I've read a lot about this case, and I generally find that there is very little nuance in the discussions on the topic: as is the case in most such circumstances, people adopt a stance based on an ideologically-defined worldview which informs the entirety of their narrative and argumentation.
One of the two fronts is relatively easy to disregard at least by some criteria: there are ample reasons why people would be loath to accept being cheated on, and these reasons can be substantial enough; therefore, an analysis to oppose the argument that people should be free to have extramarital relations “provided nobody's harmed” is unnecessary — primarily because, as experience would show, it is the rarest of circumstances that nobody's harmed in the process.
But its diametric opposite is also problematic, unbeknownst to most of its proponents; and the reason for that largely rests on the nature of these two media: the Internet and the Ashley Madison service.
For starters, we should identify the nature of the action that brought all this about: a hackers' group that identifies itself as “The Impact Team” started leaking data retrieved from the Ashley Madison network — not only server mapping, employee details and salary figures, but also user information. These actions drew some support from the public that has some problems with the company's ideas, which can be encapsulated in their registered trademark: “Life is short. Have an affair.” And one is wont to agree, at least to some extent: the company's motto alone is enough to make many feel utter disgust and contempt for the enterprise; and many extend that to its users as well.
Like it or not, however, vigilantism is not without grey moral areas; in fact, vigilantism clearly lies in the perceived need to tackle grey areas in a more direct manner that the law does not cover, or that the corrupt status quo is unwilling to let anyone tackle anyway — and it usually comes with a heady side (yes, heady) of holier-than-thou attitude: when was the last time you heard about a vigilante who was uncertain about the means by which they pursue perceived justice?
In this case, the landscape is rife with grey areas. Let us assume the most simple of issues: the sort of data some people, both amateurs and even professionals, for pity's sake, have tried to extract from all this. You see, there's a fatal flaw in that decision: Ashley Madison required an email account for one to subscribe, as far as I can tell from the media, but I've also found out that there was no requirement to verify that account in any way — meaning not only that you weren't sent a confirmation link via email, as is most common nowadays, but that you might as well even enter a completely fake email account (potentially one that not only doesn't exist, but one that cannot exist)... or even someone else's email!
As you can imagine, this latter case can prove disastrous: imagine being told that you can't deny that you were looking to have an affair, what with having an account on the site... What is important to understand here is that it doesn't even have to be your spouse that's looking you up: any acquaintance with a macabre intent to look such details up might find the account registered under your email without your knowledge.
Another example, a bit less benign but certainly understandable, would be people who registered on one hand, but never meant to actually use the service; or who perhaps flirted without any intent to go further with anyone (which, though far from pristinely innocent, still shouldn't warrant the sort of abuse that may erupt from this fiasco).
Battered spouces might also have used the service to maintain some understanding with a third party while they're contemplating where their relationship is heading; and it beggars belief that we should condemn anyone in such a position for considering leaving their spouse. Again, keep in mind these subtle cases that vigilantes would rather crush and burn along with what is rotten and malevolent. In this circumstance, the abusive spouse may find out about this.
On another note, there apparently were people from the LGBTQ minorities who used the service to find people that matched them; and it is important to consider that these included single people who just wanted to find someone they were attracted to, and that in some parts of the world it is illegal to belong in these minorities — which would, again, be simple for the authorities or local mobs to find out and act upon this information promptly, threatening legal and illegal action against them.
Last but not least that I can think of, there have been some unconfirmed reports of suicides of people who were discovered to have allegedly used the service. Personal horror and peer pressure can make someone choose to kill themselves; but it can also be reason enough that some people might attempt to fake a suicide as well, to provide some food for thought (see above examples).
Thus, one has to consider the weight such acts of vigilantism have on other people's lives: the original intent is not enough to quantify how much damage they have effected, because they cannot predict all the possible outcomes; and even intent as to what it was you intended to do, but also how your course of action accomplished that intent — not whom you intended to affect.
From a legal standpoint, it has no bearing whether you intended to harm a different party than the one you actually harmed: the intent to inflict harm is what matter, regardless of the receiving end; and on the other hand, morally speaking, it doesn't matter that you didn't want that sort of effect to occur: in light of your limitations, you bear the full responsibility for opting to take a course of action whose outcome you cannot reasonably predict. Examples correspondingly include firing a gun and hitting a different party than the one you wanted to hit, and firing blindly and hitting someone that you never intended to hit anyway.
However, I will admit that there has been some small benefit in the form of discovering people who have been verified to have used the service (due to payments made using their account information), at least insofar as we can tell; but I ask this question of you: besides hounding some public figure for hypocrisy, primarily on the basis of vigilantism, who and how has actually benefited from all of this? It is something that we all ought to consider before speaking up about this — or any similar incident.
