For the crouton petters
April 13, 2023 10:22 PM Subscribe
I've heard autism is maybe not a lack of empathy but actually hyper-empathy, which would track with this. It's certainly something to think about.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:21 PM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:21 PM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
They locked the poor thing behind a paywall! No wonder it's sad.
posted by wanderingmind at 11:39 PM on April 13, 2023 [56 favorites]
posted by wanderingmind at 11:39 PM on April 13, 2023 [56 favorites]
As a child I couldn't bear to make any of the crayons feel excluded or lonely by not using them. My drawings were . . . busy.
posted by Garm at 12:05 AM on April 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by Garm at 12:05 AM on April 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
I don't know these people but allistic researchers generally have done a shit job researching on autistic people due besides power relations to neurotypical challenges with empathizing. So unless autistic people would like to review, I'd rather leave them out of it and focus on the croutons themselves.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:16 AM on April 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 12:16 AM on April 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Dunno about object personification, but I definitely get mechanical sympathy, in the sense of finding people grinding gears or otherwise just harming mechanisms painful in a very similar way to witnessing people being hurt.
posted by Dysk at 12:54 AM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 12:54 AM on April 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
taquito boyfriend is still traumatized from the time I shrieked at him to stop washing dishes with the short chonky blue dish brush that I'd put googly eyes on & decided she was dating the short chonky blue Bluetooth speaker & it was a Little Mermaid situation, he lived on land & she lived in the sink & they could not be together
I was like "WHOA WHOA STOP WASHING DISHES WITH THE BLUETOOTH SPEAKER'S MERMAID GIRLFRIEND" & he was like "but this is a dish brush you put in the sink??" & anyway I've come around to accepting I'm probably the bad guy here
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:03 AM on April 14, 2023 [86 favorites]
I was like "WHOA WHOA STOP WASHING DISHES WITH THE BLUETOOTH SPEAKER'S MERMAID GIRLFRIEND" & he was like "but this is a dish brush you put in the sink??" & anyway I've come around to accepting I'm probably the bad guy here
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:03 AM on April 14, 2023 [86 favorites]
Metafilter: focus on the croutons themselves.
posted by amtho at 3:01 AM on April 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by amtho at 3:01 AM on April 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
I mean, how could I not
posted by amtho at 3:02 AM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by amtho at 3:02 AM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
So I'm not the only person in the world who thanks his old toothbrushes for their service before throwing them out? (Also thanked for its long service: my XBox One when I traded it in to get a Series X.)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:59 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:59 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Object personification is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human agents.
Basically what's gone wrong with most press coverage of Trump.
posted by flabdablet at 4:34 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Basically what's gone wrong with most press coverage of Trump.
posted by flabdablet at 4:34 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I caught myself speaking in a soothing way to somebody else's Macbook the other day, after making sure its external hard drive was comfortably snuggled up on a loop of its own USB cable.
Usually I swear viciously at computing machinery I'm trying to fix, on the basis that machines can sense fear and if you don't establish a clear power relationship very early on then the little fuckers will take liberties. And I've always had extra trouble with Macs. Just little things, like the keyboards needing me to remember some bogus collection of chordings instead of just having PgUp, PgDn, Home and End buttons. Or remembering exactly which folder the Finder is going to paste into when the target window contains a mixture of folded and unfolded folders. Or where they've hidden the thing to click to open this window's enclosing folder. So historically I've been motivated to swear even more viciously at Macs than I usually do at Winboxen.
But, you know, when I uncharacteristically went the extra mile to reassure that Macbook that I knew it was doing its best and leave it feeling good about itself, it gave me no trouble at all! Everything I needed to do on it Just Worked, to an extent that I found unfamiliar and disorienting.
