I would really like it if I could get some feedback from people reading my blog. I don't even care what kind of feedback would it be, any evidence that somebody actually reads it would be in order. It's not too much sense otherwise. What I post to the Internet is what I want to get to the people (and there's hardly any other way I could make myself heard with my social disability). The times I wrote my own paper diary that I didn't want anyone to see are long over.
The one way I found to let people know of my blog is to add it into an online blog list that collects blogs based on categories or particular topics. I googled around a bit and found quite a few such bloglists. I tried sending adding requests to some of them, most notably http://expat-blog.com and http://kiwiology.org.nz Now that over a week has passed and the only one that actually got back to me was expat-blog. That's what I got from them:
Dear goren,
Your blog appears to be too young to be accepted in the expat blog directory (10 posts minimum). Could you please renew your submission after your 10th post?
Thanks for your interest,
Best regards
Victoria
Share your expatriate experience!
expat-blog.com
Most probably the others won't add me for the same reason: "too young". At least, so I suppose, because they didn't even take the labor to explain themselves when not adding me. But how do I get my blog more "mature"? I can't just write something to write something, as they often do to get high post count in many systems where reputation is based on the number of posts rather than on their quality. I positively hate when people do this. There are too kinds of speeches: ones that you make when you have something to say, and ones that you make when you have to say something. And I take my pride in the fact that everything I ever wrote anywhere in the internet, however dull, goofy or emo it might have been, belongs to the first category. I'm not perfect (nobody is) and I won't claim that I'm always saying the smartest things - but I am not a dummy to fill holes in statistics.
But on the other hands, there's not much point to write anything at all, if there's nobody who could read it or comment on it. Most people who just start blogging initially build a support network from their real life friends and acquaintances, but I have none (none that speak English, at least). Thus, I can't actually make my blog bigger without getting at least some feedback from the readers. And I get no readers without being added to some bloglist. And I can't be added to a bloglist until my blog gets bigger. Kind of chicken-and-egg problem, isn't it?
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Happy birthday to me.
Just like every year since I can hardly remember when, the only people who remembered about my birthday were my parents in Russia. It's not normal, is it? In 27 years of my life I am sort of used to being alone. I had some friends and some social groups back in Russia, until I was forced out by political repression, but I was hardly ever a very social type. Asperger syndrome, especially in uncared and untreated cases, doesn't really help it. I probably should have already been used to people never caring much about me, if at all.
Nevertheless, there's at least one day of the year when I feel desperately lonely, neglected and depressed - that is, my birthday. It is this day when the difference between socially normal people and myself becomes painfully obvious. Normal people may have problems, quarrels, failed relationships and all kinds of issues with the society, but at least they can gather some friends and have a birthday party. I can only celebrate by buying myself some sweets and drinking tea by my computer.
If you've never been in such a situation, it might not seem like a big deal to you, but believe me - it is really, really painful. Sometimes I have those dreams of being frozen into a piece of ice drifting endlessly through space. I don't think I can live like this much longer, probably I'll just kill myself, or somebody else, or somebody else and then myself...
Nevertheless, there's at least one day of the year when I feel desperately lonely, neglected and depressed - that is, my birthday. It is this day when the difference between socially normal people and myself becomes painfully obvious. Normal people may have problems, quarrels, failed relationships and all kinds of issues with the society, but at least they can gather some friends and have a birthday party. I can only celebrate by buying myself some sweets and drinking tea by my computer.
If you've never been in such a situation, it might not seem like a big deal to you, but believe me - it is really, really painful. Sometimes I have those dreams of being frozen into a piece of ice drifting endlessly through space. I don't think I can live like this much longer, probably I'll just kill myself, or somebody else, or somebody else and then myself...
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Social experiment continued.
Actually, I got one useful comment on my question on Yahoo Answers. Well, it's not like it was useful by itself (in fact it was another postcount troll), but it contained a link to an article I found interesting: http://www.voxy.co.nz/lifestyle/climate-change-are-we-apathetic/268/23963
Of course, I saw this article before. It is one of the top links you get when you enter "New Zealand" and "apathetic" in Google. But it is sort of characteristic if you come to think about it. The author explains the traditional Kiwi (and her own) apathy in this way:
I don’t have a war that directly influences me; the whole nuclear-free waters thing has been achieved, there aren’t any rugby tours I’m particularly opposed to, and while I wish my pay was a little more even and some wolf whistles a little more infrequent, I’m not about to start burning my bras.
