Tag: introversion

The Truth Behind My Face Mask

Paul Fidalgo

On the old He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon show, the small, hovering wizard called Orko—the comic-relief sidekick to the muscle-bound warriors—never revealed his face. Floating in a red robe, with no discernible limbs below his torso, his head was covered by a large, floppy, pointed hat, through which his pointed ears protruded. If he had a mouth or nose, it was wrapped in a cloth or scarf of some sort. All one could ever see of Orko’s face was his eyes and total blackness.

I remember distinctly an episode in which Orko, a member of the species known as Trollans, fell in love with another member of his own kind, and the audience learns that Trollans had a custom for expressing deep affection: they revealed to each other their uncovered faces. In private, they would take off their hats, unwrap their scarves, and give the greatest gift of intimacy of which they were capable, to allow their true face to be seen by the one they loved.

So Orko would loyally, courageously, and selflessly fight the most perilous evils alongside He-Man and his Eternian compatriots, but they would never be allowed to see their friend’s face. That was for Orko to save for a time, place, and person of his choosing.

I loved that.

My preferred day-to-day uniform, assuming the temperature suits it, consists of a T-shirt, jeans, hooded zip-up sweatshirt, and baseball hat.

I chose this basic getup because of its neutrality. These various garments cover me in solid, muted colors, in forms that suggest close to nothing about who I am, what I do for a living, what my interests are, or where I’m headed. One can’t tell if I’m off of work from some office job or if I dress like this all the time. One can’t tell if I support a local franchise, ascribe to a political ideology, have attained any particular level of education, enjoy any particular forms of entertainment, or earn any particular range of income (I could be broke and unemployed or just relaxing in my down time).

This developed, as so many choices do, from my experience in middle and high school, when standing out for any reason was to experience trauma. And I don’t mean standing out like a class clown or overtly quirky student. I mean being noticed at all, for any reason. If my hair was noticed, I was made fun of. If I was seen standing in some position or other, I was made fun of. If I was seen sitting in some other position, I was made fun of. If I was heard talking, expressing an opinion, or asking a question, I was made fun of. When taunted with questions meant to humiliate me, I was mocked for any answer I gave, and was equally mocked for staying silent.

If the brand of clothes I was wearing was recognized, I was made fun of for it. If the characters or public figures emblazoned on my T-shirts were recognized, I was made fun of for it. If I wore more expensive, “nicer” clothes, I was made fun of for it. If it was known that my clothes came from a store considered to be uncool, I was made fun of for it. If it was known I got my clothes from a store considered to be cool, that disconnect meant that I would be made fun of for it.

Like many other habits and precautions I built over that time, I adopted my neutral uniform to be as unnoticeable as possible. I didn’t like how my hair and my head looked, so I covered it with a hat. I didn’t like the shape of my body, so I curtained it with a hoodie.

Now in my 40s, I still prefer the relative anonymity that this basic uniform affords me. No longer quite as cowed by heartless teens (though, sadly, not immune to their eternal derision), this basic setup gives space for the kind of self-expression I feel comfortable with. Superman’s symbol adorns my hat. I have a veritable library of Avengers and Star Trek T-shirts. The hoodies, they have stayed plain, though I now have one in a rather bold red-rust color. The T-shirt/hoodie/hat combo is neutral enough to allow me to recede into the background while offering a basic canvas for those things that give me some joy. And even with this little extra information that these things broadcast to others, I remain largely physically obscured.

I also wear glasses to correct my vision, but I would probably choose to wear them anyway, as I have foresworn things like contact lenses and laser eye surgery. The frames of my spectacles add one extra half-layer to the overall veil. Take away the hat and hoodie, dress me in a shirt-and-tie, and you still won’t really see my true face, because my glasses will still be there.

And like the hoodie and the hat and the rest of it, the glasses help define the character. They are part of the mask I wear when I play the part of me to the rest of the world.

Speaking of masks, in the pandemic era we now have the growing normalization of the face mask. They’re an inconvenience, to be sure. They must not be touched once applied, and they must vigilantly be kept clean. They can make it slightly more difficult to breathe, and I assume they will be much more uncomfortable as the weather gets warmer. And of course, they fog up my glasses, and I have yet to master whatever arcane spells or incantations that prevent that from happening.

And yet, I still find myself — weirdly? perversely? — looking forward to donning one. I didn’t understand why, at first. But then I figured it out.