2015-08-25
2015-08-22
In lue of a review, due to unforeseen flames
I had been planning to put up my thoughts on a certain series that has been one of my favourites, but the recent circumstances have taken my interest in such writing out of the way.
A little too close to our home for too much comfort, a fire is burning in the wooded region; and come the fall of night, the firefighting effort has necessarily been restricted to the use of ground forces. It is unsettling to hear the siren calls for hours on end with intermitent pauses — a sensation of uncertainty the likes of which you can't quite explain to others, I guess, not unless they've been in a similar situation.
Forest fires, for lack of a better word, are a terrible thing in themselves; but when you feel threatened by the possibility of the flames approaching you, when you have to start considering the possibilities and recount your emergency training (thinking what you'll have to take with you; what you'll have to accept leaving behind, possibly letting them go to the flames; how to carry off your pets that you can carry off, thinking about the fish you can't save; the things, the books and beloved gifts that you have to leave behind, not knowing what will befall them)... No matter what, it leaves you a little stunned, it jostles something within you, having to think whether you should perhaps stay awake to keep watch whether the flames will climb over the crest of that hill from which the smoke bellowed all afternoon.
It's times like these where you feel the surge of conflicting emotions: you are the only one back home and thus cannot leave to help fight the flames back; but you feel like you should be doing something; hence you pick up the torchlight and hope things will be well soon.
The flames are not dying out yet: the winds are too strong still, and the fire has split in parts and spreading further apart; the firefighters' numbers are thin. At least we know that, by tomorrow, more firefighters will come over — they're crossing the Aegean from Athens and Salonica both! — and more aircraft as well. So, in the long run, it's a waiting game of sorts... until tomorrow.
A little too close to our home for too much comfort, a fire is burning in the wooded region; and come the fall of night, the firefighting effort has necessarily been restricted to the use of ground forces. It is unsettling to hear the siren calls for hours on end with intermitent pauses — a sensation of uncertainty the likes of which you can't quite explain to others, I guess, not unless they've been in a similar situation.
Forest fires, for lack of a better word, are a terrible thing in themselves; but when you feel threatened by the possibility of the flames approaching you, when you have to start considering the possibilities and recount your emergency training (thinking what you'll have to take with you; what you'll have to accept leaving behind, possibly letting them go to the flames; how to carry off your pets that you can carry off, thinking about the fish you can't save; the things, the books and beloved gifts that you have to leave behind, not knowing what will befall them)... No matter what, it leaves you a little stunned, it jostles something within you, having to think whether you should perhaps stay awake to keep watch whether the flames will climb over the crest of that hill from which the smoke bellowed all afternoon.
It's times like these where you feel the surge of conflicting emotions: you are the only one back home and thus cannot leave to help fight the flames back; but you feel like you should be doing something; hence you pick up the torchlight and hope things will be well soon.
The flames are not dying out yet: the winds are too strong still, and the fire has split in parts and spreading further apart; the firefighters' numbers are thin. At least we know that, by tomorrow, more firefighters will come over — they're crossing the Aegean from Athens and Salonica both! — and more aircraft as well. So, in the long run, it's a waiting game of sorts... until tomorrow.
2015-08-21
“Realism” in fantasy and correlations
Most people of the so-called developed nations will eventually come across something in a piece of creative work (to avoid the contention as to what art really is) that will take them out of the viewing experience; this will occur when two conditions are met: one, if they have already got so into it that they have stopped bothering with the minor details and mostly go along with it; and two, if something happens which seems implausible or out of place, so much in fact that, even if a suggestion is made to explain it, it won't satisfy the viewer.
Just what will jar anyone out of the impression of believability does not fall along the same lines for every individual; and even the medium will have a different impact, because conditioning will affect what expectations one has and how they differ from what they are presented with.
One example that springs to mind is space battles: it has practically become the butt of most jokes in regards to Hollywood films that such scenes feature sound effects such as those we'd normally expect from an explosion, even though we would most likely hear nothing (except if there was, for instance, a thin atmosphere or something like that, instead of true deep space); and there is nothing wrong with the fact that people are aware of that... The downside, however, is that, having become a trop, people almost expect it nowadays. You rarely hear a person wish that a space battle was silent. Contrast that to the reception (at least amongst the enthusiasts) of the silent space scenes in the film Gravity.
