#3 from earlier: The katamari
Jun. 8th, 2008 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoy[This is #3 from earlier. Still need to write: Tufts House vs. IHC. (I put up the 10th week house minutes yesterday. Will these finally be my last ones? None can yet say.)]
This is going to require a lot of background. (It also seems it's going to turn into a rant in a few places. Oh well.)
So have I written here of the practice of trying to katamari up some people? (This is one of the things I call it, anyway. Also just "trolling for people" or "doorknocking", though in truth you generally ring bells rather than knocking on doors.) I don't think it had any name before that.) It seems that I have not. Ah, here we have my record of my first experience with it.
So the idea is this. You start with a few people, and you go around to the houses on people you know, and you knock on their door, and you get them to come with you to get more people, and you continue this until you have lots of people and you settle down somewhere and do whatever.
In Glen Rock, we did this on bikes, and "somewhere" was almost inevitably Mike Epstein's house. This is where I learned it.
Now within a house of 60 people or so, with a large common room, as at PROMYS on weekends (when I was there, anyway) or in Tufts House (theoretically), this is distinctly unnecessary. The point is to build a pool of people, and you already have your pool of people, in the lounge.
But it certainly was necessary last summer, when I lived with a person by the name of Scott, who mostly stayed in his room, and Satoru/Satory/whatever his name was, who kept entirely to himself. And so on weekends I went up and down the streets, carrying my backpack and ringing doorbells. I made a map of where everyone was, that I could find. Ian even made a copy of it, for his own use.
Unfortunately I was not very successful at it. One detail I did not mention above is, who starts such a thing? Back in Glen Rock it was usually Nick, I think - in any case Nick was always quickly involved. Note, in the entry linked above, Nick's approach - "Harry, you're coming bike-riding with us." Nick can pull that off. I can't, really. I'd go, say, to Weiner Central[0], and there would be Doug, and I'd say, hey, I'm going, looking for people, and he'd say, no, not right now, and I'd be like, ah well, see you later then.
(I should note, this is one reason it works better on bikes; having a fleet of bikes show up at your door is rather more intimidating than just a crowd of people.)
(There was also the problem of too often I went when people were eating, due to my own eating later than most people.)
The one time it worked, I found Amelia, bored, on the quads; afterwards we got Kat, and then we stopped at Colleen's where we found Grant. 5 is not a bad number of people, but it's less than, say, what we would get back in Glen Rock, and much less than I'd like given how many places we stopped.
Obviously, the biggest problem is always getting the initial few. The more people you have, the easier it is to get more. Hence "katamari". In Glen Rock, as I've said, I solved this problem by starting with Nick, because he could easily get more. Never seemed to get past that hurdle here.
Now comes this year.
So here's the thing. Firstly, the house seems to be rather... fractured this year. There's a group of first-years who have nothing to do with anyone else. Obviously the house has always had its different groups, but what makes them so thoroughly separate is that they don't use the lounge. (Also the hallways and study lounge, which as a public space are close to equivalent. I wrote "lounge" here at first but I think "public spaces" works better in general.) The lounge is in every way the center of Tufts. People who avoid it... well, it's hard to call them Tufts at all. And even aside from those, the lounge in general seems to be sparsely populated these days. And Smash is now - as it has been since last year really - just a game a few people play, rather than the round-the-clock universal time-killer it was two years ago. (Meaning large numbers of people were *watching* Smash at any given time - when playing free-for-alls, 3-in games were uncommon, but not rare; contrast now when 2-in seems to be pretty rare - meaning a lot of people you can possibly get for something else.)
(We all complained two years ago about the door closers, though many people now have doorstops. What's strange is that you'd think this would at least force more people into the lounge.)
And perpetually interfering with my ideal of a pool of people is plans. This is not new, of course. But so often I ran into the problem of people who had decided in advance to make themselves unavailable! (And, I should note, often, it would seem, entirely by private communication, without making a public "PEOPLE FOR X?" call. That's not always a bad thing, but...) Now obviously a big event, like, say, a game of Diplomacy, needs to be planned in advance. But, I think, on a weekend, a person has time; they should always be willing to spend an hour or three on something unexpected, right? Why restrict yourself beforehand? Every block of time you set aside beforehand affects more than just that - if you are doing something at 5:00, you can't, say, start something that takes an hour at 4:30. It restricts you considerably beforehand, not just during the time you've set aside.
