05.06.08

On The Tantalizing Fringe

Posted in Essay Week, Rants at 9:02 am

Essay Week Spring 2008 runs from May 5th to May 9th, 2008. Each day Iíll present a short essay on a topic of concern to me; I have the option of including a pre-essay post giving updates on ongoing life events if necessary. All the essays this week will be here; the LiveJournal is on hiatus while I concentrate here. Some of the elements in these essays may be controversial; I hope, however, that most will be well-regarded and at least read with an open mind. If you have anything to say about them, please feel free to leave a comment; I read them all, even if I may not respond due to time or other concerns. Today, we take a page from Green Day and explore just why someone would want to be in a minority, given that doing so isn’t always beneficial.

“Hi, I’m a Mac.” Justin Long starts off each installment Apple’s long-running and wildly popular television advertising campaign with those words, and in response John Hodgman typically responds with, “And I’m a PC.” My old friend the false dichotomy rears his ugly head in those commercials, but despite the many, many logical errors and flawed arguments they make– come on, they’re commercials– I still love them, and try to catch them on YouTube when the new ones come out. My enjoyment of them comes mostly from the fact that I think Hodgman and Long are good actors, and the spots are cleverly written. But at the same time, well, I’d be remiss if I said that I wasn’t rooting for Long’s “Mac” character each and every time I see him on the screen of my MacBook.

We human beings are very much creatures of habit. Despite our self-professed independent natures, we’re also pack animals to an alarming degree. Some of that is a long-buried genetic albatross handed down for our survival among the other untamed beasts of the pre-historic world. Some of it, however, is conditioned behavior. “Do as you’re told. Go with the group. Stay inside the lines.” American culture in particular deeply values independence– within limits. “Be yourself– but not too much yourself,” the message goes. “Have your own style, from the ones we provide for you.” We see the truly independent– the truly revolutionary– as rare, as somehow on a pedestal away from the masses. Some are lauded, others reviled, dependent solely on whim and appeal. That’s not really what worries me– that’s more or less normal for our society; things that stand out have a pretty much equal chance of being promoted or buried.

What is of interest is what I call the “tantalizing fringe”. I’m sure there are other names for it, ones found in traditional, academic analyses of society– I have to admit with a bit of sheepishness that it’s my sister, and not me, who’s had real education into psychology and social dynamics– but “tantalizing fringe” seems to succinctly describe the phenomenon. The fringe is basically anything that’s considered to be outside of the majority of preference, but has a sizable or otherwise significant minority of popular approval or attention so as to inspire almost reactionary devotion in its adherents.

My family, for as long as I can remember, drank Pepsi as our favored brand of cola. When I was little, if we were in the grocery store, Mom bought Pepsi and that was it. (In actuality, we more often than not bought the store-brand, and I quickly learned that they usually tasted more or less the same (thanks, Mom; saved me lots of money in the long run), but that’s not the point of this example– ironically, I have to presuppose the old and hated false dichotomy in order to show off this concept!) However, despite our family’s traditional drinking of Pepsi, I almost always, when left to my own devices, picked Coke; later on it would be Dr Pepper. I’m still the same way, actually– I’m not exactly picky, but if I’m heading home there’s usually Coke in the fridge waiting for me. I never understood why I seemed to be the only one in the family who wanted something different.

Later on, I found myself getting ready to buy a desktop computer for myself (after getting rid of my Windows laptop, which existed solely for Final Fantasy XI). The Macintosh platform had been steadily growing in my attention and estimation, as it had improved greatly since my last exposure to it in high school. I decided on the Mac mini, and aside from some gaming and having to use Windows at work, I haven’t looked back. In another one of those little ironies– this one far more telling of the concept– in high school I was desperate to learn computers that weren’t Macintoshes, because at the time they were all I’d been using!

In the end, it turns out, I find myself always looking at what’s just beyond my comfort zone, at just outside of what’s familiar or routine. Now that I rely on my Macs, I’m finding myself pondering the conversion of my Windows machine into a Linux server. In and after college I learned PHP because it wasn’t C, then Perl because it wasn’t PHP, and then Java because it wasn’t Perl, PHP, or C. You might say that going against the general public’s choice is something of a pattern with me.

This trait is not uncommon among computer scientists and techies, many of whom identify themselves as being “fringe” people who dislike the most common operating system in the world, Windows. The predominant mindset in the tech world is that a monoculture is inherently dangerous, due to the stagnation that comes without an impetus to improve. In reality, this is a fundamental tenet of laissez-faire capitalism, as well: competition benefits the company, the product, and most importantly, to the consumers. Prices will go down, features will improve, quality will go up, and working conditions will improve. Obviously that all assumes ideal behavior on the part of all involved– which is impossible– but it is how it’s “supposed” to work.