Other people have already fought for me on these issues.
The issue of my generation, and affecting every other generation, is climate change.
Well, first of all, when I said "New Zealanders are apathetic" I didn't mean "climate change". I can totally expect that the climate change is treated more seriously than most other issues in New Zealand - mostly because of all that posters, brochures, TV ads and so on: "Climate change is real!", "Sign on!", "We can make you feel you are doing something important for a nominal fee"... The state and trans-national corporations like Greenpeace make people consider the climate change as a serious threat that will impact on their lives and lives of their children.
Of course, climate change is real and there's no way one can deny it. Well, some do try denying, but it is kind of stupid. In fact, there are lots of conceptions based on denying obvious, well-known and nearly unanimously accepted facts. Some of them - like denying genetics, biological evolution or the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun and not vice versa - are plain stupid, others - like denying the Holocaust, mass murders and repressions by "communist" regimes or the on-going genocide in Chechnya - are both stupid and connected with dodgy politics. And I have a very strong suspicion that denying the climate change is one of that last category - a conception created by sold-out scholars on command by industrial corporations that do not want to spend money on cutting carbon emissions. There's some difference whether people say stupid things just because they are stupid, or crazy, or just having fun creating intentional logical fallacies - and when they deliberately try to fool people for political goals. And lies about the climate change are obviously not just some harmless craziness like creationism or the Flat World Society, but a deliberate attempt to create misconceptions in people's minds.
All that said, it is quite obvious that the climate change receives way too much attention from all types of media in New Zealand (and possibly in US and Europe as well). Of course, it's not the most important issue of our time. It's hardly even in the Top 10. I mean, yeah, raise of the sea level by one meter in the next hundred years is a rather unpleasant occasion, but it's not like all the borders will flood in one day. Most people will have plenty of time to build dams, wavecutters, raise the borders, apply drainage and what not. And even if the death toll from natural disasters grows 10 times from what it is now, it still will be much less than deaths from car accidents, coronary heart deceases or cancer. There are much more important things that impact millions of people right now and are able to jeopardize existence of humanity as a whole: wars, totalitarian dictator regimes (including very powerful ones like Russia or China) and loss of civil rights and freedom in known-to-be democratic ones, spreading and mutations of AIDS virus in Africa, agricultural crisis, energy crisis... None of those issues attract much (if any) attention here in New Zealand. Is it because people don't feel how such things affect them and there's no transnational corporation that would pay a bunch of celebrities to appear on TV and "raise awareness"?
There are as well other issues, that do not actually threat to kill anyone, but can easily make life pointless. For example, the copyright laws - what's the use of saving humanity if in the end it falls into the hands of some corporate pigs and their lawyers? What's the use of creativity, if the creation is only used to make money, not even by the author, but for some slimy agents and middle-men? What the use of technology, if it's not owned by the people but by some big companies that impose their own limitations on using, studying and sharing the technological advances?
And one can't say that those problems don't affect New Zealanders. Most computers here have Windows installed (and thus are, in judicial sense, owned and controlled by Microsoft), it is all but impossible to buy a netbook without paying the Microsoft tax, torrents are throttled on the network level and are directly forbidden by many providers, people can have their connections terminated on the basis of mere suspicion of "copyright infringement", universities have to buy ridiculous "licenses" to allow their students to copy excerpts from the books in the library... Yet, these issues don't seem to concern New Zealanders as well. The Software Freedom Day in Auckland must be one of the sorriest SFD events in the world, gathering about a dozen people together with the organizers, LUGs are ephemeral and apparently exist only on the internet websites, and there's no signs of any lobby neither for Free Software nor against idiotic copyright legislation. People are just being sheep led into the capitalist slaughterhouse without even realizing the awkwardness and danger of the current situation. That's the real face of New Zealand's apathy.
