Needle, Meet Haystack

It was pointed out to me recently that I tend to make long-winded statements on this site, to the point where it’s less of a blog and more of, well, something else.  Sure, it’s online and contains writing and links and stuff, but there’s a good chance that this little slice of Internet is something else entirely.  Consider your normal blog – full of clever bon mots, a succinct and clear message in every post, and consistency in tone and voice.  Needle, Meet Haystack rarely fulfills any of those criteria anymore.

The closest online presence that I can find that’s similar to what I try to do is the “blog” of Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction and other big, thick books that take several months to read through and double as flotation devices or mugger deterrents.  Greene’s site is a collection of well-researched essays on a large number of sociopolitical topics that are so dense that one might need a knife to cut through the layers of content to fully understand his theses.  While I’d rather not compare the work of an asterisk-free New York Times bestselling author with a site that peaked creatively in a story about ice cream barf, the broad strokes of our sites are the same.  Neither of us are bloggers because we don’t really blog.

Some of you are probably wondering what donuts have to do with all of this.

It was recently brought to my attention that in a horribly misguided attempt at cross-promotional campaigning, Dunkin’ Donuts released limited-edition Captain America donuts to celebrate the release of the new movie.  Now, when I say “Captain America donuts,” I mean that literally – when I bought my star-shaped, jelly-filled, frosted, star-spangle sprinkled carb bomb, the sign on the rack identified the donuts as “Captain America.”

With my first bite, I expected the tastes of freedom, liberty and bald eagle’s tears, hoping that they weren’t being too literal and had kept the donuts on ice for over 70 years (or however long that would be in Donut Time).  Instead, I tasted high fructose corn syrup, bleached flour, red dye #40, a host of artificial and natural flavorings, a tinge of regret, and a little bit of indigestion.  There was nothing special or remarkable about Cap’s donut, aside from its vaguely patriotic theme that will serve the chain well on future July Fourths.

Conversely, I saw the Captain America movie this weekend, and it was delightful.  Not just because Chris Evans surprised the heck out of me by being fantastic in his leading-man turn, nor due to Joe Johnston proving that The Rocketeer would have been a bigger hit if they’d given him a few more years, but because it was a genuinely good movie, and great Summer popcorn fare.  Aside from the name and color similarities, there was nothing connecting the Captain America donut to the Captain America movie.

The disparity between the two is about as wide as the one between this “blog” and an actual blog.

If I had my druthers, I would probably change the format of the site – increase time between posts for fuller, more in-depth writings.  But then again, having a blog that’s an actual blog might be a good thing – it’s taken me over 500 words in this post alone just to say that I talk too much.  Either way, something needs to change with NMH - if you have any opinions, suggestions or wisdom to offer, sound off in the comments.

I was flipping through the channels on TV the other night, when I came across a promo for a new show on NBC called Love in the Wild, which appears to be what would happen if one took Survivor, removed the whole self-sufficiency aspect, and added the conceit of it being a dating show.  Given the show’s title and premise, as well as the other new NBC show, It’s Worth What?, where contestants play an amateur version of Antiques Roadshow, I started to think that maybe all the fake movies and TV shows from 30 Rock were breaking the fourth wall and becoming real.  So of course, I decided to sit down and watch it.

The show was exactly what it advertised itself as, and matched my expectations to the letter.  While not revolutionary or overly interesting, the program is perfect mindless summer TV.  But I noticed that while watching the show, I felt a strange disconnect between myself and the people on the screen than I ever have before when watching television, or at least a greater disconnect than one would usually feel watching the prerecorded spelunking of strangers in South America.  It took a few minutes to figure out the exact why of the feeling, but when I realized the cause, everything clicked into place: it was lousy casting.

Usually, reality TV is cast based on how one-dimensional the participants are.  the more that someone conforms to an archetype, the better their chances of making it to the small screen.  There’s the classic Real World model (jock, princess, dweeb, hick, floozy, slacker, token LBGT), the Big Brother structure (as close to self-parody and caricature as possible) and the Jersey Shore subgroup (one type with several slight variations) – everyone has a role to play, and even if they don’t, the producers and editors will find a way for them to play it.

On scripted shows, viewers are drawn in because of their fascination with the characters and their lives; writers create new people out of the ether, populated by actors who whisk us away to parallel worlds where these people live their lives in 30- or 60-minute weeks.  We’re given time to learn about these people to the point where we might know them better than our own friends and family.  It’s not the situations and adventures that draw us in; it’s the characters’ reactions and the relationships that change within the situations and adventures that attract viewers.  With unscripted “reality” programming, however, we’re asked to take three-dimensional non-actors and insert them into different storylines without the benefit of a writing crew.  The people on television are playing themselves, which means that they might not always fit into the mold that post-production shapes them into.

Love in the Wild just happens to have either cast boring people or hired terrible editors.

None of them seem interesting or developed in the slightest; they’re going through the motions and following the story beats without showing their personalities or adhering to any sort of characterizations.  The participants are secondary to the situations themselves; any one of them could fill the roles of the others, making them all completely interchangeable and equally irrelevant.  This makes it difficult for the viewer to even care about the people involved, and by extension, watching further episodes.

