Recently, I stumbled on an inexplicably popular YouTube channel. I wanted to like it. The channel shares fun or random facts about a variety of topics. But after watching each video, I asked myself why I had watched it since it wasn’t really interesting or even factual. Later, I’d see the thumbnail for the same clip again and click on it, not realizing until too late that it was a disappointing déjà vu. Scrolling through the comments to see whether others equally underwhelmed, I was surprised to find mostly praise for both the video and the channel.
What the thumbnail picture promises and what video is about are two different things. While I might not be completely lied to, I sense a level of manipulation that turns me off to the channel. The thumbnail represents the two percent of the content I am interested in knowing more about which the videographer left underdeveloped, choosing instead to fill the remaining ninety-eight percent of the video with more or less drivel. If the material isn’t interesting enough to capture my attention legitimately, instead of tricking me into watching it, they could just make the material truly interesting. The other part that frustrates me is the lack of fact. Everything in the videos is presented as researched fact, but most of the information is hearsay, piecemeal data from studies that may or may not be conducted well, anecdotal evidence, and common knowledge that merely pads weak arguments. Yet, I find the comments section filled with people lauding the video as valuable, not just as entertaining but also as educational. Many of these videos are supposedly about personality subconsciously revealed through everyday tasks. But often, the studies they reference are about specific demographics not matching target audience. They ignore things like cultural norms (your stride reflects the culture you were raised in just as much as your personality), education (how you hold your pen reflects how you were taught), and training (how I cut a banana, fold a towel, prepare coffee, and replace toilet paper rolls has far more to do with my part-time jobs in college than with my personality). Perhaps the most disturbing part is reading the comments. After a video about unifying Disney theories (Probably the most unintellectual video I have ever seen, it attempted to argue that the Easter eggs hidden in Disney movies are part of an over-arching “history” of the “Disney universe,” as though the classic fairy tales and modern original stories that were all written by different authors from different eras and regions about different eras and regions were somehow part of a larger unified history.), people actually remind each other of other “factual” connections between completely unrelated movies. For every one comment I saw that logically popped their illusory intellectual bubble, I found ten more illogical confirmations inflating it. Perhaps you wonder why I continue reading the comments. It could be that it’s like a train wreck that I can’t stop watching. It could also be that it provides wonderful writing class fodder for my students to work through the logical fallacies of both video and comments. But, largely, it’s a modern form of people watching, one of my life’s simple pleasures.
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One of the side effects of living abroad is that I follow the news. After all, if the nation disappears overnight, I want to know. For me, “follow the news” means to glance at headlines in my news feed; that usually is enough to know what latest natural disaster has hit the country (for the record, based on the headlines since I moved overseas, I’m surprised that large parts of the country haven’t disappeared like Atlantis) and which celebrity did something that is somehow newsworthy (also for the record, I still don’t understand how Celebrity X’s dislike of Politician Z merits attention).
Headlines reveal cultural trends. And lately the headlines fall into two categories: 1) Someone made a horrendous mistake and should be nailed to the wall! or 2) These people are amazing for loving themselves and shouldn’t have to hear criticism! Half of the stories demand perfection; half demand grace. In one interview, a man slipped and said a wrong number. The media nailed him for it. In another interview, a man made a verbal fumble. Listeners misheard the non-word he said and chose to believe he had insulted them. An announcer for a televised event was fired because people were offended by an off-handed, decontextualized comment. I don’t know how many formal apologies were issued during the Winter Olympics, but the headlines were full of the offended public demanding their grievances be heard. As someone whose job is talking, I shudder at the implications of these stories. We have all had those moments when our brains want to say one thing and our mouths say something else. We laugh at Brian Regan’s “Take luck” because we have experienced those “Oh, no! Words!” moments. I cannot be perfect. But these headlines communicate that I cannot slip, I cannot fumble, I cannot be human. My reputation and career are at stake. And everyone with a smart device is watching and ready to post it when I fail. In the first group of articles, the person talking was a villain and the complainers were the victims. In the second group of articles, the roles are swapped. Anyone who offers feedback about someone’s social media posts is dubbed “a shamer,” which, of course, is an evil, vile, villain. In these articles, if someone offers an opinion that we do not like, we call them “a shamer,” put them down in someway with a comeback, and have hundreds of people on social media affirm our right to vilify others. The purported message is that we should love ourselves and each other just way we are, warts and all. But really both groups of articles demand perfection of others. “We must accept the shortcomings of everyone,” they cry . . . except the shortcoming of that person who wrote a stupid comment on social media. “We should celebrate our progress, not focus on our mistakes,” they cry . . . except the single mistake someone made in an interview should overshadow all the intelligent statements that surrounded it. We demand that others give us grace and overlook our weaknesses, but in return, we demand others be perfect and never need grace themselves. One of my favorite authors, Paul David Tripp, says that because we do not see our own need for grace, we do not extend grace to others. That is the cultural trend I see in the headlines. If we remembered how often we fumble for words, how often we say something that just doesn’t make sense, how often we do something we regret later, then we would remember that others make those mistakes, too. Those who think they are without sin, not knowing the beauty of grace, feel safe to stone others. Only the sinner, having experienced the sweetness of grace, can extend grace to the fellow sinners around him. Having removed the idea of sin from our culture, we have removed grace as well. I enjoy thinking, theorizing, postulating, speculating—call it what you will, I enjoy it. I know, I know, as a pastime, it’s not really one that a lot of people talk about. When your friend asks, “Hey, whatcha doing tonight?” you can’t say, “Oh, I’m gonna think.” And, certainly, it doesn’t make for interesting scrapbooks. “Here’s a picture of me thinking. Here’s another picture of me thinking.” (On a related note, it does apparently make for a good sculpture pose.)
