I listened to Scott Adams' video blog...
...while doing other things. Very easy things, the sort of things people do while suffering through Glyphosate Lazies. COVID-19 did not put a great strain on most people's energy and productivity. Glyphosate Lazies do.
At the end of the video SA admits that he's disappointed readers and says in a flippant tone that "that's terrible." Very much like a typical recent retiree who's still savoring the feeling of not having to do something well enough to continue to get paid, and of course SA is one and has the right to enjoy it, but my artificially lazified brain started picking at the ideas it had just been considering. Did SA really intend to disappoint people on all that many levels?
First, the central point of the post--"figuring out who 'they' are." I thought SA was going to make some disclosures about the people who decided to cancel "Dilbert" and what else they censor. Wrong. He used the video to publicize Google Spaces, used his Google Space to discuss what a half-dozen or so of his e-friends believe about the "they" who are doing so much to mess up the world.
What they said was less a matter of naming names ("VP or VZ is to blame for the mess in Ukraine, Fauci and/or the W.H.O. and/or (whoever else) is to blame for the COVID panic and resulting depression here," etc.) than of expressing religious beliefs. "Devils! Demons!" or "a single human-made Artificial Intelligence known as 'the global economy'?" What I learned was that some of SA's e-friends are religious and some are not. That's nice but it's hardly worth listening to 82 minutes of video.
But when the board really started to light up with "disappointed in you" messages was toward the end, when SA specifically invited women to chime in, put two women on the air, but...
I don't know if SA heard it, and I'm not even sure to what extent it may reflect the relationships he has with people he knows in real life, but his manner changed when he was talking to the first woman.
I wouldn't say it was more domineering. Consistently through the Spaces section of the video, SA speaks to his friends in ways a talk show host, a college professor, a superior officer in military basic training, and very few other people can get away with. I'm accustomed to it and semi-sympathetic to it because it's the way my Drill Sergeant Dad tended to talk when he knew more about something than other people did. But it was why he didn't have a lot of grown-up friends and wasn't asked to teach a class again after teaching it one year. It's an "I'm in charge of this conversation" manner that tends to cut off conversation altogether. People who watched or listened to a lot of talk shows wouldn't mind it and might say SA did it better than some talk show hosts--no "call abortion" with vacuum cleaner, water-flush toilet, and sob sound effects! But I heard SA as definitely domineering over men as well as women.
Rather, in talking to the first female participant instead of the men who'd rung in first, SA sounded...less serious, I think. Each participant had per own ideas of what's wrong with the world these days and who's to blame, but SA called the men back to his original question, whereas he introduced new tangents with Woman #1.
In the context of their personal acquaintance, that may have been appropriate. But, consciously or not, it seemed to me, any middle-aged woman listening to the brief exchange between SA and Woman #1 had to have been thinking, "Just listen to that conceited wormboy cutesipating and belittling a serious woman with relatively rational ideas that we ought to be hearing more of."
So Woman #2 got on the air, having more to say than SA's show had room for--she sounded as if she ought to have done a post of her own, referred everyone there first, and then just quoted herself briefly on SA's show. She wasn't going to be cutesipated and distracted, not she! She had her outline and was sticking to it, interrupting SA and talking over him as much as he did her, not taking the bait of any distracting tangents.
SA cut her off. Apparently a lot of his Spaces friends thought he sounded rude, although, again, fans of the Donahue show, much less the Limbaugh or Cosell shows, have heard much worse.
SA explained his behavior as a matter of policy: On his Space, everyone is expected to "make a point, leave room for [SA] to challenge it," and move on.
That's an acceptable rule in the context of TV talk shows, and if these people are using Zoom along with Spaces and enjoying the illusion that they are on a TV talk show, it may work for them...but I wonder whether SA has any idea how far it is from what most people, especially most women, consider normal in conversation.
In a normal conversation, acting like a talk show host is SO-O-O-O RUDE!!! that the person who does it is unlikely to get into any more conversations with those who've watched/heard it.
Possibly SA's Spaces could use a content warning notice, something like,
"CONTENT WARNING:
This Space works like a TV talk show.
The host intends to "challenge" every sentence or two other people utter.
Imitating this behavior in the real world may have many unintended consequences including, but not limited to, suspension, expulsion, unemployment, datelessness, divorce, and/or excommunication.
All participants in conversations on this Space have agreed to this rule, so there is no need to be offended on their behalf.
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK."
No comments:
Post a Comment