Videos

Rediscovering and Healing my Inner Child

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Let me know what you think about this video in the comments!

Video Transcript and Companion Post

When I made my first video three years ago, I started by saying, “I don’t know what I am doing”. Back then, I didn’t know about the visual medium. I remember being taken aback by how much people read into things- what was in the background, my facial expressions (you look tired/sick/frustrated), whether I had a 5 o’clock shadow, and of course, what I was wearing. 

As time went on, I started making tweaks to those things- my backdrop, my expressions, and my appearance. And that last bit, while seemingly the simplest of the changes I made, helped me learn so much about myself. 

You see, for the longest time, I insisted on a very simple, basic, and regimented style of clothing. One or two colors, little to no patterns or ornamentation, clothing that gets out of the way, that never makes any statements. That was just the way I preferred to dress for many years, and I didn’t think about why I was so adamant on sitting on the fence, neither dressing to impress nor to express. 

So, when I decided to wear a Hawaiian shirt on a workday, I expected it to be a little joke, a surprise to my coworkers battling zoom fatigue whilst working from home in the middle of a global pandemic. I thought they’d laugh, think it was silly- maybe they’d think I was a weirdo. 

But, they didn’t laugh at me. At best, I got some smiles, nods, a compliment here and there. That was a pleasant surprise, but it raised an important question- why did I think they would all laugh at me? 

I pondered this answer for a bit. I got to thinking about the several years of my plain, minimal dressing sense, my insistence on not making any statements, and my cringing at bright colors or patterns. I thought about how it felt wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt instead of a plain, single-color polo. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it felt to have a pop of color in an otherwise dull and drab existence that was full of sameness, especially in the times we live in. 

I had a breakthrough when I went back to my past. I looked at pictures of me as a child. Of course, I didn’t buy my own clothes back then, but I saw I wore more colorful livelier clothing. So the question then became: what happened between my childhood and teenage or young adult years, that drastically changed my outlook towards how I presented myself? 

After a lot of digging through memories, I found my answer. When I was a kid, maybe 5 or 6  years old, I decided to wear a blue beanie, or monkey cap, to school. It had tassels hanging off the sides of it. Blue is my favorite color, and I wanted to keep my ears warm in the winter, so I decided to put it on. I was warm, I was cozy, and I was feeling pretty good about myself until I walked to the bus stop. You see, kids can be cruel. The other kids at the bus stop definitely decided to be cruel to me that winter morning, when they all pointed and laughed at me in unison. 

I learned a lot about people and society that day. I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, and most importantly, I learned a lesson- that it was time to grow up: no more being childish and silly. I had to look and act like a grownup now, and that meant I had to change how I presented myself. 

I had relegated this memory to a dark corner of my mind, I’d never thought about it in many years. But I believe this was the event that had so many far-reaching effects. It changed how I saw myself and other people.

This was a huge realization because it helped me see that I was viewing all my experiences through that lens for so long. So many of my behaviors started making sense to me. My aversion to being made fun of. Taking things as a personal attack. Staying under the radar and refusing to get into any conflict or confrontation. My bad habit of putting myself down as a precautionary measure so others couldn’t do it to me first.

What is the name of this lens, the concept that lies at the root of it all? The inner child. The simplest, most commonly known, and yet most neglected of all things. This neglect is almost universal, and it affects our lives even when we’re adults. We ignore this inner child as much as we can, as we inhabit a cold, cruel world run by calculating adult minds, but this inner child has a habit of making itself known, a habit of overpowering the wills of even the most headstrong and stubborn individuals, in some situations.

In my case, it was my seemingly inexplicable defensiveness in the face of questioning and criticism. My desire to stay away from conflicts, arguments, and confrontations. And as I have talked about before, my overly simplistic dressing sense. 

So how do I move forward, how do I deal with this? I started by looking at the lesson that incident taught me. By realizing that I was stifling my desires just to appease some invisible force. By thinking of the things that brought me joy that I abandoned. By realizing that living up to these expectations was an unnecessary weight that I was carrying around. 

And yes, these expectations are a burden. My whole life, the constant feeling of unmet potential. If only I was taller, if only I lost some weight, if only I was an extrovert, if only I was popular and had many friends, if only I was top of my class in school and college, if only I was more successful by now, if only I had enjoyed my 20s more, if only, if only, if only. 

My whole life I’ve been told to measure up to some ideal vision of what a man is supposed to be. Whether it be a rich and successful professional, or a womanizing Casanova. And so far, I’ve fallen short every single time. Not rich enough, not famous enough, didn’t have enough girlfriends… it’s the tremendous weight of unmet expectations, the guilt of this unmet potential hanging over my head. 

I realized my dressing sense was just emblematic of the greater problem of trying to live up to some warped ideals that I thought I had to live up to. Of chasing all that I ought to have wanted, but all the while ignoring that which I really wanted. In this relentless desire to be accepted, to be acknowledged by the outside world, to ideally have praise and admiration, but at least to avoid being made fun of, I ignored this wounded, hurt, helpless part of my psyche, hoping it would just go away, hoping I would find a way to overpower it once and for all. 

So where do I find myself, with all of these revelations? I think back to an entry I made in my journal, many years ago. In it, I wrote, “I keep looking outside of myself because when I look inside, there’s just this absolute child.” 

This whole time I was trying to suppress my inner child, but now, I’ve decided to go the other way. To acknowledge and heal this part of myself. To express myself in ways I had not before, for fear of criticism or ridicule. Changing what I wear is just the start. 

I hope this video helps you all embrace your own inner children instead of trying to escape them. Thanks for watching, and remember: 

Don’t try to kill the part of yourself that you find cringeworthy. Kill the part of yourself that cringes. 

