Culture Vultures, MetaFeelings*, and Math
The unguilty pleasure part - me and the BF tend to like the low level celeb gossip. We both are more Pink girls than Perez girls in that Perez seems to just be super vindictive and hateful where Trent@ Pink is just playful and fanlike with only lapses of snark. Pink seems like one of your best work buddies and Perez seems like the batrastard who drinks the last cup o’joe without starting a new pot.
What we get out of it is the framework to vent about some of the representations - and in some cases causes - of a decay that we see a ripple from. There are always going to be underachievers, including charasmatic &/or malicious ones. Ditto trainwrecks. We know snarking about Britney stumbling around, seemingly substance-affected, in and out of cars, beds, clothes (…) won’t actually get back to Britney and our blather changes nothing. Whereas if we say or do the wrong thing to the coworker whose decisions we feel harms her kids through inconsiderate choices. The behaviors are more shades of grey than the black-and-white scenarios created for us.
But sometimes (for both of us) the blather helps solidify the vague enough for us to apply it to these other situations and I am certainly a believer that all cognitive procees can be building blocks for the battles we do decide to (verbally) tackle.
Some events really drive for me a desire for my regulate this industry much more stringently, although I admit to not having an idea on where to draw the borders (besides the ever vague “can’t you just tell?”). The harassment around Owen Wilson’s health issues from last weekend extend into this area.
Recap:
- What I think would have been ideal coverage: OW in hospital for undisclosed reasons. Plus general status (serious, critical, minor, …)
- What would be understandable and still fair but tasteful: OW attempted suicide this weekend. Details kept private this time out of respect for his family and to facilitate his recovery.
- Coverage I hated: Conjecture about relationship-driven reasons, Conjecture about substance-driven reasons, Conjecture about loss of career, the fact they had to have SOME form of “headline” about it everyday for a week.
Overexposure to issues such as these really make me reexamine “entertainment news” and make me try to figure out what way I can get the benefits of having this neutral arena of strangers to get catty about and to try to work thru the less daunting analogous in our mundane lives without augment the lesser parts of this industry. The same quesiness that would keep me from buying an Amy Winehouse CD (which I felt way before her FIL said this but for a starting artist the real $ is on stage and with merch. Has VH1/Behind the Music taught us nothing?) are starting to make me more and more reluctant to buy the same mag with that article.
Such exposure in situations like OW’s make the sometimes seemingly daunting seem that much more difficult. If the rumors are correct, not only does he have to come out of a suicide attempt tasked with trying to resolve situtions ostensibly too difficult to bear but having the additional hurdle of having this exposure and its aftereffects heaped on top of it.
I am sure this exposure is hell on the family. If the rumors are correct, a struggle those close to him will struggle with are the metafeelings connected with this. It’s hard enough managing all the “why” and “what if” circling around your brain without contending with constantly being prodded to share that process with the paparazzi.
I guess what is making me especially sensitive is that there is a situation surrounding a loved one from the recent past stirring up the same type of metafeelings in me that an alleged suicide attempt could stir. I have been highly motivated in the past to be continuously self critical under the aegis that finding root causes is the only way to know enough to correct a wrong. The flip side of this is a strong tendency to put a disproportionate amount of blame on myself for such things, and it is a constant struggle to know when such self-examination will yield a positive result or a negative one. I have to constantly pull out the bar of “would I hold someone else who is not me accountable in the same way?”. I have also been constantly reminding myself can lead to a “fault” tug of war, when chasing after fault really isn’t going to make anything better in the long run.
Having the intellectual tools to stave off these emotional storms does prove to be very helpful when these moods hit, but I wish I could find a way to stop generating the storms themselves in the first place. It seems like I am continuously stumbling into them and I have been fighting a low level feeling of anger/depression at myself re: this. I’m not losing the battles but I’d rather stop having them.
There is a statistics concept called “Conditional probability”. Using lottery tickets - a 3 digit pull: If I play the number “947″, I have a 1 in 1/1000 chance to win (each digit has a 1/10 chance, 1/10*1/10*1/10). But if I am watching the draw and the 9 and the 4 already come up (in that order), my chance of getting 947 given this partial draw (ie - final answer will be 94x) is 1/10. The math side isn’t real important here, it’s the concept of “What are the chances of XXXX given what has already happenned?”. The feeling that what has already happenned is CLOSED for discussion, it has happenned and just needs to moved on from has a lot of appeal. Just wish I could reset my mind to that standard.
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* I don’t know how you are on context clues. I rather suspect I am making up a word but “meta” is the latin root for “about” and I don’t have a better word
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inspiration has been ongoing, but feeling like it has gelled enough to write is kind of driven by this post. And I do agree with his sentiment re: using situations such as these to educate others. In fact, he (OW) is in a situation where he could us this to out depression/mental illness in general as more than just “bad day” and he is also perceived as maybe a little smarter than the average bear so could effectively articulate it much like Brooke Shields did about her post-partum experiences. That is part of why I rend to be on the candid side about my past/current Mental Health issues - the spotlight can heal as well as harm.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Actually, the root meta- is usually used in the sense of “above” or “beyond” (from Greek, originally from proto-IndoEuropean). In the way you’ve used it above, I’d read it as comparable to “metadata”–i.e. data about data, or in your case, feelings about feelings.
September 8th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Metadata and Metaphysics were the words I had in mind, actually.
Once upon a time there was a very old “latin roots” book at my house growing up and I read it from cover to cover. I wish I had found a way to keep ot safe from whatever purge it eventually became a victim of….