“Interesting" and "sparkly"

Harmful categorizations

I don’t like SPARC’s end-of-camp survey question “How useful was SPARC to you for meeting interesting people?” I don’t like the niche but semi-popular-on-Curius blog post sparkly people and how to find them.¹ I despise the notion that runs wild throughout many of my social circles—that some people are “interesting” and “sparkly.”

And I want to erase these words from existence, independent of whether these designations serve some important purpose, independent of whether I like or respect the people who use them.

I mean no prejudice toward either SPARC or the blog post author. The survey question and blog post are specific manifestations of a wider phenomenon that I believe deserves more attention in these circles. As such, I will read into some words, phrases, and sentences perhaps far more so than the author intended.

I find the extremeness of my reaction to be somewhat unreasonable, but I wish to explain myself.

Global Designations

The moment someone says “[this person] is interesting” with no riders or qualifiers, it feels as if they’ve created two classes of people: “interesting” people and “non-interesting” people.

These designations by themselves are not inherently harmful, even if they lead to some inequality. For example, another designation might be “French.” There are French people and non-French people, and in some cases, being French affords you different rights than being non-French (presumably, in France.) That’s not my issue with the designation of “interesting.”

I’ll begin by just talking about SPARC.

Interesting people get to go to SPARC. Interesting people are good to meet and talk to. Interesting people have ideas that are worth hearing out. Some people hear these sentences—relatively innocuous, by some metrics even true—and subconsciously process them as follows.

Outside of SPARC, people are not interesting. Those people are not important to meet or talk to. It is not worth hearing out their ideas.

SPARC alumni call this a hexagon. One model suggests that if a teacher wants to convey “triangle,” they will invariably slip up (due to the imperfection of words) and say “square,” which a student may interpret as “pentagon.” Then later, the student may think back to SPARC, and due to the passage of time and the overwriting of memory, they may generate “hexagon.”

I personally think designations of people as “interesting” or “sparkly” are not only harmful triangles, but also incorrect, and argue as such in this post. But it is inarguable that designations of people as “interesting” or “sparkly” reliably lead to the generation of harmful hexagons.

I want be specific about what I believe:

1. SPARC staff do not want SPARC students to believe people outside SPARC are not worth talking to or hearing out;

2. SPARC staff feel much less strongly than I do about the word “interesting” in the post-camp survey and in casual conversation at SPARC;

3. A subset of SPARC-affiliated people do believe that people at SPARC are “more interesting” than people outside of SPARC, and that the median SPARC-affiliated person is more worth talking to and hearing out than the median non-SPARC-affiliated person.

4. (2) is a factor leading to (3).

Now I want to talk about the blog post. I want to pick out a few phrases:

There’s an intangible quality in some people that just makes them magnetic.

Friends and I call it the “sparkle”. They reliably shine in every context.

You just want to be around them. They have a good vibe.

Some people aren’t magnetic, don’t sparkle. They are less worthy of attention, of friendship. You ought to avoid them. They have a bad vibe.

Isn’t the blog post pointing at something real, though? Of course there are some people that shine brighter than others. Of course there are some people with more magnetism than others. Right?

Speak for yourself

We are not powerful enough to ascribe global notions of “interestingness” or “sparkliness” onto people.

Nobody “[shines] in every context.” I’m not frivolously objecting to this statement in a fake-Ben-Shapiro-esque way. I am serious: you could not, even if you lived one hundred lifetimes, experience even one percent of the possible contexts of people and atmospheres and environments.

The people pointed to as being sparkly here—how many of them have needed to secure respect from others not for their intellectual abilities, their ideas and thoughts, but rather for their physical abilities? How many of them can quickly grasp the social norms of countries and communities far from their prior experience? If they do satisfy these criteria, how many other real, common situations have they not experienced, because they haven’t even lived one lifetime?

These people you might think shine in every context—they shine in the contexts that you see them in; that you hear about them in; that you know them in.

I’ve struggled to have good conversations with people before. It’s not because I’m not sparkly or interesting, and it’s not because they weren’t sparkly or interesting.

Friendship is a cross of sorts, an interaction between two personalities and the context that surrounds them. That they clash often indicates less about either person and more about the interaction.

Not some people are interesting [and others not], not some people are sparkly [and others not], but rather I find these people interesting, I find these people sparkly. Not sparkly people and how to find them, but rather how I find people that seem sparkly to me and people like me.

For everyone the author finds sparkly, there’s people out there who’d find them non-sparkly. And for everyone the author finds non-sparkly, there’s people out there who’d find them sparkly.

