Michael Offutt's Blog, page 74

It took three years for Spielberg's team to just get the licensing together for all the properties contained within Ready Player One.

Spielberg spent three years JUST getting all the licenses together to even be allowed to make Ready Player One. And he didn't get all of them. I learned from io9's post yesterday that he couldn't get Ultraman and Star Wars. Think about that...with all of his connections, he still couldn't get all of the licenses that he wanted to get. That just blows my mind. I never would have thought that Ernest Clines "ode to the eighties" would have been a difficult film to create, but it goes down as one of the more difficult ones in history if you measure the amount of red tape one has to cut through to even start filming.

Also, I got challenged by the hive mind of a group I message with the other day that was saying that some early reviewers at SXSW panned Spielberg's Ready Player One adaptation. If you've heard this but don't know why, I want to set you straight. There was a technical glitch in which the sound dropped for a full minute during the Ready Player One showing. A lot of people in the crowd thought this was intentional, and gave the movie terrible reviews because of it. If you remove those reviews out of the equation, it is getting a stellar reception. And some are even saying it is better than the book.

Honestly, when I think about this movie adaptation it doesn't surprise me one bit that the movie will be better than the book. The novel was crammed with nostalgia, but it was heavily reliant on references that (should you be without) are almost impossible to picture because you don't know what they look like. For me, it was an incredible book because I know what the Tomb of Horrors has in it because I've run that D&D module countless times. And I know what a Delorean looks like because I loved Back to the Future. And so on and so forth. People who don't have all that information downloaded into their brain tend to hate Ready Player One (the book). I have no doubt that it will translate much better to them on screen because everything will be right there for them to see.

Here's the latest trailer. I'm so excited for this.
 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind would be an impossible movie to make in modern day America.

I recently purchased my tickets for Ready Player One and Pacific Rim 2. These are two movies that I'm excited to see, but for very different reasons. I want to see Pacific Rim 2, because I like big monsters and robots, and it looks like the movie went in a very intriguing direction when it was apparent that Charlie Hunnam would not be back to reprise his role as a Jaeger pilot that saved the world. The fact that they are going with Idris Elba's son is (I think) even better than another show with Charlie Hunnam's "hot shot" character in the pilot seat.

As for Ready Player One? Well, I read the book and reviewed it in a blog post three years ago. If you want to read the review, it's posted HERE. However, the biggest reason I'm looking forward to it is to see if Steven Spielberg (who got back into the director's chair from his semi-retirement) still has the magic. I've said it before HERE, but I think Steven is the G.O.A.T. And I've been educating some teenagers by showing them Spielberg movies at my house about once a month (the teens in question are named David and Moira, which is really nerdy considering that these names are both X-Men characters). Yes, the mom is a huge nerd.

Anyway, the next movie I have scheduled to show these two teens is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's a movie that I really liked as I was growing up. However, in thinking about the film, I suddenly realized that this is not a movie that could be filmed today. To clarify, I'm saying it would be impossible to put to film in today's climate.

For one, it glamorizes a deadbeat dad. Richard Dreyfuss is clearly disenchanted with his own family because they don't want to participate in his alien-driven mania. Does he love his kids? Maybe on some level? But he's not even done with his marriage before he's making moves on a woman who shares his mania for the location of Devil's Tower, and who has lost her son to an alien abduction. Sure, the story offers convenient excuses for Dreyfuss's behavior, but there's no way that wouldn't all get panned to death by reviewers and (I think) there is no way it could even get greenlit today for any kind of budget (whether or not someone like Steven Spielberg was behind it).

Close Encounters also has stellar reviews. However, there's no way people would review the movie the same in today's climate. It would get so many one star reviews it'd make the director's head spin as people trashed it and created negative hashtags on social media for a movie that clearly glorifies all the awful stereotypes of deadbeat dads.