Fortunately for me, I have friends who equally enjoy a good thought puzzle, so we can share our thoughts and call it “hanging out,” a far more socially acceptable pastime. Over a cup of coffee (or a coffee-like substance), a friend recently shared one his theories about love: if there is a short, eligible girl, a tall guy will swoop in and woo her before any of the short guys have a chance. (Perhaps, this is because the tall guy can see her over the crowd while the short guys have to fight through the crowd before they even realize she’s there.) We thought through our tall acquaintances, and with few exceptions, our tall guy friends have married significantly shorter girls. But our tall girl friends are generally with guys of equal height. Another friend in the conversation added more data that supported this theory (though this data is all self-reported, so it’s hardly the most valid, but then again, this theorizing is just for a pastime, not for a federal report). She herself is rather short, barely passing five feet, which is the height she recorded on her on-line dating profile. We scrolled through her potential matches (guys who had expressed interest in her). Only two were shorter than 5’ 9”. Most were over 6’. Some even stated on their profile pages that they were looking for a short girl. My friend who proposed this theory is, in case you haven’t guessed, short. With the weight of our data making this look more like a tall guy conspiracy, he admitted that when he sees couples like these, he wishes he could run up and kick the guy in the shins and demand to know why he couldn’t pick someone in his own height range. On my part, I’m wondering about the dating websites. Do they have an algorithm set to match the tall guys with the short girls? (Yes, I also enjoy people-watching.) As a language teacher, I spend so much time emphasizing the importance of using words so that the audience clearly knows the ideas in the author’s mind. And then I go to work at my part-time jobs and realize I just might be wasting my breath.
“Hello, this is Eleanor at Music World,” I say, using the official company script for answering the phone. A mumbling voice on the other end of the line says, “A cup holder on a music stand.” Uncertain what that code means, I ask, “I’m sorry. How can I help you?” “Do you have a cup holder that latches onto a music stand in stock?” Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to have asked that to begin with? Usually these phone calls end just as uncertainly as they start. “No, I’m sorry. We don’t have that in stock. We can get it in for you, though,” I say. “Okay.” I’ve learned that in modern business phone etiquette “okay” means “thank you. Good-bye.” Things get more confusing when I answer the phone, and the customer says, “You just called me.” That’s it. No name. No reference to the voicemail left for them. And I wasn’t the one who called them. When asked what my associate had called them about, the customer admits that she didn’t even bother to listen to the voicemail left for her. So I get stuck playing twenty questions: “Do you have a rental account with us?” “No.” “Do you take lessons with us?” “No.” A huge part of me wants to say, “Listen to the voicemail if you want to know why someone called you!” In high school when I worked at Donut World, it was even worse. Fully literate adults would stand in front of a donut case holding forty different kinds of donuts and request “that one.” Then they made me play a guessing game. “Which donut?” “The one on the second rack.” The second from the top or bottom? From the left from the right? That still only narrows it down to eight flavors. “The one with the white powder on the outside and the white cream on the inside.” “Oh, you want a vanilla cream donut,” I would say to model using words to communicate. “Yeah, with the white powder,” they would say, ignoring my cue. Those are usually the people who make picking a dozen donuts seem like an entire shift. And they teach their children to do the same thing. “Johnny, what kind of donut do you want?” After their child stares at the overwhelming choices for a few seconds, they start pointing at “that one” or “that one.” It takes more work to describe the donut than it does to read the label. Even stranger are the ones who will read every part of the label to me, except for the name. “Could I try this ice cream?” “Which kind?” “The ‘creamy vanilla ice cream with a ribbon of caramel syrup and pecan pralines.’” “Oh, the Pralines and Cream?” “I guess so.” Why do we work so hard for high literacy rates when the general population refuses to read even once they’ve learned? The other day I was sitting by the lake ostensibly doing my homework, but eventually, I had to admit that for the past half hour all I had done was watch a family of ducks swim. Their splashing into the water had first snagged my attention away from my papers; the tranquility of watching them glide through the water or wriggle in delight as they splashed themselves allowed my tied brain the break it needed from analyzing ideas and parsing language.
