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If I'd gotten any work done today, as opposed to opening up the WIP ten hours ago and not actually managing to get anything written.
I got an email earlier -- I bitched about this briefly -- that was in part predicated upon the notion that I had both registered certain actions as associated to a particular individual, and that I retained who the hell that individual actually was.
Is it just me, or is making that sort of presumption about an acquaintance -- perhaps especially a net.acquaintance with whom one has had no private communication nor in-person interaction -- incredibly arrogant?
I suspect I'm a sigma or so on the low end of remembering who random people are and associating their past actions consistently to whatever file folder they belong in, which probably biases me somewhat. But I also can't imagine someone with whom I have no personal connection necessarily remembering anything in particular about me, or even remember that I hold a particular position, especially if it's not one of those things that I harp on consistently. I just don't figure that I have that sort of place in people's lives; there are hundreds of thousands of things that are higher priority in 99% of humanity's lives than my whimsies and my insignificant actions.
(About a month ago, I was having an argument with someone because I thought that someone was being stupid. I was talking to Kevin about it at one point, and he used a pronoun, and then paused, not sure if he'd used the right one. The person's handle strongly suggests gender, and I told him the name, and he said, "Oh, right," in the tones of someone who understood why I was having the argument in the first place. Apparently I'd had a go around with that person a week or two before. Didn't register to me as being connected. Lousy filing system.)
I've had people be incredibly offended that I don't remember who they are from interactions on usenet before they did something noticeable enough to get a file folder. I can understand the fact that the weirdnesses of my memory mean that people often get very skewed filings (because stuff that connects to whatever got the file folder created sticks better) is worthy of some irritation. I don't understand the resentment of the existence of prioritization that means that most people don't get file folders. I don't think that I'm in-nature different from most of humanity here: most people just plain aren't significant enough to anyone to get their own file folder. However many billion Chinese don't care.
My cynic wants to chalk it up to the solipsistic nature of aspects of the human psyche: sometimes, not being a named character in someone else's story can hurt. I can't understand why one would presume that one is a named character, though, in the life of someone to whom one has no personal connection whatsoever.
I got an email earlier -- I bitched about this briefly -- that was in part predicated upon the notion that I had both registered certain actions as associated to a particular individual, and that I retained who the hell that individual actually was.
Is it just me, or is making that sort of presumption about an acquaintance -- perhaps especially a net.acquaintance with whom one has had no private communication nor in-person interaction -- incredibly arrogant?
I suspect I'm a sigma or so on the low end of remembering who random people are and associating their past actions consistently to whatever file folder they belong in, which probably biases me somewhat. But I also can't imagine someone with whom I have no personal connection necessarily remembering anything in particular about me, or even remember that I hold a particular position, especially if it's not one of those things that I harp on consistently. I just don't figure that I have that sort of place in people's lives; there are hundreds of thousands of things that are higher priority in 99% of humanity's lives than my whimsies and my insignificant actions.
(About a month ago, I was having an argument with someone because I thought that someone was being stupid. I was talking to Kevin about it at one point, and he used a pronoun, and then paused, not sure if he'd used the right one. The person's handle strongly suggests gender, and I told him the name, and he said, "Oh, right," in the tones of someone who understood why I was having the argument in the first place. Apparently I'd had a go around with that person a week or two before. Didn't register to me as being connected. Lousy filing system.)
I've had people be incredibly offended that I don't remember who they are from interactions on usenet before they did something noticeable enough to get a file folder. I can understand the fact that the weirdnesses of my memory mean that people often get very skewed filings (because stuff that connects to whatever got the file folder created sticks better) is worthy of some irritation. I don't understand the resentment of the existence of prioritization that means that most people don't get file folders. I don't think that I'm in-nature different from most of humanity here: most people just plain aren't significant enough to anyone to get their own file folder. However many billion Chinese don't care.
My cynic wants to chalk it up to the solipsistic nature of aspects of the human psyche: sometimes, not being a named character in someone else's story can hurt. I can't understand why one would presume that one is a named character, though, in the life of someone to whom one has no personal connection whatsoever.
