#so whatever. but not to analyze a movie from 1996 when i have other things to do right now

[muirneach]

the son in the birdcage sucks but honestly as someone with a really really annoying stepparent myself i kind of understand him. i would never do that shit tho

[viktorfm]

(MAXENCE DANET-FAUVEL, NONBINARY) - Have you seen VIKTOR SAMUELS? VIKTOR is in HIS/THEIR SENIOR year. The VISUAL ARTS MAJOR is 24 years old & is a CAPRICORN. People say HE/THEY are OBSERVANT, INGENIOUS, RETICENT and DEPENDENT. Rumors say they’re a member of KINCAID. I heard from the gossip blog that THEY'RE HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH THEIR THERAPIST. (JAMES. 21. EST. THEY/THEM.)

dont. look at me. i know. anyways if it wasnt obvs i abandoned cupid (n darrow) in order 2 bring the two ocs tht he ws inspired by n ws a combination of bt. theyre better as different ppl methinks.

DEATH, HEAVY GRIEF, OVERDOSE / DRUG ADDICTION, HOSPITALIZATION, HYPERSEXUALITY, RELIGION MENTIONS TW

aesthetic.

old tvs and their static, worn tapes, horror movie screams, spilled ink, a sculptor’s hands, clay-stained, chicken scratch handwriting, messy notes, messy hair, scoffs and eye-rolls, bruised knuckles, sore throats, funeral homes and a crying preacher, shattered ceramics, knife fights, high ledges, vertically-striped pants, red lights, the moon shrouded in clouds, cigarette butts, graveyards and half-empty wine bottles, sitting there for hours and talking to nothing, about nothing, a god complex, gold rings adorning both hands, barbwire baseball bats, having never played baseball in your life, deep eyebags and broken mirrors, a permanent chip on one’s shoulder, yearning, longing, wishing.

basics.

full name: viktor phillip samuels

nickname(s): icky vicky :/

b.o.d. - january 2nd, 1996

label(s): the black hole, the crepehanger, the impious, the opaque, the tempest, etc.

height: 6′1″

hometown: preaker, vermont

sexuality: pansexual uwu

pinterest

stats

favorite song: disorder, joy division / it’s getting faster, moving faster / now it’s getting out of hand / on the tenth floor, down the back stairs / it’s a no man’s land / lights are flashing, cars are crashing / getting frequent now / i’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling / let it out somehow

background.

born to mama and papa (preacher) samuels in preaker, vermont - fifteen minutes after his twin sister, tatiana samuels. years later, rosa samuels joined the gang.

was an awkward, quiet kid growing up, he didn’t interact well with others and preferred being left alone to dig up worms and draw on the walls of their childhood home. the only exception was his twin, really.

as he got older he grew out of this, but instead became like … sort of an asshole? maybe to compensate for years of childhood awkwardness. he’s the sort of person who will bite the hand that feeds him & developed into a full time nuisance by middle school, unlike tatiana who was much more subtle about her conniving manners.

always has been a fan of ‘darker’ materials. grim & creepy morbid shit. probably the biggest tim burton fan, ever since he was a kid … not a good look for a preacher’s son, but he never really felt ‘in’ with the rest of his family to begin with. classic black sheep syndrome.

drew disturbing pictures as a kid that probably prompted one or two or five phone calls home to assure everything was fine.

just really had a knack for art at a young age, from drawing to painting to playing with clay. it’s always been his thing and probably is the only thing he’s good at.

being twins with tatiana was hard. they were near opposite besides both being quite mean-spirited. tatiana handled being in public better, left a better image behind - but viktor had talent, more than she did. they loved each other deeply - y’know, those unbreakable twin bonds as cliche as it sounds - but found each other as competition for their parents’ attention. a rivalry for affection.

in high school is when viktor really started to act out. it started extreme, like losing his virginity in their church and vandalism around the neighborhoods. faked being possessed in the middle of sunday service & almost had an exorcism performed on him.

his only redeemable trait was like … just his sheer talent in the arts. was in a 3d art ap course and specialized in sculptures. he could pretty much create anything he wanted with enough dedication.

because he was the problem child, the one who deserved to be disciplined for all his antics, tatiana could sneak away and get away with whatever she wanted much easier. on the bright-side, for her, i guess.

not a very motivated person - wasn’t planning on going to college, much less going to yates but his parents literally wrote & sent his college application for him because they weren’t going to house a deadbeat but had too much heart to kick him out onto the streets. cool!

he’s actually pretty smart but he just doesn’t apply himself. has a minor in english because he didn’t care for an extra course-load, but he’s good at writing & analyzing literature. is going to use it to write and illustrate his own series of children books with a style similar to tim burton’s. not for the kids, but because he likes to leave a trail of terror in whatever he does.

has been experimenting with himself since high school but college is where he really had started to crack down on himself. was out as pansexual & nonbinary by his sophomore year of college just … not to his parents, who don’t really need to know.

if you asked him if he believed in twins having a psychic connection with each other - he’d tell you he wouldn’t know. it felt believable at times, but sometimes he had no idea what was going on inside of tatiana’as head. on the other hand - viktor had always felt oddly transparent to her, like she knew all of his moves before he did. the only person who could predict him accurately.

( tw death, grief, overdose / hospitalization beyond this point )

when tatiana disappeared, viktor knew something was up. it was a twist in his gut, pure instinct that something wasn’t right. and it wasn’t right - and when she was proclaimed missing, they couldn’t find her.

and when tatiana died - viktor knew. it felt wrong, something cut so severely in him he could pinpoint her death to the second. he didn’t know how, or why, but he knew it. knew it before anybody else had.

afterwards he went on a sort of bender. he’d begun to struggle with a mild drug addiction late senior year of high school / early college, but he was managing it up until this point.

his mental health had also sunk to an all-time low, when it’d never been great to begin with. (manic & depressive episodes. once fixated on a sculpting project for six months and then knocked it off the table and destroyed it as soon as he finished it for no apparent reason.)

tatiana’s body wasn’t found immediately, and when it was … viktor went off the rails. ended up overdosing & being hospitalized. spent six months in & out of psychiatric care after that.

came back to yates to finish his senior year because … for the reasons above, he hadn’t been able to complete it. just wants to get his credits and get out of here.

is still dealing with a lot of trauma & grief - causes him to spiral and be unpredictable in regards of his mental health. he stopped taking his medication, so. :/ some days are alright, other days are pretty bad.

personality & facts.

the human embodiment of a gremlin that was fed after midnight. a goblin, if you will. one of those cats with a narrow head and really big ears … that’s them!

a big horror & halloween enthusiast. loves the old campy horror movies & probably has an abundance of masks from different movies. dresses like a grimy millennial beetlejuice more than they should because they just … love those black & white vertical-striped pants.

can appreciate the ~urban legends~ at yates and likes to feed into the fear that surrounds them. is probably the cause of a few ‘anomalies’ and ‘paranormal sightings’ because they’re just … a jerk.

fashion alternates between e-boy (they would be tiktok famous if they were 17 & didn’t think that a majorly minor based app was weird.), millennial beetlejuice, and goth in a crop top & sweatpants. big fan of crop tops and a big fan of sweatpants.

they can be really fucking mean? petty, aggressive, a major instigator. will literally spit in your face for little to no reason, you could just look at them the wrong way. the kind of person who will stick their gum into someone else’s hair. other than that? they’re like … sort of okay. they’re not always mean, just a dick about 90% of the time lmao

like okay yeah they’ll call someone a stinky bitch for no reason except they feel like it and believes it. it’s fine, they’re fine, we’re fine.

despite the fact that they’re probably getting into a fight whenever, considers themself to be a lover and not a fighter but that’a primarily because they fuck a lot. uses it as a coping mechanism, like they’re this big fancy carnival show that’s like ‘come one, come all! fuck the dead girl’s twin brother!’ and it’s … a lot. might have a problem with hypsersexuality but they’re not fully aware of it.

the preacher’s whore son, basically :)

pansexual & nonbinary, switches between he & they pronouns often and without a pattern, but they have such a fragile grip on their identity that you could call them ‘dog-faced bitch’ and they’d turn around like. sup.

vastly impulsive … like i said, they destroy their own creations for the fun of it. spends all their money on useless shit, will cheat on someone because they feel like it & likes the thrill, screams into the night sky frequently like a cat in heat.

will also spend months creating useless shit for no reason too. spent six of them sculpting a hollowed out tree the size of them & then took a sledgehammer to it.

