meish dot org: life, unfolding

1. All the tuneless two-bar whistlers.
2. All the tinny earbud-makers.
3. All the musicians who write loops which go “chhht-kh-chhht-kh-chhht-kh” when heard through poor quality headphones.
4. All the bus drivers who lurch and stumble along the road, over-accelerating at every start and over-braking at every stop, forcing the disembarking passengers on the top deck and stairs to balance, brace, lunge for something to cling to, as if on a small boat in big seas.
5. All the mobile-yakking women in fit-flops with icy highlights like frosting in their tousled hair.
6. All the boys with jeans slung impossibly, stupidly low, the belt clinging to the tops of their sulky thighs: too low for comfort, they make constant slight adjustments to their mast position while their exposed underwear shrieks disinterest.
7. All the lazy-chomping, open-mouthed, slack-jawed cud chewers, smacking their gum wetly.
8. All the apple-eaters.
9. All the slow-walking blackberry/mobile users, ambling along the pavement or platform, entirely engrossed in the quick flicking of their thumbs across the keypad, the blinking characters on tiny screen, oblivious to the crowds surging around them.

Anyone else?

Part of the toolkit of ethnography and anthropology in general is observing patterns. This could be patterns in behaviour, appearance, ritual, language or otherwise. The anthropologist’s job is to spot the patterns and try to understand what (if any) significance they have, especially in relation to social or cultural environment, or other prevailing conditions.

I use this technique a lot when thinking about online culture, social activity and communities – not just for work, but also in my own experience of social web use, too. There are always patterns to be seen, and they can reveal a lot about the priorities and passions of the people involved.

Sidenote: I’ve been meaning to write at greater length about being a participant observer online, and the disciplines of ethnography and anthropology on the web, ten years after I wrote my MA thesis on the subject of how individuals and groups were starting to (re)define culture, community and identity in what we rather grandly called back then the “age of the Internet” (isn’t it funny how that now seems like an antiquated phrase: much like “the age of the train“).

I’ll get around to that soon, I promise. But in the meantime, I wanted to briefly share an observational technique I used when doing fieldwork in the Andes which helps train your brain to spot patterns in seemingly random data or situations. It’s especially useful if you find yourself either overwhelmed by stimulus or other input, or your brain keeps getting in the way of what you’re seeing: if you’re thinking too much, in other words.

Basically, either sit somewhere for a specified period, or use a particular timechunk with varying scenery and visual stimulus, and find patterns, keeping a mental note as you do so. The important thing is not to find one of a thing and then look for others like that thing, but to cast your gaze around until you become aware of certain similarities and patterns emerging from the chaos. I find a good example is what people are wearing – people who may not be together, but who nevertheless seem to represent a common purpose or message or approach with their style.

Yesterday’s post (along with countless others on this site over the years) was purely observational – snatched moments spotted from the top of the bus, and thumbed into the Blackberry as we chugged along.

This morning, in contrast, I did the same with patterns of people. See the results after the jump…
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From the top of the bus this morning, I saw

• A couple wearing suits, canoodling hungrily within the dark cave of a speeding cab on Waterloo Bridge. He holds her face tenderly as he laps at her upturned mouth; her fingers splay on his pinstriped knee; a phone sits on the seat behind the distracted flap of her sensible skirt.
• A german tourist bus rounding the corner near the Strand and, from the shiny windows which bank the sides, twenty round lenses peering up at Somerset House roof while a bored guide in lemon transfers the mic to her other hand so she can point, and gives her commentary in the background.
• A family with parents in jumpers and children in neon-bright shalwaar kameez holding hands and elbows and clutches of documents as they skitter together across the road at Aldwych.
• Three men in pink striped/checked/plain shirts and spiky overgelled hair hovering near a turnstile lobby entrance on Kingsway, each propped against a wall or pillar, independently comtemplating their morning smoke, overlooked by a bank of CCTV cameras, impatiently blinking.
• A bald man in a striped t-shirt with his belly poking out, a ten-o’clock shadow and a half-burnt cigarette smouldering tight between his fingers stopping mid-pavement at Red Lion Square to devote his full attention to the front cover of the tabloid he’s reading. Behind and before him, a current of crotchety commuters tuts and splits around him, rejoining the flow on the other side, but he is oblivious, transfixed.
• A girl in soft shoes, exercise tights and jersey top, smoking on a step near the ballet school off Grays Inn Road. As she talks, she picks distractedly at the nape of her neck, releasing painful strands of mousy hair from a tightly scraped-back, regimentedly high bun, and flexes her toes in the sunshine

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends.