I suppose that what I'm saying is that Close Encounters is an anachronism. It's a masterpiece for the time and place in which it appeared, but to remove it from that period would be to destroy it utterly because the things that made it great would be overwhelmed by its underlying social message. 

Thank you Dave Filoni for a wonderful series finale of Star Wars Rebels because it made me excited about the future of Star Wars again.

The final episode that there will ever be of Star Wars: Rebels created such a "David Filoni" inspired universe of potential that I'm actually excited for the future of the franchise. Knowing now what Disney executives must have known a year or more ago when all of this was being discussed, I can see why episode 8, a.k.a. The Last Jedi, was made. So if you want to hear the ideas that bubbled into my head, please know that there are going to be spoilers from here on out as I discuss the Star Wars: Rebels revelations and what they may mean for the Star Wars universe at large.

So...I get it now. All of the old cast needed to be buried so that new stories could be created with young characters who are alive and well at the end of Star Wars: Rebels. The universe may have lost its last Jedi, but "Jedi" was just a title. It was a name given for people trained in the use of the Force that also had membership within an organization. But even Shakespeare in a universe not so far far away realized that a rose by any other name smelled just as sweet.

Surviving the end of Rebels, which had its curtain call beyond the events of Return of the Jedi are pretty much everyone. The universe has Ezra Bridger doing who knows what (the guy sailed off into hyperspace riding space whales and towing Grand Admiral Thrawn's Star Destroyer along with Grand Admiral Thrawn as his prisoner). Those stories have yet to be created. The galaxy also has Ahsoka Tano, who has incredible training, and who could potentially train Rey, who (in my opinion) is wielding power the equal of Yoda. I mean...all those rocks at the end of the Last Jedi were easily as heavy and massive as an X-Wing, and she didn't look all that strained to be throwing them around.

So what can we expect then in Episode 9 and beyond? I personally think that we're looking at Ezra Bridger and Ahsoka Tano getting cast as live action stars. I think we're going to see the fate of Grand Admiral Thrawn, and somehow he is going to be connected to the remnants of the First Order. And I think we're looking at new force powers that will resemble magic more than they do science fiction. Most people know (by now) that Jedi's were based on fantasy wizards anyway.

I'm hoping that my friend, Kevin Long, will weigh in somewhere in the comments. He's also a fan of the series and has quite a few insights that I value and that I don't pick out myself in my own viewings of the shows.

But yeah, thanks to Dave Filoni I'm excited for Star Wars again!

I think booking a professional massage is the perfect way to celebrate any achievement.

How do you celebrate when you achieve a writing goal/ finish a story?

This is the question that is pondered by the Insecure Writer's Support Group for the March 7th question, and it's a pretty good one. It made me think of a particular scene in the movie, Romancing the Stone:
For those of you that don't know this movie because you are too young to have seen it, the plot is pretty simple (and kinda great):

A single, lonely, romance writer finds herself caught in a wild adventure of her own when her sister calls for her help. She immediately heads to Columbia in search of her sister. Unbeknownst to her, she carries a map to the largest emerald in the world, and there are many people after it. She teams up with Jack, a guy who seems to to have stepped off the cover of one of her books, in hopes to reach Cartagena and her sister.

At the beginning of the movie (where the above gif is taken), she's finishing up a steamy romance and is putting the finishing touches on her story. In tears, she goes about her apartment looking for tissues, doesn't find any, and celebrates anyway by blowing on a note that was intended to remind her to buy more tissues and then some wine and a nice relaxing sit by the fire (if I remember correctly). The next day she drops off the finished manuscript off with her publisher or agent (I'm not sure who it is at this point). Anyway...it's a great representation of how to celebrate finishing a story even if I've never done it that way.

