Pillow book crap

[petronia]

An episode of Nana talks about close friends and lovers picking up speech patterns from each other, and how this can be disconcerting sometimes. It's one of those moments of emotional realism that make the manga. There's the process of differentiation whereby A becomes the [insert social role] of the group and B the [other role], but at the same time your friends work their way into your habits of speech - as much to say, your patterns of thought - so that A finds herself saying (and thinking) what B would say (and think). To some extent you become one another, like bacteria swapping memetic material in lieu of genetic.

Obviously this happens on LJ too. XD I was thinking about this because the honesty meme told me a couple of times that I was pretentious. I don't particularly worry about this but it made me remember that I used to feel a number of people among my flisters were pretentious. It never made me stop reading anyone permanently, I think, and eventually I stopped feeling that way, which is interesting because I don't think any of the people in question changed their blogging style appreciably. It could well be that I started to blog more like them (hence the intro paragraph). It was truly a subjective feeling, and very difficult to define. I don't think it's that I perceived the persons to be self-aggrandizing or snobbish, or even that I felt personally excluded because they were posting re: "difficult"/intellectual/obscure topics I hadn't swotted up on. But there was a sense that they were being disingenuous - that they knew, or ought to know, that their audience weren't going to engage with what they were saying (it's much more a question of engaging than understanding), and that that being the case they were being selfish by going on the way they did. That the dishonesty is of someone pretending to engage you in dialogue, when they're really not, and are aware they're not. Of course an LJ nearly always has multiple audiences, and sometimes a given post isn't for one. But some people can natter on about obscurities ad infinitum without triggering that sense of alienation. The only sure way of telling whether you've engaged your audience is if they talk back, but one can't formulate posts as if artlessly expecting a deluge of comments no matter what the topic - that makes it worse. Conversely maybe it makes it better if one baldly prefaces with a "I'm basically rambling to myself now, but..."

I'm sensitized to the above because I don't hopefully imagine that I'm not a recidivist offender in this, but it's a variable after which I grope blind. I don't know how I sound to other people, and the more people friend/read me the more tone-deaf I get. ^^; For instance sometimes I reread my old posts and comments and am horrified because I sound so smug and condescending in them, and sometimes they're fine. I'm never even conscious of feeling condescending toward anyone, but then it's not so much an emotion as an effect on others (the emotion is defensiveness, probably - this sounds very Mr. Darcy). I can also be pretty insensitive but that conversely happens in cases where I'm trying to tread lightly and say the right thing. I've never said the right thing. orz One day, but not today. I should learn to keep my mouth shut but I do enough of that already, and sometimes it's not the right thing either.

Back to the topic, anyway: it's not unrelated to the anxiety of the null set post, or maybe it is the anxiety of the null set post - you're going on and on and not only does nobody know what you're talking about, no one cares. Or maybe you're having too much fun, so much so that you don't even care anymore whether anyone else cares, and that's when people start thinking you're pretentious. Pageblank, my favorite blog du jour, notes this as the fundamental difference between geeks and hipsters - hipsters are geeks grown socially adept to the extent that they internalize "whether other people give a shit" as a tracking variable and have strategies for outflanking it, including but not limited to the preemptive attack of (the infamous hipster) ironic distance, i.e. it doesn't matter if you don't give a shit because I don't give a shit either, even if I clearly do - and everyone else knows this but it's okay because we are all in the same boat, being giant geeks, lulz and eksdee. By this metric a lot of the self-identified geeks I know are really hipsters, and some of the self-identified - not hipsters, no one self-ids as a hipster, but sophisticates - are really geeks. But I think this is, well, true. XD I sounded considerably geekier in the dawn of the Pitas age, even if I was often posting on less stereotypically geeky topics, because I had that oblivious geeky certainty that anything I thought was awesome was objectively as awesome as I thought it was. And intermingled with a lot of fangirl Japanese.

