Left September 26, 2008
Posted by wanderlustor in literature, local, noteworthy encounters.1 comment so far
I really like the smell of books. Especially, old or used books. And something that a good used bookstore can be sure to have is a wide variety of works by obscure (and popular) poets, and an unnecessarily large selection of poetry anthologies.
If you’re local to Boston, I like Brookline Booksmith (new and used books) and Rodney’s Bookstore.
One of my favorite ways to discover new writers is poet roulette (i.e. randomly choosing a poet I’ve never heard of, and reading on for a bit). That’s how I stumbled onto John Godfrey, an urban-influenced (Manhattan) poet who published primarily in the 80’s. As of late, I’ve been all over Boston and Cambridge, largely underground (“The world made of this city / dark when she steps out of her jeans”), engrossed in Midnight On Your Left. I almost forgot to get off at my T stop today.
The book is a mix of poems and prose, and both are pretty trippy. Godfrey’s imagery is a colorful ride that you find you’re more than happy to get on– here, there, within, without, city-steeped, celestial, idealist, terrestrial… His diction is entrancing and well-chosen on all accounts, even when it’s rather opaque… and his moments of utter lucidity, when they peek in through fascinatingly obscure dialogues (which, by the way, he conducts with equal confidence), resonate with some sort of stirring, mystical authority that makes you tingle just a bit.
“When was the last time you passed on a secret specific to sighs and gasps, a pleasure so exquisite you identify yourself by the memory of it?“
I was surprised to find that many of Godfrey’s poems aren’t accessible online, so I’ve reproduced two of his more “lucid” ones from Midnight On Your Left:
“This Train”
I could have had you lie down
on a railroad coach
I could have had you in my heart
when I’m too old to dream
After six years of bright
cocktail sun through that window
It lights up the fleece
on the back and thighs
you carry in such a way
you must inspire yourself
i can’t see you with justice
i can assist your freedom
“Encore”
You are so wonderful in the ordinary
You stand on a corner
fresh from the desert island
where you were lonely
and secure in your beauty
Now there is this all around you
Your neighbors name the grime
behind their ears as they
develop it on the hairs
of their forearms, while you
step back from the vase of
apple blossoms with paint
all over your hands
You feel who you are
You cling to life the
same way I do from
hour to hour by the airshaft
I count the nights of
aurora borealis and collaborate
on the highly absorbent
surface of the moon
Otherwise, I go my way singing
the song that names the stairs
At the top I am there
as the you that is yours
The Language Barrier September 12, 2008
Posted by wanderlustor in Psychology & Language, noteworthy encounters, psychology.2 comments
One of my favorite legitamo-pop psychologists, Steven Pinker, (currently working at Harvard) recently released a new book called The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.
Mine is currently en-route from half.com. Thought I’d share, as it looks pretty interesting.
Below is a review from The Washington Post:
Reviewed by Jonah Lehrer
Language comes so naturally to us that it’s easy to believe there’s some sort of intrinsic logic connecting the thing and its name, the signifier and the signified. In one of Plato’s dialogues, a character named Cratylus argues that “a power more than human gave things their first names.”
But Cratylus was wrong. Human language is an emanation of the human mind. A thing doesn’t care what we call it. Words and their rules don’t tell us about the world; they tell us about ourselves.
That’s the simple premise behind Steven Pinker’s latest work of popular science. According to the Harvard psychologist, people are “verbivores, a species that lives on words.” If you want to understand how the brain works, how it thinks about space and causation and time, how it processes emotions and engages in social interactions, then you need to plunge “down the rabbit hole” of language. The quirks of our sentences are merely a portal to the mind.
In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker pitches himself as the broker of a scientific compromise between “linguistic determinism” and “extreme nativism.” The linguistic determinists argue that language is a prison for thought. The words we know define our knowledge of the world. Because Eskimos have more nouns for snow, they are able to perceive distinctions in snow that English speakers cannot. While Pinker deftly discredits extreme versions of this hypothesis, he admits that “boring versions” of linguistic determinism are probably accurate. It shouldn’t be too surprising that our choice of words can frame events, or that our vocabulary reflects the kinds of things we encounter in our daily life. (Why do Eskimos have so many words for snow? Because they are always surrounded by snow.) The language we learn as children might not determine our thoughts, but it certainly influences them.
Extreme nativism, on the other hand, argues that all of our mental concepts — the 50,000 or so words in the typical vocabulary — are innate. We are born knowing about carburetors and doorknobs and iPods. This bizarre theory, most closely identified with the philosopher Jerry Fodor, begins with the assumption that the meaning of words cannot be dissected into more basic parts. A doorknob is a doorknob is a doorknob. It only takes Pinker a few pages to prove the obvious, which is that each word is not an indivisible unit. The mind isn’t a blank slate, but it isn’t an overstuffed filing cabinet either.
So what is Pinker’s solution? He advocates the middle ground of “conceptual semantics,” in which the meaning of our words depends on an underlying framework of basic cognitive concepts. (As Pinker admits, he owes a big debt to Kant.) The tenses of verbs, for example, are shaped by our innate sense of time. Nouns are constrained by our intuitive notions about matter, so that we naturally parcel things into two different categories, objects and substances (pebbles versus applesauce, for example, or, as Pinker puts it, “hunks and goo”). Each material category comes with a slightly different set of grammatical rules. By looking at language from the perspective of our thoughts, Pinker demonstrates that many seemingly arbitrary aspects of speech, like that hunk and goo distinction, aren’t arbitrary at all: They are byproducts of our evolved mental machinery.
Pinker tries hard to make this tour of linguistic theory as readable as possible. He uses the f-word to explore the topic of transitive and intransitive verbs. He clarifies indirect speech by examining a scene from “Tootsie,” and Lenny Bruce makes so many appearances that he should be granted a posthumous linguistic degree. But profanity from Lenny Bruce can’t always compensate for the cryptic vocabulary and long list of competing ‘isms. Sometimes, the payoff can be disappointing. After a long chapter on curse words — this book deserves an “explicit content” warning — Pinker ends with the banal conclusion that swearing is “connected with negative emotion.” I don’t need conceptual semantics to tell me that.
The Stuff of Thought concludes with an optimistic gloss on the power of language to lead us out of the Platonic cave, so that we can “transcend our cognitive and emotional limitations.” It’s a nice try at a happy ending, but I don’t buy it. The Stuff of Thought, after all, is really about the limits of language, the way our prose and poetry are bound by innate constraints we can’t even comprehend. Flaubert was right: “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.”