I honestly haven't finished that many stories, and for me, there really isn't a definitive finishing point usually because I need to do (or am compelled to do) rewrites and revisions. I wish it was a matter of "type type type" and "The End." But there is a kind of #selfcare that I do on a regular basis that seems kind of celebratory, and I usually do it whenever I feel particularly good about an accomplishment and that's to book a massage at a local spa. So yeah, I think going to a Japanese spa is what I do to celebrate anything, and that includes finishing a story (if I can even definitively call it that). It's usually a two hour one with side accouterments like a steam room and sauna and my latest favorite: the warm coconut milk drizzle. Yeah, it's as awesome as it sounds.  Seriously, if you guys out there aren't getting massages, it could really change your mood and put you in a zen state for at least a week (give or take life's stressful circumstances).

Thank you for visiting.

I wanted Shape of Water to win Best Picture and it did. I'm super happy now.

Last night, I (like a lot of people) watched the Oscars on ABC. I had my favorites even though I was unable to see all of the Best Picture nominations in a category that was overflowing with deserving films. But I think the one I was behind the most as the night wore on was Guillermo del Toro's Shape of Water. But, I knew that it "could never win," because it was too weird. It was too "out there," and it resonated with me so strongly that nothing I ever loved that was this weird and alien and different could ever be Best Picture material, right? Boy was I wrong. This year the academy embraced the weird. There simply is nothing out there in movies like Shape of Water, and I'm so happy it beat out and won Guillermo del Toro not only a Best Picture Oscar, but an Academy Award for Best Director, something he's been deserving for many years now.

Each of the three characters in Shape of Water really resonated with me. One was a gay man, rejected and shunned by essentially everyone (believe me I know how that feels here in good ole Utah). One was a woman isolated and alone because of her disability, quirkiness, and probably because she didn't feel attractive or ever considered herself to be attractive. I also know what that feels like. And then there was the fish guy who was alone in the world with no family to talk to or anyone else that was like him. Ayep, I know what that feels like as well. I remember when my friend Jake went to see it with his family (hearing me rave about it), and he told me that they were so offended by all the sex that they walked out. I responded (rather snarkily), "It's good that you have that choice because if I could, I'd probably walk out on my life too and pay to see something else." I remember that comment took him aback and we stopped discussing the film together because he could see that I'd tied a lot of my identity to this strange and weird film from Guillermo del Toro, and that I was experiencing things with its story that he was not equipped to ever understand. It was an "agree to disagree" moment. I have these moments often with the Mormon that is Jake.

I couldn't have been happier with the Academy Award for Best Picture this year. For the other categories? I suppose that Gary Oldman was deserving of one given the little bits that I have seen of his Churchill impersonation. It's about time, right? But I also kinda wanted Timothee Chalamet to get an Oscar for Call Me By Your Name. However, (and if I'm being completely honest) I think that in the end, Oldman getting the Oscar was the better choice. Timothee is so young...he needs to do more to earn such a prestigious award. And my feelings toward his Oscar snub may be tied up with the fact that I'm a biased person that was obviously taken with him and his movie. At least I can admit my biases. It's probably a good thing that I don't vote for Oscar-nominated films.

Oh and can I say that Gal Gadot and Tom Holland were the best dressed man and woman at the Academy Awards? I'll include pics of both of them below so you can see (in case you missed the Academy Awards). Spiderman knows how to rock a tuxedo. #justsayin

LOL the Lego Infinity War set just spoiled where the sixth and final infinity stone is and we were right all along.

Everyone on the internet that cared kinda/sorta believed that the last Infinity Stone, a.k.a., the Soul Stone, was going to be found in Wakanda (because the trailers for the movie are all lit up with a huge battle that takes place in Wakanda). But it wasn't ever said to be in Wakanda, and it didn't appear in Black Panther, as I discussed in an earlier post. And Lo and behold, it looks like it definitely is. Here's a picture of the Lego set in question, and I've circled the soul stone in blue paint so it's easy to spot contained in an alien drill which obviously removes it from the ground in Wakanda (that's why the ground is all cracked).  So now the question is: how does all of this fit together? And for answering that question there are a hundred theories I've read. I'm going to single out one and just quote directly from him...my friend, Tony Hale, who lives over in Oregon. Earlier this week I sent him a message on Facebook about all of this stuff, and he responded with this theory:

