All The Things

One of the things I really love about science is, if I'm being brutally honest, the potential for sheer bloody minded pedantry. Because it's very important to be clear and precise. You can't just assume that everybody knows what you mean when you say something. Everybody may well be working under a different set of knowledge or assumptions regarding whatever it is under discussion. This is perhaps what makes many people regard scientific terminology as often cumbersome. Clarity comes at the expense of brevity.

I bring this up so you may have get a sense of why it is that I sometimes I get all nitpicky over matters of terminology. Terminology is important. It's sets the tone and thus effects out attitudes and expectations. And today I want to talk about one particular bit of terminology that bugs the ever-loving shit out of me. I'm sure you too will have encountered this at some point. Maybe you'll be talking about TV shows with someone, and they will bring up a popular program you've never seen. And you know exactly what it is they will then say.

"Oh, you HAVE TO see that show!"

Do I really? OR WHAT?

You HAVE to see this show. You MUST read this book. You can't call yourself a fan unless you listen to this album.

Seriously, who the fuck put you in charge?

The reasons this get's on my proverbials so much is nothing to do with the actually quality of the requests. It may well be that the thing in question is certainly worthy of consideration. It's more than just that.

The whole commanding attitude implied bugs me. Because not only is entirely possible for to like a particular genre of things without having experienced your personal favourite aspects, it actually preferable. Because believe it or not, nobody actually has the time for all that shit.

This isn't just a question of trying to be a massive hipster douchebag about everything either. It works in either direction. It's entirely possible to like black metal without getting the metal detector out and go searching through for that one Old Forest album they buried in the woods rather than releasing.

I guess part of the problem is that people tend to associate their pop culture preferences quite closely with their sense of identity these days. Which just goes tom show how right I was about the idea of replacing religion with fandom. But there's no official gatekeepers. You don't have to do a quiz before they let you in a comic shop. Nobody is going to come take your nerd card away just because you haven't watched whatever ungodly number of episodes of One Piece there are at the moment in the original Japanese.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A NERD CARD.

This sin't to say that your experience of certain things might not be enriched. Yeah, if you like X you may very well like Y. But it's not compulsory.  Which is just as well. Because one of the main problems here is a simple question of time.

Do you have any idea of how much STUFF there is? Books to read, shows to watch, music to listen to, figures to collect, games to play? There's fucking LOADS OF STUFF. And even baring in mind that 90% of everything is shite that only brings the amount of stuff down from incomprehensible to merely unmanageable.  Nobody has the time to do everything.

The list of, for example, apparently mandatory science fiction tv shows I haven't seen is pretty fucking big. I've never seen Firefly. I've only ever seen a couple of odd episodes of Babylon 5. I've seen a fair bit of Star Trek The Next Generation, but barely anything from any of the other series. INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL. I've never watched a single episode of Blakes 7. I've seen some Battlestar Galactica, but not much. Hell, I'm genereally considered a raging Doctor Who fanboy and I've not even seen all of the stories that still exist, let alone messing around with the lost episodes. I'm not proud of this. I don't delight in ignorance. But do you know what the chances of me ever actually catching up on any of that is?

ZERO.

Okay, maybe I'll get around to picking up a few Doctor Who DVDs at some point, but even then I'll probably sit on them for months before getting around to watching them. If I never watch a single episode of anything twice ever again I'll still never catch up. I simply don't have the time. And you know what makes that especially weird? I HAVE NO LIFE.

Seriously, the only time I leave the house is to go to work. I'm unburdened by social commitments to the point where I only get 1 social interaction per week like it's on prescription or something. I HAVE NOTHING BUT TIME. Except somehow I don't. I like to watch Doctor Who, sure. But I also like to read Discworld books. I like to play Yu-Gi-Oh on my DS. I like to paint miniatures. I like to learn about science & palaeontology.  Even with the amount of time I lose to depression I should still be able to cover some of that, right?

Nope, no chance. I've a pile of manga a foot or two high that I'm still trying to read. I've got stuff sitting on my workbench that I undercoated LAST YEAR and never looked at again. I've got a pile of movies I got for christmas TWO years ago I haven't even taken out of the fucking shrink wrap. And don't even get me started on my fucking steam library. Humble bundle is NOT HELPING. And then of course there's the fact that I'm taking a whole fucking morning out to write about not having the time to get anything done.

So when someone tells me I simply MUST go watch Attack On Titan or whatever I can't help but be a little.... tetchy. I mean yeah, it looks right up my alley. But there's a bit of a congestion problem. Maybe once I shift the last 5 volumes of Sundome, build the ultimate Skull Servant deck, paint the outstanding monsters, complete the current run through of Reccetear and finish sorting my ever expanding collection of miscellaneous tat then I might be able to think about scheduling a time to try and work out if I can fit in watching it sometime. Assuming I've finished watching whatever other series I have on. Frankly it's a little overwhelming sometimes.

So... yeah. Not sure I'm entirely happy with this piece to be honest. I can't help but think there must be another way to approach the idea that get's the point across more clearly. But fuck it, I think the basic idea is there. Nobody has the time to do all the things. Even if you quit your job and focussed solely on consuming whatever subset of media full time, the simple fact is that since more stuff is always being made by more people means that you're on an exponential trail of Sisyphean futility. So maybe would should chill out, stop worrying about what we SHOULD be doing and just enjoy whatever it is that we ARE up to.