ON A RELATED TIP: if you've friended me recently (i.e. within the last several months), please say hi and tell me what you're here for! If you haven't yet and feel like it, anyway, it's not a demand. XD

Comments

[prototypical]

I think I said this when I found you, but I'm here mostly for the fics and fanbabble. But you seem like a pretty fun person from what I can gather. Always good to know the personality behind the stories.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_debbiechan_/]

Ha ha, I friended you because of your pretentiousness--or at least what other people would call pretentiousness. I call it broad knowledge and a willingness to display it. I've met too many smart people who hide their Proust behind the Ladies Home Journal because they don't want to be called "pretentious." I think that adjective has been thrown at me more than any other when people are...um ..."critical" of me. As if I could change the fact that I don't watch t.v., prefer classical music to pop, read stories in the Atlantic--all to please them. This is my lovely life and I'm happy here. I don't claim to know everything and anything--there are holes the size of galaxies in my education. Only people who claim to be experts on something they're not can truly be called "pretentious.

True pretentiousness is pretending to talk about things you know little about. I've seen that at wine and cheese parties, grad school symposiums--places where students are trying to suck up to teacher.

[sesame-seed.livejournal.com]

Hee! And the only things I had to say after my bout on the meme were 'my morals?' and 'BUT I BITCH IN PUBLIC TOO (kind of!)' And nobody who claimed they wanted to experience the bitchiness first-hand has actually gotten into contact. Sadface.

(You missed drabble_trade, youuu. Was so looking forward to seeing what fascinatingly torturous scenarios you could come up with to fire on unsuspecting participants.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I skipped out on blind_go too. XD; I actually went to comment then realised I wasn't in a mental space to deal with anyone else's requests, so better not ahaha. I'm going to be good and buckle down to finish WIPs for once.

I think the person who said "morals" was confused. I would've said "values". XD Or maybe they were extrapolating from your love of frequently immoral/amoral characters.

[marej.livejournal.com]

hi :) i friended you for the VF pr0n./teasing

oh you! i knew i love you for a reson other than asafei porn. i was totally bracing myself when clicking on the lj-cut, given the topic. but dude! dude, i think this is essentially the first time ever i have seen an introspection on pretentiousness which doesn't come off assy. i love love love your train of thought on the shared speech patterns. i may have actual thoughts later. then agian i may not. :)

*mwah*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess the way I worded the cut made it seem sort of ominous. XD I was just hoping no one would be like "omg, am I one of the people you thought was pretentious years ago???"

In a way we are all still in high school.

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

Ah! You've really nailed the irony of irony (?). I mean, recently even I posted some joke saying that irony is now passe because it's become so recognizable a trick that it is humorous; in order to be "hip" one must now appear to be UNironic while remaining postmodernly self-aware. OR SOMETHING. I suppose in this way fanfiction and straight-up meta can be genuinely cool again. PASSION IS IN FASHION, etc.

...Or perhaps this is merely a means to validate treating one's (my) flist as some sort of personal court --> posting annoying bullshit UNironically. I TRY I REALLY TRY.

I note that the best meshing in friendsgroups of all sorts occurs when everyone accepts a role within the circle. This is subconscious, i.e. one doesn't normally think stuff like, "Oh I am the funny one so I should be saying something clever right about now," one merely aims to reassert one's individualism in the peer context. When a new friend is introduced, they must fill a niche, not overtake a role, otherwise conflict will occur. This translates to LJ cliques in its own way, though friction is less overt since we are all polite, mature adulGHAHAHAHA. Um.

Re: In a way we are all still in high school.

[arboretum]

I'm not really thinking v. straight right now so may be going off on crazy tangent but, hee, your first paragraph reminds me a lot of my usual troubles in socialization, where nobody takes anything I say seriously, because for some reason everybody thinks I am always being incredibly ironic and sarcastic when in fact I have always been really lame and straightforward and awkward in my honesty, and it is just that somehow being lame and awkward has become some sort of fashionable sarcasm while I wasn't looking. "So dry!" being the usual response to anything I say. "No, I really have missed you too," I will tell someone, and they will go, "Wow, jesus, you really tried hard that time... I almost believed it." I facefault repeatedly. Interacting with people is so difficult. My sarcasm is always taken as earnestness, and my earnestness always as sarcasm. What the hell. XD

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

Is it a problem of intonation? Sarcasm has that certain quality.

