Recognizing the Exhibitionists

When I was younger I was something of a big reader, but ever since TV and the internet atrophied my attention span to near-goldfish status I haven't been going through as many. Lately though the monotony of my job has afforded me plenty of down time to get a lot more reading in. I never used to have to pause at the end of every page to investigate every shiny object stuck in the corner of the room, but I get by. If I ever sit down with a serious literary work though I'll have to order some adderall from Mexico.

Ok, so let me wrest the tangent from my mercurial focus. (SYNONYMS!) I've been reading the book Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, and I came across a passage that I really enjoyed, and that got me thinking. In this passage the main character of the book is talking about his artistic talents and the sense that he was born to paint. He imagines the feeling of being born to do something is a leftover from a time when people lived in much smaller groups.


"That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

"The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an 'exhibitionist.'"

"How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, 'Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!'"


And there are millions of amateur singers, writers, and athletes out there that feel that same way. It's pretty coincidental that I happened to read this at the time when the Olympics are going on. There are probably a dozen swimmers that are right now thinking "I could sure be something special if it wasn't for that damned Michael Phelps." In a way, I think that the apparent desperation for a glimmer of fame or recognition shown in stories like these is another extension of the exhibitionism Vonnegut writes about in this passage. Of course he (or his character), couldn't have anticipated how much the internet would open up an avenue for these forms of "self-expression".

Although that's not what is happening in this particular case. There's a huge difference between a person who has a talent so unrecognized and pent up that they post themselves on youtube, and a jackass just seeking his 15 seconds of fame. (thanks again to the internet, we can only expect 15 seconds of fame now) Unfortunately the media these days chooses rather to recognize the jackasses. Not that it's their fault, we're the ones that keep clicking on jackass content. But we shouldn't. We should reward people with our attention that deserve it, not people who are willing to prostitute themselves. And so just because I feel like making things a little more right in the world, and since I think we can agree that all of us exhibitionists deserved a little recognition once in a while, and a little recognition should be paid to the fact that we can all do SOMETHING well.... here is a clip of a random guy's talent from you-tube. He may or may not be drunk, we can never be sure.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

OK, I admit some selfishness here, this is one of my favorite internet clips of all time. If I wanted to stay true to my point I probably should have posted someone juggling or playing guitar. You know, something marginally more useful.

- Also, I have no understanding at all of copyright law, but just to reiterate, the above quote was from the book Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, and definitely not something I'm capable of writing myself.