Baggy Pants

NoBS 1:

Sometimes I just want people to shock me with being honest. I’d love to see the non perfected side of a person. I’m sure there are plenty of selfish and flawed people out there. I’m not saying that I don’t see that. I do. But even those people have a hard time just showing their baggy pants side.

Don’t brush your hair back, don’t sweep the strands back. Sometimes I just want to see someone in their raw state with simple little flaws and mundane boring streaks.

All around me, people are telling me they are honest but what they are really being is shocking or bold or an asshole. It’s all show and it’s incredibly hard to peel back layers when people present themselves in perfect little blurbs.

We were just talking about the state of presentation in Bindpoint the other day. We’re now a society of 15 second attention spans and our insatiable desire for instant gratification limits how we value content these days.

We don’t care if we get someone or understand something. All we care about is are we entertained? Am I still bored? If yes, then skip to the pictures or move onto the next video. Most of us can’t even finish a single article or a thirty second Youtube video because we get bored so fast. Is it the content? Or is it us? or both?

I’m guilty guilty guilty of not reading articles anymore. I just skip around to the bullet points and glaze over the pictures. I find most blogs uninteresting and the few that I keep bookmarked have nothing to do with the best tips or tricks or news on the latest gadget. The blogs I value the most are from people who will write a post on how they almost forgot to buy stamps at the store or how they noticed a weird tree formation on the way home. It’s not for show, it’s just for sharing and logging thoughts down.

After our reflections on this meta cultural shift, Jaminbee from Bindpoint came up with a proposal/experiment for us all to counter our growing need to only do things for entertainment and show. We’re to journal/blog three times out of the week with a few guidelines. We can’t edit our post (to avoid tweaking for “readers”), we can’t post pics (so that our content is free flowing thought rather than illustrated by bullets or pics), and we must post three times a week (so we are forced to start writing about every day things). This is to go on until the start of 2010. I’m going to do my best to keep it up with probably a few extra blogs where I can post pics. :)

So yaya! Now I have a great carass of bloggers to appreciate the non perfect acts of our lives with… Cheers to Jaminbee for this exciting new experiment. I think I’m mostly just excited to be collaborating with the group and hopefully getting to see their baggy pants side soon.

3 comments:

ObiWanAdobe said...

Very nice! While I was not involved in the creation of this, I do like the idea and I think I may follow suit. The idea of doing something that will force myself to slow down and appreciate the "Baggy Pants" side of the world while also making me exercise my mind in a more selfish way.

What I mean, which I probably don't have to explain, by that last bit is that I do have a tendency to over edit, streamline my thoughts as I type so as to not offend or bore a potential reader. The idea of being not perfect appeals to me.

I do realize I am the farthest thing from perfect but my mind does try to appeal to everyone. What can I type here that wouldn't make anyone hate me more than they already do?

Thank you for sharing this and I hope you don't mind if I don't also join you all in this, even as an tag along.

Alachia said...

It would be lovely if you joined in our little Baggy Pants cult. :) I added you to the No Bullshit, just Blog wave. Just add your blog to the list. Hopefully I can create a page to house all the blogs so we can hit up one source to keep up with everyone's thoughts. :)

Good luck!

DougFromAtlanta said...

Yeah we do get bored easily. We have serious trouble staying entertained....and then Micheal Bay was born lol.

An exercise tool I suggest is meditation, it really calms you down. Then go outside for a good hike and listen to the sounds of nature. With no ipod, no cell phone, nothing electronic. Just watch and listen to your earth.