they’re very super dramatic. would play the organ at church when nobody was looking after them and service was about to start. would just churn out these super haunting, creepy melodies like they were phantom of the opera. would do the same exact thing at home on their keyboard with the pipe organ setting whenever they got grounded until their parents took it away hbdsjfngkh

will absolutely not talk about their ‘time away’ because it’s not anyone’s business, not even their own younger sister. still refuses to talk about tatiana’s death, or their mental health, or their addiction (fallen back into it but it hasn’t gotten severe … yet :/), or anything involving their own emotions.

will just change the topic abruptly, no warning. asks about the jonas brothers instead and they fucking hate the jonas brothers.

that being said they’re absolutely not over tatiana’s death & it’s to the point of obsession over it. like there’s some kind of secret that needs to be uncovered, even though there just. isn’t. tatiana was their rock and they were pretty much dependent on her. kept them grounded. could control them when nobody else could, got into their head easier than others. it’s sort of like rosa lost two siblings that day because viktor hasn’t been the same since.

emotionally unavailable while also crying twice a day. cries during their brawls but still wins. is stony-faced when they tell you they cheated on you with your much hotter best friend.

will tell you straight up what they want from you, no bullshit & no beating around the bush. just blunt. if they want to fuck, nothing else, then that’s it. if they feel deviation or developing feelings then they’ll ghost in less than a second. is awful like that but feels no shame.

but also emotional as shit and it’s confusing. will cry on a whim and then flip you off if you try to console them or ask them what’s up. will bite you.

they go to therapy but they just fuck around and wastes their therapists’ time … also is fucking their therapist, but that’s neither here nor there. so they’re not really getting the help they need.

likes to be intimidating but not … with their body or anything because they’re a twig but uses their love & knowledge of horror and creepy shit to their advantage. has an abundance of fake blood. has channeled the energy of jack nicholson and used it on tatiana’s boyfriends before (also is a big fan of sfx makeup & has dabbled in it)

probably chases kids around with a chainsaw without the chain on halloween every year.

generally never doing good, both mental health wise & morally. would probably steal candy from a baby for funsies.

i don’t know if there’s a good to them somewhere deep down, but they don’t see any issues with themself either. nothing really breaks through to them anymore because the only person who ever made them stop and think about their actions was tatiana, and well, y’know. :/

an introverted reclusive type who doesn’t like most people or going out, but does so anyway if it means a quick high & a cheap thrill.

pretty observant and likes to analyze people even though they’re often like … partially wrong. judgmental because they like to make people feel bad, not because they’re a righteous mighty person. because they’re not. so like, a hypocrite!

wanted connections.

religious trauma? oh worm ;; three cheers fr <3 guilt <3 anyways uh. just people tht viktor hs known thru the church in some way even tho hes a fkn. freak now. maybe even family friends. 

the horror of our love :/ ;; hmm. any romance tht cld b toxic i think this cld fit. just rly a bad fit. viktor doesnt rly know hw to love so nothing rly lasts bt. maybe they try n try n nothing works bt they keep trying. cld also just be anything unrequited.

little fkn gremlins ;; theyre all evil n mean. bt theyre all friends. <3 

you are nothing ;; uuh. enemy plots. spicy enemies. rly bad enemies. rivals. they r brutal towards each other bcos nothing viktor does is ever soft.

fuck u dont pity me ;; uh. people who try to get close to viktor n he just. bites at them. he’s like no. bc he assumes ppl who r kind in response 2 his vileness r. theres smth wrong w them. n it might hv to do with pity. n he hates pity.

ugh. locals x ;; ppl who also grew up around preaker, vermont. the samuels r <3 well known folks n the uh. hm. the murder is an ongoing case. so they cld know abt it <3

dont tell anybody x ;; this is for soft plots. i dont know much about soft plots but. 

maybe i am part of the problem ;; the problem is chlamydiagate. this is a hook-ups connection. fwbs n one night stands. ppl viktor hs brutally ghosted. he doesnt acknowledge their existence outside of these events, perhaps. 

dont u just wna go apeshit ;; this is where viktor becomes a bad influence.

bt uh. anything. pelase

[aetherschreiber]

The Cycle of Fandom

I am an early Millennial.  As a 1982 baby, I literally came of age in the year 2000.  A lot of hay has been made about how my generation does things differently from our parents.  And by now, plenty of it has been made about why, as well.  I won’t rehash the talking points, but it comes down to how much things changed in our formative years.  Our parents went from vinyl to 8-tracks.  We went from cassette tapes to CDs to MP3 players to streaming over our phones.  That’s a lot to have to adapt to and as a result adapting is just what we do.

But when it comes to fandom, the human condition really hasn’t changed that much.  People like things and when they like things they obsess, collect, analyze, and sadly they eventually eventually gate-keep.

Now, let me preface all of this by saying that I don’t really have any citations for any of this.  But, as someone who was thoroughly raised in fandom, I also have a tendency to get hooked on things a lot of my generation would scoff at for being old.  I love the original Lost in Space and Man from UNCLE, the very first Mobile Suit Gundam is my favorite, I’m fascinated by the puppetry in Thunderbirds, and I’m a complete sucker for just about anything with Cary Grant.  I will binge-watch classic Doctor Who as much as I will the new stuff and love every moment of each for what it is.

For most Millennials, this isn’t the case, for whatever reason.  It’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing.  It just is.  Most folks in my generation have heavy nostalgia for the 80s at the oldest and just don’t really concern themselves with very much from before that.  It’s not that they don’t have an appreciation, but they don’t have the resulting fangirl crush I have on David McCallum that I will commiserate with my mother about (Illya Kuryakin is an adorable badass and I will die on that hill).

I like to think that this has given me a bit of a unique view on fandom, in general.  I participate in some older fandoms, where things move a bit more slowly and where the average age is usually at least one generation removed from me and therefore a bit wiser in a lot of ways.  They’ve just sort of... already covered this ground, so to speak.

The difference is the pace at which they did it.  But the cycle is the same.

It’s never anything that starts maliciously.  No fan I know of has ever set out to point-blank keep someone else from liking the thing.  Rather it starts with a sense of seniority.  “You like this thing, now, too?  Great!  I was there for the beginning and let me tell you, back then...”  It’s always like a fandom big sibling who wants to show their younger counterpart the ropes; get them proper caught-up and versed in the lore so that they can better participate.

I love fandom when it’s at this stage and it’s the type of fan I strive to be at all times.  I don’t like setting conditions for fandom.  I think it’s partly because I am such a late-comer to so many.  The idea of being a fan of something that was made 30 years or more before you were born is a hell of a thing, but I’ve never let that stop me.  And for the most part, these fandoms that are much older than I am have reached the point where they are welcoming and just sort of stuck in the big sibling stage.  Sure, you have the occasional troll, the guy that scoffs that I can’t understand because I wasn’t there at the very beginning.  But they’re usually slapped to the ground pretty quickly by everyone else.

There is the occasional exception, of course.  But one of the things those such fandoms have in common is that there is still new content being made for it.  Doctor Who is a prime example, as is Star Trek, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings (yes, I do count the upcoming Amazon series and other non-book content as new content, deal with it).  There’s something about new content being made for a fandom that causes an odd anxiety that thing that the fandom loves is going to be somehow ruined.

I’m going to use Doctor Who as an example for a lot of this.  The show turned 56 years old this last November.  56 years!  And the fact that it had a couple of decade-long breaks in there, which were themselves only separated by a single two-hour movie, only serve to highlight the changes it went through.

My second-oldest memory is of Doctor Who.  I remember the regeneration from Tom Baker to Peter Davison.  Now, Whovian historians, before you freak out because that change-over happened in 1981, before I was even born, remember that back then the US got episodes around two and three years later than the BBC, in syndication on public television channels.  So for me, that change happened when I was two.  I remember there being some Big Thing (tm) that my dad was anticipating.  I remember the burgundy and red outfit that Tom Baker was wearing while laying stricken on the ground, surrounded by his companions.  And I remember him suddenly turning into a blond and sitting up, wide-eyed and mystified.  I didn’t understand any of it at the time, of course.  And so I also remember turning to my dad, who was watching with excitement, while the credits were rolling and asking why the man turned into another man.  Oddly, that’s where the memory ends.  I don’t remember the response.  In fact, it’s only having since seen that episode as an adult that I have been able to identify it for what it was.

