#living in a foreign country where u dont speak the language and no one speaks english.........is difficult. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

unorcadox · 5 months

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omg i hope ur hair redyeing goes well!!! i will try & think of some questions for u ^_^

what color are you getting your hair dyed?? is it the same color as before?? have you had multiple different hair colors... which one's your favorite look??

do you like video games... if you dont then disregard these next questions LOL but if you DO: what's your fave console?? what's your fave (number one, top three, top five, any number u want) game(s) of all time??

do you like pineapple? do you like pizza?? do you like them together (pineapple on pizza)???

what's your favorite kind of tree?? what's your favorite season??? is your birthday in that season?? :0 (do you have a lucky number & is it your birth date...)

what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?? do you like cats or dogs better (or both or neither)??? what's your favorite kind of bird? favorite kind of shark? fave kind of bug? (feel free to skip any of these if you dont like them / dont have a fave !!)

what's your favorite movie (or top 3 / 5 / ect!!) of all time?? do you prefer live action or animated movies (or maybe you're not big on movies at all)??

pancakes or waffles? what's your fave topping for whichever one you picked??

what's your fave chip flavor?? do you like potato chips or tortilla chips better??

have you lived in multiple countries, or just the same one your whole life??

do you like candles or soaps or scented things like that... if you do what are your fave scents !!!

if / when you go to the mall, what are your favorite stores to go to??

do you like cucumbers? do you like pickles?

do you like soup?? if fresh(?) soup isn't an option, do you like canned soups, powdered soups, both or neither?

what's the weirdest ask youve ever gotten on here (doesnt have to be from this blog if u have multiple !!)??

pusheen or hello kitty? what's your fave shade of pink (or purple, or both!)??

what's your favorite holiday (any kind; could be something very very minor like ''straw hat day''(?) or any big ones !!

do you speak any other languages?? if you do, which ones?? if you don't, are there any want to learn one day??

do you sleep with socks on?? do you even Care about sleeping with socks on??? some people make it a very big deal (all in good fun ofc) but i never know what side to pick because i go either way fairly frequently </3

do you like making websites (either with html / css / js or with a website maker)?? what's a cool / fun website you like??

what was your fave song of 2013?? what was your LEAST fave song of 2013??

who's your favorite music artist (or your top 3 or 5 u get it)?? who's your fave solo artist? who's your fave band / group of artists?? what genre(s) do you listen to?? what song do a lot of people hate but you like? what song do a lot of people like but you hate??

what's your go-to karaoke song... if you don't like doing karaoke then i would like to hear your fave karaoke song to watch someone ELSE do at karaoke !!

whats your fave decade of music?? who are some of your fave artists from that decade?? what do you like about it???

if you watch foreign movies / shows, do you watch them subbed or dubbed? (or maybe it depends?)

what's something you're looking forward to (whenever !! could be tomorrow could be in a few years)??

feel free 2 skip this one if you dont wanna answer i just thought id ask!!! but how old are you?? are you a student? are you working?? (what are you studying / where are you working??) what color are your eyes??

who was the worst teacher / instructor you ever had (doesn't have to be in school)??

what's your fave pride flag aesthetically (as in, regardless of whether or not you're a part of that group, just what colors / designs do you like)?? what's your least fave?? (again aesthetically im not trying to start discourse i just like talking about graphic design LOL)

do you use any really out-of-date stuff for nostalgia reasons?? (i.e. i use microsoft word 2010 & windows movie maker 6.0 even though theyre objectively not that good for this(

what's your favorite youtube channel (or multiple)?? has that one always been your favorite??

i thiiiink you mentioned your age at some point (its probably literally in your bio but if i exit the ask box my dumbass phone is probably gonna crash tumblr and ill lose this whole ask LOL) but i feel like i remember thinking you were a similar age to me (im 18yo / born 2005) so this is assuming you grew up at least partially in the age of a ridiculous amount of kids mmos being popular... which was your favorite (if you played any)?? is it still up & running today??

minecraft or roblox (or neither, but both is not an option u gotta pick one or neither !!!)??

i think i could keep going forever but this was really long enough as-is LOL i hope that's okay with you!!! and of course feel free to skip any questions you dont want to answer !!!!!! hope u have an AWESOME day. hope you see a cool plant or a creature of some kind <3

putting these under a cut bc this is long enough as-is LMFAO

1. redyed black w blonde! never done anything that isn't those or my natural color lol

2. the dreamcast sweep. also splatoon, the beginner's guide, another game on this list, pokemon legends arceus, and bomb rush cyberfunk/jet set radio future

3. pineapple and pizza are good individually but i haven't tried them together, they sound good tho.

4. palm trees! fav season is winter, bday's in late summer. no lucky number tbh.

5. cinnamon ice cream. cats. blue jays. no idea on sharks but great whites are so silly cute :) gummy sharks actually LOL. preying mantis or bees (if they aren't in the same area as me.)

6. not big on movies tbh, but everything everywhere all at once. i prefer animation tho.

7. pancakes, haven't experimented much bc i don't have them much LOL i like classic maple syrup! i wanna try strawberry stuff tho.

8. tortilla chips for utility, but potato chips for like. the longevity of being able to eat a lot without getting bored. i'm actually a plain ruffles fan out of all things.

9. never been outside the US 🥴

10. sensory issues make that stuff hard but lavender is my traditional go-to.

11. torrid for clothes :)

12. cucumbers are ok. pickles are good but i'm afraid of having them again for some reason. autism sweep

13. soup is generally a no-go.

14. weirdest is defs the person who was fixated on the idea of paying someone to eat something vile?!?!?! got multiple about that.

15. hello kitty if i have to choose for the dreamcasts LOL they're so pretty. i really like blue-leaning purples and red-leaning pinks

16. halloween and christmas bc they're both so so good vibeswise

17. i took spanish for 4 years and was doing well with it but then i fell off tbh. i'd like to learn french but we'll see.