[VIDEO] Seven Years Living in the USA: A Few Thoughts

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In this video, I talk about validation, vindication, and victory over external pressures in the seven years that I’ve lived in the USA. It took a while to gather my thoughts on this one.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Here are the key points I discuss:

Life after school

My time in the USA can be divided into two distinct phases: the two years I spent in grad school, and the 5 years spent working post graduation. The key question I had to contend with after I graduated was- “What are you if not a student?”. For about two decades of my life, the primary objective had been to get educated and get degrees. My entire routine revolved around it.

Even activities outside of studies were viewed through an academic lens- they were called them “extracurricular activities”. In my opinion, pursuing those activities was still tied into the overarching goal of looking good on a resume.

Trying to find the answer to that question leads me to the next point.

Creating an identity

I got into the habit of journaling my thoughts in a diary, and writing blogs about my experiences when I moved. Over the first few years of my time in the US, I started developing a sense of identity around being someone who writes. I wrote on my blog, I wrote for pocketnow.com, I wrote for grad school… it was the one thing I was confident about being good at.

My sense of identity as “the writer” was challenged when I got some very critical feedback from one of my professors. It took a while to cope with and get through the turmoil that caused me, because it challenged one of my core beliefs that I held on to very strongly. I wrote a few things thinking through that whole ordeal (I even made a video about it), and over time, I started looking to improve other aspects of my life, like working on my public speaking.

I look back at this time fondly, because although it was challenging, it led me to develop other facets of my life and personality. I would even go as far as to say that the impulse to start making videos had its origins in that “critique event”.

Validation of my personality

I’ve always been an introverted and reserved person. Growing up, I always heard from my parents, my teachers, and others around me, that I needed to have “smartness” and that reserved people never get ahead in life. They always implied that being reserved and introverted meant you were a moron or a simpleton, whereas being extroverted meant you would be a “go getter” and that extraversion was the key to success. My personality was always invalidated. It’s a societal issue- you don’t need to look further than to see how many “personality development classes” there are in India. The implication that there were no personality types, just “acceptable personality” and “bad personality” pervaded my mind space throughout my life.

The fact that I went to another country, got a master’s degree, and found a job in the field of my liking all while being true to myself the whole time was the biggest validation of my personality. When you’re not burdened by the yoke of putting on a persona for the world at large, you can really focus on achieving what you want.

Being okay with my life choices

This was the point that took a long time to come to terms with. Everyday in media and on social media I see a vision of the ideal life being marketed to me, and it’s almost impossible to escape its hold. One of my biggest lamentations in life used to be how I didn’t go through the life experiences that a lot of others had. All the fun and frivolity that I was supposed to have, or that I should have had. I came to this country in my early 20s, and my peers kept telling me how I had the best opportunity to “enjoy my life”.

In a sense, the words of my peers simply echoed the arbitrary milestones that society lays out. As if life stops when you turn 30, and all of a sudden you are too old for those frivolities, and that you will never be able to experience that in your life past that age. As if I was to be handed a report card on my 30th birthday showing me how badly I had done in my personal life in my 20s. As the years wore on, that internal deadline approached closer, and that made me more and more despondent. I was a loser. I had failed in achieving those fantasies laid in front of me by others, by social media, by movies, and TV shows. I couldn’t make that happen for myself. I couldn’t manifest it into reality. I had neither the internal drive to seek it out nor the intestinal fortitude to see it through.

It is true- I didn’t take any chances. I didn’t take many risks. I can call that making a sacrifice, or I can call it wasted time- either way, that time is gone now. It can be a lifelong regret, or maybe it’s just a matter of getting old enough to be able to view that time with rose-tinted glasses. But the fact is- if I had fully internalized it and made it my life goal to be that kind of person- a player, a risk-taker, a Casanova, a whatever you want to call it- I would have made the effort towards achieving it. It wasn’t my life goal, though. I just wanted simpler things, like fulfilling the dreams of my childhood. I wanted to experience my surroundings and find a group of friends, a tribe, someone who I can confide in and talk to, an inner circle if you will. I wanted other things, like wanting to establish myself in my career, wanting some certainty on the professional front, things of that nature, very boring, mundane things. I wanted to spruce up the apartments I lived in, with posters and books and other small trinkets. I wanted to spend an entire weekend playing video games. I wanted to go to local breweries and try out their seasonal brews. I wanted to go to local cafes and restaurants and have coffee or meals by myself as I people-watched. I wanted to clean my house slowly and methodically while I listened to music or podcasts. I wanted to take long walks in local parks just to breathe freely and think through things. Things to do by myself, alone, to charge my internal battery up.

I did half-heartedly try enjoying those frivolous things here and there in these seven years. It always felt like I was fumbling around like a blindfolded four-year-old with a baseball bat in hand trying to swing at a hanging piñata. For seven years I have been swinging aimlessly, and for seven years, I’ve hit nothing but air. I have yet to make it rain candy from the piñata’s papier-mache belly.

There are only two paths this train of thought can lead to. On one hand, I could blame myself for not being able to play “the game”, for not being the kind of person that fulfills those societal milestones, or for at least pretending to like what most people seem to like. Or, I can accept that all of this is just a matter of time and a matter of luck. That there’s a fundamental absurdity and meaninglessness to everything, and that nothing is owed to me. The latter is the more relieving of the two, to be honest. It takes the burden of performance away from me and allows me to believe in myself, to stay true to who I am as a person.

In the end, I did what made me happy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s Time We Re-Examined Aesthetic and Minimal Design

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Let me know what you think about this video in the comments!

