Ever since the early days of the Internet which, by the way, predates the invention of the browser by at least a decade, there has been a form of social networking. In the mid to late 1980s and on into the 1990s, that was Usenet. Usenet was a collection of so-called "newsgroups" which weren't so much news as discussion boards.
Now, many sites have discussion boards. They are now ubiquitous throughout the Web. However, Usenet brought them under one umbrella. You would get a newsreader, which was a client-side software tool (text-based, much like working with vi or emacs) and then you'd pick a few newsgroups you were into. Many of them used naming schemes that classified it. Thus "rec" would refer to recreation and might include sports as well as TV shows.
For example, when I first became aware of newsgroups, sometime in the late 1980s, Star Trek: The Next Generation had just started. Needless to say, due to the number of nerds on at Usenet, a far higher percentage then than now, there were plenty of ST:TNG fans (ST:TNG is an acronym for the show). You'd have at least half a dozen reviewers. Names like Vidiot, Michael Rawdon, Atsushi Kanamori, and, of course, Tim Lynch were the authority figures, folks that wrote about each episode, dissected what they liked and didn't like.
And much as geekdom was not simply isolated to computers and Star Trek, there was also a huge fascination with sex. Usenet groups, legitimate ones anyway, went through this approval process. I believe some guy at Purdue approved each group and there were hundreds of such groups. However, there were also groups that some wanted without approval, and they all fell in the "alt" groups, the most famous of which was, alt.sex.
For a long while, alt.sex was a pretty fascinating newsgroup. People would freely ask questions, discuss their own personal experiences. Alternate lifestyles were fascinating. I recall a guy who was married in an open relationship. Both he and his wife would sleep with other men and women, in 2-somes and 3-somes. Their view outside the normal spectrum showed a world few were familiar with.
Due to the relative anonymity of the Internet, several phenomenon that exist to this day showed up. Most common were "flame wars". A flame was an incendiary post meant to take a highly opinionated position and often to criticize someone severely. These arguments were more emotional than persuasive and people easily became incensed by contrary viewpoints.
Why did this happen? Ask yourself who read these newsgroups? Typically, bored geeky guys that were passionate about a particular subject, say, Star Trek. Once you get hundreds of such people, it's not hard to have at least one person have a view that is contrary to the views of many. Atsushi Kanamori, for example, enjoyed Star Trek a great deal, but he found most episodes of TNG to be tripe. He argued why he thought it was that way, but it seemed 2 of every 3 reviews were negative. Fans of the show argued with him about the awesome-ness of the show, but since he reasoned his argument out in a review, he was often better prepared to retort.
And that was a civil discussion.
I used to be involved in a tennis newsgroup. During the height of Steffi Graf and Monica Seles, Seles got stabbed and took nearly 2 years off from the tour. Ardent Seles fans, who were all male, demanded Steffi return all the trophies that she won saying they were tainted because Seles was not there to challenge her for them. To be fair, Seles probably would have won her share of trophies during that period, but in a way, it's no different than if Seles had been injured and returned slowly to the tour.
The point is, even a newsgroup as potentially boring as tennis, was still filled with passionate people with passionate arguments.
What was interesting about this tennis newsgroup, and honestly, a whole host of other newsgroups, some devoted to fairly erudite topics such as artificial intelligence or arcane subjects in math, was its ability to attract passionate people who loved a particular subject matter together with other people of similar interests.
I used to love following tennis, but it was really hard prior to the Internet. If you watched tennis in the day, you could only get coverage for matches between the French Open and the US Open. This typically included some of the US tournaments (then played on clay). It was rare to see even the early hardcourt season played in Miami and Indian Wells even though those matches had been played for years. The Philadelphia Indoors was a major indoor tournament that was rarely covered on TV. Forget the entire European clay court circuit which was barely reported on.
In those days, it was amazing just to get tennis results. Most local papers didn't bother with tennis scores. At the time, the best place to get tennis scores was USA Today. USA Today may have been called "McNewspaper" for its generally cheery and somewhat controversy-free news reporting, but it also had a sports section that covered sports nationwide and internationally.
Believe me, even tennis scores don't begin to adequately cover what happens in tennis, but in those days, if you were into tennis, then tennis scores were better than nothing. You could, in principle, try to track an individual player week to week and see how they did. All you would have is scores since live coverage was out of the question.