18. i have no opinion, i don't personally but i don't care as long as the floor is clean Or i don't have to share a bed with you LOL

19. i just mess around w carrd tbh i need to step up. i really like my mutuals' neocities but i don't wanna link them on an account this big unprompted LMFAO

20. using the top 100 end list bc im lazy. paramore's still into you is my favorite, cruise by fgl & nelly is my least fav.

21. don't wanna go too in depth here but generally lucy dacus is my answer for any single favorite artist. i'm primarily a pop/folk listener but i listen to a lot.

22. never been to or done karaoke but i'd pay to see someone do love on top by beyonce with all the key changes.

23. a take that will get me attacked, buat the 2020s so far have been stunningly good for me personally at least in music. indie music is absolutely insane and there's a lot of freedom with it rn it's so good. :)

24. i don't, but i'd watch subbed. personally i don't mind either, though.

25. tomorrow. no elaboration but thanks for giving me the perfect place to hide it in the middle of this LOL

26. i'm 25, failed student, about to start working (loooong story don't ask lol), brown eyes!

27. physics teacher who used me as a TA bc i already took the class but would punish me for studying for other classes.

28. aroace is stunning but i have no overlap LOL. bi flag unevenness makes me mad, not a huuuge fan of the trans flag colors (boo pastels.)

29. i use old ios icons for my phone on a custom launcher! i handmade some for other things.

30. youtubers... ro ramdin, alpharad (especially gold, shoutout everyone who watched every episode), prochara are my top 3!

31. born 1998 LOL but like... legally i have to say it was toontown even if i never played during its main playtime (i do have an unwritten account tho.) my husband has it as his special interest so i do have some affinity for it even if it makes me very annoyed at times LOL.

32. minecraft, roblox means nothing to me.

whew! thank you for the most ever wow. hope this is comprehensive LMAOOO

#not edits #asks #long post #asker you went above and fucking beyond hellooooo #like my GOD

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thatbitchsimone · 1 year

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Thank you that’s very sweet, you’re very kind

I just read and observe people and then after some time I eventually pick up on their habits and the way they talk and that’s what I did while learning English

Obviously I knew English because I learnt it in school but I never spoke it and I wasn’t great at communicating in it because where I live we usually speak my mother tongue which is pashto and urdu (I live in pakistan btw)

I’m 20 so before I was 17 when I started learning, that too because I got into this phase where I didn’t like talking to people and just reading and writing and on my phone and the quarantine really helped lol so that made me learn English and eventually get introduced to all the western media

And I because I had been always very close to my family so we watched the same shows and I wasn’t really at all on social media, probably because the lack of knowing English so I felt kind of insecure being on social media if I wasn’t able to understand the stuff on it, so no idea of western celebs or anything like that (I knew the very famous ones like angelina jolie etc because once I saw her face printed on a bag while I was shopping when I was like 12 and I though she was gorgeous anyways I’m rambling!!! Now hahah)

Anyways the point is, sometimes it makes me feel like, social media and real life are two different planets because the stuff on it so flabbergasting and weird (but also it has its many good sides and effects as well like talking to people and that’s great for me cause I love talking to people) but What kind of makes me sad is that it’s not 2 different planets, it’s all the same and the people who are so unkind and crazy on the internet are among us

It’s very weird

loved reading this! thank u so much

i mostly learned english from reading and watching movies etc as well actually but then again i was very young (i was fully fluent by the time i was around 9 i think) and children pick up languages very fast and i live in sweden where american and english media and pop culture is very widespread and part of the culture (probably bc sweden is a western country and america is very dominant in western media in general) so people learn english very well and easily here like swedes are known for it and foreigners often struggle to learn swedish bc the natives all switch to english when they notice u dont speak swedish so lots of foreigners and immigrants have to straight up ask people to talk to them in swedish more so they can learn and practice it lol but i think that goes to show that the best way to learn a language is to watch and read media in that language and observe it in casual conversation rather than just go by how ur taught it in classes etc

i honestly think its a good thing that u didnt partake in social media when u were younger. i think a lot of the people that dont seperate social media from real life are the ones who started using it early so they have almost spent more time in the social media and online world than the actual real world and get less real world interactions than online ones. i think its very unhealthy to not be able to seperate the 2 and just like u said, the online world and the real world are 2 different things and people forget that they are interacting with real living humans thru the screen and thats when it gets toxic and crazy and hostile. people kind of lose their social skills when they only interact with others behind a screen and its very concerning. ive always talked to ppl online the way i would talk face to face and its always weird to me when others dont do the same bc its like would u say these things ur saying online if the person was face to face with u? if u wouldnt then just dont. its cowardly and embarrassing behavior and its just gonna rot ur brain and soul and make u lose touch with reality and how u connect to others on a human level

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butchviking · 4 years

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What are your Thoughts on moving to a foreign country? I moved to Korea a couple years ago so I'm definitely biased, but we get all types of weird here...

sry for the delay, i got this super late last night so i figured i'd save them til i woke up w a slightly clearer head

so to be clear i don't think there's anything inherently bad about moving to a foreign country, sometimes it's perfectly fine & respectful & no problem. but I do think that there's often certain aspects/attitudes that are. shall we say Problematic. this is probably more going to be a list of half-baked thoughts rather than diving too deep, and this is definitely going to be from the point of view of i, an english, talking mostly about the english (and a little about white americans bc theyre us)

the gentrification aspect is a big thing. rich english people moving to places like benidorm is one example that comes to mind - the way tourism changed the city so u have the tourist centre and then the "old town" further out, so then people start travelling and moving to the old town because it's more "authentic" as though THEY aren't part of pushing that "authenticity" further and further out. I also had an uncle who used to visit thailand a lot and he loved it because the savings he was travelling on were worth so much more there. He never moved, but if he did I'd be judgy of that kind of taking advantage too.