The face mask gives me one more layer of blessed obscurity. It prevents any scrutiny of my nose, mouth, or chin. They can’t see my crooked teeth, my overgrown stubble, my cheeks sagging with age. They can’t see me react to anything with a smile, smirk, or frown. All they can see are my eyes, which are already altered by glasses, and my ears.

And yes, when the temperature allows, I try to wear over-ear headphones, even when I have nothing playing in them.

Also, like T-shirts and hats, the mask offers a little space for a small bit of expression, should I choose to use it. My current mask was made lovingly by my auntie out of the same fabric she used to make my son’s first baby blanket. I love it.

The fact that face masks are also now part of a supremely stupid culture war, and for some serve as a kind of signal of political allegiance, is deeply disappointing to me. Beyond the obvious fact that the right-wing opposition to face masks and what they represent is astronomically asinine, selfish, portending of greater suffering, I’m irritated that their symbolism within this culture war means that they are no longer neutral.

I can feel it when I go on one of my rare jaunts to the supermarket. Those not wearing masks are clearly disdainful of those who are, and, at least as far as I’m concerned, the feeling is mutual.

The face mask is there, primarily, to protect others from me, in case I happen to be carrying the virus and don’t know it. Any protection it affords me is, as I understand it, minimal.

But I also valued the fact that while it helped stop me from unwittingly spreading any pathogens, it also stopped me from unwittingly telling anyone anything about who I am. It gave me one more step back from the eyes of the world. Now, the mask is like a flare, telling everyone in view that I am on one particular side of a conflict. And good lord do I hate that.

I very much hope our need for masks goes away as soon as possible. I also kind of wish that when the virus is gone, that the masks could stay. We are already so exposed. I’d prefer that my true face be something to be revealed only for a time, place, and person of my choosing.

Spocks and Datas

Paul Fidalgo

DataSpock

SPOCK: He intrigues me, this Picard.

DATA: In what manner, sir?

SPOCK: Remarkably analytical and dispassionate, for a human. I understand why my father chose to mind-meld with him. There’s almost a Vulcan quality to the man.

DATA: Interesting. I have not considered that. And Captain Picard has been a role model in my quest to be more human.

SPOCK: More human?

DATA: Yes, Ambassador.

SPOCK: Fascinating. You have an efficient intellect, superior physical skills and no emotional impediments. There are Vulcans who aspire all their lives to achieve what you’ve been given by design.

DATA: You are half human.

SPOCK: Yes.

DATA: Yet you have chosen a Vulcan way of life.

SPOCK: I have.

DATA: In effect, you have abandoned what I have sought all my life.

 

– Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Unification Part 2” (1991)

For the socially alienated, such as autistics like myself, the characters of Spock and Data from Star Trek are immediately relatable. Not because of their lack of emotion, but because of their estrangement from their peers. Extraordinarily intelligent, yet unable to understand the motivations or the social and emotional needs of the humans around them. Though full members of their respective crews and fully equal members (eventually, for Data) of their adopted societies, they are nonetheless alone.

But apart from being non-human, the sources of Spock’s and Data’s alienation are quite different. Spock, genetically half-human and half-Vulcan, aspires to overcome the psychological weaknesses he believes his human side burdens him with. Data, the creation of humans, has put himself on a quest to exhibit the qualities of humanity as faithfully as possible. While he may be confused by human weaknesses, he nonetheless wishes to replicate them.

Framed this way, Data may be the more relatable to the socially alienated. Those with Asperger’s like me, for example, are obviously the product of humans, and live and work among other humans, but struggle to make meaningful social and emotional connections with the neurotypical majority. This is painful, and there seems to be no remedy. No matter how hard they try to ape the behavior of neurotypicals, it is just that, an aping. And yet they, we, pine for that connection. For belonging.

spockbrowSpock represents something that I would guess is less common, the socially alienated person who wishes to remain alienated, because to assimilate would be to corrupt oneself, to debase oneself. Surely there are those intellectuals and savants who identify with Spock in this, and surely they too experience the discomfort of alienation. But I suspect that is the Datas among us that are truly suffering from their estrangement.

To the normals and the neurotypicals, I have to assume that these two dispositions, the Spock and the Data, are more or less indistinguishable. Both exhibit as emotionally distant. Both are prone to say things that, to the normals, are considered inappropriate, offensive, or bizarre, despite innocent or benign intentions. Both invite varying degrees of pity or condescension from normals for what they perceive as naivete or “disability.”