But there still is an aspect to that same trope that the average person will overlook — the visuals: in the absence of an atmosphere, in the thinness of the near-vacuum space conditions, explosions would not be the flashy, fiery displays people are used to. What we'd see, instead, would be a very rapid, but extremely brilliant flash; a momentary puff that would almost immediately end, only to be followed by extremely fast-moving debris. This is almost universally unseen in space cinema, but much more importantly, nobody expects it: our conditioning is so thorough that, despite the fact that, if you truly think about it, normal explosions make no sense in space, we just don't think about it.
Historical arms, armour, dress and customs are further examples, albeit much more esoteric; the details which can be of import to the general public, however, are not few. For instance, armour and dress is invariably butchered, a most interesting case being the film Braveheart, which is notorious for its inaccuracy amongst certain circles for all sorts of reasons: William Wallace is shown wearing brigandine armour (essentially, a leather vest that has metal plates riveted with metal plates), but we generally know that such armour would not be right at the time, most importantly because it would go with a helmet. Kilts also weren't usual at the time, nor was it for the British soldiers to wear uniforms, but that at least serves the function of allowing the viewers to directly distinguish which side soldiers belong to, so it's at least acceptable in a way.
And yet there are other issues with the film that are far more important: primae noctis mostly likely didn't exist, and the legends behind William Wallace's actions do not support them on that idea; that makes the inclusion of primae noctis, the victimization and subsequent fridging of William Wallace's wife more than a little problematic. Why is it that Hollywood assumes that a man will do nothing for his kith or country when they are ravaged by whom he might consider an enemy, only to change his mind when his kin is affected, especially women? You can literally count on your fingers the number of legends and myths which are based off of the killing of a man's male relatives.
But perhaps the most damning of all circumstances is when the concept of fantasy enters the playing field; in this context, I use “fantasy” not in the sense of the genre, but the theme of introducing some elements which border on the preternatural and supernatural (whether either or both, really). It is the case more often than not that people will defend something glaringly problematic with the statement that it is but a fantasy and should thus be allowed to go as the creator may please.
That is not always fine and well, even though I, myself, am more than a little inclined to make way for a creator's intent. For instance, while science suggests that there is a tendency for men to have greater upper body strength than women on average and in maximum numbers, in fantasy I would expect the breaking of that “rule,” rather than its exaggeration! As in, if fantasy allows for creative extension, I would rather expect the author to present the strongest women being equally strong to the strongest men, not the strongest men being unrealistically stronger than women.
A glaring example of this sort of essentialist fantasy is evinced in the contrast between the Hulk and She-Hulk (which goes far beyond the naming convention): Hulk is more commonly presented as a raging, brutish and mostly unthinking machine of destruction when he loses his temper, who had to go through years of character development to become more of the thinking, smart person he is in his normal persona; while She-Hulk has more of an outraged, stereotypically hysteric reaction and retained most of her intellectual capacity. In other words: stereotypes of the man who has lost it completely, compared to those of the woman who is having a fit.
Some, as mentioned earlier, defend that with the notion that that, being a fantasy, does not have to conform to certain standards; and, if anything, that gives me pause — and for good reason. I have honestly had some difficulty bothering too much with comics, primarily because they usually rely heavily on pseudoscientific, “tenuous terminology” (as one article aptly puts it) and technobabble, besides what issues I've had with their publication practices and storytelling. But, in the end, this is exactly what seems to be the problem in this case: comics are very cavalier about realism, treating it with wanton disregard when it doesn't suit their needs, while falling back on it to defend darker, more sinister themes on their pages; otherwise, comics seem to be realistic only in the sense that they don't present us with Münchhausen-like tall tales at every opportunity — more in the sense that they'd rather present us with a setting with which they can relate to at least to some degree. You can easily tell that they'd rather do so, after all, because whenever they try to present a truly bizarre world that bends or breaks our expectations of reality completely, they fail spectacularly to give any semblance of a setting that one could believe exists.
So it seems that “realism” is usually not heeded; rather, most calls to realism are made only to defend the choices the creators made. And while we should appreciate that creators also have limitations, it's not unreasonable to expect them to appreciate their capacity to overcome their mistakes: far too often the relationship between creator and content is that the creator creates content which is not to the best of their abilities; and the creator is unwilling to perform better than they do. So the question becomes more blunt: should we (the consumers) invest our resources on content made by creators who are either not capable or not willing to do any better?
Just what will jar anyone out of the impression of believability does not fall along the same lines for every individual; and even the medium will have a different impact, because conditioning will affect what expectations one has and how they differ from what they are presented with.
One example that springs to mind is space battles: it has practically become the butt of most jokes in regards to Hollywood films that such scenes feature sound effects such as those we'd normally expect from an explosion, even though we would most likely hear nothing (except if there was, for instance, a thin atmosphere or something like that, instead of true deep space); and there is nothing wrong with the fact that people are aware of that... The downside, however, is that, having become a trop, people almost expect it nowadays. You rarely hear a person wish that a space battle was silent. Contrast that to the reception (at least amongst the enthusiasts) of the silent space scenes in the film Gravity.