related to the last, a lot of english expats in places like spain had the audacity to be pro-brexit because they didn't want immigrants coming here to "take advantage" of the country's resources, particularly the nhs. but they didn't think what they were doing was the same because they contribute where they are (: as though immigrants never contribute here, and as though they were all even working instead of many being retirees.

this take may be problematic but i DO think there's something to be said for helping out at home instead of taking your contributions elsewhere. every single country has its issues and the people who are best equipped to overcome those are the people who have known the countries since birth. when a country is going through rough issues & people are just like 'im getting out' it does feel a little like... abandonment? especially considering those who up & move in times of trouble are often those who have enough stability & security that they'd be able to make difference in ways the people fighting to just keep their heads above water can't necessarily. again thinking a bit about brexit, and also a little about trump's election, how so many left-wingers were like "well this is stupid i am leaving" and i'm like, please don't? we have real problems here that need fixing? if everyone who disagreed with the political trajectory of the country just left who would be left to stand up against it? dont leave us alone with bojo im beggin

sometimes it comes from a fetishisation of culture for sure. there are weebs who move to japan, there are koreaboos who move to korea, etc. then these people walk around looking like idiots, being disrespectful, and giving their native country a bad name. you could say there's an upside to this, in that they learn the real culture of where they are and hopefully it humanises & normalises the people there for them, but.... that's at the cost of everyone having to put up w/ them. and im not sure that's always worth it. go home and learn some respect, then visit politely, THEN maybe consider moving.

there's a certain amount of cultural erosion that can happen when people move with the wrong mindset. if people have the RIGHT mindset, then moving to other countries helps preserve cultures that have maybe been trodden down, because it's more people getting to learn about those cultures - but with the wrong mindset, people just end up further treading all over everything. an example for this one is the english moving to wales. the welsh language has made a big comeback over the past few decades, but for a long time the english were pretty much on a quest to wipe it out, such that even a huge number of welsh people never got the opportunity to learn their own language. so while it would be really cool for english people living in wales to learn welsh, and be part of bringing that language back to the forefront, they by and large simply don't. given that there are whole villages in wales now where almost everyone there is english, those are villages where the native language is not getting its chance to flourish, and where the welsh who DO speak it are forced to speak english anyway because it's just easier when surrounded by all these english people. this point applies MUCH harder in ireland too, where the irish language hasn't yet managed to make nearly as much of a comeback as the welsh, but I use wales as an example bc I'm more familiar w it, having never been to ireland.

none of these mean people should never move countries or anything, but it's just. really important to be respectful in how it's done. otherwise it frankly comes off as colonisation without invasion. also gotta add that these truly are half-formed thoughts that i've never really laid out like this or had a long think about before, so i'm very open to discussion on any counterpoints or additions.

#an anon asked the same question nd im obv not gna post both so anon consider this your answer too #smolist #ask

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noscorpsaladerive · 7 years

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i'm on exchange & i've only been here 2 days but all i want to do is isolate myself i needed to go grocery shopping yesterday but i didn't leave until 2pm because until then i was just shut in my room like it was a fortress against the foreign country & against the language that i feel like i should be better at than i am. & lectures don't even start for 2 weeks so i dont even have that. do u have any advice? how do i stop isolating myself & missing home? i didnt even have a honeymoon phase

Off the top of my head, I would suggest a couple of things. One, find a friend or at least a touring/exploring buddy if you can. The first time I studied abroad, I isolated myself a lot partly because I didn’t really make friends. Luckily I had a housemate who was doing the same program, and even though she wasn’t my favorite person ever, we still went and did touristy things together, which helped with getting out of the house and feeling less isolated. Depending on how your program is set up, it might be difficult to do this before lectures start, but definitely find a buddy or two when classes do get going. Two, go do touristy things, even if it’s by yourself. See if you can find a tour of your city so you can start to get a feel for what’s where and also hopefully become more comfortable in your surroundings.

Also please know that it is 100% okay and valid to be homesick and also feel worried about language skills. I’ve been taking French going on nine years and I still feel incompetent A LOT, especially when I’m in France or speaking to a native speaker. So please know that you’re not alone. Also it’s been my experience that as long as you try to speak the language, even if it’s just to say “hello” and ask if they speak English, people will do their best to be polite and accommodating.

As far as homesickness goes, I don’t really have a good answer. Both times I was abroad, I could just look at a picture of my cat and want to start crying sometimes. I do think that getting out and getting more comfortable with your city will probably help, and finding a friend or two will for sure.

Another thing is that the honeymoon period doesn’t have to be at the beginning of your time abroad. It’s totally okay to have a not-so-great start. When I first got to Paris, I was exhausted, my suitcase was lost, and because I was in a chambre de bonne four floors above the main part of my host fam’s apartment, I was completely alone in a tiny room and feeling so incredibly overwhelmed I called my mom and literally wept and had a bit of a breakdown within three days of arrival. The only thing I wanted to do was go home. It wasn’t until later when I got used to living and studying there and when I found a few good friends that I really had my honeymoon period.

I hope that this helps at least a little bit, and please feel free to message me (on anon or not) if you have more questions or even if you just need to express what you’re feeling. I’m here for you, and I really do hope things get better for you

#Anonymous #ella gets an ask

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shadowybearkoala-blog · 6 years

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TOPIK Essay Writing Guide ' Evaluation and Marking Scheme

October 3, 2017 Written By Satish Satyarthi 26 Comments

The readers of TOPIK GUIDE have frequently been writing to us for some guidance on the Essay part of TOPIK Writing (쓰기) section. So Here We are putting this detailed article about this.

Most of the questions in TOPIK are multiple choice and objective type where there is, clearly, only one correct answer. You don't even need a human to check if the answers are right or wrong. Mostly OMR recognition softwares do the job. The problem is with the subjective type questions. In these questions there is no 'one correct answer'. Different persons can give different answers and they all may be correct. Sometimes it is difficult to even say whether the answer is right or wrong because it may be partially right and partially wrong.

