wot are you like

[nikos]

it's funny that round here many people frequent but we don't know even how each other looks like. Who is fat? who is blond or bald? who has crooked teeth or warts? Apart from some avatars and a few people I happened to meet in real life I have no clue how you folks look like. Aren't you curious?

I am taking the lead in this dance publishing a seasonal family photo; oddly the camera lens callously robbed me of me natural charm on this occasion, but you can all have a laugh at my expense



why don't you show up yourself?

[kunkel321]

What laugh? I't a great looking family you got there!

Here are the Kunkels.

[nikos]

welcome to the bricks and mortar world, more of that please
like mine, your avatar looks almost nothing to your real you

let's hope kilmatead doesn't post a family pic, we can't have hunchback pictures in forums where kids visit

[kunkel321]

Yea, the avatar image is, maybe, 15 years old... Looks like yours is from when you had long hair. Or maybe you were standing in front of a large bush?
We definitely need a newer picture of Kilmatead... All we have is this selfie he did a while back.


EDIT: As a bonus item, here is me back in the late 80s. http://i.imgur.com/9f6YIBE.png
(I'm the one doing the bunny ears to mom and dad.)

[Kilmatead]

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's not being drawn into becoming a follower. I cannot be goaded, coaxed, or bought-off with psychological trinkets of "group participation".

Fundamentally... the internet is not about information, or sharing, or self-expression; it is not a lagniappe upon the sum of its participants; it is not a nice friendly place where we get the neighbours we desire instead of the family-from-hell which drives us to doubt the validity of the human race; it is, in fact, "not" a great many things.

But nor is it something which requires an "is" to define it (nor, we, by extension, ourselves).

One could say, with a glib smugness, that to a large degree it is about anonymity, and (thanks to the EU) the right to be forgotten. There is much to be said whether Dante ever really "knew" his love "Bice" Portinari or if her very absence from his normal existence gave him legitimate leave to trade places with Virgil and the poets of old, dooming us to view the Renaissance as some scholarly-logical medieval "parting gift".

Indeed, Nikos (with his allegorically large head - not dissimilar to Kunk's unfortunate afro-friz) are undermining (by their very visibility) all the benefits of not possessing an avatar, never mind a visage-actuelle in "real life". Usually on Star Trek you have the "funny forehead" type of aliens... once, as I recall on The Next Generation, there was one alien who had no real form itself and always referred to humans as "ugly bags of mostly water" - which, of course, I thought was a fantastic way to describe and write off our failed biological lineage.

Thus, I have never aspired to be anything other than an ugly bag of mostly water. I save a fortune on hair-gel. (That said, there was a phase last year where I wanted to be Lord Voldemort, especially as he's not to be named [thus the next-best thing], but there's that whole thing with his nose... )

You see how easily the vein twists from the serious to the frivolous based on nothing more than a discussion of pictures? Am I the only one to perceive this as an indicator of the greater threat posed by the alarming popularity of image-based reasoning on the internet opposing the figurative freedoms of learned and mindful abstraction?

Thus it is only reasonable that I would appear as yet another suitor in white, trudging with lantern bright upon the snow-dropped background of wide wintry fields filled to obscurity with manor-born brides with bouquets of the lightest Rose and Galanthus, surrounded by the heavy honour-guard of Clydesdale's best Draughts. Do you see me there? I'm the lad in the lower-left corner with the translucent tears falling from his wide clear eyes at the easy rise of lurid-reason over florid expression, bearing the death-knell of your visual world for all to see.



(You know, I figure if I keep at this tirade-against-the-surreal that I'm forced to express in conflict with the "ordinary" found so often discarded by the side of the road... one day, someone's actually going to "get it". I can but live and hope, and allow Fred to suffer lonesomely through the twisted prose of my amusements along the way. )

[nikos]

I'm all in for anonymity and all that gay anarcho-communist stuff
but when somebody has "talked" to one 3625 times and you don't know how they look like, that's weird

come on, i promise you we won't laugh too much!

[Kilmatead]

If I didn't carry the dissenting opinion (about reality itself) around here, nobody else would, that's for sure. I don't know what "anarcho-communist" means really - but it seems to me that if everyone clings (and I really mean "clings") to the conservative-opinion that describes what the world is, then humanity is doomed for sure. I may act the clown, and toy with intellectual strings (because that's what the world has always expected of me) but one of the few benefits of being a grown-up is that you don't actually have to pay taxes, you don't have to obey the laws of man, and you don't have to even breathe if you think that it'll lead to something worthwhile.

Since, as humans, we're really not very good at determining what "worthwhile" really means (if we live in a conservative world), and lord knows that the currently trending cultural traditions are not actually leading to any philosophical or intellectual growth any more (the Renaissance is truly dead), is it not our responsibility to look outside of our "expected" cordialities and behave as men and not echo the past behaviours of our fathers as an empty sea-shell?

Surely I can't be the only one in the world aware of the fact that when everyone else thinks something is "normal" or "expected" or "a good idea" that is the very time to scream and shout your way out of the plastic bag they've slipped over your head?