But there still is an aspect to that same trope that the average person will overlook — the visuals: in the absence of an atmosphere, in the thinness of the near-vacuum space conditions, explosions would not be the flashy, fiery displays people are used to. What we'd see, instead, would be a very rapid, but extremely brilliant flash; a momentary puff that would almost immediately end, only to be followed by extremely fast-moving debris. This is almost universally unseen in space cinema, but much more importantly, nobody expects it: our conditioning is so thorough that, despite the fact that, if you truly think about it, normal explosions make no sense in space, we just don't think about it.
Historical arms, armour, dress and customs are further examples, albeit much more esoteric; the details which can be of import to the general public, however, are not few. For instance, armour and dress is invariably butchered, a most interesting case being the film Braveheart, which is notorious for its inaccuracy amongst certain circles for all sorts of reasons: William Wallace is shown wearing brigandine armour (essentially, a leather vest that has metal plates riveted with metal plates), but we generally know that such armour would not be right at the time, most importantly because it would go with a helmet. Kilts also weren't usual at the time, nor was it for the British soldiers to wear uniforms, but that at least serves the function of allowing the viewers to directly distinguish which side soldiers belong to, so it's at least acceptable in a way.
And yet there are other issues with the film that are far more important: primae noctis mostly likely didn't exist, and the legends behind William Wallace's actions do not support them on that idea; that makes the inclusion of primae noctis, the victimization and subsequent fridging of William Wallace's wife more than a little problematic. Why is it that Hollywood assumes that a man will do nothing for his kith or country when they are ravaged by whom he might consider an enemy, only to change his mind when his kin is affected, especially women? You can literally count on your fingers the number of legends and myths which are based off of the killing of a man's male relatives.
But perhaps the most damning of all circumstances is when the concept of fantasy enters the playing field; in this context, I use “fantasy” not in the sense of the genre, but the theme of introducing some elements which border on the preternatural and supernatural (whether either or both, really). It is the case more often than not that people will defend something glaringly problematic with the statement that it is but a fantasy and should thus be allowed to go as the creator may please.
That is not always fine and well, even though I, myself, am more than a little inclined to make way for a creator's intent. For instance, while science suggests that there is a tendency for men to have greater upper body strength than women on average and in maximum numbers, in fantasy I would expect the breaking of that “rule,” rather than its exaggeration! As in, if fantasy allows for creative extension, I would rather expect the author to present the strongest women being equally strong to the strongest men, not the strongest men being unrealistically stronger than women.
A glaring example of this sort of essentialist fantasy is evinced in the contrast between the Hulk and She-Hulk (which goes far beyond the naming convention): Hulk is more commonly presented as a raging, brutish and mostly unthinking machine of destruction when he loses his temper, who had to go through years of character development to become more of the thinking, smart person he is in his normal persona; while She-Hulk has more of an outraged, stereotypically hysteric reaction and retained most of her intellectual capacity. In other words: stereotypes of the man who has lost it completely, compared to those of the woman who is having a fit.
Some, as mentioned earlier, defend that with the notion that that, being a fantasy, does not have to conform to certain standards; and, if anything, that gives me pause — and for good reason. I have honestly had some difficulty bothering too much with comics, primarily because they usually rely heavily on pseudoscientific, “tenuous terminology” (as one article aptly puts it) and technobabble, besides what issues I've had with their publication practices and storytelling. But, in the end, this is exactly what seems to be the problem in this case: comics are very cavalier about realism, treating it with wanton disregard when it doesn't suit their needs, while falling back on it to defend darker, more sinister themes on their pages; otherwise, comics seem to be realistic only in the sense that they don't present us with Münchhausen-like tall tales at every opportunity — more in the sense that they'd rather present us with a setting with which they can relate to at least to some degree. You can easily tell that they'd rather do so, after all, because whenever they try to present a truly bizarre world that bends or breaks our expectations of reality completely, they fail spectacularly to give any semblance of a setting that one could believe exists.
So it seems that “realism” is usually not heeded; rather, most calls to realism are made only to defend the choices the creators made. And while we should appreciate that creators also have limitations, it's not unreasonable to expect them to appreciate their capacity to overcome their mistakes: far too often the relationship between creator and content is that the creator creates content which is not to the best of their abilities; and the creator is unwilling to perform better than they do. So the question becomes more blunt: should we (the consumers) invest our resources on content made by creators who are either not capable or not willing to do any better?
