| ||||||||||||
RefBan
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
The Snarky Voice in Your Head Is Killing Your Productivity; Here’s How to Stop It
June 27th, 2012Top StoryThe Snarky Voice in Your Head Is Killing Your Productivity; Here's How to Stop ItBy Alan Henry
There's a difference between being occasionally sarcastic and a little derisive in your head, but when negativity becomes your default reaction, you have a problem. You may have had a wake-up moment, much like Anna Holmes, founding editor of Jezebel, had when she realized she was sneering at someone for no reason other than that the person was happy. Here's what she said:
How about a quick check. Do you:
Sounding familiar? You may have a problem. We sat down with Roger S. Gil, marriage and family therapist, and clinical psychologist Dr. Jeffrey DeGroat, to determine when enough is too much, and what to do if you have a snark problem. How Your Cynicism Is Hurting YouIt may seem harmless if it's all bottled up in your head and not hurting anyone else, but that snark is actually doing damage to you in insidious ways. For example, cynicism and snark:
Why Is This a Problem?To be fair, it's natural to be a bit of a jerk in your own head. Unfortunately, every day we see examples of snark and rudeness as the natural response to even the most innocuous irritants. Over time however, that snark erodes our relationships and makes it difficult for us to interact with others, but it also closes our minds to people who are different than we are, shuts us off from new ideas, and redirects energy better used improving our lives and doing our jobs towards being mean to others. Says Roger Gil,
Dr. DeGroat agrees, and notes that almost always snarky, contemptuous behavior is the result of some other issue in our lives. Whether we're projecting our own unhappiness or other undesirable feelings onto someone else, or we're redirecting someone else's contempt that's directed at us off to someone else, the process quickly devolves into insensitivity, anger, and resentment. We start being rude for no reason, we begin to feel we're the only competent ones around us, distrust others, reject their ideas or any ideas contrary to our own, and we stress ourselves out over silly things. Sound familiar? We all know what stress can do to you, but if the fact that snark is self-destrcutive isn't reason enough to tame your inner asshole, letting it take over your mind can destroy your relationships, too. And, Gil reiterates, when your snark starts to hurt other people or you catch yourself being surprised by how snarky you've become, it's time to do something about it. Photo by Alan Levine. How Can I Tell If I've Gone Overboard?Figuring out whether you're just too snarky for your own good is actually pretty easy. Ask your friends—if they haven't already alienated you, good friends will be willing to call you on your crap. Sit down and really think about your natural reactions to others, then step back and think: If you saw this in someone else, would you think they were a nice person? Of course, it's different for you, right? That lady totally should have put on a different dress, right? Everyone thinks they have a reason to be judgemental, but the truth is we're all the hero of our own stories—just because you think you have a reason doesn't mean that reason is justified. Photo by zombieite. Gil says, "Inappropriate sarcasm is unprovoked and inconsistent with the mood/spirit of an interaction. It can also be a form of bullying because it's a way of going on the offensive and putting people beneath you. If you find that your go-to response to an otherwise normal situation is eye rolling or smirking on one side of your mouth (both physical cues of contempt) or a thought that basically says "that person is an idiot", then you probably do have a problem." He also notes that looking back over your posts to Twitter and Facebook are a good way to tell what's really renting space in your brain. Since we use those services to vent—and they're a forum where others have to listen to us, they can often reveal a great deal about how we really think and feel. Look over your updates, comments, and replies as though you're reading someone else's stream. Would you think you're a nice person? Okay, I'm a Bit of a Jerk. What Do I Do About It?Once the realization has dawned on you that you could probably be a little nicer, it's time to get your inner asshole in check. First of all, don't guilt yourself—you need to vent, and plenty of things in our everyday lives irritate us. The key is finding ways to deal with them or let them roll off of us without getting bent out of shape about them, or resorting to being snarky and mean just to make ourselves feel better. Here are a few suggestions:
Just Be Nice, Okay?If you take one thing away from this, it's that snark is the mindkiller. Sarcasm is fun and great in small, appropriate doses, but unchecked it not only alienates the people close to you—whether you care about them or not—and destroys your relationships. In the end, you wind up becoming the bad guy—that guy that thinks everyone else is so terrible and awful, all the while completely missing the fact that the problem isn't with them, it's with you. Thankfully, it's an easy thing to correct. In most cases, all you have to do to keep your occasional inner asshole in check is to be nice to people and treat them the way you want to be treated. Remember Wheaton's Law. Tamp down the urge to be mean just because someone's different than you are, has a different opinion, dresses differently, or just seems to love life or their work in a way you don't. Then, take all of that energy you would have spent being snarky, and put it to good use: like living your own life and doing the things that make you happy.
