Pretentious Is Not A Sexual Orientation ‘Sapiosexual’ has to be one of the stupidest sexual ‘identities’ to come along in years. New words with the suffix “-sexual” are like catnip for trendy straight people. In the late ’90s and early aughts, we collectively endured the “metrosexual,” a completely unnecessary term for a man who shaves and dares to have a few pastels in his wardrobe. Enter the “sapiosexual,” which Urban Dictionary defines as “one who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature.” Unfortunately, we might not get that lucky. NPR reports that it has since become one of the site’s “most popular new terms.” The history of “sapiosexuality” is as unclear as its legitimacy. Apparently “bisexual guy who’s into smart people” was too many syllables for him to not invent a bogus sexual orientation instead. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines sexual orientation as “an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic and/or sexual attractions to men, women or both sexes.” Thank You!
The Awl - Be Less Stupid Fashionable Quote T-Shirts, Hoodies, Long Sleeve Shirts, and Bags by Quote Couture™ the ANTHROPOLOGiST Smart, dumb, candybar, flip, and brick: a visual history of mobile phones For most of their history, mobile phones have been shrinking. Small meant portable; it even, in the not too distant past, was a sort of status symbol. Remember Motorola’s runaway hit, the ultra-thin Razr? But something funny happened on the smartphone’s way to success. Years ago, your colleagues might have laughed at you if you couldn’t fit your phone in your pocket. If screen sizes continue to grow, you might want to invest in bigger pockets, a bulkier handbag, a man purse, or even a whole new way to carry your phone. Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the Razr was Nokia’s runaway hit.
The Flight From Conversation At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates. My students tell me about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done. Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances about their plugged-in lives. We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Our colleagues want to go to that board meeting but pay attention only to what interests them. A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. A 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.” Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be.
Invisible Design The Theory Generation If you studied the liberal arts in an American college anytime after 1980, you were likely exposed to what is universally called Theory. Perhaps you still possess some recognizable talismans: that copy of The Foucault Reader, with the master’s bald head and piercing eyes emblematic of pure intellection; A Thousand Plateaus with its Escher-lite line-drawing promising the thrills of disorientation; the stark, sickly-gray spine of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics; a stack of little Semiotext(e) volumes bought over time from the now-defunct video rental place. Maybe they still carry a faint whiff of rebellion or awakening, or (at least) late-adolescent disaffection. Maybe they evoke shame (for having lost touch with them, or having never really read them); maybe they evoke disdain (for their preciousness, or their inability to solve tedious adult dilemmas); maybe they’re mute. “What on earth have you got in that backpack?” So far, two responses to this trend are apparent. There were ironies.
On The Ground Looking Up