And then it happened: Epiphany struck me with an object lesson. The duck family had reached the other end of the lake and were lurching their way out of the water and up the steep bank. Naturally, the parent ducks led the way and lingered by the edge while the baby ducks struggled after them. The last duck, probably the youngest, had the hardest time. Just when I thought that he was going to succeed, he plopped backward and landed tail-first in the water. And I thought, “Oh, how cute!” And then, I wondered why I didn’t think that about the mistakes my students were making on their papers that were sitting forgotten beside me on the bench. When baby animals and baby humans struggle through growth, we think it’s adorable and share those moments with each other. But when my students make mistakes, my initial response is not, “Oh, how sweet! They tried so hard.” I do not post their papers on the fridge as though they were little handprint turkey paintings (which I have never seen a need for). But, that baby duck did not deliberately ignore his parents’ leading and jump into the water. No, he needed more practice and probably more muscle to be able to succeed. His failure revealed what he still lacked. His failure wasn’t permanent. Then next time I watched the duck family, I was disappointed with how adept they all were at waddling and swimming. Not one cute mishap. Years ago one of my professors had urged me to examine the logic of my students’ mistakes because their mistakes were rooted in attempts to succeed. (Yes, sometimes their mistakes stem from laziness and inattention—I do not deny that.) I understood her point and have seen how logical many of those mistakes really are. But noticing my reaction to a baby duck highlighted my professor’s point: my students are still growing, still struggling to grasp new ideas, still practicing concepts they barely understand. They might not succeed every time, but their mistakes show that they are trying. Lately, I’ve been contemplating cultural trends. Not surprisingly, these contemplations arise during two activities: watching commercials on TV and driving through traffic. While I’ve read some studies about the role that movies and shows have played in the critical literacy of our nation’s youth, only one theorist has addressed the role of commercials in society. (Neil Postman’s The End of Education includes an interesting discussion of commercials as parables, for example, “Parable of the Person with Rotten Breath.”)
What I’ve been noticing in commercials is their shift towards slogans that promote competition and getting product at the expense of others, as though we are experiencing a shortage on anything in America (although we do have a shortage of businesses that develop film with matte finish or meat counters with actual meat slicers, but that’s a different sort of shortage). One particularly awful commercial a few years ago showed a couple pull up to their home and start stripping in a frenzied race to be the first one to get to use the new showerhead because apparently life is not worth living if someone else gets what you want first. I see this same trend in traffic. My city is known for its bad drivers. I’ve lived here long enough that I’m no longer surprised when someone in the far right lane turns left in front of two other lanes of traffic or when someone jaywalks across four lanes of heavy traffic after dark. Last week on my way to work, I pulled up to the intersection and got behind a car in the right turn-lane. The light turned green. The car in front of me didn’t go. I waited a few beats, then beeped the horn (yes, my horn beeps just slightly more assertively than the roadrunner’s “Meep!”). The driver didn’t move, turn on hazard lights, wave me on—nothing. We waited through the entire light. When the left turn-lane turned green, the car turned left, cutting off the person in that lane. Has our culture become that averse to admitting that we made a mistake and accept the consequence of that mistake? In the grand scheme of things, getting in the wrong traffic lane is a small mistake that is easily fixed by turning around at the next intersection. Instead of doing that, a driver stays in the wrong lane but goes the “right” direction, backing up a lane of traffic and almost side-swiping another car. If we aren’t willing to accept the consequences of small mistakes, how will we become equipped to handle the consequences of larger mistakes? I love coffee shops. Not entirely for the coffee. (If I want a good cup of joe, I’ll make it at home. After all, I am a barista; knowing how to make good coffee has turned me into a coffee snob.) The truth is that I love people-watching. When I fly, I feel a little gypped if I don’t get at least an hour’s wait in the airport. I try to be subtle about it: an open book visibly sitting on my lap, headphones passively announcing that I’m not interested in engaging with those around me. But I’m watching the humanity around me, forming theories about where people are from, where they are going, what kind of people they are.
