Meeting People

Meeting people is a neurotic despair festival; did I just look at her breasts? If so why/did she notice, is this fucked already? Shit this guy is cooler than me and making me look like I’m trying too hard and making me feel pathetic and he doesn’t even know he’s doing cos he’s a nice guy to go with it.  You get the drift, etc...

Here are a few things you could try but will most likely just sit in your head until after you’ve meet someone and are trying to distract yourself from the awkward situation you’ve landed yourself in.

Introductions seem to have become unfashionable, I’ve had to introduce myself to friends of already existing friends so many times now it’s tempting to leap in and do it before anyone gets the chance not to do it.  This would also make me seem needy and overly friendly, neither of which I can’t stand.   Instead I opt for five minutes of self conscious introspection while they talk to each other and anyone else they know who’s around, I then get the pleasure of introducing myself and trying to make a joke of the fact I’ve not been introduced which in turn makes me feel like some sort of dad figure who adheres to the social rules.  What so hard about saying ‘oh yeah this is X and these peps are A,B.C’.  Just let me get my foot in the door and I’ll fuck the rest up from there.  Are we that retarded now that we’ve forgotten how to act in social situations? 

Introduction should involve a handshake and handshakes are a great way to establish dominance.  Before the dominance, what’s the correct etiquette with women and handshakes?  I’ve had some strange looks for shaking hands with women I’ve just meet?

Handshaking:  Just make the other person involved feel like whatever shake they tried was weird, and that yours was the correct shake style. If it’s a guy who seems like he’s concerned with not being tough enough, go limp and weak. He’ll natural overcompensate and shake too hard, keep looking him in the eye and keep up the verbal niceties.  This makes them feel like a poser adult. Similarly, if a guy throws you a “what’s up dog” handshake, give him the plainest white guy shake you have.  He’ll feel corny and be embarrassed (Unless of course you’re white and he’s black, in this situation just try your best not to look corny yourself. Also why are you trying establish dominance over a black guy? Bro, that’s racist.

Tid Bit: The best handshake move is to tuck your thumb in against your palm and give them a “Aaaahhhh, just fucking with you”

Name Games:  People aren’t always going to remember your name and you need to be prepared for this.  Reintroduce yourself completely. “Hey, I’m George, what’s your name?” If they bring up that you’ve met, act like you have no recollection. This is a dick move, but it establishes the vital fact that you’re in control and not prey to their whims. Do not, under any circumstance, do the “Hey, uhhh, we’ve met before… I’m George… uh yeah, at Joe’s Party, I think… uh… your name’s Chris, isn’t it?” thing.  That makes you look way awkward, and looking awkward is for people whom no one respects.

There are non dick move variations but you can end up in a situation where it seems you’ve Google Imaged them and have been playing this meeting over and over in your head to theme From Dawson’s Creek.

Stuff to make your already existing beliefs seem even righter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27Qo6PU8Sw

Rumsfeld giving the thumbs up to the rather insane Al Qaeda bunker is fairly hilarious.

Stuff to make your already existing beliefs seem even righter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl6lOP_BfLg&feature=relmfu
Is it despotic, is it rambling, is it a joke?  No it's Fox and their trusty side kick Bill O'Reilly.

That Marshal McLuhan he had a few good ideas

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, was a philosopher, professor of English literature, literary critic, and a communication theorist.  McLuhan is best known for the expressions "the medium is the message" and "the global village" and his prediction of the World Wide Web three decades before it came to be. His undoubted heyday was the late sixties featuring in shows such as Head to Head, debating with Noam Chomsky (and getting le better of him in my humble opinion, well seeming the more interesting) and of course his books most notably The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.   Since the advent of the internet, and given the parallels that can be drawn between the social concerns of the effects of television then and the internet now, there has been renewed interest in his work and perspective.

The subject that would occupy most of McLuhan's career was the task of understanding the effects of technology in relation to popular culture, and how that relationship affected humans’ interactions with each other in their every widening communities.

With the internet and pop culture invading nearly every aspect of first world human life, the relationship between ourselves, the internet and pop culture has never been as vital.  So then we must conclude understanding that relationship is equally vital. 