For a Data, there is a constant pull toward the group, a tug toward the tribe. The Data will practice the mannerisms and idioms of the normals, and often fail laughably. For a Spock, the social distance is actively maintained. Rather than gravitate toward inclusion, they prefer to observe from a safe and less distracting distance. There is no attempt to do as the Romans do. To the Spock, the Romans are silly.

From my own point of view, to adopt the Spock approach would be a luxury. While I do not believe that a Spock-type never suffers in her alienation, she certainly suffers less. A Spock has already decided that there is little to be gained from full social inclusion, and little to envy from the normals’ mindset. What a relief that would be.

datadanceThe Data, however, is all too aware of the myriad ways she does not match up to her normal peers. She suffers from the humiliation of failed attempts to assimilate, and she suffers from her solitude. And unlike the character of Data the android, Data-types definitely experience emotions, often severely. It is a sisyphean way to live, except that everyone is watching and audibly commenting on how weirdly one is pushing the rock up the hill.

In a previous piece, I chose another Star Trek character as an Aspie-analogue, and reflecting on it now, it seems to fill a kind of middle-ground between the Spock and the Data. I’m talking about Odo. I wrote:

ds9odoThough he takes a humanoid form as best he can, no one thinks Odo, the changeling, really looks like them. He doesn’t understand humanoid behavior, but he does try to map it out in order to follow others’ motivations and how they lead to actions. He is impatient with the things that humanoids seem to find fulfilling and important, which to him seem pointless and wasteful. He comes off as mean when he doesn’t intend to. He craves companionship, but knows he can’t have it. And when it all comes down to it, when he’s tired of pretending to be one of the “solids,” he must — absolutely must — return to his bucket. He must resume his true liquid form, stop pretending, find total solitude, and rest.

If Spock and Data show us two poles of how the socially alienated cope with their weirdness, Odo shows us the consequences of all that work. What does the outcast do after all the failed attempts to commune, or after a day of navigating the incomprehensible absurdities of the normals’ behavior? What toll does it take?

Odo shows us. We must return to our bucket, or we dissolve.

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Autistic Alienation: Not as Simple as Intense Introversion

Paul Fidalgo

One thing about Asperger’s/autism that I think is hard for neurotypicals to understand, and is also hard for me to come to terms with, is that as an autistic person, my attitude toward socialization isn’t merely binary. The introversion instinct is incredibly strong, and it’s true that I can’t heal, rest, or reengergize without relative solitude. But that doesn’t mean I therefore never want human contact.

It gets even more complicated than that, though. If it were as simple as “I like to socialize a lot less than most people, but I do want to socialize a little,” that’d be relatively easy to manage. You just keep social interaction to a manageable level, whatever it happens to be For the individual. But here’s the thing: even human interaction that an aspie might affirmatively seek out is still fraught with discomfort, self-doubt, anxiety, and pain. It’s still exhausting, and sometimes dispiriting, unless it's particularly fulfilling in some way.

So when an introverted aspie is avoiding other members of his or her species, they may also be experiencing, at an atavistic, lizard-brain level, a longing for human contact, to feel assured that one still “belongs” in the tribe. And even when that validation is achieved in the most positive and affirming of scenarios, it’s still incredibly difficult.

This is the picture: Imagine a human being whose brain has developed differently than almost everyone they know. They may be incredibly intelligent or talented in some way or other (or maybe not!), and have a great deal of thoughts and feelings they desperately want to express and share. But the agony of submitting oneself to the evaluation of normal people, even in the most banal and benign circumstances, is often too much to bear, or at least too uncomfortable to make it worth the effort. When they do take the leap and try to mix in normal society, the energy drain is rapid, the stress is damaging, and the tiniest faux pas (real and imagined) is burned into their memories as scarring humiliation. So this human being, full of life and solitary, feels lonely, while determined to remain alone. Until the loneliness becomes too much, such that a new attempt is made.

I miss having a set of friends that I was comfortable with, that I could develop routines with, and rely on for that base-level validation that I was in the right species, that I had a tribe from which I was in no danger of being ejected. I have had that. A lifetime ago.

