a grammar

three thoughts concerning the internet, Angela Chase, and ways to learn about game theory

The internet teaches people various ways to present portions of their lives as fun and interesting. Much like with television and advertising, this can create acute self-consciousness in any given internet user, who is constantly presented with visions of other people’s lives that seem way more fun/interesting than his or her own — except, in this case, without the reassuring knowledge that those lives are at least fake. A given internet user might, in fact, start to develop some really visceral form of resentment toward those groups of people who seem, on the internet, to have charmed or enjoyable lives. (One good way to experience this might be to look at pictures from foodies and apartment-decor hobbyists while eating macaroni and cheese on a bare mattress — or even just flick through the Facebook photos of someone who’s mostly pictured at parties.) This feeling may even harden until the given-internet-user is vastly overestimating the amount of fun/interest/self-satisfaction in those people’s lives, simply because the only part of those lives they’re exposed to is the bit that photographs well. That is my best explanation of a funny paradox: when you hear people ragging on, for instance, “Williamsburg hipsters,” they often wind up alleging that the lives of “Williamsburg hipsters” are actually way, way, way cooler, more fun, and more interesting than those lives could possibly be in reality.

That’s also my possible explanation for how many Americans on the internet embrace the very-American habit of being hyper-aware about who might think they’re better than you.

There has been an item floating around Tumblr today that’s sparked a bunch of discussion about Claire Danes as Angela Chase on My So-Called Life, and how various modern pop-culture items might look with the kind of character Danes tends to play in the leading roles. (I gather most people in this discussion have been lucky enough to avoid seeing It’s All About Love, and probably skipped Shopgirl, too.) There is only one thing I want to add to this discussion, and it is this: one of the great things about My So-Called Life is that instead of trying to present Angela Chase as particularly competent, it spent half of its time lovingly, empathetically making jokes about the many things she did not yet understand. The best and funniest example of this comes when she describes what she finds so attractive about Jordan Catalano. The way he leans. The way he always closes his eyes, “as if it hurts to look at things.” Meanwhile, Jordan is leaning on a locker and putting in eyedrops. His entire appeal — everything that Angela thinks means he’s deep — is actually just a matter of his being stoned.

I have wondered many times what kind of discussion the show’s creators thought that might start between teenagers who didn’t pick up on that one and parents who did. I also wonder about the idea that this platonic Chase/Danes, transferred to modern pop-culture scenarios, would really be some shining star of unalloyed strength; a big part of her skill set as an actress has always had to do with vulnerability. This is why, when Angela Chase cries, it can do some really profound stuff to the viewer; I can think of no other show that so successfully draws you into frequent scenes of a teenager weeping. (If she could cry on command for some sort of charity drive, I’m pretty sure a whole lot of Americans age 24-34 would straight-up empty their pockets.)

If you want to learn a whole lot, for free, with minimal effort, a good way to accomplish this is to get some smart people reading your blog and then be open about your ignorance/curiosity concerning a given topic. For instance, after I posted about game theory, various people explained a whole bunch of things about game theory, addressing my specific questions, at a level I sort of felt like I should be paying tuition for. Who knew you could crowdsource office hours?

My original sticking point with the Traveler’s Dilemma was this vague conviction that there should be, somewhere out there, a totally rational system that would explain why humans stop undercutting one another right around $96. (My uneducated guess was that it might have something to do with a cost/benefit analysis — “at what point does the downside of non-cooperation become larger than what the players stand to gain from it.”) But one person, Gabriel R, wrote me with a pretty persuasive case that this might just be a human social issue — that we’re fine with greedy undercutting over a few bucks out of a hundred, but balk, non-systematically, after that. Plus I’m pretty sure hardcorefornerds was pointing out that even if you find that cost/benefit point, voila, it’s suddenly in your interest to undercut it again. And Andrew G has given me a nice intro to the field, and helped identify the rational system I’m looking for as maybe having to do with risk analysis.

Plus, what with the Nash equilibrium and all, Russell Crowe wound up involved. Thanks, everyone!