Here’s what I talk about in this video:

Let’s have a look at one of the most widely accepted and deeply held beliefs in the UX space and turn it on its head. I had this idea while thinking of Nielsen’s heuristics, mainly “Aesthetic and Minimal Design”. Let’s just start with the bundling aesthetic and minimal together. Why does it have to be that way? Clearly, it is possible to have something that’s aesthetically pleasing without it also being minimalist. If you look throughout antiquity you will see so many examples- The Meenakshi Temple, Angkor Wat, the list goes on. 

Of course, the heuristics are written from a usability standpoint. For the design of tools and services that are to be used to accomplish particular tasks. In that sense, it makes perfect sense to let go of excessive ornamentation if it interferes with the goal, which is the successful completion of whatever task is at hand. 

The issue I have with the laser focus on minimalism is when it bleeds into other aspects of life. As UX-ers, we’ve all been there. When we first get into this field, maybe you read the design of everyday things or some of those other staple books and you start looking at everything around you through the lens of design and usability. How many times have you come across something and said “hey, that’s bad design”. We’ve all been there, we’ve all done that. Some of us still do that, because we can’t help ourselves. And in many cases, it’s warranted- like when you have to park your car in a very confusing parking structure, for example. 

However, in many cases, it turns into a more tribalistic shaming of certain things. Let me give you an example from my own life. My mother loves having a house full of different stuff. Just collections of books or small trinkets or whatever it may be. She loves collecting stuff and changing the décor with the seasons and the festivals throughout the year. It’s always a very involved process for her- taking things out of boxes, putting them in particular spots around the house, and making sure every corner of the house has something placed in it. When I was younger and I was learning about minimalism, I used to think this was all very excessive and unnecessary- that it was inefficient and a waste of time, and that all this ornamentation was … just too much. That it was, well, not good design. 

Thinking back to it now, I realize that I was looking at it from a very myopic mindset. When my mother decorates the house every so often, she’s not creating unnecessary ornamentation. The whole process that I mentioned earlier is delightful in and of itself. UX-ers are always chasing the holy grail of “the delightful experience” all the time- we discuss it in every forum, in internal conversations at work, and so on. Anyway, the point is that a lot of things that bring joy to people are considered illogical or suboptimal when looked at through that minimalist lens. 

Let’s think instead from the “maximalist” point of view. Where it’s not “less is more” but rather “more is more”. Of wanting ornamentation, wanting every nook and cranny full of intricate details. A lot of cultural traditions are like that. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that the thought of minimalism as the only way for something to be aesthetically pleasing is a very euro-centric way of looking at it. The first things that come to mind are Scandinavian minimalism and to an extent Japanese minimalism as well. There are so many cultures that are not minimal though- I grew up in India and the dominant aesthetic sensibilities in my country are unapologetically maximalist, in my opinion. There’s also the phenomenon of minimalism as a form of cultural erasure- this is a more controversial stance which states that minimalism was used by authoritarianism to erase cultural heritages, from antiquity to modern times. In fact what people call modern design that was developed in the middle of the 20th century has that backdrop of authoritarianism and wanting to detach from the cultures of the past. 

As the field of UX becomes more international day by day, I think we as a community need to rethink the core tenets of our craft. We need to think about the overall contexts in which those rules were codified. I think that at least on the digital side of things, these heuristics that were formed in the 90s and 2000s were created when the internet and digital UX were in a nascent stage- when most of the creators and the end-users were limited to Europe and North America. 

So instead of shaming maximalism, let’s try to see how we can fully understand these different cultural and historical sensibilities and move our field forward. 

Thanks for watching, and remember:

Design IS political. 

[Video] Stop Over-Scripting your User Interviews!

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Semi structured interviews are the staple food of the UX Research field. So you have fully scripted “structured” interviews on one end, and you have completely free-flowing conversations with no scripting in the “unstructured” side of things, and semi-structured interviews occupy the middle of that space. What’s great about them is that you have a framework to ensure your key questions are answered, but it gives the interviewer flexibility- to move within that framework, to follow interesting threads, to change the order of questioning with the flow of the conversation. 

Unfortunately what happens a lot of times is that semi structured interviews get over scripted with too many specific questions. This can happen for plenty of reasons- an increase in the project scope, or a need to cater to multiple stakeholders who have various different requirements for example.

Watch the video here- don’t forget to like and subscribe!

Here are the key points I mention in the video:

  • In the beginning when I was an untrained interviewer, I tended to script every aspect of the interview, right from the initial conversation to the conclusion. I just didn’t have the cultural frame of reference to make small talk, for example. The training wheels helped me get past the initial hurdles.
  • As I got more interview experience under my belt, I realized the beauty of the medium.
  • Training wheels help you learn to ride a bike, but if you never take them off you’re holding yourself back. You can’t ride a bike as fast, you can’t take quick twists and turns. 
  • What I find unfortunate is that UX practitioners have to account for this over-scripting by doing things like having checklists to make sure all the questions are answered, which is like being put into a straightjacket. No freedom to follow interesting leads because you’re always concerned about getting all the questions in. No breathing room, no allowance for creativity in the obsession with dotting i’s and crossing t’s.
  • When you overly script, you become a human google form. 
  • Philosophizing on the nature of semi-structured interviews. Thinking of it as Jazz music, where the missed or off key notes are part of the performance. Or even like Indian classical music, where the ragas provide the framework, but a classical vocalist can sing for hours on end with multiple variations. Or even like the yin-and-yang symbol of the Tao, order and chaos in harmony, being comfortable in giving away control to the participant and taking it back as the need dictates.
  • Finally, a connection to Professional Wrestling. I talk about how an over-scripted interview makes me feel like Jon Moxley when he was on the Stone Cold podcast, where he concluded by saying he was “playing in big brother’s yard” when he was asked to take more creative control of his character. I then compare that to the experience of doing semi-scripted interviews as they are intended, to Jon Moxley’s debut in AEW. Him breathing in and taking in the atmosphere, feeling free and confident in his abilities.

