Oh get off their lawn, all of you.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Friday, 29 August 2014 14:50 (nine years ago) link
Ha, IO OTM.
― Jeff, Friday, 29 August 2014 14:55 (nine years ago) link
almost nothing happened and nothing was discussed and this was a boring coffeeshop with plain old coffee, but self-consciousness obsession with presentation seemed like it had turned the episode into a signal event in life.
Isn't this just ritual elevating something mundane into something sacred? Or at least something set apart, something more than the apparent/visible. It's just a collective agreement to treat something in a special way, which other people who are not teenage girls do ALL THE TIME. Sporting events, any place or item or moment associated with religion--pretty much outside of birth, death, and twoo wuv, EVERYTHING else we consider important in life is because we've entered into an agreement to find it important. So ease up on teenagers.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Friday, 29 August 2014 14:56 (nine years ago) link
every moment is important when you're on television. and maybe being under constant observation = girlhood, i dunno.
― Adding ease. Adding wonder. Adding (contenderizer), Friday, 29 August 2014 15:02 (nine years ago) link
teen panopticon
there's no need to get all save-a-teen, i understand it, but i question whether the total penetration of social networking forms of ritualized self-presentation and self-styling into mundane life is good. teens just provide a particularly clear example of the possible extent.
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 15:04 (nine years ago) link
I was explicitly taught that God was completely aware of my every thought and action, at all times, and I was never actually alone or without observation, and I would eventually be morally accountable for every second. So really, take your pick. Could be pop culture, could be a completely fucked up religious delusion that millions of people have agreed to accept.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Friday, 29 August 2014 15:05 (nine years ago) link
Goddammit why is the "trenchant social commentary" thread still lockedxpost
― Immediate Follower (NA), Friday, 29 August 2014 15:06 (nine years ago) link
you get a nice little debate about high-waist goingyou get a nice little debate about high-waist goingyou get a nice little debate about high-waist goingyou get a nice little debate about high-waist goingyou get a nice little debate about high-waist goingyou get a nice little debate about high-waist goingyou get a nice little debate about high-waist goingyou get a nice little debate about high-waist going
― Hadrian VIII, Friday, 29 August 2014 15:06 (nine years ago) link
thank you
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 29 August 2014 15:07 (nine years ago) link
hey NA, bite me
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 15:08 (nine years ago) link
nothing happened and nothing was discussed
^see, more interesting things happen inside religion and sports than in this mindset. I know it's considered laughably reactionary to say that "personal technology" is creating human cyborgs, but Long Live the New Flesh etc.
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 29 August 2014 15:09 (nine years ago) link
Hahaha WHAT? Teens will always like horrible things, because teens are horrible and also super great. They'll become "more discriminating" in the individual sense as they get older and fall in line with more mainstream trends, but teens as a group, I hope they never change.
I like this!
― carl agatha, Friday, 29 August 2014 15:14 (nine years ago) link
xp More interesting TO YOU, maybe.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Friday, 29 August 2014 15:15 (nine years ago) link
well, the only perspective any of us ever knows
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 29 August 2014 15:17 (nine years ago) link
there's no need to get all save-a-teen, i understand it, but i question whether the total penetration of social networking forms of ritualized self-presentation and self-styling into mundane life is good. teens just provide a particularly clear example of the possible extent.* haven't seen the save-a-____ in a while, was wondering when/if it would come up; i was beginning to think it was considered passé?* geez not to mention that the conversations of teenage girls are yours to observe AND criticise? talk about quiddity and agony.
― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Friday, 29 August 2014 16:08 (nine years ago) link
they are if their squealing idiocies in a public place annoy the fuck out of me
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Friday, 29 August 2014 16:11 (nine years ago) link
Suffer the little children, morbs.
― Aimless, Friday, 29 August 2014 16:15 (nine years ago) link
* geez not to mention that the conversations of teenage girls are yours to observe AND criticise? talk about quiddity and agony.
― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Friday, August 29, 2014 4:08 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Super OTM.
― carl agatha, Friday, 29 August 2014 16:16 (nine years ago) link
don't strawman me, LL, and don't impute motives that speak to your preoccupations because you think it will undercut what i said. how is a person's society ever not up for observation and criticism by that person?
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 16:17 (nine years ago) link
as contendo noted, there is obviously a prevalent socialization of girls into certain forms of behavior for which highly self-conscious and carefully constructed social-networking self-presentation seems to have a relevant affinity. i don't think there was anything out of place about noting that it was girls i encountered behaving in the way i described. i'm sorry there wasn't a table of boys there, but i'm not doing an objective field study, just relating an anecdote.
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 16:20 (nine years ago) link
And you related your anecdote in a biased way, using words like "contriving," "nothing" happened or was discussed, "self-conscious obsession," "presentation," all words that have neutral usages but in combination and in a dismissive framing, are pointedly demeaning to the group and their behavior.