The newsgroup, in those days, was primarily devoted to the pro game. Sure, there was the occasional discussion of how to play tennis, but Usenet's medium was primarily text. In the early 1990s, there was no YouTube. The best you could hope for was to post photos, and even back then, digital cameras were rare, and there was no convenient way to produce slow motion video from which to take digital stills.
Tennis instruction wouldn't take off again til about 2007. By then, YouTube had existed a few years, and people were producing high quality tennis audio and video and able to acquire slow motion video of the pros and begin to dissect their shots. Up until then, information about how to play tennis seemed like a deeply held secret among certain tennis coaches and that information was not widely disseminated, not even in the "Dummies" books that were starting to abound.
Anonymity creates a strange social dynamic. On the one hand, people will say critical things in front of others and not fear any repercussion. I used to participate in a college newsgroup about issues affecting colleges. One person was adamant in his hatred of affirmative action claiming it was reverse discrimination. The African Americans (at the time) tended to ignore what he said so there was rarely intelligent discussion. Liberals just assumed affirmative action was right and conservatives assumed it was wrong, and there wasn't much discussion, just heated arguments.
Thus, behind the veil of anonymity, people behave in ways that are outside the norm. On the flip side, anonymity sometimes lead to people being a lot more honest. For example, suppose a person was having an affair, or they were gay, or a whole host of things that would be seen unfavorably if their friends new (they were sexaholics, etc). They could get to a newsgroup and discuss it in relative anonymity being a lot more open knowing they could leave at any time.
Of course, the flip side also held true. If people couldn't see you, then perhaps you could pretend to be someone you're not. If you were 50, you might pretend to be 20, and so forth. All sorts of social behavior that has evolved over time to let us interact mostly peacefully begin to deteriorate when bad behavior doesn't have to be reined in. That beautiful girl? Ask her to remove her clothes? That "ugly" person? Criticize them for being a lardo.
It's perhaps no surprise that many of the behaviors that spontaneously evolved during that time continue to this day. People still flame. People still pretend to be other people. People still are passionate about topics and find others that are similarly passionate. Sociologists may one day look at this period, near to the cusp of a new millennium, and wonder how the nature of the Internet and anonymity lead to the burgeoning of the earliest form of social networking, and how people began to view notions such as honesty and privacy in surprisingly different ways.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Dallas 362 Again
I saw Dallas 362 a few years ago on the positive review of Internet critic, Mike D'Angelo. It was just showing this morning on IFC and I caught the last 20 minutes or so.
If memory serves, the story is about a mother and son, originally from Texas, that move to California. The woman, played by a perhaps impossibly beautiful Kelly Lynch, has become a widower when her husband has died as a bucking horse rider, one of those guys that tries to stay on a horse as long as possible, usually merely seconds, before getting tossed aside. She's moved to be as far away from where this happened as possible.
The son, having been transplanted, doesn't fare particularly well. He gets tangled up with a guy named Dallas who is mixed up with the wrong folks. Perhaps in Dallas, the son (Rusty), sees a kind of father figure, or at least, some masculine role in his life. But perhaps, much like the Charlie Sheen figure in Wall Street, he knows that what he's doing isn't right, and the film depicts how he ends up choosing the right path for himself.
Jeff Goldblum plays, well, himself. Perhaps one reason to cast Kelly Lynch is because she's blond and a bombshell, though with the paucity of characters in the film, no one much pursues her. Goldblum's character is the awkward, geeky, nerdy character he generally plays in most films, but it serves as a contrast to Rusty and the film takes time to have Rusty warm up to this guy who is nothing like the self-destructive Dallas.
Mike D'Angelo, himself trained as a screenwriter, picks a scene, where son and mom sit on a bench outside the house having a heart-to-heart. She tells him that she's in love with Jeff Goldblum's character, and wants to marry him, and he tells her that he's genuinely happy for her, and she finally gives him permission to pursue his dream to go back to Texas and do the only thing he's ever been good at, riding horses.
And he realizes that, even if he thought he would leave California and pursue it with or without his mother's permission, he would have to cut off his life in California, one that was bad for him, but the only one he knew. And it's an interesting decision, the contrast of living the honest life that he knows he should. He tries to convince his buddy, Dallas, to leave his wicked ways and join him, and yet, we know, Rusty knows, and finally Dallas knows, that Dallas is just as suited to life in Texas as Rusty is suited to life in California.