Servile passive-aggressive obsequious manipulative self-satisfied little fuck.
posted by flabdablet at 4:49 AM on April 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
Usually I swear viciously at computing machinery I'm trying to fix, on the basis that machines can sense fear and if you don't establish a clear power relationship very early on then the little fuckers will take liberties. And I've always had extra trouble with Macs. Just little things, like the keyboards needing me to remember some bogus collection of chordings instead of just having PgUp, PgDn, Home and End buttons. Or remembering exactly which folder the Finder is going to paste into when the target window contains a mixture of folded and unfolded folders. Or where they've hidden the thing to click to open this window's enclosing folder. So historically I've been motivated to swear even more viciously at Macs than I usually do at Winboxen.
But, you know, when I uncharacteristically went the extra mile to reassure that Macbook that I knew it was doing its best and leave it feeling good about itself, it gave me no trouble at all! Everything I needed to do on it Just Worked, to an extent that I found unfamiliar and disorienting.
Servile passive-aggressive obsequious manipulative self-satisfied little fuck.
posted by flabdablet at 4:49 AM on April 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
I've noticed a trend (i.e., the last two posts on metafilter where I've had a strong interest in reading the material) of posting links to scholarly articles behind hard paywalls. When all I have is an amusing title and an abstract, I don't know how to get into into the discussion I'd like to have about it, when it appears the heart of the claim itself is this kind of weaksauce:
posted by drlith at 5:08 AM on April 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
object personification occurs commonly among autistic individuals, and perhaps more often (and later in life) than in the general populationThis is not a disparagement of anyone autistic people who identify with this framing. But I'm also not the only one who has noticed a trend where relatively weak and preliminary findings in scholarly publications get translated into much stronger claims in social media--from Metafilter to TikTok--with the end result being that behavior patterns that are relatively common in the general population are framed as "that thing you do? it's a trauma response!" or "if you this other thing, you just might have undiagnosed ADHD" and so on.
posted by drlith at 5:08 AM on April 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
Sad is a post of just an abstract that doesn't allow for a deeper dive into the actual "research". A presumably self-selected 87 people on the internet isn't science, it's a poll. The last thing needed for autism is more junk science generating headlines.
posted by ITravelMontana at 6:21 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by ITravelMontana at 6:21 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've heard autism is maybe not a lack of empathy but actually hyper-empathy
Oh god, that tracks.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:28 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh god, that tracks.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:28 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've heard autism is maybe not a lack of empathy but actually hyper-empathy
are you guys really still trying to decide whether autistic people can be empathetic
posted by Gymnopedist at 7:37 AM on April 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
are you guys really still trying to decide whether autistic people can be empathetic
posted by Gymnopedist at 7:37 AM on April 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
drlith, here's a sci-hub link. (Incidentally, I think you nailed it sight unseen with "relatively weak and preliminary findings"...)
posted by aws17576 at 8:11 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by aws17576 at 8:11 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
When my minivan is doing particularly well, I pet and thump the dashboard, just as I would with a Very Good Dog.
posted by sockshaveholes at 8:15 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by sockshaveholes at 8:15 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Meanwhile, neurotypical researchers fail to attribute human characteristics to autistic objects people.
posted by heatherlogan at 8:20 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by heatherlogan at 8:20 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
I'm just starting the process of being formally diagnosed and it's sickening, honestly. Most of the providers I speak to still use problematic terminology like "high functioning" and "low functioning." That's insulting, in and of itself, because it's a spectrum not a scale, and no autistic person is any "more" or "less" autistic than another person, any more than red is more than green. Just a whole bunch of constellations of traits, some of which may be easier or harder for other people to swallow, and that's a lazy way to sort people.
But it's also being used to dismiss why I might even be autistic. I mean, yeah, I'm verbal, but I rarely say anything I haven't practiced in my head like 6x and I prefer to communicate in segments/speeches I have developed and memorized over time that I feel comfortable with, so let's not oversell it. I also blow up any diagnostic series you might want to put me through so let's not assume I'm all good because I'm pretending to hold eye contact and I can robotically ask "How was your weekend?"