Sentimental films such as Love, Actually would have you believe that the arrivals gate is a place of joyful anticipation and tearful reunion, where families come together in a flurry of hugs and shrieks and lovers reunite in a smooch of kisses and entwined limbs (while standing in the most inconvenient exit-blocking place possible, oblivious to the log-jam of fellow travellers who cannot pass).

This is only part of the story, and not a particularly representative bit, either.

In a world in which public transport is quick and plentiful, it’s increasingly rare to be met by someone you know at the airport. Most people (whether arriving home or somewhere new) make a bee-line for the underground, train, or cab rank. It’s quicker to head in to town yourself in the majority of cases, and traffic mayhem combined with scandalous short-term parking charges deters all but the most determined from making an appearance at the barrier.

But at the arrivals gate in most airport terminals, there are some scattered families, who pace the floor and try to keep younger siblings amused in the sterile environment. There are some lovers, waiting with slack anticipation as they flick through the paper at the coffee shop.

And then there are the others.

The board men. The bored men. The car service drivers.

Who stand waiting in the arrivals hall holding a laminated sheet with an unfamiliar name scrawled on in blue erasable ink.

Who line up against the barrier in their uniform of bluetooth-headset, cheap suit and sensible-but-smart shoes, shifting the weight from aching legs.

Who scan the emerging crowd for clues of identity – travellers tired and crumpled in clothes more appropriate for somewhere several hours and several thousand miles away who scan, in turn, the scribbled signs for their own names.

Who are summoned by a curt nod from someone with a briefcase who will be whisked away, amid polite enquiries about the flight, to a faceless business hotel on the edge of town.

This is your welcoming committee.

I don’t know what that says about the state of the world, these days.

White ribbons drooping from cutaway like-a-virgin lacy gloves, and with soft scarves and loose threads dangling from her bag, her jacket, her waist, her ponytail, the bobbles which swing from the top of her boots, she is a limp Medusa of the morning – all sleepy limbs, swaying extensions and and yawning.

Nodding along with the music in her ears which leaks out occasionally in silver-cymballed beads and the chirrups of tree-frogs, she skillfully applies first concealer, then foundation, to smooth her half-woken skin, dull the bright spots of chilled flush on her cheeks, cover the shadows under her eyes.

She is tired, and this morning ritual is performed in private, inside the walls of her attention, the train a public extension of her bathroom.

Eyeliner, shadow, highlighter to brow and socket and the sides of her nose. Liptint, applied with a stained brush the colour of frosted Ribena. Mascara, poked and stroked onto lashes framing eyes which peer into a hand-held mirror, while her mouth makes an unconscious ‘o’. Then blush, which lifts her color, brings her to cheeks back to life in the cold morning. Finally, attaching to ears multiple strands of silver, which brush her collar and tangle with her hair, and a rummage in the bag of tricks to find the secret ingredient, a breath mint.

As the train rumbles through the city, she becomes human, and when the next stop comes, she rises and leaves the train, coloured ribbons and scarves and extensions flying, alive, awake and ready.

Web 2.Oaf: someone who has got the consultants in, hoovered up everything they said, lapped up the expensive research & swigged down kool-aid to the point where they’ve managed to spill it all over their presentations, board reports, conversations and pants, as well as using the information and resources and buzzwords they have amassed like a big blunt stick to beat everyone into agreement with, but still doesn’t really, fundamentally get it, and manages to make rather poor decisions about their digital business in spite of all the time, money and conferences. A good example of a little knowledge – or rather, of a little knowledge combined with no analysis and interpretation and nouse – being a dangerous thing.

1. Nearly a decade ago, when I worked in the editorial department of a major ISP, one of the homepage editors had a theory that while lists were always a good thing, there was a magic list number – a sort of divine proportion, if you like – which was the perfect length for any list of items, where perfection is measured in people’s enacted interest which is proxied by the action of following a link trail.

   This number, I can reveal, is seven.

2. Her reasoning was this:
   • Five items is too short: it feels like there’s not enough content there, or not enough diversity in the items.
   • Ten items is too many to digest in a short time. People don’t have time to go through ten things, mostly.
   • Six feels too arbitary. Like, why six? Did they just run over? It’s like having eleven, or one hundred and two.
   • In the same way, nine feels lacking somewhat. Couldn’t you think of another?
   • Eight is difficult to read. People don’t like the word, for some reason, and besides, it means you can’t used the word “great” afterwards, because it sounds daft.
   • Seven is a natural, friendly number. People are used to sevens, because we work in them all the time – weeks, and so on. You can click through seven items easily.