After that, I don’t have much in the way of Doctor Who related memories until the Paul McGann movie in 1996.  I was 14 and not well-steeped in Whovian lore at the time and I thought it was great.  My dad was more luke-warm to it because it just wasn’t the same as what he grew up with.  It was a sentiment shared by many, unfortunately, which meant that Paul McGann’s wonderful take on the Doctor was relegated purely to audio adventures until the 50th anniversary in 2013.  Sadly, in the early days of the internet, those of us who liked it weren’t quite able to find each other yet.  In the days of Usenet and mailing lists, it was still only the most hardcore fans of a thing who got together to geek out.  Meaning that most of the conversation was “oh, that’s all wrong.”  Lurking in those conversations, I saw pretty much every tremulous young person who dared to say that they liked it get slapped to the ground and told they weren’t a fan of “the real thing.”

Gate-keeping.  It’s nothing new.  And in 1996 Doctor Who fandom ran smack into its pad-locked closed barrier.  Around that same time other old but still active fandoms were starting to manifest the same thing on the internet.  It was when Trekkies suddenly separated into Trekkies (who had seen the original as it aired) and Trekkers (who came long later), for reasons I have never understood.

No, that’s not true.  I understand it.  Us humans tend to get possessive about our stories.  We have a sort of emotional ownership to them, even if not a legal one.  And when you feel an ownership of something, there is an instinct to protect it, keep it pure.  And to do that, it’s natural to try to set oneself up as an authority on the subject.

It took another decade for Doctor Who to come off the shelf again, in 2005.  I was 24 by then, the age that marketers tend to target.  A friend got his hands on a digi-copy of Christopher Eccleston’s first episode, “Rose,” that had been leaked to the internet in its entirety about a week before it actually aired.  We watched it before our D&D group met and I was instantly hooked.  And the friend that was responsible for the new addiction was only too happy to have new fandom friends.

The pendulum had swung.  Gate-keeping was out and welcoming people to the fandom was the MO.  Of course, there were and still are to this day old school Whovians who deny that anything past Sylvester McCoy exists, calling the 1996 movie and the current series a different show entirely.  There will always be those people.  But for the most part, Whovians welcomed new fans with open arms throughout all of Eccleston’s and David Tennant’s runs.

Now, that one cycle, from welcoming to gate-keeping, and back to welcoming, took 42 years.  Most things don’t last anywhere close to that long.  A show might be on for five years or a movie and its sequels be around for ten and after that, for the most part, it’s done.  And in the pre-internet age of fandom, the pendulum swung slowly enough never to hit a repeat in the cycle.

The internet has sped up everything about fandom.  The airing of just about any show in any country might as well be a world-wide premiere these days because it all just travels that quickly.  It has to if it wants to maintain any sort of surprise in its story lines, otherwise internet chatter will spoil it.  These days, things move so fast that even the few hours between an episode of Doctor Who airing in the UK and in the US is enough that one can be subjected to spoilers.  And the swing of the fandom pendulum has sped up accordingly.

For Doctor Who, it started swinging back again when David Tennant left the show and Matt Smith took over.  Tennant’s Doctor had a lot of fans who desperately didn’t want “their Doctor” to leave, many of whom took to the internet, swearing off the show.  They said it would never be as good because David Tennant was just the best Doctor ever.  By then, there were a number of us Millennial Whovians who had dug into the lore and were comfortable with the concept of regeneration as a part of it.  After all, it had already happened nine times.  And there was a bit of a tendency to call those people who swore off Matt Smith’s episodes as being fans not of Doctor Who but of David Tennant.  Meanwhile, of course, old school Whovians were patting us all on the head going “aren’t you cute.  Now you understand why Tom Baker leaving was such a thing.”

And so, the pendulum started to swing back.  You started having people call other people “not really fans of Doctor Who.”  That only got worse when Peter Capaldi took over and there was a significant portion of the fandom upset that the Doctor was now an older guy instead of the 30-something Doctors we had grown accustomed to.

Gate-keeping reared its ugly head for most of Capaldi’s run and, sadly, I think that kept a lot of people from the fandom and from really appreciating the 12th Doctor.  That cycle has started to swing back with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, but the gate-keeping is in a stage where it is desperate to hold on to what Doctor Who was when they became fans and therefore is very toxic right now.  It’s not pretty.  But those asshats are starting to be slapped to the ground on social media thanks to a new influx of fans who are now once again more comfortable with the idea of regeneration and its possibilities.

Similar swings are happening with many other fandoms.  The Star Wars fandom is a really ugly place right now, quite frankly.  Star Trek seems to be on the welcoming end.  There are always the exceptions to every generalization, of course.  There will always be “that guy” in fandom.

This swing has always existed.  Millennials are just the first generation for whom it has swung multiple times in the life of the show.  The internet is probably the biggest contributing factor to that.  What that means is that we’re the first generation to really have the chance to see the pattern for what it is.  A few of us have even been able to extrapolate back and understand that, no, this is how it always has been, just slower.

The hopeful part of that is this; by virtue of being the first to recognize the pattern, we are the first ones with the opportunity to learn from that history.  And now we’re starting to see fandoms that actively abhor gate-keeping and just want more people to come in and play.  But those tend to be very young fandoms.

The one that comes to mind for me is Critical Role.  This is a fandom that was wholly born on the internet, as the series is streamed live on Twitch.  It’s really unlike anything that has ever had a fandom this size before.  It’s only been around for four years or so.  But the cast is on its second D&D campaign which means it’s already had the opportunity to have the elitism gate that could be closed.  But something different seems to have happened.  The very moment that people started saying “I’m a real fan because I watched the Vox Machina campaign, not just the Mighty Nein,” they were told to shut the hell up and let people like things.  A foot was stuck into the gate and wrenched it back open before it could close.  And you know what?  The fandom has absolutely exploded in the last two years.  And I have yet to run into a single instance of someone gate-keeping for it that didn’t get an overwhelming and harsh rebuttal from the folks who welcome people to the fandom.

Sadly, the Critical Role fandom is distinct from the Dungeons & Dragons fandom on this point.  But therein lies the difference.  D&D is over 45 years old, ten times and more the age of Critical Role.  And the “satanic panic” over it in the 80s made a lot of D&D players very protective of the hobby, only amplifying that.  The age of your average Critter is only mid-to-late 20s or so.  At 37, I’m a little bit of an outlier, I have found.  The Critter fandom is big on TikTok which I... don’t grock, frankly, because I’m turning into an old fart.  But I’ve never, ever, been made to feel unwelcome because of that difference.  It’s been a refreshing experience, frankly.

In contrast, I really feel like I’m only now starting to be considered a “true Whovian” by the old school Whovians.  It took me 15 years and required me getting hooked on the classic stuff (which I was all too happy to do).  People who have never seen any of the classic stuff and don’t care to are often still looked down upon.  That needs to change.

The Critical Role fandom is still young and all of this may prove to be overly-optimistic in the end.  But I think it has the opportunity to be the first big fandom not to go through the gate-keeping cycle.  I sincerely hope we can hold on to that.  The cast and crew are a big part of that, with how they always hammer on the idea of inclusivity and engage so directly with the fandom.  “Don’t forget to love each other” is Matt Mercer’s sign-off at the end of every episode and serves as a constant reminder.  And if more casts and crews of more fandoms do that sort of engaging in the future, it will help break the cycle of fandom gate-keeping all the more thoroughly.  This is a fact that production companies are starting to awaken to as Millennials, comfortable with social media, age into positions of authority.

So, welcome people in, gate-keep, almost cause the whole thing to collapse, repeat.  That’s the cycle that fandom has engaged in for three generations and more.  But I think we’re on the cusp of breaking that cycle, for the most part.  The idea that you can be a fan of something without knowing absolutely everything about it has been gaining very visible traction in the last five years or so and it is wonderful to see.

Now, please, people.  Don’t prove me wrong.

[pomrania]

Speech overlap in conversation between close male friends

((So this is the final paper I did for my Gender and Language course, looking at an All Work No Play clip with the conversation between Sam and Liam. Posting it here now, because why not. Word count: 1913 words.))

Introduction

Too many things are incorrectly ascribed to gender. So many relevant variables, from power to intimacy to social status, are all folded into “gender” like it's the real reason for any finding, even without gender stereotypes interfering with what researchers believe they see. I felt that what we were given as features of female conversation, particularly between friends, was not due to gender, rather openness between the parties involved. In our society, unfortunately, emotional intimacy between men is often stigmatized, leading to some avoiding it for fear of repercussions; there is also pressure on them to constantly posture their masculinity and heterosexuality.

