( sp. “elitist”). I think you are reaching here. Experienced paddlers notice these things all the time, but that doesn’t make them elitists, in the sense that they think themselves superior.
I agree with you, noticing these things hardly makes one an ‘elitist’. But what is it that compels a person to comment about it, one way or the other? My favorite article on the subject: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-is-2020/201712/why-people-give-unsolicited-advice-though-no-one-listens
@ Out_of_Line
Sometimes a full psychological evaluation is not needed.
I have no trouble telling people landing on an island that is restricted because it is bird breeding season of the situation and where they can go to get that information. I am not fulfilling a deep seated need when I do that. It is a matter of being aware of where we are.
Sometimes upside down paddles go with other choices in paddling which could be dangerous. Like sitting in the middle of a narrow channel at the end of the day when the lobster boats are coming thru at times on autopilot because the operators are in back cleaning up.
If you want to call either of these acting out of a sense of undue self-importance - part of the article - we have a different approach to safety and environmental stewardship.
Here’s what the O.P. wrote: “You know you’re an ‘elitest’ when the 1st thing you notice in these pictures is the inferior kayak or the upside down paddle (and not the ‘subject’ of the picture).” So, the elitist defined here just notices, without comment being necessary. Those who blurt it out in public might be elitist or maybe just trying to be helpful. No way to really tell, although the best scenario is to get them aside and quietly tell them.
Pagayeur
Not an elitest, I only noticed one paddle upside down but I guess I didn’t look too closely. I once turned down a gig to video the governor of wv rafting on the gauley river. I knew he was taking “a day off” but I had some issues with his policies and didn’t want to mess up his day so he just went unfilmed . I did watch and also video Dan Quayle dropping over sweets falls. His top hand was not on the t-grip but rather on the shaft. I know Al Gore and James Watt both boated the grand canyon, Jimmy Carter canoed on the Chattooga but wasn’t there for any of that. I also missed Steven Seagal’s rafting trip down the New, and Vanilla Ice’s wave ski trip up the new river gorge.
We tend to immediately notice and focus on those things with which we are most familiar. Sometimes that makes us annoying to other people and sometimes that “expertise” even causes us to annoy ourselves.
I had a beau for many years who was an absolute automobile and motorcycle “gear-head”, almost an “idiot savant” about it. He was so attuned to cars in particular that he could identify many marques strictly by engine sound and could tell at a glance not only what year and model ANY auto was, but what the trim packages were. When he was a kid, his older siblings used to win quarters from their friends by betting that their little brother could identify any car’s brand driving by with his eyes closed. As a result, many things that 99.999% of people would never notice drove him nuts (and me nuts because he could not resist remarking on and ranting about them.) For instance, back in the '80’s we used to watch the “Miami Vice” TV drama – the lead character was an undercover detective who drove a Ferrari Spyder sports car. But apparently the engine noise that the Foley editor spliced into the sound track was from a Corvette and that used to drive my partner to distraction – hearing the “wrong sound” caused him cognitive dissonance. And when we would watch movies with car chases he could immediately tell when a different vehicle was being using as the scenes cut. He noted that in the infamous car chase through Manhattan in “The French Connection” there were at least 3 different Pontiac LeMans (obvious to him) used in that sequence. He even noticed that one was a manual transmission and two were automatics. This really bugged him because it distracted him from being able to suspend reality and enjoy the action, he said.
It used to bug me that he did this but then I noticed that “expertise” makes me notice some things that I can’t look away from. I did a bunch of rock and ice climbing and winter mountaineering in my younger days and used to sell the gear for it. As a result, there are very few dramatic films about climbing that I can enjoy because the gear and techniques used in them are nearly always so completely ludicrous that I cannot maintain credulity. Sylvester Stallone’s “Cliffhanger” was a dud in countless ways (some of the worst direction and acting I’ve ever seen) but the stupidity of the “climbing” scenes was so bad that was what triggered me to walk out less than halfway through. Same with “Vertical Limit” which would have been tolerably laughable had it not taken itself so seriously.
A more recent beau was a lifelong professional musician with perfect pitch who had also been a sound engineer. He loved live music and we would attend many concerts including those by our world-class Grammy-winning symphony orchestra. But he would notice every slightly “off” squonk or buzz or disharmony and constantly want to change where we were seated to improve the balance of the sound and would fret about how the soundboard was being mishandled. I kind of felt sorry for him – I would be awash in enjoyment of a magnificent Beethoven concerto and he would be squirming because one of the second violins was slightly off pitch.
So we often just can’t block ourselves from noticing those details which are specific and important to our particular areas of expertise. I think the impulse to remark on these anomalies is more individual compulsiveness than “elitist”.
And for the same reason I cannot watch medical dramas. They never get CPR right and the things they do are not appropriate for the heart rhythm presented
Yes, KM, I know what you mean. The emergency room doc I dated for 4 years used to give a running negative commentary when we would watch any film or TV show with medical content. Most of it drove him nuts. I remember it was worst during the two months he was cramming for his board cert renewal.
Oh yeah, “sound elitism”… It makes me laugh when Hollywood shows an image of a Bald Eagle in flight and then couples it with the sound of a Red-tailed Hawk screaming.
You can go nuts looking for those types of discrepancies. One of my favorites is when the detectives call for SWAT and then lead the charge to get the bad guys.
I’m not an elitist
been oft called a defeatist
but then ain’t life the sweetist
when expectations arise
thus come some to converted
in turn with paddles inverted
by those places oft skirted
as many strokes do surmise
But then, you’re right, Rex!
There’s a Red Tail squealin’,
for the Temple Owl scream!
Pileated in the Congo?
Who out-parrots Tarzan’s scream?
Try’n not to be a sound-elitisit.
But come on! Really, man?
Taylor Swift and Boy George
to be a Zeppelin cover band???
I can’t watch medical dramas either but it has nothing to do with excessive knowledge on my part.
As a musically-trained kid who stopped playing when I was 20, and as someone who does not have absolute pitch (but may have perfect relative pitch), I have to say that IT HURTS TO HEAR OUT-OF-TUNE music. Even now, decades after being out of the music world.
No way to say it more clearly than that. I won’t change seats, make loud comments or anything like that, but it makes me grimace at every, and I mean every, off-note.
This has nothing to do with elitism. It is about certain people being so sharp in certain senses (BORN that way) that they cannot abide the off bits.
I also hate supposedly identical colors being NOT identical, even so slightly that most people don’t notice even when it is called out. Unfortunately, this happens frequently, so I just mentally block it out.
Pileated in the Congo?
It’s just so wrongo!
Portland Cara Cara?
Super bizarra!
They call me an elitist,
For paddling a Cetus,
And shunning all the simpletons
Launching plastic Pelicans.
But when I see them fumbling
With paddles, packs or outfitting,
I am compelled to set them straight
To save them from uncertain fate.
It is my duty, can’t you see
For I’m the maven of the sea!
I am blessed? with a fairly acute sense of smell. Sometimes that can be very bad
Pikabike: Sounds like you may have close to perfect color vision, maybe even are a tetrachromat (with 4, rather than the usual human 3, cone cell channels.)
I never heard that term before. Don’t know if I am one. I just know there are some, let’s call them slight discordances, in sound or color that could drive me nuts if I dwelled on them. Then there’s out-of-square walls etc, which unfortunately our house here is full of!
What, you mean he’s got dinosaur DNA? The only tetrochromats I’ve heard of are birds.
I think it’s one thing to think to yourself “What a piece of crap kayak, bike, whatever…” and another to say it out loud. Human nature.