If Love in the Wild is a portent of things to come for television programming, then one wonders if this means that the medium as a whole will become increasingly more passive.  Already facing the threat of interactive entertainment from computers and video games, it seems as if shows like this are designed to move the viewer even further into the spectator’s seat; eventually, the programming landscape could be littered with blank, bland, robotic content that’s visually appealing but psychologically and emotionally unappealing.

Unless the show is actually a prank that went too far in the NBC boardroom.  And in that case, why did they green-light Minute to Win It?

A little over a year ago, I took some time to extol the virtues of low-tech communications.  With a more simple device, I argued, it’s easier to have it do a few things well instead of many things poorly.  I suggested that the health risks to advanced technology giving off more radiation weren’t worth the ability to look at Amazon.com during a traffic jam.  No, it was better for me to have a phone that simply made calls and texted and took grainy photos.  And yet, here I am now, with a smartphone of my own.  What happened?

Basically, I bought into the hype.

It started innocently enough with the purchase of an iPod Touch, or “Smartphone Training Wheels.”  I liked the multi-functional aspects of the device, and found myself using it more and more, despite the limitations of a wifi-only connection.  I was using it to map routes, find new places in the city, organize my notes, and do dozens of other things that I had previously restricted to a computer.  The freedom of a portable device made life a lot easier.

As the months went on, more and more of my friends picked up iPhones, Blackberries and Android devices.  Gradually, I became cut off from the conversations about new apps and social connections that peppered group discussions.  While I still have no interest in Foursquare or Instagram or that weird brostache thing, it became harder and harder to stay out of the loop.  By staying several years behind new technological developments, I was taking a step back from social involvement, too.

But what really clenched it for me was moving to my new place.  Being only vaguely familiar with the area, I made a lot of wrong turns and found myself lost on a regular basis.  I somehow managed to turn a 5-minute drive to meet up with friends for dinner into a 30-minute survival-horror epic that ended with me being the last to arrive.  Having a device with a built-in geo-locational search and GPS began to seem like a necessity.

So one fateful Saturday, I went to a storefront for my wireless service provider and got an upgrade.  While it’s taken some getting used to having a larger mobile device in my pocket, it’s nice to know that I can communicate with friends on several levels, find my way around, or just play a silly game at a moment’s notice.  And it turns out that the whole health concern thing might not be such a big deal.

There’s a lot to love about the Internet – pictures of cats, stories about cats, cat videos, cat-shaped baked goods, cat message boards – and that’s just the stuff for dog people!  There’s literally an entire world’s worth of information out there on the Web, and it’s a great place to collaborate, research, or just goof off.  But the Information Superhighway is an imperfect masterpiece, a deeply flawed machine that has forever altered society and global culture in many ways that are not at all positive.  In fact, there are a number of very good reasons that the Internet is sucky, awful, and just plain scary…

10. You’re never safe.

A friend of mine decided to Google himself the other day, since his inbox alerts about his own name had dried up.  On the first page, he found some social network profiles, links to pages listing his awards and accolades, and his personal information, including his email, address and phone number on a website he didn’t recognize.

If you’re not familiar with a whois site, it’s basically a way to look up the official ownership of a given webpage.  Many domain name services offer a blocker for this, so my friend thought that his information was kept private.  But when he renewed his domain name, he didn’t know that the whois blocker was now a separate cost.  Lucky guy that he is, he was unable to find contact info for the owner of the whois site, so if you Google his name today, one of the first things you’ll find is his personal information.  He’s paid for the blocker services now, but there’s no way of knowing how long that the data will be out there.

While one could make the argument that it’s no different than being listed in a phone book, consider how many people have access to the information in a phone book (those in that region/city) and how many use it (barely anyone).  Meanwhile, the Internet is global and has publicly traded information readily available.  And in this case, it comes up immediately as a result for his specific name on the first page of results on the most popular search engine anywhere.

It’s not limited to website owners, either; a few years ago, Google added a “phone book” feature with that info on it too.  It’s been taken down since then, but while it was up, it made things quite easy for identity thieves.  This expands beyond Google, too; Facebook’s notorious ever-changing privacy policy with automatic opt-ins to their latest features, coupled with the glitch that let you swipe people’s personal email info have made some of the most-used websites easier for strangers to steal personal data.

9. You’re never secure.

Having to create and remember a multitude of different passwords for different websites can be exhausting, leading to a complex system of spreadsheets and notebooks and vaults and more passwords.  So, most people stick to the same one for everything.  Which is dumb.

What’s even dumber is that most passwords aren’t made very well.  This post about password hacking from 2007 is just as effective now as it was then, since many people don’t consider things like online banking, shopping or bill pay are worth the extra security of a phrase besides “IloveMuffins.”  Which is also their username.  Regardless of network security levels, no one’s helping anyone by making their password “password.”

But even if you have a secure password, you can still have your account hacked, as PlayStation Network customers found out not too long ago.  This led to the suggestion that we should move from passwords to more advanced methods, like eyeball and fingerprint scans.  The argument becomes worse when one remembers that the body scans still require data to be transmitted, and since data is what the hackers would get anyway, this now means that they have another layer of identity theft to perpetuate.  Right now, there’s no way to make sure that anything you have online is safe from hackers, which gets worse once you think about cloud computing, where all of your data is shared through a digital network; one weak security link in that chain, and all of the content is exposed.

8. Everyone is lying.

During middle school and a couple of years of high school, I played in an online text-based RPG where we played as Dragonball Z characters (don’t judge me).  One of the rules was that each person could only play as one character.  At one point, my alliance in the game needed additional manpower, so we decided that I would have a “brother” who wanted to play as well.  No one even questioned it.