   So since seven was the magic number, lots of galleries, lists and content was produced which conformed to or was jimmied into a septimal configuration.

3. I’m not sure that this theory necessarily holds water, especially as the appetite for snack-sized, easily-digestible and mildly stimulating content – the web equivalent of those energy bars you can buy at corner shops to give you easy, bland sustenance on-the-go – has grown rapidly in the age of linkbaiting.

   I’ve noticed – as I’m sure you have – the growing trend for listification of web content. Every day on del.icio.us, digg or any of the clones, there’s link after link to web content and blog articles of information which has been sorted into a list order and given a listy headline in order to catch people’s eye.

   • 34 WordPress templates you won’t have seen.
   • 10 reasons to give up chewing tobacco.
   • 8 people you haven’t heard of.

   My favourite so far has been “137 ways to make your life simpler” which I thought was sort of funny, because surely having the lowest possible number of things to do would improve the simplicity of your life?

4. But what decides the number of items in the list? If the number isn’t scientifically or traditionally standardised – 7 days of the week, 24 hours in the day – or enforced by a limited supply of resources – 12 places where you can buy a trilby on a Wednesday, 8 airlines with a shonky safety record, 39,450 people called Algenon – then it seems that the number of items is instead dictated by either
   a) how many items the author could think of or be bothered to find
   b) a nice round or impressive-sounding number (see (1) above)

5. I have another theory about numbers, which is that everyone has numbers which they return to again and again. Not in a 23 sort of way, but because they are familiar in some way. This is often revealed when people exaggerate – I’ve only seen that film, like, fifty-eight times; there were about eighty-seven thousand people on Oxford Street this afternoon….

   I frequently drift back to 87, probably because I lived in a house with that number. Do you have a number like that?

   I’m not suggesting that the number of items in a list are always dictated by a number feeling particularly “right” to the author, but I do think that some numbers feel innately more familiar and pleasing than others, and this tends to be different for each person, with some golden/divine exceptions.

6. Then, of course, there are the omnipresent list programmes which no Saturday night schedule (or repeat-heavy sister-channel) is complete without. Though they may have their roots in the chart countdowns familiar to anyone who’s ever tuned in to their local station at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, finger hovering above the pause button on the tape recorder, such formats have spread like Santa-Ana inspired wildfire over the last decade to every corner of the schedules on radio and TV. Especially TV.

   In fact, you can barely switch on the box of an evening without witnessing a parade of talking heads mithering about why they hate/love [delete as applicable] some item or person or event which has haplessly made it into the countdown.

7. There’s no subject which cannot be listified. Years, events, jokes, music videos, people, places…the list of potential list subjects is, with no irony whatsoever, endless.
8. I want to make a list programme called “100 Greatest Numbers Of All Time”, which would go something like this:
   • First up, at number 100, we’ve got….100! Here’s an interview with Nick Heyward from famed Eighties one-hit wonders Haircut 100 about why this number rocks so hard.
   • Next up, in 99th place, it’s….99! Nena of Eurovision red balloon fame explains the lure of the nines, while Mr Whippy is in the studio to help us understand how the famous icecream snack got its name
   • At 98, it’s…..98! Here’s Stuart Maconie (or is it the other one? Collins?) on why 98 is brilliant.
   • Coming up after the break, we’ll hear from the Fahrenheit regulation board about why you should care about 97, plus The Alarm on why 68 Guns are better than 67. And much more! Don’t touch that dial!

   And so on, all the way down to three (amigos, stooges, blind mice, men in a boat, and someone from De La Soul talking about why it’s the magic number), two (some tango dancers, a couple of twins and an afternoon tea waiter) and, finally, one (Bono, obviously, plus someone from the Marley clan if they’re available).

   Ideally, I’d throw in a few red herrings, for variety. At number 20, we’d have the number 101, for example. Just to keep things interesting, you understand.

   And why not? My list, my decision about what goes where.

9. List-format shows are lazy programme-making, just as, in much the same way, web content in list form can be lazy content-creation. Pick a number. Pick a subject. Collect resources (links, talking heads, examples, etc). Lather, rinse, repeat.