OTOH a lot of people, myself included, will refer to something monumentally terrible as "awesome," "amazing," etc. for the humor value, and at times I have had people actually halt the conversation to ask me, "Wait. Was that sacrastic or sincere?"

[arboretum]

Oh, yes... um, I do that too. That's probably the problem, huh, that my sarcasm and my earnestness all sound the same, only, alas, people never ask me whether or not I'm being sincere, but just assume I'm not. OH WELL. XD

[beeblebabe.livejournal.com]

sincerity is the new irony pass it on

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

DUDE, ARE YOU BEING SARCASTIC?

[beeblebabe.livejournal.com]

I don't even know anymore!!!

Re: In a way we are all still in high school.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the sincerity that is self-aware but still sincere. XD

I don't think you post annoying bullshit! But now that I've made this post everyone is telling me they don't think I'm pretentious, which I appreciate greatly, but it wasn't really my point. XD So rather than say that I'll say yeah, I know that feeling of GEEZUS H CHRIST WHY AM I POSTING ABOUT [FOO] AGAIN, I AM SO FUCKING ANNOYING. And being in fandom, it's one of those things one has to constantly sanity-check oneself for, because counterintuitively people come and read (generic) your LJ specifically for the fan-tard crap. So I have these bouts where I start posting my fanon characterization analysis or whatever on carnet where it's f-locked and out of the way and then I'm like, no wait, this is ridiculous.

[mithrigil.livejournal.com]

I am here because you have intriguing and insightful things to say about topics that I am also interested in, fannish and un-. Case in point, this entry.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Interesting: I think we talked of it, but I have never really felt this way about people on my flist, because I don't know their flists, so if they are going on and on about something, there is no way I know whether their flist can or cannot engage them, even if I can't because they are continuing a convo I wasn't part of, or are talking about something I have no knowledge of or interest in. I suppose I can't consider it much different from going on and on about a character, pairing, or fanfic the readership really is not as into as you. (Your definition of pretension confuses me. So if one or two people comment, then the poster is no longer pretentious because they have engaged? Why not say that all three of them are pretentious then?)

I suppose for me, pretentious people are insincere in some way. They don't mean it in some fundamental sense, and are somehow putting on a front. But, it's hard to judge from the outside what's going on. Although we might think "huh, no one would actually believe that," they might. So it's really this that makes one think that they're different from some socially inept geek who is convinced that obscure topic A is very interesting and bores the pants out of everyone about it. (To be honest, though, I think people dislike, and I do too, snobs much more than pretentious folk: although there may be some overlap.)

The feeling of alienation may be an effect of posting style. Perhaps it depends whether one expects one's audience to know or not, or whether one attempts to write a preamble.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ah, I don't think I was as clear as I could have been. XD My definition of pretension (or perceived pretentiousness) is that - by my own experience - it's a perception on the part of the reader, based at least in part on what they themselves bring to the table, regardless of what the intent or level of sincerity of the writer really is. Because you're right, in most cases there's no way of knowing for sure.

I think in situations online, many of these concepts get conflated into the one word: the bores, the snobs, the people who put on a show - they all get called "pretentious". (One of my honesty meme commenters said, "Either you're very pretentious or I'm not smart enough to understand your fic," which is not a true dichotomy. XD But what s/he means, I think, is "Either you're being deliberately obscure for the sake of perceived intellectualism, or it's not deliberate on your part and thus the fault of failing to engage rests with me." The onus falls on the intent, as it were, even if IMO there's no "fault" to be assigned when a reader fails to engage with a text.

Though, I don't even know how it's possible to write fic to be obscure for the sake of snobbishness - obscurity for the sake of covering up one's own known weaknesses as a writer, sure, but.)

