Extreme Noise Terror
On the bus this morning, that all too familiar tinny beat of another person's earphones reminded me of why I hold UCLA undergraduates in such deep contempt. In one of his books, Douglas Adams describes a race of people afflicted with telepathy, and in order to prevent their deepest secrets from becoming known they go through life generating sufficient noise to suppress any thought whatsoever. Welcome to UCLA.
These supposedly intelligent people cannot bear to strut around campus without some kind of electronic noise generator stuck in their ear. If they're not bellowing inane platitudes into a mobile phone, they're listening to inane music on an iPod. I have no idea what deep thoughts these people are trying to suppress from their heads, but judging by their vacant expressions I would be surprised if it was worth the effort.
posted by Captain Fastrousers @ 9:29 am
5 Comments:
When I first started reading this entry, I wondered why you had such a deep contempt towards UCLA undergraduates provided that my stance towards your comment, in the first place, was neutral. As I read it through, I was surprised realizing how stereotypic (or more negatively worded: prejudiced) and impaired perspective you have hold, not just towards UCLA undergraduates, but also towards the meaning of culture (on a small scale in this case).
iPod culture seems to have flooded the universities (at least in two major universities I know) in the United States and I don’t deny on this. Almost everybody seems to be holding different colors of iPods walking around on campus. This is the trend; this is the culture, which, apparently, are blind; being meaningless to comment on whether the group phenomenon be good or bad; being pointless to draw black or white definitions on an abstract cultural phenomenon. Although if you were to do so, which I think you did, it’s like you were judging on people whether it be correct to use a green color cup to drink water or to use a blue one. A particular trend/culture most often has naturally spread across space and time. By not exploitating another person’s benefits or rights, no judgment on the trend/culture is necessarily involved, especially when this trend/culture almost always follows a peak and trough cycle.
Here are two points I would like to make. Firstly, it’s not just that listening to music FROM AN IPOD suppresses one’s thought; listening to other forms of electronic devices, such as mp3, discman, walkman, etc, could also come down to the same conclusion if that'd be the case. So did you judge about the act of listening to music outdoor or about the iPod itself? Secondly, the whole point being made in this entry shooting right at the undergraduates, particularly from UCLA, was extremely unfair. Listening to an iPod and/or bellowing into the mobile phone have never ever been restricted to UCLA undergraduate students. I have seen one of your graduate fellows listening to his/her iPod and, other times, talking loud on the phone within the quiet working area. Note that this is only one of the many graduate student examples here. So what the fuck then could explain this? Based on enrollment statistics of fall 2003, UCLA had an undergraduate student body of 25,715 and a graduate student body of 12,883. It shows that the number of undergraduate students was more than twice as much as the number of graduate students. In that case, it makes perfect sense that more or less 6.5 out of 10 people you come across at UCLA with an iPod are undergraduates and you simply ignored your 35% graduate fellows.
I personally don't have an iPod and am not planning to get one. Simply becaue I don't like it, though it could allow me to tape lectures, store huge GIS files plus data, and listen to (what-you-called-inane) music (iPods obviously have more than one purpose for being purchased), but that doesn't mean I have to discriminate people owning one. As I said, this is the trend; this is the culture for the time being, so who to blame; who to judge?
*edited: who is to blame? who is to judge?
...blimey - I was just going to comment on the 'Extreme Noise Terror' gig from many years ago in Sheffield at which Will's face was introduced to the studded leather jacket of a thuggish mosher...
...but such a comment pales against such a diatribe, so I'll keep that one to myself...
Sa, although you make some valid points I'm afraid I'm unable to take them seriously, due to your blue cup/green cup analogy.
To serve water in anything other than a glass (preferably a tall tumbler) would be the most horrific social gaffe.
Shame on you for getting a graduate degree in geography!
More than half of the world’s total population earn less than US$2 per day. People in the tropics in particular may not even have cups, but probably some type of (wooden) containers for water.
Well, this is YOUR blog, what more can I say?
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