Tuesday 24 May 2005

Pic of the day: Kitty girls are common in Japanese entertainment, but the boys who are obsessed with them are held in low regard. (Perhaps not always without reason..) Screenshot from the crazy anime 2x2=shinobuden. But kitty girls and the boys who love them are not the only ones who live an unusual life:

Life on the Long Tail

"The long tail" is an expression from statistics. It refers to the shape of some statistics where the most common elements occur often, making a bulge (head) when you plot it on a graph. Meanwhile there are a lot of less common elements that stretch out like a straight tail behind the bulge. For example the words in English (and possibly all other languages). There are a few words that are very common, like "the, a, is" and so on. These make up the head. There are a lot of words that are uncommon but still in use, like "erstwhile" and "moreover". You can live a long and fulfilling life without ever taking the word "erstwhile" in your mouth, so clearly it is far out on the tail. And in this way it is also with many other things.

There are some interests that are "head" too. Things that you can make popular TV series about, and write about in the tabloids. Clearly there are lots of people who are interested in those things. Also basic porn, despite not being in mainstream media it must be very interesting because it sells a lot elsewhere. And the female equivalent of porn, cakes. ^_^ OK, perhaps they don't match up entirely, but each of them have a prominent place in the colored magazines that sell well for their respective genders.

On the other hand, you have a large number of small "tail" interests. The expression "long tail" indicates that there are a lot of them. Altogether the tail probably vastly outnumbers the head, but it is too fragmented to ever get much mainstream coverage. Let's say you are interested in the artwork of the excessively intricate and decorative letters that start a new chapter in medieval handwritten manuscript. You try to find as many of these as possible, and study how they are classified, how they developed over time and so on. That's pretty tail, although I am sure there is a Yahoo group for it, I just don't know where. There is nothing wrong about your interest, it is rather a harmless one, but you'll get a lot of blank stares if you try to strike up a conversation about it.

The difference between head and tail can be subtle. I guess there is, as in real life, a body between. And the body has its own distinctions. Some interests for instance can be lumped together. If you are interested in the current Mahoraba animated Japanese TV series, then you are almost certainly also interested in various other such "anime". Many people will watch a lot of different anime, while others are only interested in love stories or stories about students. These days, anime is becoming so commonplace that it is hardly "tail" any longer, although I would hesitate to call it "head" unless you are Japanese. But if you are only interested in anime about high schoolers, then you qualify for "tail" status. If you are only interested in one particular anime, then you are very far out on the tail. And so on with many other interests. You can't tell at a glance whether it is heads or tails...

***

Of course you could have read about The Long Tail in the Wikipedia article, and perhaps found it easier to understand as well. The reason I write this explanation is that 1) you are lazy and want it all on one page, 2) it's about my life.

You see, I live a life on the Long Tail. That's what I wrote yesterday, just seen from another angle. Perhaps anime is pretty far out on the tail as some of you see it, but to me that is some of the most mainstream in my life. Well, I guess my job is fairly ordinary too, but I don't write about my job. And besides, if I did, I would write things that would surprise you at the very least. Because my attitude there is not very different from my attitude elsewhere, and that attitude is pretty far out.

"Head" interests are so taken for granted that people probably believe them to be instinctive, in some way. For instance, there is supposedly a "territorial instinct" located in the "reptile brain" (I am sure you can find out more about all these in Wikipedia or other reputable sources). Basically deep down in the core of our brains, we have instincts that are common with animals we don't feel much kinship with (and some we do). Among these instincts or "drives" as they are called in humans, there is also the need to claim a space as our own. Birds build nests, dogs pee all around the place to mark territory, and humans buy houses or, failing that, flats. I look around and I see they are willing to go to great lengths for this, lowering their standard of living in the rest of their life choices. Presumably the instinct is forcing them, much like the poor birds. Except ... there are people who don't have this "instinct". One of them am I.

Actually I did take a keen interest in houses and did daydream about them for quite a while, until sometime in my 30es I think. But then it kinda died by itself. I didn't even crucify it and suffer great pain during the process of mental necrosis. It just faded away. Somehow I doubt that the amygdala and hippocampus and surrounding brain tissues have died and faded away. So a more likely explanation is that it wasn't really so instinctive after all.

