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Flanderization

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Re: Flanderization

#111

Post by blowski »

racl101 wrote: post #80
shanusmagnus wrote: post #32

This is one of those moments that makes me fall in love with the internet all over again. I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) wrt aging in real life. So many people seem to become increasingly caricature as they get older. The guy who likes woodworking and European travel becomes the embodiment of woodworking and European travel. It's all he talks about. His kids roll their eyes at…

> I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) I used to call it the "Kramer Effect", much like you, without knowing it was called Flanderization and was using it in the early 2000s to describe my displeasure with the character Joey from Friends. Joey went from kind of low intellect to full retard by the end of the show and very inexplicably.

Ross also became more and more neurotic.

Re: Flanderization

#112

Post by katamarimambo »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #68
shanusmagnus wrote: post #32

This is one of those moments that makes me fall in love with the internet all over again. I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) wrt aging in real life. So many people seem to become increasingly caricature as they get older. The guy who likes woodworking and European travel becomes the embodiment of woodworking and European travel. It's all he talks about. His kids roll their eyes at…

Just spend a week on tvtropes.org and you'll instantly become a better writer I think. It's not to say that tropes are bad but it's important to use it as a repository of easily accessible writing mistakes so you can quickly learn from the past and contextualize them for your own synthesis.

tvtropes is fun, but it's the cultural analysis equivalent of overfitting a model.

Re: Flanderization

#113

Post by julianeon »

Bakary wrote: post #41
shanusmagnus wrote: post #32

This is one of those moments that makes me fall in love with the internet all over again. I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) wrt aging in real life. So many people seem to become increasingly caricature as they get older. The guy who likes woodworking and European travel becomes the embodiment of woodworking and European travel. It's all he talks about. His kids roll their eyes at…

As you age, the rewards you get from social conformity become less and less important because your social role starts to be squeezed in general. Pop culture stops catering to you as much, you are less likely to multiply intimate partners or discover new friends or change your circle to a great extent, though obviously this is a vague trend and there are tons of exceptions to this. From your own perspective, you have…

Here is a simpler explanation:

When you are younger, you have a community of people and friends who push, pull, and otherwise shape you.

When you are older, there is no community. That’s an oversimplification, but it’s close enough.

So there’s no pushback about “hey man, that’s enough about your hobby.” There’s no influence to curb any parts of your personality. It’s just you, instead of being in a health community, living in a kind of void, in between your interactions w others.

Now it’s true there are people (say, your parents) who continue to exert influence. But it’s like the number of people actively involved w you falls from 100, to like 5. In terms of true peers who are your age - they number may very well fall to 0. So the amount of eccentricity, or really indulgence of personal preference above every other consideration, skyrockets.

Re: Flanderization

#114

Post by ineedasername »

It seems like the term has a negative connotation in the article but I think it could go either way.

In some cases you could interpret it as the fact that early is a series the audience has very limited experience with a character’s personality. What seems like a minor trait could seem that way only because we haven’t had the opportunity to see more of a character and once we do it is shown to be a defining trait.

In fact this is not that different than real life. When you first meet someone you have no idea who they are, but after a few years in may be that initially minor (seemingly) aspects in fact run very deep. Using Ned Flanders as an example here actually fits real life perfectly: I have known people who are extremely religious with much of who they are, especially in their own minds, defined through their faith. Rarely is this obvious upfront. Like anyone else, the more I got to know them the more they revealed about who they are and how strong their beliefs are.

Re: Flanderization

#115

Post by xhevahir »

racl101 wrote: post #80
shanusmagnus wrote: post #32

This is one of those moments that makes me fall in love with the internet all over again. I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) wrt aging in real life. So many people seem to become increasingly caricature as they get older. The guy who likes woodworking and European travel becomes the embodiment of woodworking and European travel. It's all he talks about. His kids roll their eyes at…

> I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) I used to call it the "Kramer Effect", much like you, without knowing it was called Flanderization and was using it in the early 2000s to describe my displeasure with the character Joey from Friends. Joey went from kind of low intellect to full retard by the end of the show and very inexplicably.

I don't think Kramer is a good example of this. The Simpsons characters, and I suppose most Friends ones as well, gained depth (or at least the audience's affection) over the course of several seasons, whereas Seinfeld stuck to its original formula of, "No hugging, no learning." Kramer was never supposed to take on interesting dimensions like the Flanders of the nineties did.

Re: Flanderization

#116

Post by Karrot_Kream »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #93
matsemann wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need to prevent it? I think it's related to optimal stopping / the secretary problem. In the beginning, you explore. Later, you exploit by doing more of the things you found fruitful.

It's a good question. My take is that the quote from one of the sibling comments -- where someone's dad talks about aging as 'boiling down to your own true essence' -- is actually wrong. I think there's a lot less 'true essence' and a lot more path dependency. In my example, is woodworking and European travel true essence? I suppose it's possible, but I don't think so. I think it could have just as easily been someth…

I think it depends on the person and there's no good answer. For some folks it will be sticking with what they know and trying to "exploit" it as deep as possible, while for others it will be "exploring" as wide as possible trying everything out, and for everyone else it'll be some mix of both.

To counter the anti-caricature penalty, there's also the stereotype of the older person that never found something to anchor them in life. This stereotype of an older person never found a hobby, friends, community, or partners and travels from place to place constantly searching and consuming. Most people are probably in the middle and most people relative to themselves probably become more focused with age.

Re: Flanderization

#117

Post by LAC-Tech »

corysama wrote: post #79
rockbruno wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watch an youtuber that makes videos about life in Japan and he mentioned recently about how this drives the direction of his videos against his will. Despite producing extremely high-quality videos, every video is accompanied by clickbait titles and the classic "=O" idiotic face thumbnail. The quality contrast between the cover and the video is immediately clear once you start watching the content. He mentioned tha…

Linus Tech Talks has a whole video explaining that they hate making YouTube Face thumbnails, but their numbers are dramatically worse when they don’t.

I've pretty much refused to watch any of his videos because he looks lone of those open mouthed clowns you throw balls into at the carnival.

Re: Flanderization

#118

Post by cmehdy »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #32

This is one of those moments that makes me fall in love with the internet all over again. I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) wrt aging in real life. So many people seem to become increasingly caricature as they get older. The guy who likes woodworking and European travel becomes the embodiment of woodworking and European travel. It's all he talks about. His kids roll their eyes at…

As time goes you might find your eigenvectors. Sometimes it takes a change of norms, sometimes it takes a change of bases. But things might be simpler when you live your eigenvectors :)

Re: Flanderization

#120

Post by xattt »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #32

This is one of those moments that makes me fall in love with the internet all over again. I've thought about this idea (without knowing there was a term for it!) wrt aging in real life. So many people seem to become increasingly caricature as they get older. The guy who likes woodworking and European travel becomes the embodiment of woodworking and European travel. It's all he talks about. His kids roll their eyes at…

> how would you prevent such a thing? And should you?

I once had a chat with an exec-level nurse. Don’t remember how it came up, but she mentioned that growth comes with leaving a practice area once the butterflies in your stomach leave and comfort sets in. Her experience was this came at about a 5-year cadence. My experience so far is this advice was spot on.

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