This type of questions generally appear in the Writing section of TOPIK. And believe me, you are not the only person who find them difficult. Evaluating this type of questions is the most difficult task for Examiners as well. As these questions are evaluated by real humanss and not the machines, there are high chances of variation in evaluation process depending upon the personality and psychological status of the examiner. And that's why it confuses the test takers on what and how to write the answer of such questions so that it looks correct to the evaluator. Particularly, the TOPIK Essay writing part is the most difficult of these subjective questions.

In this series on TOPIK essay writing, we are going to clear all those doubts. We are going to tell you exactly how TOPIK essays are evaluated and marked. The series is based on 'model evaluation guideline' from NIIED, the organization that conducts the TOPIK test.

We have divided the series in to 3 parts in which we will take 3 model essays each from beginner, intermediate and advanced levels of TOPIK and will analyse the evaluation system by giving detailed marking pattern of 3 model answer essays.

Below is the model guideline that all the evaluators have to follow, according to NIIED:-

We will start with the Beginner Level.

Here is the Essay Question that we will take as a model:-

I am leaving you with three example answer essay. read properly and think how you would mark them if you were the examiner. In the next post we will see how the TOPIK evaluators marked them.

TOPIK Beginner Model Essay 1

TOPIK Beginner Model Essay 2

About Satish Satyarthi

Satish is the Founding Editor of TOPIK GUIDE. He is passionate about helping Korean language learners succeed in TOPIK test and achieve their goals. He has a Masters degree in 'Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language (외국어로서의 한국어교육)' from Seoul National University and is currently pursuing his PhD in Korean language. He has been involved in Korean language teaching and research for more than 6 years.

Hello, thanks for this post.

İ think first one is best, right

Because second one has some mistakes and third one is not good

How abkut this essay's points. İ wonder bexause i will get this exam next year.

그래서 열심히 공부 합니다. 정말 감서헙니다.

Thanks a lot for sharing this nice and informative post, This posts shows your efforts that how do you cover any topic research. I really like your blog because your blog has updated posts on different current issues. I would request you to keep sharing your thoughts.

이것은 너무 도와주신 글인데 감사합니다 선배님.

hello i hav a doubt..

see topik test are conducted 4times in evry 1year'and as for me i will be giving my test in the 40th topik'i have 3years'but i live in india and here the educational sessions end in june'so my point is that i wont be able to make it in the beginners level 1 test which is conducetd in january'should i wait for another year or shud i give level 1 topik in july.

This beginner essay writing will definitely be a great resource for the students who will write essay first time in their academic career. Essay writing is not so much tough, just need a little bit attention due to which students can write essays of excellent quality. Buy Essay

Thanks for this post, I speak spanish,and I dont found information about it. thanks

Great to know that it helped' Thank you.

Thank you for the great review and the whole site' it helps a lot 🙂

I am preparing for the intermediate level TOPIK, and I was just wondering if the 400-600 characters are counted with or without space?? Do you know anything about this? I was sure it's without space (because that's how usually it is at language tests), but then just to make sure, I put a sample essay from the official TOPIK paper and copied it to Word, to see how many characters it is. And it turned out that it's 353 characters without space, and 456 with space' So I'm kind of confused now :/ Do they count it with space? It makes a huge difference actually'.

Actually it's with spaces'

Thank you so much for the quick reply ^^

I would like to know if you have to write the essay using the ㅂ니다 form. I have been learning Korean on my own and talking to my friends. We usually just use the polite speach ending in 요. But Since this is a test I guess I will have to use the other form right?

You can check this post:-

hi , i want to know if i can pass the level 2 of topik exam how can i use by this score, thank you for your answer

It can help you getting into a Korean university or getting a job in a Korean company' It also helps you get certain types of Visa'

Good morning teacher.nice to meet you in your team chart. am from Cambodian now i stay in Cambodian too . but i want to test Korea exam how can i do it because am so far from here. so u can advice me how to do? am looking for you reply me back .thank you so much. i want to study more in Korea but am so poor so i don't have money to study at there. if you have a good advice for me please tell me 'i can test from internet or anther test .thank you.good bye see u reply soon..from Sophea Cambodia..good luck for you.

많은 분들이 한국어를 공부하시군요. 다들 좋은 결과 얻으시길 희망합니다. !

my big problem in topik exam is the writing part , i had no clew about it . but this article made me feel more comfortable and bit ready for it 🙂 thanks a miliiooooooon 🙂

hello, thanks for this post i am preparing 31th intermadiate topik exam and i wondering about essays topik?

thanks for this information..now when you are told to write about a countries love or parent love what are the essential things to write.

It depends on the level..

There's a little bit of spelling errors in Example 2. Here's some of the ones that I caught:

'하지만 우리 지금 만나면 저는 너무 행벅해집니다.' ' 행복*

'저는 제 친구 너무 보고 싶어서 발리 러시아에 가거싶습니다.' ' 빨리* and 가고 싶습니다*

Also, any tips on how to get Level 6? What kind of essay structure are they looking for to get level 6? If I get all points or at least enough points to reach level, is that how I can get level 6?

Example 3 also has a bit of errors.

'체 취미 축구입니다.' ' 제* and I think it sounds better to write 제 취미는*

'나중에 아마 저는도 유명 축구사람 됩니다.' ' 저도* and 유명한* and 축구선수*

'우리 집에 조대할고예요, 우리 아버지게서도 정말 좋아요.' ' 초대 할 거예요* and 아버지께서*

I could be wrong, but I think those are some errors.

Yes, those are errors. That's why example essay 2 ' 3 got less marks. Check this post:

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

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The secret of savor: why we like which is something we like | Tom Vanderbilt

The Long Read: How does a anthem we detest at first discovering become a favourite? And when we try to look different, how come we end up looks a lot like everybody else?

