Tics, Body Language

[version]

Reading DeLillo's Americana atm and one of the things he does is zero in on and mystify stuff like the way a character's father taps his elbow with a certain finger whenever he's saying something important. Similar to Ballard's search for geometry in body parts.

How big a believer are you in body language?

 

[luka]

explain the question a bit i dont get it

 

[version]

Do you believe people are unconsciously communicating through their movements and posture?

 

[version]

Something like struggling to maintain eye contact due to nervousness seems pretty obvious, but I'm not convinced by claims of folded arms being defensive.

 

[luka]

probably. i don't really notice it though. im not really looking very closely. i think the way people hold themselves and move through the world can often give you a sense of their attitude towards the world
defiant, or whatever. the more granular stuff you're talking about i don't know really

 

[version]

It's part of treating the world like a text. Everything made up of signs and symbols to be decoded.

 

[luka]

you must have come across this person lol what a loser

 

[Clinamenic]

Certain tics, I think, function to discharge excess energy, and physiognomically can be seen as safety valves for anxiety, perhaps.

 

[luka]

leg jiggling is either social anxiety or amphetamines, as a rule

 

[version]

Certain tics, I think, function to discharge excess energy, and physiognomically can be seen as safety valves for anxiety, perhaps.

Nail biting.

 

[version]

Another angle's the possession one. We've talked before about Burroughs and William F. Buckley's facial tics. Lizard tongue and rictus grin.

 

[luka]

Certain tics, I think, function to discharge excess energy, and physiognomically can be seen as safety valves for anxiety, perhaps.

they call it displacement activity.

 

[luka]

if you keep staring at a girl it means you fancy her.

 

[linebaugh]

I dont think Im necessarily a nervous person but I have loads of these. I fuck with my hair so much I have to wear a hat to stop. I pick at my skin and crack my knuckles incessantly. my wife says Im awful to go to a restaurant with because my heads always darting back to the kitchen every time someone exits there. I used to pace constantly to the bane of former roomates. When i was younger teachers thought I was either cheating on exams or simply autistic because I would contort around in my chair so much.

 

[luka]

gross.

 

[luka]

you definitely are autistic that's called stimming. youre fully autistic.

 

[luka]

im the only one on dissensus that's not a full aut.

 

[version]

im the only one on dissensus that's not a full aut.

You're a nutter. You're like a comedy skeleton who pops out of the grave in a film and hounds the protagonist.

 

[linebaugh]

I think its the restless stirrings of a high iq mind

 

[sus]

I think that you can learn to read these things and pick up real information, I also think that easy, generic, super-legible rules like "crossed arms = x" are gonna be wrong more often than not, because most gestures can mean a lot of different things depending on context, and fluent reading is about this really complex, almost sub-conscious computing of how the whole fabric of interknit gestures forms a coherent whole.