![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Laws of the universe, II
Dec. 5th, 2019 06:08 pmAs the size of your captive audience increases, the importance of your message also needs to increase, if sublinearly.
Example: if you are in a car with three friends on a roadtrip, and they've all agreed to go with you knowing that you're a self-absorbed goofball, you can talk at length about something that might not be very interesting. You should be more courteous towards them, because there are three of them, than you would be with only one person, but not necessarily three times more so.
However, if your "talent" at a "talent show" is rambling on at length about a process you endured in the hopes that it will be edifying information to the 60 assembled guests, you also need to be more respectful of their time than you are on the car trip, because there are 60 of them and each one is trapped there. You don't need to be twenty times more respectful, but...scale upwards, not downwards.
Example: if you are in a car with three friends on a roadtrip, and they've all agreed to go with you knowing that you're a self-absorbed goofball, you can talk at length about something that might not be very interesting. You should be more courteous towards them, because there are three of them, than you would be with only one person, but not necessarily three times more so.
However, if your "talent" at a "talent show" is rambling on at length about a process you endured in the hopes that it will be edifying information to the 60 assembled guests, you also need to be more respectful of their time than you are on the car trip, because there are 60 of them and each one is trapped there. You don't need to be twenty times more respectful, but...scale upwards, not downwards.