During this scene, D'Angelo points out that Goldblum is just about to join in. He's in the background, hangs out a minute, then leaves. Rusty peers over for a second, and the Goldblum is gone. He credits director Caan (who also plays Dallas) with keeping that subtle, not drawing attention to it.
I happen to like a later scene, flashy as it may be. While Rusty and his mom and his mom's boyfriend are having a nice dinner, Dallas has paired up with a guy to rob a local kingpin. That scene is played for tension and intercuts with the life Rusty could be living (namely, being with Dallas) and the life he has now decided is right for him. The scene ends in an absurdist situation where a third character pounces in at a moment that causes Dallas and a guy he has paired with to rob the house, end up accidentally shooting each other and killing one another.
Of course, that scene is played for the tragic ending you know the film feels inexorably drawn to, and while flashy and reminiscent of the tense moments in "Boogie Nights", it's not the one I point to.
Instead, although you are never told this, it's a scene afterwards where Rusty is dazed, devasted and begins to cry. Few films about the tough male bonding ever dig deep at the emotional, homoerotic crux of such relationships. Dallas, for all his faults, was the one guy that, in his way, cared for Rusty, and bad as he was for Rusty, it meant something emotionally to him. It was, in its way, a doomed love affair, improbable because one guy was, at his core, someone bad, and one, at his core, was someone good, as trite as the idea seems.
It reminds me a bit of "Wild Reeds", a French film, which has the daughter of a Communist teacher (communists supported the Algerians during their fight for independence from France) who has fallen for a loner (whose dad died in Algeria, and believes Algerians owe the French for all they've done for them). The two have a very brief tempestuous relationship, one similarly doomed to fail because both are such different people. Lust and love can't overcome their diametrically opposed view of the way the world works.
Perhaps the reason this scene resonates is because few male relations are depicted like this, and perhaps few relationships exist like this. In the process of creating a drama like this, it seems Caan has also given thought to what it's like for someone to have that intense a friend, and the associated emotions that it brings. This hyper-masculinity means the two can never really express what they mean to each other in any but the most superficial macho preening ways.
And yet, in that moment of loss, with Rusty on the verge of leaving California, leaving his friend, he breaks down. The one man he truly cares for is gone, and it has taken his death to reveal just how much he cared. And yet, he's also now a truly free man. He has made the right decision, and he only wishes his friend, whose life was being sucked to self-destruction, had listened to him, had taken that improbable step, a step he was never going to take.
It takes keen observer to create characters that you can tell have a path they must lead, but try to escape it.
By the way, after this movie, IFC is now showing Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, the inspiration to Star Wars. The movie opens with two bickering low-lifes who are wandering across the desert. There is a war and they were mistaken for the enemy, and like Merry and Pippin, have managed to get themselves out of a bind. The two insult each other, even come to strangle each other, when another guy, a warrior of some sort, stumbles across, trying to escape the enemies pursuing him.
Six horses with men come by, finish him off, and then leave, the two men bewildered, happy to be seen as beggars.
It reminds me of the scene of C3PO and R2D2 crossing the desert planet of Tatooine. Of course, C3PO is the fussy English butler, and R2D2 mostly squeals and beeps. They don't have the kind of insulting, bawdy, relationship that the two characters in Hidden Fortress do. And it is funny to imagine Lucas deciding to make the droids behave like these men, bawdy, bickering, rather than polite, effete.
Too bad that Lucas's pilfering of Kurosawa doesn't extend to Kurosawa's clever filmwork. Kurosawa is a formalist, often as interested in the relationship of how characters fill the screen, how they sit and situate against one another. Lucas, far less mannered, doesn't seem concerned with these trifles.
If memory serves, the story is about a mother and son, originally from Texas, that move to California. The woman, played by a perhaps impossibly beautiful Kelly Lynch, has become a widower when her husband has died as a bucking horse rider, one of those guys that tries to stay on a horse as long as possible, usually merely seconds, before getting tossed aside. She's moved to be as far away from where this happened as possible.
The son, having been transplanted, doesn't fare particularly well. He gets tangled up with a guy named Dallas who is mixed up with the wrong folks. Perhaps in Dallas, the son (Rusty), sees a kind of father figure, or at least, some masculine role in his life. But perhaps, much like the Charlie Sheen figure in Wall Street, he knows that what he's doing isn't right, and the film depicts how he ends up choosing the right path for himself.