I don’t have that now, and most of my experiences after my life in professional theatre has been characterized by anxiety over being banished from whatever tribe to which I submitted myself, or else having no tribe at all, and cautiously yearning for one. (And not knowing that I was autistic in the first place.)

It’s not just that we want to be alone. But it’s the only way we know we can safely be.

Quirky: Adapting for Asperger’s at the Expense of Sincerity

Paul Fidalgo

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No really, I’m like this all the time.

Coming to terms with being a 38-year-old man with Asperger’s, having only been diagnosed a few weeks ago, has naturally lead to reexaminations of my behavior. The first things I’ve focused on have been those aspects of my personality that put me blatantly at odds with the rest of the species, such as my extreme introversion, my inability to read others’ signals or intentions, and my aversion to overstimulation.

But as some of this has begun to settle, I also find myself going a few layers deeper, and I realize just how much of my identity is wrapped up in how I’ve compensated for the hindrances of Asperger’s. Some of the more interesting exploration is not about my differences, but my adaptations — the behaviors I’ve adopted to mitigate those differences. Successful adaptations, even.

As I’ve noted before, some people have trouble accepting my Asperger’s diagnosis as a valid one, because all they see are the adaptations. They see me as someone who’s generally smart and funny and well spoken, someone who is obviously not “the average guy,” but someone a little different, just a little odd, and harmlessly so. A bit nerdy, a little geeky, and humorously self-effacing about all of it. Maybe a little too self-effacing, but oh, that’s just Paul. One of his many quirks.

That’s me. I’m quirky.

Paul says some weird things sometimes, or Paul gets oddly quiet and distant, or Paul seems to find everything funny, but also every once in a while he takes something too seriously, and talks a little too much, too fast, and too loud. But that’s just his quirkiness.

If anyone comes away with that impression of me, as “quirky,” then I have successfully adapted as best I could. Once it became clear to me, probably around my mid-teens, that I was never going to be considered “normal,” and not even in the same universe as “cool,” I decided (partly consciously, partly unconsciously) that I would adopt a quirky identity. I’d be the funny sidekick, the sarcastic friend, vaguely-artsy oddball, just minimally different enough to cover up just how utterly alien I actually felt. My quirkiness was like a white noise machine to help muffle and distract from the sound of the train line running right next to the house.

Decades of this practice led me to believe that the act was who I really was. In a new social setting, I’m harmless-quirky, making little jokes when it seems safe to do so. With bosses, I’m grinning-idiot-quirky, engaged and overly eager to agree. With closer friends, I’m wry-quirky, able to vent a little of my misanthropic steam, but in a safe and humorous way. And so on.

It even extends into my online persona, where the facepalming-Paul avatar has become my unofficial insignia. I have a quirky logo.

Some of it is natural, some of it is very much forced. But over the years I think I may have gotten so good at it that I don’t know when I’m “working” and when I’m just “being.”

But without this adaptive behavior, I don’t know how I would have navigated the real world. Maybe if I had known I had Asperger’s, and accepted the things that made me different, I wouldn’t have bothered to try so hard to please and to pass. What would I have been like? What happens if I decide to drop the quirk now? What will I be?

I think the scary answer to that is: sincere. I’d be sincere.

I am not an insincere person, per se, not in the way we usually think of that term. I’m not two-faced or deceptive or phony. What I mean by sincerity is a dropping of unnecessary pretenses and performances, allowing whatever person was behind those masks to come out and breathe.

That’s terrifying!

I can’t say with any exactness, but I suspect this hypothetical sincere version of me would be less expressive when in the company of others. Even in conversation, I might look distant or even severe, even if my actual feelings were entirely benign. I would interject less often, and save my words for when they might contribute to something. That might make me appear disinterested or “shy,” even if I felt neither. A more sincere version of me might excuse himself entirely earlier and more often in order to recover from the stresses of stimuli.

A sincere version of me would be less concerned with a projected personality, online and off. He would not think so much about cultivating a “brand” for himself, and simply let his work and his words speak for themselves. It would likely have no impact on the number of Twitter followers I could boast, and this version of me (again, hypothetical) wouldn’t concern himself with that anyway, because why bother.

This sincere-me would relieve himself of the stress engendered by worrying over what people thought of his various interests and obsessions. Contemporary geek culture has made the world a safe place for folks to proudly parade their allegiance to various fiction franchises, but that’s not quite what I mean, because what that really adds up to is a new in-group that happens to be made up of people who once languished in out-groups. That’s good and fine, but not what I mean.