When I say the only way of knowing if you're engaging your audience is if they comment back, I meant from the POV of the writer: if three people have a constructive response to your post, then at least three people out of [however many] don't think you're being a pretentious twat, which is reassuring. XD Someone else may be lurking and thinking all four of you are pretentious twats, but you can only worry about so much in life.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Eh, well, if it's perceived pretentiousness, then of course it matters what the reader is seeing, but what is it that the reader believes that they are seeing? That's what I find unclear. They believe that they are seeing an intent or a level or sincerity, in my opinion.

Wouldn't be the first time that people online have conflated these words. But IMHO, given this thread and the varying responses, I am not sure others share your idea of pretension. For example, considering that commenter, she didn't say "and I knew she was being pretentious because no one else commented on that story." So therefore in terms of the perception from the reader's POV, the fact that other people engaged was not meaningful. From the author's POV, maybe yes, but IMHO that doesn't change the situation, especially because there are other reasons they might not have commented. (Simply because you don't understand something and thus don't want to comment, does not mean you think it is pretentious... )

I think it is possible to be obscure for the sake of snobbishness in writing fanfiction.... why wouldn't it be?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Have to run but - yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, whether other people engage/comment is not meaningful from the reader's POV. It's not part of my "definition" of pretension. I'm only talking about the writer's kimochi, there. XD

Eh, I just think from a practical point of view it's introducing difficulties I can't imagine any fiction writer would want to deal with!

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I see, but I guess I don't see it because when I don't get comments, it usually can be most reasonably traced to an issue that I don't consider has anything to do with pretension. For example, have you tried reviewing books that no one on your flist has read or has ever heard of? Then people have nothing to say because they a) have not read the book, b) were not considering reading it. Whereas, I could write something much more out there about a book that everyone knows about, say HP. But this has no bearing on how pretentious I was about either. I could write the most workman like thing about the obscure book, and still no one would respond.

? Do you mean that no fiction writer would want to be obscure for snobbishness's sake, or no fanfiction writer would? I can see it. If they are trying to write only for a select group, or if they want to have the satisfaction of those they see as the hoi polloi be unable to understand it.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yes, but in that case you wouldn't even be worried about seeming pretentious, unless you objectively think that the reason no one in your audience would consider reading the book is that it's more difficult/obscure/literary than they would enjoy. Actually, you wouldn't worry about seeming pretentious anyway unless you were prone to second-guessing yourself, and I don't think you normally do. XD (What _debbiechan_ refers to above, "smart people who hide their Proust behind the Ladies Home Journal".)

See, my point isn't so much that this is what "pretentiousness" means to everyone - I was trying to define what it means to me, or rather what it is I experienced on the occasions when I felt someone was being pretentious. And it's a very solipsistic, irrational thing, along the order of:

1) I feel that I'm representative of your target audience (for whatever reason - I'm in your current fandom and your LJ is primarily fannish, I'm in the social circle you often address, etc.).

2) Your post is overly difficult and/or obscure for your target audience, i.e. me. And since I am your target audience, you ought to know this - oughtn't you?

So you know - "Christ, Code Geass is a sparkly crack-filled mecha anime, why do you talk about it with words like Derrida and post-colonialism that mean nothing to me in this context?" Like, the person may actually be full of hot gas, or they might have a theory on Geass that legitimately invokes Derrida etc. in their head and it makes sense to them, but it makes no difference to you because as far as you're concerned, they've failed to communicate. And someone who talks without communicating is either a bore or trying to make themselves look good.

Of course, faced with this same situation someone else could just as well have an opposite emotional reaction, which is "OMG, I feel so dumb compared to this person and unworthy to comment on their LJ, they'll just think I'm stupid." And people say this to me too, in honesty meme-type contexts. XD;

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I have to say, my natural reaction is to think that someone who posts on and on about something without an interlocutor, if I bother to have any opinion, is a bore rather than pretentious. XD If they were pretentious, they'd have some regard for their audience and would be entertaining. Isn't there a group of people whom the pretentious wish to impress and thus garner comments from? It just seems... an awful lot of work to write a gigantic post that is simply designed to overawe the target audience who won't understand what it means anyway.