Results and Milestones

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The idea for this video was cooking up in my mind for a while. Let me know what you think!

Results. The outcomes of your actions. The products of a chemical reaction, the solution, the hidden X in a mathematical equation. Results can be so many things, but we tend to talk about results as the positive, tangible, visible product of our efforts. 

Recurring Dreams about Examinations

I have recurring dreams from time to time. One is me in an examination hall, writing a paper, or completing an assignment when the time runs out, and I either don’t finish what I was writing, or I do, and the examiner refuses to accept it. The other and by my estimation more universally experienced one is that I got the results of an examination and I did badly. 

Whenever I talk about these dreams, it seems to resonate with my peers, especially those who grew up in India or South Asia in particular. It tells you a lot about how the education system we were raised in just sticks in our minds and our psyche, never really leaving, but just fading slightly, like an old tattoo. 

As a kid who grew up in India, “Results” generally meant the results of examinations, the most important of which were Standards 10 and 12- secondary and higher secondary education. A lot depends on these results, and a lot doesn’t. Going through all these examinations has an effect on all of us, I guess- it occupies a corner of our mind, and the subconscious uses it to communicate – fear. 

The fear, of not measuring up to some invisible ideal. Of not having enough time to do the things we set out to do, within the time we were given to do it. An invisible plan laid out by some invisible man. The invisible examiner, pointing at an invisible watch, with his invisible hands, glaring at you with his invisible eyes. It’s all invisible, all in our heads, but all of us feel the icy glare all the same. 

This fear then morphs into insecurity and a deep dissatisfaction- in our childhood we’re so conditioned to see letter grades or numbers associated with whatever we do, and with whatever anyone else does, that we feel dissatisfied when we don’t see that tangible, visible product.

Working Out and seeing “Results”

I’ve been working out for over a year now. I started lifting these small weights, then I slowly trained enough to lift these heavier ones, and then I got these, which are even heavier than that. Two to three times a week, I lift these weights, above my head, or off to the side, and I put them back onto the ground. I FEEL better than how I used to a year ago. I eat better, I sleep better, I feel more limber, more lively, all great things. Despite all these things, the first question anyone ever asks is: “What about your results, though? Where are your results?”. Of course, they’re talking about the visible results- where are your biceps, your triceps, why do you still have a double chin, why don’t you have abs, and so on. 

Because, if you can’t see a change, a visible result, It’s all for nothing. I might as well have done nothing at all. Right?

Getting Older

I turned 28 this past November. I think all the time about how I’m going to hit the big three-o in a couple of years. I think about how unremarkable my 20s were. How there were so many things I wanted to do and didn’t. Either because they were withheld from me, or because I withheld myself. Just lists of to-dos left incomplete. One of those I remember I wrote as a joke on my 25th birthday. It was a list of things to learn, starting with “learn to talk to adults”, followed by learning to talk to children, infants, animals, and so on. The only thing checked off was the “talk to adults” part. But that’s just among a whole lot of different insecurities. 

I got to thinking about this and I realized I felt like I was going into my 30s feeling like I had a blank scrapbook. Just blank pages. No glitter, no sequins, no fancy pictures. Just an unremarkable man who had an unremarkable decade. And that filled me with dread. It was as if someone was going to hand me a report card on my 30th birthday, showing me how I’d failed to get a good grade in all these aspects of life. Or it’d be worse- they’d show me a report card that just said, “no remarks”. Because I’m an unremarkable man who lived unremarkably through his 20s. And that’s just it, isn’t it- the idea that if you didn’t live out all those fantasies, all those frivolities that they said you should have lived out in your 20s, then the time to do so has run out. 

And that’s because certain things have to get done by a certain age- right?

Don’t Believe the Hype

Of course not! My answer to those who clamor for visible results, and to those who think everything should be time-bound, is simple. The first thing is that sometimes you should just do things for their own sake. For the fun of it. You don’t need to turn everything into a test, a competition, or a hustle. You don’t need the imaginary examiner looking at everything that you do. The second is that you have more time than you think you do.

When I was a kid in school, people used to make fun of me for “being in my own world”. The more I grow older, the more clear it is to me that it’s the way to be. It’s kind of like the dude from the big Lebowski, and how he goes about his life. This quote by Gwen Ihnat really captures that character and that philosophy, and I’d like to leave you all with this. She says,

“We envy The Dude for knowing himself, for escaping the need to conform, and for rejecting mainstream society for the little one that grows around him.”

~ Gwen Ihnat, avclub.com

[VIDEO] My Fascination With Suits

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Video Script

Looking at me right now you might have a few questions- Why am I standing? Why do I have my hair tied in a ponytail? Why, am I wearing a suit? One because I can, two because I feel like it, and three, because this year hasn’t given me any reasons to wear a suit. So I made a reason. This is a video about my fascination with suits. 

A few suit-clad characters in Media.

A lot of my fascination for suits stems from my childhood- growing up you get to see all kinds of suit-clad characters on TV, in movies, and in video games. You’ve got your heroes, like James Bond and John Wick in their trademark tuxedos and black suits. You’ve got villains, like the G-Man from Half Life and his blue bureaucratic suit. You’ve also got the cool anti-hero/anti-establishment types like Kiryu from the Yakuza series, and of course, my personal favorite, Tony Montana from the movie Scarface. he wore a lot of great suits in that movie, but the one I remember the most is the iconic white suit, with the red shirt and cuban gold links chain. I always thought that was the coolest thing back when I was a teenager- the getup evoked the whole larger than life nature of the Tony Montana character, and it all worked together perfectly. I still kinda want that suit, but I wonder if I could pull it off. That whole outfit needs a level of swagger and confidence that I haven’t reached yet. I don’t want a bunch of people looking at me and saying, “well, that just doesn’t suit you”. 