2015-08-18
Off-Colour Mods
After many years, I've finally truly involved myself with Skyrim. Since I'm fairly certain most people have no idea what I'm talking about, I checked The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim when it first came out, but decided it wasn't entirely my cup of tea and left it at that. Still, Morrowind (TES III) is a very dear part of my collection, and Oblivion (TES IV) was fun as well, so when my wife suggested getting it for me when it was on sale, I thankfully accepted the gift.
Since then, it has occupied quite a bit of my free time. I've went ahead after a while and modded it a bit (though I have some issues with a few mods, the ones I've kept are more than fair enough). What interested me the most, however, was that I noticed something... which bothers me, for lack of a better term.
This isn't something I've only seen in Skyrim; the first time I met with it, I think, was with Neverwinter Nights (a D&D game), and then with Knights of the Old Republic (this one's Star Wars), and then again with KotOR II: The Sith Lords — and that is that the modding community hails mods which have gone beyond the intentions of the creators to absurd degrees.
Of course, I must admit, a mod is a mod, and the most express sentiment behind a mod is that it has something to tamper with in the game; I, personally, even got involved with a mod or two, though I must admit that one in particular, which also happens to be the one I felt the most for, actually fell through at some point; as one person put it: “Unfortunately, it has not been released and its current status is apparently in limbo.” So, if anything, I understand that a mod's core principle will always be the modification of the game. That much is perfectly acceptable, obviously.
What's troubling me, instead, is the absurdity in the degree of divergence from the source, especially in terms of lore. Game-balancing mods, for instance, are obviously not inherently wrong, and can, in fact, make a game a lot more enjoyable.
But what about games which alter the themes behind a game? In Star Wars, for instance, there were mods which completely altered the thematic elements as to what the Force is capable of doing; in it, that mod which I speak of granted powers similar to those of mages or wizards in typical western role-playing games, like the ability to conjure a miniature lightning storm out of thin air, or the ability to produce exploding fireballs. The same problem, more or less, is what bothers me with this sort of modding and the enthusiasm behind it: if we accept it as laudable, doesn't that entail that it should be laudable to create any sort of fan-fiction (for the sake of argument) which features similar out-of-line with the original, entirely new material? Such as Gandalf casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction on the One Ring; Picard with a lightsabre; psychic Hobbits and Gimli, the 20th-level Monk/Assassin. These are absurd examples, but they are used to make a point that needs to be made, I think.
Since then, it has occupied quite a bit of my free time. I've went ahead after a while and modded it a bit (though I have some issues with a few mods, the ones I've kept are more than fair enough). What interested me the most, however, was that I noticed something... which bothers me, for lack of a better term.
This isn't something I've only seen in Skyrim; the first time I met with it, I think, was with Neverwinter Nights (a D&D game), and then with Knights of the Old Republic (this one's Star Wars), and then again with KotOR II: The Sith Lords — and that is that the modding community hails mods which have gone beyond the intentions of the creators to absurd degrees.
Of course, I must admit, a mod is a mod, and the most express sentiment behind a mod is that it has something to tamper with in the game; I, personally, even got involved with a mod or two, though I must admit that one in particular, which also happens to be the one I felt the most for, actually fell through at some point; as one person put it: “Unfortunately, it has not been released and its current status is apparently in limbo.” So, if anything, I understand that a mod's core principle will always be the modification of the game. That much is perfectly acceptable, obviously.
What's troubling me, instead, is the absurdity in the degree of divergence from the source, especially in terms of lore. Game-balancing mods, for instance, are obviously not inherently wrong, and can, in fact, make a game a lot more enjoyable.
But what about games which alter the themes behind a game? In Star Wars, for instance, there were mods which completely altered the thematic elements as to what the Force is capable of doing; in it, that mod which I speak of granted powers similar to those of mages or wizards in typical western role-playing games, like the ability to conjure a miniature lightning storm out of thin air, or the ability to produce exploding fireballs. The same problem, more or less, is what bothers me with this sort of modding and the enthusiasm behind it: if we accept it as laudable, doesn't that entail that it should be laudable to create any sort of fan-fiction (for the sake of argument) which features similar out-of-line with the original, entirely new material? Such as Gandalf casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction on the One Ring; Picard with a lightsabre; psychic Hobbits and Gimli, the 20th-level Monk/Assassin. These are absurd examples, but they are used to make a point that needs to be made, I think.
2015-08-09
Call centre memorabilia
There are a number of topics that I want to tackle, but I have been a little occupied and, rather than keep putting things off in order to have the concentration to deal with them in earnest, I think it would be best to at least tackle something, regardless of whether it is a pressing concern, primarily so that I won't allow myself to stagnate.
