This one doesn't have a clever title either because the only ones that come to mind are unhelpful.

[hirez]

So, um, in the course of kicking some ideas around a muddy 2ndXI pitch before they put the goalposts back for the start of the new term, an idea that I'm not entirely sure how to express came to me...

'If I have this shiny-thing[1] then things will generally be better and I will be able to hold my head up in polite society and/or do better in my work and/or cop off with that person of appropriate gender-presentation.' (Or some other outcome along those lines.) :

[Poll #1774704]



[1] Where 'shiny-thing' expands to 'boots, article(s) of clothing, leather goods, elective surgical procedure, electronic device, personal conveyance, &c.' I'm not entirely sure if it encompasses 'toy frenzy', but that may (or may not) be a gendered assumption.

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

No, of course bloody well not.

However we all keep falling for it, because it's such a simpler and more attractive worldview than the likely alternatives.

I don't buy the branded trainers because they'll help me pull, I buy them because I want to believe in a world where my pulling power can be so easily and rationally manipulable.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I had my first taste of it with an electronic device today. I was sitting on the Tube with my mobile phone, playing one of the noddy little low-res games it comes with (Snake, or Tetris or something) and a guy sat down next to me, got out his smartphone and started quite ostentatiously scrolling through the masses of awesome-sounding games on his screen. I felt sudden tech-shame!

Mind you I don't experience it so much with 'stuff' as I do with body/appearance stuff. Why is my hair not glossy and manageable like the girls I see on my way to work? Why can I not walk effortlessly in five inch heels? Why are my clothes not creasefree without gaping buttons and dangling threads? Did I miss some vital lesson in womanhood at some point in my teens, and now I'm forever playing catchup because I DON'T KNOW HOW TO BE A REAL GIRL?

And occasionally it suckers me into buying things, like moisturisers or 'miracle' hair treatments. When actually I suspect what I really need is to be devoting huge amounts of time and energy to personal grooming when frankly, I have better things to do with my time.

Like post introspective comments on Livejournal in the middle of the night. Um.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Where's the "like" button???

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Glad it's not just me!

I do wonder how these women do it. You see them at 8am with perfect makeup and straightened hair and you think "Crikey, lass, you must have got up at 6am to get all that done!"

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

I don't quite understand spending all that time on such things, to be honest. Not when I have so many other things I want to do. And it's not just DOING it, but maintaining it through the day. What if it's humid? Do you bring your straightener with you? What if it rains? What if you're riding in a convertible!!!

Well, I guess there would be no riding in a convertible, and that's just unacceptable. I'd rather have messy hair than give up the chance to have the wind muss it up.

And there are women (and men) out there who would look at me the way I look at them. Takes all kinds, I s'pose.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

To be honest, if I have clean and matching socks on I count it a good day. Sure, I do the dressing-up thing for big events, but every day? No.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Dear me, yes. (And also El Bat's comment above, but in a different part of my head.)

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Also "like". I missed girl school. Maybe because I went to a girls school :)

I rationalise it this way - if I spend 30 mins a day on self-maintenance (which I think is low) that's 3.5 hours a week. 175 hours a year. That's a whole week a year of my life down the drain. But it still gets to me.

[badnewswade.livejournal.com]

You'll have the new thing, and it'll be great for a while, but then not as great as the new new thing.

Then again, you might get Vista progress - where the new thing is shite compared to the old thing that was much better, but you can't get the parts now so, meeeeeh.

[andrewducker]

It is true for "do better in my work", for values of "this tool is actually more effective".

Other than that, bah! I do buy occasional presents for Julie, which adds to her general happiness with me, but I don't think they lead directly to copping off.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

As you know, Jim, I'm often taken with the urge to lay hands on one kind of shiny-shiny thing or another.

But I don't usually have any concrete idea of the technical or social benefits that will flow from it. I just want it. Or I just want some kind of newness, and the thing in question seems to be a candidate.

Which I think means I am even less organised than your hypothesis would suggest, and my acquisitorial urges are not really directed at a plan for increased happiness.

I think there's a whole human urge, the urge to go and find the Good Stuff and get it, that's completely different from the urge to get the things one needs to runs one's life. It's not really connected with a plan-for-happiness. It's like cats chasing mice. They don't do it because they are hungry and mice are food, they do it because mice just need to be chased.

Since about 1970, getting the things one actually needs has become so straightforward and easy that most of commerce has become directed at this urge instead of at any kind of use-value.

All advertising (with the exception of Lynx adverts and WeBuyAnyCar) is now directed at promoting the trainers/telephones/cars in question into the category of Good Stuff so this urge will go to work on it.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

The self-storage craze
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14718478

[quercus.livejournal.com]

About 3am last night there was an absolutely top TV documentary on freight containers. How they've not only changed shipping, they've changed _everything_. "Ports" (the places were people put things on boats, by hand) can now be inland, so Canary Wharf closes overnight and you build yuppieville on it instead. Dockers are told to "sling their hook", so whole communities vanish. John Lewis expands its number of SKUs fifty-fold. We now need phrases like "SKU", which simply didn't exist before. A single container boat costs £30k / hour to operate, so nothing is allowed to delay it. Crane operator managers have degrees in "logistics", because we can't afford them to get it wrong. Any future strike by dockers would likely be answered with tactical nukes on the second day, because we just can't afford one any more.

