Some Kind of Mid-Flight Teleportation Situation

Vol. 1 Issue 25

What is it to be definitively, officially unpopular? How unpopular is that actually?  First, to deal with the super obvious: this is not a question to be asked of someone who may be in transition and is perhaps in a place where they simply don’t know anyone. At least I don’t think it is. Such persons may be in situations such as starting new jobs, starting at new schools, or moving to new cities. Assumingly, these situations should resolve themselves. The person in transition eventually settles into a place, both in their life and in their transition, that being that they are no longer in one, at least as much as is theoretically possible, where what they at first may haven mistaken for a bout of unpopularity, was actually just in fact a simple case of not knowing anyone.

I’d like to parallel this with horrendicity briefly. Drawing parallels is something you’re supposed to do, and is very highly regarded in the literary world. In my blog Getting Kicked Off the Train in Genoa (Part One), where I don’t write about a Genovese train, or getting kicked off of one, if you will recall all that stuff about environments and experience, those were parallels to psychology I think. And if you’ve noticed all the italics, good for you. You are very observant. Italics are highly prized in the literary world too and so I’m using them frequently to show that I’m a real pro, just in case you haven’t already figured that out.

As we know, being horrendous at something is not the same as just not knowing how to do something; likewise, being unpopular is not the same as just not knowing anyone. Ex.- I don’t know how to fly a plane, thus my level of horrendicity at this particular activity remains undetermined, even though I would almost certainly be horrendous at plane-flying if I were put in the cockpit this very moment. If it were some kind of mid-flight teleportation situation where I was teleported onboard and the real pilot was teleported off board, that there particular plane would probably crash. Although my piloting ability screams horrendous, and that still may yet be proven, as of now it has not been. It just looks that way; I just don’t know how to fly a plane.

Now tennis on the other hand would be something that I just suck at. I know how to play, but I suck (still better than my Vietnamese though). So when is it determined that someone is truly unpopular vs. just being unknown? First, there is the problem of the usage of un- in the word unpopular. Truly, the use of un- is an serious everyday problem. To be unpopular is to allude that one was once popular and then became unpopular. Framed in this way, unpopular would mean something like to fall out of favor, or become disliked, as Tiger Woods was for awhile, or like George W will probably be forever . In reality, both individuals are actually still very popular in that they are known. For them to become unpopular in the way I’m interested, people would have to actually un-learn that they even know Tiger Woods and George W. exist.

Take unsweetened iced tea for example. The fact that it is called un-sweetened iced tea implies that by its very nature it was at one point sweetened, and then at some point went through a process of un-sweetening whence it became: unsweetened. The un- implies that sweetened is the natural state of the tea that is to become unsweetened, just as the un- of unpopular implies the natural state of the person who is to become unpopular is popularity. I’m not so sure about this whole natural-state business.