Green Room - Week 16 - Day 3
Sep. 12th, 2013 01:53 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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therealljidolI came across an article this morning about what they were calling “The Green Gator Effect”.
I’d link it, but I know the site has a tendency in get hit with more DDOS attacks than Putin’s best friendenemy’s LJ. So I’ll spare you the hassle and just cover the basics.
Think of an alligator. Maybe you’ve seen one in person. Maybe you’ve only seen it in pictures and video.
(I know I see them all the time, but that’s part of being in Florida)
What color is it?
Give someone a black and white picture and a box of crayons, the vast majority of people will grab the green one.
Because alligators are green.
Except they are not. While wet, they are black. While dry, they are grey. Occasionally there is an albino.
But they aren’t green.
Somewhere that idea got out there, and accepted in the general worldview of “how things are”, and it stuck hard enough that you could probably *show* someone an alligator, right in front of them, and a few minutes later hand them a bunch of crayons, and they would still reach for the green.
I thought this was interesting for a couple of reasons, (1) because it fits with what I’m reading involving color theory in Drunk Tank Pink, and how the little details that you might not consciously register profoundly impact how you take in the world. (2) I had never really thought about it, and I see gators all the time. But if you gave me crayons, I’d probably reach for the green just like everyone else. (3) It fits in with what I’ve been thinking about “drama” lately, and how people don’t see it, until someone thinks they do and mentions it, and suddenly people come out of the woodwork to declare that they saw it the entire time!!!
On that third point, that’s why I tend to cringe when someone starts bringing it up. Because, compared to just about anywhere I’ve ever been, Idol is fairly “drama free”. Yes, there are a bunch of creative people in a space together, with all that energy and ego bundled up under pressure – and yes, sometimes it pops free. But compared to a lot of places??? Our “drama” wouldn’t register. The Yahoo comments section would pat our “drama” on the head and ask it if it would like a cookie.
But then someone brings it up and suddenly it’s green. Everyone knows it’s green, and it’s such an overwhelming shade!!
You get out of Idol what you put in. I hope that the majority of people can come in and see that it’s grey, and that most of the time it’s not going to mess with it unless you mess with it first. It’s a shame when I see people thinking that it’s a green monster that is going to attack you out of nowhere unless you put it down…
***
http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/693486.html is where the poll is, the deadline is tonight.
I’d link it, but I know the site has a tendency in get hit with more DDOS attacks than Putin’s best friendenemy’s LJ. So I’ll spare you the hassle and just cover the basics.
Think of an alligator. Maybe you’ve seen one in person. Maybe you’ve only seen it in pictures and video.
(I know I see them all the time, but that’s part of being in Florida)
What color is it?
Give someone a black and white picture and a box of crayons, the vast majority of people will grab the green one.
Because alligators are green.
Except they are not. While wet, they are black. While dry, they are grey. Occasionally there is an albino.
But they aren’t green.
Somewhere that idea got out there, and accepted in the general worldview of “how things are”, and it stuck hard enough that you could probably *show* someone an alligator, right in front of them, and a few minutes later hand them a bunch of crayons, and they would still reach for the green.
I thought this was interesting for a couple of reasons, (1) because it fits with what I’m reading involving color theory in Drunk Tank Pink, and how the little details that you might not consciously register profoundly impact how you take in the world. (2) I had never really thought about it, and I see gators all the time. But if you gave me crayons, I’d probably reach for the green just like everyone else. (3) It fits in with what I’ve been thinking about “drama” lately, and how people don’t see it, until someone thinks they do and mentions it, and suddenly people come out of the woodwork to declare that they saw it the entire time!!!
On that third point, that’s why I tend to cringe when someone starts bringing it up. Because, compared to just about anywhere I’ve ever been, Idol is fairly “drama free”. Yes, there are a bunch of creative people in a space together, with all that energy and ego bundled up under pressure – and yes, sometimes it pops free. But compared to a lot of places??? Our “drama” wouldn’t register. The Yahoo comments section would pat our “drama” on the head and ask it if it would like a cookie.
But then someone brings it up and suddenly it’s green. Everyone knows it’s green, and it’s such an overwhelming shade!!
You get out of Idol what you put in. I hope that the majority of people can come in and see that it’s grey, and that most of the time it’s not going to mess with it unless you mess with it first. It’s a shame when I see people thinking that it’s a green monster that is going to attack you out of nowhere unless you put it down…
***
http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/693486.html is where the poll is, the deadline is tonight.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 03:05 pm (UTC)People who are determined to whine ad nauseum about OMG TEH DRAMAZ in a place that's hardly got any (Idol ain't the first or last place, but it's a damn good example) can go take a stiff shot of Shut The Fuck Up and chase it down with a big gulp of Get The Hell Over It. In my experience, those people fall into one of two categories: they're drama whores themselves who totally get off on the whole thing and whine about drama as a means of generating even MORE drama so they can jerk off to that too, *or* they're such a fucking paranoid 'fraidy cat they're frightened of their own goddamn shadow and think anyone who so much as sneezes in their presence is actually issuing a covertly coded death threat directly at them, because obviously a sneeze can't really be just a sneeze. Both of the above types of people can go fuck themselves, get off the internet, and possibly consider a career as a movie theater owner because all they know how to do is fucking PROJECT.
Do some people have isolated incidents or bad run-ins that can sour an experience or create an unfortunate first impression? Sure. It happens. But for the most part, if someone's hanging around a relatively low drama environment that tends to be filled with reasonably intelligent adults, yet they feel like there's drama galore and that they're always at ground zero for all of it, maybe they need to try looking in the mirror instead of at their environment when they're looking to issue blame or find the source of the problem.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 05:30 pm (UTC)That said, I definitely *don't* want people to just go away to get over themselves, I would much prefer if they saw that they need to (borrowing your tone) Settle The Fuck Down (/borrowing your tone).
I like to think that there's room for everyone and everything in Idol. It's just a matter of the people involved *wanting* to make it work.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 06:15 pm (UTC)Ok.
I'm trying to mince here. Let me use numbers. That will help.
1. There was no - zero - nada - drama in Exhibit A. At all. period.
1.a. We might should compare the list of people wailing over drama to the list of people who didn't participate in Exhibit A. It could be interesting.
2. There has been precious little that could be called drama in Exhibit B.
2.a. The pissedoffness of the twist a couple weeks ago is the exception, and honestly, the people screaming loudest LOVE IDOL VERY F'ING MUCH, (and would (and have) defend it to all naysayers who had balls (or tits) enough to say what they think in the Green Room).
2.b. The tossing of the poll COULD have been drama fodder, but it was handled so quickly and so well, it doesn't really count.
3. In the light of these things, people who are complaining about Idol Drama are not paying attention and/or generating a cloud of drama on their own (see PTW's unminced comment above).
no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 06:06 pm (UTC)I love your unminced words. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 10:21 pm (UTC)(Wow, I was in kind of a mood earlier, wasn't I?? *snerks*)