I feel like Brian Moffatt… good blogging intentions, short of time. But Brian emerged, and there were a couple of comments I thought were worth following down in his penultimate post this morning. One, from a Mister Salmon Rushdie-Hayek-Bisque points to a post at the Head Lemur’s place, a post I might critique thusly: you have to get past the phlegm and go below the fold for the good part.
(The above italics are brought to you courtesy of the for-shit WordPress WYSIWYG editor, by the way. I can’t figure out how to remove them without pulling the whole post into a desktop editor, revising it and uploading it, and basically, who cares about a few extra slanty letters anyway, right?)
Speaking of “anyway…”
Anyway, if you got past the phlegminess at Allan’s, you will see a brilliant advertisement for the famously fictional new book, Shiny Happy People, and linkage to a post at the creating passionate users blog that provides an affirmation for Robert Scoble that after all it is his blog so he can do with it what he wants and documents the inspiration for the Lemur’s SHP send-up.
Now it turns out that there have been lengthy exchanges about Robert’s new rulz, and I’ll admit to skimming these at best, because locked as I am in a time crunch I have as little time for reading as for writing, which is too bad, because as every hooked-up blogger knows, if you blink, it’s all over and past you and you missed it by god. Suffice it to say, that Happy Bob Scoble has decided to moderate his comments, a decision I applaud because a) I’ll know that these are Bob-approved comments, and b) I won’t have to wade through so much bullshit if I decide to read them.
But back at Kathy Sierra’s place, where she indeed does provide a scientific affirmation that if we would all just stop worrying and be happy, if we would cease our nattering nay-saying, our negativity, then people around us would be happier too and we could nuke Iran with a smile on our face, while affirming large contracts with China for size 7 boots that don’t quite fit, each one accompanied by a reciprocal exchange of an outdated version of Microsoft Windows XP with a big cash advantage to both parties and detriment only to the American taxpayer and/or consumer, a fellow with two cars who can afford it anyway. And wait! That’s what Bob’s boss is doing right now! No wonder Scoble doesn’t want to be perceived as a nattering nay-Bob!
And as we say, anyway… if you read down through the comments at the happy-happy post, you’ll run into one by Jeneane that lays out the issues with some clarity, a gem of which I reproduce below since Kathy doesn’t perma-link her comments, and they go on forever…
This is an interesting post Kathy, but I think it’s a long way from analyzing what’s going on with Robert’s decision to not let anyone comment who is an “unhappy person” and only let people who “add value” participate in his online world. Incidentally, it’s a business web site from a guy who just wrote a book on the conversational era.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Thx for the catch! phlegm /flan I get confused.
in the words of the immortal Saint Frank:
We are the other people
We are the other people
We are the other people
You’re the other people too
http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/lyrics/We‘re_Only_In_It_For_The_Money.html#Mother
SHP Now without phlegm
http://headlemur.wordpress.com/2006/04/20/shiny-happy-people-now-without-phlegm/
Darn… you spiffed up your site so nice and pretty that I slid right off your blog roll.
But, but … what the? You have TWO BLOGS! What’s going on here?
“But back at Kathy Sierra’s place, where she indeed does provide a scientific affirmation that if we would all just stop worrying and be happy, if we would cease our nattering nay-saying, our negativity, then people around us would be happier too and we could nuke Iran with a smile on our face, ”
Wow — if you read my entire post and that’s what you got from it, then I have to take responsibility for being a far worse communicator than I could possibly have imagined. That is no dramatically different from what I intended, and I’m really sorry that I led even a single person to that conclusion. I admit it may have been a mistake to use Scoble’s decision as the launch point, but it was all the derision of “happy people” he was getting that motivated me to post something I’d been thinking about since long before I started my blog. Of the gazillion things I learned from the fallout of this post, perhaps the most obvious is how many different interpretations of the word “happy” there are — and how emotionally charged the word is.
I had no idea how many people believed, as you apparently do from the part I just quoted, that happy = complacent. And the idea that being “happy” would cause someone to nuke Iran with a smile–that makes no sense to me either, given that “happy” is pretty incompatible with “destruction”. I realize that you are sincere, so… it’s obviously a point of view that I wish I’d known a few days ago.