"There is a problem with the locations of all the Infinity Stones, and it's this: it puts most of the stones on Earth. I actually think that Odin had the Soul Stone (and all of the other stones) at one point. Hence, the fake gauntlet in his treasury room. I also think Thanos gave Loki the mind stone so that he could put two of the stones near one another, namely the Tesseract (space stone) with the Mind Stone. In the comics, the writers hint that the stones are drawn to each other, and I think that Thanos wanted to get them all into play. So, I think he knew the gauntlet in Odin's treasury was fake, just like Odin obviously knew in addition to one other person: Hela.
    "So let me put it all together for you. When Odin worked with Hela to subvert the universe, he was actually collecting the stones. Partway through collecting them, he realized they were too dangerous together. So he left the Aether (the Reality Stone) with the elves. Odin also left the Power Stone with the remains of the destroyed ancient aliens, until Starlord stumbled across it. The aliens were one of the races destroyed along the way by Hela and Odin. The Mind Stone was never recovered (Thanos starts with it in his "possession"), and I think that Odin had not yet discovered it when he ended his search. The Time Stone (of course) was on Earth, which Odin learned after becoming deified by the Norse men and women. In this aspect, I think that Odin gave the gift of the Soul Stone to the people of Earth, who had deified him. In the comics, Thanos has a love affair with Death, but I think the MCU is not going to go as metaphysical with this character. Instead, they will use their already existing representation of Death in Hela. Well, Hela knew about the fake gauntlet, and she obviously wants to rule the universe. So she found someone devoted to her, filled him with the idea of the Gauntlet, and sent him to get it for her. That's what I think is going on."

It's a nice theory, but it leaves me a little wanting, because I think there are enough clues in Black Panther that the heart-shaped herb does indeed derive its power from the Soul Stone. And the Lego box has a picture of the Soul Stone being drilled from the ground by something heavy enough to crack the surface. Then of course there's the huge fight in Wakanda, which are not Norse people, so they couldn't have been the recipient of the Soul Stone. So yeah...maybe Tony is overthinking this? Maybe the Soul Stone just happened to be in a meteor of vibranium and crashed into the Earth millions of years ago, and it has yet to be extracted. That may end up being the sole explanation of all these questions about vibranium's seemingly endless powers to do fantastical things.

However, Tony does make me think that Hela may (in fact) not be dead and could have survived Asgard's destruction at the hands of Surtr. Maybe she has a role to play in all this to come.

One last piece of information: for those of you that are excited for Avengers: Infinity War, the release date has been moved up a week to Friday, April 27th for a worldwide simultaneous release. 

Star Wars Rebels just took a sledghammer to the Star Wars universe in one of its last remaining episodes called "Wolves and a Door." Let's talk about it.

There are spoilers here, and we need to talk about what Star Wars: Rebels has done. I hope that there are some of you that are brave enough to talk about this with me, spoiler warning be damned.

First, Star Wars Rebels is canon. This is not "fake news." Disney (the company that purchased all of the rights to Star Wars from George Lucas for $4 billion a few years ago) has said as much. Here's a quote from the article on what is canon and what is not canon from Wookiepedia.

"The new canon began on screen with the Star Wars Rebels animated television series and in print with the novel A New Dawn. Under the direction of the Lucasfilm Story Group, all elements of Star Wars canon now operate in a unified and collaborative storytelling setting...."

The sledgehammering of the Star Wars universe took place in the Jedi Temple that had an entrance picturing the "Mortis gods" from an episode in The Clone Wars. This was a very interesting (old) episode, for the father (pictured in the middle) had two children: one represented the Dark Side of the Force and the other represented the Light Side of the Force. The father was essentially the balance between the Light Side and the Dark Side. The three of them were very powerful.