My father had a hard head, and thought he could both understand what poetry was and yet also objectively judge its place in the "wider world", thinking this self-satisfied superficial sheen could make him sophisticated. I always doubted that conceit and strove for immersion in everything, even if it proved disappointing in the end - and as strange as it sounds to the contemporary mind, personal pictorial representation as portraiture is one of those things I've always doubted as a valid form of expression. The more "selfies" the world takes, the more "pictures" they collect and place online, the smaller the minds within that world become, as they sacrifice their own mind's perception for a technological convenience of perspective.

I may have the least popular opinion on the planet in this regard, but as Bergson suspected, popularity is not necessary when cultural rebellion against the superficial is a requirement for the Élan vital to strangle the Ancien Régime. And he knew this a hundred years ago!

And if that's "anarcho-communist", then you need to read a little more of your buddy Bertrand's book, and really read it this time, and not just memorise the facts and figures!

3625 times, indeed. Make it a billion times and there will always be more things, Horatio, there will always be more.

(Hey, at least I'm living up to the spirit of the title of this thread if not to the spirit of the bland intent behind it. Rebellion always starts in your own backyard!)

[Tuxman]

The most interesting thing with this topic is that nikos explicitly calls for pictures of people who never would post themselves online (which is why he hasn't ever seen them). Collecting data for the NSA, aren't you?

[Gandolf]

Me and my "family", my wife died in 2007.

[IneedHelp]

The more "selfies" the world takes, the more "pictures" they collect and place online, the smaller the minds within that world become, as they sacrifice their own mind's perception for a technological convenience of perspective.

The selfie is part of a governmental strategy dedicated to tracking and identifying individuals, no doubt about that.

[dunno]

"wot am I like" ?

me.jpg

what exactly is it that one can discern from a picture about, logic, reason, morals, virtues ?......or does a picture say a thousand words....

[Kilmatead]

what exactly is it that one can discern from a picture about, logic, reason, morals, virtues ?

As the social "sciences" would have us believe, babies are especially attuned to (by nature) focus upon adult faces, visually extracting the mimicry necessary to fathom emotion and trust at (again, what the "sciences" tell us) is a fundamental level. This is probably more of an excuse for adults to feel better about scaring the bejezus out of the poor babies by constantly looming in their fields of vision, and cooing like the demented and selfish lot they actually are. Were the children to truly glean any nature from this, it would be one of hatred, distrust, and fear. And we wonder why we are all touched by some degree of haunting dementia when alone in life - it is that very solitude which provides the clarity from the illusion, and our true natures assert themselves - and we are always most fearful when facing our own most private motte-and-bailey keeps of faith.

But that pictorial illusion runs deep in our psyche. How often (under post-pubescent sheen) did we attribute the most noble traits, the most virtuous logic, the kindest of natures to the people we were most attracted to? Do great tits really imbue a girl with nobility of reason? Of course not, but I wouldn't be the first man to admit he was swayed from the sureness of his better angels by a fine bodice!

How often have we lead ourselves unto beguilement just because that which "appears to be true" most often is not? The very language we use suggests the visual prejudice to hold the greater sway of our moral centres... for do we not look smart standing proud in our prim uniforms of obedience and tradition? I have, at times, reflected that a few thoughtful military leaders throughout history have suspected this trait, and intentionally introduced elements of the ridiculous into their dress on purpose. By the same token of counterbalance, the superficial forms of intimidation have served their purpose as well - and anyone who has ever seen the French CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité) charging down their person in full dress would be forgiven a bullish detail of brocade leather and silver distraction.

Despite the admonitions from the Buddha to the Bible to the Gods of old, our own animalistic-selves respond to visual stimuli, and most humans have just accepted it as "normal", if not so obvious as to be beneath notice itself. But are these "most humans" correct in their assumptions? Of course not - they are merely riding the crest of a wave that happens to be a quarter-of-a-millon years long. This gives them ever the excuse of impetus, the conservative momentum, the very justification of fear itself: Perceived Truth. So they take their photographs, and they film their births of record, they hire their Rembrandts, and they bequeath all this as paltry evidence of their existence. Bereft of foundation for logic, reason, morals, and virtues - they bequeath this paltriness nonetheless.

And we are. indeed, all the less for it. And it matters not to them.

(But, hey, it's still rather difficult to argue with the truth that forms a great pair of tits. What's a guy to do? )

Happy Christmas to the visually enthused, the sightless unseen, and the blind visionaries of yore. We drink to the health of ye, and lament the death of ye; rave on silent scions, all's the more, all's the more.

[nikos]

what would have happened I wonder if instead of a picture I had asked you for something really complicated like your dental records or your view on the meaning of life

[dunno]

what would have happened I wonder if instead of a picture I had asked you for something really complicated like your dental records or your view on the meaning of life

Nikos chill, its xmas.

I don't subscribe to the family photo thing. What if my family are ugly as fvck, or wheel chair bound, or autistic, or deformed, do you really think that I would post their pictures against their wishes in a public forum, to what end ?.

[dunno]

but if you insist