Is being a hipster too mainstream if you are a hipster

Chapter Six Reflection

This chapter isn't as simple as the other side of the fence, opposite to Persuasion; that s the actor, and this is the audience. It seems easy to fall into that trap. They're beside each other and talk about sort of the same thing. As has been the theme, it isn't as simple as that.

To backtrack, persuasion is trying to make someone do what you want (them to do). In a very simple sense, yes, conformity is those people listening to you, obeying you. And we can end it at that, but research shows us that that isn't the entire picture. Accepting that as the entire picture highlights something I realised just now (changing my opinion to my current opinion that it isn't as simple as that). Would that mean compliance, obedience, acceptance, only happens when there is an act of persuasion?

Narrow Nuances

Chapter Four Reflection

The chapter makes it clear that people had the wrong idea. As we've previously elaborated, there is a grandness to making a graceful umbrella theory over everything. Making a clear and straight path when it comes to mechanisms and structure and pathways. But as always, our complexity is there to foil our plans.

The initial default assumption was that our attitudes, our evaluations, influence and direct our behaviour. Behaviour stems from our attitudes regarding certain things. It makes perfect sense. And to a degree, it is reality. But we generalise quite a bit and we seem to see this as the end-all and be-all, and forget that things don't happen in a vacuum, and that there are always things that interact and affect variables, and behaviour is not exempt from that. And the chapter goes on to elaborate instances where attitudes aren't realised or expressed as their corresponding behaviour, and when they are.

That is Within Us

Chapter Three Reflection

Our exercise on impressions and assumptions of our teacher is a good jump-off point for this reflection. In there, we were asked to decide whether the person in question was more situated on either pole of a sort-of character trait continuum. These were numerous and covered a wide range of personality. They were inferences and guesses, and reflectively, we had no idea how we came from those conclusions.

It's a bit like knowing what certain words mean. You 'know' what they mean, but you can't explain the definition when you're asked by an inquiring acquaintance. A bunch of this comes for intuition, I think. I think you don't really know the word, but you have an intuition as to what it is. And this is perfectly okay. Our intuitions are mostly accurate and that's what makes us go to them repeatedly. So relying on intuition is perfectly okay, but not all the time.

Brownie Points

Chapter Eleven Reflection

With the hanging question of online relationships, I answer that they are supplements but not replacements. There has been reports that people who meet online eventually want to meet-up and 'eyeball' each other to legitimise the relationship and 'to take it to the next level'. From that, there seems to be the acknowledgement that physical interaction is an important element, almost a prerequisite, for a 'real' relationship.

But that isn't to say online correspondence is to be shunned. Let's regress it to less demanding 'friendships' and general social interaction. It's undeniable that your online network connections help at least in the maintenance aspect. As a moderator of an online film group (and part of a few other online interest groups), there's something to be said about the merits technology has gifted us. A lot of members are people I've never met and who I don't know beyond their names and avatars, but we get into good discussion that our diverse contexts (some work, some study in that school in Katipunan, some don't even live in the Philippines) would not have allowed otherwise.

Medium Rare

It's hard for me to discuss this without bringing up Akira, so I might as well put that down and try to end with more independent construals. This is pretty good, pretty solid. How close it approximated Akira (except the great music) makes the real planned North American remake/adaptation even more irrelevant.

Points for Consistency

You might have seen the first series, and you would note (as I had), how great the finale was. I loved that it didn't try to conclude things (bad things follow those sort of decisions usually), and managed to generate lots of excitement for the second series that was still a good time away.

Well the second series ended not many weeks back and it was just terrible. I checked myself and wondered if my rosier than expected outlook on the first one was a wall put on by the really rather well done finale. Maybe. In all, this last series is more consistent and ddn't have that clunky second episode (similar three episode format here).

I don't need you right now, Savage Garden

I feel terrible. All these horrible feelings mushrooming after moments days weeks months countless of slaps and inattention. I haven't felt this way for a long time, seriously denting all hope for something resembling near future. For once I thought this was a play, and entertained it was a play for both our sides, but then. But then I thought, I thought maybe there was some thrill in being. Cast away all evil intention. And let such lead me to red end like a guiding light. No more. Not anymore. I do not know.

I feel fat.