A side note on the phrase “it doesn’t suit you”. It has so much to do with how other people view you, and when you’re a teenager or adolescent, you’re at the intersection of trying to find who you are, and also trying to find a way to be accepted in some socal circle. That’s the point of life where you try new things, different clothes, different catchphrases and all kinds of different stylistic choices, while constantly being told what suits you and what doesn’t, because of who you are and where you come from. How you react to that- either by changing your choices or sticking with them- often forms the core of your identity through adulthood. But, I digress. 

Going back to suits, another reason I think I’m fascinated with them is that I didn’t have a suit of my own until just a few years ago. I didn’t have one as a child- suits are expensive to get made or to buy, and don’t make the most sense to buy for a child who’ll probably grow out of it and need another one every year.Also, traditional Indian festive wear was a lot more practical, more affordable, and would actually be worn a lot more times in a year. 

A Safari Suit

But I did always gravitate towards the idea of wearing a suit as a child. I’d watched as I said before, grown-ups wearing suits in media as well as in-person, you had your traditional suit-and-tie, the rare tuxedo, the Indo-Western hybrid of wearing a suit jacket over a dhoti, there is also this odd curiosity I have always been fascinated with, called the “Safari Suit” or just a “Safari”- which is a half sleeved jacket with four pockets, popular in the 90s and is a rarity these days. I think I’ve only ever seen political figures or older people wear safari suits, and I really want to know where that trend came from and whether it will ever come back.  

I had some close shaves with getting to wear a suit back in the day though. I remember being picked to play the role of Abraham Lincoln for a school play once, and one of the things I was looking forward to about the whole thing was getting to wear a suit, or a costume facsimile of one. Unfortunately for me, the only thing the costume rental place had was a weird stagecoach driver costume made of nylon or polyester or something, and it was a few sizes too big. It did come with a top hat though, so with that and a fake beard, I made for a passable Lincoln. 

There was also my high school farewell party, where I saw most of my batchmates wearing suits- I’d opted for a more “out there” look that belongs in a cringe compilation. Also, it was the middle of summer in India, and a suit does not go well with that amount of heat and humidity. I have to admit though, my classmates looked cool, even though they were quite uncomfortable. 

Not having a suit doesn’t matter in 99% of social situations, like those days in college where you were supposed to wear ties to class and some people decided to take it up a notch by also wearing a suit. I do remember one instance where not having a suit almost got me in an awkward situation. I was new to the US at the time, and I was invited to a family event. It was an official wedding reception and at the time I didn’t know that the dress code was more “suit and tie” and not quite the traditional indian wear that I had packed and what I was used to wearing for similar events in India. I managed to avoid embarrassment because my cousin was gracious enough to let me borrow a suit jacket and we managed to piece together a formal-enough outfit for the occasion. That was the first time I had donned a suit, well into my adulthood, and even though it wasn’t my own, I felt great wearing it. 

After that event, I had the proper justifications to own a suit- before then, every time I brought up the idea of getting a suit made, my parents always shot it down saying “When are you ever going to need one anyway?”. But now that I had a story of near-embarrassment, it was enough to push them over the edge, and I finally got a suit made for myself at 24. Now you might ask, “why is this relatively innocuous event worthy of its own video?”. 

The main reason was that the reality of owning a suit actually matched the expectations that I had all those years growing up. It is one of those pieces of clothing that brings out that feel good factor just by virtue of how it looks. The design of the suit in general is made to make you look good- with the padded shoulder sections and the tapering down – it mimics the ideal male physique that we all have in our minds, and enhances how the wearer looks if it’s made well. Speaking of made well, the fact that the suit was tailored to my measurements, an experience that I had never gone through before, with choosing the materials, the design, and getting it fitted to my proportions… I had almost always bought mass produced clothes off the shelf and had them altered in some minor ways, that was the only experience of “tailor-made” that I’d had up until that point. 

Even thinking about that experience brings a smile to my face. Just everything about the rush of thoughts that go through my mind – wearing a perfectly fitting suit, feeling great about my reflection in the mirror, getting compliments and feeling great about that, and just the joy of finally being able to experience something you always thought about growing up. It’s a confluence of a bunch of wonderful emotions, every single time.

And that’s what lies at the heart of it all, really- everyone always talks about how much they want to go back to their childhood, where they didn’t have any responsibilities and life was easier, that adulthood is just not worth the extra responsibilities it brings. But I like thinking about it from the opposite perspective. That of how adulthood and an increased amount of agency in the world, has allowed me to experience things that I had not experienced before, and how many of those experiences live up to my expectations. A relatively small deal, an article of clothing, but it signifies so much to me on a personal level. An exercise in delayed gratification that had the perfect payoff. All those years of never getting to wear a suit, made the feeling of finally donning one that much sweeter. 

If you’ve watched the video till this point, thank you so much for watching. In the comments, let me know about something in your life that fascinates you like my fascination with suits. Like this video if you liked it, share it with people if you think they’d like it, and remember: 

Comfort is a prison you’ll walk right into.

The uniquely Indian PC Gaming Experience

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Video Script (minus the ad-libbed parts)

Hello and welcome back to Shriviews. A lot of you noticed the issue with my last video, with the audio and video being out of sync- that was definitely not supposed to happen, it wasn’t some artistic flair that I added to make things cinematic. 