Back to TFA, though, I started to say I don't personify inanimate objects, but on reflection, I do have strong feelings about which objects do or do not like me. That hammer and I are not friends. I have to use the red one.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:02 AM on April 14, 2023 [17 favorites]
But it's also being used to dismiss why I might even be autistic. I mean, yeah, I'm verbal, but I rarely say anything I haven't practiced in my head like 6x and I prefer to communicate in segments/speeches I have developed and memorized over time that I feel comfortable with, so let's not oversell it. I also blow up any diagnostic series you might want to put me through so let's not assume I'm all good because I'm pretending to hold eye contact and I can robotically ask "How was your weekend?"
Back to TFA, though, I started to say I don't personify inanimate objects, but on reflection, I do have strong feelings about which objects do or do not like me. That hammer and I are not friends. I have to use the red one.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:02 AM on April 14, 2023 [17 favorites]
Wow, there appears to be a basic math error in the text of the article vs. the table data ("there were significantly more personifiers in the autistic group [56%] than in the non-autistic group [33%])" when the table data indicates that 44% percent of autistic participants did not engage in any type object personification vs. 57% of allistic participants, which means that personifiers vs. non-personifiers would be 56 vs. 44% autistic and 43 vs. 57% allistic. If we set aside any issues with the underlying data, this means that slightly more than half of austistic respondents personified and slightly less than half didn't; meanwhile, slightly less than half of allistic respondents personified and slightly more than half didn't.
posted by drlith at 9:03 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by drlith at 9:03 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Sounds like they should have gotten an autistic person to check their results.
It's all right there in the abstract though: "perhaps more often [...] than in the general population." They have no conclusions. And yet, look what the narrative is: oh those childish autistics, they're so dumb they treat objects like people. There's a direct line from this kind of thinking to involuntary Do Not Resuscitate orders, denying gender-affirming health care on the basis that autistic people can't know whether they're trans, and subjecting autistic kids to electric shock conditioning.
This is so deeply, horribly offensive and dehumanizing.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:19 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
It's all right there in the abstract though: "perhaps more often [...] than in the general population." They have no conclusions. And yet, look what the narrative is: oh those childish autistics, they're so dumb they treat objects like people. There's a direct line from this kind of thinking to involuntary Do Not Resuscitate orders, denying gender-affirming health care on the basis that autistic people can't know whether they're trans, and subjecting autistic kids to electric shock conditioning.
This is so deeply, horribly offensive and dehumanizing.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:19 AM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]
I'm sticking two googly eyes right on the top of this web page.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:05 AM on April 14, 2023
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:05 AM on April 14, 2023
Probably autistic here: Interesting abstract.
In experience, I find how folks (especially those not known to be autistic) treat objects and other non-human agents, especially if they're either non-standard or in development/a prototype, kind of reflective of how they treat other people. In some cases, it's a pretty strong correlation without need to attribute causation to it. It's kind of like an inductive proof: n = 1 is this non-human agent, and you treat it some way. This may have implications for objects n+1, including humans you'll meet.
$0.02, with grains of salt available to take
posted by JoeXIII007 at 10:19 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
In experience, I find how folks (especially those not known to be autistic) treat objects and other non-human agents, especially if they're either non-standard or in development/a prototype, kind of reflective of how they treat other people. In some cases, it's a pretty strong correlation without need to attribute causation to it. It's kind of like an inductive proof: n = 1 is this non-human agent, and you treat it some way. This may have implications for objects n+1, including humans you'll meet.
$0.02, with grains of salt available to take
posted by JoeXIII007 at 10:19 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Given the obvious truth of animism/panpsychism and the ultimately arbitrary nature of the line between human and nonhuman, this would seem to track with the general trend that autistic people frequently decline to buy into consensus nonsense.