  If one looked specifically at close male friends, would their conversational features be the same as those of female friends who aren't afraid to be open with each other?

  I selected speech overlap as a focus, because it encompasses a wide variety of purposes, from supportive back-channelling to violative interruption. I chose a pair of friends whose interactions were already on publicly-available video, whose work and relationship I was familiar with, who were conversationally proficient, and who didn't subscribe to toxic masculinity.

Methods

  Liam O'Brien and Sam Riegel, the participants for this paper, are colleagues and close friends. They are both white cis men in their 40s, reasonably well off, and established voice actors noted for their involvement in Critical Role.

 I chose for analysis a clip from the beginning of “All Work No Play: Sword Fighting”, the first video in an online series that follows Sam Riegal and Liam O'Brien as they chat about whatever comes to mind, engage in various activities, and discuss “the fun [they] done”. This clip begins with them talking about their earlier podcast and how this show began, and goes to such varied places as the identity of a particular Schwarzenegger movie, children's birthday parties, geocaching, and finally introduces the sword fighting they had done. The conversation took place in a studio, with both participants sitting across from each other at a round table. They had beverage available throughout, presumably alcoholic.

 The total duration of the analyzed clip was 11:42. Except for one hard cut done as a joke, and one sound effect added, the video has unbroken unedited audio, of an unscripted conversation between friends. The visuals switched between camera sources, but only the auditory aspects are under consideration here.

I transcribed the clip, and noted any overlaps. I classified the overlaps according to five categories:

"simple" overlap, where the second speaker began before the first speaker was entirely finished, but after the meaning was clear

successful interruption, where the second speaker took a turn from the first speaker before that one was done

failed interruption, where the second speaker tried, unsuccessfully,

back-channelling, or supportive listening

"additional", which covers both "interruptions" to add information with no intent of seizing the turn, and instances where both parties are talking at once with nobody yielding; the former corresponds to Coates' (1988) Type V

I came up with those classifications myself, in absence of prior widespread definitions. With the exception of "additional", I noted who initiated each overlap.

Results

Failed interruptions are, by far, the least common type, with only five instances out of a total of 111 overlaps. Back-channelling was the most common type of overlap, primarily due to Liam's contributions. “Additional” had the second-highest frequency, possibly due to its use by me as a “catch-all” category.

  As shown in the table, Sam and Liam have similar total numbers of overlaps, but they differ when broken down by category. Simple overlaps and failed interruptions occur in roughly equal number between participants; there are faint trends, but not to a significant enough degree to justify declaring, as those might be pure randomness.

  Liam has a drastically higher amount of verbal back-channelling, while Sam had substantially more successful interruptions.

  Of interest is the fact that Liam has roughly the same amount of failed and successful interruptions, which shall be discussed further later on.

  Some other results aren't apparent from the table, being qualitative rather than quantitative. While many topics occurred as a result of natural conversational drift, some were brought up intentionally; and in all four instances, this was done by Sam. None of the overlaps or interruptions was received negatively by either person; this accords with both Hunt (2005) and Coates (1988). The division and location of back-channelling will also be discussed later.

Conclusion/discussion

 Although “knowledge of being observed and recorded” can change people's speech behaviours, I have reason to believe that such was not the case here, making this video a valid representation of their casual conversations. The participants are professional voice actors, who have also had their weekly D&D games filmed and broadcast for the past four years. Having watched almost all of said D&D game broadcasts, which often run for four hours per session unscripted, I can confidently say that their verbal behaviour, in the examined video, does not appear to differ from that which I have previously seen, at least when they are not acting in-character.

Asymmetry in conversation, even across multiple features, is not unusual, and greater or lesser use of one feature is not necessarily linked to usage of a different feature (Freed et al., 1996). However, I only have the one pair to work from. There might or might not be a general correlation between frequency of back-channelling and simple overlap and failed and successful interruptions; I have no data to tell me one way or the other.

 The conversation in question is very obviously cooperative and not competitive. Aside from the usual purpose of social bonding, and that All Work No Play is designed as an “excuse” for these two to hang out, this conversation was also explicitly filmed for fans of a show that both Liam and Sam appear on, so that they can see them interact.

 “Interruptions” can be violative, an attempt to steal a turn, or they can be from enthusiasm. Prior knowledge of Sam's behaviour, along with Liam's reaction or lack thereof, leads me to believe that his “interruptions” are the latter kind. Sam has an outgoing and “active” nature, he always needs to be doing something; and I am like that too.

 Liam has roughly equal (low) numbers of failed and successful interruptions, and Sam has a much higher number of successful interruptions than Liam. For an interruption to be successful, it requires two things: an attempt, and acquiescence on behalf of the other party. These pieces of information tell a story about the relative natures and dynamics of the participants. Sam feels a greater urgency to speak than Liam does, and Liam is happy to play along with it. I would expect this pattern to continue whenever active extroverts and more passive introverts are friends and have a conversation together, although I have no data to back that up, only intuition; this could be the subject of a future study.

 Even though Liam had the highest rate of back-channelling, Sam still did a decent number. Back-channelling, by definition, is supportive and displays involvement in the conversation. However, a high amount of back-channelling alone does not denote a friendly conversation. Hunt (2005) recorded a group of three friends who had a similar rate of back-channelling to this study, but only if laughter and sound effects were included as such, whereas I did not count them.

 Something interesting concerns instances of narration by each person, and how the other responded to it. Sam's longest stretch of narration, describing a birthday party he attended recently, was frequently interspersed with Liam's back-channelling. Liam has comparatively long uninterrupted stretches of speech, where he describes geocaching, or how birthdays change as children age. This cannot be explained simply as Sam being less supportive than Liam, when viewed in context. Liam's narratives are intended to convey information, while Sam's described an experience of his. Sam also left much more room for responses in his narrative. This difference in how they narrated might or might not be responsible for the difference in amount of back-channelling.

 Not much can be definitively said from this about the overall nature of gender and conversation, although it provides evidence for features between two particular people. Some of the relevant apparent features of female friend conversation are simultaneous speech due to high involvement, high rates of back-channelling, and cooperative conversation-building. All of those were found here.

 There is evidence to support that gender matters less than specific variables, when it comes to speech outside of public contexts. As follows, two studies examined pairs, controlling for conversational needs and other factors.

 Freed et al. (1996) looked at pairs of same-sex friends, and usage of “you know” and various types of questions. They found that “you know” was used in the same ways, at the same frequency, regardless of gender, and its variation depended upon discourse needs, what type of talk there was. Question frequency did not vary by gender, although particular types of questions were used somewhat more often by the male or female pairs. They concluded that most of the observed gender differences, in natural environments, came from how gender affects what discourse requirements one is exposed to, and therefore how one would speak.

 Kollock et al. (1985) looked at same-sex and opposite-sex intimate couples who live together, and found that for most features, dominance was more important than gender. Much of those results are outside the scope of this study, but it provides additional evidence that “gender” is often a confounding variable. One interesting tidbit is that in their study, less than half of the interruption attempts were successful, a start contrast to my findings, where the vast majority were successful. There are however some substantial differences in situation between their and my research, such as the nature of the participants' relationships (couples vs friends), and their research methods invoked potential conflict between members of a pair.

  There are five great limitations in this study. First, although there have been attempts to create a system for classifying types of overlaps (Roger et al., 1988), nothing has of yet been commonly accepted. Therefore, one cannot easily compare results between studies, including my own, at least not in a statistically valid manner. Second, I only looked at a segment of one conversation, between one pair; I don't have as much data as I would like. Third, there is little-to-nothing available with which I can compare my results. My results may be generally applicable to all male friends of similar closeness, or they may be unique to Liam and Sam, I have no empirical evidence to direct me one way or another, only vaguely similar studies, and gut instinct. Aside from that, I only know two studies that examined conversational features between female friends, both of which I cited here; they are separated by a continent and two decades, and look at vastly different participants, so their actual comparative value is limited. Fourth, my classification system was flawed, specifically with the “additional” type; I should have noted an added comment or question along with its attribution, and kept the unattributed type for instances where it's unclear whose “turn” it might be. Fifth, I failed to account for transition-relevant places specifically.

  Despite those, the overall findings of my research are valid, even if they could be better.

  In conclusion: while I may not have conclusively proven my hypothesis, I have provided evidence that supports it, and taken a much-needed look at an understudied field.

References

Coates, J., Cameron, D., & Coates, J. (1988). Gossip revisited: Language in all-female groups. Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language & Sex, 94–121.