I mean that when I have a driving obsession with something that holds no obvious value to anyone but the satisfaction of my own brain, that’s not a failing. It’s not something to be embarrassed about or ashamed of. I can just pursue that interest (within reason and feasibility) without regard to the opinions of others.

And I – I mean this hypothetically sincere version of me – wouldn’t have to make excuses for any of it. He wouldn’t have to apologize, and qualify himself with “I know this is weird” or “this probably seems silly, but…” He…I…would just follow the string of curiosity where it leads, and allow my brain its squirts of dopamine whenever they can be safely had.

The last bit of this is the hope that sincere-me would not indulge his autism and oddness at the expense of his responsibilities to those he loves. I don’t see that as a problem, because one thing that even quirky-me can be sincere about is my love and devotion to my wife and kids. I don’t need to “act” that, no“passing” required. Come to think of it, I’m very lucky for that.

The adaptations of Asperger’s have been enormously expensive in countless ways. They have eaten up time, energy, and my valuation of myself. Maybe over time, as I truly come to terms with this condition and its implications, I can begin to turn down the dials, divert power away from the quirk-generators, and recoup some of what I’ve lost. I would sincerely like that.

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A More Forgiving Lens

Paul Fidalgo1 Comment
The author and his little brother in 1980.
The author and his little brother in 1980.

I have never felt like I belonged in this species. I resembled a human, and I could force myself to awkwardly ape the basic mannerisms of people, but I would always suspect that there was something alien about me, and that everyone else suspected (or knew) the same thing.

A lot of this alienation is in regard to my relationship to, and interactions with, other people. I’m a pretty severe introvert, that’s no secret. Being around people, even those I love and feel most comfortable with, utterly exhausts me. But I’ve always felt that there was more to it than mere introversion. For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled to relate to almost anyone, unable to comprehend others’ values, aspirations, needs, obsessions, or subtexts.

As a result, I’ve been at a loss as to how to blend, to appear as though I do understand, or at the very least to keep my bewilderment hidden. So I’ve thrown an inordinate amount of processing power at figuring out how to appear normal, how to talk, stand, sit, move, gesture, and where to fix my gaze or how to modulate my voice. I pretend to value the same things other people value and aspire to the same kinds of things they aspire to, even to the point of almost entirely convincing myself.

That alienation, this constant dissonance, was of my own making, I believed. I didn’t share the same interests as others because I had somehow failed to grasp the obvious reasons they were important or provided joy. I didn’t engage in sports or other physical activities because I was weak and afraid and unwilling to put the time in to not be that way. I had trouble comprehending instructions and directions because I was being self-absorbed and inattentive. I had trouble reading for any length of time because I was superficial and distracted. I upset people I love, not giving them what they needed, because I was negligent, self-centered, and oblivious. I didn’t want to socialize because I was a stick in the mud, narcissistic, and timid. I didn’t want to go on big adventures, travel, take big risks, or throw myself into new situations because I was cowardly and lazy. That summed up why I fared so poorly, academically and socially, throughout much of middle and high school: I was cowardly and lazy.

What else could I conclude? And having reached such a conclusion, over and over, in every circumstance from childhood to my late 30s, brought self-hate, depression, anxiety, resentment, and resignation. How could it be any other way?

I did have one suspicion, though. A suspicion that kept popping into my awareness, something that felt familiar, but also sounded too alien even for me.

That suspicion only grew, however. When I would air it out loud to someone, it would be summarily dismissed. I, not trusting my own perceptions of the world, not knowing how to be a person, conceded to the dismissal. But only outwardly.

I stopped conceding. I have finally pursued this suspicion to its end, and, well, it turns out for once I was right.

Last week, at the age of 38, I was officially diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, along with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

I have Asperger’s. I am autistic.

I’m so very glad to know. And I’m also glad that there was no hedging on the part of the doctor, the neuropsychologist who tested and diagnosed me. As my wife Jessica and I sat down in her office, the doctor mercifully began by saying, “I’ll cut to the chase, because I know you’re eager to know,” and told me that I had what she characterized as “severe” Asperger’s syndrome. Not severe in the sense of debilitation or in some kind of danger, but meaning that I’m firmly, well into the spectrum. Had the diagnosis been fuzzy, a borderline case, I’d never stop wondering and doubting. Having it be so clear-cut was a relief.