Unfortunately, the authors have a tendency, here and e.g. elsewhere, to beg the question by talking about object personification / anthropomorphism as ascribing "human traits" to nonhuman objects. Which suggests that they are not coming to this question from a very enlightened standpoint. Perhaps they had better put their own philosophical house in order first.
posted by Not A Thing at 10:54 AM on April 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
Unfortunately, the authors have a tendency, here and e.g. elsewhere, to beg the question by talking about object personification / anthropomorphism as ascribing "human traits" to nonhuman objects. Which suggests that they are not coming to this question from a very enlightened standpoint. Perhaps they had better put their own philosophical house in order first.
posted by Not A Thing at 10:54 AM on April 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
JoeXIII007 interesting, do you think that's maybe like a transposed version of watching how your date treats the waiter?
The waiter is somebody acknowledged to be a person but in a position where your date may have the opportunity and inclination to treat them as an object rather than a subject. But also, since maybe we do all slip into object-treating people sometimes, you look at how people relate to inanimate things. What is somebody's attitude towards the world and all its parts, before they put their "extra nice towards the humans" face on.
Why not inanimate subjects anyway, right?
posted by away for regrooving at 11:31 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
The waiter is somebody acknowledged to be a person but in a position where your date may have the opportunity and inclination to treat them as an object rather than a subject. But also, since maybe we do all slip into object-treating people sometimes, you look at how people relate to inanimate things. What is somebody's attitude towards the world and all its parts, before they put their "extra nice towards the humans" face on.
Why not inanimate subjects anyway, right?
posted by away for regrooving at 11:31 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Feeling seen here.
I do this type of stuff, much less so as an adult, but it got to the point where as a kid I used to get worked up and cry about inanimate objects. I got over much of it, but I've been late to online stuff before because I was in the in game orphanage /hug-ing all the orphans. Don't get me started with working in IT and all the names for everything. Until quite recently, I thought of it mostly as some sort of benign eccentricity, like liking mowing so much that I mow all the neighbor's lawns, not something that I should for some reason feel bad about? Maybe it's people like you that helped me care more about inanimate objects than people?
This is so deeply, horribly offensive and dehumanizing.
This. You'd think that as medical "professionals" they wouldn't ridicule the subject with that title. Maybe next time they can go with "Paranoia: Maybe they are out to get you!" or "Hoarding: Why seven storage lockers is three too many." maybe "Medicine: Hippocratic, Shmippocratic: Oaths are for suckers."
posted by Sphinx at 11:36 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
I do this type of stuff, much less so as an adult, but it got to the point where as a kid I used to get worked up and cry about inanimate objects. I got over much of it, but I've been late to online stuff before because I was in the in game orphanage /hug-ing all the orphans. Don't get me started with working in IT and all the names for everything. Until quite recently, I thought of it mostly as some sort of benign eccentricity, like liking mowing so much that I mow all the neighbor's lawns, not something that I should for some reason feel bad about? Maybe it's people like you that helped me care more about inanimate objects than people?
This is so deeply, horribly offensive and dehumanizing.
This. You'd think that as medical "professionals" they wouldn't ridicule the subject with that title. Maybe next time they can go with "Paranoia: Maybe they are out to get you!" or "Hoarding: Why seven storage lockers is three too many." maybe "Medicine: Hippocratic, Shmippocratic: Oaths are for suckers."
posted by Sphinx at 11:36 AM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
I have access to that article, and it suggested this open access article (everyone can read) that is based on the posted article with more information: Anthropomorphic tendencies in autism: A conceptual replication and extension of White and Remington (2019) and preliminary development of a novel anthropomorphism measure
posted by JZig at 2:26 PM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by JZig at 2:26 PM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
away for regrooving: interesting, do you think that's maybe like a transposed version of watching how your date treats the waiter?