...woah, that turned into something of a rant. Anyway. Also, contrary to what I had hoped, very few Tufts alumni inhabited the lounge. For whatever reason, Tufts is on kind of a 2-year rotation. Few people stay past their second-year; I still do not understand why. Back when there was still a quota on returning students, I figured it was because of that; but that was lifted, and still the pattern continues. The result of this is that the house has a very short memory. It's kind of a problem. (This is not true of all houses - contrast Hitchcock, e.g.)
And these people, who go off and live outside the house, what do they do when they have free time and nothing to do? You'd think, with the Tufts lounge such a central place, where a pool of people can be assembled, where a game of Smash can be found, they'd all come back here; but not many do. And of course, it's self-reinforcing. (Presumably whatever they do is again arranged entirely by private communication rather than by calls for people, the latter being kind of impossible in such a situation.)
(Similarly, during the summer, I had hoped such a central place, where people could go and expect to find people - say the quads, or Bartlett quad - would spontaneously arise, but none did. So, I had to resort to trolling the streets for people.)
Anyway. We're almost done with the background. :P
So it happened that this year, when I couldn't find anyone in the house, I tried to katamari up some people among the Tufts alumni whose locations I knew. There were several problems, however:
1. Again, I'm not a good starter for this, as always.
2. It was no longer the summer. I had lost my map, and anyway it wouldn't have been much use anymore; people had moved. I simply didn't know where people were now. I knew there were a lot of people around 54th and Woodlawn, but the only people I could locate specifically were Grant/Jim/Jake, the girls[3], and Ian/Kat/Sara (now Ian/Sara/whoever the third is). Presumably, once I could get someone, they could then locate others, but it certianly made the initial hurdle even harder by limiting it to only a few groups of people.
So, I would go up to Grant's place, find nobody; then go southward to the girls', find nobody; and then figure it wasn't worth it to try to get Ian, and go home.
(If you know the geography I'm describing here, you might find this order kind of strange. Indeed, if I had expected it to work, I would have gone first south to the girls', then northward, to save walking if successful. But I didn't expect that, so instead I went north first, figuring it was Grant that would be easier to get by myself.)
Thing is, I ought to have had people from the house when I did this, yes? Well... uh... no. That was a mistake. See, I did it when I couldn't find many people in the house, right? And I didn't know how really to call for people for this, so... uh... I didn't. And I went alone, and got nobody, as expected.
But! (Now we get to the event I meant to actually relate.)
It happened last Saturday that as I was going out to find people, Youlian asked where I was going. And I explained. (Not at this length, of course.) And so, Youlian said he would come with me. And then Winston passed by and we got him too. And then we got Steve. And thenYoulian Steve did something interesting: He went doorknocking within the house.
Now this I would ordinarly consider, well, rude. Part of the reason going around town knocking on doors is OK is because, well, you have no idea whether they're available to come or not. But here in the house, it's a pretty simple signalling system, no? In public space, or door open: Here I am, potentially ready to do something else. Door closed: Leave me alone. Now of course the installation of door-closers screws this up, but enough people have doorstops you'd think it would be pretty reliable. (Of course, trolling for people like this is very "You're coming with us" anyway, so perhaps this is somewhat irrelevant to it.) (And of course, this isn't reliable in the case of, say, closed-door parties (which have to have the door closed for rules reasons, i.e., alcohol or being way too loud - which forces the question of why do so many people seem to consider alcohol essential to a party?))
But, whatever. We got me, Youlian, Winston, Steve, and Agnes. Now, that's 5. 5 isn't a bad number. If I could find 5 people in the lounge, I probably wouldn't even have thought to go trying to katamari up some more. (Except maybe I would have since it was really loud in the house. Whatever.) Not really a number to stop at, but not at all bad. But, firstly, Youlian had specifically told them we were going out to katamari up some people; and secondly, well, five almost certainly wasn't large enough considering the exact people we had.
And so off we went. Unfortunately, we were not at all successful - it followed the patterns of the other times this year. None of the five of us knew anyone's specific location aside from the three places we'd already mentioned, and so indeed, we went first northward to Grant's, then southward to the girls', then decided it wasn't worth trying to get Ian.
However, the reason for our failure this time was simply that we didn't even find anybody, except for Jim. We had 5 people, and Youlian can do a rather good "You're coming with us", and Winston certainly should help with that too (he had a large cardboard tube with him at the time...). So, something to try again in the coming year, it would seem.
So Agnes and I returned home, and the others wandered around doing who-knows-what, but apparently not first confusing drunk people and then beating with the cardboard tube, as Winston suggested.
-Harry
[0]Doug, Pavel, and Anthony's apartment, though Pavel wasn't there at the time. Also Grant tells me it doesn't exist anymore?