If you had asked me, when I was 10, to forecast my life as an adult, I would probably have sketched out something like this: I would be driving a Trans Am, a Corvette, or some other muscle vehicle. My residence would boast a mammoth collecting of pinball machines. I would sip sophisticated alcohols( like Baileys Irish Cream ), read Robert Ludlum romances, and blast Van Halen while sitting in an easy chair wearing sunglasses. Now that I am at a point to actually be able to realise every one of these feverishly foreseen flavors, they view zero interest( well, perhaps the pinball machines in a weak minute ).

It was not just that my 10 -year-old self could not predict whom I would become but that I was incapable of suspecting that my flavors could experience such wholesale change. How could I know what I would want if I did not know who I would be?

One problem is that we do not apprehend the effect of experiencing situations. We may instinctively realise the authorities concerned will tire of our favourite meat if we gobble too much of it, but we might underestimate how much more we are to be able like something if only we consume it more often. Another issue is psychological salience, or the things we pay attention to. In the moment we buy a consumer good that offers cashback, the offer is claiming our courtesy; it is likely to be have influenced the buy. By the time we get home, the salience fades; the cashback croaks unclaimed. When I was 10, what mattered in a car to me was that it be cool and fast. What did not matter to me were monthly pays, side-impact crash shield, being able to fit a stroller in the back, and wanting to avoid the impression of is available on a midlife crisis.

Even when we look back and be seen to what extent much our flavors have changed, the idea that we will change evenly in the future seem to be mystify us. It is what remains tattoo removal practitioners in business. The psychologist Timothy Wilson and colleagues have identified the illusion that for numerous, the current is a watershed instant at which they have finally become the person or persons they will be for the rest of their lives.

In one venture, they found that people were willing to pay more money to check their favourite strap play-act 10 times from now than they were willing to pay to see their favourite banding from 10 years ago play now. It is reminiscent of the moment, looking through an old-time photo album, when you visualize an earlier picture of yourself and declare, Oh my God, that “hairs-breadth”! Or Those corduroys! Just as photographs of ourselves can appear jarring since we are do not ordinarily read ourselves as others encounter us, our previous appreciations, viewed to areas outside, from the perspective of what looks good now, come as a surprise. Your hairstyle per se was possibly not good or bad, simply a reflection of contemporary penchant. We say, with condescension, I cant believe parties actually dressed like that, without realising we ourselves are currently wearing what will be considered bad flavor in the future.

One of the reasons we cannot predict our future preferences is one of the things that stirs those very preferences change: novelty. In the social sciences of experience and likings , novelty is a rather elusive phenomenon. On the one side, we crave originality, which defines a arena such as manner( a battlefield of ugliness so perfectly unbearable, quipped Oscar Wilde, that we have to alter it every a period of six months ). As Ronald Frasch, the dapper president of Saks Fifth Avenue, once told me, on the status of women designer storey of the flagship store: The first thing “the consumers ” asks when they come into the accumulation is, Whats brand-new? They dont want to know what was; they want to know what is. How strong is this impulse? We will sell 60% of what were going to sell the firstly four weeks the very best are on the floor.

But we too adore intimacy. There are many who believe we like what we are used to. And yet if this were exclusively true , good-for-nothing “wouldve been” change. There would be no new prowes forms , no new musical genres , no new makes. The economist Joseph Schumpeter was contended that capitalisms character was in educating people to want( and buy) new situations. Makes drive economic change, he wrote, and buyers are taught to want brand-new happenings, or circumstances which differ in some respect or other from those which they have been in the habit of using.

A lot of days, people dont know what they crave until you demo it to them, as Steve Jobs gave it. And even then, they still might not miss it. Apples ill-fated Newton PDA device, as charming as it now examines in this era of smartphone as human prosthesis, was arguably more new at the time of its release, foreseeing the requirements and actions that were not yet amply realised. As Wired described it, it was a entirely new category of invention passing an entirely new building housed in a pattern part that represented a completely new and daring design language.

So , novelty or acquaintance? As is often the instance, the answer lies somewhere in between, on the midway spot of some optimal U-shaped curve storying the new and the known. The noted industrial designer Raymond Loewy sensed this optimum in what he worded the MAYA stage, for most advanced, yet acceptable. This was the moment in a product design repetition when, Loewy quarrelled, defiance to the unfamiliar contacts the threshold of a shock-zone and fighting to buying changes in. We like the new as long as it reminds us in some way of the old.

Anticipating how much our flavors will change is hard-boiled because we cannot find past our intrinsic resist to the unfamiliar. Or how much we will change when we do and how each change will open the door to another change. We forget just how fleeting even the most jarring novelty is also possible. When you had your firstly swallow of beer( or whisky ), you probably did not slap your knee and exclaim, Where has this been all my life? It was, Beings like this?

We come to like beer, but it is arguably incorrect to bawl brew an acquired feeling, as the philosopher Daniel Dennett indicates, because it is not that first taste that people are coming to like. If beer gone on savor to me the room the first sip tasted, he writes, I would never have gone on drinking brew. Place of the problem is that booze is a scandalize to the system: it savours like nothing that has come before, or at least good-for-nothing delightful. New music or prowes can have the same effects. In a New Yorker profile, the music farmer Rick Rubin recounted that when he firstly sounded Pretty Hate Machine, the album by Nine Inch Nails, he did not care for it. But it soon became his favourite. Faced with something discordantly novel, we dont ever have the reference points to absorb and digest it, Rubin alleged. Its a bit like memorizing a new expression. The album, like the brew, was not an acquired savour, because he was not hearing the same album.

Looking back, we can find it hard to believe we did not like something we are today do. Current popularity gets projected backwards: we forget that a now ubiquitous hymn such as the Romantics What I Like About You was never a make or that recently in vogue antique babe identifies such as Isabella or Chloe, which seem to speak to some once-flourishing habit, were never popular.