Dr. Jeffrey DeGroat, PhD, LP is a Clinical Psychologist, specializing in family therapy. Both gentlemen graciously offered their expertise for this post, and we thank them. Title quote courtesy of Anna Holmes.  |
|
I Really Didn’t Need Those New Mass Effect 3 Endings
June 27th, 2012Top StoryI Really Didn't Need Those New Mass Effect 3 EndingsBy Evan Narcisse
Editor's Note: What follows are thoughts on the ending of Mass Effect 3, both before and after the newly-released Extended Cut DLC. Needless to say, there will be spoilers. If you haven't finished Mass Effect 3 yet, you should probably stop reading now.
My Commander Shepard fought to the Citadel and, after talking to the Catalyst, I spent an agonizing time—10 minutes? 15? An eternity?—making my decision. As much as I wanted to destroy the Reapers, I finally settled on the Control ending because the idea of self-sacrifice and turning the giant war machines to a greater good appealed to me. Click to view Sure, I had questions about the fate of the individual races I'd united to fight against the malevolent synthetics. But, if I learned anything over the course of playing through 180 some-odd hours over three games, it was that humans, Asari, Salarians and other races in the Mass Effect universe would figure out their own fates one way or another. Yeah, they needed me, but only so much. The series lore excelled at establishing the idea that these cultures had existed long before Shepard burst onto the cosmic scene. They'd probably continue in the same way. I liked not knowing whether the Krogan would try to subjugate the galaxy again and wondered at the hazy maybes of future Quarian/Geth relations. But then the Extended Cut came. The whole reason the Extended Cut exists is because a very vocal group of Mass Effect 3 players felt like they didn't get enough. Not enough closure, not enough explanation and, probably, not enough emotion. Bioware listened to them and went to work on an expansion to Mass Effect 3's finale. The Extended Cut doesn't spell everything out, mind you. But it does spell out too much. If you hated the Catalyst's Space Child persona, you're going to hate it even more after he keeps on just talking and talking. And if you liked his slightly petulant dismissiveness—like I did—then you're also going to hate him more. Making the Catalyst explain things brings him down to earth, the last thing a machine god needs to have happen to him. Now, I have my own personal feelings about each ending thread. For me, the Destroy decision is reductive and jingoistic. It turns Shepard into a hero for only organic life and leaves the cruelest fate for EDI and the other artificial sentient lifeforms that once fought by his/her side. Control is the most Christ-like, reminiscent of the assumptions and ascensions from classical mythologies. The human form is left behind for something more celestial and a higher ideal gets achieved for the good of those still bound to earth. And Synthesis shines as a beacon of co-operation where a true peace gets formed out of formerly incompatible ways of life find a way to combine. Refusal is just... ornery.
I didn't need to explicitly see my Shepard's tearful parting with his love interest Liara. I already knew they loved each other. Destiny tears them apart and that's tragic enough. The new goodbye scene works but it isn't necessary. Likewise for the Shepard narration in the Control ending. I felt like my ME3 avatar was more godlike and unknowable in that scenario before I got the skinny on his post-corporeal existence. I knew that the consciousness of Evan Shepard was doing good after taking control. That was the way I played him, after all. To me, the Mass Effect games form an allegory about societal change. BioWare's triptych of titles explores what happens when different civilizations encounter, ally and subjugate each other. Taken all together, Mass Effect1, 2 and 3 act as a fable about culture clash, how much we matter to each other and how those relations impact the universe. And, as befits a symbolic story, there's tons of room for players to interpret and imagine the little side stories and divergences in a fictional construct. The Extended Cut crowds out some of that ideaspace with a bunch of detail that, I'd argue, the game never needed.
Look at how the expansion's extra dialogue also chips away at the shock, wonderment and awe of encountering the Catalyst. Before I felt like I was meeting a god. Now, I'm meeting a construct, built somewhere by someone at some time. It's the same thing but all the explaining changes the context, making it more knowable and less thrilling. I can't help but feel that other players forced this diluted ending on me. They didn't get what they wanted and now I get something that I don't want. Before, I had an ending that felt like its creators respected my intelligence enough to trust me to fill in the blanks. Now, it's swollen with info dumps. As the Catalyst says in Mass Effect 3's endgame, "it is now in your power to destroy us." Now, an ending that, for me, felt just a little lyrical and poetic comes across as unnecessarily bloated and just a little bit destroyed. Who needs a slideshow when the scenes in your head are probably so much better?  |
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)