The reason is that the normal human attention span for just about anything is probably only two or three minutes. When the limit is reached people collapse then have to summon the strength to begin a new round of attention. The guy in the drawings wasn't bored, he was actually intensely interested in what was going on around him. He simply reached the end of his attention span.
So far as I know this important phenomenon was discovered by John Krisfalusi. One day I met John for lunch and I found him animating flipbooks on the restaurant table. Most of the books were funny, I wish you could have seen them, but one one book in particular stood out. It showed a guy getting a glassey-eyed stare, collapsing then straightening up again. I asked John what it was and he said he was just animating what the people at the other tables were doing. I stared at those people while John made more flipbooks and that's when I noticed what I drew above. Every single person at every table got a glassey stare and collapsed every few minutes. It's subtle, and I probably would never have noticed it if I hadn't been for the flipbook, but when you know what to look for it's unmistakable.
Interesting, huh?
23 comments:
Of course though, Eddie, you live in L.A. This could also be the effect of many types of drugs.
I guy who used to work where I work now was a big filthy druggie. He'd get a glassy stare quite often. One time he stared at absolutely nothing for about 10 minutes. Then he snapped out of it and said "Oh yeah. I've got work to do." (There's a picture of him on my blog by the way. Needless to say, his ass was fired).
I am going to look for this in class today.
This theory may work for the average person but not me. I worked on my animation recently for 6 months and I spent an average of 2 hours per day fixed on my work. I say it depends on how intensly passionate you are about your subject and or work. That's my theory at least.
I'm pretty sure I do this all the time. Away with the fairies you might call it. Then all purposefully deranged again.
On a general gushing kind of a note... well, you know how you have a nice thought about a person sometimes, and it seems sort of mean spirited not to tell them about it. I was just thinking that the way you use the word 'theory' or your kinds of theories are the most appealing kinds of theories I've come across in my life. Mainly because they come from actual human experience and a kind of compassion for people instead of from a book of abstract pointlessness. Maybe not just you, maybe you and John and your circle. I'm off on my own trip a little bit here. Perhaps if you could see me I'd look a bit glassy-eyed just now.
Well put Uncle Eddie! I've caught myself doing that on more than one occassion!
Chloe: I absolutely love the idea of using the word "theory" the way it's used here but credit for that goes to John who's used it that way for the whole time I've known him. The man loves the sound of words.
Chloe: I forgot to ask, what is "A Robot Called Audrey?"
Hi Eddie,
If you click the link, you should be able to hear her talk.
She's a computer voice... you can get text-to-speech software that reads text for you. And Audrey is one of the voices.
Re the 'theory' thing... well, at least you understood what I was talking about. I feel I've found people who use language in a way that isn't self-defeating and which doesn't make me angry, which is proving to be a wonderful thing.
What a relief! And all these years I thought it was just me that did that.
Actually, I already have a meta-theory. It's this. This phenomenon is most common when one is trying to attend to material coming from outside one's own mind (the perfect example being students listening to a lecture), and it is much rarer when one is attending to material coming from within one's own mind (eg., when working on an autonomously choses task). A typical dinner-hour conversation is between these two, but closer to the former, more heteronomous, paradigm. If your dinner partner is doing most of the talking -- even closer!
Lunch will never be the same for me.
I blame children programs like 'Sesame Street' for our limited attention spans. In these one hour programs, kids are introduced to a new concept every fifteen seconds.
this theory is "repeat-able, test-able, and demonstrate-able" enough i think they ought to bump it up in class to a scientific Law. I think, thought that is hasn't got to do with attention span, watching too much tv, or anything like that, but simply because the brain moves so much faster than lips- by the time a guy says a sentence, you've already thought about a paragraph ahead of him, and so must shake yourself back to rewind to the end of his sentence!
Eh?
Oh, sorry - a moth flew passed me midway through your last sentence...
TV remotes, iPods and MTV have all shortened the average person's attention span to roughly that of a puppy. (The fact that no one reads books anymore doesn't help matters, either.)
The dinner table phenomenon you described is best experienced in LA, and will be familiar to anyone who's ever had a conversation with an actor. That distant, glassy-eyed look appears in their eyes the moment the subject steers away from themselves.
Whoa! I don't...think I've seen a collapse. I may have. I may have been collapsing myself at the time, so who can be sure? Needless to say, no restaurant visit will be the same...
Oh, and hooray for more Eddiedoodles! I never literally laugh out at art, but that shit always gets me. More more! It more'n makes up for no sequel to Worm Paranoia.
Mike: Oh, people still read books. But they're books like the DaVinci Code, where the chapters are like three pages long and the print was originally designed for the senior citizens among us.
I wonder where the convenience culture really started- teevee? 24 hour 7/11s? A more potent question would be when will it end.
If I get distracted while listening to your theories, which do intrigue me like everyone else here, it's because I'm staring at something on your head, Eddie. Or perhaps you lapping up some Sprite/ and or pizza. I should film you doing it so everyone can see it here in the blog world. I bet you'd get your fair share of hits on YouTube.
Words I (and probably Mike F. mutually ) hate:
-blog
-blogosphere
-youtube
-podcasting
YouTube isn't as bad, considering it at the very least, describes what it's functions are. Journal makes sense, blog does not. Eddie's Diary makes sense too. Ha!
Everybody: Funny thing is, what if I'm wrong? Theories that are easy to disprove sometimes have the greatest staying power. When people (including me)test and don't get the right result, they just figure they must have done something wrong. After all, they reason, it worked for everybody else.
Wrong, easily tested notions that still persist: Coca Cola dissolves nails and pyramids sharpen razor blades. I tried both of these and neither works.
I have no tolerence for people with short attention spans. Those people can never finish any...
Personally, I think this is just more proof that God rushed us to market before He'd finished debugging us.
This, and ingrown toenails.
Chloe: Thanks for the tip! Audry sounds great! Which program do you recommend?
There was a time when the short attention span was corrected by a quick slap to the back of the head, from either a teacher or a dad. Followed by a sharp "pay attention" this seemed to work for any occasion. I still duck when I find myself drifting off.
lol, nice drawings eddie
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