And again, I think this stems from people viewing “happy” as “not caring”, where many of us see it as exactly the opposite.
I realize that anything else I say at this point will probably end up as more fodder for ridicule, but I’d still like to offer *my* perspective on the “nuke with a smile on our face” idea. Many of us believe that it is the kind of angry, negative, worried, pissed off, tv-media-driven, *confrontational* attitude that leads to war, not the other way around.
The glass-half full people tend toward seeking peaceful solutions. We give the benefit of the doubt. True, we may give it even when we shouldn’t, but sometimes we give it where others would not, and where it turns out that optimism would have been the better choice. It is the Happy People who favor diplomacy over attack.
No, I don’t think it was happy optmism that led us into our current situation. I think it was deeply unhappy, fearful, and angry thoughtless people. The opposite of happy.
By my (and most of my commenters) definition, happy equates with mindful, conscious, less emotional, and yes–optimistic. I agree that optimism without a conscience or rational thought would allow you to nuke a country without an afterthought. Or do anything else. But it’s not the “happy” part that’s the problem. It’s the lack of thought. Too often, in fact, it’s the angry enraged part that allows people to kill and react most primitively, with no regard for the effect they have on others or on long-term systems.
I misjudged just how many people really do believe that “happy” equates with “tuning out the real world”. But one who tuned out the world skipping merrily along does not seem to include the kind of testosterone-laden rage against “the enemy who hates us” people that led us into the mess we’re in.
It wasn’t Shiny Happy People who complacently looked the other way. It was terrified people. The ones who allowed themselves to be infected by the “be afraid, be very afraid, be worried, do this or your kids will die” negative endless repetitions of images and words of “terror”. (And there *is* a good deal of evidence… things like studies showing that some people developed PTSD symptoms merely from watching too many repetitions of the towers falling, etc.)
Wide-scale negativism, not optimism, has led us to this time.
At the least, I’d blame the endlessly negative television news (my particular “cause” is to wage “kill your tv” campaigns) before I’d blame people who are hopeful and optimistic.
Yes, I suppose the less optimistic might believe that optimism means “everything is just fine as it is”, but for us, it often means just the opposite–”everything may NOT be fine the way it is, but there is still hope that we can do something to change it!” And that, I believe, is the fundamental distinction. We keep hope alive so that we can continue to do something–including fight (in our own way)– against whatever ridiculous odds.
Which brings us back to this idea of whether ONLY anger can produce change, and that if everyone–EVERYONE–just joined in on the anger (not just any anger, but anger for the thing our particular group has deemd “righteous”) we’d make the world a better place.
The many things I’ve learned from this experience include:
* The definitions of what is meant of the word “happy” are all over the map. If I’d realized that, I would have done things differently. Just one of my many mistakes in this.
* Some of those definitions include “the unwillingness or inability to care or think (something I tried to counter in part with the happy=left-brain thing, but I guess anyone who believes happy=clueless is probably not looking to have their mind changed on that).
* Despite my best effort at explaining that *being angry about something* is not the same as being *an angry, negative person*, I left way too much room for misinterpretation.
* When *I* (and many others) describe “angry, negative people” as the opposite of happy, optimistic people, there is a fairly clear way to tell the difference, and it’s NOT about complacency. The difference seems to be (and the results of my post were a bit more evidence of this) that the “happy” people are far less likely to DERIVE PLEASURE from judging and ridiculing others.
Do we do it? Sure. But we don’t go high-fiveing one another for taking another entertaining personal slam at real people who–however misguided we believe them to be–we happen to disagree with.
Happy people disagree. Happy people get angry over situations. But the key distinction is they continue to be hopeful. They try to avoid being dragged into mob pile-ons, because they try to be aware and mindful of emotional contagion. TRULY happy people tend to focus more on criticizing ideas and actions than on criticizing other people. (I say truly, because I don’t believe that the people who enjoy gossip are particularly happy people, no matter how they look or sound. In the case of happiness, I believe it is actions–not words–which demonstrate it).