Of course, I saw this article before. It is one of the top links you get when you enter "New Zealand" and "apathetic" in Google. But it is sort of characteristic if you come to think about it. The author explains the traditional Kiwi (and her own) apathy in this way:
I don’t have a war that directly influences me; the whole nuclear-free waters thing has been achieved, there aren’t any rugby tours I’m particularly opposed to, and while I wish my pay was a little more even and some wolf whistles a little more infrequent, I’m not about to start burning my bras.
Other people have already fought for me on these issues.
The issue of my generation, and affecting every other generation, is climate change.
Well, first of all, when I said "New Zealanders are apathetic" I didn't mean "climate change". I can totally expect that the climate change is treated more seriously than most other issues in New Zealand - mostly because of all that posters, brochures, TV ads and so on: "Climate change is real!", "Sign on!", "We can make you feel you are doing something important for a nominal fee"... The state and trans-national corporations like Greenpeace make people consider the climate change as a serious threat that will impact on their lives and lives of their children.
Of course, climate change is real and there's no way one can deny it. Well, some do try denying, but it is kind of stupid. In fact, there are lots of conceptions based on denying obvious, well-known and nearly unanimously accepted facts. Some of them - like denying genetics, biological evolution or the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun and not vice versa - are plain stupid, others - like denying the Holocaust, mass murders and repressions by "communist" regimes or the on-going genocide in Chechnya - are both stupid and connected with dodgy politics. And I have a very strong suspicion that denying the climate change is one of that last category - a conception created by sold-out scholars on command by industrial corporations that do not want to spend money on cutting carbon emissions. There's some difference whether people say stupid things just because they are stupid, or crazy, or just having fun creating intentional logical fallacies - and when they deliberately try to fool people for political goals. And lies about the climate change are obviously not just some harmless craziness like creationism or the Flat World Society, but a deliberate attempt to create misconceptions in people's minds.
All that said, it is quite obvious that the climate change receives way too much attention from all types of media in New Zealand (and possibly in US and Europe as well). Of course, it's not the most important issue of our time. It's hardly even in the Top 10. I mean, yeah, raise of the sea level by one meter in the next hundred years is a rather unpleasant occasion, but it's not like all the borders will flood in one day. Most people will have plenty of time to build dams, wavecutters, raise the borders, apply drainage and what not. And even if the death toll from natural disasters grows 10 times from what it is now, it still will be much less than deaths from car accidents, coronary heart deceases or cancer. There are much more important things that impact millions of people right now and are able to jeopardize existence of humanity as a whole: wars, totalitarian dictator regimes (including very powerful ones like Russia or China) and loss of civil rights and freedom in known-to-be democratic ones, spreading and mutations of AIDS virus in Africa, agricultural crisis, energy crisis... None of those issues attract much (if any) attention here in New Zealand. Is it because people don't feel how such things affect them and there's no transnational corporation that would pay a bunch of celebrities to appear on TV and "raise awareness"?
There are as well other issues, that do not actually threat to kill anyone, but can easily make life pointless. For example, the copyright laws - what's the use of saving humanity if in the end it falls into the hands of some corporate pigs and their lawyers? What's the use of creativity, if the creation is only used to make money, not even by the author, but for some slimy agents and middle-men? What the use of technology, if it's not owned by the people but by some big companies that impose their own limitations on using, studying and sharing the technological advances?
And one can't say that those problems don't affect New Zealanders. Most computers here have Windows installed (and thus are, in judicial sense, owned and controlled by Microsoft), it is all but impossible to buy a netbook without paying the Microsoft tax, torrents are throttled on the network level and are directly forbidden by many providers, people can have their connections terminated on the basis of mere suspicion of "copyright infringement", universities have to buy ridiculous "licenses" to allow their students to copy excerpts from the books in the library... Yet, these issues don't seem to concern New Zealanders as well. The Software Freedom Day in Auckland must be one of the sorriest SFD events in the world, gathering about a dozen people together with the organizers, LUGs are ephemeral and apparently exist only on the internet websites, and there's no signs of any lobby neither for Free Software nor against idiotic copyright legislation. People are just being sheep led into the capitalist slaughterhouse without even realizing the awkwardness and danger of the current situation. That's the real face of New Zealand's apathy.