It now seems impossible to imagine, a few decades ago, the gossip provoked by the now widely cherished Sydney Opera House. The Danish inventor, Jrn Utzon, was essentially driven from the country, his mention extended unuttered at the ceremony, the sense of national gossip was palpable towards this harbourside monstrosity. Not exclusively did the building not fit the traditional anatomy of an opera house; it did not fit the conventional word of private buildings. It was as foreign as its architect.

The truth is, most people perhaps did not know what to shape of it, and our default setting, faced with an insecure unknown, is detesting. Frank Gehry, talking about his iconic, widely admired Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, admitted that it took a couple of years for me to start to like it, actually. The inventor Mark Wigley suggests that maybe we only ever learn something when some structure we think of as foreign causes us and we withstand. But sometimes, many times, in the middle of the fighting, we end up loving this thing that has elicited us.

Fluency begets liking. When shown personas of buildings, designers have rated them as least complex than laypersons did; in other words, they read them more fluently, and the buildings seem less foreign. The role of the inventor, shows Wigley, is not to give the client exactly what he was asking for in other words, to cater to current taste but to change the notion of what one can ask for, or to project future delicacies no one knew they had. No one supposed an opera house could look like the Sydney Opera House until Utzon, taking his idea from a peeled orange, said it could. The nature changed around the building, in response to it, which is why, in the strange messages of one architecture commentator, Utzons breathtaking build appears better today than ever.

A few decades from now, person will inevitably look with dread upon a new house and answer, The Sydney Opera House , now theres a build. Why cant we construct acts like that any more?

This argument for example, Why isnt music as good as it used to be? manifests an historic collection bias, one colourfully described by the designer Frank Chimero. Make me let you in on a little secret, he writes. If you are hearing about something age-old, it is almost certainly good. Why? Because nobody wants to talk about shitty old-time stuff, but lots of parties still talking here shitty brand-new material, because they are still trying to figure out if it is shitty or not. The past wasnt better, we just forgot about all the shitty shit.

The only guarantee we have of savour is the fact that it will change.

In a 2011 sketch on the substantiate Portlandia , the obsessive sardonic catalogue of the hipster mores of the Oregon city, an exaggeratedly posturing persona known as Spyke with chin whisker, lobe-stretching saucer earrings, and a fixed-gear bike is evidence treading past a prohibit. He pictures some people inside, equally adorned with the trappings of a certain kind of cool, and establishes an supporting nod. A few days later, he agent a clean-shaven guy wearing khakis and a dress shirt at the bar. Aw, cmon! he hollers. Guy like that is hanging out here? That barroom is so over ! It exclusively gets worse: he ensure his straight-man nemesis astride a fixed-gear bicycle, partaking in shell artistry, and wearing a kuki-chins beard all of which, he churlishly warns, is over. A year later, we check Spyke, freshly shorn of whisker, wearing business casual, and having a banal gossip, roosted in the very same barroom that produced off the whole cycles/second. The nemesis? He procrastinates outside, scornfully swearing the bar to be over.

The sketch wonderfully encapsulates the notion of savour as a kind of ceaseless action machine. This machine is driven in part by the oscillations of originality and knowledge, of hunger and satiation, that strange internal calculus that effects us to tire of food, music, the colouring orange. But it also represents driven in part by the subtle the two movements of parties trying to be like one another and beings trying to be different from each other. There is a second-guessing various kinds of skirmish here , not unknown to strategists of cold warera game theory( in which players are rarely behaving on perfect information ). Or, indeed, to readers familiar with Dr Seusss Sneetches, the mythical star-adorned mortals who abruptly trench their decorations when they detect their challenger plain-bellied counterparts have idols upon thars.

That taste might move in the kind of never-ending repetition that Portlandia hypothesised is not so far-fetched. A French mathematician named Jonathan Touboul identified a phenomenon of searching alike trying to look different, or what he called the hipster influence. Unlike cooperative systems, in which everyone might concur in a coordinated fashion on what decisions to build, the hipster result follows, he hints, where individuals try to make decisions in opposition to the majority.

Because no one knows exactly what other people are going to do next, and information is also possible noisy or retarded, there can also be the times of brief synchronisation, in which non-conformists are inadvertently aligned with the majority. Spyke, in reality, might have had to see several people doing shell art maybe it even suddenly appeared at a store in the mall before soon jam-pack it in. And because there are varying degrees of hipness, person or persons may choose to wade into current trends later than another, that person is followed by another, and so on, until, like an astronomical adventurer chasing a dead whiz, there is nothing actually there any more. The quest for distinctiveness are also welcome to generate conformity.

The Portlandia sketch actually goes well beyond appreciation and illuminates two central, if seemingly contradictory, strands of human behaviour. The first is that we want to be like other parties. The social being, in the degree that he is social, is virtually imitative, wrote the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, in his 1890 notebook The Laws of Imitation. Imitating others, what is known as social learn, is an evolutionary adaptive strategy; that is, it helps you exist, even prosper. While it is considered to be in other species, there are no better social learners than humen , none that take that knowledge and continue to build upon it, through consecutive generations.

The sum of this social learning culture is what draws humans so unique, and so uniquely successful. As the anthropologist Joseph Henrich documents, humans have foraged in the Arctic, reaped cultivates in the tropics, and lived pastorally in deserts. This is not because we were “ve been meaning to”, but because we learned to.

In their journal Not by Genes Alone, the anthropologists Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson use the sample of a bitter flower that turns out to have medicinal value. Our sensory structure would understand the fierce as potentially harmful and thus inedible. Instinctively, “theres no reason” we should want to eat it. But someone eats it regardless and experiences some curiously beneficial make. Someone else assures this and imparts it a try. We take our medicine in spite of its bitter experience, they write , not because our sensory psychology has progressed to make it less bitter, but because the idea that it has therapeutical quality has spread through the population.