However, there are some distinct disadvantages to going against the flow. In computing, specifically, choosing an alternate operating system– or, heck, even simpler, an alternate application for content production– can often lead to insurmountable incompatibilities. Granted, the situation today is far different from that of twenty or even ten years ago, when data on a Mac disk was inscrutable to a Windows box– even if both had the “same” application on it. But, even when data is interoperable, the applications themselves can be difficult to adapt to. Anyone who has attempted or completed the switch between Windows and OS X knows this trouble intimately. Tech types can rationalize their preference for the alternative by saying that they need to understand the “different” choices in order to support them, but this is at its core often just a rationalization.

Outside of the computing world, taking the less-popular choice can be difficult or even dangerous. In some cases there is literal intolerance for alternate viewpoints. Quiet, personal, individual rebellion against what could be seen as unreasonable societal norms are often met with hostility, anger, violence, or even murderous intent. Many individuals grudgingly follow the popular opinion, paying it only lip service, too afraid to speak their true minds. In societies where this is in place for trivial phemonema, the well-accepted practice of compulsory conformity spreads memetically to other areas of that society’s function until the end result– fascism– brings the society to an abrupt, self-destructive end.

I don’t think that those people who choose the alternatives, consciously anyway, do so out of an attempt to stave off slavish fascism. That would be attributing a bit too much to what ultimately comes down to a personal preference. But, it is interesting to note that because of the conscious perception of “going along with the herd”, the mainstream choice can elicit actual revulsion, even when it might actually be the best course of action.

What it really comes down to is that the individuals, like me, who seem to perpetually choose the alternative options often do so as a way to simply get a sense of differentiation. It is easy in this world to feel like one has an often predetermined path through life, where one’s choices ultimately wind up being meaningless. By taking the proverbial path less traveled, the individual sets him or herself up for an experience that diverges from the rest of the world, for good or for ill. It can be thrilling, exciting, or sometimes even more trouble than it is ultimately worth– many times I’ve found myself going back and taking the traditional option anyway after running into too much trouble off the beaten path. But, ultimately, the person who chooses the alternative feels more comfortable with taking that risk, and can sometimes feel apprehensive or scared to take what everyone else takes.

Is it always better to take an alternative? Of course not. Is it always better to disregard them? Certainly not. But, I’m sure I’m not the only one to have wondered at times why he or she picks the less-obvious choice more often than not. In most cases, the choices are mere personal preference; other times they have far-reaching consequences which might not be immediately obvious. Regardless, one should always try to be aware of the choices one makes, the reasons for the choice, and to know that whatever the reason, the alternate choice does not define the chooser.

A few months back, a post on Engadget detailed the results of a marketing study done on Mac users at a MacWorld show. The Mac users, according to the study, were more likely to be “more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large” (source). This sparked a lengthy (relative to Engadget comment counts, anyway) flame-and-Mac-bashing session. Now, granted, I’m not arguing that the stereotypical Mac user is an insufferably smug bastard who I would not prefer to deal with. What bothered me was the implication that all Mac users were stereotypical. I came across following remark, which seemed to be predominant in the reasons non-Mac users disliked Macs: “[...]I can’t bring myself to use a Mac. I don’t like people like that, and certainly don’t want to be one of them.” My response– and gut reaction, actually– was, “Why do you assume that you are defined by what you own?”

The film adaptation of Chuck Pahlaniuk’s novel Fight Club contains this line, spoken by the pseudo-hallucinatory Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt): “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f**king khakis.” While I can honestly say I don’t quite share the self-annihilistic bent that Durden caricatures, he has a very important point. What you have is in no way absolutely indicative of what you are.

In object-oriented programming, it’s the difference between membership and inheritance. OOP relies on the concept of object classes– specified categories that an object can be expected to adhere to. An object is usually composed of properties and methods. A property describes the object, while a method is something the object does. Furthermore, objects can be presented in hierarchical levels of specificity– simply put, an object can stand in for another object if it conforms to certain definitions common to the replaced object and the expected object. Usually this is accomplished by having both the replacer and replaced objects be descendants of a parent class– the expected object. For example, if the expected object is a “car”, anything that’s a “car” will do, either a Prius, a Maserati, or a Model-T. Of course, a car has as one of its properties one or more tires. Tires themselves can be objects. So, a Prius is a car (inheritance), but it has a/some tires (membership). A Prius does not “have” a car, nor “is” it its tires.

I am me. I have a Mac. What I am dictates what I own, in that direction alone. What I am includes the property “likes Macs”, so I have a Mac. If all you knew about me was that I owned a Mac, it’s likely that my definition includes the property “likes Macs” but it is in no way necessary that it include the property. In this way, all choices are the result of the individual’s definition without revealing absolute truth as to the definition by itself. Understanding why someone makes a choice requires more information than just knowledge of the choice alone, and it is foolish to assume that you know someone simply by looking at the results of their choices. You are simply playing the odds in that case.

Now, playing the odds, you can come close to understanding someone. But you can’t really understand them without interacting with them, without looking past the choices they made and looking at their properties– looking at them themselves.

So what does choosing the alternative all the time say about me? Absolutely nothing. Which, when you think about it, is just fine.

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