Something from Nothing #2

This week's Overthink: desire paths

A few years ago I learned the term "desire path," which is a path created instead of or in the absence of one designated. You can read more about them here or see examples of them here. If you don't want to do the semi-assigned reading, imagine a house on a street corner. The house has a front lawn with no gate, and there is a bus stop in front of the house. Over the years, people have cut through the front yard to avoid walking those extra few feet rounding the sidewalk's corner, and with repeated crossings, there is now a dirt trail where grass does not grow starting from the sidewalk on one side of the house, through the yard, and ending at the bus stop. With repeated action, people have created a desire path.

I was reminded of desire paths a few days ago and have been thinking about them since. I find them interesting from a sociological perspective, but as of late I have also found myself using the term metaphorically for my career. For the past few years I have been unintentionally creating a desire path that has veered far from my actual Desired Path. Basically, I've been cutting corners but without the added benefit of getting to my goal point any faster. I'll write but feel anticipatory defeat and leave the project unfinished. I'll look into residencies and fellowships but reject myself before applying. I am carving out a life by repetition that is leaving a permanent etching, and I need to self correct before the grass is no longer able to grow. 

So it's time to fix Me! Two steps of this somewhat Sisyphean task are:

For the first step, I am working on divesting from trending language and the homogeny of internet speak, which feels like a gargantuan undertaking. I am too online, and I could easily blame this on being too unemployed, but honestly, I have always been an internet girl. I'd finish my homework then spend hours on StumbleUpon dot come (RIP) which was essentially a way to flip through the pages of the internet; clicking the "stumble" button over and over again like a cocaine distributor to a lab rat. Every click on "stumble" would provide a new random page from the internet. The entire internet. It was incredible. I discovered things I probably should not have seen in my early teen years but also found interior design, cartoonists, science journals, and weird goofy videos that used to be what the internet was all about. I'd be simultaneously on AIM chatting with friends and checking on what was new in eBaum's World which apparently still exists!  Over time but what felt like overnight, the internet became homogenous slop. There are many reasons, among them but not limited to: every hobby becoming a side hustle out of greed and/or necessity, the rise of AI-produced garbage, the TikTok-induced short attention spans and blink-of-an-eye trends, and front-facing monologue videos that have dominated so much of social media. One massive shift I have noticed in the broader online culture leaking into daily life is the changing of speech patterns. 

In the earlier days of TikTok, Gen Z poked fun at millennials for what they dubbed "the millennial pause" – a silent beat my generation takes before speaking in a video. This is very likely due to growing up with camcorders, and having to make sure the camera was ready before speaking. With smart phones, the camera is always ready (and always on, but that's for another essay). Gen Z grew up with iPhones, so they don't pause. A simple generational divide made obvious by the addictive video app. 

But the generational divide in terms of language, slang, and online behavior is rapidly shrinking. People of all ages use the same trending terms, then weeks later when those fall out of fashion they use the same new trending terms. Slang that was once used by one group is adopted by everyone in a matter of days. And by everyone, thanks to the freakin' world wide web, I mean everyone. Accounts from all over the world will be using the same slang, which in many ways is very cool and in many other ways a bit sad, because as much as I find it interesting that people from around the world can communicate via slang, I find it in equal measure a bummer that regional specificity is fading away. You'll see examples of this in every comment section from real people and bots alike.

In complimenting someone:

"queen"
"yes mama"
"king"
"mother"

In showing you like the post:

"obsessed"
"it's giving…"
"I'm dead"
"I can't"
"this is everything" 

When describing a sweet moment:

“That's a core memory!” (co-opted from Pixar's Inside Out)

In congratulations for an accomplishment:

“Achievement unlocked!” (co-opted from video games)

These words and phrases are inescapable on social media, and are any more effective than just hitting "like?" Or is the dead-eyed vacant expression while typing "hahahahaha" now transposing to a dead-eyed typing of anything at all?

The homogeny of thought and lack of trying has also worked its way to dating apps, which when I first started noticing the pattern was an eye roll but now just pisses me off. Why would I want to match with you if you answer every question the same as everyone else? In the real world, you can't answer a prompted question by Googling or god forbid using Chat GPT to ask for help, and since usually the question is something like "what do you like doing on the weekends?," needing to outsource for an answer is particularly pathetic. How can I connect with you if you aren't the one answering?

Here are some answers to given prompts I see nearly every single day:

"I'll fall for you if…" you trip me. 
"Let's make sure we're on the same page about…" pineapple NOT belonging on
pizza!!
"The nerdiest thing about me is…" everything.
"I'm looking for…" a solid roast to flirt ratio. 
"The key to my heart is…" tacos.
"I'm looking for…" solid banter. 

Side note: isn't banter just having fun while talking? Or am I missing out on a subset of courtship where banter is its own thing? Banter is just talking! Banter is talking!!!! Also, pineapple is great on pizza, but why would a differing taste in pizza topics prevent us from dating? Let's just get one half with pineapple and one half without. Or better yet? Two pizzas. Regardless of pleading insanity due to dating app responses, culturally we are using our language as desire paths; taking the newer carved-out easier road to avoid going a few steps further. It's easy and shows we know what's current. It's also boring and meaningless.