During my Freshman year of college, hundreds of my classmates joined a new site called “Facebook” and received friend requests from an attractive woman whom none of them had met before. It turned out that “she” was a couple of frat guys who had figured out how to make a fake account.

The Internet was established as an anonymous safe haven (remember screen names?) where people could come and go as they pleased without the web interfering in their personal lives.  The advent of social networking has pushed “real life” interactions on the Web to a more prominent level, but it is still easy to create fake data to mess with people, steal information, or make a decent documentary/thriller.  There’s no accountability.

Of the bloggers I’ve met in person through our online interactions, at least 50% of them are different in personality and demeanor than their writing and communications might suggest.  In some cases, they alter their personalities; in others, they act as their ideal selves to hide any flaws.  To a degree, we all do this on the Internet.  Since we don’t have any incentive to “keep it real,” there’s no ethical violation when someone isn’t authentic, unless they’re caught.

7. Your relationships don’t end.

I recently purchased a cell phone that synced up with my social networking data to give me a live feed of everyone’s status updates.  This had the unintended consequence of also syncing all of the phone numbers that people listed on their Facebook pages to my phone’s directory.  My contacts list tripled, and I noticed that most of the new numbers were for people with whom I have not spoken in several years.  What’s worse, the software forbade me from removing them from my contacts page unless I deleted them from my social networking profiles, so I ended up un-syncing my accounts, wiping my phone directory, and manually re-entering everyone’s info.

I went through this whole process, of course, because I collect friends online.  Even though I could care less about the lives of at least 1/5 of my social networking buddies, I check their status updates and wish them a happy birthday because they’re part of a number that I know within my heart does nothing to improve my social proof.  I’ve kept on people who I could barely tolerate in high school, exes, random people I don’t even know, and acquaintances I met once on vacation.  And you probably do this too.

Instead of focusing on those who really matter to us, the opportunity to “know” and be known by more people is a more tantalizing prospect.  The larger the number of people we know of overall, the more the value of our actual friendships diminishes.  It creates an imbalance among the three rings of socialization.

6. There’s too much content.

Did you know that two days’ worth of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute?  Because that’s a stone-cold fact.  That’s one year of content in just over three hours.  Even discounting duplicates of stuff that’s already on there, there’s at least one day’s worth of new lipdubs, cat videos and horrible “parody” songs in less time than it takes to download an album off of iTunes.

Similarly, take a look at the number of returned results the next time you search for something online.  Chances are, the number will be well over 1,000 different entries and pages (and over 30,000 for more common items) for a rudimentary search.  The amount of data and web space dedicated to even the most trivial things, like Owen Wilson’s nose (12,200+) and what’s in a hot dog (140,000+) is astounding.

You can find almost anything on the Internet, but it only works well if you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for.  Otherwise, you’ll be bogged down by an endless stream of tangentially related sites as you fervently click through each link to find the one bit of information that you need.  And since nothing is ever really deleted from the Web and the Internet itself is without content moderation, that means that the problem will only get worse.

5. It’s necessary, but in a ‘drug addict’ way.

 Travel agencies are long since gone.  Most of the Borders bookstores have closed down.  Tower Records and Circuit City are a thing of the past.  And the reason that many brick-and-mortar stores are going the way of the dodo is due to the Internet.

A bit of business 101: when the consumer can get the same thing for less money, they don’t care if they have to wait a bit longer for it.  That’s why warehouse sales sites like Amazon and direct company-to-consumer sites like those of most airlines have flourished.  There’s less overhead (physical store and the bills associated with it), fewer employees to pay (no stores = no workers in those stores) and the same profit margin, if not greater (items can be sold at cost or in bulk with no contract to negotiate a lower cost like in retail stores), so manufacturers have every incentive to push their products online more than in stores, which means that over time, there will be many more goods and services that can only be purchased over the Internet.

Then, there’s media items.  Netflix takes up more bandwidth in the US than any other site, service or activity.  People are getting more used to paying for digital music.  Thanks to the Kindle, Nook and iPad, Ebooks are selling like hotcakes.  Heck, even the video game industry is planning on pushing download-only games on their next generation of consoles.  That means that the majority of home entertainment will be purely digital (unless converted by the consumer into physical media) and available for download online.  After all, it’s much cheaper to have one copy that can be downloaded indefinitely than creating thousands or millions of copies that need to be re-issued when sales are booming.

However, media companies are charging the same for a digital copy as they are for a physical one.  Their profit margins are sufficiently higher, and with a decrease in options for consumers, this means that you’ll need to use the Web for entertainment, or be stuck with older content.  And don’t think that the Internet providers aren’t aware of this – they’ve figured out how to net themselves a tidy profit from all of us hungry entertainment addicts…

4. It moves faster than we do.  

Do you remember Ted Williams, “The Man With the Golden Voice”?  He was the homeless radio announcer who became a viral sensation (as The Today Show called it), received gainful employment from a large number of companies, was revealed to have been an addict with an arrest record, and went into rehab thank to the advice of Dr. Phil…ALL IN ONE WEEK.  Which is insane.  Think about the last time you had a week that productive and ridiculous.  And think about the last time you heard anything about Ted Williams.

