Talk Funnel

I recently came across this fun bit of distraction at the local Library — a book called The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie of Blackadder, Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, and now House fame. It looks to be something he did back in 1996 while he was still a wee young lad. It’s fun and breezy and apparently got some good reviews at the time (“A James Bond for the 1990s… with much better jokes” says the Daily Telegraph).

Fortunately for the legion of House fans, it wasn’t enough to get him side-tracked from his acting career.

So I’m zooming through this when all of a sudden my reading is interrupted by what is, for all intents and purposes, an early form of highly localized micro-community:

Apparently, Reader-A decided that the plot action wasn’t sufficiently realistic and chose to augment it, first with a:

Then follow with:

In case it’s hard to read, it says: ‘No serious guerilla or “terrorist” would reveal such a [sic] important name (except on a need-to-know)’.

I won’t bore you with the whole plot background, but the protagonist is pretending he’s an assassin and has infiltrated one of those European proto-anarchist groups (a la Red Brigade). At this point in the story he asks the head of the group point-blank who the group’s chief financial backer is and the head-guy just blurts out a name.

So on merit alone, Reader-A should be commended for his/her astute observation. But the mode of delivery — having permanently defaced a book from a public library in order to deliver this opinion — tends to detract from the force of the argument.

In comes Reader-B, with a counter-argument:

“Well DUH dumbass. I think it’s apparent these guys aren’t a) serious or b) smart. Shut up and keep reading.”

The ‘dumbass’ bit gives us an early glimpse into one of the lasting features of social communication — the rapid descent into name-calling.

But what the interaction reveals most is the desire by people to inject their opinion and build a ‘micro-community’ in the most unusual places (bathroom stalls being another one). Back in 1996 (or whenever these comments were made), there weren’t too many places you could hold that sort of discussion and especially in such a localized context (i.e. on page 261, line 6).

Going forward, I think publishers — especially those of the E-book variety — ought to consider offering such a feature as part of their product. Not only will it be a good differentiator but it will hopefully stop the next generation from having to deface public property just to get something off their chest.

And for the record, I totally agree with Reader-A. There’s no way Cisco would just come out and give Lang the name.