Jeff Goldblum plays, well, himself. Perhaps one reason to cast Kelly Lynch is because she's blond and a bombshell, though with the paucity of characters in the film, no one much pursues her. Goldblum's character is the awkward, geeky, nerdy character he generally plays in most films, but it serves as a contrast to Rusty and the film takes time to have Rusty warm up to this guy who is nothing like the self-destructive Dallas.
Mike D'Angelo, himself trained as a screenwriter, picks a scene, where son and mom sit on a bench outside the house having a heart-to-heart. She tells him that she's in love with Jeff Goldblum's character, and wants to marry him, and he tells her that he's genuinely happy for her, and she finally gives him permission to pursue his dream to go back to Texas and do the only thing he's ever been good at, riding horses.
And he realizes that, even if he thought he would leave California and pursue it with or without his mother's permission, he would have to cut off his life in California, one that was bad for him, but the only one he knew. And it's an interesting decision, the contrast of living the honest life that he knows he should. He tries to convince his buddy, Dallas, to leave his wicked ways and join him, and yet, we know, Rusty knows, and finally Dallas knows, that Dallas is just as suited to life in Texas as Rusty is suited to life in California.
During this scene, D'Angelo points out that Goldblum is just about to join in. He's in the background, hangs out a minute, then leaves. Rusty peers over for a second, and the Goldblum is gone. He credits director Caan (who also plays Dallas) with keeping that subtle, not drawing attention to it.
I happen to like a later scene, flashy as it may be. While Rusty and his mom and his mom's boyfriend are having a nice dinner, Dallas has paired up with a guy to rob a local kingpin. That scene is played for tension and intercuts with the life Rusty could be living (namely, being with Dallas) and the life he has now decided is right for him. The scene ends in an absurdist situation where a third character pounces in at a moment that causes Dallas and a guy he has paired with to rob the house, end up accidentally shooting each other and killing one another.
Of course, that scene is played for the tragic ending you know the film feels inexorably drawn to, and while flashy and reminiscent of the tense moments in "Boogie Nights", it's not the one I point to.
Instead, although you are never told this, it's a scene afterwards where Rusty is dazed, devasted and begins to cry. Few films about the tough male bonding ever dig deep at the emotional, homoerotic crux of such relationships. Dallas, for all his faults, was the one guy that, in his way, cared for Rusty, and bad as he was for Rusty, it meant something emotionally to him. It was, in its way, a doomed love affair, improbable because one guy was, at his core, someone bad, and one, at his core, was someone good, as trite as the idea seems.
It reminds me a bit of "Wild Reeds", a French film, which has the daughter of a Communist teacher (communists supported the Algerians during their fight for independence from France) who has fallen for a loner (whose dad died in Algeria, and believes Algerians owe the French for all they've done for them). The two have a very brief tempestuous relationship, one similarly doomed to fail because both are such different people. Lust and love can't overcome their diametrically opposed view of the way the world works.
Perhaps the reason this scene resonates is because few male relations are depicted like this, and perhaps few relationships exist like this. In the process of creating a drama like this, it seems Caan has also given thought to what it's like for someone to have that intense a friend, and the associated emotions that it brings. This hyper-masculinity means the two can never really express what they mean to each other in any but the most superficial macho preening ways.
And yet, in that moment of loss, with Rusty on the verge of leaving California, leaving his friend, he breaks down. The one man he truly cares for is gone, and it has taken his death to reveal just how much he cared. And yet, he's also now a truly free man. He has made the right decision, and he only wishes his friend, whose life was being sucked to self-destruction, had listened to him, had taken that improbable step, a step he was never going to take.
It takes keen observer to create characters that you can tell have a path they must lead, but try to escape it.
By the way, after this movie, IFC is now showing Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, the inspiration to Star Wars. The movie opens with two bickering low-lifes who are wandering across the desert. There is a war and they were mistaken for the enemy, and like Merry and Pippin, have managed to get themselves out of a bind. The two insult each other, even come to strangle each other, when another guy, a warrior of some sort, stumbles across, trying to escape the enemies pursuing him.
Six horses with men come by, finish him off, and then leave, the two men bewildered, happy to be seen as beggars.
It reminds me of the scene of C3PO and R2D2 crossing the desert planet of Tatooine. Of course, C3PO is the fussy English butler, and R2D2 mostly squeals and beeps. They don't have the kind of insulting, bawdy, relationship that the two characters in Hidden Fortress do. And it is funny to imagine Lucas deciding to make the droids behave like these men, bawdy, bickering, rather than polite, effete.
