Unpredictability

By Matthijs Rotte on 21 April 2010

As I’m writing this blog I’m looking out my window. I see grass and think: ,,aaaah, Fresh air, nature..” minutes after that I realize that it is not. This is manmade nature. Nature is not something we want to have outside my window. Nature is unorganized and unpredictable. So we cultivated it and brought a small part of manmade nature between four walls, so we can enjoy nature without the nasty side effects like bugs, rodents, mud and unexpected tree trunks we can fall over. That last case by the way is never our own fault, somehow it’s the tree’s. We’ve cultivated everything to such extent that we banned nature from our lands. We let it on there in tiny controllable bits; we don’t like to be surprised by an unexpected flower.

This drive to ban out nature, has led to the phenomenon that we try to incorporate all kinds of “real” things back into our lives, without having the discomfort of unpredictability. That’s why we love video’s of pets. They are unpredictable. Have you ever considered how many youtube clips are about cats? Or how frustrated we get if something unpredictable happens to us. We only like to experience unpredictable things when we allow them to happen. We go to comedy shows for instance. The place where people tell us things and then say something unexpected, and then we laugh. Because we didn’t see that one coming! Comedy is a great example of how and when to be unpredictable. It is a fine line between set clichés and absurd situations we don’t expect. On the internet it’s no different. We browse to be surprised, but only in the time we allow ourselves to be surprised.

So why are we all using social media? We’re not making any new friends, we are merely keeping in touch with our real friends. Or is it that we can give our real friends a glimpse of the person we want to be? Online socializing is not new, it’s just gotten easier. And therefore we all do it. In this age of facebook, twitter and email, we can share interests to all of our friends. You can tell people who you would like to be. It’s a kind of narrowcasting to your friends. All we’re doing is telling our friends: ,,Hey I’ve been there!” or ,,I’ve watched this movie!”, so next time we meet each other, there’s no time lost in having to ask ,,Have you seen that?” we know what to expect and what people have been up to prior to meeting. We can go to that all time favorite subject; the weather. The only unpredictable nature thing we haven’t been able to control yet. We can just observe, and be surpised about vulcanos and snowfall. Oh look!, the sun has come out, I’ll go and sit outside. I didn’t expect to see the sun today, what a pleasant surprise.

tagged with: realism, nature, unexpected, social media

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