the snail shell


Pokemonization

Compare these two lines of cars. Honda:

Hondas, including the Brio, Jazz, Passport, Ridgeline, Odyssey, Civic, Accord, and e:NS1

Lexus:

Lexuses, including the IS, ES, GS, LS, UX, etc

Now close your eyes and try to do the following for each company:

I bet you can do all of these better for the Hondas. Why? Because Honda models are Pokemonized.

what is pokemonization?

Giving everything in the group a name that is:

For example: Pikachu, Charmander, Blastoise. These fit all of the above criteria; even if you didn’t know which one was the fire one and which one was the little mouse, you could probably guess. And if I said “Blastoise”, you’d know exactly what I mean; it’s not like there’s Blastoise, Blastoise v2, and Blastoise-X.1

The Hondas fit this almost perfectly2. They’re easy to pronounce in 1-3 syllables. None of them are in danger of being confused with each other. I can guess what they each are from their names: “Ridgeline” sounds like a rugged truck, “Brio” and “Jazz” are cute, “Civic” is middle of the road.

Lexuses? The names are unpronounceable. (sure, you can say them, but “GS F” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). They all sound the same, and they tell me nothing. If my friend was excited about his Lexus NX, I wouldn’t know whether he’s going camping or track racing. And the first time you buy spare tires for the GS only to find that they’re actually for the GS F, you will wish that there was only one Lexus GS.

Now that it’s been a minute or so, try to name the Hondas and the Lexuses again. Here, I’ll wait 60 seconds and try real time: Brio Jazz E:ns1 Accord Civic Ridgeline Odyssey, and um, IS CS LS GS GSF CX NX EX? 7/8 Hondas and 4/8 Lexuses with 4 false positives.

pokemonize your set

If you’re trying to sell something, this seems like a no-brainer to me. It will stick in people’s heads, interoperate cleanly, and even have personality.

If you’re Printercorp and you sell 3 printers, and they’re called Rolfus, Flurbo, and Sneepy, wouldn’t that be nicer than Printercorp x300, 274q, and 274i-1? I’d gladly buy a Flurbo printer and then Flurbo replacement ink, without worrying if it’s the right version of Flurbo.

If you’re making a software package called Glorf, telling people “install Glorf” will work way better than “install GSP (Glorf Software Platform)”.

A car with license plate BIDOOF with two Bidoof pokemons in the back window

Can you imagine people doing this if Bidoof was instead called Pokemon 118.24?

  1. An earlier version of this post used Charizard here. But reader C S pointed out to me that there are in fact two versions of Charizard: Mega Charizard X and Y! And a whole slew of Charizards if you’re counting the card game. Probably a ton of Blastoise cards too. Well, god damn. Even Pokemon is bad at pokemonizing sometimes, the real world (or the pokemon world) is infinitely complex, and we can’t have nice things. ↩︎

  2. Except the “e:NS1”, welp. ↩︎



2 Focus 2 Positive

a few obvious things

how is this relevant now

When I’m in the muck, nothing seems good. the positive voices seem like Pollyannas. I can’t change it once I’m there. it’s like Severance. the miserable innie doesn’t want to listen to the outie who’s living the good life.

Unlike in Severance, the innie would rather not exist. he doesn’t like being miserable. being miserable and heard is better than being miserable and ignored, but not being there is better than both. So maybe the deal that outie-me can strike with innie-me is: if we, together, can focus on the upsides more, you (innie) don’t have to exist as much

But it’s also hard talking with him without treating him as an object or a problem, and I assume either of those stances will make him shut right down, and I wouldn’t blame him.

a friend blogged this a while ago, and the phrase stuck with me. I do this a lot:

An example:

so now what

Ok, I have a little more energy right now and life seems hopeful. Current practice, then, includes “stop being victim of metonymy, befriend innie, focus on the positive.”

“focus on the positive” is too much to bite off, though, so I’m starting with “orient”: just focus on the outside world, feel my senses, feel connected with it all. I think this is basically the same thing that most everyday practices point at: Alexander technique, meditation practice off-the-mat, “stop and smell the flowers”, “take a deep breath.” Life is a little easier if you just chill out right now.

I’m gonna get so good at it.2

  1. usually, including in this case, it’s “victim of synecdoche”, but using “metonymy” instead is a synecdoche I can live with ↩︎

  2. comic by owlturd.com where B says “hey type A friend, stop and smell the flowers” and the type A friend gets so aggressive and tries to become the #1 flower smelling champion ↩︎



Micro-frustration

I was going to write about how frustration is the most common emotion I feel these days, but I’m not sure. Exhaustion is right up there. They’re kind of the same.

Here’s a feeling that happens a lot: I’m under little pressure, but I become frustrated because any single move is impossible, and I am rewarded with the sonic and emotional equivalent of intermittent electric shocks.

Here’s a concrete instantiation of that feeling: kid and I go to the playground. It’s 5 blocks away; let’s walk! On the way, the following things happen:

A more zen person than me would realize that we are just killing time so who cares if it takes a while? And I am kind of like that; most of these things, I don’t force him to move on, I just let him explore and take his time. But it is exhausting for me. Exhausting because we are changing directions multiple times a minute. I just get started walking this way… and now we’re walking that way. (And if I try to get him to walk this way again, he’ll either ignore me or start screaming and crying.)

I wish there was a word for this. Micro-frustration. Everything’s a yak shave. It feels like if you had allergies, but every so often when you went to wipe your nose, it didn’t work and an airhorn came out of your nose instead, so you had to gently coax your nose back to working.

The frustrating thing is that the answer doesn’t seem to be psychological. It’s not like “I just have to let go of my anxiety around ___” or “realize that I don’t have to control ___.” It feels like being a little bit on fire, and the only solution is to “just get ok with being a little bit on fire.” That feels like a much harder adjustment to make, than to update some thinking patterns.