[self-demonstrating my point, it appears]

All right, I have a question: why do people apologize for rambling and/or try to be brief, as if more exuberant verbiage would somehow be offensive, at least online??

I was actually thinking about this, and... doesn't it stand to reason that even if you have nothing of interest to say, if you just keep on talking, eventually you'll say something vaguely interesting?? Maybe. If you can make yourself understood and/or aren't insane. I'm guessing.

Maybe this is 'cause we live in the age of brain-numbing small-talk and sound-bytes, where anything that isn't packaged and prescheduled is suspect, I dunno, or maybe that's too cynical and hard on small-talk. Or maybe it's just lame & dorky to waffle about and be indirect, or possibly too 'feminine' and not macho enough for guys especially and/or it gives the impression that the person has a soft brain, so to speak. I mean, I won't argue about the soft brain bit, personally. I always thought direct, blunt people were way cooler than I am, but my point is that it takes skill to be successfully both intelligent and blunt + direct, skill which you don't need to ramble on pointlessly and also skill which you obviously don't have if you're to-the-point but not, in fact, pithy.

Perhaps as a side issue, this whole thing of wanting to appear to be cool which might explain things... I dunno. Why do people even bother? Of course, this probably says more about my apathy than their delusion, as per usual....

[narrator bias poll!]

I just couldn't help it, thinking about these questions while reading 'King Dork', which is very us-vs-Them and counterculture-vs-'Normals', to the point where even though I empathized with the pov character, I felt slightly bad for everyone else (who wasn't so clearly characterized anyway, including the best friend-- unreliable narrator heaven).

I was wondering about the relationship between empathizing with the pov character vs the underdog or whether they can feed into each other (since here we had your classic underdog-pov situation, and I was, in fact, suckered.) Also, whether this all generally relates to whom is better written than whom :>

( So: it got a little lengthy, so I cut it. But I'm still curious! :P )

~~

    EDIT - If you picked 'other (?)', tell me whyyyyyyyy! Heh. I'm like 'omg, I know my answer options weren't full enough, I totally suck, WAH' :))