[3]Katy/Kate/Alex/Charlotte. Despite about half the population of Tufts being girls at any given point, among people of my year and the year after us, that it refers to these four is unambiguous. Probably not so among the first-years, though.
This is going to require a lot of background. (It also seems it's going to turn into a rant in a few places. Oh well.)
So have I written here of the practice of trying to katamari up some people? (This is one of the things I call it, anyway. Also just "trolling for people" or "doorknocking", though in truth you generally ring bells rather than knocking on doors.) I don't think it had any name before that.) It seems that I have not. Ah, here we have my record of my first experience with it.
So the idea is this. You start with a few people, and you go around to the houses on people you know, and you knock on their door, and you get them to come with you to get more people, and you continue this until you have lots of people and you settle down somewhere and do whatever.
In Glen Rock, we did this on bikes, and "somewhere" was almost inevitably Mike Epstein's house. This is where I learned it.
Now within a house of 60 people or so, with a large common room, as at PROMYS on weekends (when I was there, anyway) or in Tufts House (theoretically), this is distinctly unnecessary. The point is to build a pool of people, and you already have your pool of people, in the lounge.
But it certainly was necessary last summer, when I lived with a person by the name of Scott, who mostly stayed in his room, and Satoru/Satory/whatever his name was, who kept entirely to himself. And so on weekends I went up and down the streets, carrying my backpack and ringing doorbells. I made a map of where everyone was, that I could find. Ian even made a copy of it, for his own use.
Unfortunately I was not very successful at it. One detail I did not mention above is, who starts such a thing? Back in Glen Rock it was usually Nick, I think - in any case Nick was always quickly involved. Note, in the entry linked above, Nick's approach - "Harry, you're coming bike-riding with us." Nick can pull that off. I can't, really. I'd go, say, to Weiner Central[0], and there would be Doug, and I'd say, hey, I'm going, looking for people, and he'd say, no, not right now, and I'd be like, ah well, see you later then.
(I should note, this is one reason it works better on bikes; having a fleet of bikes show up at your door is rather more intimidating than just a crowd of people.)
(There was also the problem of too often I went when people were eating, due to my own eating later than most people.)
The one time it worked, I found Amelia, bored, on the quads; afterwards we got Kat, and then we stopped at Colleen's where we found Grant. 5 is not a bad number of people, but it's less than, say, what we would get back in Glen Rock, and much less than I'd like given how many places we stopped.
Obviously, the biggest problem is always getting the initial few. The more people you have, the easier it is to get more. Hence "katamari". In Glen Rock, as I've said, I solved this problem by starting with Nick, because he could easily get more. Never seemed to get past that hurdle here.
Now comes this year.
So here's the thing. Firstly, the house seems to be rather... fractured this year. There's a group of first-years who have nothing to do with anyone else. Obviously the house has always had its different groups, but what makes them so thoroughly separate is that they don't use the lounge. (Also the hallways and study lounge, which as a public space are close to equivalent. I wrote "lounge" here at first but I think "public spaces" works better in general.) The lounge is in every way the center of Tufts. People who avoid it... well, it's hard to call them Tufts at all. And even aside from those, the lounge in general seems to be sparsely populated these days. And Smash is now - as it has been since last year really - just a game a few people play, rather than the round-the-clock universal time-killer it was two years ago. (Meaning large numbers of people were *watching* Smash at any given time - when playing free-for-alls, 3-in games were uncommon, but not rare; contrast now when 2-in seems to be pretty rare - meaning a lot of people you can possibly get for something else.)
(We all complained two years ago about the door closers, though many people now have doorstops. What's strange is that you'd think this would at least force more people into the lounge.)
And perpetually interfering with my ideal of a pool of people is plans. This is not new, of course. But so often I ran into the problem of people who had decided in advance to make themselves unavailable! (And, I should note, often, it would seem, entirely by private communication, without making a public "PEOPLE FOR X?" call. That's not always a bad thing, but...) Now obviously a big event, like, say, a game of Diplomacy, needs to be planned in advance. But, I think, on a weekend, a person has time; they should always be willing to spend an hour or three on something unexpected, right? Why restrict yourself beforehand? Every block of time you set aside beforehand affects more than just that - if you are doing something at 5:00, you can't, say, start something that takes an hour at 4:30. It restricts you considerably beforehand, not just during the time you've set aside.
...woah, that turned into something of a rant. Anyway. Also, contrary to what I had hoped, very few Tufts alumni inhabited the lounge. For whatever reason, Tufts is on kind of a 2-year rotation. Few people stay past their second-year; I still do not understand why. Back when there was still a quota on returning students, I figured it was because of that; but that was lifted, and still the pattern continues. The result of this is that the house has a very short memory. It's kind of a problem. (This is not true of all houses - contrast Hitchcock, e.g.)