A couple of days ago, I was forced to search through more-or-less all of the documents I have around due to a small issue with some paperwork; I never relish searching in places where I know there isn't what I am asked to look for, and that is doubly true when I am fairly certain I was never given what is asked of me to find — and even more than that if the person is insistent that I must have lost it. There are various issues at play here, but I'd rather not press them, because I don't want to have a fight over something that is likely the oversight of at least one person in at least one party, which can also really be me, and if it is not, I still don't see much sense in picking fights. I'd just rather not make a ruckus...
So, that aside, it just happened then that I came across an old sheet of paper that I had kept around. I'm quite fond of notes, you see; be it sketches, funny thoughts, ideas that come to mind: I like to get to look back on what I thought like — what plays with words I'd played back when — and what little oddity sprung up here and there. This is definitely one of my fondest memories, which is ironic, since it comes from a time that was otherwise problematic, in its own way. If anything, the best thing that actually came out of it was the fact that, at least for two months, I got a regular paycheck. It is, to this day, the only post I've held besides working as a desk clerk (a story I'll leave for another time).
As you must have already surmised, back then I used to work at a call centre; it was a job that I was told about at the time by another applicant and we signed up together. I held that position for two months, and I still might have worked there for a while longer, if not for a number of reasons. One was the terrible pain I started getting at some point: trigeminal neuralgia. There were others as well, but that was the clincher for me. I told them at first that I wanted to stop for that reason (it was the office doctor that actually diagnosed me, so there wasn't any leeway around that) and to not sign me up again, but they ignored me and signed me up anyway, most likely so that they would get around unemployment compensation. I had to quit in person, but even then I also had to loudly explain to the overseer over the phone that I would not get back to work and that was that. It probably has not been the smartest thing I've ever done, and I might have saved some more money, but what's done is done.
Aside from all the memories I have from that place that are too keen to forget, there are many details which I can't recall on my own. A few phone calls stood out far too much to escape my memory, but some particularly tantalizing details I just knew I would not be able to keep in my head for too long. Luckily enough for my interest, I had taken to bringing a notebook with me to jot down all the little things that I had to keep in mind anyway: whom I should be calling and when, names of interest, stuff I had to ask for and so on and so forth... That notebook, however, ended up being where I also wrote some of the more interesting stuff, amidst the notes that were useful for the jobs and all the doodles. And what I found two days ago is a sheet of paper that I have kept separately, because it has some of the funniest (at least to me, really) of all the tidbits I heard on the job.
There are, of course, actual notes on the job on it as well, but that's not all of it. Some of the notes I scribble on the paper are, believe it or not, nothing other than surnames, with a few full names too; examples include names that are funny because they refer to common objects or local dialect words for such things; others because they sounded so utterly bizarre, and some still do to this day. Others include references in them that were uninteligible to me then and made me curious as to what they might mean, given that surnames universally tend to mean something specific (such as an occupation or some association the locals had with the person they ascribed the surname to).
But of all the funny stuff, the names I don't think I should share. They belong to the people that are named after them and it would be unkind to put them up as a laughing stock. I'd rather focus on the other thing that stood out the most, and it is part of the reason I write this now...
As I just mentioned earlier, some of all this has escaped my memory to some extent; but reading back on the paper, especially with the outlined discussions, I get glimpses of those events flickering at the back of my head, being reminded as I am by reading these excerpts of the things as they transpired.
So there is this one discussion that I was reminded, once again, and which brings fond memories, as it is one of those incidents that really made that part of my life so bright, at least in retrospect. The call centre I worked for occasionally got us to ask people to participate in polls, and that was one of my favourite assignments; at other times, we'd receive incoming calls for donations and assistance, and that was perhaps the best job of them all that I held there. Regularly, however, I was assigned one of the most ugly tasks I can think of: calls for banks.
You see, the call centre I worked for had a long-running contract with the National Bank. Just so you know, the National Bank is a private company that has nothing to do with the National Bank of Greece; regardless, the National Bank is perhaps the most powerful private bank in Greece and many deals are struck exclusively through it for that reason — and it also happens to be most bothersome. In any case, the company was tasked with making calls on the behalf of the bank, such as to bother people with new offers and, thankfully, rarely bring up matters of debt or what have you; and because the National Bank is such a strong player in the field, most of our work was on their behalf.
That's more or less what happened one such day that I was working there: I had just had an outgoing call picked up. For your information, I had no control over who was called on the phone — all that was done by a dedicated desktop application which run through a database to make the phonecalls automatically, which I might get to on a later date. Regardless, the voice I heard over the line was the uncertain voice of what accurately seemed to be a very young child. I didn't jot that part down, since it wasn't the first time I've heard an unsteady response, nor that of a child, so nothing warranting any special attention had happened up to that point — it is what followed that sparked my interest.