Too bad that Lucas's pilfering of Kurosawa doesn't extend to Kurosawa's clever filmwork. Kurosawa is a formalist, often as interested in the relationship of how characters fill the screen, how they sit and situate against one another. Lucas, far less mannered, doesn't seem concerned with these trifles.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Wait Wait Followup
Of course, now that I did a full rant, I learned what had happened. Turns out the guy who was supposed to play tennis with me got caught in traffic and that had severely delayed him. He went on to play tennis with someone else that day. We ended up playing doubles and singles the following day.
I'm not sure my observations were incorrect in my previous post, but at the very least, I should apologize for the situation which I misunderstood.
I'm not sure my observations were incorrect in my previous post, but at the very least, I should apologize for the situation which I misunderstood.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Wait Wait
In India, the term is so common, it's been given its own name: IST. IST stands for Indian Standard Time. No, it's not the peculiar N + 1/2 hour difference that the entire country of India has with other countries. It's akin to what is called "Clinton Standard Time".
Bill Clinton was known as something of a schmoozer. He loved to talk and charm his guests. So much so that his meetings often ran late, which meant he was rushing to his next meeting, but the rush was superfluous because, well, he was late. And that meeting would run late, and so forth.
IST is this idea that Indians don't show up to anything on time. They can be late as short as 10 minutes to as late as, well, who knows, half an hour, an hour? If the person making you wait is, say, a relative, then you put up with it. Grandma was supposed to arrive at 2 PM, and it's nearly 6 PM and you're still waiting, wanting to get on and do the next thing? Nope, you're hanging out. The thought of taking off and leaving Grandma by herself would be deeply insulting, and so the culture never cures itself of this promptness problem because the person that's late knows they can get away with it. They prey on the kindness of others.
I've heard of Indians who promise they will show up to something and when it happens they "just don't feel like it" and so they don't show up at all. Do they call ahead to inform the folks that they don't feel like it? It doesn't seem necessary. They don't seem to feel that bad about it. Perhaps it's happened to them so much, and they've done it so much, that saying you won't show up, especially to a group event is, even in this modern day of communication, a trifle. What should someone bother?
Now, to be fair, there are enough Indians that are pretty prompt. They know how to get to places on time. But it seems like a foreign trait. Most people that run late feel they have "power". I'm not constrained by a schedule. I don't have to be out there right. This. Minute.
Part of the problem is the lack of ability to estimate time. You need to be somewhere by 7? Many think, oh, it'll only take 5 minutes. Once you convince yourself of that, then it no longer matters if you leave at 6:55 or 7:00, now does it? It's only 5 minutes, right? And much like the snooze alarm, you can always say, well, if 5 minutes late is OK, then 10 should be OK too, right? I think many would be shocked to learn that they need to be in their car at 6:45 moving, because at 6:45, 7:00 seems so far away.
And so sometimes the lies come. It's 7, and they are still at home, so you give them a call, and they don't want to displease you, so the white lie is "I'm on the road now, so I'll be there in a few minutes" and by the time they show up, you realize when you called, that they weren't even in their car. The entire trip time consists of the time between the time you called and the time they arrived.
And because it's so prevalent, a late Indian never (or rarely) apologizes for being late. Sometimes they are almost indignant or shrug it off, and try to convince you to move on, they're their now, let's get started.
What's worse than that is not the lack of ability to estimate time is the thought process that occurs. It seems, any time there is a deadline to arrive somewhere, that's when someone will decide to do something. Oh wait, we need to take care of this one thing before we go out.
I suspect this idea of getting a hundred things done had to do with the nature of slow transportation in India, that once you were out your door, you might not get back for hours, and if you hadn't taken care of something by then, it might be too late, so rather than take care of those things hours ago or the previous day, the deadline of having to leave the house suddenly reminds the person they need to take care of this or that, or they don't want to be interrupted in whatever they are doing.
The idea of completely dropping everything and getting out and to the vehicle and reaching you on time is foreign. Indeed, if everyone is in IST, why bother rushing? The other guy is going to take his or her time, and you have to wait, because the notion of abandoning the person you are waiting for would be cutting your nose off to spite your face, that is to punish someone and yourself as well.
This tardiness, as I mention, not a particularly Indian trait. I'm told it's common in Brazil, and I'm sure in many developing countries. To be held to a deadline is to feel shackled, and so people feel it's OK to slip a little late here or there, until it is an epidemic behavior in society.