Now, technical difficulties are a common part of video production, especially for me – I don’t have any fancy equipment and I’m just making these videos as a hobby- I have no formal training in videography. This time though, neither the software nor my computer wanted to cooperate with me. The software was choppy and kept freezing on me despite trying all the tricks the different forums suggested online. Not to mention the fact that my computer- one that I built 4 years ago (even blogged about it on my website shriviews.com), really starts hitting the limits of its capabilities when I try to use it for video editing. 

My first PC looked something like this beige box. It even had a TV Capture Card. Remember those? Good times.

I’ve been using the PC that I built for gaming and for work (things like spreadsheets and whatnot) for these past few years without any issues, and I had never set out to build a video editing workstation in the first place so I am not at all surprised that it struggles with that workload, but I’m not frustrated by the apparent obsolescence of my computer on the horizon- in fact, it’s the exact opposite. It has helped me rediscover a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time- the feeling that’s known to many kids in middle-class families who grew up playing computer games in India. The joy you get from getting something to work on a hopelessly feeble PC. 

I say that this is a shared experience with some confidence because I knew a lot of kids in the same boat as me when I was in school- we were all trying to get our hands on the latest games, only to settle for bargain bin titles that were years or even decades old most of the time. Even when we did get our hands on the latest and greatest, there was the question of how we would even get these games to run on the computers we had at home. You see, gaming in general was and still is, a luxurious and expensive hobby to pursue in India– enthusiast-level hardware is super expensive, and what’s considered even consumer-level stuff in the western world can get super pricy. 

Akshay Kumar was in an ad for the xbox 360 back in the day.

I remember begging my parents for an Xbox 360 when it released and I saw ads plastered all across the neighborhood mall. I remember going to gaming centered cyber cafes and gawking at the PCs with one gigabyte of RAM flat-screen monitors. The one I had at home was a Pentium 4 System with 256 Megs of RAM, positively ancient in comparison. I remember the horror in my mother’s eyes when she took me to one of those and saw a couple of zombified looking guys staring intently at their computer screens playing Counter-Strike 1.6 in a seedy, dimly lit room with the occasional expletive being hurled at no one in particular. 

But even if the hardware and the games were more affordable, I have a feeling that most kids would still be bereft of videogame induced joy, because even if you can afford video games, your parents still have to let you play them in the first place. I don’t know about parents these days, but my parents definitely thought video games were unproductive, a waste of time, and in the case of my mom, tantamount to gambling (I think she made that connection from the aforementioned seedy gaming den). 

I remember doing a lot of the stuff mentioned in this video to get GTA 4 to work.

Despite all these obstacles and limitations, we still found ways to find games and make them work on our computers, whether it be by cranking the settings down to their lowest levels or even sometimes messing around in config files. The end result was usually a blurry, pixelated mess with missing textures and all sorts of weird glitches. I vividly remember going through all those things to get GTA 4 to run at 24 frames per second. I even played through the game with that experience- twice! In the end, the experience of playing the game wasn’t limited to the game itself, but the experience of buying the game, getting it to install, trying to get it to work, trying to get it to run at a framerate that wasn’t a complete slideshow, talking about games with your friends and nerding out about them, really wringing out every last drop of enjoyment out of each and every game that we had. I might even argue that the fact that videogames were so looked down upon added to the enjoyment- we fancied ourselves to be rebels engaging in some underground activity, in an age where gaming was starting to grow out of being an underground subculture, a time where it didn’t have the widespread mainstream appeal it has now. 

These days, gaming is pretty commonplace- the smartphone has taken over as the device of choice for a lot of people. In my case, I was able to build my own PC after years of dreaming about it. Seriously though, I was lucky to have a computer parts store where I lived, where I got to see shelves full of parts and components and just pick stuff out-  something couldn’t even fathom as a kid. In a way though, building a gaming PC and getting all my games as digital downloads took away the challenge of getting a game to work and the weird sense of joy and accomplishment that came with it. This is why, when I started encountering the choppy and unresponsive software, and I could hear my computer’s cries for help as it struggled to render 1080p video, I was transported back through all of these memories- memories of a uniquely Indian PC Experience. 

That’s the end of this video- let me know what you thought about my PC Gaming memories, chime in with your experiences in the comments. Thanks for watching, and remember- 

There is no I in “team”- but there is an I, in “profit”. 

I’ll see you next time. 

The Long and Short of Settling

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The idea for this video came to me from the myriad of thoughts circling in my head for months.

Video Script:

I haven’t been uploading any new videos of late because I haven’t been in the mental state to create things. My creativity was blocked because there were a lot of things on my mind, a lot of suspended particulate matter that makes everything hazy and unclear. I just needed something to go my way, anything at all. 

That breakthrough came in the form of me finally getting my driver’s license for the state of Tennessee after 5 months of moving to the state. After 5 months of being stuck in red tape and having no choice but to wait, I can finally officially say that I’m a resident of this new state that I reside in. I talked about how car ownership and how the ability to drive is at the core of the American experience in a blog post I wrote a while ago. I can finally say that I’ve settled into my new place of residence, even though I have been living here for over 5 months now. I can finally say that the new chapter of my life has begun in earnest. 

This saga got me thinking about the long and short of settling into a new place, a new chapter of life. It took 2 days to set up my living space. But it took over 5 months to get my Driver’s License- the key proof of residence, the key to mobility in this car-first ecosystem where pedestrians are an afterthought, and foreign passports are somehow unacceptable as proofs of identity nearly everywhere. 

In the interim, my mind was full of thoughts about all the plans, wishes, and fantasies that have gone unfulfilled so far. You see, ever since I moved to the US in my early 20s, I heard the usual off-hand comments that implied I was on borrowed time, and that there was an eventuality waiting for me as I grew older. There were these unwritten deadlines written by society, by ancestors decades or centuries ago. These forces pulling me in some direction because it’s “what’s best for me”. 