Thanks in no small part to the content overload of the Web, we’ve created micro-celebrities with shorter shelf-lives than ever before.  Williams is just the most extreme example: a man whose discovery, rise and fall occurred in 1/52nd of a year.

Conversely, Rebecca Black has endured a somewhat lasting popularity (and greater traffic consistency than Mr. Williams) despite having a singing voice that could charitably be described as “exponentially improved by autotune.”  Within several days of achieving monster viral status, the song had already spawned over a dozen parody videos so by the time that Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon, the Glee cast and Katy Perry got their hands on it, it was old news.  Heck, even the King of Song Parody, Weird Al, is having trouble keeping pace with all the new stuff.

An overabundance of information and choices often leads to distraction.  And with the sheer volume of new stuff being added to the Internet every minute (as discussed in #6), it’s far too easy to want to move on to the next new thing as quickly as possible.  Once again, there’s no incentive to keep your attention focused on one thing, when you could be looking at ten others in that same span of time.  A desire for additional experiences and content drives many Web users into an ADD-like frenzy of content consumption, a game we can’t possibly hope to win.  The only outcome is that we pare down our celebrities even further from Ted Williams’ one-week journey until we are living in a world where Andy Warhol’s prophecy about 15 minutes of fame becomes literal.

3. Everyone has a different idea of what the Internet actually is.  

If you ask me what the Internet is, I would probably call it a lifesaver.  My last three jobs have all been online-only, providing content created for and viewed on the Web.  I don’t make anything tangible, unless you print it out.

If you ask my mom the same question, she’ll say it’s a great way to keep in touch with friends and family, even though she won’t add me as a friend on Facebook.  My dad would say it’s the thing that costs him about $30 a month.  My best friend would call it the thing that lets him blow off steam after work by fragging some guys in a TF2 tournament.  Former United States Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) would say that it’s a series of tubes.

Even after making its public debut almost two decades ago, the Internet is still a mystery to many people – is it a communications tool, a new form of commerce, an entertainment engine, or a complete waste of time?  It’s such a multi-faceted animal now that it’s almost impossible to find two people who have the exact same understanding of what the Internet actually is and how it works.

That’s why your grandma might think that the Web is best for sending you chain emails and cat pictures.  Your boss might not understand why you’re using Wikipedia to look up details for a new project.  Your siblings might think you’re an idiot for looking at ragecomics.  Because of this, legislators and companies are having a heck of a time figuring out how to regulate and profit off of it.  The majority of the government doesn’t understand how the Internet works, so how can they effectively combat piracy and enforce some sort of regulations on it?  Heck, they’re letting telecom companies charge you more for using your data because you’re using it.  Until we create a definition for the purpose and function of the Internet that is easily understood by the masses, wrangling the many-headed beast known as the Web will be an impossible task.

2. Website translations are rough.  

Like I mentioned earlier, I recently purchased a smartphone, and it’s pretty fantastic.  All of the apps and features let me do tons of new things, like getting un-lost while driving, checking my email at dinner, and playing Angry Birds while standing in line at the movie theater.  Unfortunately, one of the downsides is that a lot of websites look pretty cruddy on its screen.

There are ways around this, of course.  Those of you who are reading this blog on your phones now are probably aware that I have a mobile blog-adapting widget thingy that makes it look all purty to those without computer screens.  But many websites haven’t made the investment in mobile versions of their pages, leading to the pages rendering oddly, or not at all without voodoo, technical know-how and animal sacrifice.

What’s more, there are plenty of websites that don’t render properly on a normal computer screen, since not all webpages have cross-browser functionality.  Everything from your operating system to your browser to your screen resolution and the updates on your system can change if and how you see a website.  It’s nearly impossible to tell with absolute certainty that everyone’s seeing the same thing.  The size of the text, the alignment of images, the pacing of animations and every other part of how a site looks and works is uncertain.  There’s no way to know for sure that everyone is experiencing the same Internet that you are.

1. The Internet is shrinking.  

We’re living in the Golden Age of the Internet; net neutrality, the ability to see every part of the Internet with any Web provider, is alive and well.  Thousands of people are watching HD movies and TV shows streaming live from their web connections this very instant.  Millions of games, programs, apps, widgets, patches and updates are being downloaded while you read this sentence.  Unfortunately, this all might go away very soon.

Broadband companies have slowly started placing data caps on their customers’ internet use, something that pretty much every mobile carrier is doing already.  Though the current infrastructure already supports unlimited Internet (as we use it now, anyway), the various companies have found it more profitable to limit speeds and bandwidth so they can charge overage fees.  Although the caps are high right now (to compete with cap-less competitors), the limits to what one can surf for and enjoy on the Web will slowly become more and more limited.  With expanding data use thanks to more high-definition videos, higher-quality songs, more advanced web pages and fancier games, we may soon face an age of Internet retreat, where websites devolve to their earlier forms.  If you think this is a good thing, please take a minute to look at the Space Jam website and let me know if you prefer it to most modern pages.

It’s not just limited to the web developers – hardware companies are getting in on the reduction action too.  Almost every mobile smartphone company is involved in some sort of lawsuit with their competitors.  Although the Apple juggernaut can weather most any legal storm, weaker companies like RIM (Blackberry) and the WebOS folks (Palm, luckily absorbed by HP) might not make it out alive.  With a decrease in purchasing options, consumers will have to settle for a limited selection that might move at a glacially slow development pace, more inescapable bloatware, and higher costs for new devices.  While it’s understandable that these different companies want to protect their patents and technology, their customers are the ones who will ultimately feel the sting.