So I tell this story because this happened to me. I play tennis with a guy who is routinely late. I think part of his tardiness is this embarrassment that he has to do all these things at home for his wife and kids. He never says that this is the cause of why he's late to play tennis, and then insists, after he's late, that everyone else accommodate him so he can play his 3 hours, even though everyone showed up 1.5 hours earlier. You must wait, he says. It's an incredible amount of selfishness that he merely shrugs off.
The morning group tennis was canceled because it was felt the courts were too wet. But he hadn't played the night before with me. Why not? His new job means he gets back around 8. His cheapness means he doesn't have a cell phone, so he can't call any sooner than 8. I told him I had made plans, and I wasn't going to play tennis, but he had hoped. By 10 PM, it was raining anyway, so it might not have been possible to play.
So at 10 AM, I called him, and asked if he would play at 10:30. Oh, no, that's too soon, how about 11? Fine, 11. So I went out to arrive by 11, and he calls while I'm on the road. "Maybe it's too wet to play?". Too wet to play? Too wet to play?! I told you the morning tennis had been called off because it was wet, and you insisted on playing, and only now, you think it's too wet? You better be out in a raincoat ready to play. If you break your leg and can't play for 6 months, you better be out there! Too wet to play, indeed!
Of course, I said nothing of the kind. I told him I'd check on the court conditions and get back to him. I reached there, and it was wet, but no wetter than the previous weekend, and he showed up then.
Now realize, this guy was ready to show up at 11. So I figured, he's dressed and ready to head out. I should have known.
IST.
Probably not dressed. Probably attending to hundreds of other things, and taking care of them, and not even ready to roll. So when I say it's OK, he has, I'm sure, not even made a move to leave. He's in the middle of other things, don't you know. I will wait, don't you know? It's all about him and his selfishness, and he won't even bother saying why he might be late, because it's a sign of weakness, or it's something no Indian ever thinks about. You don't apologize for your lateness because it's a trifle, a bother. You are too stressed out about people being late! Enjoy life!
So as it became close to being 30 minutes late, and I had made several calls, I left. Funny that he called 4 minutes later. Clearly, he couldn't have arrived at the court, and then gone back home. It meant he was still home and still hadn't left. So I refused to return his calls all day. I hope he was unable to play with anyone that day.
And you have to do things like this, because otherwise, the guy thinks he can do it again. And, of course, being human nature, he'll probably not learn, and continue to do it, and continue to beg to play. The man can't even convince his own son to play. His son doesn't want to be seen with his dad. So he bullies his friends because he can't bully his family. His family knows how to say no, and he's given up.
Are things likely to change? Most likely not. Lateness is a disease, and the cure too painful for most to swallow.
Bill Clinton was known as something of a schmoozer. He loved to talk and charm his guests. So much so that his meetings often ran late, which meant he was rushing to his next meeting, but the rush was superfluous because, well, he was late. And that meeting would run late, and so forth.
IST is this idea that Indians don't show up to anything on time. They can be late as short as 10 minutes to as late as, well, who knows, half an hour, an hour? If the person making you wait is, say, a relative, then you put up with it. Grandma was supposed to arrive at 2 PM, and it's nearly 6 PM and you're still waiting, wanting to get on and do the next thing? Nope, you're hanging out. The thought of taking off and leaving Grandma by herself would be deeply insulting, and so the culture never cures itself of this promptness problem because the person that's late knows they can get away with it. They prey on the kindness of others.
I've heard of Indians who promise they will show up to something and when it happens they "just don't feel like it" and so they don't show up at all. Do they call ahead to inform the folks that they don't feel like it? It doesn't seem necessary. They don't seem to feel that bad about it. Perhaps it's happened to them so much, and they've done it so much, that saying you won't show up, especially to a group event is, even in this modern day of communication, a trifle. What should someone bother?
Now, to be fair, there are enough Indians that are pretty prompt. They know how to get to places on time. But it seems like a foreign trait. Most people that run late feel they have "power". I'm not constrained by a schedule. I don't have to be out there right. This. Minute.
Part of the problem is the lack of ability to estimate time. You need to be somewhere by 7? Many think, oh, it'll only take 5 minutes. Once you convince yourself of that, then it no longer matters if you leave at 6:55 or 7:00, now does it? It's only 5 minutes, right? And much like the snooze alarm, you can always say, well, if 5 minutes late is OK, then 10 should be OK too, right? I think many would be shocked to learn that they need to be in their car at 6:45 moving, because at 6:45, 7:00 seems so far away.