A little social experiment.
I registered on Yahoo Answers a little while ago and posted a question. That's how it looked:
Why people of New Zealand are so apathetic?
I came to New Zealand about three years ago, but I still can't get used to it. Nobody seems to care about anything or anybody. Really, I could die here in my room, and nobody would even notice. Nobody is really passionate about what they are doing. It is nearly impossible to organize any kind of event, after all running around and trying to make things work nobody shows up. There are hardly any people who are into any popular hobbies as well. Why is that? And is there anything that breaks this rule of apathy?
Honestly, I did not really expect all that much from this question, but I was ready to make some conclusions based on by whom and how the question is answered. For me, it's a social experiment of some sort. And I got my results, more or less. Sadly, the Yahoo system does not permit to comment on the answers within the system (or I just didn't find the right button, whatever), so I'll do it here.
The first answer I got reads as follows:
No one there knows, and they don't care
The best answer so far. No, seriously. It's not like I don't know that this person is a rather trivial troll and that this answer is just to raise the post count thus moving the poster up in Yahoo hierarchy, but there's absolutely no evidence that they are wrong. At least, my impression is that it is completely true.
Then comes an answer by someone named Princesspea (one hell of a nickname if you ask me):
Maybe you are meeting the wrong people or going about it in the wrong way?
Maybe you arent actually recognising that people are interested in things...just not demonstrating it in the same way you are used to.
I don't mean the above in any bad way...I just wonder if it's a cultural difference you aren't use to. Or, perhaps what you see as important isn't important to others?
Maybe. Why not? After all, if I was completely sure I'm right, I wouldn't ask the question, would I? That's the whole freakin' point - to find out if there really are things, that New Zealanders care about, if I failed to notice them during the last three years.
I work for a charity and can definitely attest to peoples interest and passion in certain things. I just wonder if you aren't recognising that.
Yay! The people of New Zealand are not apathetic at all! They care about... umm... "certain things". And those things are?.. Wait! Where did you go? Now, that's just great: you got me all interested, and then just disappeared without giving any concrete answer at all! Real classy, eh? Bitch...
Then, I got the following:
No idea why you are having problems with NZers. However, if you are unhappy there, why not leave?
No comments. If somebody said this to me IRL, I'd probably just punch them in the face. Did I ask if I should leave? Did I fucking ask you if I should leave?? Did my question read, like, "Oh, I am so unhappy in New Zealand, do you reckon I should go elsewhere?"? No? Then why you think I want your fucking opinion on where I should live, you fucking Nazi moron?? Read the damn question and understand what I'm trying to know, or shut the fuck up! Damn idiot.
It is almost unbelievable how mad you get receiving stupid comments like this one. The last time I was so furious is when someone said to me on some forum: "You can't expect people to talk to you, if you don't approach them yourself it's your fault!" This would be forgivable if that person didn't know I had Aspergers, but I just wrote about that in a few posts up in the same thread! Saying such things to people with Aspergers is like saying "It's your fault you can't climb the staircase" to a person in a wheelchair! What's fucking wrong with those people? Can't they read? Or do they have some learning disabilities of their own, that prevent them from understanding the situation?
Okay, whatever. The important thing is that I (kind of) got my answers. It is quite obvious, that New Zealanders are aware that they are apathetic compared to other nations, and their attempts to deny it leads to either frustration or to some foggy allusions leading nowhere. As for the reason of this apathy, I think nobody can actually give a decent answer. "It's just how the things are" - that's the essential idea. But I am still hoping that maybe I'll get an answer that would give some clue to solve this island mystery.
Why people of New Zealand are so apathetic?
I came to New Zealand about three years ago, but I still can't get used to it. Nobody seems to care about anything or anybody. Really, I could die here in my room, and nobody would even notice. Nobody is really passionate about what they are doing. It is nearly impossible to organize any kind of event, after all running around and trying to make things work nobody shows up. There are hardly any people who are into any popular hobbies as well. Why is that? And is there anything that breaks this rule of apathy?