I tell people that and fully believe that SPARC is special not because it selects for “interesting people,” but rather because it creates an environment where people are allowed to explore versions of themselves that interest them the most. It creates an environment where people are allowed to refuse to accept messy explanations, where people are encouraged to “read this” and “try that” and told that they can ask this of others, where people are applauded for being passionate about the history of whatever their expertise is, be that juggling or nuclear engineering.

How many people that could have been dismissed as “uninteresting,” “non-sparkly” could have been recategorized after just ten days?

Framing matters, and with that in hand—

Permanence

Let me be clear: I understand I’m trying to read deeply into what is ultimately a fairly innocent blog post. (Or survey question.) But this blog post is an instance of a wider issue. And I’d like to dissect the harmful frames that lead to the survey question and blog post, so I will proceed.

Nowhere in the blog post is the idea that non-sparkly people can become sparkly presented.

I think this is so, so, so important. The author posits there are sparkly people, and non-sparkly people, and your job as a (presumably sparkly) reader of the blog is to go forth and find the other sparkly people out there. Plausibly, you all live happily ever after—

—except for the non-sparkly people, who don’t tend to make value-neutral observations; fall headfirst into the cultural zeitgeist; accept messy explanations; feel uncertain about how to teach things at different levels. You should avoid them. What?

There’s no gene that codes for “accept messy explanations.” For many, it’s a case of them not knowing or not feeling that they can ask for elaboration, that it’s not disrespectful to ask people to repeat things! This is a skill you can practice. When I teach—whether that be math, writing, or weird things like Philosophy of Exercise, I’m hyper-aware that people are often afraid to ask questions. So I tell them they can. Over and over again! Please ask for clarification, please tell me if you’re confused.²

It takes effort to (using the author’s definition) make a “non-sparkly” person “sparkly.”³ It’s not anyone’s responsibility to take that on. You don’t have to spend all your time forcing these traits (or any given set of traits!) out of random people you meet—that will likely burn you out. But I wish the blog post mentioned that change is possible.⁴

One more thought

There are ways to healthily, inclusively express the (good) ideas in the blog post. That the author appreciates a certain non-judgmental openness to ideas; that the author appreciates consistency of creativity; that the author appreciates a certain centeredness and peace.

But those are treated as if they are universally good, wrapped up with the “reliably shine,” “best in their field,” “good vibe” words and phrases, and I simply don’t think this is true.

To be clear, I think the issue is partly clumsy writing—not only in the blog post, but in general with respect to discussions on seeking out certain types of people. Writing is a difficult skill to master, especially writing thoughtfully about other people.

That said: I value that some people very often have strong opinions, make anything-but-value-neutral observations, necessarily sensationalize. (Hater energy!) I value that some people prefer to maintain rather than make things. (You don’t have to be a founder.) I value that some people don’t have a “default peace,” that they are driven enough to not be okay with the way things are, because really, things aren’t okay for a lot of people in a lot of places in the world.

And in a similar vein: I don’t think “interestingness,” in the context of SPARC, is universally good, either. But I already wrote about that.

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As a final thought: after I wrote this, Espen sent me this blog post, which expresses many of the ideas I care about, including the following:

• All people are interesting;

• Great people are right in front of you—it’s up to you to bring their greatness out;

• So much of how a person acts is context-determined or environmentally-determined, and not just inherent to the person.

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Disclaimer:

• This post is not supposed to tell you who to interact with or who to be friends with.

• This post is primarily an exploration of the way certain communities use language about other people.

• Socializing is hard. Again, there is nothing wrong with “I find these people more interesting than these other people, so I will interact more with the former.” I do not intend to pretend that we should just seek out people at random to be friends with.

1. I’ll refer to Anson’s blog post from now on as “the blog post” and to Anson as “the author.”

2. It may seem that I’m picking off the easiest quality of supposedly sparkly people to teach, but I think all the qualities are teachable! For example, my own blog post here may be anything but a “value-neutral observation,” but I’d like to think I’m pretty good at noticing and pointing out when people automatically slot things and experiences into a good-bad dichotomy.

3. I think not seeing or being able to bring out sparkliness in people is partially a skill issue, as it were. I’m not claiming to be particularly skilled, but at least I’m aware. (Of course, it’s also an intersection, and not on just you, but there is a skill component!)

4. I don’t fully agree with everything Logan says here, but in my opinion his (different-but-somewhat-similar) framing of “sparkliness” is fairer and more nuanced than the other blog post’s framing. “The implication is that there are lots of people who could be sparkly but aren't yet, for any number of reasons. People who feel trapped in school […] have been beaten down […] don't have the space in their lives to build their own projects because they go to school in the day and work to support their family at night.”