What if it was framed like: They were strengthening social bonds, using the tool of social media to build connections to high-status friends or figures they wanted alliances with, consolidating human relationship power into discrete nodes, whatever--oh suddenly they're performing strategic diplomacy or something high-falutin' like that! Whaddya know. The fact that a bunch of you who read this post may find that idea laughable is a pretty good demonstration of the problem with framing.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Friday, 29 August 2014 16:28 (nine years ago) link
Morbs, I'm not even touching your "squealing idiocy" because I like to like you, and to address that seriously I'd have to see you in a way that I don't want to. You, sir, are straight trolling.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Friday, 29 August 2014 16:30 (nine years ago) link
xp why should you presume that i am incapable of telling the difference between, for example, contriving and some other manner of doing something? if you are contending that it should not be possible to observe and describe what someone does as contriving to do something or other, without that description constituting an act of dismissal or demeaning, then i would question whether you are not operating under other assumptions that would bar people from making good-faith judgments about the most ordinary interactions.
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 16:32 (nine years ago) link
io otm itt, also
― Hadrian VIII, Friday, August 29, 2014 8:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― now what’s trending is grazing (silby), Friday, 29 August 2014 16:34 (nine years ago) link
xp furthermore, i didn't say anything that denied that the group i saw could have been doing all the things i mentioned. but it's not clear that if they were, they couldn't be also doing them in a way (the way i described) that would have its own costs for the ways that people relate to each other, conceive of themselves, etc., and that that way would be open to critique.
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 16:35 (nine years ago) link
this is an important conversation/argument and I am doing my best to refrain from derailing it but that quote is simply amazing
― stacked as fuck & imposing (DJP), Friday, 29 August 2014 16:37 (nine years ago) link
oh cmon, you wrote "total penetration"you're just trying to be annoying! give it a rest "i feel like i already complained about this..." --> maybe don't complain about it again?
everyone is so aggravated all the timeit's tiring
― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Friday, 29 August 2014 16:38 (nine years ago) link
io so on the money.
― how's life, Friday, 29 August 2014 16:39 (nine years ago) link
http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/__NEW/CNBC/c_powerlunch_limitedbrandsontherise_100707.300w.jpg
getting a nice little debate about high-waist going
― how's life, Friday, 29 August 2014 16:43 (nine years ago) link
imo it's easy to forget that simply going to a coffee shop is a pretty exciting thing for a teenager to do, especially if surrounded by a bunch of other teenagers they know, and well, better preening and taking photos than demonstratively smoking 1000 cigarettes right beside you which is what i did at coffee shops when i was a teenager
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 29 August 2014 20:16 (nine years ago) link
god i was a fucking know-it-all dick #stillam
can't smoke in a coffee shop in 2014, though in Seattle maybe you can get away with vaping
― Spirit of Match Game '76 (silby), Friday, 29 August 2014 20:29 (nine years ago) link
top summer pastime around here is, like, "can I get away with vaping here"
After being in Seattle twice last month, the answer to that seems to be a perpetual and enthusiastic "yes".
― joygoat, Friday, 29 August 2014 20:34 (nine years ago) link
vaping indoors really isn't much better than smoking and I wish it weren't encouraged
― odd proggy geezer (Moodles), Friday, 29 August 2014 20:38 (nine years ago) link
teens being bored and boring shocker. remember being on the phone for hours at home and your ear would hurt and you'd have to switch to your other ear? the internet has saved our ears.
― scott seward, Friday, 29 August 2014 20:38 (nine years ago) link
i remember long-distance phone bills in the hundreds of dollars.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 29 August 2014 20:53 (nine years ago) link
i basically forfeited my allowance for a year because of a particularly intense long-distance relationship i had with a girl in johnson city.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 29 August 2014 20:54 (nine years ago) link
i had one of those too (only after the long distance charges for the place i called had been discontinued, thankfully) but i don't think the fact that it was over the phone means that there is nothing significantly different and worth questioning about contemporary habits of online identity presentation and social interaction.
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 21:00 (nine years ago) link
"Social media might be ... bad!?!? ... for human interaction" isn't really worth discussing any further in 2014.
― Immediate Follower (NA), Friday, 29 August 2014 21:08 (nine years ago) link
i value your contributions to ilx as well, thank you for sharing them and helping to make it an inviting place for conversation
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 21:09 (nine years ago) link
We could have a conversation about a dude by himself in a coffee shop "observing" teenage girls if you want.
― Immediate Follower (NA), Friday, 29 August 2014 21:12 (nine years ago) link
or the use of "scare quotes" to make "insinuations", its a cornucopia in here
― Adding ease. Adding wonder. Adding (contenderizer), Friday, 29 August 2014 21:15 (nine years ago) link
we could have a conversation about you fucking off, NA. what are you adding here? what is it you seek to gain, other than shutting others down?
― j., Friday, 29 August 2014 21:18 (nine years ago) link
you guys sound like a gaggle of teenyboppers.
― scott seward, Friday, 29 August 2014 21:19 (nine years ago) link
You can gaggle on my teenyboppers.
― Immediate Follower (NA), Friday, 29 August 2014 21:36 (nine years ago) link
That was inappropriate and disgusting but it was right there. Sorry.
― Immediate Follower (NA), Friday, 29 August 2014 21:37 (nine years ago) link
no way it was hot
― mattresslessness, Friday, 29 August 2014 21:41 (nine years ago) link
big up idiots teens 4 eva
― ╲╱\/╲/\╱╲╱\/\ (gr8080), Friday, 29 August 2014 23:25 (nine years ago) link