Man’s position in a technological and media orientated society, McLuhan’s states; ‘If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?’. This statement is considered to have announced the existence of a global village, another phrase he is given credit for, and pre-empts the intensification of the global community.

Obviously Facebook and Twitter et al weren’t his intended targets but they are devices which enable a human family and a singular consciousness on an unprecedented level.  But what is the reality of our human family?   Social networking is dependent on friend requests, which is rather tribal and highlights that we are only layering technology upon ourselves.  Does that help us develop as beings? Aren’t we repeating ourselves but with the addition of new finery?  Social networking hasn’t made us more social; the average Facebook user has 130 friends and on average regularly talks to 6% of them.  

If I seem sceptical about ‘ourselves’ and the internet then well spotted.  McLuhan had a less sarcastic warning "we become what we behold", consider the blinding desire of many average teenagers to be like Sergio Augureo, Telusa, the increasing demand from teenage girls to have plastic surgery or the use of BlackBerries in the recent riots.  (Please ignore the that last reference as they weren’t worth paying any attention to beyond the fact that a lot of people without a lot of hope did their best to get their hands on what they behold and subsequently desire and I don’t blame them.)

Objects of Desire

Advertising and market research on the unsuspecting consumer, (no blame should fall on Don Draper no matter what Marshal or I say in the following).   The effects of advertising are set out in The Mechanical Bride. The book deals with the influence of print media on male and female psyches. The aim of the ad man, said McLuhan, “is the manipulation, exploitation, and control of the individual.” So who is the unsuspecting victim in all that and what’s to become of them?  Again with passage of time McLuhan words may seem a little dated but they can still be applied today.  We are the dupes of advertising and the aim is get in to our pockets and stay there for as long as possible, I know an ad man lives in my wallet.

Exploiting men’s sexual desire by objectifying women through the media is perhaps the trade mark of advertising, as is the sleight of hand when in turn women are sold means to help them achieve the ends... desirability.  In doing this the ad men created a new market which had not previously existed.  The point of this little jaunt in to advertising is not to poke the bad men with a sharp stick but to give insight into how media functions.  The quote that follows is McLuhan's description of the mindset of a woman under the influence of advertising geniuses. He said: “To the mind of the modern girl, legs, like busts, are power points, which she has been taught to tailor, but as parts of the success kit rather than erotically or sensuously. She swings her legs from the hip . . . she knows that a "long-legged girl can go places." As such, her legs are not intimately associated with her taste or with her unique self but are merely display objects like the grille on a car. They are date-bated power levers for the management of the male audience.” As a man I’m hesitant to say that he correctly shows that it is not the fact that women try to improve their looks for men, but the idea of "polishing" each part for optimal function. Mid to late 20^th century and 21^st century woman has been programmed with advertising that each of her features can be optimised for the purposes of gaining a man or woman, a promotion, or just about whatever she wants.

There is of course a male counterpart and he is equally unflattering.  He seeks the holder of beauty, grace and charm in amounts almost unimaginable and of course she demands only the highest standards of virility from her male counterpart. The results of this McLuhan claim “are men who are readily captured by the gentleness and guile of women, but who are also surrounded by a barrage of body parts. The man is not won over, but slugged, and beaten down in defeat.”   He paints a pretty stereotypical image of men and women one which he saw being amplified by the mediums print, TV and Radio advertising, with increasing amounts of advertising filling the internet those stereotypes are being amplified louder than ever and that is in turn reflected in our own attitudes and behaviour.


There’s a whole load more to McLuhan but this is what came out and seems to have come to a conclusion of its own.  Maybe part two will crop up one day.

Yeah a guy you've never hear of prattling on about nothing you haven't seen cut and pasted somewhere before. What a treat and his spelling is awful.

All jokes aside, I'm bored and although Im cool with my decision not to chase a meaningful series of jobs, cash and something terrible like a lifestyle, it does leave one with a fair amount of spare time on his hands.

Le plan is to dazzle you all with my sarcasm.

Present some sort of comment that seems not to have been reported on current/relatively current things.

Say something about people of interest, past and present.

Generally try to make sense of what are little brain factories present as reality to us.

Thats it