Critical Role. (2018, September 30). All Work No Play: Sword Fighting. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD1CXWE7KwM

Freed, A. F., & Greenwood, A. (1996). Women, Men, and Type of Talk: What Makes the Difference? Language in Society, 25(1), 1-26.

Hunt, S. (2005). Some (more) features of conversation amongst women friends. Southern African Linguistics & Applied Language Studies, 23(4), 445–458.

Kollock, P., Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1985). Sex and power in interaction: conversational privileges and duties. American Sociological Review, 50, 34–46.

Roger, D., Bull, P., & Smith, S. (1988). The Development of a Comprehensive System for Classifying Interruptions. Journal of Language & Social Psychology, 7(1), 27–34.

[linssikeittomies]

The Place Between Here And There - Chapter 9: ...And Happiness In Private Life

Masterpost     AO3 Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3  Chapter 4  Chapter 5  Chapter 6  Chapter 7  Chapter 8  Chapter 9  Chapter 9(cont’d)

This one is super super short(actually just the first few scenes of the complete chapter) because I just can’t shake the writer’s block on this fic. I’m putting this fic on HIATUS, can’t say for how long, but I would like to finish it someday. Cowriters will always be extremely welcome!

--

It had been a major fuck-up to not press Vanya more about his family life last night. That had been the first time he had volunteered information, without any prodding from Al, and would have kept talking if only Al hadn’t been such an idiot! Yeah, sure, he’d been exhausted and in no condition to analyze whatever would’ve been told, but he could’ve done that later! Now Vanya had come back to his senses, and his lips were sealed tighter than Fort Knox! Uuuggghhh!!! Al frowned into his coffee cup while staring at the wall where Vanya had scribbled his number that first time. Back then Al hadn’t been surprised to get a number, but as time had went on, he came to realize that Vanya wasn’t the type of person who went around sharing his number with just anyone. He was picky about the type of people he socialized with, and honestly, it still kind of baffled Al that he had been one of those Vanya accepted. They couldn’t be more different – as charming as Al was, and he was very charming, he couldn’t really get Vanya. Al simply could not understand why Vanya didn’t want to talk about some things, or why he was content with being a silent participant in a conversation, how he could stand not having friends. His life seemed so profoundly lonely and boring, and he didn’t seem content with it, but he wasn’t willing to change it, either.

Maybe it was all just because of that mental illness he refused to acknowledge. It’s never easy losing your parents, and it sounded like Vanya had been pretty young when it happened. He said they had moved to the States in 1996, so Ivan had been, what, around... Uhm, 2015 minus 1996... that made 19... and now Vanya was 32 so that minus 19... Uhhhhhhh around 12. Close enough, Al had never been good at math. Well, 12 wasn’t that young, didn’t sound to Al like a death in the family would be that traumatizing at that age. Al had been 10 when Artie moved back to England, and it hadn’t fucked him up bad. So it wasn’t the exact same thing, but it had been close. Five years of radio silence from someone who was practically his older brother. That’s basically a death. So maybe it wasn’t just a simple death, maybe there’d been some weird, special circumstances. Could be that Vanya had been a huge mama’s boy. Or maybe it had been an accident he was present at, like a car crash. If it had been that, Al sure was lucky Vanya had survived. Kids are so fragile, they can die from the dumbest things. If he hadn’t survived, or if his mom had, Vanya would’ve never moved to America, and then Al would’ve never met him. Al hated thinking that it was a good thing Vanya’s mom had died, but he couldn’t help it – as infuriating and incomprehensible Vanya was, he really was The One for Al. Despite all their differences, despite all their problems, despite all their fights. Al was again reminded of their first ever fight, the one with rape fetish accusation. Dubois had been killed that same night, and Vanya hadn’t replied to Al’s texts until two days later. If Dubois had been found as quickly as the other bodies, within a couple days instead of ten, Vanya would have been too busy to ever be willing to fix his relationship with a guy he had only been dating a couple weeks, max. Funny how many hurdles they had passed without ever knowing they had existed. If Kyle had gotten to Al first, if Al had followed the street signs better, if Dubois had been found earlier… They were like Romeo and Juliet, destined to be together, star-crossed lovers. If that wouldn’t convince Artie that Vanya was awesome, nothing would! He was into occult crap so he must’ve believed in fate, too. Come to think of it, what if Vanya had met Dubois instead of Al that night? He did say they were very similar, he might have fallen in love with Dubois, as well. Al liked to think that he was a special case, that Dubois wouldn’t have been as invested and smitten with Vanya as Al had been from the get-go, but who’s to say he couldn’t have held Vanya’s interest just long enough for Al to pass by unnoticed? Or what if BK had chosen to kill Al instead of Dubois? If they really were that similar to an outside eye, it wouldn’t have mattered which one died. Al was lucky he had been too pissed off to even think about going out that night, or it might have been him strangled and castrated. He wouldn’t have put it past himself to pick up some random guy and agree to an alley fuck. Maybe Dubois had had a fight with his boyfriend, too. Maybe he hadn’t been past having revenge sex. Maybe he had liked rough sex. Maybe he wouldn’t have been scared by Vanya’s violent fucking. Maybe Vanya would have run into him and pounded him into blissful goo. Maybe Vanya would have liked imagining he was beating Al. Sliding doors, like Al had said about Kyle. In one continuity, Al was dating Vanya and Dubois was killed – in another, Al was killed and Dubois was dating Vanya – and in a third, Al had a one-night stand with Kyle, Vanya had no one to pull him out of depression, and Dubois was dead.

