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chloerinee · 3 years

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This ep of helluva boss was just SO GOOD in terms of propelling Blitzo's character developement forward, especially within the context of the world building of hazbin/heluva canon. Like how Blitzo and Stolas's personalities and their motivations impact their roles in the society they exist in, and by extention, the relationship between the two of them due to the inherent power imbalance of Stolas's status as a royal. Their character arcs both individually and together are shaping up to be extremely interesting! I'll start with a general analysis of both characters and go forward from there.

To start, Stolas is incredibly entitled and definetly suffers from a major superiority complex. It's an interesting contrast to Blitzo's inferiority complex, and to be honest, when you think about it they act as foils to one another in a lot of different respects. While Blitzo is prideful and an incredibly proud individual, there's an underlying note to a lot of his interactions that leaves you with the impression he has a lot of deep seated self-loathing and internalizations of his unloveability (i.e. ep two "does anyone love you blitzo?" "no."); Stolas by comparison, is self aggrandizing and portrays high self esteem and a secure sense of self and what his duty is even while he's in emotional distress (i.e. also in episode two with his lullaby to Octavia when he touches on his disillusionment with love! more on that bit in a sec)

From what I can speculate about Stolas given his portrayal on the show, he appears to be observably shackled to his sense of duty despite the lack of joy it brings him, however he WANTS LOVE. He DESIRES the thrill of that connection. His relationship with Blitzo goes against everything he built his life around (his marriage to Stella, his status as nobility, his responsibilities to safeguard his grimoire) but even despite this he can not help himself. I get the feeling that he may have impulse control issues or perhaps his willingness to just Risk It All speaks to the amount of infatuation he has for Blitzo??? because everytime they are in the same scene, he's just so incredibly elated and constantly vocalizing his desire for Blitzo's presence. He even goes as far to go out of his way to invite Blitzo to things, and introduce him to his daughter! A parent does not do those things lightly- to introduce your child and construct a situation where your 'partner' and your child socialize is a huge deal. On some level, he wants his two favorite people to interact and be introduced to one another, no matter how misguided that is. He did not consider Octavia's feelings or ask if it was what she wanted, only that he had positive memories at Lou Lou Land and he wanted to share that again- this is a show about hell but we've been shown time and time again the humanity and multitudes of emotional depth that the demons in this verse contain. His actions do not make him completely irreprehensible, but instead show that he does indeed have flaws and redeemable qualities despite our first impressions of him at first as a rich fuckboy, and then again as a dorky, well meaning dad with marital issues. His interactions with Blitzo and the other imps of the wrath ring once again recontextualize everything we know about Stolas as a viewer, and I have a feeling this is only the beginning.

Looking at Stolas's lines to Blitzo in episode 5 through the lense of Stolas being an incredibly lonely man (in a presumably, loveless on both sides and open, non-monogamous, arranged marriage), who craves intimacy on an emotional and physical level to the extent that he will extort his assets and risk every facet of his life so that he can have a continuous 'relationship' with someone, I don't think he was intentionally trying to degrade Blitzo (intentionally being the key word here). Which is not to belittle Blitzo's point of view of his experiences with Stolas, as he is totally entitled to how he feels and it stems from a completely valid place based on his socioeconomic standing as an individual in hell. Alternatively though, Stolas is someone born into privilege, therefore he doesn't see how his words come across and how they are percieved by someone in a lower social caste or someone who deals with systematic prejudice. Privilege is having the option to learn about what injustices people suffer because you don't experience them yourself, and that description fits Stolas to a T as it stands.

Stolas doesn't understand Blitzo's struggle, and that is the core of their miscommunication on the nature of their relationship. Blitzo won't allow himself to view the relationship as anything other than transactional for fear of getting his hopes up and being vulnerable by showing his hand in an emotional sense, and then being just another imp taken advantage of by someone higher up (if im reading this motif of imps vs the greater hell caste system right). Blitzo has had to fight tooth and nail for every success he's had, every achievement he's had thus far is hard won and it's so easy to diminish your own accomplishments when you're born into a society that makes you have to work 10x as hard as everyone else in order to be treated as an equal to others doing less and still achieving the same and more. To Stolas, his endearments and tendency towards physical affection is an expression of his fondness towards Blitzo, but he doesn't ever consider how those very same actions come across as demeaning/ belittling/ or acts of microagression that disregard his capability.

Tldr: im so fascinated by these two bastard demon menaces who have contrasting flavors of intimacy issues and can't wait to see what or who they do next???

#helluva boss #blitzo #stolas goetia #stolitz #meta

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eijispumpkin · 3 years

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On Allegory, Imperfection, and Inadvertent Subversion: A small essay about Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish and Salinger’s “A Perfect Day For Bananafish”.

In the story of Banana Fish, Yoshida references Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day For Bananafish” (which henceforth shall be addressed as “Perfect Day” simply for ease of reading) several different ways, both in-universe and out. It is exceedingly evident that the character of Ash Lynx is heavily based on Seymour Glass, and one might surmise that Banana Fish is an allegorical retelling of “Perfect Day”, especially given that in the original story, Ash Lynx dies of what is arguably a “passive suicide” – that is, when faced with an injury that isn’t immediately fatal, he chooses to bleed out rather than seek help, which when framed as a suicide, parallels the much more violent and sudden suicide of Seymour Glass.

However, this surface-level allegorical reading ignores a very important variable in the story of Banana Fish, namely the counterpart to Ash’s Seymour: Eiji’s Sybil. While Ash and Seymour share many similarities (both are traumatized, troubled geniuses with partly-Irish roots who grew up in New York City), the similarities between Eiji and Sybil are very few. Eiji does symbolize a world of innocence to contrast with Ash’s world of horrors, but unlike Sybil, Eiji is an adult with agency of his own, and though he retains some of Sybil’s childlike innocence and is able to connect deeply with Ash as a result of it, Eiji’s agency and decisions ultimately change the narrative and its meaning.

That is to say, by introducing Eiji as an imperfect Sybil, one who has agency and can actually provide Ash with understanding and support of the kind that Seymour never got from Muriel or others around him (and which Sybil, being three years old, was in no way equipped to provide), Banana Fish directly subverts “Perfect Day”’s original message of cynicism in the face of a material world unconcerned with the horror of lost innocence and its resulting isolation.

To understand what this means, it’s important to first understand the meaning and context of “Perfect Day” and the circumstances in which it was written. “Perfect Day” is a story written first and foremost as a critique of American materialism in the wake of WWII; Salinger echoes the concerns of the Lost Generation before him, in a way, by really driving home the alienation from modern adult life felt by those who were exposed to the horrors and traumas of the battlefields in wartorn Europe, only to return home and find a culture completely removed from it all. Seymour Glass is a stand-in for Salinger himself—Kenneth Slawenski, in his 2010 biography of Salinger, notes that on returning from the European theater, Salinger “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.”

If that sounds familiar, good, because it should! This is precisely the motif of “Perfect Day” (as well as some of Salinger’s other work featuring members of the Glass family, such as Seymour’s younger brother Buddy, which, as an aside, is a name that might stick out to Banana Fish fans. Whether this is an intentional reference or a coincidence, I can’t say for certain, but given the depth of other references within this allegory, I’m inclined to think it’s intentional).

As a quick summary for those who may need a refresher, “Perfect Day” is a story about a deeply traumatized man who feels isolated from the rest of society because of the weight of the horrors he has been exposed to. Muriel Glass, Seymour’s wife, is the epitome of this: she represents the materialistic culture that Seymour feels so alienated from, always talking about brand-name things and luxuries and upward mobility. Seymour rejects her company in favor of playing the piano for children and spending time on the beach, where he tells three-year-old Sybil Carpenter a story about bananafish, fish that gorge themselves on bananas in holes under the sea until they’re too fat to escape the entrances to these little banana dens, and then they die. Instead of dismissing this story as something bizarre, Sybil claims she sees a bananafish in the water, which endears her to Seymour, until she leaves, at which point he returns to his hotel room and shoots himself in the head.

In “Perfect Day”, this interaction (between Sybil and Seymour) is the center of a set of dualities. Sybil represents the state of childlike innocence that Seymour longs to return to, and because of her innocence, she can “understand” him in ways that the material adults like her mother or Muriel do not. Seymour’s isolation is a product of his society and the lack of support and understanding for traumatized veterans returning from war, and it shows in the way that adults his age cannot connect with him, and he cannot connect with them. This disconnect between worlds is what eventually results in Seymour’s suicide—he can fit neither in the world in which he wishes to be, nor in the one in which he must reside, and it ends in his death.

The question is, then, how does this relate to Banana Fish?

As mentioned previously, Ash Lynx is a very clear parallel to Seymour Glass. He’s a young man faced with immeasurable trauma from which he believes he can never recover, and there is a clear motif of duality in his entire character arc: his world (one of violence and trauma) versus the “normal” world (where innocent people who have “regular” lives may reside). Like Seymour, Ash feels trapped in a world he can’t escape, knowing “the truth” that he knows, about the horrors that people are capable of.

It follows, then, that Eiji Okumura is a parallel to Sybil Carpenter, who represents childlike innocence and a world that Ash longs to be part of but can’t reach. And to an extent, this is true: Eiji is sheltered and innocent, comparing real-life to TV shows and being completely unexposed to kidnappings, drugs, guns, and violence. However, there is a sharp contrast between Eiji and Sybil, one that fundamentally changes the relationship between Eiji and Ash and makes it radically different from that between Sybil and Seymour:

Eiji is an adult, and as such, he has agency of his own.

Unlike Sybil with Seymour, Eiji can make his own choices and face Ash as an equal. Where Sybil is a child who runs back to her mother after playing with Seymour at the beach, Eiji actively and consistently chooses to stay with Ash, over and over. He even explicitly tells Ash “you are not alone”, which is a huge and direct contrast to the message of inevitable, devastating isolation from “Perfect Day”. Whereas Sybil’s innocence serves as a reminder to Seymour of what he’s lost and cannot regain, Eiji’s innocence is a beacon of comfort and companionship to Ash. Eiji is someone with whom Ash can relax and be playful like a boy his own age, as noted by Max and Ibe watching them interact.

