The Problem is Right in Front of Your Face

Training to be a waitress 

I had been considering writing a piece about EliteDaily, a popular nonsense website made up of predominately American Narcissists under the age of 30. Similar to ThoughtCatalog. Rather than write that I went another way instead. 

The main observation was going to focus on the fact that EliteDaily doesn’t pay any of its writers. Yet each ‘writer’ churns out 4 to 5 posts a month, and lets EliteDaily soak in the benefits/clicks/revenue. For reference, EliteDaily seems to post 70+ pieces day.  With no compensation, why would anyone write for it?

Even more bizarrely their main competitor, ThoughtCatalog, has even written a post about why you should write for ThoughtCatalog instead. I had trouble focusing on its insanity, but their argument seems to be “We won’t pay you either, but we’re nicer about it!” I think? Maybe you’ll have better luck deciphering it. This piece on EliteDaily’s history is worth a look too. 

But really, this psychological problem of working for free on the internet is already covered over at TheLastPscyhiatrist in Alone’s last ever post.  So why rehash it?

Instead I was struck by a random piece by a young lady on EliteDaily titled “The Foolproof Way To Orgasm: Stop Sleeping With Douchebags” (spoiler alert it has nothing to do with orgasms. I know, I was disappointed too.) - Like nearly every post on the site it’s not actually a helpful how-to guide (as the title implies), but it instead reads like a journal entry; an overly personal live-journal post for those who remember live journal.

The young lady author (who you can find on Linkedin if you’re so inclined) rants about some douchebag she used to have relations with, and then congratulates herself because she claims she is no longer perusing douche-y guys. I’m not convinced, but more power to her.  

Why am I not convinced? Despite insulting her former flame as a “narcissist”, “self-serving”, “manipulative” and “psychopath” she also calls him her “counterpart” - her words.  Huh.

The most interesting part of her post was a throwaway line that I doubt struck her as odd or important. The start of her ‘how I met the douche’ story is this line:

“Immediately following my college graduation, I accepted a position as head hostess of a local chain restaurant.”

And there you have it folks. Again, you can find her Linkedin page.

Why Slate is Wrong / How to Cure Authoritarianism

Wait, they let babies into college now?

There is an article making the rounds right now that was initially posted on Slate.

In it, a Law Professor at U of Chicago, Eric Posner, argues that college students (he interestingly doesn’t specify age, just college students) should be denied most rights (such as free speech) because they are too immature to handle having rights and freedom.

The initial reaction, one would hope, is to decry this faux-intellectual milquetoast as an authoritarian monster who is damaging children. Don’t bother. Reason.com took that tactic already. 

While Reason.com (and I’m sure other sites) has pointed out that Mr. Posner has issues, let’s agree on three things.

1. Yes. Mr. Poser is an authoritarian monster.
2. Telling Mr. Posner that he’s an authoritarian monster isn’t likely to stop him from being an authoritarian monster.  So why bother telling him?
3. Why can’t we persuade Mr. Poster that he’s a monster? Have you ever known someone to give up power willingly because you asked them nicely? Being in charge of thousands of college-age adults is essential to Mr. Posner’s identity. He needs to think of them as children so he can think of himself as an adult; even if he’s accomplished nothing of note that would otherwise signify adulthood. The childhood status of these legal adults is how Mr. Poser brand-identifies himself as an adult by proxy.

So, Mr. Poser is not going to have his mind changed on this issue. And regardless I’m sure many other people have written enough hate-pieces on him/to him. None of that helps solve the problem.

What we need to focus on is people who are persuaded by Mr. Posner’s arguments, and look to persuade them away from Mr. Posner’s arguments.

The person who reads Posner’s piece and thinks “He’s got a point. College kids today do seem awfully immature. ” –  Those people. How can we persuade them? How can we persuade them to reject authoritarianism and instead invest in the future of our younger generations? They are our only hope after all; who else is going to pay for our/Posner’s Social Security?

So these people who are sympathetic to Posner’s view point. How can we construct an argument to ‘save’ them?

Branding and Product Names are Important

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But it is worth revisiting.

On Amazon you can buy a 4-pack of Potato Chip Bag Clips for $5.99. Translating to roughly $1.50 per clip.

