The Monkeysphere

AggroChat 44 – Tragic Relationships

As we were getting close to recording this weeks episode two things happened.  Firstly we decided that it was probably better for all parties combined if we tried to record on Friday instead of Valentines day proper, that would leave the day open for any holiday plans that our cast might have.  Secondly Kodra suggested that we try and record a Valentines episode talking about relationships in video games.  At face value this seemed like a great idea, and generally speaking even if an idea is destined to fail… I am more than willing to try it.  The problem is as we sat down to record, we quickly realized just how flawed and tragic most relationships in video games are.  We can’t even make it past three relationships in the episode without hitting in the fact that man…  video games are really bad at this.

The problem is that video games seem to be good at two emotions revenge fueled Rage, and utter soul crushing Sadness.  We joked about indie games being hung up on sadness a few episodes ago when Tam kept giving each game Kodra talked a sadness score “Seven Sads out of Ten”.  It seems as though we are not quite ready to talk about actual adult relationships that are productive and not abusive or hostile to the well being of the participants.  I think the problem is more that we have not figured out how to do meaningful stories that are not relying on these elements as a way of moving the plot forward.  After all if someone is happy with their life, chances are they are not going to go off and be and adventurer.  In any case the episode ended up being pretty interesting to record in spite of itself.

The Monkeysphere

TheBelSphere Yesterday Braxwolf wrote an interesting follow up to my post diving into my post and trying to explain some of his own thoughts.  His post was awesome for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it gave me a real name to a theory that I have used for years.  Once upon a time I was driving home and heard some researchers talking on NPR about the “monkeysphere” theory…  well it turns out this is more properly known as the Dunbar number.  Essentially it is the maximum number of people that we can care about at one time.  The idea is that our brains are literally only capable of caring about a fixed number of people at any given time, so in order to start caring about someone knew… we have to punt someone out of the sphere.  I’ve long thought about this and I think my zone of caring maybe works a little different than the extreme examples of these studies.

While I am not sure if my sphere is larger than most, but I think it is arranged in some distinct regions.  I attempted to draw these out above, to make sense of them.  If you take that 150 is the maximum number of people that you can care about at any time like the initial study I read, my numbers would break down to something like this.  I generally have about 25 people that I would consider my inner circle, and these are folk that maintain their orbit relatively safely and I ultimately end up talking to them almost every single day.  After that we fall into a close orbit zones of folks I would consider close friends, and among this group I would say there are about 50.  From there you fall into what I refer to as the “hotswap” zone, to borrow a term from technology.  This would be a field of 75 people that gets swapped in and out of the larger pool of every single person I have ever met.

Points of Data

Each person that I meet gets stored in my brain as a pattern of data…  the closer I am to a person the more data points I remember.  The odd thing is… when someone moves in and out of orbit I don’t delete that data.  I can remember things about friends that I have not seen in years and may never actually cross paths with again.  Essentially I feel like I have a fourth sphere that is made up of the thousands and thousands of people I have ever met in my life.  At any time due to circumstance one of these people can come zooming into orbit and bump someone else out of that “hotswap” zone and I can functionally pick up where I left off, as though no time had passed.  I realize that not everyone functions in this state of constantly looking for new interactions with people, and pulling them into their own personal gravity for as long as possible.  But that is the way I work, as some sort of empathic computer looking for new inputs.

The biggest flaw in my system design however is the fact that there is no delete key.  When a group of individuals break out of orbit attempting to shun me…  there is no system available to write those individuals off as a “loss” and purge them from my memory.  The sting of rejection will always be there, even after decades pass..  it can be summoned up on a whim with brilliant Technicolor realism.  I can remember every disappointment, every failure, every time someone made fun of me.  Which seems horrible until you realize that I can also remember every single positive event that has happened to me, each warm fuzzy felt and recalled at a moments notice.  The problem is…  this makes it extremely hard to ever truly forgive someone.  I can reach a point of “being able to exist amicably” with someone, but I can never actually forget any of the transgressions… and in the back of my head will always end up holding a grudge.  So having this deep empathic memory…  is a double edged sword, but I would not change the way I function for anything.

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