Ping

[randy_byers]

LJ posts are a kind of ping. "Anybody out there paying attention?" But whereas ping is trying to determine whether a host/server is out there and reachable -- whether the Other exists and can be accessed -- LJ posts often seem to be a way to determine whether the Self exists. If somebody responds to me, I must be here. This gets to be addictive. If I haven't posted for a while, I begin to feel invisible and immaterial. Likewise if a post gets no response. However, that's only true if I'm regularly on the internet. If I'm away from the internet, well, out of net, out of mind.

I used to have a close friend who I ultimately decided liked to piss people off because it proved that he existed and had an impact on the world. It seemed an unconscious reflex on his part. It wasn't enough to get somebody's attention, he had to provoke an emotional outburst. He was completely impervious to the anger, too. It contained no personal information for him. A bit autistic that way, perhaps. To him what he was doing was just an elaborate form of pinging, although clearly it was a bit of an unconscious power trip too.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on "ping", I'm now wondering what the existential/psychological equivalent of "ping flood" is. Nagging, perhaps.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the extreme of that phenomenon is mass murderers and assassins who do it to become famous, they evidently not caring about the difference between fame and infamy.

Like most Wikipedia articles on technical topics, this one quickly descends into morasses of complete incomprehensibility to the uninitiated.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

No such thing as bad publicity? I suppose it isn't autism so much as sociopathy.

I confess I didn't make it very far into that Wikipedia article myself.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

"Like most Wikipedia articles on technical topics, this one quickly descends into morasses of complete incomprehensibility to the uninitiated."

I hear that happens with the 11th edition Britannica, too. My, how educational standards have fallen.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No. It does not happen with the 11th edition Britannica, whose technical articles may be complex but are models of clarity.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

I suspect your sample of "uninitiated" may be... less than optimal.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I think not. There is nothing, no matter how clear, that won't confuse somebody, so we can leave those people out of the discussion.

But for my part, I regularly find articles in Wikipedia outside my expertise to be bafflingly written, and even those within my expertise are often poorly expressed (so sometimes I fix them). This is not a problem with print encyclopedias, even the 11th Britannica, from which I've learned much on the technical matters it covers.

And others to whom I've observed this have agreed. Of course, we could all be poorly educated moderns, and the original Britannica readers of 1911 would have understood Wikipedia's article on "ping" (a topic on which they certainly would have been among the uninitiated) perfectly.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

"I think not."

You never do.

"There is nothing, no matter how clear, that won't confuse somebody, so we can leave those people out of the discussion."

Absolutely. Let's declare 90% of the population, about whom the comment was made, to be out of the discussion. How annoyingly tedious it would be otherwise -- the discussion might stick to the point, or something.

Let's stop talking about those boring other people, and return to the most important topic in the universe: You.

"But for my part, I regularly find articles in Wikipedia outside my expertise to be bafflingly written, and even those within my expertise are often poorly expressed (so sometimes I fix them)."

Et cetera, et sequelae.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Nagging or bickering.

I hadn't thought of LJ as "pings of the Self" before, I think you're right. Or at least, onto something.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Bickering is a mutual ping flood. Ha!

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Very good thoughts. I have a current close friend - of sorts, again a rather autistic relationship - who does what you describe, and yes, she does it when, I think, she's decided the conversation has been not paying enough attention to her for too long - it's very strange and you've pegged that way the actual anger created doesn't seem to be the point, nor the actual substance. She did it on Sat in fact,quite suddenly after a perfectly enjoyable evening , and I, who had a lot on my plate at the time, rather radically did not respond but simply walked away and hid in the toilet for a bit. When I came back we resumed pleasantries and later, very unusually, she rang to apoogise for the lapse(though not quite in so many words :-) . I wonder if that's what to do: like dogs, train them by denying attention rather than giving it..

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Probably not a bad idea, actually. I'm impressed that she apologized!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Operant conditioning works on anything with a central nervous system, so there's no reason it shouldn't work on one's friends. And yes, giving attention is one way to reinforce a behavior, withholding it is a way to extinguish the behavior. Well-established behaviors tend to take much longer to extinguish, however.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I'm now wondering what the existential/psychological equivalent of "ping flood" is.

Secretarial work. Hosting a birthday party for a three-year-old. My morning e-mail routine.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm actually -- literally! -- LOLing over here.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

I agree with the concept of LJ posts being a ping but I don't see them in quite the way you do. For me it's about writing on a topic of interest to me and seeing if anybody responds. If nobody does I don't feel any less real but I do feel more out of step with the world. If people do respond I feel less like an island and more like an isthmus (which is perfect because I don't want to be part of the continent).

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, that's certainly the proper attitude to have. I was wondering this morning if Facebook works more on the ping model than LiveJournal: brief messages and responses that are more on the level of phatic communication.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

How I'd put it is that Facebook is close to being a pure example of ping. Anything which allows for response is a ping device but in the case of LiveJournal (or any number of other networks where original work can be posted, Flickr, deviantART etc, etc) there is also the satisfaction of creation. As you yourself have noted writing reviews to post here fills a need other than connecting with others. If you write a review and nobody responds you still have the satisfaction of creation because writing that review has allowed you to examine your response and set it out in a coherent way. Facebook on the other hand isn't really about creation (though you can use it that way if you try hard enough) but about taking quizzes or posting videos etc, activities which require little or no creativity, and sending the results as a ping. In the Facebook model then the ping is the most important part of the process, so long as other people keep sending you quizzes and videos you know you're in the social loop.

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

For me the addiction of pings and the simple satisfaction of having written out my thoughts go in cycles.

One of my old computers would make a sonar ping-like sound when I pressed my voice comm push-to-talk key when I was alt+tabbed out to my desktop while playing a video game. My friends would then ask me how my yellow submarine was doing.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I think for me it depends on what I'm writing. If I write a review, I don't expect a response (although I often get one) and am mostly doing it to get my thoughts down and putting them out there just in case anyone else is interested in whatever is being reviewed.