Unfortunately, net neutrality might be going away, too.  Recently, more and more members of the Federal Communications Commission (who are supposed to provide oversight on all of this Internet stuff) are moving to the private sector after approving corporate maneuvers and mergers, getting cushy positions at the companies they approved.  Congress isn’t too impressed with the FCC either, overturning a ruling that the regulatory body made regarding the preservation of net neutrality for reasons that amount to, “nuh uh, that’s our job.”  Then again, public opinion might take care of things; some cable news pundits who don’t understand the issue are unwittingly suggesting that their viewers support a closed-off Internet as well.

So when you get right down to it, the World-Wide Web is a reckless, lawless, poorly defined, dangerous place full of liars and cheaters that we’re all addicted to, despite varying levels of visual comprehension and increasing encroachment by corporate interests.  It would behoove all of us to take a step back and reduce the power that this medium has over our lives so we can deal with some of its major flaws.  If we can spare enough time away from adorable cat pictures, that is.

Last weekend, I saw that movie based on a comic book.  You know, the big-budget one with the flashy special effects starring the not-quite famous actor in the lead role in what is ostensibly an origin story.  That’s right, I saw Captain America Green Lantern Thor X-Men: First Class. And after sitting through some awkward social commentary, January Jones’ lose interpretation of ‘acting,’ Kevin Bacon chewing scenery like he’s got a bet going with Nicolas Cage, I came away with one thought: Holy Cow, can Michael Fassbender Rock a Turtleneck.

Not since the halcyon days of James Coburn and Steve McQueen has one man so dapper-ly rocked an article of clothing that many gents who fail to pull it off have referred to as being strangled by a really weak guy, all day.  Sadly, I’m in that latter group.  Maybe if I was around in the Sixties, I could have found some way to pull it off.

There is a large constituency of the general population that seems to insist that they were born in the wrong period of time: their poetic soul aches to have heard Keats and Byron speak their words aloud; their social conscience dictates that they should have joined the MIllion-Man March; or their fashion sense is more in-line with the beat generation.  While it’s nice to imagine hopping in a time machine and travelling back to the storied past, there’s a tendency to overlook the simple things that many of us take for granted every day, like the sanitation, technology, social roles and economics of the time period of our affections.  The trade-off between chatting with the Founding Fathers and using a restroom with a toilet and running water is greater than one might imagine.

It’s easy to speak in hypotheticals because there’s little danger in doing so 0 the entire construct is fictional, so offering a specific opinion on it runs little risk of being taken seriously.  Discussing time travel as the means to leading a new and exciting life falls into the same category as “If I had a billion dollars” or “The super-power that I want the most” – fun to think about, but highly unlikely.  So naturally, there are people who take these things too seriously.

Not too long after seeing X-Men: First Class, I tried watching the movie Primer, ostensibly the most realistic take on time travel thus far in human history, and it made my head hurt (here’s a graph of what I think is an accurate timeline of the film’s events that I still find confusing).  By filling in a number of the science-y blanks when it comes to what I’m used to seeing as something no more complex than imagining if the world was made of chocolate, it almost demanded that I take this non-existent concept and treat it with the full gravity that it potentially deserves.  The entertainment and fun of daydreaming about bouncing through the eons has been replaced by pragmatism and logic.  Where X-Men was a silly popcorn flick that asked me what super-power I would want, Primer asked me if I was ready to accept the consequences of a bleak scientific future.  One offered a pleasant hypothetical conundrum, while the other put up road blocks on my perceptions of a suppositional construct.  I fear that it’s all become incredibly complicated.

But dangit, I just want to look cool wearing a turtleneck.

I’ve been living in my apartment for a bit over two weeks now, and in that time, I’ve met a few people.  I know of the guy downstairs from me who gets his three kids every weekend, along with their endless army of friends who seem to enjoy playing in the parking lot.  I’ve seen the couple next to him, a May-December romance in favor of the older woman.  I’ve passed by the guy who never seems to have his shirt on when he takes his dog out to poop near the dumpster.  I waved hello at the lady who thinks it’s a good idea to put a leash on her cat and take it for walks.  I’ve acknowledged the families by the pool and the folks who use the fitness center.  But I don’t know their names.  What’s worse, I haven’t met my neighbor.

During recent chats with friends, co-workers and other acquaintances, I mentioned that I have no idea who lives next door to me.  I’m pretty sure it’s a woman, and I think she has a dog.  Once, I saw a woman walking near the shared stairs between our apartments with a dog on a leash, so I assume that was her, as I don’t have any dog-walking ladies at my place.  Also, she had a nice butt.  None of them see anything wrong with this.  ”I don’t want to know who lives around me – they should keep to themselves, like I do.” An office-mate suggested.  ”Unless your place is burning or you need to borrow a cup of sugar, should you even bother?” A friend asked.  Their comments scared me more than the thought of a ghost walking her ghost-dog near the stairs.

Growing up, I was on pretty good terms with the other kids on my block.  We’d have pick-up basketball games, pool parties at each others’ houses, soccer matches and stuff like that.  Everyone knew everyone, and even if they didn’t like each other, the adults at least tolerated one another with clenched grimaces and nods of acknowledgment.  In college, people went in and out of different dorm rooms frequently, hanging out, watching movies, smooching and so on.  There was a sense of community.  Here, it feels more like we’re all living in isolation pods.