Fascinating thing. Pour yourself a glass of weak lemon drink and watch it on some shiny new mediagadget.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

Do you mean 'yes' as in 'yes, this is an observable phenomenon' or 'yes' as in 'yes, this is sensible'? If the former, then yes.

Buying stuff is easy. Doing all the other stuff is hard. There's probably some hand-waving to do about how status in a society that is driven by consumption is measured in terms of expenditure.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It's the malign influence of Bernays and his hateful progeny, isn't it?

[alasdair.livejournal.com]

I am prone to both variants of this: the one where I like to have up to date shiny toys because there's apparently a magpie roosting somewhere in my family tree,* and* the one where it is, to a certain extent true that better shiny toys make me better able to do my job. This is partly a case of wanting the right tool for the right job - I couldn't run my current photoblog anything like as well with anything other than my current iPhone, for example. It's also partly because a non-zero part of my day job *and* my hobbies/interests involves trying to get a handle on What's Coming Next, in order to better build websites/fictions, and trying to understand What's Coming Next is a lot harder when viewed through technology that is just about keeping yup with what happened 2 years ago last Tuesday. I know some of the latter is merely my self-justification for the aforementioned corvid, but it is at least part true.

Honest.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Years ago I was playing the Sims and my sim was miserable because he was working all hours because I wanted to get the money to buy him a plasma screen TV which would make him happier in the long run. Then I thought, "Shit, I wouldn't bother to do this rubbish in real life, how have I been conned into doing it in simulation."

[quercus.livejournal.com]

How do people get conned into simulating real life, the one thing that comes supplied as standard?

Two things. There are also blackberries. They come for free too.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Real life has many missing and poorly implemented features. For example, yesterday, I simulated breaking into a factory to steal industrial secrets and being shot repeatedly in the face because I'm ham-fisted at such things. Fortunately the game has a save feature which real life lacks. Also in real life bullets hurt and there are no health pick ups.

Obviously my real life (working as a mathematician in a university) most closely matches the life of secret agents in shoot-em-up games. Supposedly other people's lives are more like the Sims. However, even in the Sims, I can investigate "hey, what happens if I shag the neighbour, hold a pool party, pee on the floor and then set the kitchen on fire" and then restore from a saved version when it turns out this doesn't work out so well. When I tried this in real life I was horrified to discover that there's no autosave and they made me clean it all up. Also in real life I can't fast forward time while I'm at work and raise money for a swimming pool and plasma TV in just five working days.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

"hey, what happens if I shag the neighbour, hold a pool party, pee on the floor and then set the kitchen on fire"
Bizarrely I read that and the word "Humblebee" flew unbidden into my mind.

Can't think why - no pool.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

If it had been "Hold a party where the chainsaws come out, pee on the dog and set John's bedroom door on fire" you'd have been startlingly close to reality.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Did you ever see a glowing green plumbob hovering in the lounge?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I don't believe so.

Mind there was this time when I had to go and sleep in the middle of the field so the universe could play the entirety of 'Hawkwind live' at me.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what Humblebee refers to but the first google hit is one of those places which attempts to sell you the idea of living in a hut by calling the hut a wigwam.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Sorry. (A bit)

You know how the tales of yr shared living with Dr. T + various Petes took on a life of their own as they travelled the internet?

Humblebee is/was the JHR + allied types version. There are still traces in the GUsenet archive: http://groups.google.com/group/uk.people.gothic/browse_thread/thread/f2ba6920bd6a369a/ca44beaef0be4632?q=+humblebee&lnk=ol&#

[steer.livejournal.com]

tales of yr shared living with Dr. T + various Petes took on a life of their own as they travelled the internet?

It was perfectly reasonable to be hoovering naked, I thought -pete. was out.

Heh... Humblebee does sound pretty cool actually.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I've discovered I can get a cheap dose of "the shiny" by waiting ages between wiping my laptop screen. Then for hours after I do clean it I'm marvelling at the sharpness of picture. Similarly if you put a screen protector on your touchscreen mobile and wait until it's really crusty before changing it, it's like having a new phone but the protector is only 25p from ebay.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

That sounds like it ought to be a Viz "Top Tip"

[steer.livejournal.com]

Ah... I wish I could write for Viz.

Incidentally, my belief is that the worst possible form of "new! shiny!" is a new hard drive to replace a near capacity or failing hard drive.

The immediate reaction is "ooh, new computer part" glee. However, after hours of toil you've replaced all the various OS, got the data back and sit back to bask in the glow of... something that works exactly the same as it did before you started buggering with it. The only thrill to be had is looking at free space on the disk. It quickly palls.

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Yes. In that it's an easier thing to believe all round and keeps us happy sem-fulfilled consumers.