Lincoln - Not Just a Republican President

You secretly want this

In 2014 the Lincoln car company released some TV advertisements featuring Matthew McConaughey.

They were given a lot of attention, supposedly because they were so odd. The adverts featured Matthew driving around, doing nothing, and trying to sound ‘deep’.

The adverts struck a cord with pop culture. Parody is arguably the highest form of flattery. Many people claimed they didn’t ‘get’ the ads, and therefore the bizarreness of the adverts was ripe for parody, including a memorable 3-parter by Jim Carrey on SNL (which he pitched himself according to interviews)

And this piece by Ellen.

On the off chance you’ve never seen the original Matthew adverts - here is one.

Lincoln just released two more adverts. So, now is a great time to talk about the series of adverts overall, and who they are targeting.

A basic truth of advertising is that advertising knows you better than you know yourself. Advertising teaches you not what to want, but HOW to want.

The Lincoln adverts are for a very specific type of person. Who is that person?

Black Mirror Review: Episode S1E3 “The Entire History of You”

In the future we’re all unlikeable Wankers

Black Mirror S1E3 is boring and not worth watching. Here is how it could have been better. 

Here is a basic soap opera/lifetime plot that is reassuring in its predictability.

1)      Husband suspects wife is cheating on him. He suspects this because he comes home early from a business trip, arrives late to a dinner party his wife is at, and his wife is surprised and embarrassed because she was talking to another man, who she clearly finds much more interesting than her husband.

a.       (This is, hilariously, similar to the start of the Will Ferrell movie Old School)

2)      Husband becomes further suspicious when wife laughs at other-man’s jokes that aren’t funny.

3)      Husband becomes annoyingly passive aggressive in his accusations of wife being interested in other-man.

4)      As suspected, wife and other-man did indeed used to make the sex together, before she met husband. Wife admits it.

5)      As further suspected, wife admits she’s actually slept with other-man recently, despite being married to annoying passive-aggressive husband.

6)      And, by the way, that daughter that wife and passive-aggressive husband have? Yeah…… it’s other-man’s kid.

7)      Passive Aggressive husband and wife break-up. Husband is sad.

8)      Fin.

You’ve likely seen this story before, and it’s not any more interesting this time either. It is in fact woefully boring.

What’s disappointing is that the above scenario actually is the exact synopsis of the 3^rd episode of the much buzzed about, much talked about UK Sci-Fi Horror Series – Black Mirror.

The buzz, save for this episode, is well deserved. Like all good Sci-Fi, Black Mirror takes a future setting and uses it to comment on the Now. Black Mirror is the best (arguably only) Sci-Fi fiction to really take the world of the internet, social media, and the death of old-media, and break it open to see what it’s guts look like.

Now available on Netflix in the US, the Yanquee’s are finally able to catch up on the best Sci-Fi series since the Twilight Zone.

·         The first episode of Black Mirror is a somewhat puerile (but worth watching) meditation on out-of-touch journalism, the wisdom of crowds, narcissism, shame, and participatory art.

·         The second episode is a combination of facebook, Wii Mii’s, American Idol, reality TV, prison, maintaining authority, subjugating the masses, freemium gaming, and love, all rolled into one of the most depressingly tragic visions of the future ever created.

·         The third episode is a soap opera in which every character is unlikeable and nothing interesting happens.

“How exactly is the above plot supposed to be Sci-Fi Horror?” you ask?

It’s not. Black Mirror S1E3 “The Entire History of You” is not Sci-Fi, it’s not Horror, and it’s not interesting. It’s standard soap opera drama. Its derivative and you should not waste your time watching it.

But – it’s clear that the writers/producers of Episode-3 think (incorrectly) that it is Sci-Fi because of a Sci-Fi tech feature in the world of the episode called a ‘Grain’.

Basically, nearly everyone in the show has a ‘Grain’ installed in their heads, a little piece of tech that allows them to replay the audio and video of every moment in their life (or maybe just since the grain was installed, it’s not explicitly clear). They can play back for solo watching in their own eyeballs, or they can seamlessly project the Grain video onto a TV for others to view as well.