~¨:.:¨~

Ivan entered the office with three coffees in hand – two blacks and one with milk. This was the easiest Toris-like behavior to replicate, and would likely raise the least questions since it also benefited himself. He made sure to let Amanda see him set his own coffee down on the desk before giving hers, and she wasn’t weirded out. That was a relief. “Good morning”, Ivan said, without smiling, because that would have been pushing it. Amanda nodded in acknowledgment and took a sip of her coffee, then said a simple “thanks” before opening her computer. When Toris came in, she smiled to him and greeted him cheerfully. After she turned back to her computer, and wouldn’t see Ivan’s face, he also smiled slightly as he nodded his greeting to Toris. That day, Ivan concentrated on trying to replicate the smiles Toris often employed – the ones that didn’t express happiness, but were rather meant to ease to atmosphere. He made it look easy – it came out naturally, at the right time, and did what it sought out to do. Ivan only knew how to do sarcastic smiles, and by the end of the day Amanda was almost angry enough at him to actually say something to his face instead of muttering quietly to herself. Exhausted from the mental work, Ivan didn’t even bother getting out of his coat before collapsing face first on the sofa. “Rough day, huh?” Fredya chuckled. Ivan made a grunt, and Fredya crouched down to see his face. “I know what’ll cheer you right up – some quality cuddles and a good movie!” Ivan was too tired to correct him, and so let Fredya take off his boots and peel off his coat. He nearly refused the cuddles, but surprisingly found that he didn’t mind them much, after all. He still would have preferred a nap alone in bed, without explosions and dramatic bass going off every five seconds and Fredya’s elbow digging into his stomach. Somehow he still managed to fall asleep for a few minutes, not enough to feel rested, but much calmer than before. They heated up leftovers from yesterday, moved back to the sofa where Fredya picked out a new action movie without even finishing the first one, and Ivan took out his notebook to arrange his thoughts. About an hour passed, with Fredya saying whatever came to his mind and Ivan replying with a short comment every now and then, peacefully, until Ivan’s phone rang. That was starting to happen abnormally often – before he had crossed paths with Fredya, the phone would ring once every couple months, mostly work related. Now Fredya called him every once in a while when he was feeling too lazy to type, and even Katyushka seemed to have been bitten by the call bug. Two calls from her in as many weeks? Ivan hoped she was only calling to borrow some more money. “Excuse me for a moment.” “Work?” Fredya asked, pausing the movie. He still thought Ivan was actually watching that garbage. “No, it’s Katyusha. Unpause that mindless drivel.” Ivan got up from Fredya’s lap, already stressing about what was pressing on Katyushka’s mind. Don’t get him wrong, he loved both his sisters more than anything in the world, but Katyushka barely ever called for anything other than pressing matters, so Ivan had learned to associate calls from her with crying and pressure. “Yes, Katyushka?” “Hey, Vanya. Is this a good time to talk?” Katyushka greeted cheerfully. A weight immediately lifted off Ivan’s shoulders. “Yes, I’m at home. It sounds like something good happened, yes?” “I think so!” she giggled gleefully, sounding like the careless teenager she had never gotten the chance to be. “I was talking with Tasha earlier today and she told me some interesting news!” she sang teasingly. How odd, Ivan had no clue what news from Tasha might warrant a call to Ivan. If it was related to Tasha herself, Katyushka would wait for Tasha to tell the news herself, and there were few other people in their lives to get excited about. Tasha was interested in celebrity gossip, but Katyushka did not share that interest, so it couldn’t be a movie star getting married. “Oh? Pray tell.” “Don’t play coy with me!” Katyushka laughed. So it was news that Ivan should already be aware of. But then why would Katyushka be telling them to Ivan? “If you’re going to make me guess, we’ll be here the rest of the day”, Ivan replied. “You have a boyfriend!” His heart froze over in panic. “What?! No - I mean – Tasha told you that?” He was hardly intelligible, it felt like his tongue had thrown in the towel. “Uh-huh!” she squeed, for once oblivious to his terror, and Ivan could picture her jumping in joy. “She was jealous because you haven’t been spending time with her so she complained to me! Why didn’t you ever tell me?” “I – because – Tasha… Tasha gets jealous very easily, so I did not wish for her to know”, Ivan stuttered, panic setting in, before remembering that Tasha already knew about Fredya. He didn’t need to stay a secret anymore. Ivan was just so used to hiding his relationships from Tasha he did without thinking. “Hey, you could’ve told me! I can keep a secret!” Not from Tasha she couldn’t. Unintentionally or not. “Ooh, I’m so excited, it’s been a long time since you were with anyone! Is he nice? Good-looking? Does he also want kids? Gay or bi? Single or divorced?” Katyushka had always been the one most interested in romance, despite never having dated in her life. Since high school she had kept claiming that she didn’t have the time needed for a solid relationship. While that was true, if only because she would not let herself have the time, Ivan was sure the actual reason was Katyushka being afraid of the apple not falling far from the tree. Her mother and sister sure had trouble picking good men. “You are not giving me any time to answer”, Ivan said, both relieved and nervous. He didn’t mind Katyushka knowing about Fredya, in fact they would get along nicely, but Ivan was worried about her putting ideas into Fredya’s head. Ivan had only ever dated for fun, but each time his older sister had started planning weddings right away, and Ivan didn’t want to scare Fredya away so soon. “Don’t be nervous! I’m really happy for you! You know you’re not getting any younger and it doesn’t help that you’re so shy, plus you’re picky, so all the time I’m worried no one is good enough! So tell me about him!” Katyushka urged. “Well, um, he’s – um, American, he’s a little younger than me. He’s very lively. Please don’t tell Tasha –“  Right, Tasha already knew, as they had established at the very beginning of the call. Talk about conditioned behavior. “His name is Alfred. Do you remember the drunk man who paid our dinner in the Ladle? That’s the man.” “I do!” Katuyshka squealed in exhilaration. “So it’s thanks to me that you guys got together. You were so oblivious to his flirting that I had to give him some tips”, she giggled. “He seemed like a fun guy.” “He is”, Ivan agreed wholeheartedly. “He’s the complete opposite of me. He’s very social, for one.” “I hope he doesn’t drink as much”, Katyushka said, and although her tone wasn’t accusatory at all, Ivan immediately felt guilty. She had known about his drinking problem almost from the start, but wasn’t aware of how bad it had gotten in recent years. “He usually only takes a few beers every now and then. That night was a rare exception”, Ivan assured her. The only other time Fredya had gotten shit-faced was when he had tried challenging Ivan – Fredya learned from his mistakes, even if he liked to pretend otherwise. He always gave off the air of not trying at all, but sometimes you could catch a glimpse of the truth - Fredya did nothing by half-measures, he always did his best because nothing else was good enough for him. Being his best self was so effortless to Fredya, watching him was a joy, no one else could have such spirit. There was a beauty to him – a sincerity. “He’s – Katyushka, he’s amazing. Thank you.” “Vanechka… Oh my god, I’ve never heard you say that about anyone! Aww, that’s so romantic! When are you bringing him to meet us?” “Uh – I don’t think that would be a good idea. Tasha would get jealous.” “Come on, you can’t talk him up like that and then not let me talk to him! He still needs to get the family’s approval! Ask him if he’s free this week, I’ll make time!” She was so excited it would crush her if Ivan didn’t comply. It was still a difficult decision to make - he knew Fredya liked him, but doubtfully to the extent of wanting to meet his family. It would heavily imply a wish for long-term attachment, and Fredya was not the type to settle down. He would run to the hills the second Ivan implied wanting to keep him for life. But Katyushka had asked – Ivan had to do it for her sake, Ivan owed her, and not only for being the catalyst for their relationship. “Alright”, he finally said, and the answer was an overjoyed yippee that sounded wholly inappropriate from a 36-year old. “Let me know when he can make it! Talk to you later!” “Wait, you don’t need to hang up. He’s here.” With his heart thumping painfully, Ivan opened the bedroom door with shaking hands. Fredya was thankfully still concentrated on his idiotic movie so he didn’t notice. “Um, Fredya?” Ivan asked cautiously. “Ya?” he asked distractedly, popping a chip in his mouth, the crackle probably audible even through phone. “Katyusha is on the phone. She has a request.” “Oh, should I leave?” “No, no, it actually has everything to do with you. She would like to meet you sometime this week.” The reaction Fredya had to this invasion of intimacy was very far from the one Ivan had expected. Instead of being weirded out and declining outright, his face lit up in a smile wider than Ivan had ever seen on him. “Are you serious! Of course I’ll meet her!” He was so ecstatic that Ivan was sure he was not aware of the implications. He was afraid Fredya was running headfirst into something he thought was casual friendship. Even so, Ivan was afraid of stating clearly what meeting Katyushka was really about, because even suggesting meeting her implied Ivan wanted to tie Fredya down. He would not be opposed to it, if that was what Fredya wanted, but it would be very presumptuous of him to suggest it himself. “She seems to have a different idea of our relationship than we do, so please disregard whatever she might say about that.” “Chill, dude, I can handle girls. When?” “Vozlyublennaya sestra, pozhaluysta, ne govori nichego o svad'bakh ili detyakh”, Ivan pleaded to the phone, and Katyushka promised she wouldn’t. She had good intentions, but she wasn’t very good at keeping herself in check, rest assured she would forget all about the promise when she saw Fredya in the flesh again. Ivan put the phone on speaker so they could all weigh in. They eventually settled on Wednesday. Katyushka suggested gathering at Ivan’s house, but he was worried it would feel too domestic and final, and suggested a restaurant instead. He would of course pay for Katyushka’s meal, he couldn’t very well force her into paying herself when she was already behind on so many bills.

--

Vozlyublennaya sestra, pozhaluysta, ne govori nichego o svad'bakh ili detyakh.(Возлюбленная сестра, пожалуйста, не говори ничего о свадьбах или детях.) : Beloved sister, please don’t say anything about weddings or children.

Chapter name comes from ...счастья в личной жизни by Alla Pugacheva.

[sillyanimegamingroad]

How much information can our brain store?

In 2016, Professor José A. Esteban gave the conference “ What are memories made of? And where are they kept? ”At the Achucarro Forum of the Basque Center for Neuroscience. In it, the CSIC biologist and researcher spoke about synaptic plasticity and the development of therapeutic applications for diseases such as Alzheimer’s. It has always been a curiosity that how much information can our brain store?

Thinking about the content of the talk, the first thing that came to mind were a couple of recent articles. On the one hand, the tweet from Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce.com, commenting on the Constellation Research study on the importance of Big Data, Analytics and Data Mining (again) at this moment in history in which 90% of the data in the world was created in the last year.

On the other hand, the creation by scientists from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom of a new data format that, by storing information in crystal nanostructures, has achieved an expected life time of 13.8 billion years of expected survival for said support. You don’t know where to store 360 ​​terabytes of data and you may have to put it at 190º of temperature? No problem! We have the perfect hard drive for you thanks to a scientifically proven 5D storage technique. So I got to thinking, how much information can we remember? Will it be more or less than what can be generated in a lifetime? And what about the one that has been generated throughout history?

The information peta

Information peta of our brain

To estimate how much information could be generated, nothing better to do this than to look for the leaders in information processing. In 2011 Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, the company that wants to order the world’s information to make it accessible, said that humanity generated 5 exabytes of unique information every two days on the Internet .