In response to the child's query as to who was on the phone, I originally tried to see if I could get the company poem across — “Hello, my name is [...]” and so on and so forth — without confusing the kid. I realized that wouldn't work, so I just asked if the father (as far as I could surmise from the data shown on screen, which was slim at best) could talk to me on the phone.
Here's what followed:
[Child]: “Dad, there's somebody on the phone!”
[muffled male calls, likely from a bedroom or bathroom]
[Child]: “My dad is not here...”
[I]: “I am sorry, what time should I call?”
[Child]: “What time should they call, dad!”
[more muffled calls]
[Child]: “Monday!”
At that point, grinning broadly, I politely thanked the child for being so helpful, greeted the kid off and dropped the call; it really took a lot of willpower not to laugh like a maniac.
A couple of days ago, I was forced to search through more-or-less all of the documents I have around due to a small issue with some paperwork; I never relish searching in places where I know there isn't what I am asked to look for, and that is doubly true when I am fairly certain I was never given what is asked of me to find — and even more than that if the person is insistent that I must have lost it. There are various issues at play here, but I'd rather not press them, because I don't want to have a fight over something that is likely the oversight of at least one person in at least one party, which can also really be me, and if it is not, I still don't see much sense in picking fights. I'd just rather not make a ruckus...
So, that aside, it just happened then that I came across an old sheet of paper that I had kept around. I'm quite fond of notes, you see; be it sketches, funny thoughts, ideas that come to mind: I like to get to look back on what I thought like — what plays with words I'd played back when — and what little oddity sprung up here and there. This is definitely one of my fondest memories, which is ironic, since it comes from a time that was otherwise problematic, in its own way. If anything, the best thing that actually came out of it was the fact that, at least for two months, I got a regular paycheck. It is, to this day, the only post I've held besides working as a desk clerk (a story I'll leave for another time).
As you must have already surmised, back then I used to work at a call centre; it was a job that I was told about at the time by another applicant and we signed up together. I held that position for two months, and I still might have worked there for a while longer, if not for a number of reasons. One was the terrible pain I started getting at some point: trigeminal neuralgia. There were others as well, but that was the clincher for me. I told them at first that I wanted to stop for that reason (it was the office doctor that actually diagnosed me, so there wasn't any leeway around that) and to not sign me up again, but they ignored me and signed me up anyway, most likely so that they would get around unemployment compensation. I had to quit in person, but even then I also had to loudly explain to the overseer over the phone that I would not get back to work and that was that. It probably has not been the smartest thing I've ever done, and I might have saved some more money, but what's done is done.
Aside from all the memories I have from that place that are too keen to forget, there are many details which I can't recall on my own. A few phone calls stood out far too much to escape my memory, but some particularly tantalizing details I just knew I would not be able to keep in my head for too long. Luckily enough for my interest, I had taken to bringing a notebook with me to jot down all the little things that I had to keep in mind anyway: whom I should be calling and when, names of interest, stuff I had to ask for and so on and so forth... That notebook, however, ended up being where I also wrote some of the more interesting stuff, amidst the notes that were useful for the jobs and all the doodles. And what I found two days ago is a sheet of paper that I have kept separately, because it has some of the funniest (at least to me, really) of all the tidbits I heard on the job.
There are, of course, actual notes on the job on it as well, but that's not all of it. Some of the notes I scribble on the paper are, believe it or not, nothing other than surnames, with a few full names too; examples include names that are funny because they refer to common objects or local dialect words for such things; others because they sounded so utterly bizarre, and some still do to this day. Others include references in them that were uninteligible to me then and made me curious as to what they might mean, given that surnames universally tend to mean something specific (such as an occupation or some association the locals had with the person they ascribed the surname to).
But of all the funny stuff, the names I don't think I should share. They belong to the people that are named after them and it would be unkind to put them up as a laughing stock. I'd rather focus on the other thing that stood out the most, and it is part of the reason I write this now...
As I just mentioned earlier, some of all this has escaped my memory to some extent; but reading back on the paper, especially with the outlined discussions, I get glimpses of those events flickering at the back of my head, being reminded as I am by reading these excerpts of the things as they transpired.
So there is this one discussion that I was reminded, once again, and which brings fond memories, as it is one of those incidents that really made that part of my life so bright, at least in retrospect. The call centre I worked for occasionally got us to ask people to participate in polls, and that was one of my favourite assignments; at other times, we'd receive incoming calls for donations and assistance, and that was perhaps the best job of them all that I held there. Regularly, however, I was assigned one of the most ugly tasks I can think of: calls for banks.