I suppose with me it's that I feel that I can never accurately believe that I am the target audience (unless I know all people on their flist); after all, often posts that don't make sense tend to be from discussions on other LJs or chats. (So would 'I was talking to soandso about blah blah, and so I wrote this post after thinking about it..' also be a prophylactic?) But then you're saying that in that situation, if someone else commented, you would then have proof that you were in fact not the target audience of that post.

(But now I am vaaaastly curious as to who just these people are so that I can see these baffling posts for myself to see what reaction I would have. )

MR. DARCY <3

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have said "pretentious" but "authoritative," like you've GOT all the solutions, one-EIGHT-y revolutions (but you do, right? so where's the pretense eksdee.)

RE: geeks vs. hipsters, I dunno if I buy that as the distinction: it seems to me that geeks too are capable of such strategies, such as deliberately not mentioning one's geek habits (be they "video games" or "Sailor Moon loli tentacle pr0n doujinshi") in polite nongeek company, if only to avoid getting arrested/fired. Maybe it's more of a continuum:

hipster <-- closeted geek <--> out geek --> out & proud geek?

Re: MR. DARCY <3

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a continuum - or rather I think hipsters just have more strategies. Like, there are people who will geek out embarrassingly in front of anyone, and people who will clamp down until they're among peers and then geek out, and (actually) a sizeable group of people who constantly think no one gives a shit about what they say, no matter if they're among peers or not. I've met many LJers who lurk 99% of the time because they're convinced they're uninteresting, so when they make a post and no one comments, they decide it was a horrible idea to have embarrassed themselves speaking up in public, geez what were they thinking, and delete the post. And then delete the LJ. XD; Basically this is hipsterdom inversed, like you can have a card in a tarot reading inversed.

[meril.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why I don't post that often. I really don't think anyone needs to hear what I have to say.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Re: picking up other people's speech/writing patters, I AM A BLANK CANVAS I COPY EVERYONE NO ONE IS SAFE FROM ME. I don't usually do it particularly intentionally either. I do it blogging, I do it in real life, I just start talking like the people I've most recently been speaking with/reading. Sometimes I'm paranoid I seem like a shameless imitator.

Strangely, this does not seem to be a big problem for me when writing fiction. Each story I write has its own voice and while it is of course somewhat influenced by what I've been reading, it's the story's own voice that affects me most while writing it.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Actually I do it a lot too. XD I've heard it said this is an INTP, or maybe just an IXXP trait: you unconsciously try to adapt to your surroundings.

This is really embarrassing when I'm in a foreign country and after two days I start to pick up the accent. It's like, I'M NOT PRETENDING TO TALK LIKE YOU TO MAKE FUN, HONEST.

[cis.livejournal.com]

after two days I start to pick up the accent

I do this a great deal, and worry about unintentional offence, but then I wonder if only I can hear the other-accent in my own speech and they can't really tell? Except in the case of my picking up Northern vowels, which is a running joke by now among my friends: it takes a conscious effort to speak RP english for me to reset my accent to what I assume were its original settings. I even get this bleed-through from lj-posts, I think, in that so many ljs I read are of people from North America, so I read them in an approximate accent, and then, I swear, my rl accent gets slightly more 'American' (in the vaguest sense of the word).

Last night I wrote a response but lost it to the vagaries of lj: one salient point was that I kind of took the 'pretentious' thing as a personal affront as much as anything, a bit 'oi, you can't speak about my sister like that!!' Heaven knows we've swopped enough memetic material over the years I'd never notice were it true.

[reynardine.livejournal.com]

re: audience not engaging

Most of the people I have friended I know through one fandom or another (some in person from way back), but several of them are in different fandoms. So I may post about jdrama, which is an obscure interest of mine that I've followed for years, and only one or two people would care. That doesn't bother me. If I manage to get someone interested in trying to watch jdrama, I'm happy.