“Isolation pod” might not be the right word – I’m thinking of the capsule hotels found in large cities in Asia; one can rent out an elongated cubby from a wall of rows and columns of identical cubbies for a few hours’ time to sleep, work, watch TV, browse the Internet or hide from a vengeful paramour.  Assignments are chosen at random, neighbors change frequently, and everyone keeps to themselves.  Though life in the capsules might be temporary, it’s a solitary sentence, devoid of human interaction.

Many of the people I spoke with about my neighbors mentioned that they don’t know anyone who they live next to, which is an odd thing to consider.  These are the folks who can watch your place while you’re away, the audience to your domestic troubles and attempts at home repair, and the uncomfortable aural recipients of whatever sounds you make in the evening.  They could be voyeurs, mendicants, millionaires, or great friends.  Instead of connecting to those who are literally a few steps away, many of us are content to be surrounded by strangers, so long as we’re safe in our own little pods.  Community, it seems, is limited to those we already know or have met through other circumstances.

I have to admit, I’m a bit terrified of breaking this confusing social faux pas.  Is it wrong to be social with those you share close quarters with?  Is it rude to want to know who’s on the other side of the wall?  Can we only learn who’s in the pods next door if we’re both out and about at the same time and notice that we look familiar to each other?  It’s too complicated.

Maybe I should just knock on the door to say “Hi.”  That could work.  Sure, it might be awkward at first, but this way, I would feel a little more comfortable here.  At least as long as my neighbor doesn’t know that I was talking about her butt on the Internet.

I was out at dinner to celebrate the birthday of my friend’s ex-girlfriend the other evening among a dozen people I had never met before, when I noticed that one of the guys had ordered a drink.  At the time, there was no other alcohol at the table, so a cloud of silence passed over us, ending all conversations as we gazed at one upon his beverage choice.  It was neon green, with a maraschino cherry on the bottom.  With his inaugural sip, something strange happened, as we all gazed with rapt attention to gauge his response.  He became the manliest man at the table.

It wasn’t by the merit of his choosing an alcoholic beverage, though that played a small factor in it. He could have ordered a Shirley Temple and the effect would have still been there, but at a lower level.  You see, the force and power of his decision came from what he chose.  He picked a “girlie drink.”

Conventional wisdom holds that the only time that most men can order a drink that is a color other than brown, black-brown, light brown, yellowish, clear or (sometimes) red is if he is either (A) somewhere tropical, (B) at a restaurant where the servers are wearing Hawaiian shirts, (C) too young to know better, or (D) at home, alone, with the windows blacked out and all of the lights off.  Men are supposed to drink the terrible stuff, the aged whiskeys and fancy scotches and oak barrel-aged tequilas that it takes a “refined palate” to identify.  But here’s a secret: a “refined palate” means that your taste buds have become numb to the flavor.

Think back to your first beer – it was probably terrible, right?  Your parents may have tried to dissuade you from drinking by giving you tastings of straight gin or past-due red wine.  Chances are that they never offered you anything that could be mistaken for a slushie or a mixed juice cocktail.  Those drinks are for people with weaker constitutions, who need to have the flavors masked by sweet add-ons.  Those drinks are for ladies or guys who meet one of the four criteria listed above.  Those drinks are really freaking tasty.

Unlike Bar Observance #13*, a man who drinks a traditionally non-masculine beverage is not immediately deemed attractive.  In fact, he may become the subject of the ridicule of his peers, gaining uneasy glances from the ladies.  Much like any change in nature, it takes time to develop.  If the drinker can successfully navigate the social stigma he faces without resorting to self-deprecation or bowing to peer pressure to order something else, he will emerge as an alpha male.  He’ll be viewed as someone who is above labels and social constraints, a man truly comfortable with himself and his tastes.

While this power might seem to come from self-confidence, it actually gains its strength by playing against the insecurities of others.  Every man who drinks knows that Blue Hawaiians are tasty and that a well-made Manhattan can be the perfect pick-me-up after a bad day, but few can ever act on it.  Those who do are accomplishing wish fulfillment for their brethren, creating a vicarious force so powerful that others can’t help but to become humbled in the presence of the drinker.

It’s a quick way to accrue social proof points, and is far superior to the Tourist Strategy of relying on stories of past experiences, since people can see you do it, a far more powerful tool than just hearing about something.  Whenever people can directly see someone’s skills, confidence, intelligence or other positive qualities, they are more likely to defer to them.

For the rest of the dinner, the Appletini fellow held court over the rest of the table – his jokes seemed funnier, more people wanted to talk to him, and a few of the women even found him more appealing.  He had ignored every rule that he had ever been taught by beer and booze commercials, and yet he was reaping the dividends that matched with the images presented in the advertisements.

So the next time you’re out with a group getting a few drinks, order something outside of your wheelhouse.  Sure, you might get a few stares and jabs at your selection, but if you hold in there, you’ll become the most interesting person in the room.

* A woman who drinks a traditionally masculine beverage is perceived as more attractive, but not necessarily more feminine.  Similarly, men who imbibe traditional ‘male’ drinks and women who consume traditional ‘female’ beverages have no change in perceptions from others.