When I first began toying with the idea of getting tested, I couldn’t avoid the fact that simply knowing I had Asperger’s, if indeed I did, wouldn’t really change anything. There’s no medication to take, there’s no real treatment. I’d just go on as I had been. I had to ask myself, well, why bother?

Here’s why. The dissonance of my life – my strange predilections, my quirks, my strong and irrational aversions, my inability to read or connect with other people, my lack of interest in the experiences of life, my intractable obsessions over particular topics and utter lack of curiosity for almost anything else, my desperate need for safe and reliable routines, my spacial disorientation, my hypersensitivity to heat, sound, and light, my clumsiness and lack of coordination, my over-reliance on rules and logic, my inability to think in broad, big-picture terms, and most especially, the panic, pain, and exhaustion I experience in even the most benign social situations – I have always ascribed these things to my being a failure as a person. A lazy, cold-hearted, short-sighted coward.

Now I know that much of it (not all, of course) stems from something I was just born with. There was an actual condition that made it impossible that I could ever be and think like everyone else. My brain was literally different from theirs, and there was nothing I could have done about it.

Generosity of spirit is one of the virtues I value most, but it is never something I allowed for myself. Instead, I have tortured myself over my past, for the things I endured and the things I felt I had brought upon myself, because I had failed at some point to become fully human. I blamed myself for having neglected to learn how to be a normal person. I wasn’t just unable to cut myself a little slack for the failures and disappointments of the past, I had forbade myself from doing so. To forgive myself, I felt, would be to allow myself to continue to fail and disappoint.

Now I can reevaluate. I can look back on the story of my life through a more forgiving lens. I honestly don’t know what that might do to me.

As I sit here now and tell myself this is real, it’s hard to accept, even though it’s mostly welcome. I obviously have a great deal more processing to do. Some of that processing I’ll do here, in writing, as it seems to be the way I best understand and express my thoughts. In writing, the rules and parameters, and there are no social cues to miss or misinterpret, no eyes with which to avoid contact, no expected time frame in which to form and verbally express a thought, no expectation that I intuit the nuance and give-and-take of a real-time conversation. Here, I don’t have to second-guess my very worth as a human being.

Actually, maybe that’s the first thing I should do: Accept, finally, that there is nothing to second-guess, and that I don’t have to pretend to be normal anymore. Maybe I never did.

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Beautiful, Beautiful Alienation: Walkmen, Phones, and (Not) Watches

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Photo credit: Viewminder / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

I was relatively late to the whole Walkman thing. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I got ahold of my own portable cassette player, partly because I didn’t discover a love of contemporary music until I was 12 or so, and partly because I never thought to ask for one. (I had pretty much exhausted my enthusiasm for my Weird Al tapes, they being pretty much the only thing I ever listened to.) I don’t remember how I finally got one (a spare of my dad’s? a gift from grandma?), but when I did acquire one, and armed it with Thomas Dolby’s The Golden Age of Wireless, my life was changed.

Suddenly, I could remove myself from the world around me, something I as a bullied, nervous, self-loathing teen was desperate to do. In place of the hurtful, disapproving world, I could immerse myself sensorially in a rich world of melody, pathos, cleverness, and imaginativeness. It’s a cliché to say that “music saved my life,” but it’s no exaggeration to say that I was able to get through some of my most miserable years because I discovered the joys and the escape of music, enjoyed alone.

The Web and the larger online world have in many ways been the Walkman of my social existence. There was no Web to speak of when I was a teenager, but I did have Prodigy and later America Online (which I hear goes by another, shorter name now). These technologies — which included things like chat rooms, message boards, email, and later social networks — facilitated communication and interaction, yes, but from a much safer remove. There were layers of abstraction that conveniently hid most of who I was, and only let out the things I specifically authorized. I could speak, joke, argue, play, and even flirt, and never have to worry that I was being disqualified for my appearance, my clothes, or even how I simply held my body, all things that invited open mockery in meatspace. Like a personal cassette player, the online world let me enter a rich new world while also being blissfully alone.

Last month at The Awl, John Herrman wrote about “the asshole theory of technology,” which I’ll get into in a bit. He writes about the dawn of the Walkman:

Sony was worried that its portable stereo would be alienating. This turned out to be true. But the impulse to correct it was wrong: the thing that made it alienating was precisely the thing that made it good. The more compelling a gadget is, the more you use it, the more the people around you resent you for using it, the more they are pressured to use it themselves. (The fact that these devices are now all connected to each other only accelerates the effect.)