You see, the call centre I worked for had a long-running contract with the National Bank. Just so you know, the National Bank is a private company that has nothing to do with the National Bank of Greece; regardless, the National Bank is perhaps the most powerful private bank in Greece and many deals are struck exclusively through it for that reason — and it also happens to be most bothersome. In any case, the company was tasked with making calls on the behalf of the bank, such as to bother people with new offers and, thankfully, rarely bring up matters of debt or what have you; and because the National Bank is such a strong player in the field, most of our work was on their behalf.
That's more or less what happened one such day that I was working there: I had just had an outgoing call picked up. For your information, I had no control over who was called on the phone — all that was done by a dedicated desktop application which run through a database to make the phonecalls automatically, which I might get to on a later date. Regardless, the voice I heard over the line was the uncertain voice of what accurately seemed to be a very young child. I didn't jot that part down, since it wasn't the first time I've heard an unsteady response, nor that of a child, so nothing warranting any special attention had happened up to that point — it is what followed that sparked my interest.
In response to the child's query as to who was on the phone, I originally tried to see if I could get the company poem across — “Hello, my name is [...]” and so on and so forth — without confusing the kid. I realized that wouldn't work, so I just asked if the father (as far as I could surmise from the data shown on screen, which was slim at best) could talk to me on the phone.
Here's what followed:
[Child]: “Dad, there's somebody on the phone!”
[muffled male calls, likely from a bedroom or bathroom]
[Child]: “My dad is not here...”
[I]: “I am sorry, what time should I call?”
[Child]: “What time should they call, dad!”
[more muffled calls]
[Child]: “Monday!”
At that point, grinning broadly, I politely thanked the child for being so helpful, greeted the kid off and dropped the call; it really took a lot of willpower not to laugh like a maniac.
2015-08-03
About scores, reviews and criticism
First things first: criticism is not a science.
To some, the idea that criticism cannot be construed as an objective practice sounds horrible: they are under the impression that employing a set of criteria is enough to guarantee objectivity; however, that notion faces a certain problem right from the get go — and that is none other than how questionable a set of criteria can only inherently be... How do you assess the objectivity of the criteria that you mean to establish for the very same purpose: an objective assessment? To judge their objectivity, you have to have objective criteria in the first place.
In turn, there are those who mistakenly assume that the problem of objectivity must preclude all such notions of criticism under some particular standards; the idea goes that, since no criterion can truly be evaluated objectively in a way that we can certify, the notion of using any criteria to criticize is itself inherently wrong and must be abandoned. But, then, doesn't that idea stem from the fact that one is, ironically, making their own judgement under a set of criteria themselves? To judge that anything is wrong must necessarily fall on criticism.
So, we're left at a sort of impasse: we should acknowledge the value of critique, while also retaining the mindset that all criteria seem impossible to verify objectively and, thus, are apparently subjective. That entails that criticism must follow after a refinement of our standards — that, at least, even if we cannot objectively verify the truth value of our judgement, at least we must consider carefully where our assumptions and expectations need to be reevaluated.
With that in mind, there is ample hope for making progress; but one should always be wary to check on the assumptions they and others around them will make, so never, ever forget to keep that in mind.
To some, the idea that criticism cannot be construed as an objective practice sounds horrible: they are under the impression that employing a set of criteria is enough to guarantee objectivity; however, that notion faces a certain problem right from the get go — and that is none other than how questionable a set of criteria can only inherently be... How do you assess the objectivity of the criteria that you mean to establish for the very same purpose: an objective assessment? To judge their objectivity, you have to have objective criteria in the first place.
In turn, there are those who mistakenly assume that the problem of objectivity must preclude all such notions of criticism under some particular standards; the idea goes that, since no criterion can truly be evaluated objectively in a way that we can certify, the notion of using any criteria to criticize is itself inherently wrong and must be abandoned. But, then, doesn't that idea stem from the fact that one is, ironically, making their own judgement under a set of criteria themselves? To judge that anything is wrong must necessarily fall on criticism.
So, we're left at a sort of impasse: we should acknowledge the value of critique, while also retaining the mindset that all criteria seem impossible to verify objectively and, thus, are apparently subjective. That entails that criticism must follow after a refinement of our standards — that, at least, even if we cannot objectively verify the truth value of our judgement, at least we must consider carefully where our assumptions and expectations need to be reevaluated.
With that in mind, there is ample hope for making progress; but one should always be wary to check on the assumptions they and others around them will make, so never, ever forget to keep that in mind.
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