Forced Feedback

So during last week Anime Expo 2006, I discovered that I have been an otaku for most of my life.

During the convention, Tony asked me about the noise that plagued his digital camera pictures. A series of questions later, we realized that several months previously I had set his camera to settings appropriate for the time; high ISO and no flash were needed for the darker than normal interior shots with projection screens. A few more questions later and I find myself reacting in a way best summarized by the word: DUH.

Now, DUH can be quite the awful word. It can make people feel, well, dumb. And possibly angry. Now, I didn’t actually use that word, but I did find myself thinking along those lines while I was describing camera operation to Tony. He, being the good friend that he is, called me on it.

I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful that he pointed out how I should be aware of how I tend to assume certain knowledge and how I expect people to operate in certain ways of thinking.

So, what WAS I assuming?

Well, I was assuming that he knew that higher ISO = higher noise. Now, I look at that statement and think: Oh, that’s pretty simple. It took a bit of prodding from Tony to recognize that ISO is not a commonly used word, to recognize that most people have no idea what ISO levels are considered high or low in the digital camera world, to recognize that that statement means next to nothing to most of the six billion people out in the world.

So I explained to him a bit about how digital camera sensors work: the fact that the sensor is an analog device and relating its noise to an amplifier in an analog audio signal chain. It didn’t take long for him to recognize exactly what is going on; he is a pretty darn smart guy, after all.

But I was still bothered by the fact that I had this habit of assuming common knowledge… and sometimes reacting in a condescending manner when I found that knowledge lacking in a person.

I like to think that I’m actually pretty good in NOT acting in this manner. When talking music, or technology, or computers, or video games with someone who doesn’t have the breadth or depth of knowledge that I have, I like to think I can be an entertaining conversationalist.

Somewhere along the line, though, I forgot that when I was six years old, when I wasn’t reading back issues of National Geographic or practicing piano, I was reading through my absolute favorite book: The Photographer’s Handbook, Second Edition, by John Hedgecoe. There, I learned about SLRs and TLRs and rangefinders, about different film types and focusing screens, about special effects during the shot and in the lab. I learned that Minox made really frigging tiny stuff while Nikon F series and Olympus OM series cameras were the choice of professionals. I could read the B&H Photo catalog and tell you exactly what was going on in the spec charts, and I knew what was hot in the photography world. (You can learn a lot reading Popular Photography in the magazine aisle while your mom is shopping for groceries.)

Nevermind the fact that at six years old, there really wasn’t much of a way for me to apply that knowledge. I was a first grade camera otaku.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that finances allowed me to get a digital camera for myself, and now I find that information that I learned long ago welling back up inside of me. As I’ve mentioned so many times to so many friends, I don’t know what it is that I know until I know it. My personal data retrieval mechanisms are pretty awful. Dealing with this is one of my pet peeves.

Maybe I should think a bit more about what other people know.

But there I was at Anime Expo, surrounded by nearly 40,000 people, each containing knowledge that I couldn’t even being to describe. I swear, I walked in on a 2 AM conversation where people rambled on, mad scientist theory style, why Mario’s hair and moustache are differing colors. Maybe I was too tired, but I also swear that they sounded almost intelligent as they defended their stances on Mario’s moustache’s brownness. Almost.

And that one group of Star Ocean cosplayers was pretty hardcore, spouting off vehemently of how release schedules and marketing caused the superior game to fall in the eyes of RPG players. The girl in the group screamed every time she saw a Kingdom Hearts’ Sora cosplayer. I bet she got into a few fights.

Being an otaku, after all, requires being condescending toward other otaku factions.

I remember back at my first anime convention (Otakon 1997), all the otaku that surrounded me were: anime otaku. Sure, some people favored Macross over Gundam, some people thought El Hazard kicked Sailor Moon’s ass…but for the most part, they were all anime fans before they were fans of particular series. Nowadays, it seems like everyone is defined by something a bit more narrow. Shows, producers, manga artists, animation studios, genres… I suppose it’s so big now that it’s impossible to grasp everything that comprises the anime and manga industry in America and abroad.

With all the disparate pieces of knowledge out there, there must be a lot of people out there thinking: DUH. Of course x is better than y. DUH. Of course Mr. So-and-so produced that show you hate so much. DUH. Only people who don’t know any better like Awesome-Anime-Zed.

Let’s all get along. Let’s revel in our otakuness while NOT being exclusive of other people who don’t necessarily have the information that we’re privy to. Let’s share with each other the joys and happinesses that we as otaku can experience to an even fuller degree in togetherness. Let’s give to fellow otaku everything we–

What? What does otaku mean?

DUH.