What is that? Bernardo Hern��ndez pointed out in these parts that it is as much information as from the beginning of history until 2003, all together, at the same time, without anesthesia. As there were people who did not quite square the figure, Science magazine decided to recalculate, concluding that we have generated about 600 exabytes up to 2011. And how much is an exabyte? Much.

1000 kilobytes = 1 Megabyte 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte 1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte 1000 Yottabytes = 1 Bronobyte 1000 Bronobyte = 1 Geopbyte

So of course, a skill that is becoming essential to survive in this modern environment is a hypertrophied memory, whatever they say. Therefore I needed to have an idea of ​​our maximum capacity to memorize in order to determine if everything we generate fits or not.

Robert Birge , a professor and researcher at the University of Connecticut who analyzed the storage capacity of proteins, estimated it to be between 1 and 10 Terabytes in 1996, assuming that a neuron was a bit. Closer in time, in 2008, he considered in a radio interview that it could actually be something closer to 30 or 40 Terabytes , given that the brain does not store information in the same way as a computer. In any case, it seems insufficient to reach our goal, so a solution must be found. On the one hand, it is hopeful to remember that the brain forgets things, leaving room for new memories. We all have things we want to forget (those over 40 years younger because there are no compromising photos of us on the Internet of when we were young, for no other reason). But it is also true that we could forget what we should not.

No, in these topics we better bet on the Diogenes syndrome of memories, we are not going to forget any important anniversary for our partner, such as his birthday or Valentine’s Day. So we tried to keep asking to find out that depending on who we talk to we can reach the magic Petabyte number. The calculation in this case comes from estimating 100,000 million neurons with 1,000 synaptic connections each, taking each connection instead of each neuron for 1 bit.

The confirmation comes to us by a team of researchers from the Salk Institute led by Terry Sejnowski estimated in a paper published in eLife at the beginning of 2016 that it could be considered to go from tera to peta without problems since the synapses were not all the same, and that the different types could allow estimating up to 4.7 bits of information for each one .

What’s more, in some cases there is even talk of a maximum of 2.5 Petabytes . Paul Reber gives us an idea of ​​the impact of this difference in capacity in an article in Scientific American .

In it, this professor of psychology at Northwestern University explained that this amount would allow 300 million hours of television to be stored . Of course, what he did not say is that it was not in HD, so I do not think that with that quality we can survive our challenge: 1 petabyte in HD quality is barely 13.3 years of video , very little if we are looking for true love and for all life.

An image and thousands of words

Digital Brain

I admit, this first approach is discouraging. It was urgent to find solutions. So my next step was to try to determine the maximum potential of our memory . If it was greater than the information generated we would still have a chance. We have already left behind the mistaken idea that we only use 10% of our brain, but it is still clear that we cannot use everything at once and that we have it quite underused. How do you get to use it in such a way that it is possible to memorize everything you can memorize? The next one seemed obvious: we had to find the great memorizers of history , see what they were capable of and compare it with the limits.

Unfortunately, it seems that many of the best known cases of “infinite” memories were the result of trauma or unwanted situations and, what is worse, not easy to repeat without putting our integrity at risk to achieve it. An example of the risk we talked about was the old case of Cenn Fáelad mac Aillila , an Irish scholar who died in 679. Although what is called a scholar was actually scholar, it was not very scholarly. Come on, his thing was weapons and fighting. Precisely in one of them he got a good wound on his head, which resulted in a wound that caused him pain all his life on the one hand, and an elephant memory on the other. What’s more, it is said that he did not manage to forget anything else during the rest of his existence. To understand the harsh implication of acquiring this superpower we must know that Cenn, after obtaining his new condition, completely changed his life to devote himself to poetry and learning Latin, instead of enjoying with friends from the “third time” after the battles .

Recent literature has also treated the subject with interest. Forges wrote about ” Funes the memorable ” telling in his collection of “Fictions”, back in 1944, the story of a man who suffers from hypermnesia after a common accident: a fall, in this case from a horse.

Curiously, his new gift is also associated with another headache, this time that of not being able to sleep (a big mistake, as we will see later). The absence of sleep and the premise that this process is a “memory eraser” means that the protagonist has, during his short life, a memory full of details but a total inability to think and make use of them. I was on the right track … well, you understand.

Closer in time was the case of Kim Peek , who inspired the character of Raymond Babbit in the movie “Rain Man.” Kim did not have any accidents during his life as his ability apparently originated before his birth. After Kim was born, the doctors told his parents that the child was not normal and that he would have mental retardation all his life, so they even recommended admitting him.

They refused to discover as he got older certain abilities that contrasted with the evident delay that he actually showed, as they had been diagnosed. Little Kim had been reading since he was 18 months old. Well, the reality is that he memorized the books his father read to him and he didn’t need to read them ever again to remember them. At the age of three he went to the dictionary, which he also memorized, to finish with what is estimated to have been around 9,000 books in his life.

As in the case described by Borges, his great memory and other abilities did not help him in his day-to-day life (coordination problems) or in analyzing or drawing conclusions. Apparently the reason for his ability would be related to the absence of a corpus callosum in his brain, causing his neurons to form a compact mass of connections that amplified his capacity, combined all this with an evident case of macrocephaly.

Kim’s father met Barry Morrow, the scriptwriter for the film “Rain Man,” at a conference in the State of Texas in 1984. The film introduced the “Sage Syndrome” or Savant into our lives, studied by Darold. Treffert. A “Savant”, or virtuoso of the arts in French, is a person who despite some physical, mental or other disability, possesses other skills that are normally developed at a much higher level.

It is associated with autism although it is estimated that less than 10% of autistics have abilities of this type . It is also estimated that half of the Savants are autistic, which does not help us much in our search (safe and without risk to our integrity) for an infinite memory. In a century of study, a maximum of one hundred people with this capacity are calculated. Treffet himself considers that less than 50 exist right now in the whole world with it. Other researchers, such as Snyder or Mottron and Dawson, tried to find the ability to induce skills, but without much success. Looking for alternatives, I went to ” The Big Bang Theory” , which allowed me to remember that there is what is known as Hypertrophic Eidetic Memory or Photographic Memory. Yes, those people who remember everything, like Sheldon Cooper or Will Hunting. If they only remember things related to their own existence, we speak of a Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), of which it is estimated that 20 such people have been studied around the world (all in the USA). They are the “Google Humans” who suffer from hyperthymesia or excess memories. Unfortunately it is a quality that, coming as standard, can be lost if it is not diagnosed and worked on.

It appears suddenly and from that moment those who suffer from it begin to remember a large number of details of their day to day. In this case, Jill Price , who published a book about her case in 2008, can remember all the days of her life since she turned 14. Remember that at the age of 8, in 1974, you were beginning to be aware that something was not normal in your memory.

Unfortunately these people do not always have the ability to memorize anything, usually their memories are focused on aspects of their own life. They also do not use techniques or mnemonic rules that can be learned or replicated by others, or managed or improved. There are several recorded cases besides Jill Price (the long time patient AJ), all of them very similar.

For example Brad Williams, Rick Baron or Marilu Henner, star of a TV series in the US, which is the place of origin in most cases. The study of these patients by a team from the University of California at Irvine, led by Dr. Parker, has helped to better understand where and how data is stored in the brain.

It has not helped so much to the bearers of this gift, since as Jill herself has the negative part of spending much of her life in the past, of not being able to identify what each key is for , of suffering problems with recognition facial of people and also showing obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Become a Foer

At this point on the road it seems that the alternatives to have a memory “in keeping with the times” were having an accident waiting for luck to smile on us, inducing a genetic or birth anomaly and little else. Is there no other way to get an elephant memory? A journalist in the United States dedicated a year of his life to finding the solution to this problem. Our great man is Joshua Foer , who decided to leave everything to better know the people who were professionally dedicated to developing their memory, even training himself for the memory championships in the USA.

Without any prior knowledge of the subject, or special ability, or natural genetics, he won the championship in 2006. He ended up writing his experience in a book, ” The challenges of memory ” can be found in Spanish, “Moonwalking with Einstein : the art and science of remembering everything ”in English. Joshua also gives TED talks explaining how “normal people” can expand their retention capacity.

One of his first discoveries was the millenary mnemonic techniques , such as the palaces of memory. Aristotle spoke already in his time of places where we were able to store content to be remembered. The thing did not remain in the past: the ars memorativa was discussed and studied in classical sources or medieval studies. Saint Augustine wrote profusely about memory in his “Confessions”, in fact the term appears about 100 times, and also refers to a place where we can access and where memories are kept.