Honestly, I did not really expect all that much from this question, but I was ready to make some conclusions based on by whom and how the question is answered. For me, it's a social experiment of some sort. And I got my results, more or less. Sadly, the Yahoo system does not permit to comment on the answers within the system (or I just didn't find the right button, whatever), so I'll do it here.
The first answer I got reads as follows:
No one there knows, and they don't care
The best answer so far. No, seriously. It's not like I don't know that this person is a rather trivial troll and that this answer is just to raise the post count thus moving the poster up in Yahoo hierarchy, but there's absolutely no evidence that they are wrong. At least, my impression is that it is completely true.
Then comes an answer by someone named Princesspea (one hell of a nickname if you ask me):
Maybe you are meeting the wrong people or going about it in the wrong way?
Maybe you arent actually recognising that people are interested in things...just not demonstrating it in the same way you are used to.
I don't mean the above in any bad way...I just wonder if it's a cultural difference you aren't use to. Or, perhaps what you see as important isn't important to others?
Maybe. Why not? After all, if I was completely sure I'm right, I wouldn't ask the question, would I? That's the whole freakin' point - to find out if there really are things, that New Zealanders care about, if I failed to notice them during the last three years.
I work for a charity and can definitely attest to peoples interest and passion in certain things. I just wonder if you aren't recognising that.
Yay! The people of New Zealand are not apathetic at all! They care about... umm... "certain things". And those things are?.. Wait! Where did you go? Now, that's just great: you got me all interested, and then just disappeared without giving any concrete answer at all! Real classy, eh? Bitch...
Then, I got the following:
No idea why you are having problems with NZers. However, if you are unhappy there, why not leave?
No comments. If somebody said this to me IRL, I'd probably just punch them in the face. Did I ask if I should leave? Did I fucking ask you if I should leave?? Did my question read, like, "Oh, I am so unhappy in New Zealand, do you reckon I should go elsewhere?"? No? Then why you think I want your fucking opinion on where I should live, you fucking Nazi moron?? Read the damn question and understand what I'm trying to know, or shut the fuck up! Damn idiot.
It is almost unbelievable how mad you get receiving stupid comments like this one. The last time I was so furious is when someone said to me on some forum: "You can't expect people to talk to you, if you don't approach them yourself it's your fault!" This would be forgivable if that person didn't know I had Aspergers, but I just wrote about that in a few posts up in the same thread! Saying such things to people with Aspergers is like saying "It's your fault you can't climb the staircase" to a person in a wheelchair! What's fucking wrong with those people? Can't they read? Or do they have some learning disabilities of their own, that prevent them from understanding the situation?
Okay, whatever. The important thing is that I (kind of) got my answers. It is quite obvious, that New Zealanders are aware that they are apathetic compared to other nations, and their attempts to deny it leads to either frustration or to some foggy allusions leading nowhere. As for the reason of this apathy, I think nobody can actually give a decent answer. "It's just how the things are" - that's the essential idea. But I am still hoping that maybe I'll get an answer that would give some clue to solve this island mystery.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Hello.
My name's Goren. Just Goren. It's the name I chose for myself, as opposed to being given a name by parents, church or the state. I am former Russian citizen living in New Zealand right now. I have already been blogging for several years in Russian language, my Russian blog is located at http://lj.rossia.org/users/ash-rabbi Now I think it's about time to start writing something in English as well.
My apologies in advance if what I am going to write would be a bit rash and not very politically correct, but that's just me. I have all the right reasons to be mean: I used to have more or less complete life, I had job, friends, a girlfriend and all in all some future, and then I had to run and leave it all behind, ending up here, where people talk to me about once a month. So forgive me my bad temper, and maybe if you know me better, you'll find I'm not all that bad.
My apologies in advance if what I am going to write would be a bit rash and not very politically correct, but that's just me. I have all the right reasons to be mean: I used to have more or less complete life, I had job, friends, a girlfriend and all in all some future, and then I had to run and leave it all behind, ending up here, where people talk to me about once a month. So forgive me my bad temper, and maybe if you know me better, you'll find I'm not all that bad.
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