This communication and connection are present between Sybil and Seymour, but in a very different way. Seymour prefers to play make-believe and tell silly stories to kids, because he went from being a wide-eyed innocent to being traumatized and longing for a place to belong, and Sybil as a child represents what he wishes he had, while the adults around him (most notably Muriel, his wife) are a world he doesn’t understand that feels false.

This is not the dichotomy of worlds that Ash faces. Ash faces a world of trauma and suffering that he sees himself as trapped in, and a world of peace and security that he thinks is beyond his reach. Where Seymour yearns for a return to innocence, Ash yearns to escape his pain, and the combination of this subtle difference with the effect of Eiji’s agency and the narrative structure of Banana Fish results in a subversion of the themes in “Perfect Day”.

Banana Fish is a long-form narrative, while “Perfect Day” is a short story. Part of the inherent structure of a long-form narrative is character growth and development, which for obvious reasons is much less prominent in short stories. As a result, Eiji’s impact on Ash is clearly visible over the course of the narrative, and it becomes impossible to declare that Ash is firmly rooted in the world he sees himself as trapped in. By the end of the story, even Ash wavers on this assertion; although he ultimately succumbs to suicide, a narrative choice that been criticized ever since its publication, in the moments leading up to his stabbing, he does believe that Eiji is right, or at least right enough that he wants to see him one last time (this is ambiguous and open to interpretation, of course).

Why did this narrative choice spark so much controversy and outcry from fans? Not every story that ends in tragedy is criticized as poorly written for it; examples range from Shakespearean tragedies to “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, a film in which the entire cast dies in the climax. Yet just about all fans agree that it fit the narrative. Clearly, then, it is possible to craft a story that ends in death and tragedy but still feels well-written. What makes Banana Fish different?

I would argue that the answer lies in this imperfect allegory. By creating a Sybil-esque character that can interact with the Seymour-esque character as equals, can stay with him, and can listen to him and support him through his grief and pain, Akimi Yoshida inadvertently turned “Perfect Day”’s message on its head. The tragedy of “Perfect Day” is Seymour’s isolation. By giving Ash a warm, compassionate relationship in which he is assured over and over that he is not alone, Yoshida upturns this entirely.

Ash is led to believe in this dichotomy mostly by his isolation. He believes that since Eiji is in mortal danger as a result of being special to him, he needs to send Eiji to safety, i.e. somewhere far from him and far from the reach of those who would hurt them both. This isn’t a miscommunication issue or anything of the sort; this is Ash being afraid for Eiji’s life; Eiji isn’t averse to returning to Japan itself. Eiji is averse to returning to Japan without Ash, as he mentions when he talks about how Ash could be a model, and tells him about kami. In establishing this as a consistent tenet of Eiji’s character, Yoshida ensures that Ash is not isolated in the same way that Seymour was.

In addition, Eiji can move freely between both worlds set up in Ash’s perceived dichotomy, a motif made explicitly clear when Eiji leaps the wall to freedom and light at the beginning, leaving Ash (and Skipper) behind in captivity in the dark. Despite this escape from the world of violence and crime, Eiji returns of his own volition and stays with Ash, experiences his own fair share of horrific traumas, and still leaves in the end to return to his world. This makes it clear that the dichotomy is less stark than Ash is led to believe, unlike the repeated validation of his isolation that Seymour receives, and is another reason that the ending of “Perfect Day” is inconsistent with the ending of Banana Fish

A quick sidebar: Banana Fish has no real Muriel, but if pressed, I would posit that the closest parallel to Muriel that exists is Blanca, whose main purpose in the narrative seems to be to reinforce to Ash that he can’t escape the world he feels trapped in and longs to leave. But where in “Perfect Day” Muriel symbolized the materialism of American society after WWII, Blanca has no real established reason to be so invested in keeping Ash down, and in conjunction with the fact that despite his own traumas, he can retire peacefully to the Caribbean, his role in the story falls to pieces entirely. Where Muriel represented a lifestyle that Seymour fundamentally could not reach, thereby reinforcing his isolation, Blanca is supposed to parallel Ash to a degree, but his words to Ash do not match his actions whatsoever.

Therefore, if anything, Blanca’s assertions serve only to strike a contrast with Eiji’s (and Max’s, to an extent, since Max and Eiji both agree that Ash can escape this and they want him to heal). Moreover, Blanca’s relationship with Ash is that of a mentor and a student, a relationship that is shown to be fundamentally unhealthy, given that Blanca willingly worked for Ash’s abuser, a mafia don who he knew trafficked children. Some argue that Blanca was blackmailed into this service, but given that Blanca chose to betray Golzine at the end and work with Ash with seemingly no real provocation or change in his relationship with Golzine, this supposition seems flawed. Blanca’s assertions about Ash and his ability to forge bonds and leave his world the way Eiji does, and indeed the way Blanca himself does, are simply incorrect, and the narrative itself provides us all the tools we need to realize that Blanca is wrong, even without the extended context of a parallel to Muriel Glass.

Returning to the main issue at hand, i.e. that of the imperfect allegorical connections between Sybil and Eiji, and the dichotomy between worlds that Ash perceives, it’s clear that in creating a positive, nurturing relationship between Ash and Eiji rather than a one-off encounter, Yoshida inadvertently created a story about connections rather than isolation. Ash’s attempts to keep Eiji safe from harm by sending him home are countered by Eiji’s assertion that he only wants to go to Japan if Ash comes with him, which is a kind of selfless devotion that reaches through Ash’s isolation until he decides that he won’t try and separate himself from Eiji anymore, which is a massive blow to the dichotomy of his supposed two worlds. This is the narrative acknowledging that both worlds can coexist.

Not only this, but also Eiji, who has his own trauma—he’s kidnapped several times, shot at, drugged, sexually assaulted, attacked with a knife by a drugged friend, exposed to several deaths, shot at people in fights himself, and ultimately nearly killed by a gunshot wound—despite all of this, Eiji is still allowed to exist in the world of peace and regularity. Eiji’s innocence is sharply tempered by traumatic experiences, and he can still walk between worlds. If Eiji, Max, Ibe, Jessica, Sing, Cain, and Blanca can all experience traumas, why is Ash the only one who cannot escape? Is there some kind of magical bar of “too much” trauma, like an event horizon on a black hole?

Obviously, no.

So it comes to this: Essentially, the reason that the ending is so controversial, and why I personally believe that the open ending of the anime is an improvement to the original story, is that the allegory between Banana Fish and “Perfect Day” falls apart because of Eiji’s agency. Ash wants to protect Eiji, and to protect Eiji’s innocence and light, because he feels that it’s beyond his own reach, but Eiji forges a bond with him that is rooted in mutual respect and care, and in doing so, undoes the devastating, painful isolation that led to Seymour’s suicide. This is why Ash’s death can feel so hollow—it doesn’t follow the pattern of “Perfect Day”; after the entire story is about Ash’s bonds and those who love him unconditionally, it feels almost like a shock-value plot twist tacked on, rather than a tragic inevitability.

I don’t believe that Yoshida intended Banana Fish to be a subversion of “Perfect Day”. I believe she meant it as a one-to-one allegory, and this is why she kept the ending as Ash choosing death. However, due to the changes in themes because of the characters and their relationships, Ash is not isolated in the profound way Seymour was, and his death is therefore not nearly as impactful.

#this is 2600 words i am so fucking sorry but also im not sorry im just verbose #banana fish #banana fish meta #asheiji #ash lynx #eiji okumura

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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“There is no one right way to live”

Adventure and 02 really make up an unusual series in many ways, and I think one of them is how kind it is to the human condition. One of its most consistent commitments is to portraying its kids as “real children” -- as in, messy kids with some very deep nuances to their behavior, in ways that don’t reflect what you’d usually expect from media tropes. In some ways, it ended up backfiring (tropes are not inherently a bad thing, and it’s led to miscommunication that persists to this day because the audience has to fight a tendency to read the characters through the kinds of tropes we’re all expecting to find), but it also had the effect that these kids could be intimately relatable to the audience in ways that “textbook” portrayals of kids often wouldn’t be.

Adventure had eight main characters in its human cast, which was extended to twelve in 02 -- a massive balancing act -- and yet took the stance that none of these twelve characters’ very different ways of thinking or living life are fundamentally wrong. Rather, it celebrates the differences between them, and encourages them to embrace them about themselves. But it also does not shy away from the struggles those with each line of thinking might have in terms of communicating and interacting with the world. It’s easy to say words like “be yourself”, but what does “be yourself” really mean?

“Each character’s way of thinking”

Most people tend to define “character development” by “how much the character changed over the course of the narrative”, but if you look carefully, not all of the characters change that much. In fact, Koushirou and Miyako’s character arcs are about how they shouldn’t have to change much about themselves!

What we do get to see, however, is everyone’s intimate thought processes. We’re given so much information about each kid’s background and how it shapes their ways of thinking, and how they react to given situations, that you can get six fanfiction writers who have studied the series well and give them a completely hypothetical situation with some of the characters, and most if not all of them will roughly agree, because each kid’s thought pattern is so well detailed that you can easily imagine how they’d behave even when the scenario is hypothetical.

This, despite the fact that Adventure and 02 rarely use internal monologue (this is something specific to its Japanese version; while Japanese anime generally has less of this compared to Western shows, Adventure and 02 are unusually low on this even compared to later Digimon series, and it’s a possible byproduct of the narrative being eventually revealed to be from Takeru’s perspective and not someone truly omniscient). This is something that also somewhat backfired in that characters who are difficult to read or unaware of their own feelings become very difficult for the audience to read, so you have to read their behavior patterns and put two and two together (such as Takeru outright lying about his feelings regarding his childhood in Adventure episode 12, or Sora’s testimony about her confrontation with her mother not quite tracking with what’s actually depicted in Adventure episode 26). It does, however, have a very powerful weapon that it uses to help the audience understand each character’s mentalities and what they’re thinking at a given moment...