No one has ever asked me to speak at a graduation ceremony.  I have friends who did, but I can’t tell you much beyond a basic outline of what they talked about.  Whatever messages they had were temporary, and evaporated into the air once they were spoken.  Last year, I decided to give my own message in a more tangible form.  And this year, I’m at it again.  Here’s some unsolicited advice for the Leaders of Tomorrow that won’t be announced in any auditoriums, stadiums, multi-purpose rooms or theaters.  You can pretend that’s where you heard it, though.  I won’t mind.

I read in a comic book once that there’s a much smaller number of people who run the world than the number of people who make the world run.  And while it would be nice to think that we’ll all end up in the first group, it’s not that bad being with everyone else in the majority.  For one thing, there are more people to spend time with.  It’s more comfortable when you know you’re part of a team that works together; it’s why cultures are based on groups, not just individuals.

There’s little point in talking about dreams, the future, possibilities and opportunity.  If you’ve spent years of your life on a set path towards success or if you’ve spent years of your life trying to figure out how vegetable oil can be an ingredient in Mountain Dew even though it has no oily taste, you’ve already mapped out your plans for the next decade or so.  If you’ve breezed by, no speech will make you realize your full potential.  That has to come from you.

Some of you will never, and I mean never, figure out what it is that makes you truly special.  You might stumble around for years trying to figure out what can make you feel fulfilled both personally and professionally before you settle on something that you’re just good at.  This is fine, and it’s more normal than you might think.  In a survey I just made up, over half of everybody has settled for doing something that they’re good at.  But “good” and “great” and “special” and “fulfilled” and “potato” are all relative terms; you might think you’re slumming it while others are blown away by your skill and expertise.

Then again, you’ll probably be too distracted with your personal life to take a fully vested interest in quantifying the exact details of your professional life.  This has nothing to do with the bills and loan payments and insurance and taxes you will soon be facing, but rather the odd sensation that comes with the realization that Full-Fledged Adulthood isn’t like taking a step up, but is more like walking up a ramp with a very slight incline.  There’s no magic test, no shining moment that solidifies your position as a citizen of the world and one of the enlightened, responsible masses.  You might still make the same dumb mistakes you’ve been making for years.  You might try to stay out all night partying well into your thirties.  You might never want to get rid of that Black Eyed Peas concert shirt you scored for $10 after the show five years ago.  Being an adult is really just being an older kid.  So eat ice cream for breakfast once in a while.

Speaking of ice cream, I could really go for some right now.  After all, most of you are waiting for me to be done so you can collect your diplomas, have your pictures taken and go about your lives as new graduates.  The most painful part of any graduation is sitting though the speeches and well-wishers.  It’s like an American Idol results show: hours of build-up to something that ends up taking only a few seconds.

So here’s the part where I’m supposed to offer you some short snippets of advice.  Go off and do your thing, even if it’s not in the place you’d expected to be.  Find happiness and contentment where you can.  Don’t have ice cream for breakfast every morning, or you’ll need to get a lot of toothpaste and a really good dentist.

And whether you plan on running the world or just helping make the world run, take this time to relax; you’ve earned it.  I mean, you just got through another graduation speech.

It happens at least twice a day, without fail.  Complete strangers, whether they have a reason to or not, start conversations with me about baseball.

“So, you’re a Yankees fan, eh?”

“Man, A-Rod’s not lookin’ too good this year, sucks for you guys.”

“I prefer the Red Sox.”

I know how baseball is played, and I’ve been to a few games, but it’s by no means my favorite sport, and if given a choice between watching a game and pulling weeds out of the backyard at 3:00 PM in Phoenix in July, I’ll probably be doing yard work.  But it’s not really my fault.  I don’t say or do anything directly to encourage sports talk.  I will go out of my way to avoid sports talk.  The blame for all this rests solely at the brim of my hat.  My only hat.  My Yankees hat.

I bought the baseball cap when I was fifteen and on a community service trip in Denver.  We were taking a break from helping at soup kitchens, clearing debris from dilapidated homes and doing other good deeds by sitting in the cheap seats at a Rockies game.  I’ve held a grudge against the Rockies ever  since they (needlessly) humiliated the Diamondbacks during their first-ever game, so choosing who to root for between them and the visiting Yankees was easy.  After a heated argument with one of the other trip-goers regarding which team sucked more, I decided to stick it to him by buying a $15 Official MLB Licensed One-Size-Fits-All Yankees baseball cap, which I wore with pride as the Bronx Bombers decimated the home team, 11 to 4.

It was the first hat I’d bought or worn in three years.  I haven’t bought any since.

My friends tend to give me grief about the hat.  ”You should buy another one,” some suggest.  ”What’re you gonna do when you visit Boston?” others tease, unaware that I had accidentally already done that, which led to many curses and death threats from random pedestrians.  The thing is, I don’t see any reason to get another hat.  I’m not concerned about style, and the piece of apparel does its job: keeping the sun off of my eyes.

So long as the brim isn’t broken and the hat fits, it works.  I don’t wear it often enough for the thing to become a trademark or for it to wear out (which is why it’s lasted almost a decade in almost the same condition as when I first bought it), and I don’t require the same versatility in hats that I might require in footwear, pants, or even belts.  One hat does its job, and that’s enough.  Some might say that it’s a minimalist hat collection, but it’s really an issue of utility.