Anyway, once inside the temple, Ezra used the power in the temple and his own abilities through the Force to save Ahsoka Tano from Darth Vader (who I had presumed was dead two seasons ago in a spectacular battle on Malachor, where a Sith holocron was located). So he used time travel to actually save a major character who is now alive in the universe because Ezra chose to save her. Just think about that a moment. Time travel has now been introduced into the canon of Star Wars, and it is not just an observation kind of time travel. It is a kind of time travel that can undo literally anything.

Mace Windu was killed by the Emperor. Well not so fast. Are you sure? Let's time travel and fix that by giving Mace Windu a heads up at Anakin's betrayal.

The Jedi were taken by surprise that Senator Palpatine was in fact, Darth Sidious. Well...not so fast. Let's time travel and fix that by giving the Jedi council a heads up that's years in the making.

Oh, the singular moment where Han Solo is killed by his own son in The Force Awakens goes down as a spectacularly bad decision on Han Solo's part. Well...let's fix that by undoing a few things.

Seriously...everything that we know about Star Wars' entire story from the very beginning can now be rewritten. Nothing is sacred unless Disney wants it to be. Holy Cow! That is just crazy to consider, and I don't know how exactly I should feel about this. It's incredibly tempting to say that it is a good thing for the franchise which now has a way to deal with plots that are unpopular. But does it feel like maybe too powerful a weapon with regard to a story that is close to the hearts of so many? Does it feel like Star Wars Rebels maybe crossed a line somewhere?

I want to talk about this with someone. Let me hear your thoughts. Hopefully there are going to be some who are intrigued or horrified by this new development in the Star Wars universe's canon. Maybe Princess Leia should have uttered the phrase (back in A New Hope), "Help me Dave Filoni...you're my only hope" instead of "ObiWan Kenobi," because Dave Filoni has just upended everything.

Annihilation is one of those films containing imagery whose sole intended purpose is to fool you.

There are some spoilers in this post regarding Anniliation (the movie), but they are not "overt." Proceed at your own risk.

Annihilation is one of those films that has imagery in it whose sole intended purpose is to fool you. I have a love/hate relationships with these kinds of movies. On the one hand, I really love being able to identify things clearly. I love that some movies don't require a whole lot of thought processes to figure out exactly what I'm looking at. "That's obviously a fish" or "that's obviously a woman" etc. I think you may know what I mean if you've seen a lot of film. However, Annihilation is not one of these kinds of movies. It's a movie where you say, "Wait...was that a bear?" Or, "Wait...did that woman not have eyes a minute ago or was that just me?" "Was it a bad angle?" "What exactly am I looking at here?" "Are those things moving?" And the list goes on and on. It's aggravated further because you can't rewind a film for a second glimpse when it's being shown in a theater.

I did enjoy the film, but why can't we have good intellectual films where I'm absolutely certain that what I'm looking at is a thing? Maybe the reason is that in order to ask intellectual questions to begin with, we have to present something alien that we've never seen before, and then wait for our brains to catch up. In other words, you want to eschew the familiar. But, is this what good art does? Presenting the unfamiliar to our senses so that we have a chance to process and then name it so that it becomes familiar? After seeing Annihilation, I found myself thinking of the first time I saw the xenomorph from Ridley's Scott's Alien, and how I tried to figure out just what I was looking at. "Was that a head?" "Was that a tail or is that all one piece?" Of course, after staring at art illustrations and models and even holding a miniature one in my hand that was "for sale" in a Portland, Oregon comic book shop, I now have a pretty good idea of what the xenomorph is. So there is no more "surprise" factor, and seeing it on screen is actually kind of boring, which is the opposite of what one wants from an artistic point-of-view. So maybe Annihilation really succeeds in this instance, because there were many "WTF moments" that hit me during the viewing time of the film.