Digimon partners! In a sense, “talking with a Digimon partner” is a replacement for internal monologue, because the kids spill their internal feelings to their partners as if they’re talking to themselves. (Protip for all of you fanfic writers out there who struggle to figure out how to integrate the Digimon smoothly into the narrative: “cutting out most of your internal monologue and replacing it with a conversation with a Digimon partner” is one of your most reliable fallbacks.) This is helpful for characters like Koushirou, who initially starts off Adventure as very isolated from the others but immediately takes well to Tentomon, and Ken, who spends a good part of 02′s third quarter still very emotionally distant from the others and not entirely willing to open up to them, but very conversely willing to open up to his own partner. Iori converses about his conflicted feelings regarding the situation with Upamon during the process of forming his Jogress relationship with Takeru, and, back in Adventure, Takeru himself was willing to show his more “less well-behaved” side in front of Patamon that he normally wouldn’t when he was constantly in the presence of elders.

On top of that, Digimon partners being reflective of the kids’ own personalities in some sense means that they are very good at asking just the right questions at the right time, or saying perfectly well-timed things that the kids needed to hear the most, to get them to reconsider their position or realize that they might be going in the wrong direction...

Moreover, we get a lot of help in 02 simply by virtue of the fact it’s about relationships -- I’ve said this a few times before, but 02 is not a series about platitudes or toxic positivity, and has a strong emphasis on “you must understand the other person’s feelings if you want to truly reach out to them.” Showering happy platitudes about friendship on them means nothing if you’re still technically dismissing their feelings and making zero attempt to figure out why they feel this way! Therefore, everyone only accepts Ken when they each come to understand his feelings on the situation, and the Jogress arcs involve the relevant parties making active attempts to “understand the other person’s feelings” and what exactly makes them behave the way they do, before addressing their problems using what they need most at that moment. Being able to push people forward in a positive direction requires having a proper understanding of all of the negativity that came with it, accepting them in spite of that, and choosing to address what they need.

And in 02 episode 49, Daisuke says something that embodies a lot of Adventure and 02′s attitude towards these things: it’s not a sin to have feelings. Your reaction or way of seeing things, based on your backgrounds and experiences that have shaped you, is not something you can be blamed for having, whether that means being worried, sad, frustrated, angry, resentful, what have you. The only question is what you do in response to your feelings.

It’s easy to say “be yourself”, but that’s obviously a problem if you “be yourself” by rampantly ignoring what other people think and trampling on other people’s feelings, and it’s also a problem if “being yourself” is causing problems for others, and it’s especially a problem if “being yourself” is also hurting yourself while you’re at it -- so what does it mean to be true to yourself?

It’s not about your inherent personality traits, it’s about what you choose to do with them

As I said earlier, Adventure and 02 all arguably celebrate the fact that everyone is so different, and has their own skills to contribute to the group. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, and everyone makes up for each other’s weaknesses when they work together. And some of these characters do change in order to become “better people”. But what does being a “better person” mean? How does that tie into still “being true to yourself”, and yet changing at the same time?

02 episode 18 has Miyako in possibly one of her worst bouts of loss of control -- she has an effective panic attack and starts yelling at everyone in all directions, resulting in Hawkmon getting hurt. However, everyone here understands that Miyako meant well and was trying her best given the situation, and nobody scorns her for it, with Hikari even arranging for Miyako and Hawkmon to have proper space to emotionally air things out. Again: it was not a sin for Miyako to have feelings of anxiety, but it was a problem once those feelings led to causing trouble for others -- as in, trampling on their feelings, not having enough regard for their welfare, and such. Well-intentioned or not, Miyako just caused problems, and for that, Miyako labels herself as a “bad” person (tying into her ongoing character arc that involved negatively comparing herself to more mature and put-together people). However, Hawkmon assures her that he likes her the way she is.

But Miyako can’t keep going on like this -- it would obviously be very bad for her to keep being inconsiderate and trample on others’ feelings! But what does happen is that Miyako simply learns to channel these traits in the correct direction -- it’s established that, on the flip side, her being over-the-top brings joy to other people by making them laugh (02 episodes 31, 36, 38), and her aggressive personality is able to reach out to those like Hikari who are too closed in and on another unhealthy extreme! And as it turns out, she is capable of channeling all of those “aggressive” qualities into “aggressively”...reaching out to others and proactively supporting them; all she needed was a bit better sense of regulation so that her energy would go to the places she wanted them to be, rather than rampantly all over the place to the point of causing trouble. She didn’t have to fundamentally change herself into someone like Mimi or Hikari; it was just about adjusting her way of going about things just enough so that she could become more considerate.

Even all the way back in Adventure episode 10, all of the “problems” caused in this episode specifically have to do with Koushirou ending up (accidentally) being inconsiderate to Mimi and Palmon and not taking their feelings enough into account. Again, Koushirou is not treated as if his feelings are wrong or malicious -- he even states that he thinks that the research he’s doing will help everyone in the long run -- but his way of handling this situation is awful, and, regardless of his intent, Mimi and Palmon are feeling abandoned and tossed aside.

For the rest of the series, Koushirou learns to hone his existing skills in analysis -- even his fixation tendencies are treated as a potentially valuable trait -- and, once we learn the details about how he started keeping distance from everyone due to the shock of learning he was adopted and his social anxiety tendencies in Adventure episode 38, Koushirou momentarily tries to force himself to use casual language, and his parents assure him that he doesn’t have to force himself to change. In the end, it’s not an inherent sin for Koushirou to have social anxiety, nor that he needs more time to adjust to becoming more casual with others -- according to Adventure episode 54, he does want to get closer to others eventually, but even Tentomon says he shouldn’t force himself. Koushirou “working past” his social issues doesn’t mean he suddenly has to turn himself into a socialite overnight, but rather, he simply needs to do enough to be able to communicate with others without (accidentally or otherwise) ignoring others’ important feelings. Thus, in 02, he’s still working on becoming less distant from everyone, but he’s managed to become someone who can communicate with and organize people, and is well-respected for it.

A recurring theme in Adventure and 02 is that there’s a good and a bad side to everything, and so if we look at the twelve kids over Adventure and 02, we can see that a lot of the “good things” and “bad things” about them really stem from the same thing:

Taichi: Being an ambitious person who can oversee people in disparate places and bring them together (good) also means that he’s not always good at checking the nuances or other potentially negative contingencies, and can be rather insensitive (bad)

Yamato: Being emotionally sensitive to others means he can be passionate and open about everything, and compassionate to others (good), but also means he can get explosively angry and lose control of himself (bad)

Sora: Being caring towards others and supportive (good) means that she can also end up developing self-destructive tendencies due to her perceived obligations to others (bad)

Koushirou: Being constantly curious and fixated on learning more means he can get to the bottom of things and answer questions that others can’t (good) but also means he can get too absorbed in it and not be able to take others into account (bad)

Mimi: Being extremely sensitive and empathetic means that she’s open-minded, compassionate, and all-loving (good) but also that she takes any kind of discomfort or emotionally draining thing extra hard, and may all too often be unable to take a stand even when she really should (bad)

Jou: Being constantly invested in everyone’s welfare and compelled to help them means he’s very honest and dutiful and otherwise reliable (good) but also means he can make very reckless decisions because he’s so stressed about everyone and everything (bad)

Takeru: Being good at maintaining an atmosphere of moderation and generally being able to handle very tough things means that he has a very strong grip on himself and doesn’t cause trouble for others easily (good) but also means he’s prone to sudden and irrational emotional outbursts because he’s suppressing so badly that he gets no catharsis and isn’t being honest about his own feelings (bad)

Hikari: Being compassionate and all-loving means that she can put her foot down easily for the sake of others and advocate for kindness (good) but also means that her desire to not be a burden on others makes her compulsively unable to vocalize any of her own personal problems to the point of self-destruction and passiveness (bad)

Daisuke: Being so deferential to others and pure-hearted means that he can focus practically on what needs to be done and be a supportive person to others (good) but also means that he’s prone to insecurity, defensiveness, and lack of assertiveness in the face of others (bad)

Miyako: Being over-the-top and full of bright energy means that she can bring joy to others and can reach out to those who have troubles (good) but also means that she has difficulty having restraint from losing control of herself (bad)

Iori: Being humble and a principled person means that he’s good at approaching things directly and driven by a constant desire to do good (good) but also can be so fixated on those principles that he clings onto them even far beyond practicality, and is constantly restraining himself more than should be necessary (bad)

Ken: Being assertive and able to have firm will means that he can get what he wants done for others and show kindness when he needs to (good) but also means that the same assertiveness can be used for uncontrolled sadism and inflicting pain on others (bad)

So, again: all of these characters are encouraged to embrace all of the good things about themselves, and to channel them in ways that are productive or healthy or help them live happily alongside others; all of those “bad” traits also being there doesn’t necessarily mean they have to blot out those personality aspects that have good sides to them as well! It’s just that those “bad” things need to be kept in check so that they don’t cause trouble, and you can read all of these character arcs in ways that involve everyone changing just enough to make sure those “bad” things don’t go rampant and cause problems everywhere -- and everyone’s an imperfect human being, so it’s unlikely that they’ve completely gotten rid of those entirely even into adulthood -- but they have better awareness of what they need to do, and how to better adjust themselves into better people.

Look at the difference between Ken and Daisuke -- Ken had to go through some massive changes because, as the Kaiser, his “bad” traits were going over the top and causing all sorts of harm to everyone, and there was a huge journey he had to go through to get that all in check, whereas Daisuke was always clearly a very pure-hearted person from the get-go and didn’t have to adjust himself as much. Yet you could say the same thing about both of them -- by Ken learning that his efforts and assertiveness were misplaced, and by Daisuke getting around his constant insecurity and need for validation in order to better lead everyone forward, they basically did the same thing, just in different ways, and they’re both better people for it.

And it’s also the philosophy Jou endorses in Adventure episode 50 -- Mimi and Jou aren’t people who are necessarily best at fighting, and this isn’t inherently a sin. It’s just that they need to find ways to productively play to their own strengths in ways that are true to themselves. If Mimi can’t bring herself to engage in direct violence, she can at least use her skills to bring together everyone else who wants to protect the Digital World and prevent more casualties, and if Jou is, by his own admission, “not strong”, he can consider a path ahead of him that involves becoming a healer who can help those who are wounded, and prevent casualties that way.

There is no one right way to live.