Frances Yates in her book “The Art of Memory” (1969) confirmed how the ancient Greeks and Romans used a technique based on prior memorization of the arrangement of everything in a room or building. Joshua Foer includes in his the story of the Greek Simonides of Ceos, who was enjoying a banquet with friends in the 5th century BC when everything collapsed around him, most of those present perishing. A survivor of the catastrophe, he suddenly became a history of memory when, abstracting from what happened and taking as a reference the columns, tables and general arrangement of the room, he managed to lead the relatives of the deceased by the hand to tell them where they were at the moment that everything changed in their lives. Joshua and the legend say that at that moment, with this practical demonstration of the Simónides technique, the study of memory began its official journey.

This is how the idea of ​​using a physical “place” as a reference is the basis of this mnemonic technique known as the Loci Method (plural of the Latin term “locus” or location, location). We first memorize a “container”, a reference, for example using a building or a house, ultimately a place we know; we can even create one from scratch. Once it is developed, we design routes through it, to also have an order, a sequence that we will follow to move through it and that will act as a common thread, turning a complex task into a pleasant walk.

Information stored in Brain

In this way we solve two important problems: remembering things that the brain has trouble remembering naturally, and remembering them in context even when they do not have them per se. The idea, later copied by communications engineers, of using a “carrier” of the message, which facilitates its transport and storage, is as old as our culture. Greeks and Romans in their ancient rhetorical treatises, such as the ” Rhetorica ad Herennium “, the oldest surviving book of rhetoric in Latin to this day (originating from the year 90 BC), already spoke of the places to store things in our memory.

Problem solved … for now

At this point part of the problem seemed solved. We could not confirm if the brain could remember all the information that is generated, but we did know that there were people who remembered everything , and that following Foer’s instructions, anyone could learn to memorize a large amount of important information, such as the dates essential to survive in a modern couple relationship. And after all, if Foer, a journalist, had been able to do it, anyone should be able to be.

The post How much information can our brain store? appeared first on Technoeager- tech blogs and articles.

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Title: Visitors To A Gallery - Referential Self, Embedded.

The artwork is a surveillance system that incorporates the visitors to the gallery inside the artwork. It is a performative spectacle of surveillance. As visitors come into the gallery, they are then tracked and captured by the camera system in the gallery. A series of codes and custom electronics manipulates the camera feeds. Proximity sensors on the floor allow the system to zoom in, or divide the screen in to grids depending on where people are standing in the gallery. The results are displayed on the walls.

- The public are embedded into the "information stream" of the artwork so that they become the artwork. - This is an open process where the invasion of privacy is made public and shared. - The resulting experience becomes a real time artifact, the work is always changing, never the same again always different forever. - The focus is the live dynamic interpretation of the space and the people both inside and outside. - This artwork puts the public on public display. The surveyed public as everyday actors are displayed and incorporated into the spectacle. - This work opens out the networks of CCTV and manipulates these images creating new and hidden narratives in the process. - The idea of using the information inside the space is also to make the space transparent and extend the gallery space outwards.

Contexts: Visitors in any of the galleries and all spaces in the building can appear inside the artwork at any time. In this way Stanza creates a parallel universe what he calls " a parallel reality". The gallery become a panopticon a surveillance space of the live breathing data "The Visitors To A Gallery - Referential Self Embedded ". This artwork continues Stanza's series of investigations by into privacy, identity within public space and networked space.

"Visitors to a Gallery- Referential Self, Embedded", uses custom made electronics and sonar sensors which are placed on the gallery floor to create the installation in the space. Visitors to the main gallery control the CCTV feeds by their own movement in the space. The piece becomes a semi performative controlled system. The proximity to the main ultrasound sensors affects the aesthetic of the image. The visitors act as an intervention in the the gallery space and become embedded in the artwork.

Concepts: The visitors to the gallery, are in fact assets, and could be referred to as data. Visitors are units of data, moving around the giant database. The patterns, movement, and exchanges of data in the real space, can be measured and interpreted as an emergent social space or flow space. Though I have indicated that visitors can be thought of units of data, it is also possible to “re-mediate” the body in the data space in order that a new, emergent, social space is created. New technologies will monitor the space to track public interactions and provide “interpretative” and the cluster of visitors within the gallery. ---> IMPORTANT 

FURTHER CONTEXT:

Everything is or will be tracked. CCTV, car sensors, tracking inside our phones and id card movement tracking in the guise of anti- terror activity. The patterns we make, the forces we weave, are all being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re-imagined and sourced for information. These patterns all disclose new ways of seeing the world --> reinterpreted by the machine. The value of information will be a new currency as power change. The central issue that will develop will be the privilege and access to these data sources. By at least taking some of this data and making something with it one is at least reclaiming ownership of the data and putting it back in the public domain. Surveillance systems are everywhere in the public domain. We are all actors, bit part actors, in a giant movie called life. Except we cannot watch, it is not on public display and the results are monitored, filtered and distributed without our permission. This research is an opportunity to redress that balance. Underpinning these artworks and research, are a whole series of potential problems about observation, surveillance, and the ethics of the control space. Imagine walking out the door, and knowing every single action, movement, sound, micro movement, pulse, and thread of information is being tracked, monitored, stored, analyzed, interpreted and logged. Stanza often works with small unit blocks that are simplified then re built , re-cored re-formed into an understanding that can re-communicate the complexity of the larger system. Stanza is working towards creating a new social space that exists in between these independent online networks where future cities will be merged into real time connected up data cities. The landscape will become an observable connection of monitored networks of real time information flows. Stanza 2004

In Visitors to a Gallery, Referential Self, Embedded, the artist is therefore fully aware of the tendency for ubiquitous technologies to be those of surveillance and control. The audiences here are making their own damn art and have the freedom to make the content of the work itself, but because the CCTV cameras are capturing their image when they might not have been aware of it, they of course are not fully in control. The artwork Gallery, Invisible Agency and Cultural Behaviours from 2008 marks a more conceptual approach to a similar theme, and Stanza asks what happens during the process of visiting the gallery as a dataspace - what does the visitor actually do? Professor Beryl Graham

"The London-based artist Stanza has been exhibiting for over three decades, and has been drawn consistently to themes of surveillance technologies, as in the “panopticon” addressed by Michel Foucault but later treated more skeptically by Bruno Latour and Emilie Hermant. The theme of surveillance has been a central concern in the social sciences in recent decades. Much of the credit for this obviously must go to Foucault, due to his well- known passages in Discipline and Punish on Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon,” an institution whose inhabitants (prisoners, students, patients, or otherwise) might be watched at any moment from a central observation point. As Foucault puts it: “The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.” Another of Stanza’s themes is multi-point perspectives, though rather than give this topic the expected relativist spin, he stresses the notion that the varying perspectives amount to parallel realities thereby suggesting that these realities are partly cut off from one another for the same reason that Euclidean parallel lines never make contact." Professor Graham Harman

From an essay by Beryl Graham. “ Data. People. Art.”

These relationships between physical space and virtual space are a recurring theme in Stanza’s work. His work Visitors to a Gallery, Referential Self, Embedded from 2008 uses the CCTV Closed Circuit Television Cameras to embed visitors to a gallery inside the artwork. Grids of images from CCTV in other parts the building are projected into the gallery rooms showing visitors their own bodies from other spaces and other times. The projectors and cables sprawled across the gallery floor reveal the self-referential nature of the work and the means of production. The installation makes visible those things not usually shown in galleries and reveals the nature of gallery-visiting Itself. Artists have of course used CCTV and surveillance cameras for art for some time, including the Surveillance Camera Players who performed with props and subtitles, specially for CCTV cameras around New York since 1996.

What Stanza’s work does is to highlight a critical view of the current rhetoric about visitor participation in galleries, for here the visitor is not necessarily participating in work voluntarily. But what does this buzzword 'participation' really mean after all? Is it a euphemism that sells the obligation to cooperate, to play along? Is it a moral imperative, a condition of the social? Is it just a way of emphasising the necessarily plural nature of activity in general?

Artists working with new media have become very familiar with the ways in which it necessarily works with interaction and participation, and disrupts fundamental artworld systems of authorship and Intellectual Property. In Visitors to a Gallery, Referential Self, Embedded, the artist is therefore fully aware of the tendency for ubiquitous technologies to be those of surveillance and control. The audiences here are making their own damn art and have the freedom to make the content of the work itself, but because the CCTV cameras are capturing their image when they might not have been aware of it, they of course are not fully in control.