Living in the USA as a financially independent 20-something, I have the most agency I have ever had in my life, and yet, I am powerless in many aspects. I mean, think about it- I am living in the US on a work visa right now, and I have a long way to go when it comes to really settling here, owing to a bunch of factors beyond my control. 

The lyrics to Riders on the Storm come to mind: 

“Into this house we’re born, into this world we’re thrown”.

That concept of being thrown into this world, born into conditions beyond our control. These conditions affect how we live and experience the rest of our lives. 

I couldn’t control where I was born, and how I was raised. When I moved to the US, I looked at it as an opportunity to start afresh, to make mistakes and learn from them on my own accord, without judgemental eyes stalking my every move. Moving halfway across the world brought its own challenges with it though- having to deal with red-tape all by myself was one of them.

As I saw myself being trapped in this red tape, I began to see all the other ways in which I hadn’t really escaped the circumstances in which I was born and raised. I began seeing those deadlines again. I began seeing those existential dead ends that society has ordained to be the ideal conditions, the happily ever afters that you aren’t supposed to question. You know what I mean- having a wife and kids, living in a house encircled by a fence and a back yard, having cordial relations with neighbors and some kind of social group that you’re a part of only to satiate your social needs and sense of community, a group that runs purely on quid pro quo but tries to convince itself that it’s formed on some deep connection.

Is that really all there is to life? Wife, Kids, Social Groups? Well, yes, that really is all there is. There comes a time where you come to terms with the inherent absurdity of the universe, and everyone’s silence on the matter. It is at that point where you either take refuge in the belief system of your choice, or you accept a nihilistic approach. Or, you decide to rebel against all of it- against both the absurdity of the universe and the world’s silence on the matter. To decide to live the way you want to live, and to give in to neither ends of this problem, just because you can. 

That’s the sense of agency that I want to exercise through the videos that I make. To exercise the right to talk about whatever I want to talk about, instead of simply talking about things that people want to hear, or the algorithm wants to push, or anything else will make this video go viral- whatever that may be. 

In the end, with my driver’s license finally approved, I want to revel in this sense of closure. Of finally feeling like I’ve embarked on a new chapter in my life. Maybe I’m still hurtling towards some eventuality, or maybe it’s all unknowable and absurd, but I feel like I bought myself some time, and regained a sense of agency and control in my surroundings. 

I had these thoughts circling in my head for a while now and I needed to talk about them before I went about with the regularly scheduled programming. Life is weird in general these days, and my ruins with bureaucracy and subsequent intrusive thoughts only serve as a microcosm of life: the fact that this small thing was resolved but so many questions still remain is in and of itself what life is all about. About how you decide to live it, given the things you can’t change. About the journey, and not the destination. 

Thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it, share it with someone if you think they’d like it and remember: 

“The difference between marketing and propaganda is ______”

I’ll see you next time. 

Engaging an Audience: A Media Theory Perspective

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Video Script with some additions and sans some ad libbed parts:

Ever since I started making videos there’s one thing that has always bothered me. I’ve talked about this before, and that’s this graph of user retention. It shows that people tend to watch my videos till about 2-3 minutes in and there’s a steep decline in the number of people who watch my videos till the end.

I’ve been listening to the feedback that people have for me and I’ve been making changes in every video that I make, but there’s still that statistic, that low engagement with the video that sticks with me as something I need to improve on.

With that in mind, I began looking at the usual tips and tutorials online on how to be a more effective communicator, but that felt like I was just scratching the surface. So, I decided to read up about media theory. The first thing that came up was the well-known work of Marshall McLuhan who famously said “The medium is the message”.

What he meant was that the medium of communication shapes how the message is perceived, which in turn also shapes behaviors and has an effect on society as a whole. He divided history into four epochs: Oral, where information was communicated solely through the spoken word, then there was the literary epoch, with the invention of writing and the creation of manuscripts. The third was the print epoch which came to be after the invention of the printing press and movable type, and the fourth is the electronic epoch, which is today’s society.

As mankind moved through these epochs, the invention of new communication mediums changed how we thought and remembered things, and also changed how societies were structured.

I want to talk about an aspect of McLuhan’s theory, the concept of Hot versus Cool media. Contrary to what you’d expect, he described hot media as the one you passively accept, and cool media as the one you actively participate in. To explain further, hot media engages one sense in a high definition way and has a low level of audience participation. Radio or printed books are examples of this. Radio engages the auditory sense while books engage the visual. Cool media, on the other hand, involves the use of multiple senses at once and involves “filling in the gaps” with your own thinking and cognition. An example of cool media would be watching TV, where you have to absorb the visual as well as the auditory information at the same time, while also forming thoughts and opinions on what’s being talked about.

I looked at the two things I usually create- blog posts and videos- and tried looking at them through this lens of hot or cool media. I realized soon that this binary classification wasn’t quite enough to fully understand how people engage with these things. You could oversimplify and say that blogs are mainly text-based and more “hot” media and videos are more “cool” because of the audiovisual information. Here’s the thing though- blogs are not plain text like printed books, they are purely digital and you can add pictures and other forms of media into them. You can also allow people to comment and share them. Also, I make videos, but the platform I use for them is youtube, which has its own design features and caveats. When you think of a youtube video or a YouTuber, you think of a particular archetype of person, a particular style of delivery, and a particular set of calls to action (like share and subscribe!). Not to mention all sorts of other “tropes” that have emerged- making things appear organic and less “high production”, building a sense of community, and the often mentioned parasocial relationships… the list goes on. Link in the description for a playlist of the videos I watched, as well as some articles I read.