People imitate, and cultural activities becomes adaptive, they insist, because learning from others is more efficient than trying everything out on your own through costly and time-consuming trial and error. The same is as true for people now speaking Netflix or TripAdvisor evaluates as it was for primitive foragers trying to figure out which nutrients were poison or where to find irrigate. When there are too many alternatives, or the answer does not seem obvious, it seems better to go with the flow; after all, you are able to miss out on something good.

But if social reading is so easy and effective, it creates the question of why anyone does anything different to begin with. Or indeed why someone might vacate innovative activities. It is an issue asked of evolution itself: why is there so much substance for natural selection to sieve through? The master or innovator who was attacked in his daytime seems like some kind of genetic altruist, sacrificing his own immediate fitness for some future payoff at high levels of the group.

Boyd and Richerson hint there is an optimal balance between social and individual learning in any group. Too many social learners, and the ability to innovate is lost: people know how to catch that one fish since they are learned it, but what happens when that fish dies out? Too few social learners, and beings might be so busy trying to learn situations on their own that national societies does not thrive; while people were busily fabricating their own better bow and arrow, person forgot to actually get food.

Perhaps some ingrained sense of the evolutionary utility of this differentiation is one reason why humans are so snapped between wanting to belong to a group and wanting to be distinct mortals. Parties want to feel that their feelings are not unique, hitherto they experience anxiety when told they are exactly like another person. Think of the giddy anxiety you feel when a co-worker is demonstrated by wearing a similar clothe. We try some happy medium, like the Miss America player in Woody Allens Bananas who responds to a reporters interrogate, Differences of mind should be tolerated, but not when theyre extremely different.

If all we did was conform, there would be no delicacy; nor would there be penchant if no one conformed. We try to select the right-sized group or, that the working group is too large, we elect a subgroup. Be not just a Democrat but a centrist Democrat. Do not just like the Beatles; be a fan of Johns.

Illustration by Aart-Jan Venema

When discriminating yourself from the mainstream is becoming too wearying, you can always ape some version of the mainstream. This was the premise behind the normcore anti-fashion tendency, in which formerly forcefully fashionable beings were said to be downshifting, out of sheer tirednes, into humdrum New Balance sneakers and unremarkable denim. Normcore was more conceptual skill activity than business case study, but one whose premise the most different stuff to do is to reject being different altogether, moved the manifesto seemed so probable it was practically wish fulfilled into existence by a media that feasts upon novelty. As new as normcore seemed, Georg Simmel spoke about it a century ago: If obedience to fashion consists in impersonation of an example, conscious inattention of pattern represents same mimicry, but under an inverse sign.

And so back to Spyke. When he felt his drive for peculiarity( which he shared with others who were like him) threatened by someone to areas outside the group, he moved on. But all the things he experienced were threatened the chin beard, the shell arts and that he was willing to walk away from, were no longer practical. We signal our identity simply in certain regions: Spyke is not likely to change his label of toilet paper or toothbrush merely because he hears it is shared by his nemesis. When everyone listened to records on vinyl, the latter are a commodity material that allowed one be interested to hear music; it was not until they were nearly driven to extinction as a technology that they became a mode to signal ones identity and as I write, there are stimulates of a cassette revival.

In a revealing experimentation carried out within Stanford University, Berger and Heath sold Lance Armstrong Foundation Livestrong wristbands( at a time when they were becoming increasingly popular) in a target dormitory. The next week, they sold them in a dorm knows we being somewhat geeky. A week afterwards, the number of target dorm circle wearers dropped by 32%. It was not that people from the specific objectives dorm detested the geeks or so they said it was that they thought they were not like them. And so the yellow segment of rubber, tattered for a good stimulate, became a means of signalling identity, or savour. The only path the target group could avoid being symbolically linked with the geeks was to abandon the feeling and move on to something else. As much a sought for novelty, brand-new experiences can be a conscious rejection of what has come before and a distancing from those now enjoying that penchant. I liked that stripe before they got big-hearted, becomes the common refrain.

What our flavours say about us is primarily that we want to be like other people whom we like and who have those appreciations up to a extent and unlike others who have other savors. This is where the idea of simply socially reading what everyone else is do, get complicated. Sometimes we read what others are doing and then stop doing that act ourselves.

Then there is the question of whether we are conscious of picking up a practice from someone else. When someone knows he is being influenced by another and that other person to know each other very, the hell is exhortation; when someone is unaware he is being influenced, and the influencer is unaware of his influence, that is contagion. In delicacy, we are rarely presumed to be picking up happenings haphazardly. Through prestige bias, for example, we learn from people who are regarded socially substantial. The classic rationale in sociology was always trickle-down: upper-class people hugged some preference, beings lower down followed, then upper-class people scorned the taste and cuddled some brand-new taste.

Tastes can change when people aspire to be different from other parties; they can change when we are trying to be like other people. Groups transmit experiences to other groups, but savor themselves can help create groups. Small, apparently insignificant differences what kind of coffee one boozes become real spots of culture bicker. Witness the varieties of mark now available in things that were once preferably homogeneous merchandises, like coffee and blue jeans; who had even heard of single ancestry or selvage a few decades ago?

There is an virtually incongruous cycles/second: private individuals, such as Spyke in Portland, wants to be different. But in wanting to express that difference, he seeks out other persons who share those changes. He conforms to the group, but the conformings of these working groups, in being alike, increase their gumption of change from other groups, just as the Livestrong bracelet wearers took them off when they accompanied other groups wearing them. The be adopted by delicacies is driven in part by this social jockeying. But this is no longer the whole picture.

In a famed 2006 venture , an organization of people were given the chance to download anthems for free from an internet site after they had listened to and ranked the hymns. When the participants could see what previous downloaders had chosen, they were more likely to follow that behaviour so popular songs became more popular, less popular songs became less so.