And so sometimes the lies come. It's 7, and they are still at home, so you give them a call, and they don't want to displease you, so the white lie is "I'm on the road now, so I'll be there in a few minutes" and by the time they show up, you realize when you called, that they weren't even in their car. The entire trip time consists of the time between the time you called and the time they arrived.
And because it's so prevalent, a late Indian never (or rarely) apologizes for being late. Sometimes they are almost indignant or shrug it off, and try to convince you to move on, they're their now, let's get started.
What's worse than that is not the lack of ability to estimate time is the thought process that occurs. It seems, any time there is a deadline to arrive somewhere, that's when someone will decide to do something. Oh wait, we need to take care of this one thing before we go out.
I suspect this idea of getting a hundred things done had to do with the nature of slow transportation in India, that once you were out your door, you might not get back for hours, and if you hadn't taken care of something by then, it might be too late, so rather than take care of those things hours ago or the previous day, the deadline of having to leave the house suddenly reminds the person they need to take care of this or that, or they don't want to be interrupted in whatever they are doing.
The idea of completely dropping everything and getting out and to the vehicle and reaching you on time is foreign. Indeed, if everyone is in IST, why bother rushing? The other guy is going to take his or her time, and you have to wait, because the notion of abandoning the person you are waiting for would be cutting your nose off to spite your face, that is to punish someone and yourself as well.
This tardiness, as I mention, not a particularly Indian trait. I'm told it's common in Brazil, and I'm sure in many developing countries. To be held to a deadline is to feel shackled, and so people feel it's OK to slip a little late here or there, until it is an epidemic behavior in society.
So I tell this story because this happened to me. I play tennis with a guy who is routinely late. I think part of his tardiness is this embarrassment that he has to do all these things at home for his wife and kids. He never says that this is the cause of why he's late to play tennis, and then insists, after he's late, that everyone else accommodate him so he can play his 3 hours, even though everyone showed up 1.5 hours earlier. You must wait, he says. It's an incredible amount of selfishness that he merely shrugs off.
The morning group tennis was canceled because it was felt the courts were too wet. But he hadn't played the night before with me. Why not? His new job means he gets back around 8. His cheapness means he doesn't have a cell phone, so he can't call any sooner than 8. I told him I had made plans, and I wasn't going to play tennis, but he had hoped. By 10 PM, it was raining anyway, so it might not have been possible to play.
So at 10 AM, I called him, and asked if he would play at 10:30. Oh, no, that's too soon, how about 11? Fine, 11. So I went out to arrive by 11, and he calls while I'm on the road. "Maybe it's too wet to play?". Too wet to play? Too wet to play?! I told you the morning tennis had been called off because it was wet, and you insisted on playing, and only now, you think it's too wet? You better be out in a raincoat ready to play. If you break your leg and can't play for 6 months, you better be out there! Too wet to play, indeed!
Of course, I said nothing of the kind. I told him I'd check on the court conditions and get back to him. I reached there, and it was wet, but no wetter than the previous weekend, and he showed up then.
Now realize, this guy was ready to show up at 11. So I figured, he's dressed and ready to head out. I should have known.
IST.
Probably not dressed. Probably attending to hundreds of other things, and taking care of them, and not even ready to roll. So when I say it's OK, he has, I'm sure, not even made a move to leave. He's in the middle of other things, don't you know. I will wait, don't you know? It's all about him and his selfishness, and he won't even bother saying why he might be late, because it's a sign of weakness, or it's something no Indian ever thinks about. You don't apologize for your lateness because it's a trifle, a bother. You are too stressed out about people being late! Enjoy life!
So as it became close to being 30 minutes late, and I had made several calls, I left. Funny that he called 4 minutes later. Clearly, he couldn't have arrived at the court, and then gone back home. It meant he was still home and still hadn't left. So I refused to return his calls all day. I hope he was unable to play with anyone that day.
And you have to do things like this, because otherwise, the guy thinks he can do it again. And, of course, being human nature, he'll probably not learn, and continue to do it, and continue to beg to play. The man can't even convince his own son to play. His son doesn't want to be seen with his dad. So he bullies his friends because he can't bully his family. His family knows how to say no, and he's given up.
Are things likely to change? Most likely not. Lateness is a disease, and the cure too painful for most to swallow.
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