I remember when I started making youtube videos a lot of people told me I was softspoken- they sounded surprised about it like it was different from what they expected. It was as if there’s some unwritten rule about how you present yourself that says you have to be loud and boisterous and “always turned up to 11”. As if there are unwritten rules of how to engage with the audience on this platform. Again- youtube isn’t just a video viewing platform, it’s a video delivery platform: there’s an algorithm to suggest videos to you, a comments section, a whole bunch of communities and followings- it’s an ecosystem unto itself.

Another way the Hot/Cool dichotomy breaks down is to think about it from the perspective of a viewer. I watched a video where there’s a discussion of how what’s hot for one person may be cool for another person- just because of how they interact with or consume the media. For example, I may listen to a podcast attentively, or I may just have it on as some background ambient sound while I do something else. Also, people may “heat up” or “cool down” based on the media type, the platform they are on, and a whole bunch of other factors.

So when it comes to the original question of engagement, it looks like I’m back to square one. Not quite- I did learn a lot about media theory and this exploration got me thinking a lot about how people engage with media. The most important lesson was the true meaning behind the words “the medium is the message”.

This does raise a few questions though- should I start using these tropes? Should I start having a high energy boisterous presentation with the goal of forming a parasocial relationship with my currently unnamed “fanbase”? Or should I continue doing what I’m doing and hope that youtube’s algorithm decides to bless me one day? For now, it’s the latter. But I am open to suggestions and feedback, and who knows, maybe I’ll stumble upon something that both engages the audience and gives me creative fulfillment.

This is the end of the video, so I’d like to thank you all for watching, I’m very close to 100 subscribers which is a milestone (for me at least) and I’m very grateful for all the support. Be sure to like this video, subscribe and hit the bell icon if you want more of this content, let me know what you think about this video in the comments, and remember:

“Anyone who claims to know all the answers has lied to you once already.”

[VIDEO] Giving and Receiving Feedback

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Paraphrased Video Transcript:

Today I want to talk about giving and receiving feedback. When I first set out to make this video I wanted to talk about a couple of life experiences and what they taught me about giving and receiving feedback, but I soon realized that the subject of feedback has a lot of nuances that I couldn’t do justice from my own experiences alone. So I decided to get some, well, FEEDBACK from a few people, and I got a lot of different perspectives from them.

First off I realized I have to define the scope of what I’m about to say. I want to talk about giving and receiving feedback on someone’s creative expression. I’m not talking about getting feedback in a work environment. I’ll tell a story about it- I wrote a blog post about something I learned in grad school called self-determination theory and sent the first draft of it to the professor who taught it to me. I was expecting some criticism of what I’d written, but in the email, he sent me he started off with the sentence “Your writing needs work”. He then proceeded to completely eviscerate my writing. I mean I hadn’t seen that many red lines since I was in elementary school. He did, however, say that he really appreciated the amount of thought I’d put into the piece.

I’d like to pause the story here to talk about some lessons that I took from that experience. The first lesson, keep in mind the relationship between the feedback giver and the receiver. In this case, It was between my college professor (giver) and his former student (receiver). Second, context is key – he was giving me feedback from an academic perspective, thinking from the mindset of writing a paper or academic piece, while I was writing from a personal perspective. With that in mind, we discussed it over a few emails and hashed it out.

But I remember being very shaken by that experience. For the next several months I felt terrible about it. I’d created a sense of self-worth around being a writer and that was my self-identification, and it was all shattered by four words – your writing needs work. I introspected and realized that maybe I really wasn’t looking for feedback; maybe, I was looking for validation. That’s what really happens these days- you post something online, you wait for the validation from social media- you have the words “feedback welcome” in your post but you really just want people to encourage you, and when someone does the opposite, you entrench yourself further into your own mindset and try to find things that support it (Confirmation Bias). The important thing is to understand this impulse and curtail it.

How I got out of that negativity was by trying to improve myself- I began working on my public speaking skills through Toastmasters, and I found a club that gave me feedback but also gave me a whole lot of encouragement. It also opened my mind up to different avenues of expressing myself. Maybe if it weren’t for that email my professor sent, I wouldn’t have been here making videos!

Speaking of videos, I also realized that it’s important to have a thick skin when you put yourself out there on the internet and to anticipate and prepare for situations where people are being especially mean or hateful.

I’d like to talk about another story that happened recently, where I had a completely different experience with getting feedback. I made a new banner for my social media and posted it online mentioning that it was my first attempt at creating one. Check out my website, my twitter page, and subscribe to my youtube channel while I’m on this topic. I got some feedback from my peers in the User Experience biz, telling me about things like the contrast ratio, font size, and other things about the visual design that I could tweak to make it a more effective banner.

  • Old Banner (version 1)
  • New Banner (after getting feedback)

I felt the impulse of retorting, of defending my design, but I realized I’d been in this place before. I decided to look at their feedback objectively. I thought about the goal of a social media banner; it’s about spreading the word, making sure people get the information on it as quickly as possible. I realized that if peers in the User Experience business are giving me feedback about a design I’ve made, they’re taking time out of their day to look at what I’ve created and suggested ways in which I can achieve the goals of the design in a better way, then that’s a good thing.

So I took their advice, made some tweaks, and thanked them for their feedback. To my surprise, someone told me that it was a pleasant surprise for them, and that people tend to stick to their guns and be very defensive about things, and that it was a breath of fresh air to see someone being receptive.

This whole thing was a complete 180 from the time I felt a shattered sense of self from four words by a professor.

All in all, these were two life experiences and two completely different approaches to receiving feedback. I feel like I grew as a person in the interim of the first experience which was a few years ago, and the second experience which was just a few days back.