On 11/18/2021 6:54 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Thursday, November 18, 2021 at 4:01:07 AM UTC-6, BGB wrote:
>> On 11/17/2021 7:29 AM, chris wrote:
>>> On 11/17/21 08:41, David Brown wrote:
>>>> On 17/11/2021 02:35, BGB wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I generally consider myself to be
>>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> I generally consider people's sexuality or attractions to be of little
>>>> relevance or interest. I cannot see how your preferences in that area
>>>> are any more relevant to others than your preferences in ice-cream
>>>> flavours or films you enjoy. Of course it can matter to /you/, and it
>>>> matters in situations where you are looking for or interacting with a
>>>> partner. But outside of that, it does not matter - we're all people,
>>>> whoever we like to spend time with.
>>>>
>>>> This is not a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude - it's a "I really don't
>>>> care one way or another, and knowing your sexuality will not influence
>>>> me in any way in how I relate to you" attitude.
>>>>
>>>> I am also not at all convinced of the merits of applying labels to
>>>> different kinds of sexuality. It might be helpful sometimes to have
>>>> broad categories (hetro-, homo- and asexual), but since everyone is a
>>>> mix of different aspects (and the mix can change with time and
>>>> circumstance), categorising is always going to be inaccurate. (If /you/
>>>> find it helpful to pick a label for yourself, then that's fine of course
>>>> - but I don't like using labels for others.)
>>>>
>>>> The important thing is you get to be yourself, and are happy with that,
>>>> and others should not get to impose their ideas, theories, or prejudices
>>>> on you. I don't care who you find attractive - but I /do/ care that you
>>>> have the right to decide for yourself.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But, I guess this sort of advertising seems less common now...
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, thankfully - it is mostly a relic of the past. Scantily clad women
>>>> still turn up in some adverts, and not just for those where it could be
>>>> relevant to the product, but they are rare in technology adverts.
>>>>
>>>>> Did decide to leave out my memories of a bunch of random stuff from
>>>>> decades-old infomercials...
>>>>
>>>> It is a well-established principle of advertising that sex sells.
>>>
>>>
>>> Selling works best by appealing to the most basic drives in humanity
>>> and sex has always been high on that list, next to food and shelter.
>>> Scantily clad young ladies were often used draped across the front
>>> of cars in the old days, but that's considered sexist nowadays.
>>> Tv advertising pretends to be oh so innocent, but the number of
>>> adverts featuring tight buttshot in the opening frame gets ever more
>>> common. Again, appealing to the most basic drives in humanity.
>>> Probably appeals to all persuasions and choices as well...
>>>
>> Admittedly, I don't watch (actual / broadcast) TV much anymore, apart
>> from occasionally shows like NOVA or similar (on PBS), so dunno...
>>
>> But, I guess the issue may be that a (potentially significant) number of
>> people have in-effect lost interest in these sorts of activities, and
>> have gotten kinda tired of it (both in its portrayal in the media; or
>> the expectation / implication that people do these sorts of things IRL;
>> ...).
> <
> <
> I tried to have that discussion with my youngest brother several decades ago::
> His business is advertising, and his question was "what do I have to do to get
> engineers to read the advertisements" ??
> <
> I told him of the efforts of engineers to eliminate all advertisements from
> even arriving on their screens so they would never have to even bother to
> move their eyes in that direction.
> <
> I related how if there was anything blinking or moving on the ad that it would
> not be read and often the window on which the ad was displayed, moved to
> the edge of the screen so as to not bother the engineer.
> <
> After a couple of hours explaining how engineers go out of their way to avoid
> ads--he had still not gotten the point--"do not waste time or effort in trying
> to put ads in front of engineers. "Like putting lipstick on a big"...........

Yeah. I was also writing about "the other thing", but yeah, this applies
to ads as well. Most ads just kinda suck and anymore are just sort of
noise in the background that I tend to ignore.

Some of the mobile-games ads get particularly obnoxious, where they sort
of pin themselves to the page and display endless flashing and jumpy
animations. Does little more than being annoying when one isn't really
the sort of person who has any real interest in "free to play" mobile games.

>>
>> Like, culturally, one of expected to "find someone", "have a
>> relationship", ..., but doesn't help when one is kinda burnt out about
>> it (and there is no one around that one has any real interest in).
> <
> Sometimes I think women and advertising people come from the same
> island.........global warming cannot come soon enough........

Kinda agreed. To me, trying to interact with someone who can't relate to
the world in a similar way to myself, or where it is seemingly
impossible to have a meaningful conversation about much of anything I am
interested in, seems kinda pointless.

I "could" try to seem more normal, except:
This wouldn't work out long term;
I have no real interest in "flings".

So, this favors a strategy of, rather than trying to be "charming" or to
"woo" them, instead trying to optimize for determining whether or not
they are potentially compatible, and if not, they can go on their way.
Getting caught up in something that wont work is not ideal for either party.
And, if they are the type that expects to be wooed, or for the guy to
start throwing money at them to try to win them over, well then, I want
nothing to do with them.

>>
>> But, yeah, it may have been an oversight that not everyone is this way.
>>
> Crap loads of people do not understand the relationship between ads
> and "the poor", or adds, and "mental illness" {Witness SkyBuck}, or the
> relationship between the number of ads and the number of murders
> going on..............or the relationship between more TV channels and
> crappier programming en-the-large.......

I have little idea what is going in most "skybuck" posts, they tend come
off more like incoherent rambling.

One thing with commercials is its effect on episode length, which seems
to have become fairly standardized:
30 minute block: 22 minutes of show (leaving 8 minutes for ads);
60 minute block: 44 minutes of show (leaving 16 minutes for ads).

One notable exception for a lot of Cartoon Network shows is them using
an 11 minute episode format.