My criticism aside, Annihilation is a film that is full of smart stylistic choices. The wide lenses that the director used were obviously chosen to create an unnatural sense of space. Short focal lengths isolate characters in the frame. Even before the characters enter "the shimmer," which is a zone of ever-expanding weirdness slowly swallowing the Earth, the film is full of windows, screens, and lens flares to create dubious perspective. When the heroine and her husband are reunited during the early scenes, a drinking glass sits in front of the place where their hands meet in order to distort everything about their relationship in the land of curved light and strange reflections.

Ultimately, Annihilation was filled with technical brilliance, but because of all the trickery, I'm not sure of exactly anything of what I saw. Nor am I sure that any of it really matters. As a side note, this kind of bugs me, because I think that if a story is so weird that it defies any kind of understanding, it (maybe?) has pushed its audience too far. Or maybe I'm just picky and lazy because I want things to make sense.

The Brainiac that SyFy is bringing to Krypton is super cool.

SyFy channel is launching a new Superman-themed television show that takes place before his planet blew up, and it launches on March 21st. Naturally, it's called Krypton, and my original feelings were just kind of ho-hum about the whole thing. I'm kind of over-saturated with Superman stuff that's kind of built up over the years from Smallville, to Superman Returns, to a reboot of Superman in Man of Steel, and then to Supergirl and so on and so forth. But I'm kind of excited for Krypton, because the villain in it, a.k.a. Brainiac, looks sooo good. Below is a picture of Brainiac courtesy of USA Today (he kind of reminds me of a green borg from Star Trek, which is maybe why I kind of like him so much). In the trailer (which I've embedded below so you can watch it), he looks absolutely awesome. He has a massive, kind of sprawling skull ship, and he's surrounded by all kinds of black cables and ropes that look like tentacles. I've never seen Brainiac look like that, and he gives off a decidedly evil (and very ghoulish) vibe that feels like it will make the story told in Krypton very interesting. The design of him is influenced heavily from a Geoff Johns's cover for Action Comics #868, which is shown below. In watching the trailer, the only question I had was, "Why are they putting Kryptonians in ball caps and hoodies?" I haven't figured that one out yet, but maybe it was to appeal to Americans watching the show instead of trying to create a completely alien-looking race similar to how director Ridley Scott approaches things. Without the brilliance of someone like H.R. Giger, envisioning something "alien" is undoubtedly going to be based upon something of which we are undoubtedly familiar.
So who is Brainiac anyway?
He's been depicted in multiple television series several times, but I've always been underwhelmed by him in every single appearance. Supposedly (I haven't read the comics in which he's the biggest villain) he is Superman's archenemy, and he is responsible for shrinking and stealing Kandor, the capital city of Superman's home planet Krypton. The bottle city of Kandor is a pop culture icon, and features prominently in cartoons and the comic books. The fact that we might see this event happen in this new series gives me enough of a reason to want to watch it. Hopefully, it's darker and more serious than Supergirl. Not that I don't like Supergirl, but I sometimes enjoy a nice brooding switch from all the campiness that is on the CW. I think that dark and brooding is perfect for Krypton as it's literally a series set on a planet on the brink of annihilation. There's nothing quite like "impending doom" to light a fire under things.
Random thought: I wonder if there are going to be overt comparisons to Earth in Krypton, as many think that our own world is on the cusp of some kind of apocalyptic doom associated with climate change. Maybe like the Kryptonians that our fiction writers dream about, we'll all turn a blind eye to it until it's too late. That could be fun.

Facebook changed the social dynamic of the world by allowing people to ask for things from you without actually doing anything at all for you.