Correct - dates, or anyone for that matter. You got it
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:53 PM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Correct - dates, or anyone for that matter. You got it
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:53 PM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hanging out with an eight year old who was placed on the spectrum, I can’t say I’ve noticed this behavior except in his personification of buses, though he has books with talking vehicles, etc. which makes me think that it is just a trope in kid’s books. Look up “animism” for loads of examples. However, I have witnessed rampant anthropomorphism in any thread here regarding AI and chatGPT. The PBS Spacetime series (which I highly recommend) also features rampant anthropomorphism. It is an innately human behavior to predicate human behavior to inanimate objects. You could claim that it is just a metaphor, but the sometimes high emotional response that people have when something doesn’t work the way they expect, shows that the reaction isn’t metaphorical. How many of you here think that things around your home are out to get you?
posted by njohnson23 at 5:09 PM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 5:09 PM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
[news bulletin] And now we'll go to finance news to understand how the market is feeling today
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:28 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:28 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Usually I swear viciously at computing machinery I'm trying to fix, on the basis that machines can sense fear and if you don't establish a clear power relationship very early on then the little fuckers will take liberties.
But you have to be careful, because they all belong to the same union and will gang up on you in solidarity.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:03 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
But you have to be careful, because they all belong to the same union and will gang up on you in solidarity.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:03 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
As long as I remain in control of their power switches they can gang up all they like.
Thinking about that, though, certainly helps explain why I have such a strong aversion to working on phones and tablets. It also fits in with a childhood nightmare I still remember, involving an auto-changing record player that would not turn off.
Given the obvious truth of animism/panpsychism
I see neither of those as obviously true. What's obvious to me is that huge numbers of humans behave as if they were literal truths rather than amusing and occasionally useful metaphors. I think we're better off when we give ourselves permission to think more playfully and that taking our metaphors too seriously is a mistake.
I think the same mistaking of metaphor for truth applies to all of the Abrahamic monotheisms, which it seems perfectly clear to me are derived from object personification applied to the universe as a whole.
I'm unaware of any specific connection between autism and monotheistic belief.
the ultimately arbitrary nature of the line between human and nonhuman
is a nature that that line shares with every distinction. That doesn't make distinctions useless for reasoning with; without them we'd have very little to reason about. All it means is that reasoning based mostly on some particular distinction's difficult edge cases is inevitably going to be a bit unreliable.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 AM on April 15, 2023
Thinking about that, though, certainly helps explain why I have such a strong aversion to working on phones and tablets. It also fits in with a childhood nightmare I still remember, involving an auto-changing record player that would not turn off.
Given the obvious truth of animism/panpsychism
I see neither of those as obviously true. What's obvious to me is that huge numbers of humans behave as if they were literal truths rather than amusing and occasionally useful metaphors. I think we're better off when we give ourselves permission to think more playfully and that taking our metaphors too seriously is a mistake.
I think the same mistaking of metaphor for truth applies to all of the Abrahamic monotheisms, which it seems perfectly clear to me are derived from object personification applied to the universe as a whole.
I'm unaware of any specific connection between autism and monotheistic belief.
the ultimately arbitrary nature of the line between human and nonhuman
is a nature that that line shares with every distinction. That doesn't make distinctions useless for reasoning with; without them we'd have very little to reason about. All it means is that reasoning based mostly on some particular distinction's difficult edge cases is inevitably going to be a bit unreliable.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 AM on April 15, 2023
I do absolutely believe my electronic devices can sense when I am going to replace them soon and enact retribution by failing before their replacement arrives, out of resentment.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:56 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:56 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Next time one does that, put 240V up its barrel connector as a warning to all the others.