I think their programming blocks vary (between being based on a 15 and
30 minute structure). Though, not much actual motivation to watch the
channel itself (well, if I still had access to it) because it was
basically an endless stream of commercials and "Teen Titans Go" (wasn't
a fan of this show, but it was apparently the "got the highest ratings"
show).

Though, generally, the 11 minute episode format is fairly limiting in
terms of how much they can do with it.

Though, can note that Adventure Time managed to do surprisingly well
within the limits of 11 minute episodes. The episodes managed to both
tell a story and not feel overly rushed.

Partial contrast with Miraculous Ladybug where they use a 22 minute
episode format and the episodes still often feel rushed.

>>
>> Granted, character ships in TV shows are sort of their own category
>> (though it does start to get kinda old when a show drags it out for too
>> many seasons). Or, in some series, it is hard to get much investment
>> when they have been dragging out the same dynamics with the same
>> characters for like the past 25 years or so.
> <
> Soap Operas anyone--the plot never gets anywhere.........

Partly I was thinking some about things like "Sonic the Hedgehog" and
similar, where they had been trying to "milk it" for roughly 25 years
(in particular, the one-sided romance between Amy Rose and Sonic).

There are a few characters that had (plot wise) been in such a "ship"
for much of a century, but this aspect was mostly relegated as they in
effect got promoted to the level of deity-like corporate mascots.

Newer shows, such as Miraculous Ladybug, seem to be trying to pull the
same trick. Though, Ladybug tends to get fairly convoluted with it, and
most episodes (thus far) which tried to explore the romance going
further, were also in the form of time-travel plots which create
alternate timelines which then erase themselves at the end.

However, I am left to suspect that due to the way time-travel seems to
work in-show, that they are not dealing with a single timeline but
rather each instance of time travel in effect forks the timeline
(otherwise, they would have gotten "completely wrecked" by all the
paradoxes).

More so when several characters seem to use time travel in ways which
have different properties (so, in effect, whether or not paradoxes apply
seems to depend on who it is that is doing the time travel). Would be
kinda funny if they then introduced a character who could jump between
timelines "Rick and Morty" style, maybe showing the continued existence
of some of the other timelines.

>>
>> But, real-life is more awkward, it is like a character ship where one of
>> the characters is themselves. Still pretty much immaterial though.
> <
> If you are an engineer, the women will still ignore you because you
> a) don't have the look of royalty, b) the adornments of the rich and famous,
> c) street smarts of a lizard,............

Well, one can use their imagination, and ship themselves with people
they will likely never meet IRL, and where things wouldn't work out even
if they did meet them.

But, yeah, the vast majority of females around fall into the category where:
I have no reason to be interested in them;
They have no reason to be interested in me either.

Like, it is a case where neither side has anything the other side will
find useful, so there isn't much reason to pursue anything.

Longer range, still nothing.

Most of the ones I would have much of anything in common with are:
Too far away;
Wouldn't likely be interested for other reasons;
...

So, the combination of:
Sufficiently nearby;
Sufficiently nerdy;
Sufficiently intelligent;
Various other constraints line up;
...

Yeah, basically no one, it seems.

>>
>> Not sure as much how other people relate to this, or if they (also) in
>> these contexts end up thinking in the 3rd person (like if oneself were a
>> character in a TV show).
> <
> Thinking in the 3rd person, except as an experiment, is a sign that you have
> already lost something that people who watch ads have--and you either never
> did or do not currently have.........

I am not entirely sure I follow...

Actually, how I see myself is probably a topic in itself, but I am not
feeling particularly inclined to go that much into it (there is not much
I can find in terms of writings about psychology which seems to match up
with my experience of my own existence; but in any case I suspect it may
be atypical based on what I can gather).

But, in terms of thinking about interpersonal stuff in general, I
usually end up thinking about myself in the third person. So, it is sort
of like if one has control over a TV show they are watching. They can
choose what to say, or bring in other characters (they can be people I
know, people I have never met, or characters who are entirely fictional;
I can also pull in scenarios or events from TV shows, ...).

I can either control what is said actively, or let scenarios play out
and take more of an observer role.

In this mode, I am generally better able to figure out how chains of
events will turn out, or how people will respond, compared with
interacting with them in real-time (also in real-life interactions, one
can't change out the setting or characters).

This is also sort of useful for writing fiction, since it isn't so much
like I am actively trying to come up with what the characters say and
do, but rather building the scene, adding the characters; then one
watches the events play out in their mind and writes down what they see
happening.

Though, this does run into the limitation that I can't really add
characters who are smarter than myself, or who know things that I don't
know.

Or, events happen which I feel less inclined to write about, say for
example, a character in a story set in the 2070s watches an ill-advised
2030s era "Deliverance" remake followed by an ill-advised sequel (sorta
imagined in terms of a collection of action movie tropes mixed with the
character "finding themselves" by "going back to where it all began",
....). So, these imagined worlds can sort of exist recursively to some
extent (the sub-worlds are spatially disjoint from the world that
contains them).

I had noted that this space is in many ways very similar to the world I
experience in dreams, and I sorta suspect it is actually the same space
(just it is able to run in parallel with the external world, just off in
its own space). Generally it is fully 3D, but visually simplified (*).

*: Because seemingly my imagination is too lazy to run much faster than
around 4 frames per second or so, or with much beyond a fairly limited
color palette, ...

If interacting with someone in real-life, stuff can sorta fall apart if
they go "off script" and respond in a way which falls outside the range
of responses I was expecting; but usually I can predict things well
enough that this is infrequent.

Sometimes, real-life conversation is a challenge as then one has to go
on a mental search and come up with responses fast enough that there
isn't any obvious breaks.