For me, I was already alienated. I needed someplace to be while alienated, a way to make use of my alienation. Music helped, and the advent of the online world was a significant leap (and iPods too). And then we got smartphones, and all of that and more became instantly available wherever I was, from a small rectangle in my pocket.

So back to this asshole theory. Herrman means to apply it to the likely success of the Apple Watch, as a new gadget for users to alienate themselves with, while simultaneously wooing the would-be-alienated:

This is the closest thing we have to a law of portable gadgetry: the more annoying it is to the people around you, the “better” the concept. The more that using it makes you seem like an asshole to people who aren’t using it, the brighter its commercial prospects. [ . . . ] It will succeed if it can create new rude exclusionary worlds for its wearers (this is why I wouldn’t underrate the weird “Taptic” communications stuff). It will succeed, in other words, to whatever extent it allows people to be assholes.

Maybe this is true for the Apple Watch, that the air of exclusiveness and elitism that it projects, and the in-crowd-only communications aspect of it, will drive its success. But the theory doesn’t work for me in terms of personal stereos, iPods, the Internet, and smartphones. I don’t care if they make me seem like an asshole (perhaps they do). I care that they get me away from all the other assholes, everywhere.

And a watch can’t do that.

Collective Genius and Brains in Vats

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I’ve at times felt some discomfort of the idea of the “genius,” maybe chiefly because I discovered I am not one, much to my delusional childhood chagrin. But the more one knows about one’s brilliant heroes, who despite having powerful creative and intellectual gifts are also rife with human flaws, one begins to see that for “genius” to flower and actually become something meaningful, someone else needs to work alongside the genius. Last year Hélène Mialet wrote at Wired about Stephen Hawking (someone we regard as easily qualifying as a “genius”) and how in many ways Hawking is a “brain in a vat,” and what we think of as “Steven Hawking” is really a larger gestalt of brilliant people:

In another version of Hawking’s story, we notice that he is more “incorporated” than any other scientist, let alone human being. He is delegated across numerous other bodies: technicians, students, assistants, and of course, machines. Hawking’s “genius,” far from being the product of his mind alone, is in fact profoundly located, material, and collective in nature. … What I discovered was that to understand Hawking, you had to understand the people and the machines without whom he would be unable to act and think; you had to understand the ways in which these entities augmented and amplified Hawking’s competencies.

And I think this applies to a lot of people we think of as either geniuses or extremely important or powerful. There’s a reason we can refer to President Obama, the White House, or “the administration,” and mean the same thing each time. The language we use reflects the understanding that the words and deeds of “President Obama” are actually those of a vast array of human beings working extremely hard, all under the banner of “Obama.” Barack Hussein Obama the person may be the hub of that network, the brain in the vat, but he is only one part of it. The successes and failures we ascribe to him are really borne by that network.

Joshua Wolf Shenk in a piece at the New York Times narrows this idea of “group genius” to the pair.

[A]n impressive body of research in social psychology and the new field of social neuroscience…contends that individual agency often pales next to the imperatives of a collective. The elemental collective, of course, is the pair. Two people are the root of social experience — and of creative work. When the sociologist Michael Farrell looked at movements from French Impressionism to that of the American suffragists, he found that groups created a sense of community, purpose and audience, but that the truly important work ended up happening in pairs, as with Monet and Renoir, and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In my own study of pairs, I found the same thing — most strikingly with Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

I found this both enlightening and alarming. As readers of my previous blog have been told severally, I am a pretty severe introvert, and the idea that “genius” really requires, or at least best thrives, with people in pairs worries me a bit. (The fewer the people in a group, the more the intimacy is increased, and the more threatening that can be to us introverts.) This is not to say I have never been or am incapable of being collaborative with another human being — I used to be a professional stage actor! — but especially these days it doesn’t come up much. I don’t even work in physical proximity to my coworkers, but alone in my home office.

Perhaps Lennon needed McCartney, Carl Sagan likely needed Ann Druyan, and presumably Steve Jobs needed Steve Wozniak and later Jony Ive (or Tim Cook?) — not as the person behind them, but as creative partners — and they were fortunate enough to find each other and decide to collaborate. But all these collaborations took place before the Internet dominated so much of our social lives. These people had to interact in meatspace. Even the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, came together in person in a garage.