Patterns of speech are changing because of social media's influence as well. There is a new jilted way influencers talk that shows up in so many talk-to-camera videos, mostly in the case of trying to sell something to the viewer. It's robotic; with unnatural pauses and a glaring lack of authenticity. It's almost as if the speaker hasn't formed a single sentence in advance and is instead coming up with each word individually. Scrolling through Instagram's explore feed shows dozens of these types of videos in a single swipe, but thanks to Meta's shift to inserting ads every other post in your main feed and between stories, you won't have to search at all! And on the topic of consumerism, we all saw the frenzy over Stanley cups and Labubus, and littlest old lady voice back in my day… HardTail jazz pants, Juicy jackets, Etnies… but don't seem to notice or care when our own vocabulary has been dominated by Internet Speak. The sameness has seeped in everywhere, and I have recently noticed it in myself– and not just in what I say aloud. If Internet Speak and trending slang has gone so far as to sneak into my mental monologue, then whose voice am I writing in? 

A facet of this phenomenon is societal adaptation. Homogeny in clothing, behavior, language– it's like with like. Our monkey brains perceive familiarity with safety. We are the same because we dress the same, talk the same, think the same, and so I am safe in this group. But if we act and talk and think the same, how will new ideas break through let alone form at all? 

And so my homework for… the rest of my life is to continue discovering my voice as it grows and changes as naturally as I can make that occur, because you can't know what you want if you don't know who you are. Sondheim comes in handy for life advice once again! So really my homework is to be online less, which proves very difficult for someone in a career path that requires constant self-promotion/begging for jobs on the internet. But I can't keep subconsciously adopting the language patterns of people I don't even know or spend time with if it's replacing how I think, speak, and write. I've lost myself and need to step away to rediscover how I actually feel about things with words my own brain wants to conjure. And that's just step one! Whew.

Step two (trying to figure out what I want versus what I actually do) feels just as challenging, because it is another pattern adjustment and I simply love to be set in my ways. But if I continue on this path of doing without aligning the work with my goals, then I am not even creating a desire path to a bus. I'm creating a desire path to a stationary bike. And that's a metaphor, but right now I'm not even really going to my stationary bike. It's become a glorified drying rack. Let's tack on "exercising more" as Step Three. 

So what do I want? Well for the past decade and change I've wanted to be a TV writer and humor writer and I have done that with some degree of success, but not with the consistency I crave nor a means to depend on it financially. I am not the only one in this situation, because as you may know, Hollywood (the idea not the actual town) is in flux. As a result, Los Angeles (the idea and the actual town) is struggling, or in internet speak, she's in her flop era. As the entertainment industry collapses in on itself then expands rapidly into new dumb territories (AI everything, vertical dramas, filmed "podcasts" that are just a way to get a comedian to host a talk show without union protections), then rinses and repeats, I am lost a bit more each day. There is no longer a clear designated career path for me, and I've created a desire path to my own detriment in its absence, carving out a shortcut-turned meandering trail that leads nowhere.

So to make step two actually work for me, I need to identify what I want to do, identify what I'm actually doing, then see what lines up and what does not. Today I'm doing it. Well, I slept too late again. But once I got out of bed I started doing it. I wanted to write an essay on this topic and here it is. But so many other days, what I want to do is be creative and what I actually do is disassociate on social media. What do I want to do? Have a new humor piece published, finish my feature script, get new representation, sell one book, write a different book. And what am I actually doing? Woof. In a daily sense, not nearly enough productive work to achieve these goals, but in a writerly-excuse sense I am thinking about these goals a lot! So much thinking. 

I am now forcing myself to pivot to doing, because shockingly, thinking about an idea for a book does not get it published. Thinking about being published in The New Yorker doesn't get the finished piece into the editor's inbox. Thinking about getting out of bed does not make me rise. Thinking is an essential step but the doing is the much more necessary step I've been avoiding for a myriad of reasons. 

And so I've been overthinking about desire paths and the sameness of internet language and the ease in which I tiptoe around getting my shit done, and there is no other conclusion than it is time for me to change, and maybe even take the clothes off of my stationary bike. 

Something I Noticed

I saw this cool bug! It's a Ten-Lined June Beetle and I’m pretty sure it is alive.

I also noticed a neighbor on my block left their keys in their trunk keyhole so I knocked on a random door to be like hey… do you know whose car this is because they left the key in the trunk. And the random door lady was the car's owner! So beetle and car keys– two good reasons to not stare at my phone while on a walk. 

Knitting Corner

My next project is still the Petite Knit Novice Slipover (vest) but I am waiting for more yarn to come in at my local yarn shop, which the knitting community abbreviates as LYS. Knitters are obsessed with abbreviations. It amuses me but also drives me nuts. The language of knitting patterns can be so needlessly complicated. In the meantime, I'm knitting a friend a "thank you" beanie and should be done in the next week, and the rest of my vest yarn should arrive in the next week as well. And then?? Time to decipher another knitting pattern. If any knitters are reading, what is your favorite brand of yarn? What are you working on now? I love lining up my next project before my current one has even begun.