Your Opinion Is Wrong™

"The 28 hour law, enacted in 1873 and amended in 1994 states that when
animals are being transported for slaughter, the vehicle must stop every 28
hours and the animals must be let out for exercise, food, and water. The
United States Department of Agriculture claims that the law does not apply to
birds."

...

And why not?

Quite a few interests of mine are coming full-circle. A few months ago, I was reading anything I could find on the anonymity of expressing oneself online - I'd say that this started with an article that I was linked to when I first started working where I am now - it was about moot defending/discussing the anonymous nature of 4chan. The idea of anonymous posting is, in my opinion, a good idea - in theory. I agreed with his statement that a lot of people place too much importance on identities, which can sometimes compromise the original message - in other words, allowing their perception of the speaker to shape how they view that person's message.

Is this important? Well, if one considers the fundamental intangibility of verbal language (and I'm not alone in believing that it's a huge factor), then knowing who's talking to you will alter how you receive that message - you'll make assumptions based on prior knowledge of that speaker, unconciously or not. Accurately or, as the odds would favour, not.

This idea interested me because our existence on Internet is anonymous anyway - 4chan just removes any pretention of identity.

Sure, we can all fill in our facebook profiles and blog every single day, twittering everything that happens to us, but we're still arguably behind a facade of sorts. After all, what does that data say about us in the real world*?

Well, it might say something, but it might not. We might intend to paint a picture of ourselves when joining facebook groups and listing as many movies as we can think of that we enjoy in the hope that other people will like the same crap, but we don't know that the reader will be getting that message. I could list "The Boondock Saints" as a favourite movie in the hope that I'll be viewed as a guy who likes a bit of chin-stroking social commentary in a pretty violent film (how about that open ending, eh?), but in all likelihood, I'll just be telling that person reading my profile that I have the mentality of a 12-year-old boy. They're a different mind with unique experiences, thus forming differing associations. So, it's all a bit hit-and-miss. And we don't really know whether we hit or miss, do we?

I even became interested enough in 4chan to spend a bit of time as a member of the "community"** for a while. Why bother contemplate the workings of something without experiencing it, right***?

Additionally, I've been studying Japanese, all the while not being entirely sure why. One thing I know is that the language does interest me and has since I got my first taste of it in early high school, but that's not really an explanation to give someone when I'm asked, but it's all I have (obviously if I'm voluntarily learning a language that'll take me years to gain a reasonable amount of fluency in, well, duh, I'm interested in it.) I'm not that much into Japanese culture - I like some anime, but I'd hardly call myself an enthusiast. I like their diet, except for the fact that, for a nation which can be quite forward-thinking and rational, they are decidedly un-vegan in their dietry habits (although I have the same love of tuna and salmon that most Japanese people apparently do - I just no longer act on it)****. All the same, I never intend to actually visit the country - in part, because I'd rather not fly anywhere that I don't have to, and in part, because there was always something depressing about the country's modern culture that I couldn't put my finger on. But then, maybe the travelling-bug isn't in me. I dunno.

Additionally, I've been reading about the increasing virtualisation of our culture. More internet sourced information-things than I can count and quite a few books. As far as this process is headed, the authors of these sources are split into two camps - either viewing this as a factor for a future utopian society, or a future dystopia.

I was reading a magazine article called Japan's Private Worlds. It brings together the three things I've allowed to dominate my headspace***** for so long, questioning the increased virtualisation of modern Japanese culture - how people will avoid eye-contact and public conversation, how more Japanese than ever before have been living in single apartments by themselves, only socially interacting with others via a computer or other virtual interface. Privacy and anonymity is also brought up - the article cites an AP report that Mixi, a networking website, stated that the "...vast majority of Mixi's roughly 15 million users don't reveal anything about themselves..." and that "less than half of the Japanese customers of the dating site Match.com were willing to post their own photographs, a practice gleefully undertaken by the site's American users".

The article also discusses the concept of "Communities" that exist online, using soshoku-danshu, moe and other relationship-based communities as examples. This is a term that's thrown around quite a lot, but it's questioned here - the idea being that in a given forum that represents a community, any number of users could be merely 'passing through', giving some input after spending five minutes in said community, only to move on half an hour later. How do we really know how many people truly represent a given community if we don't pay any specific attention to this? The point being - the actual "community" that we're a part of (or are we?) may actually be a lot smaller than we think it is.

I guess Japanese culture is probably predisposed to lean in this direction with the aid of the technology that perpetuates a hermitic lifestyle and these products are, by and large, designed and manufactured in the same nation.

Both the products and the virtualised lifestyle along with them have clearly been spreading to the western world - I've only really considered this from a western perspective before - I've never really considered that Japan could easily be considered the genesis of this social shift. Hmm. Maybe I am interested in going there after all.

Oh, incidentally, I've got a facebook account now, which I activated last weekend, quite possibly as the last human on Earth who hasn't done so yet. Huh. Full-circle, eh?

*For those who are not paying attention, I'm not talking about superficialities
**I'll return to this momentarily...
***Say hello to Ted, otherwise known as "Jack-From-Fight-Club", otherwise known as a hypocritical tourist.
****There, I said/implied it. All you non-vegans are not either of these things. Please be merciful in your killing of me. Interestingly, in complete contradiciton to my generalisation, some Japanese coporations are thinking ahead in this area - synthesizing meat-products is something that's on the agenda and it may be a little less environmentally suicidal than raising livestock for slaughter. Maybe.
*****borderlandsborderlandsborderlandsborderlands.

Borderlands borderlands, borderlands. Borderlands borderlands borderlands borderlands - borderlands, borderlands - borderlands, borderlands borderlands.

Borderlands borderlands, borderlands? Borderlands borderlands! Borderlands. Borderlands borderlands, borderlands. Borderlands, borderlands*, borderlands & borderlands. Borderlands, borderlands. Borderlands borderlands, borderlands.

Borderlands borderlands borderlands.

...Borderlands?

Borderlands borderlands, borderlands. Borderlands.

*borderlands borderlands, borderlands - borderlands borderlands borderlands borderlands borderlands!