I'm always surprised when someone says something about a post and I never realized they were interested in that subject. It's kinda fun when that happens.

Never thought you sounded condescending in your posts--you sound enthusiastic. Sometimes I'll note down something you recommend precisely because you are so enthusiastic about the subject. :-)

[edit]

[brownbag.livejournal.com]

I haven't read you long enough to get a grasp of what your lj's really like (I was just about to say "know you"), but I don't think you're pretentious at all. I think there's the question of what blogging means to different people? How some don't mind if they're being completely out there and how some would like to get a reaction from whoever might be reading them, so they try to write in a way that encourages discussion. I don't mind reading blogs written either way. I think if everybody were solicitous about their flist, and their flist's flist, it would take the fun out of things somehow. I mean, go virtual soapbox. (I deleted my last comment because it was too me me me and now I think I make zero sense but I'll leave this one up? XDDD)

Re: [edit]

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much my conclusion with regard to the practical side - it's very much a perception thing on the part of the reader, so as long as you know you're being true to yourself and not trying to score points there's not much else you can do. XD

[simside.livejournal.com]

Hello, friended you after I got linked to a random post of yours, I like anything related to Jojo but I also like many of the other series you talk about too. Plus, you're usually quite entertaining in general ^_^

I'm actually surprised that the topic of pretentiousness came up, I think your posts are not at all, actually. It's hard for me to read that into anyone's post though... if I don't know the person when I read their journal, I can't usually connect "moods" to posts.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's always nice to meet another JoJo fan - they/we are very scattered. XD

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I once tried to be a hipster but I didn't have the social radar for it.

Pretension is about misrepresentation more than dishonesty or insincerity, I thought. It's about image -- pretending to have certain tastes, know certain things, in order to project a certain image. It assumes that some tastes are better than others, which annoys people who don't think so, and it's a convenient scapegoat for what's often the real complaint, which like Charmian says is snobbishness. You know, the only thing worse than talking to someone who thinks she's better than you is talking to someone who is cheating to make herself look better than you.

But I'm talking in an abstract way, because my experience with real-life pretentious people is limited. XD; Though I've been to physics parties where the main point is to score intelligence points, which I sometimes resented, being that I was by no means the most intelligent person in the room.

[troisroyaumes]

I find my earliest LJ posts to be unbearably pretentious precisely for that reason (me to my earlier self: "Shut up, no one cares."). Then again, I did have fewer people on my friends list, and I didn't exactly expect people to read me, so a lot of it was me essentially showing off to my future self that would presumably come back to read it. Unfortunately, I do come back only to find my younger self incredibly annoying. I wonder if I'll think the same five years from now...I'd like to think I've stopped sounding pretentious, but I often get paranoid that I still sound self-absorbed.

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

I came here for intelligent commentary on fandom. I haven't been disappointed.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

:)

[niche.livejournal.com]

that was some brilliant wank. i wish you would post more stuff like this. (y)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I will try, maybe? XD I pretty much think in lengthy blog posts these days, but I rarely have the gumption to write them down.

[darkgloom.livejournal.com]

Well, I got linked to your Viewfinder fiction, loved it, and then took a look at your LJ and noticed you had more than a few fandoms in common with me... so, friended. :)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Ha, glad you liked - I'll be writing more in VF fandom shortly. XD

[redplasticglass.livejournal.com]

re pretentiousness: Do you mean perceived pretentiousness? Or, like, the sort that a person _is_? One is often misapplied, and the other would never be admitted to... And for those that do, they really aren't.

Anyway, I friended you.... I think several months ago, because I figured it was about time. You're on all my friends friends lists, and I see your name pop up everywhere and I already periodically read your posts. :P

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I was talking about perceived, but I think it's all perceived anyway - because as you say, it's not like anyone would admit to it as intent. XD

I would almost have thought I friended you first, for the same reasons. XD