And these people, who go off and live outside the house, what do they do when they have free time and nothing to do? You'd think, with the Tufts lounge such a central place, where a pool of people can be assembled, where a game of Smash can be found, they'd all come back here; but not many do. And of course, it's self-reinforcing. (Presumably whatever they do is again arranged entirely by private communication rather than by calls for people, the latter being kind of impossible in such a situation.)
(Similarly, during the summer, I had hoped such a central place, where people could go and expect to find people - say the quads, or Bartlett quad - would spontaneously arise, but none did. So, I had to resort to trolling the streets for people.)
Anyway. We're almost done with the background. :P
So it happened that this year, when I couldn't find anyone in the house, I tried to katamari up some people among the Tufts alumni whose locations I knew. There were several problems, however:
1. Again, I'm not a good starter for this, as always.
2. It was no longer the summer. I had lost my map, and anyway it wouldn't have been much use anymore; people had moved. I simply didn't know where people were now. I knew there were a lot of people around 54th and Woodlawn, but the only people I could locate specifically were Grant/Jim/Jake, the girls[3], and Ian/Kat/Sara (now Ian/Sara/whoever the third is). Presumably, once I could get someone, they could then locate others, but it certianly made the initial hurdle even harder by limiting it to only a few groups of people.
So, I would go up to Grant's place, find nobody; then go southward to the girls', find nobody; and then figure it wasn't worth it to try to get Ian, and go home.
(If you know the geography I'm describing here, you might find this order kind of strange. Indeed, if I had expected it to work, I would have gone first south to the girls', then northward, to save walking if successful. But I didn't expect that, so instead I went north first, figuring it was Grant that would be easier to get by myself.)
Thing is, I ought to have had people from the house when I did this, yes? Well... uh... no. That was a mistake. See, I did it when I couldn't find many people in the house, right? And I didn't know how really to call for people for this, so... uh... I didn't. And I went alone, and got nobody, as expected.
But! (Now we get to the event I meant to actually relate.)
It happened last Saturday that as I was going out to find people, Youlian asked where I was going. And I explained. (Not at this length, of course.) And so, Youlian said he would come with me. And then Winston passed by and we got him too. And then we got Steve. And then
Now this I would ordinarly consider, well, rude. Part of the reason going around town knocking on doors is OK is because, well, you have no idea whether they're available to come or not. But here in the house, it's a pretty simple signalling system, no? In public space, or door open: Here I am, potentially ready to do something else. Door closed: Leave me alone. Now of course the installation of door-closers screws this up, but enough people have doorstops you'd think it would be pretty reliable. (Of course, trolling for people like this is very "You're coming with us" anyway, so perhaps this is somewhat irrelevant to it.) (And of course, this isn't reliable in the case of, say, closed-door parties (which have to have the door closed for rules reasons, i.e., alcohol or being way too loud - which forces the question of why do so many people seem to consider alcohol essential to a party?))
But, whatever. We got me, Youlian, Winston, Steve, and Agnes. Now, that's 5. 5 isn't a bad number. If I could find 5 people in the lounge, I probably wouldn't even have thought to go trying to katamari up some more. (Except maybe I would have since it was really loud in the house. Whatever.) Not really a number to stop at, but not at all bad. But, firstly, Youlian had specifically told them we were going out to katamari up some people; and secondly, well, five almost certainly wasn't large enough considering the exact people we had.
And so off we went. Unfortunately, we were not at all successful - it followed the patterns of the other times this year. None of the five of us knew anyone's specific location aside from the three places we'd already mentioned, and so indeed, we went first northward to Grant's, then southward to the girls', then decided it wasn't worth trying to get Ian.
However, the reason for our failure this time was simply that we didn't even find anybody, except for Jim. We had 5 people, and Youlian can do a rather good "You're coming with us", and Winston certainly should help with that too (he had a large cardboard tube with him at the time...). So, something to try again in the coming year, it would seem.
So Agnes and I returned home, and the others wandered around doing who-knows-what, but apparently not first confusing drunk people and then beating with the cardboard tube, as Winston suggested.
-Harry
[0]Doug, Pavel, and Anthony's apartment, though Pavel wasn't there at the time. Also Grant tells me it doesn't exist anymore?
[3]Katy/Kate/Alex/Charlotte. Despite about half the population of Tufts being girls at any given point, among people of my year and the year after us, that it refers to these four is unambiguous. Probably not so among the first-years, though.