This has some interesting implications that are sadly only touched on briefly in the epsidoe; for example to get through Security at the airport, you let security peek through the last 6 weeks of life, so they can confirm you weren’t building bombs or mingling with terrorists. The Grain is also a great nanny-cam, as you can play back the baby’s audio/video to ensure the babysitter cared for the baby properly. (Dealing with parents monitoring teenager’s activities via this process, without the teens consent, would have been interesting)

Instead, in Black Mirror S1E3, the Grain tech is merely used to confirm (not advance) the development of the plot. Rather than having passive-aggressive husband obsesses on his lonesome over whether wife laughed too much at the joke that wasn’t funny, he literally plays it back on the TV for himself, and other people.  

Rather than argue inconclusively (he-said/she-said) about whether wife had mentioned having a brief one-week fling with other-guy or a 6-month relationship, husband plays back the memory of their pillow talk after their first time, where wife lists her past relationships, and she really did downplay the other-guy incident to be only one-week. Yes. The husband is really that bad at pillow talk. “That was great. So now tell me about other times that were better!”

(Pro-Tip: guys – you should never ask about your girl’s past. If you ask, that just lets her know that you’re a weak insignificant tool who lacks confidence)

For additional terrible effect, the Grain is used to confirm that wife and other-guy did indeed sleep together recently….. and without a rubber (the Grain records all the close-up intimate details!) proving that daughter does not belong to passive-aggressive husband, but to other guy.

All of those plot events would have happened without the Grain. Wife was clearly unhappy with passive-aggressive husband, and their divorce was coming, Grain or no. And, for clarity, the episode makes it clear the cause of the initial rift in their relationship is not an over-reliance on tech, or living in the past via-Grain obsession, but just on the husband being a passive-aggressive unlikeable sad-sack loser.

And, because the paint-by-numbers plot could exist functionally without the inclusion of the Grain, the episode fails as Sci-Fi, and lacks any poignant social commentary bite. There is no commentary on the dangers of tech, or analysis of the dangers of replaying memories rather than experiencing them as they are happening. It’s just a story about unlikeable people in which the tech is incidental.

Here is how it could have been better.

How to Cure a Narcissist

No, the answer is not a bullet to the head.

A few primers before starting:

1) This cure is not guaranteed to work.

2) In this cure a narcissist is defined as someone who thinks they are the main character in their own movie. All other people are supporting character or extras. This is important as to a narcissist everything relates to them, and all other people lack agency of their own. Therefore a narcissist has no compassion, empathy, guilt, etc.

• This is a different understanding of narcissism than the more classic view of people who are overly obsessed with their outward appearance (like a Jersey Shore cast member.) This style of narcissist can be ugly and/or fat, the key is that they think they are the only character in the movie.
• To provide examples of this kind of narcissist. One example of this is a parent who uses children as a prop to communicate their own narcissistic identity to others. In this example, the child does not have agency, obviously as everything relates to the narcissist, a child is only an extension of the parent.http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/01/couple_reveals_childs_gender_f.html
• In this other example the narcissist literally says that their life is a movie with themselves as the main character, in case it wasn’t clear. Read it.http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/why_parents_hate_parenting.html

In all likelihood a Narcissist is not aware that they are narcissists, and/or will vehemently deny being one when it’s pointed out to them. If this cure is attempted it’s vital that the cure not be presented to the narcissist as a cure for narcissism. The narcissist must be ‘tricked’ into performing the cure.

How to do this?

It’s a fair bet that the narcissist often does not get everything they want, in particular from other people. The narcissist does not understand why the cashier at Subway is rude to them and won’t give them a free cookie. The narcissist does not understand why their child hates them and will not do what they’re told. The narcissist does not understand why everyone at work avoids them. The narcissist likely cannot get people to do what the narcissist wants, which may baffle the narcissist, as after all aren’t they the main character in the movie? Why isn’t the supporting cast and the extras helping to advance the plot?!

Approach the narcissist. Say you want to help the narcissist. They’ll like that; it’s about them after all.  Ask the narcissist if they sometimes have trouble getting people to do what they want. Ask the narcissist if they have trouble getting people to like them. If the narcissist says yes to either of those things, then ask the narcissist if they’d like to fix that. Would they like it if they could get people do what they want, and get people to like them?

Ideally the narcissist will say yes.  At this point the cure can be suggested.

Suggest to the narcissist that they read the classic self-help book by Dale Carnegie –How to Win Friends and Influence People.