My brother was taken aback the other day when he trolled me and asked why my art has not made it onto Facebook. I told him that I didn't like Facebook and could care less about sharing it. His eyes opened wide with shock and surprise, but he decided (for once) not to angrily press me into sharing on Facebook. He has done this before with me, insisting that I post pictures and such of my house on Facebook so that everyone could see. When I said no, he pushed until he got his way. That's just our dynamic I guess. My brother says that he shares everything on Facebook to create Facebook memories. Again, I could care less about Facebook memories. I prefer the real ones. And should I ever be so mentally compromised that I can't remember the real ones, I doubt I'll remember how to get onto Facebook anyway. It all seems like unnecessary narcissism to me, if I'm to be honest. I feel like I know too many people on Facebook who are addicted to attention. There's actually a disorder for it called "attention addiction disorder." For those who don't know what this is, it's when a young person gets too much attention for one reason or another and grows addicted to it because it feels good (kind of like a drug). As they get older, they need to have that sustained input of attention and will do anything to get it, including risky sexual behaviors etc.

Side Note: For those that are legitimately interested in seeing my art, I will be posting a picture I've been working on for months here on my blog when I finish it. But it's a really slow process, and I'm about 90% done. There's lots of detail in it. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about in this post.

What I wanted to talk about is that I've been really struggling with putting into words why I don't like Facebook, and why I try to stay off it as much as possible. And then it finally hit me, I think I dislike Facebook so much, because it changes the social dynamic that I was raised up knowing (into something that feels alien and different). Here's how: Facebook allows people to ask for things from you without actually doing anything at all for you. It makes it too easy for people to become takers in your life without giving anything.

It used to be that people had social contracts with each other. If you wanted to get to know someone, you would hang out with them in real time. You would go and visit their home. You would pick up the phone and talk with them for hours on the phone until parents told you to stop monopolizing the line. You knew what was going on with their lives on a daily basis because you invested in another person. Facebook has removed all of that. Now, all you do is check someone's feed of things that they post to your wall and that's your substitute for "catching up." There is nothing unique for you. Rather, it's like everyone is doing a "press release" for their avocado toast that they chose to eat in the morning. "Press release...I'm drinking O.J. from this cute kitty cup!" It's ridiculous and wrong on so many levels.

I suppose I'd be okay with it, but these same people that you somehow friend because you saw them once and they send you a friend invite will still come after you for favors (like a Go Fund Me account or a request to join a political activist rally), even though they haven't stepped one foot in your house and even though they never call. With as little effort as possible, these people still expect you to come to their aid, they expect you to extend levels of respect to them that you would previously only do to people you really wanted in your life, yet they will never do the same. The equivalent of "breaking out the fine China" for a new generation of people is to abide by all of the political correctness that they insist upon if you are to communicate with them beyond a "hello" and treat them with the respect of a visiting dignitary and not an average person. And I'm being serious here. I have barely met people and they have asked favors from me having to do with multiple personal pronouns, not using certain language (or to provide trigger warnings), and to respect them in ways that I was raised to believe that only "honored guests" received. There's been several times when I've paused, and asked, "who are you exactly?" and then gotten into a heated conversation about how that's not appropriate only to put that person resoundly in their place and they never speak to me again. In truth, it's a wonderful feeling, but it's also why I hate Facebook. People today seem to think that they can do so little, and then expect so much from someone in return. I come from a generation of people who believed that you treated everyone at a baseline, but extra-ordinary respect needed to be earned. Now (it seems) that people desire extra-ordinary respect to be the baseline, always, and without exception. I simply don't agree with this. There are plenty of reasons for people to be treated with no respect, either through their abhorrent behaviors or attitudes.

It's a curious development of the technology era, and I've been called a "luddite" by some who eschew my particular view on social media. I've never really considered myself a luddite. I know that I'm quite versed in technology and seem to have a solid grasp of how computers, mobile phones, and apps work. But just because I prefer paying in cash as opposed to paying for things using Facebook (yes there's a way to pay through Facebook) or paypal or Bitcoin shouldn't be a reason for a person to call me a "luddite" even if it is meant affectionately.

I see for me an odd kind of future, where I willfully embrace introversion over the complexity of trying to navigate friendships which are ultimately both meaningless and frustrating. Anyone else noticing these kinds of relationships and interactions cropping up in your life with more and more frequency? Do you blame Facebook? I look forward to reading your comments.