   If there isn’t a good reason for content being in a list format – to make it easier to digest or understand, or to show hierarchical importance, or to explore a finite number of resources – and the list format is just being used in order to create catchy headlines which are digg-friendly, then ultimately, you’re not helping content become better understood or enjoyed. Which is a shame.

   Having said that, if you’re stuck for some content for your site or TV schedule, look no further than this handy list-o-matic generator, which will give you and unlimited* number of digg-friendly headline ideas for content. Delicious linkbait, guaranteed to have the crowds tuning in/clicking in droves**

   
   

   

    

   Try again if you’re not satisfied. And if you get anything particularly good, copy and paste it as a comment….

10. A numbered list makes any content seem more authoritative, even when it isn’t – as if there’s design in the ordering of things, when (mostly) there is none. Fact.

That being said, I make lists all the time. I’m not saying they’re bad, just that there’s a lot of tosh about.

* not mathematically true
** unenforceable by law

She’s got new shoes. At the end of long, bare and goose-pimpled legs, they are conspicuously shiny and uncomfortable, and she does not know what to do with them.

They are tucked together primly, her knees higher than she is used to.

They are stretched out in front, swaying on the points of the heels.

They are pigeon-positioned, with her tote bag between ankles.

Her toes wiggle in their unfamiliar confines, and she finds herself sneaking glances at these new additions, admiringly, just as other commuters do the same to her.

Trotters stuffed in phat-laced white adidas, with jeans suitably distressed and earnest meeja glasses. He’s reading a limited-print-run magazine – the kind with incredibly stylised fashion photography and wrapped in an achingly ironic cover – a gorgeous woman in a pig mask – with a single-syllable name.

Munt. Vibe. Tramp. Shunt. Meh.

He is flipping through the pages, impatiently, and his lips move as his piggy eyes flick across the pages.

She can’t stop fidgeting. First she’s opening a bank statement, then rearranging the contents of her handbag, then rummaging in her coat pocket to change the track on her music player, then faffing with tucking her hair behind her ears.

With every twitch, her downy jacket, which adds an inch to her personal space, or takes one off, intrudes upon the suited man beside her. With every brush of her puffa, he huffs a little louder, and rearranges himself to withdraw from her contact.

His annoyance increases at precisely the same rate as her awareness doesn’t.

During the course of the last few months, I’ve dealt with and got to know a lot of people from all over the world. Of these, a handful have outrrrrrageously strong accents.

There’s a woman from Spain who espiks ass eef see ees a nestra een a espagetti westerrrn, an’ ees difficul forr joo can’ theeenk off ahnytheeen else.

There’s a man from Germany who hass ze ixact eckzunt zat a perzon frum charmany vood haff in a bad moovi.

There’s a woman from New Zealand who puppuz huh cunvusayshun wuth thuh sungle vuwul thut charucturizuz thut puhtucyuluh way uf speekung.

There’s another woman, from France, ‘ooze voys ‘as zuh mel-odd-yus kaliteh of ‘er ‘omm cowntri in ever-y leetl wohd.

There’s a man from South Africa whu tillz ivrywan thet huz ecksent esn’t thit strong, rilly, uzzit.

There’s also a woman from Australia with quoite the maost trooli umaaayzing ‘dn udderli faahntaaastic grayt bigg raaond vaawls.

The thing is, I’m convinced they’re all making it up. They don’t really talk like that: they’re putting it on, for comic effect. Their accents are just too perfectly characteristic – I’m sure that actually, they’re from (respectively) Dagenham, Slough, Kettering, Cheltenham, Margate and Ruislip.

It must be true.

Me, though, I’m actually from Azerbaijan, though you’d never guess it to hear me speak. It’s taken me years to get this whole well-spoken English thing down pat. It’s involved years of careful study and observation, and nights of listening to recordings of native speakers – newsreaders, actors, minor royals – and repeating, parrot-fashion, what they say.

Actually, saying that, and seriously for a moment, I’m constantly getting asked (by cab drivers, hairdressers etc) if I’m Australian – even by Australians. I’ve never even been to Australia. I don’t think I sound Australian. Do I?

You can hear a snippet of me speaking here, on an interview about the jailing of an Egyptian blogger which I recorded a few weeks ago for the World Service. Judge for yourself.

On the way home tonight, I noticed a lot of people carrying bouquets. This reminded me that some years ago, I wrote a guide to the six main public-flower-carrying positions employed by embarrassed men and overwhelmed women on transport systems in this country:

The full breakdown can be found over here. I tend towards the award stance, myself, but I have been known to adopt the down poise when I think people are staring.