When parties established selects on their own, the choices were more predictable; beings were more likely to simply pick the sungs they said were best. Knowing what other listeners did was not enough to completely reorder publics musical penchant. As the scientist Duncan Watts and his co-author Matthew Salganik wrote: The best carols never do very badly, and the most difficult anthems never do extremely well. But when others alternatives are evident, there was greater risk for the less good to do better, and vice versa. The pop chart, like delicacy itself, does not operate in a vacuum.

The route to the top of the charts has in theory get more democratic, less top-down, more unpredictable: it took a viral video to assistants induce Pharrells Happy a pop a year after its liberate. But the hierarchy of popularity at the top, formerly launched, is steeper than ever. In 2013, it was estimated that the top 1% of music acts took residence 77% of all music income.

While record firms still try to engineer notoriety, Chris Molanphy, a music critic and obsessive analyst of the pa maps, disagrees it is the general public fouling one another who now decide if something is a reach. The viral wizard Gangnam Style, he notes, was virtually coerced on to radio. Nobody operated that into being; that was clearly the general public being charmed by this goofy video and telling one another, Youve got to watch this video.

Todays ever-sharper, real-time data about people actual listening action strongly fortifies the feedback loop-the-loop. We always knew that people liked the familiar, Molanphy responds. Now we know exactly when they flip the depot and, wow, if they dont already know a lyric, they truly throw the station. For the industry, there is an almost hopeless is making an effort to alter, as fast as possible, the brand-new into the familiar.

Simply to live in a large city is to dwell among a maelstrom of options: there are seemed like it was gonna be by numerous guilds of importance more choices of things to buy in New York than there are preserved species on countries around the world. R Alexander Bentley is an anthropologist at the University of Durham in the UK. As he applied it to me: By my recent count there were 3,500 different laptops on the market. How does anyone make a utility-maximising alternative among all those? The costs of reading which one is truly better is nearly beyond the individual; there may, in fact, actually be little that scatters them in terms of quality, so any one acquire over another might simply manifest random copying.

For the Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset, columnist of the 1930 pamphlet The Revolt of the Masses, journalistic shipments from adventurers seems to thrust one into a vertiginous global gyre. What would he stimulate of the current situation, where a spurt of tweets comes even before the interrupting report proclamations, which then turn into wall-to-wall coverage, followed by a recall piece in the next days newspaper? He would have to factor in social media, one has a peripheral, real-time awareness of any number of people whereabouts, achievements, status updates, via any number of platforms.

Ortega announced this the increase of life. If media( large broadcasters creating audiences) helped define an era of mass society, social media( audiences establishing ever more gatherings) help define our age of mass individualism. The internet is exponential social discover: you have ever more ways to learn what other parties are doing; how many of the more than 13,000 reviews of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas do you need to read on TripAdvisor before making a decision? There are ever more ways to learn that what you are doing is not good enough or was already done last week by someone else, that what you like or even who you like is also liked by some random being you have never met. This is social learning by proxy.

People have always wanted to be around other people and to learn from them. Metropolis have long been dynamos of social alternative, foundries of art, music, and manner. Slang has always beginning in metropolitans an upshot of all those different, densely jam-packed people so often exposed to one another. Cities drive taste change because they furnish the greatest showing to other parties, who not amazingly are often the innovative parties metropolitans seem to attract.

With the internet, we have a kind of metropolitan of the sentiment, a medium that people do not just exhaust but inhabit, even if it often seem to be repeat and increase prevailing municipalities( New Yorkers, already physically exposed to so many other parties, use Twitter “the worlds largest” ). As Bentley has argued, Living and working online, people have perhaps never imitation each other so profusely( because it typically costs good-for-nothing ), so accurately, and so indiscriminately.

But how do we know what to copy and from whom? The age-old ways of knowing what we should like everything from radio station programmers to restaurant steers to volume critics to label themselves have been substituted by a mass of individuals, connected but apart, federated but disparate.

Whom to follow? What to prefer? Whom can you trust? In an infinite realm of selection, our options often seem to cluster towards those we can see others representing( but away from those we feel too many are preferring ). When there is too much social affect, people start to think more like one another. They take less information into account to make their decisions, yet are more confident that what they are thinking is the truth because more beings seem to think that way.

Social imitation has gone easier, faster, and most volatile; all those micro-motives of trying to be like others and hitherto different can intensify into explosive erupts of macro-behaviour. The big-hearted ripples have got bigger, and we know that they will come, but it is harder to tell from where, in the vast and random ocean face, they will swell.

This is an edited extract from You May Too Like, published on 30 June by Simon& Schuster( 12.99 ). To ordering a transcript for 10.39, going to see bookshop.theguardian.com or announce 0330 333 6846. Free UK p& p over 15, online guilds only.

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apsbicepstraining · 7 years

Text

The secret of savor: why we like which is something we like | Tom Vanderbilt

The Long Read: How does a anthem we detest at first discovering become a favourite? And when we try to look different, how come we end up looks a lot like everybody else?

A few decades from now, person will inevitably look with dread upon a new house and answer, The Sydney Opera House , now theres a build. Why cant we construct acts like that any more?

The only guarantee we have of savour is the fact that it will change.

Illustration by Aart-Jan Venema

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

The post The secret of savor: why we like which is something we like | Tom Vanderbilt appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2ts5WsS via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

apsbicepstraining · 7 years

Text

The secret of savor: why we like which is something we like | Tom Vanderbilt

The Long Read: How does a anthem we detest at first discovering become a favourite? And when we try to look different, how come we end up looks a lot like everybody else?

A few decades from now, person will inevitably look with dread upon a new house and answer, The Sydney Opera House , now theres a build. Why cant we construct acts like that any more?

The only guarantee we have of savour is the fact that it will change.

Illustration by Aart-Jan Venema

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

The post The secret of savor: why we like which is something we like | Tom Vanderbilt appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2ts5WsS via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes