I had an assignment in my geography class where they were assigning people continents and told them to find the flags of those continents and what language they spoke. When I explained there were many flags in Asia, they told to just pick the dominant one. Y’know, the one. It was a group project, and I took over and made sure we did at least a bunch of Asian countries. I got India, China, Japan, South Korea (chud me didn’t think we even could research DPRK) Vietnam, Russia, and I think some Middle Eastern countries. But yeah, it was a bad assignment. In the teacher’s defense, she was an elementary school keyboarding teacher forced to teach high school geography. It was an easy class as she had no idea what she was teaching.

I never even thought of that angle, sounds genuinely awful.

:yea:

I have somehow evaded this with my polycule to date. I still have some hope out there. Some. Gods that does sound terrifying.

What’s heavier: a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?

That’s right: a pound of lead. Because lead’s heavier than feathers.

Incurious is the best way to describe it. They’ll happily ask me questions, but they’ve never bothered to just google it or anything themselves. Like they can’t imagine trying to learn anything themselves, that they’re just comfortable in their ignorance.

It wouldn’t be so bad if these people were in the least bit interested in bettering themselves in any way

i’m too tired boss

Like, how the fuck do you live to be my age and have no desire to meet new people, go to new places and interact with new ideas?

hogs, covid; covid, time, money; they think FDR-ism is a new idea

And people call me self-flagellant when I say we cannot ever be integrated into a truly proletarian society and the best outcome is we get placed out of the way where no more harm can be done. Like no this is extremely easy analysis.

Legit need for (re)education. I feel that often the framework isn’t there for critical thinking because it requires consideration of things outside of the self. And the rugged individualism baked into the culture triggers an instinct to withdraw in shame (or go on the defensive) from new concepts rather than accepting one’s understanding might not be perfect, and acknowledging the need for growth.

Further still is the competitive mentality and need for domination; ie there is no need to engage with the global proletariat as they’re our competitors for finite resources and we’re obviously superior.

Then there’s trauma baked into “not being good at school” because of pedagogy being punitive rather than liberating; eg better to be insular, believe oneself “dumb” and reject learning wholesale to avoid uncomfortable growth rather than acknowledging that everyone learns differently and seeing it as a collective activity where our strengths lift others.

Nothing misanthropic about it. There’s a reason that every AES agreed with you.

Yes, I saw a graph the other day which concluded America is technically a great place to be ‘dumb’, as even their 2 lowest literacy rate brackets have a higher or similar income (adjusted for cost of living) to the average income of the highest literacy brackets in the other countries.

Not that literacy is the definition of smart - I know plenty of brilliant tradesmen and artists alike - but reading comprehension is an important part of politics and political messaging, and possibly why even with our own fascists in the UK, I don’t think we’d ever have a truly Trump like figure. That guy gets away with speaking like an actual 7 year old.

I didn’t mean for this to just become an America bashing thing, I edited the post, it’s more a problem I’ve only ever noticed with American clients, not clients from anywhere else, and not all Americans, many are fine. I would certainly agree that ignorance favours no one nationality, I think your idea about money and exchange rates could be it. I know fellow Australians who can’t afford to commission an artist even with pretty high salaries due to high cost of living, so they just don’t have the disposable income for it that an American with a comparable salary might.

they are more educated than most countries

The quality of education is dogshit though. Its like someone who eats nothing but fistfuls of candy saying they eat better.

It might have just been bad wording on their part, but it does remain to this day the dumbest thing I think I’ve ever heard from someone. They thought that a long drive across the desert would be “shorter” for them because they use miles and not kilometers. They might have meant that it would feel shorter since they’re used to long drives, but they also didn’t seem to understand that they couldn’t just drive across the desert (which is a trip that takes days and requires a huge amount of prep and emergency supplies, there’s nothing out there), even if they were used to long drives, so they might have just not understood the distances involved in driving across the country in Australia and thought the country was just much smaller than it is, but they were oddly hung up on the kilometres vs miles part of it.

It’s not relevant to the actual work, it’s just small talk. A lot of clients seem downright desperate for someone to talk to, which is sad in its own way.

You know, I would hope someone that commissions metric system porn would at least understand measurements.

Unit porn where Imperial units sit in the cuck chair while Metric bangs their husband.

Also you can see the weather out the window.

At least she knew there are different seasons

Eh I’ve heard dumber things, at least this idea sort of kind of logically makes sense considering time zones exist, if midnight means it’s night then maybe December means it’s winter. It’s the kind of idea I’d expect 10 year old children just learning about the world have not grown ass adults tho.

I think the logic was that kilometers are smaller than miles, therefore a trip that takes 8 hours in kilometers will be quicker in miles? It could also have been something to do with the speed limits as well, maybe they thought that if the speed limit is 110, that’s 110 miles and therefore they can go much faster and get there quicker. Thankfully I was able to convince them that it was a terrible idea to drive for several days through the desert in a rental car with no water or emergency petrol or phone. They were from Texas, and so they were used to “long drives” which I think might’ve been a part of their confusion?

Every single year, without fail, some dumb ass yank gets pulled over by the RCMP for doing like 200+ km/ph down a highway, because they don’t understand the difference between kilometres and miles.

I’m going to get labeled as this guy at some point. I’m very inclined to resist incorporating unfamiliar technology in my life even if it’s extremely straightforward, and I’d probably end up fabricating reasons to justify that if someone pushed me too much without actually convincing me.

As long as you’re professional and reasonable it should be fine, I personally would prefer proper grammar and spelling, but I wouldn’t hold it against a client if they type differently as long as what they write is legible and straightforward, that’s mainly what I’m looking for, clear, concise and straightforward instructions on what they want. Clients who are vague or non-committal to ideas are very frustrating. Sometimes it’s them trying to be nice by trying to give me more “creative freedom” but that generally isn’t helpful, since tbh, any commission isn’t going to be something I’m passionate about drawing, it is just for the money ultimately. I’m passionate about making people happy, so I want to do a good job, but I’d rather it be direct and straightforward rather than me needing to play a guessing game of what the client wants.

Both examples of what you gave when seeing a sketch/early draft sound fine, being direct and honest is always the best, especially early on in a commission. Redoing a sketch takes minutes, redoing an inked or coloured picture can take hours, and redoing a finished fully shaded picture can take days. I’d much rather a client say early in the process “this isn’t quite what I wanted, can we try doing X instead?” instead of just pretending they like it and then asking for much bigger changes later in the commission. Don’t be afraid to make it clear what you want. Artists aren’t judging your tastes.

I’m mostly venting here rather than addressing clients directly because I wouldn’t want my clients to feel uncomfortable when I’m talking to them, I always try to be friendly and welcoming to clients, which is probably why I get so many clients who are very eager to talk about things completely unrelated to the commission. It’s less of just a childish way of typing and more a childish way of treating the commission, some clients will be very vague and I’ll ask them what they want to see in the picture and they’ll give unhelpful one word answers or massive walls of redundant text (usually the same clients doing both), it’s my job to draw art for people, not to decipher their riddles or help them to learn to communicate, which I know is a little callous of me to say, but unfortunately I can’t spend all week on a single commission because the client doesn’t know how to articulate what they want, because I have bills to pay, I wish I could be nicer and more patient, but I can’t draw anything for people if I’m homeless.

The fact that you’re concerned about trying to be articulate and trying to make sure you’re doing a good job as a client already puts you head and shoulders above most tbh, even if you’re a little unclear if you ordered a commission it does sound like you’d be very quick to clear up any issues, which is more than enough.

TBH, a perfect client would probably be someone who asks for clear and straightforward ideas that are in my usual skillset and allow me to get the work done quickly and effectively, and then also are consistent with their requests so I have more reliable income. I know in the original post I was talking pretty negatively about clients, but this was two examples after years of doing this, 99% of clients are fine, it’s only a small few who cause problems, and if you’re concerned about causing problems and want to avoid it, you’re already not a part of that small group.