And since I don’t get to enjoy airports regularly, I visit coffee shops. Where else could I overhear a gem like this: “I want to be one of those extras that dies because I can”? (My working theory was that this girl was on a first date and trying to use her acting ability to secure his interest. People don’t usually brag about their ability to die.) Recently, a friend and I were travelling and decided to stop at Starbucks to get coffee. (Usually I prefer mom-and-pop shops, but it’s harder to find those right off the interstate.) We parked beside a middle-aged lady in a convertible. In the backseat of the convertible was the lady’s dog, not wearing a leash. As I entered Starbucks, I heard her say to the dog, “Stay here in the car; I’ll be right back.” No sooner had the lady reached Starbucks’s door than she realized that the dog was following her into Starbucks. She firmly led the dog back outside to the convertible, saying, “I told you to stay in the car. You are being bad.” Still leaving the top down on the car and still leaving the dog unleashed, the lady re-entered Starbucks. Finally achieving the front of the line, she glanced back to see her dog sitting on the sidewalk staring at her. “I told you to stay in the car,” she said again when she stepped out to rebuke the dog. “Okay, I’ll give you a choice. Do you want to wait here on the sidewalk, or do you want to wait in the car?” After a moment’s pause she continued, “Okay, if that’s what you want, you may wait here at the door.” Apparently, her dog had indicated that he preferred that option. Again, the lady returned to the line. And again, before she could order coffee, she noticed her dog running around the parking lot. When my friend and I left with our coffee, she still hadn’t managed to stay inside long enough to order. Years ago (yet significantly after the show had originally aired), I stumbled on a verbal exchange between young Lex Luthor and Dr. Bryce in Smallville that resonated with me. In the scene, Lex is questioning the doctor’s decision, and she replies with “I’m second-guessed for a living, Mr. Luthor; it comes with the territory.” Immediately I connected with her quip. How often does someone share what their doctor has prescribed for them only to have a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger in line at the grocery store suggest their own superior recommendation without knowing the medical history of the patient and without having any medical training? Frequently as a teacher, I have jokingly referenced this line because it’s just as true about teachers.
I have met with students extensively to help with a project or to conquer a troublesome concept. After thinking that we have made progress together, I’m flabbergasted when the student reverts to a previous concept or draft because someone else told them it was “right.” Last year, I had a parent “force-feed” a new paper draft to her child and threw away the draft that I had spent conference time helping him with, convinced that she was helping him create a better final draft (which matched none of the requirements laid out in the project description). At times, it can be discouraging to have students, parents, colleagues, administrators, politicians, and the public at large discredit our training and experience and offer their educational equivalents to homeopathic medicines (which I have nothing against, but I wouldn’t completely disregard a doctor’s diagnosis and treat my friend with my own remedy). As I stand there, saying, “Here, let’s try this method that my training, experience, and longitudinal research suggests might help you succeed,” I too often hear, “Oh, but I saw this better idea on Pinterest. I’ll try that instead.” And I have such an honest face, to paraphrase Rory Gilmore. But recently, I realized someone has a harder job than being second-guessed for a living like doctors and teachers are—flight attendants. While few second-guess flight attendants, passengers offer a greater challenge. Flight attendants are ignored for a living. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome onboard Flight—” and the flight attendant has already lost the attention of at least half of the passengers. Even though I have flown enough to have the pre-flight safety spiel memorized, I still try to look pleasantly engaged as I stare at the nearest flight attendant. Sometimes, it’s hard, like when I can’t actually hear them because the two men behind me are loudly gossiping about how some girl named Brittany at their office won’t have a job once they get back from their conference and how much they can’t stand people gossiping about work drama and how inconsiderate people can be. (Ironic? Yes.) Thinking about it, there are a lot of similarities between air safety regulations and classroom procedures. Perhaps I can work some of the pre-flight announcement into my lesson openings this year: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Room 2010 with service from rudimentary knowledge to experience. We ask that you please take your seat at this time and secure all rucksack-sized bookbags underneath your seat so I don’t fall flat on my face when I pass out papers. Please turn off all personal electronic devices, including laptops and cell phones. Smoking is prohibited for the duration of the class. Thank you for choose Miss Lane’s class. Enjoy your lesson.” About three years ago, a friend made me watch Susan Cain’s Ted Talk “The Power of Introverts.” That was a first time that I heard someone specifically advocating for the need for the quiet (and the quiet people) that our culture drowns out. While Cain’s ideas resonated with me, I lacked the time to read her book Quiet until just