A similar thing happened with cars. As a kid I was very interested in cars, although not enough to try to take them apart. They were pretty rare and expensive back then and there, in a rural village on the west coast of Norway. Be that as it may, the interest continued at roughly human levels I guess, and then it faded. It simply wasn't worth it, especially not the way the Norwegian state is heaping special taxes on all things car-related, from buying it to driving it to having it standing in your garage. I haven't heard anyone try to explain the car madness as an instinct, but the fact is that people have them even if they only drive their lunch box to work, and even if they have to pay astounding sums to do it. It is definitely a head thing, but not a brain thing evidently ... Anyway, I'm happy here on the tail, taking the commuter bus to work and walking to the shop as long as I still can.

In contrast, real instincts don't die. They just fade... wait, wrong quote. Anyway! It is true that until lately, I have been eating less and less, but that is because I have needed less and less food. The flame of the body burns slower as we age. After the month without solid food, I got the pulse watch and the non-gnawing jogging shoes. Now I regularly burn a few hundred extra kcal, and there is no doubt now as to whether the hunger and thirst instincts are dead or alive. My temporary lifestyle change may be subtle, but the body picked it up pretty easily.

Even instincts that aren't in such active use still don't just lie down and die. Not to go into detail, but I'm probably more celibate than the average Catholic Pater and probably quite a few Cardinals as well. And yes, the sex drive does subside gently over time. But it sure isn't going away on its own, even though my brain is well aware that the warranty has kinda expired on that part of life. The windows and doors of opportunity are closed and locked and blocked with heavy bookcases, but tell that to my body.

In contrast to the, uh, "basic instincts", there are the more civilized notions of romance and dating and all that. These actually do fade into nothingness if ignored. Well, almost nothingness so far, but that's definitely the way the needle is pointing. Despite this, romance is so mainstream, indeed such an essential part of civilized life, that I'm sure most people consider it an instinct if they even consider at all. Of course, if people considered at all there might be a lot less of such things.

(I should write more about life without romance, if I get the days. It is easy to write, popular to read, and might even help some people who think the sky is falling if they are not currently "seeing someone".)

***

Recently I was disturbed in playing Sims2 (where my Sims have houses, romance, children and much more, ironically). The phone rang, which it very rarely does. (And even then it is wrong number as often as not. But at least I actually have a phone still.) A polite male voice told me that it was calling on behalf of such and such polling institute and would like to ask about money games. That's what they call them here, lotto and betting and that kind of stuff. I told him simply that I was not knowledgeable at all about such things, and he immediately decided to call someone else. In retrospect I realize that I should have demonstrated my ignorance instead. For I have this vision softly creeping that the guy marked me as not picking up the phone or some such. I doubt they have a category for people who admit that they don't know enough about money games to have an opinion. Of course, in our society it is perfectly acceptable to have an opinion and not know anything, as long as you don't let anyone know that you know that you don't know anything... And the one thing I need to know about lotteries is, they are a tax on people who are bad at maths!

In fact, normally when I am called by a "market research institute" (they seem to be pretty active here in Norway at least), I end up in the twilight zone. It is nicer than Kafka's stories, but equally weird. "Have you seen this or that advertisement on TV?" "I don't have a TV." "What was the last advertisement for a Type X company you saw on TV?" "But I don't have a TV!" "Which of the following do you associate with Brand X..." "I've never heard of them." "What is your opinion of the following auto repair stores..." "I don't have a car." And so on. I don't envy the poor workers that are supposed to plot my answers into their ready-made spreadsheets. I wonder how many of them just marks me as "didn't pick up" and then try to explain to their boss how they wasted so much time...

For some reason, nobody ever calls me about Japanese comics or online multiplayer games. And they definitely don't call me about sexual abstinence. Perhaps if I had lived in the USA ... I understand the government there thinks it is of the utmost importance. And I am sure I could teach Mr Bush a lot of things he's never known about it.