It’s not like I haven’t thought about buying other hats.

Over the past few months, I’ve decided to become a bit more outdoorsy via hiking, running and being outside when the sun is out.  Though my skin is quite happy with being non-translucent these days, the nearness of Sol is still a bit of an issue, and my current hat doesn’t have any fancy cooling vents or UVA-/UVB -ray-blocking technologies.  I spent several hours over the course of one weekend at different outdoor and athletic shops, trying to find a good head coverer, and yet, among the $20 pairs of socks and $50 water bottles, between the $90 man-girdles and $5 sticks of something called “energy gum,” I couldn’t find a hat that cost less than a nice dinner at a four-star restaurant (tax, tip and drinks included).  There were some contenders, like the lightweight waterproof cap with moisture-wicking technology, and the desert commando-style topper with a retractable neck-covering back flap and built-in LED flashlight on the front of the brim, but none really worked for me.  None felt right.

Maybe one day, after a bad wash cycle or a strong gust of wind or an unfortunate incident on a roller coaster, I’ll need to give up the hat.  I’ll know the freedom of not having to pretend I know much or care at all about professional baseball.  I can escape the jeers and taunts of my many-hatted friends.  The sameness of a decade of utilitarian headpiece use will give way, as I will finally need to purchase a new cap.

But I’m pretty sure that I’ll only buy one.

NOTE: I do not condone or endorse cheating, infidelity or affairs.  This post is for illustrative and entertainment purposes only, and should not be taken as advice or tips by anyone.

There’s a lot of power in numbers.  Statistics can be manipulated to swing opinions one way or another, to discover hidden truths, or even for proving silly points (like this one or this one).  Economists, scientists, politicians, web developers, marketers and millions of other people depend on statistics for their livelihoods and professional success.  Statistical results drive the progress of the modern world.  They also drive your dating life.

In a recent-to-me post on Musings on Life and Love, dating blogger extraordinaire Dennis Hong  used math to debunk the myth of male promiscuity (in terms of quantity of partners, at least).  It’s highly worth a read.  But I’ll attempt to summarize it a lot more plainly and quickly:

In an environment with a split that is drawn right down the middle (ie: men versus women), it’s impossible for the sides to not even out.  The average of 5, 0, 0, 0 and 0 is the same as the average of 1, 1, 1, 1 and 1 (they’re both 1), and the average of 5, 1, 1, 1 and 1 is the same as the average of 1, 2, 2, 2 and 2 (it’s 1.8 in both cases).  Unless you decide to fake some alarmingly false and misleading restrictions, you cannot create a 3:1 ratio between both groups.  As a contribution to the set requires an even contribution for each side (1 point to each), the numbers will always balance.

Dennis explains it much better.

The thing about Dr. Hong’s post is that it made me realize that there are other mathematical procedures that are involved in the dating dance.  And one of the biggest proponents of this is infidelity.

If you’ve seen the film A Beautiful Mind, you might remember the scene in which Russell Crowe’s character explains to his colleagues that by dividing their attention evenly among several women instead of all competing for one, they increase their chances for enjoying some mattress mambo that night.  The men expand their search group and remove overlap, resulting in less competition an an easier time attracting the ladies.  This exemplifies Game Theory (specifically the Nash equilibrium described above) and is a good example of why competition is bad.  But that’s just the beginning.

Let’s say that you’re getting $50 in cash.  You have two choices: a $50 bill, or two $20 bills and a $10 bill.  Which would you rather have?

Wait, let’s change that.  Which of these would you like? You can have: a twenty, two tens, a five and five ones; ten ones, two fives, a ten and a twenty; two twenties and two fives; five tens; fifty ones; or seven fives, a ten and five ones.

Which one of those choices was easier to make?  Chances are, it was the one with less options, unless you really like George Washington or Abe Lincoln.

The more choices a person has, the more difficult is is for them to make a decision.*  When we have fewer options to work with, it is simpler to think analytically and critically.  A or B?  True or False?  Yes or No?  Eliminating the middle ground and reducing comparisons makes things so much simpler.  It’s far easier to fight one person than ten.  And this is why it’s easier to attract someone who’s in a relationship: your competition is much lower.

When you’re single, you could feasibly have all of those plenty of fish in the sea people keep talking about.  Your potential dating pool and all of your possible suitors are literally everyone who matches your partner preferences when it comes to gender and orientation.  That’s between 10 and 50 percent of the population if we don’t skim down spiritual, personality, ethnic, physical, mental and emotional restrictions.  And even then, there are hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people you could be with.

When you’re in a relationship, you’re with one person.

For those of you who failed out of basic math, 1,000,000 is a heck of a lot more than 1.

For the enterprising homewrecking cad, laziness is key.  They don’t need to be more attractive, clever, intelligent, wealthy, interesting or powerful than everyone else in the club or bar.  They just need to be better than the person their target is with.

There’s more that could be said about the travails of a serious relationship, the difficulties of monogamy and the psychology of a cheater.  But really, it’s just more convenient to choose from one of two options than it is to choose from a veritable smorgasbord of thousands.  When we’re more limited in our options, we make easier (but not necessarily better) decisions.  That’s why it’s easier to find someone you want to be with when you’re in a relationship than it is when you’re single.

Then again, that could just be statistics manipulating your brain.

*For more on this, read up on choice modelling if you feel so inclined