Most importantly is this one difference–while those who judge us believe they–and they alone–are the ones who will stand up and make a difference (and that the “happy” ones are useless or dangerous), most of the truly happy people recognize that ALL are needed.
I had no idea how much joy some people get out of making fun of happy people… how easy it is for them to judge us as having nothing of value to offer other than as providing good opportunities for the entertainment of those who derive pleasure ridiculing us with as many snarky, sneering, sarcastic bites as they can get. I sense a certain one-up-manship, for example, on who in your circle can do the best, most entertaining job of ridiculing Kathy Sierra.
Let’s make fun of her books (”butt first”, etc.), let’s make fun of her blog, let’s make fun of her blond hair, and on and on and on. And let’s be sure and remind her that “she brought it on herself.” that get-out-of-jail-free card that means anything goes.
I don’t mind being the object of these jokes–that *is* the price I pay for making these posts, so I reckon that I *do* get what I deserve, and I’m more than willing to pay that price, if for no other reason than to read the thoughtful, meaningful comments to that post. Yes, I realize that many of you will seize on the small percentage of comments from people who we all know damn well don’t need any excuse to spin something their way. I’m hoping that others are able to look past those to the overwhelming majority. The majority that y’all are writing off as… what? Clueless? Stupid? Dangerous? These are people. With real thoughts and concerns and desires for improving the world. Maybe people worth knowing if you weren’t so busy writing them off as mindless airheads in one fell swoop.
The big difference is, the “happy people” DO recognize that much good in the world has been accomplished through seriously angry, raging people. I find it sad that the people who would judge us so harshly are so certain that they offer the only One True Way to make the world a better place.
So, I disagree with many of you. I believe you are perhaps as wrong and potentially dangerous as you believe that I am. The big difference is, I’m not going to gather up a bunch of my online buddies to see who does the best job of spin, misleading, quoting out of context, and ridiculing.
Frank, I’ve been reading your blog a long time. I was very surprised to see you explain that I suggested:
“then people around us would be happier too and we could nuke Iran with a smile on our face”
You know perfectly well that this is not what I said, and I have a very difficult time accepting that you read through the entire thing, and the comments, and still came to that conclusion.
[Update - the comment below was offered as an acknowledgement that I had but skimmed Kathy's post, and that skimmage was only to suck in a few tidbits through the old proboscis, tidbits that I could sneeze out onto the screen here. This morning I have slogged through more of the ambient prolixity at Kathy's blog, and down through more of the comments at Shelley's on Scoble's decision to do the Bobby McFerrin thing by limiting the output he offered through his comments to those who appeared to be appropriately upbeat (unless, it is averred, he already has you on the less-than-upbeat list, in which case he does the Gong Show moderation number and you get the hook before your comment even appears). I still don't like it that I made Kathy feel bad, but I like it even less that I apologized for doing so. I am, after all, one of the grumpy people, so a fully realized master like Kathy should know what kind of negatory emotional contagion to expect when she comes here. That said, I'll leave my embarrassingly conciliatory comment below in place in the interest of hewing to the Blood rule - see number 4 - of never change a thing because all bits are sacred.]
[Update - the above "update" was updated to corfrect spelling errors.]
***
I know that was not what you said, and I apologize for my flip turn. I thought Alan’s thing was just brilliant, and I could personally give a damn about what Sideshow Bob does with his comments, and Jeneane’s insight regarding the big business nature of his work was well placed too, I thought, so I have to stand by what I said back there in the center of my post:
Now it turns out that there have been lengthy exchanges about Robert’s new rulz, and I’ll admit to skimming these at best, because locked as I am in a time crunch I have as little time for reading as for writing, which is too bad…
Consider this post an acknowledgement of your work and ignore the insulting fact that I was pretty superficial in both my reading and my interpretation. Please.
I’m still trying to make my way through the 1,635-word comment. We can scientifically conclude that happy people have much to say.
Bob needs to study with Doctor Bruce