Letters to the Editor
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Video – what’s the point?
I can’t listen to sound at work so I never do view these videos. I’ve seen lots of readers say the same thing. So it makes me wonder - what is the point of even having a video? Was there something that she said that just couldn’t be expressed written down? Is the music that wonderful?
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Stop with the videos, please.
Can't watch the video and don't really want to anyway (can we stop it with the videos please) but the article was hilarious. I emailed it to everyone I knew. Who knew that we, plus 95% of the female population in the US (including my mom) were so edgy and different?
Yeah, and, just to repeat: PLEASE stop with the videos. Does ANYONE like them? What purpose do they serve? If I want to watch TV, I'll watch TV.
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Second. Third. Fourth. And fifth.
Stop the videos. Please.
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Ever have a potentially disquieting misunderstanding with a significant other over the meaning and intent of a text message?
Right. That’s because the fraction of potential meaning in human interpersonal communication – which evolved [;-)] pre-text-messaging and pre-internets – conveyed by the literal meaning ascribed to the text is something less than 10 percent.
Short, ideally, of face-to-face conversations on feminism, hipster coolness and conformity, it would seem difficult to argue against the value added by the non-literal cues provided by video clips for those interested and inclined to pay attention.
Take this text contribution for example:
"She's baaaaaack! (groovy pron music and all)
Run for it boys, run! Its just as vapid, pointless, and laggy as ever."
What was really intended and revealed here? Is the writer predominantly angry, or being humorous or ironic, sarcastic, exasperated, condescending, objectifying, cynical or what? Rate and tone of speech, delivery, inflections, facial expressions, etc. would have gone a significant way toward understanding this contribution. Maybe that’s why in letters theads it is not uncommon to see requests for clarification or questions like, “Were you being sarcastic?”
Clearly not all content suffers equally from lack of extra-textual cues, nor would be practically deivered and received via video. But is there really much harm in providing it supplementally?
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Why versus?
Is everything a competition? I assume the women cited in the article as examples of hip, urbane tomboy chic are in their 20's. Anything can offer a person empowerment and liberation at any time in her life. It depends on the person.
How many fashion changes does a woman undergo in her life?Women were wearing blue jeans and sneakers well before the 1950's; the only thing that has changed is the names on the labels and the cost to wear a trend.
Fashion neither defines or limits femininity. It's an accent, like pillows on the sofa. Tomboy chic has been around for centuries in various forms and in all cultures. It comes and goes as a popular fashion. It is the bias of the viewer that defines the limits of their perception. We should enjoy the changes and differences instead of heaping criticism in every direction.
After all, NOTHING under the sun and moon is NEW. I read an article about the trend of living together without benefit of marriage. It was written in a women's magazine published in 1919. All that we think is NEW, is just part of the flow of life and living in every generation.
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I know it's wrong
But for once I agree with W.E.S. Tomboys are hot. Though, I'd prefer my women in patched carhardts than $200 jeans.
I also find the video talking heads distracting. Clark-Flory looks kinda like one of my ex g/f's so I'm wondering if I should give the ex a call rather than about what C-F is saying.
But that's always true about people on video. I can't look at Tim Russert and not think "Mr. Potato Head!"
If Salon is going to use videos, it would make sense to me to use them the way Greenwald uses them, to show other people. Or show what you're talking about. Like, show some of those urbane tomboy women.
They're hot!
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@J.C. Miller
Just to make it more ironic and complex J.C., you are quoting from a post that Salon saw fit to delete. Was that "angry, or being humorous or ironic, sarcastic, exasperated, condescending, objectifying, cynical or what?
Guess I won't get my red star today, darn.
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Another vote against the videos
Please. I have watched only one and found it boring and a waste of time. What is the point? Self-promotion? What? I don't care what these people - writers! - look or sound like. Does anyone? It's just irritating.
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I just can get my ahead around spending $200 on jeans.
The price of the jeans is the obscene element of this story, since The Man co-opting hipness is an old, old story.
I don't spend $200 on the slacks I wear to work, and if I spend $50 on jeans, I feel guilty. They're jeans!, after all. And I make a lot of money compared to most people.
I have a hunch that young women buying $200 jeans is somehow related to the meltdown of our nation's financial system, i.e., people buying far too much on credit and saving far too little. Either that, or the women who spend that on jeans are also employees of a certain club which caters to certain unemployed governors of fruity-nicknamed States.
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Everyone wants to bang Hillary Swank, I guess.
I'm more of a Juliette Binoche man, myself. You can never be too fem, for me.
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nonverbal op-ed: just ugh
JCMiller--
The harm is what people are saying it is. Nonverbal communication makes the article useless if you've got a lousy machine or connection, a problem with your eyes, ears or social instincts, or a cube the boss can see into.
That statistic you quote doesn't work online, by the way. It might be true for conversation--assuming its discoverer didn't do what I suspect and pad the total with every bit of connotation that doesn't come direct from the dictionary. Even assuming the statistic is honest, true nonverbal communication only works because a speaker is free to be sloppy in ways that no opinion blogger should ever try:
1) Speakers can compose in real time. This forces the brain's language generator to settle for conveying the gist, and leave the rest to the lobes that work the face and so forth. When you do have time to arrange words into your actual meaning, anything less is just lazy.
2) Speakers can save a great many words by taking who, where, when and why for granted. They get away with sentences like "We're out of tickets", where delivery means everything: are you hearing it through the window of a box office or the car you've just been doing 95 in? But no such skimping is possible on words that introduce your abstract thoughts to Internet strangers--not even if you blow your IT budget on a streaming video widget to say them from.
3) Speakers don't have to talk about anything. Half the "content" of a typical conversation is meant to flesh out a persona, game a system, jerk a heartstring or suck the chrome off an ego. Nobody wants to read that, and even if they did, since when have writers have any trouble writing it?
So yes, I do think there's a problem with letting the soundtrack and the look on your face speak for you. The problem is that innocent kbps had to give their lives, and innocent users their patience, in order that so very little extra could be said.