But what Google and others helped enable with the rise of the Internet and the Web was collaboration — deep, meaningful, substantive collaboration — between people who have never been in each other’s physical presence. That gives me hope.

Now, just because it’s been enabled, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily happening much. I genuinely don’t know, and we’re really only on the cusp of this being a viable way to work and create together, via our connected devices, never in the same room. As someone who works from home, I feel pretty confident that good work and collaboration is not only possible, but in many ways improved and augmented with remote interaction, and I can thrive and excel in a vat-brain support network. But is this how the next “White Album” or Cosmos or iPhone will come to be?

I’d bet that probably yes, eventually, when more areas of friction in communication are removed, and there’s no meaningful difference between popping into someone’s office with a sudden whim and doing its equivalent online.

“Just Bring the Kids” is an Option. But it is One That Sucks.

Paul FidalgoLeave a comment

Maybe this will help you understand. Christine Skoutelas at A Morning Grouch enlightens those without children as to why she and other people with kids seem to socially disappear. (Now, I’m inclined to socially disappear anyway, but having kids only turns it from a predeliction to a kind of existential necessity.)

Here’s two parts to her post that really stood out to me, first, on why we don’t want to “bring the kids along,” even if it’s totally cool with you:

We just can’t focus on you very well when we have to simultaneously keep an eye on our kids making sure they don’t choke, drown in randomly placed vat of water or get a head injury bumping into the pointy corner of a table. We spend a lot more time and energy worrying about keeping our brood alive than you might imagine. A lot of times we host events you don’t get invited to. Again, this isn’t because YOU aren’t fun, it’s because our events aren’t fun, at least not for most adults. They are loud, obnoxious, and strategically located where there are wide open spaces or playscapes that allow toddlers to run and bounce off padded surfaces, screaming like banshees, that allow us to leave the Xanax at home since we don’t have to fear death by pointy edge.

Imagine the anxiety level in the room when it’s parents with kids doing stuff with other parents with kids! It’s like the other parents aren’t even there. But at least everyone’s on the same page.

But here was the big one for me, on the value of idleness:

We’re spending so much energy carrying, wiping, toting, cleaning, chasing after, listening to, reasoning with, teaching, and doing, that sometimes we need to just sit, in a quiet space, for ten or thirty or one-hundred-and-twenty minutes in a row, for our own sanity, and for the safety of those around us. There is no sleeping in, or afternoon naps, or resting on the weekend, so these moments are critical to help our bodies and minds recover and recharge for the remainder of our day or week. God help you if you infringe on our time we’ve allotted to revive ourselves.

Exactly. I’ve always been overly precious of my free time, since I’m a severe introvert and a value beyond measure my chances to get the hell away. But caring for kids, worthwhile as it absolutely is for me, just leaves me with nothing to run on. Whereas day-to-day activity and interactions were already draining, being a parent has utterly sapped all reserves. It’s actually a miracle that I get to work from home, making my in-person time significantly mitigated. But when I once donned the Blue Shirt in the Brushed Aluminum Retail Location, that was nothing but personal interactions.

Back then, though, I only had one kid.

Why Apple’s “Sullen Youth” Ad Works, You Snide, Heartless Jerks

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Maybe, like me, you’re not all that great with big family get-togethers during the holidays. Maybe, like me, you find yourself a little overwhelmed by all the reuniting, all the catching-up, all the big expressions of emotion. And maybe you’re even a “sullen teenager,” as I was many years ago, who is still figuring out how to behave around this weird mix of adults and children. Maybe you don’t always feel like you really know them, or know yourself, and maybe, like me, you just don’t thrive in that environment.

And maybe, if you’re like me, you also still love all of them a whole lot, and would like a way to show it.

That’s why Apple’s ad works. Technology and the Internet, represented in this ad by the iPhone, is what can allow us introverts to feel safe, and express ourselves more sincerely than we otherwise would be able. It’s not a crutch, it’s the amplifier, the translator. 

Maybe that sullen youth, who really does love his family, is more comfortable fiddling with his phone than “experiencing” everything so fully and physically, but you know what? That’s just who he is, and his family loves him too.

But you can go ahead and be snide, heartless jerks about it. Me and this fictional sullen youth who exists only in this corporate advertisement for a consumer product are used that.