this spring. Having studied temperaments and personality types a bit, I did not expect to learn anything earth-shattering, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn more about myself than I had expected. In a culture that blaringly promotes the need to “be yourself,” I frequently feel that “being yourself” is acceptable only when it means being the brash, bombastic, enthusiastic, bubbly, eccentric nonconformists sharing that message in the media. In the same movies and shows that claim to appreciate people being themselves, the quiet characters are marginalized, mocked, or perhaps pitied. We have allowed the fictional version of our culture reframe our view of reality. So many of us now live fictionalized versions of ourselves. Recently, some colleagues invited me over for dinner and games. I have been interacting with them in this setting enough to feel none of my usual qualms until I showed up. The colleague I feel most comfortable around (a bubbly, vivacious woman) hadn’t come. When I asked about her absence, I was told that she doesn’t like crowds. Though disappointed at her absence (especially since no one had warned me that our social group that night would triple in size), I was thrilled: I had found another closet introvert. And that’s what I am: a closet introvert. My acting experience allows me to blend in with the loud world we live in. Even at church, the one place I should be allowed to be the temperament God made me, I flit about as the social butterfly that I am not, cringing at the partly self-imposed pressure to be what I’m not. No, having a quiet temperament does not give me an excuse to be rude, nor does it mean that I don’t like people. (As anyone who has gotten me on the right topic can tell you: I love a good conversation. Many introverts do, as Susan Cain explains.) What overwhelms many introverts, according to Cain, is not people but stimuli of any kind. That idea has allowed me to reframe my ideas about myself and my interaction with people. I’ve been perplexed at what I perceived as inconsistencies in my behavior because I still viewed introversion and extroversion as a spectrum of whether people drained me or energized me. When I get into a good conversation (particularly a sobremesa), I can be engaged for hours and walk away reluctantly. On the other hand, I feel exhausted after an hour of a meet-and-greet at work. The answer, Cain suggests, is how much and how much new stimuli is in each situation. Knowing that has allowed me to make better choices in which social invitations I accept and which I decline. And, having read Quiet, I’ve given myself permission to stop being a social butterfly unless the situation truly demands it. At church yesterday, I engaged in conversation with only two people during the greeting time in the service (I’m convinced an extreme extrovert invented that concept), and instead of the usual feeling of being incredibly alone after that, I felt refreshed, connected, and part of the group. While listening to Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers, I heard the title statement: A nation is born Stoic and dies Epicurean. (Frustratedly, I can’t properly site my source since I was listening instead of reading: I have no idea what page or even what chapter in Outliers that gem was on.) Although I’m not certain that we could describe our nation’s birth as truly Stoic, I see students of Epicurus all around me.
This past year of teaching, I’ve noticed that increasingly classroom management methods I was taught and have successfully used for years no longer work with the rising generation. The most frequent unsolicited feedback I get from students is “You should give us Skittles instead of M&Ms.” (I cannot imagine having the gall to say to my wonderful third grade teacher, the only teacher I recall giving us tangible rewards, “Thank you, Miss Thompson, for the cool pencil, but you should stock more cool erasers in the classroom prize box.”) As much as I enjoy teaching my students, sometimes I am amazed at how little they appreciate gifts because they have so much given to them. How did our nation grow into a place in which a student who doesn’t earn the candy treat responds, not with harder work next time, but with, “Fine, I’ll just buy some candy at lunch”? And it’s not just in my students or in the larger American culture that I see this trend. I wonder if this trend is true of maturing into adulthood as well. When we first start out “on our own,” we appreciate the free but ugly furniture that has been abandoned by its owners because the furniture serves its function whether or not the pattern is aesthetically pleasing. We consider a meal from a fast food dollar menu as a treat. And any computer access is better than none. That was me at least. But now, I consider a treat to be dinner at The Pit in Raleigh, or dessert at the Marietta Diner in Marietta, or anything from Caffe Piccolo in Pawley’s Island. I desperately want to recover the ugly free furniture that I am sitting on right now. And I’m thinking about pricing a new laptop because mine has trouble with the Internet. It’s not enjoying luxury that I’m questioning. I wonder whether we realize how frequently we have redefined luxuries without even realizing we have. Foolishly, we compare ourselves among ourselves rather than comparing ourselves against a standard. (Too many of my students think that they are District 12 from the Hunger Games. I popped many self-pitying bubbles when I drew the many glaringly obvious connections between modern America and the Hunger Games’s Capitol.) Epicurus promises pleasure, but where does that pleasure end? |
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