You have to show the bolshie little bastards that you're not somebody they can afford to fuck around with.
posted by flabdablet at 10:33 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
You have to show the bolshie little bastards that you're not somebody they can afford to fuck around with.
posted by flabdablet at 10:33 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Probably autistic here, finding out for sure in a couple months (from a wonderful just-licensed psychologist friend who noticed that I winced when she told me she was studying to be a CBT practitioner, realized that her kneejerk 'but I'm one of the good ones!' response said terrible things about the field at large, and has expended huge effort to engage with autistic people to find practices that are not harmful). Very nearly all of my friends are either a) autistic b) ADHD c) both d) closely related to people who are autistic and/or ADHD, or e) all of the above, and I don't think I had realized before this moment that feeling sorry for a dishbrush or apologizing to a busted water bottle was a deeply weird thing to do. Computers are different, everyone feels like that about computers. Surely.
posted by ngaiotonga at 1:58 PM on April 16, 2023
posted by ngaiotonga at 1:58 PM on April 16, 2023
> But you have to be careful, because they all belong to the same union and will gang up on you in solidarity
Are you the guy who... hit the television set?
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:58 PM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Are you the guy who... hit the television set?
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:58 PM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's not "deeply weird" at all!
No one's ever suggested to me that I'm anything but neurotypical and I routinely say "ok, just a second" to the microwave, not to mention "please" and "thanks" to Siri and to Tilly the car.
posted by tangerine at 9:23 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
No one's ever suggested to me that I'm anything but neurotypical and I routinely say "ok, just a second" to the microwave, not to mention "please" and "thanks" to Siri and to Tilly the car.
posted by tangerine at 9:23 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Computers are different, everyone feels like that about computers. Surely.
Nope. Computers can't be the subject is my mechanical sympathy, because they aren't mechanical. I guess I could feel sorry for a fan with a busted bearing or something, but that'd be the fan, not the computer.
Similarly, so many people I know give names (and usually female names specifically, explicitly gendering the objects in a way I find very off putting) to things like guitars or cars. I call cars by their model name or maybe a snippet of the license plate if it's particularly memorable (FPU, SDV, that kind of thing) and guitars and basses get referred to by make, model, or colour (the Jazz, the Dean, the red one, etc). Both are always "it" because they are inanimate objects.
My sympathy for cars is limited to the mechanics. A rough running drivetrain or clanking sus will make me wince, but body panel dents are just not comparable. I don't care about them in at all the same way. I feel no sympathy for instruments (though I don't like them being destroyed, mostly because it's a waste) and used to regularly beat the hell up on whatever I was playing when performing.
It would never occur to me to apologise to any inanimate object.
posted by Dysk at 10:04 PM on April 18, 2023
Nope. Computers can't be the subject is my mechanical sympathy, because they aren't mechanical. I guess I could feel sorry for a fan with a busted bearing or something, but that'd be the fan, not the computer.
Similarly, so many people I know give names (and usually female names specifically, explicitly gendering the objects in a way I find very off putting) to things like guitars or cars. I call cars by their model name or maybe a snippet of the license plate if it's particularly memorable (FPU, SDV, that kind of thing) and guitars and basses get referred to by make, model, or colour (the Jazz, the Dean, the red one, etc). Both are always "it" because they are inanimate objects.
My sympathy for cars is limited to the mechanics. A rough running drivetrain or clanking sus will make me wince, but body panel dents are just not comparable. I don't care about them in at all the same way. I feel no sympathy for instruments (though I don't like them being destroyed, mostly because it's a waste) and used to regularly beat the hell up on whatever I was playing when performing.
It would never occur to me to apologise to any inanimate object.
posted by Dysk at 10:04 PM on April 18, 2023
I call cars by their model name or maybe a snippet of the license plate if it's particularly memorable (FPU, SDV, that kind of thing)
The number plate on the beat up old tan and orange Kombi that took us around Australia in 1995 was RFS 178, so it was pretty much inevitable that he became Rufus the Wonky Bus.
posted by flabdablet at 1:49 AM on April 19, 2023
The number plate on the beat up old tan and orange Kombi that took us around Australia in 1995 was RFS 178, so it was pretty much inevitable that he became Rufus the Wonky Bus.
posted by flabdablet at 1:49 AM on April 19, 2023
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posted by Phanx at 11:16 PM on April 13, 2023 [7 favorites]