I think some comments here are missing what the blog post is trying to say. This is my read on it.
It's "cool to care" - if you like something, don't be afraid to keep liking and caring about it. With some interests (like theater here), there's external pressure to stop liking what you like, because your interest isn't "cool".
If you pursue what you like on your own, repeatedly, you sometimes find there's people with the same interests. You start to recognize each other. And traveling around the world to participate in the thing you like can have lots of value.
It's the last part, the seemingly ridiculous travel, that I think is a key part of Alex's story. There's something about the kind of people who would travel overseas to see a musical, repeatedly. They really care about what they like. That's an extreme dedication to the interest, and that's how you find people who are also extremely passionate and motivated about their interest, or maybe even just about the community that has arisen around that interest.
That's the part of Alex's story that landed for me. I feel I experienced something similar 15 years ago in my own niche interest, flying from Australia to see Eurovision (before Australia was part of the contest). I traveled alone, but found ~20 other Australians doing the same thing, and some of them attended every year. That shared interest & shared experience became decade+ friendships. And for us it evolved into getting backstage, meeting artists, running local nightclub events with Eurovision artists flown in from Europe to Australia, and somewhat accidentally creating a national fanclub community of hundreds of people.
Crazy ideas around niche interests can spiral and snowball, as you provide ways for the crazy kids to find each other. And that seems to be what's happened here with Operation Mincemeat.
Cool does mean detached and aloof and unpeturbed. And theater kids (and Eurovision fans) "unpeturbed"? Yeahhh... probably not.
But the original cool would not have fallen to peer pressure of what others think either. The Fonz is cool, but The Fonz absolutely cares about his friends too.
I agree with the sentiment, it is good to care, it is admirable and perhaps virtuous to care.
But it is not cool to care. Cool does mean detached, offhand, poised, aloof, unperturbed. That's why it's called "cool".
We don't need to hijack the term and pretend that it's cool to be enthusiastic and dorky and to talk too loudly when we get excited about something. The point is that those things are good even if they're not cool.
I wonder what criticisms could be leveled at the virtues of proactive energy, passion, and incessant curiosity. I notice that they make me feel slightly nauseous. This is something I'm curious about. What really is a dork?
Sometimes, I feel like conversation is just a way to talk to oneself, by using others as mirrors of what we want to believe.
That article had that vibe.
I don't care about the show, the author doesn't know why she cares that much about the show, and I really, really don't understand what caring has to do with seeing the same show several times.
>Whenever somebody asks why, I don’t have a good answer.
I'll suggest the author (and everyone reading this) to really, really sit down and think of why they like the things they like. What are the variables that clicked for me when I interact with X ? The theme ? The way the thing is made ? The echo and specific resonance it has with my inner life ?
I would have gained much more from that article if the author had gone to the trouble of making me connect with the show in that way.
"It's a story about friendship", and it's moving. Everything else, and the reason for seeing it twelvety times, seems in fact to be about communing with real-life friends, and only incidentally about the show.
What's that line from Saki ... to whom anything was thrilling and amusing if you did it in a troop.
I think some comments here are missing what the blog post is trying to say. This is my read on it.
It's "cool to care" - if you like something, don't be afraid to keep liking and caring about it. With some interests (like theater here), there's external pressure to stop liking what you like, because your interest isn't "cool".
If you pursue what you like on your own, repeatedly, you sometimes find there's people with the same interests. You start to recognize each other. And traveling around the world to participate in the thing you like can have lots of value.
It's the last part, the seemingly ridiculous travel, that I think is a key part of Alex's story. There's something about the kind of people who would travel overseas to see a musical, repeatedly. They really care about what they like. That's an extreme dedication to the interest, and that's how you find people who are also extremely passionate and motivated about their interest, or maybe even just about the community that has arisen around that interest.
That's the part of Alex's story that landed for me. I feel I experienced something similar 15 years ago in my own niche interest, flying from Australia to see Eurovision (before Australia was part of the contest). I traveled alone, but found ~20 other Australians doing the same thing, and some of them attended every year. That shared interest & shared experience became decade+ friendships. And for us it evolved into getting backstage, meeting artists, running local nightclub events with Eurovision artists flown in from Europe to Australia, and somewhat accidentally creating a national fanclub community of hundreds of people.
Crazy ideas around niche interests can spiral and snowball, as you provide ways for the crazy kids to find each other. And that seems to be what's happened here with Operation Mincemeat.
Cool does mean detached and aloof and unpeturbed. And theater kids (and Eurovision fans) "unpeturbed"? Yeahhh... probably not.
But the original cool would not have fallen to peer pressure of what others think either. The Fonz is cool, but The Fonz absolutely cares about his friends too.
I agree with the sentiment, it is good to care, it is admirable and perhaps virtuous to care.
But it is not cool to care. Cool does mean detached, offhand, poised, aloof, unperturbed. That's why it's called "cool".
We don't need to hijack the term and pretend that it's cool to be enthusiastic and dorky and to talk too loudly when we get excited about something. The point is that those things are good even if they're not cool.
So if someone enthusiastically shows me some crazy game mechanic they made and I say "that's cool", I am using the word "cool" incorrectly?
Sangfroid, even.
I wonder what criticisms could be leveled at the virtues of proactive energy, passion, and incessant curiosity. I notice that they make me feel slightly nauseous. This is something I'm curious about. What really is a dork?
A good book in this topic, Virtue Hoarders by Catherine Liu.
https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517912253/virtue-hoarders/
https://classautonomy.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Foreru...
You’re just going to drop a book against 80% of HN like that? What is the context?
Sometimes, I feel like conversation is just a way to talk to oneself, by using others as mirrors of what we want to believe. That article had that vibe.
I don't care about the show, the author doesn't know why she cares that much about the show, and I really, really don't understand what caring has to do with seeing the same show several times.
>Whenever somebody asks why, I don’t have a good answer.
I'll suggest the author (and everyone reading this) to really, really sit down and think of why they like the things they like. What are the variables that clicked for me when I interact with X ? The theme ? The way the thing is made ? The echo and specific resonance it has with my inner life ?
I would have gained much more from that article if the author had gone to the trouble of making me connect with the show in that way.
"It's a story about friendship", and it's moving. Everything else, and the reason for seeing it twelvety times, seems in fact to be about communing with real-life friends, and only incidentally about the show.
What's that line from Saki ... to whom anything was thrilling and amusing if you did it in a troop.
Went to the theatre and liked it.