What it is you want to do

Here’s an interesting question about the 02 epilogue, and, while we’re at it, 02 episode 50 as a whole: Why are “careers” brought up so much? Timeskip epilogues are hardly new to 02 (and of course have popped up in media for years thereafter), but not all of them involve careers, and even fewer of them have that much focus on shoving “careers” into your face as the main centerpoint, especially since usually this kind of thing would be about family lives or romance or something (and we can say a lot about how the 02 epilogue cared so much about the career thing that it was blatantly prioritizing it over the hot-topic romance issue of Yamato and Sora).

Because, in the end, a career -- or, perhaps, a “future aspiration”, because various details about how the epilogue is presented indicate that “the career that defines your income and adult life” may not actually be the correct term here -- is the ultimate manifestation of “what it is you want to do with your life”. The point driven home by 02 episode 50 is that such a thing should be “what you want to do”, and, given that this was originally supposed to be the Adventure ending before 02 was conceived, it also ties into Adventure’s own theme of “finding your own path”. All of those “careers” listed in the 02 epilogue feel a lot more nonsensical when you think about it in terms of the material hobbies they had during the series, but make significantly more sense when you frame it in terms of what kind of personality each person had and what they would prioritize. Materially, if you think about what Taichi had as a “hobby” during Adventure and 02, it would be soccer, but when you think about him being “an ambitious, wide-reaching leader who brings people from different places together”, his career of “diplomat to bring two worlds together” makes much more sense. It wasn’t about what they’re doing to pay the bills; it’s about “what’s most important in each of their lives”.

And, as far as the series is concerned, none of these decisions are the “wrong” ones; if there’s a “wrong” decision, it’s the one 02 (and later Kizuna) warned you about, in terms of blotting your own self out and making yourself unhappy because you did it for the sake of society’s expectations instead of for yourself. There’s even a difference between the Adventure group and 02 group in their own priorities, in that the former is more individualistic and far-reaching in terms of personal ambition, and the latter prioritizes mutual support and living simpler lives as long as it makes them happy, and as far as Adventure and 02 are concerned, that’s all fine, because those are choices that suit their own dispositions and fit things that they want to do first and foremost.

Everyone is different, everyone has different priorities, and everyone has different ways to live. Everyone has different perspectives and feelings, and once the arguments are ironed out, those should be cherished and celebrated.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta

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thedreadvampy · 3 years

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Like idk what you want from me here. If you want to engage me in a specific question about ace/aro identities, as I've said several times and nobody has ever actually done, then ask me the specific question. Don't fuck around with vague gestures at Points of Discourse and then get cross with me because I haven't answered the Exact Question you Didn't Ask But Expected Me To Intuit.

Preface: If you don't want to answer any of these because you are allo/allo and don't have a say because its not your place, say that. In fact, I'm asking these because you seem to do have opinions on things you shouldn't based off things you have said in the past.

I also want to state that I agree fully with your points about Martin- minus the blatant aphobia. Not just acephobia, arophobia as well.

1. Do you think qprs are problematic? I believe you once made a post saying roughly that qprs are just normal friendships, or something like that, that has since been deleted. What is your current opinion?

2. Are het aros lgbt?

3. Are het aces lgbt?

4. Cis aro/aces lgbt?

5. Cishet aro/aces?

6. Do the spectrums and micro identities exist? You've implied in the past they don't, in the post about how they were supposedly created from sex positivity

7. Can aros be in or desire romantic relationships?

8. Can aces have or desire sex?

9. Does the split attraction model exist and does it benefit people?

10. Can teenagers identify as aro/ace or do you think they're too young?

11. Can you be, say, an aroace lesbian, or an aroace gay, aroace bi, etc. Idk how to phrase this one but like can you be aroace and still id with another orientation?

I could send another anon detailing the aphobia in the post, because I at least am certainly not upset about Martin being sexual, rather it was the very blatant aphobia. It could have stemmed from ignorance, and if that's the case I don't mind explaining it.

Ok this is a lot of questions, some with quite involved answers, so I'm gonna answer them chunk by chunk so it's a bit more manageable, and then I might come back to some of the surrounding message. This isn't gonna be an immediate bang bang bang, but I'll try and work through them over the next couple of days.

Question 1

1. No, I don't think qprs are problematic. I don't necessarily understand them but I don't need to understand them to understand and respect that they're a thing that's important to a lot of people. I don't know what post you're referring to, but I'm surprised that you say it was deleted, because I very rarely delete posts except, occasionally, reblogs where people have flagged up misinformation or dogwhistles or which I reblogged by accident. tbh I'm the messiest online presence I'm way too lazy to delete past posts or block people even when I probably should bc I don't like to feel like I'm ~hiding evidence~. So I'm not saying you're wrong, you're probably totally right, but I'm surprised.

I'm thinking about what posts I've made that you could be thinking of, and obviously I don't remember everything I say on here bc I say A Lot and I actively post to get things out of my head so 🤷‍♀️ but I do remember making a post a while ago where I said that it was a normal expectation of friendship to have some friends close enough that you'll live with them, raise kids with them, etc, and I'm wondering if that was the post you're thinking of? I did have qprs in mind while writing that to a degree, but only because I think 'you wouldn't do this with your friends' is a very common argument people put forward about qprs and I think it's a weak argument, because many people have different definitions of friendship, and the only argument I think is needed for any sort of I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing is...I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing. Like you can't offer a universal materialist definition of the differences between romantic, queerplatonic, sexual and platonic relationships, because the boundaries are very personal and it's really an emotional and experiential difference. so if that is the post you're thinking of, I wasn't criticising The Concept Of QPRs as much as saying that I thought trying to put hard lines around What Friends Do Vs What QPPs Do was a) counterproductive when arguing with someone who thinks QPR is Just Normal Friendships bc. if they do those things with their friends then saying NO THIS IS A QPR THING just reinforces their existing belief that you're talking about the same thing as they mean by friendships and b) to me seems to set a painful expectation to young people that you can only get these kinds of close friendships occasionally and in the form of a QPR and it will be stigmatised and misunderstood (and depending on how people talk about it, is only accessible to aspec people and allo people should only expect it to come through romantic/sexual relationships), when in fact most people of most ages I know have friends with whom they can share things like housing, deep feelings, futures, finances, who they miss if they don't see for a few days, who are mutually supportive and vital to their wellbeing. I don't think that's mutually exclusive with the existence of QPRs though - like I personally don't know what the difference is between a QPR and a close friendship, but I also don't know what the difference is between a romantic relationship and a close friendship but I know there is one and I know it's not a question of What You Do but a question of How You Feel And Interact, and that's pretty hard to define in unambiguous terms.

Like generally I don't Not Think QPRs exist, and I think it's a dick move to try and tell people they're wrong about how they experience and define their relationships because???? how are you meant to know that better than the person whose relationship it is??? but I do think the way people talk about QPRs (both from the perspective of defending them and from the perspective of attacking them) is pretty rife with problems and I don't think it's invalidating the reality of QPRs to talk about where the arguments and language around them potentially falls down or has unexpected consequences.

On the other hand, I don't know if that actually is the post you're referring to - the reason I'm calling back to that is that that and a few resultant asks are the only time I remember talking about QPRs on here in the last year or so. So like, several of these questions reference past posts, which is very fair, but I do need it to be clear that, since I don't really tag anything and I don't have a great memory, I can only really speak to What I Think Now In This Context, not to what I posted in the past and what I was thinking when I posted it. Like, this isn't too deny responsibility - I reckon I'm responsible for what I post even if I don't still agree with it, which is why I don't tend to delete my own posts on purpose - but just to deny capacity, I guess? I don't really KNOW what I've posted so if you talk about it in vague terms (and I do understand that if it's been deleted there's not a lot you can do but that) I may not necessarily be responding to the part of it that's worried you, so if I'm not speaking to something specific I've said or done, it's not because I Don't Want To, I just don't necessarily know to.

I'm waffling about this because looking through your messages there's a lot of "you said X" and like. given that the intended message of the post that's kicked this off was very different to the message people have taken from it, it feels important to me to know whether if I looked at the posts you're referencing I'd be like "ah yeah I did believe that but now I believe X" or if it's more a situation of "oh right I can see how you took X from that but my thinking was more Y".

(also sometimes when people say "you made a post" they mean "you reblogged a post" and I am a compulsive discourse scroller so sometimes I reblog a random post to bookmark my place on someone's discourse blog or I accidentally longpress the reblog button while scrolling - I try to delete reblogs that I don't agree with but sometimes I miss some, all of which to say if there's a post on my blog that doesn't seem to reflect what I say in my original posts then it doesn't necessarily mean I'm a crypto-whatever so much as I'm very lazy and messy with my blog. Doesn't mean I shouldn't be held accountable for reblogs but it's useful to know if we're talking original content or reblogs bc I'm unlikely to fully accidentally make a post. but I quite often accidentally reblog stuff. I doubt this is the case with this sitch just bc of your phrasing but I want to cover my bases)

anyway tl;dr: no I don't believe that QPRs themselves are inherently problematic, nor do I think I have at any point believed that, but I do think that a lot of the language and ideas used to talk about them are based in miscommunication or absolutist ideas about relationships and can have damaging knock on effects.

#i recognise that your past ask implied that it was somehow evasive to answer in long form #so sorry but this is gonna get loooong #but I'd rather be long and honest than say something snappy and absolutist that doesn't reflect what i actually think #so yeah this is gonna go ooooooooooon

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mittensmorgul · 6 years

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Bubble Theory

To a certain extent, we all live in our own self-made echo chambers. This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. It’s just a reality of being a human being, and not an omniscient deity. Being aware of this simple fact makes life more pleasant all around. But maybe especially in fandom, or on social media in general.

Even if we actively and regularly step across the edge of our own bubbles and peek in at what else is going on in other bubbles, we’re still experiencing that foreign bubble from an outsider perspective, and viewing information and conversations going on there without the context of everything surrounding that conversation.

The only time this causes conflict is when someone fully steps into a different echo chamber where they don't know what's really going on, where they don’t know the history or the etiquette, or the backgrounds and motivations of the people they’re now interacting with, and simply assume the entire awareness and discourse inside that “other bubble” is on a level with their own echo chamber, and react in a manner that everyone in the “invaded” bubble is baffled by, or offended by, or worse.

So I mostly stay out of the bitter discourse, because it’s not my place to tell other people how to feel, without personally understanding WHY they feel that way. That’s just... Not Cool.

I do try to at least keep an eye on other fandom echo chambers, despite spending most of my time in my carefully curated corner of this fandom. Because this IS where I come for “fun and relaxation,” and not to engage in discourse heavier than the pineapple on pizza or “is Cas now a ginger” nonsense or whatever.

The danger is in letting your personal echo chamber inform your understanding or opinion of an entire fandom.

I think that’s at least part of what causes the conflicts between "factions." Whether it be shipping factions, character stan factions, meta factions, or even the different culture and etiquette and conversations happening on twitter versus tumblr. These communities all have their own accepted understanding and mutual etiquette that holds them together within the larger fandom, and by that very nature can lead very quickly to misunderstandings among people outside those particular bubbles, and often what’s perceived by the “invaded bubble residents” as horrifically offensive behavior. Instead of understanding other points of view and other interpretations, and other's motivations for engaging with the show the way they do, it just becomes inter-fandom wank.

And heck... to put a Supernatural meta spin on this, "miscommunication is the worst villain" in real life too.

Here on Tumblr, I often see people who venture into “fandom Twitter” report back about how absolutely, horribly toxic it is over there; and when I have personally ventured into Fandom Twitter, I’ve seen comments about how glad the participants there are not on Tumblr, because gosh Tumblr fandom is a trash fire. I think a lot of this interpretation of “the other fandom bubble” comes directly from this lack of understanding about the different culture, expectations, and etiquette inherent in these two very different social media platforms.

(not even touching on the fact that how “toxic” any of your experiences on ANY social media site is directly informed by the people you choose to follow and interact with, and your experience can become instantly less toxic by not engaging with toxic people in general.)

We all know the way our own echo chamber communicates, but not necessarily how the others do, or even what they talk about on the other side of the bubble. Barging in to another bubble armed with the assumption that we know and understand the discourse you’re bringing with you is bound to fail.

It’s a larger fandom disconnect, just like when certain factions latched on to the vegetable water post and judged all destiel shippers as morons who think cucumbers make you gay, or that wearing a certain type of plaid makes you gay, rather than understanding these as essentially crack posts that we all pointed and laughed at, because they functioned like a meme that validated everything we’ve written about Performing Dean. And everyone INSIDE our bubble knew this, because we’d already HAD the discussion (and it’s conveniently available on all our blogs, in painful detail, for anyone outside the bubble who actually cares to educate themselves on why we’re making crack posts about pie vs cake, or dean in shorts, or whatever). It's that level of disconnect.

Looking at the surface-layer of what crosses the bubble (i.e. the sorts of posts that “go viral” and therefore escape the bubble they were intended for), and making broad general assumptions about the motive, intent, understanding, and personal investment of the person who created that content based on your own experience inside a different bubble is just... ignorant.

I really can’t abide ignorance. Especially when that ignorance is used to directly hurt, insult, offend, or shame other human beings. Also, Not Cool.

And it’s not just over the matter of shipping where these disconnects are happening. It can result from misunderstanding ANYTHING from outside your personal bubble. Because NONE of us have completely shattered our own bubbles, you know? NONE OF US know everything, NONE OF US should even be EXPECTED to know everything, and NONE OF US should EVER barge into a bubble they self-admittedly have very little knowledge of and behave like assholes in someone else’s bubble.

Not everything that conflicts with your experience inside your own bubble is automatically “hate,” or “ignorant,” or “gross.” Everything outside your own bubble is not inherently malicious, or intended to be malicious. Not everyone engages with fandom in general in the same way you might be accustomed to. That does NOT give anyone the right to wander into another bubble where they CLEARLY do not understand the background, context, and the very real human beings on the other end of a tumblr post, and spew shaming vitriolic assumptions all over the place.

This goes for the residents of EVERY fandom bubble.

(I can’t believe we have to have this conversation as ostensible adult citizens of the internet, but here we are. The golden rule still applies, even when you think you know better than the person you’re trying to “educate.” Also: “sorry your feelings were hurt” is not actually an apology.)

#fandom problems #wank adjacent

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personalcoachingcenter · 3 years

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Research Paper: Why Coaching Is A Better Strategy For Engaging And Retaining Millennial Employees

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/research-paper-why-coaching-is-a-better-strategy-for-engaging-and-retaining-millennial-employees/

Research Paper: Why Coaching Is A Better Strategy For Engaging And Retaining Millennial Employees

Research Paper By Kathrine Anne Minzlaff (Young Professionals Coach, AUSTRIA)

Introduction

Today’s labor market is dynamic with a diversity of generations comprising the workforce. Born between 1981 and 1997 (Dimock, 2019), the millennial generation, also known as Generation Y, is the most recent and potentially largest generation to enter the workforce (Lancaster and Stillman, 2002). They represent a unique generation with different work values, beliefs, and career attitudes than previous generations (Campione, 2015). Millennials are technologically savvy and socially conscious(Brack and Kelly, 2012) as they have grown up in an era characterized by rapid technological advancements and increased globalization (Friedell et al., 2011).

With this background, they bring high achievements and even higher expectations to the workplace. Some of their attitudes, expectations, and preferences, which are vastly different from other generations, have sometimes been perceived negatively and caused a generational conflict in the workplace (Ng, 2012) and, consequently, decreased job satisfaction and increased turn over amongst these younger employees (Campione, 2015). This seemingly ongoing trend poses significant challenges for organizations as high millennial turnover rates mean enormous losses for them (Bogosian and Rousseau, 2017), both in financial terms and loss of talents, and potential gaps in leadership (Brack and Kelly, 2012).

Given these high turnover costs, many companies have focused on developing, packaging, and branding themselves in various ways to retain millennials (Campione, 2015). Despite these efforts, however, millennials have still emerged as the job-hopping generation (Friedell et al., 2011). Therefore, to address this issue more effectively, it has become necessary for organizational leaders to direct their attention on understanding how to motivate and interact with this population(Canedo et al., 2017) by learning more about their mindset, worldview, and satisfaction drivers (Bogosian and Rousseau, 2017). The underlying assumption is that by understanding the perceived motivational factors for millennials, organizations will increase workforce commitment, reduce turnover, and fill the leadership void (Calk and Patrick, 2017).

Joining the question of resolving this problem with high millennials turnovers, researchers have also focused their attention on investigating millennials’ motivations and expectations surrounding the nature of their jobs or careers. Based on their studies, many researchers suggest making organizational changes to adapt to millennial’s workplace motivations (Lancaster and Stillman, 2002) and desired work attributes (Overjijk, 2017). The alternative approach, which is recommended only by a few (e.g., Ng, 2012; Solomon and van Coller-Peter, 2019), is to use coaching as a tool for developing and retaining millennials. Though empirical research on coaching millennial professionals is scarce, this paper, drawing on the literature on millennials, coaching, and self-management aims to explain why coaching is the more effective strategy for engaging and retaining millennial professionals.

Millennials in the Workforce

Millennials are the fastest-growing workforce segment and the least understood (Calk and Patrick, 2017). This generation of new employees, who grew up during the emergence of the Digital age (Bolser and Gosciej, 2015), is defined and influenced by their acute relationships with technology. Often referred to as ‘digital natives’, they easily integrate technology into their daily lives and use it to solve problems, interact with others, and interpret the world (Calk and Patrick, 2017).

According to Brant and Castro (2019), the defining social influences of technology, communication, and globalization made it possible for millennials worldwide to share similar characteristics. It is also the main factor that has given rise to and shaped millennials’ work attitudes (Ng, 2012).

Millennials are described as open-minded, confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat, and receptive to new ideas and living practices(Appel-Muelenbroek et al., 2019). They are highly educated and well-skilled, which is crucial in the current global knowledge economy. The way millennials use communication networks and quickly gain knowledge also brings various innovative opportunities for companies (Brackand Kelly, 2012).

Aware of this generation’s unique competencies and perspective, businesses worldwide are continually looking for ways to harness their strengths and keep them engaged (e.g., Franco and Lyapina, 2016). Despite their efforts, however, they still struggle to retain them as these young individuals continue to leave their jobs whenever better opportunities arise elsewhere. For this reason, millennials have become known as”notorious job-hoppers” (Roebuck et al., 2013 as cited in Franco and Lyapina, 2016).

Based on the notion that millennials’ job dissatisfaction is the main trigger for their desire to change jobs, many academics have recommended various changes to the organizations to adapt to millennial worker’s wants and needs. Such changes include modifications to work practices (Bartz et al., 2017), policies (Brack and Kelly, 2012), and even the physical environment (Canedo et al., 2017). In line with Lazarus’strategiesfor addressing challenges (as cited in Cottrell, 2003), these suggested solutions are problem-focused because they solve the external aspect of the problem, thus its symptoms.

Additionally, as they are solely dependent on the companies to action, they are also out of the millennials’ realm of control. In contrast, coaching is an emotion-focused solution because it addresses the root cause of the problem by proposing to look inward at the millennials’ attitudes and emotions that impact their reactions to the situation. It presumes that this young group can create an environment that supports what they want to achieve. Examples of areas where coaching can help engage and retain millennials in organizations are depicted in the next section.

Where coaching can help

Millennial workers want their jobs to be meaningful and challenging, and its absence could impact their satisfaction in and intention to stay at their current position(Overdijk, 2017). Having this job criterion assumes that millennial workers already know what is meaningful or challenging for them. Nonetheless, because describing one’s work as “meaningful and challenging” is subjective, it raises the question “Do they all know what meaningful and challenging work is for them?”Surveys (e.g., Clark, 2018; Kalogeropoulos, 2020) show that millennials increasingly use social media, known for its strong influence and questionable credibility, as their primary source information.

Therefore, it is possible that what they think is meaningful and challenging work are ideas that they have picked up from this medium rather than that that align with their true selves. By bringing individuals on a self-discovery journey and retrospection through coaching, a coach can help them uncover their real values, interests, and strengths, and link them to work that they would personally find meaningful and challenging (Bogasian and Rousseau, 2017; Ng, 2012).

Furthermore, Friedell, Puskala, and Villa (2015) identified millennials’ lack of patience and perseverance as another plausible reason for their constant job change. They posit that instead of waiting for opportunities in their current employment, millennials prefer to fast-track their career advancement and salary raises through job-hopping. Ng (2012) attributes the impatience and impulsiveness of millennials to their desire for instant gratification. Since millennials are so accustomed to technology, which provides instantaneous feedback, they need to experience instant gratification. Interpreted by their managers and colleagues as an entitlement, this aversion to delayed gratification also affects their short-term work processes. They struggle with long projects, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and attention to detail and accuracy.

Unaware that they are inherently ill-equipped to deal with delayed gratification, the absence of instant reward can become extraordinarily frustrating for millennials. This frustration has a significant impact on job performance and job satisfaction, leading to low retention in some cases. It may also eventually lead to turnovers because the inability to delay gratification has significant consequences that result in poor decision-making and planning habits (Cheng et al., 2011). Having a possible negative impact on their long-term success and overall well-being (Mischel et al., 1989), it is, therefore, necessary for millennials to address this issue. Fortunately, delaying gratification is a skill that one can learn, and coaching can also support millennials acquire this skill.

Another crucial skill that millennial professionals could work on in coaching is communication. According to Calk and Patrick (2017), growing up in the world of social media has negatively impacted the way millennials communicate with others. They argue that though millennials are well educated, they have substandard communication skills that have contributed to the misunderstandings and miscommunications in the workplace.

Supporting this argument, Holmberg-Write, Hribar, and Tsegai (2017) also point out that having learned to communicate using technology, often millennials are unaware of their nonverbal cues which have often contributed to miscommunication between them and their coworkers and managers. Bolser and Gosciej (2015) therefore suggest that, as much as millennials want to be understood, it is necessary that they also learn how to understand and communicate with different generations. Coaching can facilitate this learning too. Additionally, millennials could take advantage of coaching to support them in learning how to better articulate and successfully negotiate their work goals and expectations with their employers (Campione, 2015).

What coaching is

Coaching is a problem solving, a solution-focused, and goal-setting structure designed to equip individuals with the tools and knowledge they need to develop and reach their desired professional and personal goals (Minzlaff, 2019). The role of coaching is to create for the client the conditions for learning and growing. A coach acts as a catalyst to facilitate the clients’ progress towards the defined goals by using skilled listening and questioning techniques.

Coaching is a partnership between a coach and a client and typically consists of a series of one-on-one sessions (Ng, 2012). A coaching session is a conversation focused on helping the client discover answers for themselves, which is critical because people are much more likely to engage with solutions that they generate themselves rather than those imposed on them. The coaching model that coaches apply to structure the sessions vary. Generally, however, most coaching adheres to the following process: discovery, creating awareness, designing actions, planning, and goal setting, and managing progress.

During the session, the coach employs a guided discovery technique, where the coach asks the client a series of questions that enable the individuals to become aware of their thinking (Minzlaff, 2019). The assumption is that by promoting awareness, coaching will help allow a more realistic and rational decision-making process to occur as it moves an individual from a self-limiting mode of thinking to a more adaptable system of identifying several problem-solving strategies.

How coaching can help

One of the first steps in successfully managing any situation is taking responsibility for oneself as an active, thinking, and creative agent within the process (Cottrell, 2003). This step means moving beyond the “blame” to find the most constructive outcome possible. In coaching, millennials learn to take responsibility for their work situation and the career they want to pursue by understanding their intrinsic motivations. Intrinsic motivation, which Ayodogmus (2018) describes as the positively valued experiences that individuals get directly from their tasks, is the key psychological component of employee empowerment. Through this lens, Ng (2012) believes that millennials would be able to make connections that would help broaden their focus and find meaning at work and enable them to become self-managing (Ayodogmus, 2018).

Self-managing vital because it helps enhance personal skills (such as delaying gratification and communication skills), work engagement, and self-goal setting (Ghali et al., 2018). By developing self-management skills, initially through coaching, millennials learn to oversee and screen their conduct and manage the choices they make. Once they possess these skills, they can consistently set their goals independently and take the initiative to achieve them. With this purposeful self-management, young professionals can direct their career trajectory and ensure they seek opportunities that get them closer to their goals.

Finally, another significant advantage of coaching for both the millennial employees and their employers is that it is based on a solution-focused approach (Minzlaff, 2019). The solution-focused model holds that focusing only on problems is not an effective way of solving them(Cottrell, 2003). Instead, this approach targets clients’ default solution patterns, evaluates them for efficacy, and modifies or replaces them with problem-solving techniques that work. Because this type of approach is often expected of those in managerial roles, millennials who aspire to enter jobs with managerial responsibilities can start developing this method through coaching.

Conclusion

With a workforce comprised of multiple generations of employees, organizations today struggle to motivate and retain talents from the millennial generation. The way millennials interact and communicate with other generations and the expectations they bring to their employment diverge from those of previous generations. In some cases, this has led to misunderstandings and conflicts among the different generations co-existing in the workplace and consequently decreased job satisfaction and increased turnovers among this young generation.

High millennial turnover for companies means knowledge and productivity loss, higher recruiting and training costs, and potential leadership voids. Therefore, given the unique nature of millennials’ workplace motivations, organizations are expected to shape and sustain a culture that attracts, engages, and successfully interacts with this population. While many researchers suggest various organizational changes to achieve this goal, only a few recommend coaching as a developmental and retention strategy. This paper advocate coaching as the more effective approach in engaging and retaining millennial professionals.

Unlike organizational changes, which focus on the external aspect or symptom of the problem, coaching addresses its root cause by focusing inward on the millennials’ attitudes and emotions that impact their reactions to the situation. Through coaching, millennials can acquire a higher level of self-knowledge and personal responsibility concerning a self-directed personal plan, which can be applied not only to their professional lives but also to their personal lives. Organizations, as a result, gain an engaged and committed pool of young and talented employees.

Bibliography

Appel – Meulenbroek, H. A. J. A., Vosters, S. M. C., Kemperman, A. D. A. M., & Arentze, T. A. (2019). Workplace needs and their support; are millennials different from other generations?. 1-14. Paper presented at Twenty-fifth annual Pacific Rim Real Estate Society conference (PRRES 2019), Melbourne, Australia.

Aydogmus, C. (2018). Millennials’ Career Attitudes: The roles of Career Anchors and Psychological Empowerment. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(6), 1–23.

Bartz, D., Thompson, K., & Rice, P. (2017). Maximizing the human capital of millennials through supervisors using performance management. International Journal of Management, Business, and Administration, 20(1), 1-9.

Bogosian, R, Rousseau, C (2017) How and why Millennials are shaking up organizational cultures. Rutgers Business Review 2(3): 386–394.

Brack, J. & Kelly, K. (2012). Maximizing Millennials in the workplace. UNC executive development. Retrieved on December 1, 2020, from http://unc.live/2s2rvA6.

Brant, K. K. & Castro., S. L. (2019). You can’t ignore millennials: Needed changes and a new way forward in entitlement research. Human Resource Management Journal 29(4): 527-538.

Calk, R. & Patrick, A. (2017). Millennials Through the Looking Glass: Workplace Motivating Factors: The Journal of Business Inquiry, 16, 131-139.

Campione, W. A. (2015). Corporate Offerings: Why Aren’t Millennials Staying? The Journal of Applied Business and Economics, 17, 60-75.

Canedo, J. C., Graen, G., Grace, M. & Johnson, R. D. (2017). Navigating the New Workplace: Technology, Millennials, and Accelerating HR Innovation. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction 9(3): 243 – 259.

Cheng, Y., Shein, P. P. & Chiou, W. (2011). Escaping the impulse to immediate gratification. The prospect concept promotes a future-oriented mindset, prompting an inclination towards delayed gratification. British Journal of Psychology 103(1): 129 – 141.

Clark, K. (2018). How Are ‘Millennials’ Using Social for News? Family Online Safety Institute. Retrieved on December 28, 2020, from https://www.fosi.org/good-digital-parenting/how-are-millennials-using-social-media-news.

Cottrell, S. (2003). Skills for success: personal development and employability. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 60 – 88.

Dimock, M. (2019, January 17) Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/.

Franco, A., Lyapina, L. (2016), Work–related factors that affect organizational commitment: An examination using millennials in the workforce of Thailand.International Review of Management and Marketing, 2019, 9(6), 98-104.

Friedell, K., Puskala, K., Smith, M. & Villa, N. (2011). Hiring, Promotion, and Progress: Millennials. Expectations in the Workplace. St. Olaf College Working Paper.

Ghali, B. A. A, Miri, L. & Hamzah, K. D. (2018). Self-Management and its Relation to Organizational Excellence. International Journal of Engineering & Technology 7(4): 47 – 50.

Holmberg-Wright, K., Hribar, T., Tsegai, J. (2017). More Than Money: Business Strategies to Engage Millennials. Business Education Innovation Journal, 9(2), 14‒23. HTTP:// www.beijournal.com/images/2_V9N2_final_2-2.pdf

Kalogeropoulos, A. (2020). How Younger Generations Consume News Differently. Digital News Report. Retrieved on December 28, 2020, from https://www.fosi.org/good-digital-parenting/how-are-millennials-using-social-media-news.

Lancaster, Lynne C., & Stillman, David (2002). When generations collide: Who they are, why they clash, how to solve the generational puzzle at work. New York: HarperCollins, 352.

Minzlaff, K. A. (2019). Organizational coaching: integrating motivational interviewing and mindfulness with cognitive-behavioral coaching. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice, 12(1), 15-28.

Mischel W, Shoda Y, Rodriguez, M. I. Delay of gratification in children. Science. 1989;244(4907):933-938. DOI: 10.1126/science.2658056.

Ng, L. (2012). The Millennials: An Overview and Implications for Coaching Generation Y, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Overdijk, R. (2017). The millennial difference: The effect of adapted job resources and HR practices on turnover intentions of millennials and the mediating influence of person-job and person-organization fit. Retrieved from http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=145619.

Solomon, C., & van Coller-Peter, S. (2019). How coaching aligns the psychological contract between the young millennial professional and the organization. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 17, 11.

Original source: https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/research-papers/kathrine-anne-minzlaff-why-coaching-is-a-better-strategy-for-engaging-and-retaining-millennial-employees/

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dasaene-archive · 7 years

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Sx-blinds Mistyping as So-blinds

I never made a proper post about this, but I’m seeing an ever-increasing number of people that from my observations mistype themselves as so-blind (usually as sp/sx, since secondary so is harder to type) or as so/sx but are actually sx-blinds that don’t understand the soc instinct or are in complete denial that they don’t understand sx either. This seems to be a popular topic as of late and I think it would now be an appropriate time to post this. As an sx-blind myself I hope to offer a different perspective on sx-blind motivations and faults. There are many questions about soc/sx-blindness that I wanted to answer in this post (like what passion means to sx-blinds, what do you think is soc’s best quality, how can I tell if I’m sx-blind or just have a 9 core/strong fix), but for some sort of consistency in this tertiary Ti infodump I will elaborate on those in a different post.

I think it should go without saying that if you’re serious about learning about typology you shouldn’t get all your information from Tumblr, but a lot of people still rely on it for the majority of their information. Tumblr is an excellent resource if you know the right people and figure out how a proper way to interpret information, but it’s not great for confused sx-blinds. I don’t claim to have a perfect understanding of instinctual variants, but most experienced and reliable members of the Tumblr typology community are so-blind, and although they do a good job, they can’t help being biased from their negative experiences with badly developed sx-blinds or sx-blinds that made no effort to understand so-blindness. I mean I’m pretty sure the reason why a lot of so-blinds become so-blind is due to the influence of unhealthy, overbearing sx-blinds in formative years.

However, so-blinds are not the only people to blame for the confusion, rather sx-blinds themselves. A main criticism I have of sx-blinds is that not enough are sure of their typing/willing to rock the so-called community boat and come forward to try to explain soc with all its good and bad. It’s pointless not to at least try to speak up about your thoughts, since so-blinds are not superior nor do they care about “community values” and are more than happy to refine their own and by extension your ideas. Until I asked questions and tried to understand an so-blind point of view, I didn’t get sx very much at all, and I probably still don’t, but I’m far less clueless than before. That’s the purpose of discussion lol, there shouldn’t be any shame in trying to get a grasp on your lack of sx or try to help other people form a more conclusive idea about soc

The words of those in “higher standing” in a community (something I will elaborate on further in) can bother sx-blinds, and many will be afraid of being sx-blind because they are afraid of/don’t relate to/don’t get what the materials they read are really trying to say about all the bad qualities of lacking sx. Being affiliated with the image of soulless, bossy, desperate people incapable of fulfilling relationships isn’t appealing to them. People with soc generally want to be “nice,” they want to be “good,” they want to be likeable and cool and accommodating. If they read a lot of things that say differently from what they perceive themselves to be like or try to be like, they will mistype.

I’m not saying that sx-blinds are insecure or incapable of critical thinking, but when they first start out learning about anything, having many people to rely on as good sources and available to provide feedback is important to them because their relationships always act as a network of information (”networking” put under sx-blind descriptions isn’t wrong, even if that behavior is commonly misunderstood). Being able to rely on the numerous connections they create is what has benefitted them in society, although not necessarily benefitted them in understanding themselves. So when their sources conflict with their self-perception, it usually causes misunderstanding instead of something more productive.

Because sx-blinds are unfortunately pretty susceptible to the words of others, so-blinds are usually put into a “higher standing” in an sx-blind mind because they are more confident in their words and actions as a result of being able to ignore other people in a way sx-blinds can’t. Which is why so-blind sx-blind interactions usually go one of three ways: sx-blinds being frustrated by so-blind criticism since they feel incapable of arguing points that they know will fall on deaf ears, sx-blinds approaching so-blinds for friendship or attention in ways and for reasons that would never appeal to the latter party, or sx-blinds becoming literal sheeple.

Many well-known so-blind users have recently made posts about how the grouping or ranking of people is nonsensical to them, because this grouping is the main way sx-blinds view multiple people who share opinions, style, or way of communication. This grouping is also the reason why so-blinds feel like sx-blinds treat everyone the same way. Although sx-blinds do group people, it creates a helpful organization or hierarchy that helps them understand why certain people are friends with others, why certain trends in their communities are happening, and why some people are more “powerful” (higher-ranking) than others. This doesn’t mean they have to make the structure rigid, although many unfortunately do and that’s what causes the cruel, awkward, or just plain weird interactions so-blinds have faced with sx-blinds.

When healthy, sx-blinds understand that just because they have grouped a person with another superficially similar person doesn’t mean they can’t adjust to them as an individual or remove them from a group entirely once they have more information. There are some complications that come with grouping people in the first place, and I have made other posts explaining how sx-blinds figure out who’s safe for them, but group structure is what makes sense to sx-blinds, who see people in communities. It’s not an inherently negative or positive thing, although sx-blinds sometimes have trouble figuring out where the lines are when they think of themselves as a part of a specific group with a specific role. If they manage to get the group organization and their self-perception right, they are excellent at teamwork, realistically dismantling social structures that they have seen to be more harmful than beneficial, and understand the limits of their sx blindspot and which weaknesses can be worked on. If they get it wrong, well, there’s enough stories of sx-blind mishaps out there for you to probably figure that out. Enough unhealthy sx-blinds are out there to make people pretty confused about their variants, because one sx-blind can be totally chill if a little plain while another is going to be super annoying to deal with.

Mistyped sx-blinds think because they have basic requirements for so-blindness (hobbies, close friends, etc. etc.) that they could never be sx-blind. They don’t understand what sx is just from its descriptions, but because soc descriptions make less sense to them, they stick with being so-blind and begin to idealize it until they really believe that it’s what they are. This is an especially common problem for sx-blind introverts or people in the withdrawn triad, since a lot of activities described as so-blind are one-on-one or personal pursuits, although neither are so-blind-only things. A miscommunication occurs; so-blinds are the majority in making these posts, and because so is their blindspot they can’t explain it in a way that applies to less extreme sx-blinds, and because sx-blinds have sx in their blindspot they think that sx fits them even when it doesn’t. So-blinds are pretty decisive and make posts that express that decisiveness, which some more impressionable sx-blinds take as fact instead of a different way of communication. OP vs reader blindspot disagreement is a major cause of mistyping.

Sx-blinds generally have less of an objective impression of their own strengths and weaknesses than so-blinds due to being influenced by the opinions of others and lacking the specificity that sx gives people, so although some of the negative attributes given to sx-blinds are true even if exaggerated sometimes (like being boring due to the fact that they talk about obvious things to maintain distance and don’t express passion like sx-users), they make sx-blinds defensive and mistype out of fear that they could ever be a part of that sad group. There’s nothing objectively wrong with being sx-blind, but sx-blinds care about being respected in general, and they don’t think that with those qualities associated with them that it’s possible for them to be. Which is pretty sad, although I agree that it’s no one’s responsibility but their own to get over themselves, accept weaknesses, and recognize when someone’s opinions are just opinions even if they can have potentially valuable information.

Being unable to acknowledge weaknesses seems to be a pretty common problem in mistyping in general, which imo is odd since you would assume that people looking deeper into typology would be willing to accept the problems that come with being each type and learn from them instead of forming their identity around a stereotype and being Totally Definitely 100% So-Blind™ to avoid their problems.

To summarize, the basic qualities of average sx-blindness are these: understanding the social environment based on groups, lacking motivation/having embarrassment in pursuing or publicly expressing dedication to interests, a degree of confused self-perception (especially in low Ti or those lacking a 4 in their tritype), and being [too] receptive to the opinions of others. Mistyping is connected to the perception sx-blinds learning about instinctual variants have of soc and sx, and how they wish to distance themselves from the idea of sx-blindness because many descriptions they read are worded in an so-blind way that they don’t relate to or are true things that they refuse to see in themselves. Sx-blinds are easily affected by changes or the popular opinions in the communities that they see themselves a part of and therefore have many misconceptions of their own behavior or lack the self-awareness to work on the flaws that cause them to have a weak sense of self in the first place. [soc voice] If sx-blinds wish not to be misunderstood, they should work on understanding their own thought process and sharing their views, instead of denying that they have soc or lack sx.

#sx blind #so blind #instinctual variants #typing

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ageloire · 5 years

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3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers

Not to point any fingers, but how many marketers are guilty of asking designers something along the lines of “Can you just make it prettier?”

For many marketers, working with a designer can be one of the most challenging tasks they face while building a brand. Communicating their wants, needs, and visions can lead marketers into a minefield of misunderstandings.

Despite working toward the same goals, designers and marketers speak different languages. Designers are specialists who have learned to translate concepts visually, but that method of communicating information requires plenty of education and training.

Marketers are no less specialized than designers, and increased digitalization has led us to use more technical jargon—marketers love their buzzwords—and complex processes. Most words we use to communicate meaning just don’t add up: The word “flat,” for instance, has a completely different meaning to designers than it does to marketers—and most other folks, for that matter.

On top of the inherent differences to each role, the way people communicate meaning and value changes constantly. The speed of modern communication has altered our expectations of turnaround times, and the introduction of 5G is about to change the speed of communication yet again.

When frustrations and miscommunications arise, this tension leads to diluted messaging and diminished relationships with their target audiences. If marketers and designers commit to speaking a common language, their relationship and reliance on each other will lead to superior marketing assets: Good design results in world-class branding, after all.

Bolster Your Brand by Learning to Speak ‘Designer’

Don’t let the fear of lousy communication stand in the way of an awesome partnership with your design team.

Here are three ways you can keep projects running smoothly:

1. Get together before the project begins

Designers aren’t mind readers. They cannot pluck an idea from your brain and turn it into something marvelous without plenty of direction, clear expectations, and guidance along the way.

At the start of the relationship—or any new project—set up a meeting to discuss your vision. Be clear and specific about your goals, and admit what you don’t know or still have to find out. Ask the designer what he or she needs from you.

Use this meeting to also forecast the timing of the project. According to our in-house data, basing timelines on previous projects causes teams to underestimate how long a project will take 67% of the time. To avoid this trap, outline any expectations about turnaround times and revisions before building a timeline together. When possible, allow designers to take the lead on project timelines or stages.

Give your designer everything he or she might need to understand your brand and target audience. Explain the demographics you’re trying to reach, how your audience interacts with your brand, and what promises or values you want to communicate.

That might seem like a lot of information, but it will empower your designer to make intuitive choices without micromanagement. Without clear expectations, it’s easy for a designer to follow a tangent that made sense in the drafting stages but doesn’t necessarily align with your end goal.

2. Commit to overcommunicating

When you’re establishing a new relationship or project with a designer, err on the side of overcommunicating. Ask plenty of questions, and don’t assume anything. Get clarification about the designer’s thought process, ideas, and—especially—suggestions.

Check in regularly to see whether the designer has everything he or she needs. Explore different methods of communicating to find an approach that works for both of you. Chat platforms like Slack are great for quick, on-the-go check-ins, but nothing beats a face-to-face meeting or video call for sorting out problems and expectations or stirring up excitement for ideas.

It’s equally important to provide written documentation of all expectations, budgets, timelines, and directions. Don’t let creative briefs linger in a folder on your desktop; get them to your designer right away. You can set your projects up for success by treating this early step as a collaborative and informational process.

Once you’ve established your preferred mediums and cadence of communication, you can settle into a more relaxed rhythm with the knowledge that everyone’s on the same page.

3. Give constructive feedback that’s design-specific

Clear and constructive feedback is essential to a productive relationship with a designer. Saying only “I love this” or “I don’t like that” doesn’t cut it, and vague comments such as “Make it cleaner” won’t help designers decide what to do next. High-quality feedback builds on good ideas and explains why “bad” ideas won’t work.

A designer’s job is to solve and create, and your goal is to present a challenge with a problem to overcome. Don’t impose solutions—ask designers for input and ideas. If discussions start to go in circles, steer the conversation back to your pain point. Try to explain precisely what bothers you about any problematic elements, but give your designer the freedom to own the work they are doing.

Trust your designers and embolden them to offer their own evaluations without having to fear that you’ll ignore them or take offense. Create this safe space in your meetings by introducing feedback from the beginning.

Designers might speak in colors and shapes rather than metrics and data, but you can work together to forge a shared language. Start this relationship off strong by bridging the gap and finding ways to communicate, and the results will speak for themselves.

The post 3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from Marketo Marketing Blog https://blog.marketo.com/2019/04/3-ways-marketers-can-avoid-a-communication-breakdown-with-designers.html

#Marketo Marketing Blog

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ingrid--writes · 4 years

Text

The Anomaly of Artistic Expression

A room with black walls, floor and ceiling. Quiet but for the murmuring of gallery-goers looking up and down at the collation of hundreds of images tacked squarely onto the felt surface. My eyes locked first onto a small label, ‘apple’, sans-serif. Un-assuming and barely noticeable, the laminated word is surrounded by images of apples; all different kinds. Granny smith, pink lady, fuji, perhaps even some royal galas. These images melt smoothly into glossy pictures of apple trees, then orchards, then clouds, then valleys, all the way until the wall space is filled with scantily-clad Asian women, a representation of the label ‘artists’ model’.

When I reached the end of the exhibit, the section entitled ‘anomaly’ the notes page on my iPhone indicates that there existed “not that many anomalies”, instead “just weird images of people in costumes.”

I left feeling like I got the point, but that I also didn’t. I’d read the curator’s note, which gave me the impression that Paglen was commenting on the dangers of allowing an algorithm to identify and filter images online; perhaps the algorithm would make a problematic mistake and call a perfectly regular person a ‘racist’, a ‘fucker’, or a ‘schemer’, based on the program.

Samantha-Kay, a teacher walking through the exhibit, got the same impression I did.

“I thought that was really quite genius how he did that,” she says, in reference to Paglen’s use of graphics to illustrate a point. “I think it gives you an insight…whoever is producing it [the algorithm] is using their mind to create a program.”

However, I then realised, there had been a miscommunication of sorts between Paglen and his audience.

Samantha-Kay expresses her concern that Paglen’s “put in just two words: Apple and Anomaly, and then all that came up – which is interesting because you’re thinking how does this AI think?”

However, an anonymous staff member at the Barbican states “I think what people don’t realise is that what Trevor is showing here, is the input, rather than the output.”

The core confusion here lies in the lack of explanation regarding what Image Net, the focal point of Paglen’s exhibit, actually does. It functions primarily as an online dataset; FeiFeiLi, its founder, employed a human labour force to manually class a set of images under categories, each category holding up to four hundred pictures. Upon these classifications created by human labour, an algorithm can be built and used to technologically classify images.

Thus, as the staff member implied, ‘From Apple to Anomaly’ showcases the input of human data into a potential algorithm, as opposed to results from placing a search term into an algorithm, as Samantha-Kay and myself wrongly assumed.

Yet, it took me multiple conversations, the reading of two articles online and a YouTube video to grasp how ImageNet works, and how it can be considered problematic, as Paglen attempts to convey through his artwork.

Katyanna Quach’s piece on The Register UK was deeply informative, gave a clear history of ImageNet’s inception and potential pathways and dove into specific sections and categories which proved problematic, e.g., the presence of images of nude children in the ‘swimming trunks’ section. However, it was wordy and dense, and slightly disengaging for that reason.

In contrast, the piece Welcome to robot university (only robots need apply) published by the MIT Technology Review presents a more brief, but still informative impression of ImageNet. It contains a concise explanation of how ImageNet was created utilising crowdsourced human labour, providing a database to teach neural network algorithms to recognise images. It is highly accessible with diagrams and graphics, and only 576 words.

A combination of a gallery exhibit, interviews and two articles allowed me a basic understanding of ImageNet. However, the exhibit itself left much to the imagination and imparted upon myself, and Samanta-Kay, the misguided notion that ImageNet itself was an algorithm which wrongly labelled.

Similarly, Image Roulette, a past artistic project of Paglen’s in conjunction with Kate Crawford conveyed the message that ImageNet could be problematic, but not an adequate explanation of the story behind it. An interactive app which utilised the ImageNet database to teach its algorithm to label and categorise the faces of people who used it saw a large amount of entertainment and joking around, but also a darker side where users were labelled racist slurs such as ‘Negroid’ and ‘Slant-Eye’.

The interactive nature of Image Roulette enhanced the clarity of its message in comparison to From Apple to Anomaly. It caused a true emotional reaction in participants and demonstrated how the use of such a database created from human labour can hold inherent bias and prove problematic when used on mass by algorithms, even causing over 600,000 images to be removed from ImageNet. However, what remains unclear from utilising Image Roulette itself is how ImageNet works, or in fact, what it actually does.

Art is an experience. It can come in many forms and it engages an audience in ways words can’t seek to, because art is visual and physical and experiential, tapping into different neural pathways and communicating with humans in a unique way. Trevor Paglen’s art succeeds in telling about algorithms in some ways, but falls short in others.

In conveying the emotional impact of the jarring, presumptuous and sometimes highly problematic labels the database places on living people, it succeeds.

In conveying the context behind these problematic labels, it falls short.

This lies in the fact that the viewer walks away from the artwork thinking Paglen is showing how an algorithm wrongly labels people, when in fact, the problem lies in future algorithms learning from ImageNet perpetuating the human bias of its creators.

In examining the differences between telling about algorithms using art and using writing, it becomes evident that art prevails in the field of emotional impact, whereas writing tells a better back-story.

Trevor Paglen’s From Apple to Anomaly tells a misguided story, but has an accurate emotional effect.

Perhaps a combination of resources would function better to paint a holistic and accurate image of the world, and the algorithms that exist within it.

#university

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sualkmedeiors · 5 years

Text

3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers

Not to point any fingers, but how many marketers are guilty of asking designers something along the lines of “Can you just make it prettier?”

Bolster Your Brand by Learning to Speak ‘Designer’

Don’t let the fear of lousy communication stand in the way of an awesome partnership with your design team.

Here are three ways you can keep projects running smoothly:

1. Get together before the project begins

Designers aren’t mind readers. They cannot pluck an idea from your brain and turn it into something marvelous without plenty of direction, clear expectations, and guidance along the way.

2. Commit to overcommunicating

Once you’ve established your preferred mediums and cadence of communication, you can settle into a more relaxed rhythm with the knowledge that everyone’s on the same page.

3. Give constructive feedback that’s design-specific

The post 3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/modernb2bmarketing/~3/QIWiqSD7wFY/3-ways-marketers-can-avoid-a-communication-breakdown-with-designers.html

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archiebwoollard · 5 years

Text

3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers

Not to point any fingers, but how many marketers are guilty of asking designers something along the lines of “Can you just make it prettier?”

Bolster Your Brand by Learning to Speak ‘Designer’

Don’t let the fear of lousy communication stand in the way of an awesome partnership with your design team.

Here are three ways you can keep projects running smoothly:

1. Get together before the project begins

Designers aren’t mind readers. They cannot pluck an idea from your brain and turn it into something marvelous without plenty of direction, clear expectations, and guidance along the way.

2. Commit to overcommunicating

Once you’ve established your preferred mediums and cadence of communication, you can settle into a more relaxed rhythm with the knowledge that everyone’s on the same page.

3. Give constructive feedback that’s design-specific

The post 3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 https://blog.marketo.com/2019/04/3-ways-marketers-can-avoid-a-communication-breakdown-with-designers.html

0 notes

maxslogic25 · 5 years

Text

3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers

Not to point any fingers, but how many marketers are guilty of asking designers something along the lines of “Can you just make it prettier?”

Bolster Your Brand by Learning to Speak ‘Designer’

Don’t let the fear of lousy communication stand in the way of an awesome partnership with your design team.

Here are three ways you can keep projects running smoothly:

1. Get together before the project begins

Designers aren’t mind readers. They cannot pluck an idea from your brain and turn it into something marvelous without plenty of direction, clear expectations, and guidance along the way.

2. Commit to overcommunicating

Once you’ve established your preferred mediums and cadence of communication, you can settle into a more relaxed rhythm with the knowledge that everyone’s on the same page.

3. Give constructive feedback that’s design-specific

The post 3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 https://blog.marketo.com/2019/04/3-ways-marketers-can-avoid-a-communication-breakdown-with-designers.html

0 notes

racheltgibsau · 5 years