Why am i an idiot
7 reasons why thinking you're an idiot increases self-awareness
On a scale from 1 to 10, how much are you afraid of being perceived as stupid?
Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to ask a question but worried about looking foolish? Do you want to be more confident in yourself but google things like “5-step guide not to be stupid”?
Whether you like it or not, there’s nothing you can do about your foolishness. It’s a fact. Contrary to common beliefs, stupidity is universal – we’re all idiots.
Let’s return to my question. A while ago, I would have answered “8”. But then I discovered that accepting you’re an idiot raises your self-awareness. We’re about to prove how.
Why thinking you’re an idiot increases self-awareness
1) You can ask questions all the time
Imagine a scenario: You’ve just arrived in a new town. You have a terrible sense of navigation, your phone is dead, and you don’t have a map. You’re going to an important meeting and every single minute is vitally valuable. But you don’t know the city – there’s no way you can go without some help.
What would you do?
The easiest solution is to stop the stranger and ask one simple question: “How can I get there?”
But people often avoid asking questions.
That’s exactly how I missed probably the most important opportunity of my life – I couldn’t arrive at the meeting because I didn’t ask questions. Why? I didn’t want to look foolish. But this was a long time ago.
Now I know that the way I acted was stupid. But on the other hand, stupid people ask questions more easily.
Does it mean you can be an idiot and a smart person at the same time? Yes. Stupidity can co-exist with intelligence. Therefore, you can be an idiot and a smart person at the same time. How?
Asking questions about everything looks stupid.
But it’s the most optimal way to gain information and become smarter. So, admitting you’re an idiot helps you ask questions without hesitation and consequently, you become more self-aware.
2) You no longer underestimate your abilities
Believe it or not, competent people are more likely to underestimate their abilities. It doesn’t matter whether they lack confidence, have a hard time understanding their skills and qualities, or feel nervous, devaluing themselves won’t do any good for their well-being.
But fortunately, that’s not the case with stupid people. Instead, foolish people tend to overestimate their abilities and think they’re more competent or clever even when they aren’t.
Psychologists call it the Dunning-Kruger effect. In simple words, it means that stupid people think they are not stupid because they’re too stupid to know how stupid they are.
Feel confused yet? No need to, because actually, being an idiot can be a positive thing.
Do you really need modesty if accepting stupidity can help you accept your weaknesses, realize your strengths, and maybe, sometimes, even exaggerate them to feel better? I hope that you don’t.
3) Idiot people are more confident
Even if you think that you need tons of skills and great knowledge to be more confident, you’re simply wrong. Knowledge only helps you appear intelligent. And intelligence doesn’t necessarily lead to confidence.
Paradoxically, it’s otherwise.
Studies show that people who lack intellectual skills tend to be more confident while those who are more competent underestimate their abilities.
Why?
Because intelligent people care more about their public image. They want to be perceived as smart. But unfortunately to them, fear of being an idiot makes you look even more idiotic.
On the other hand, stupid people believe that their abilities are above average. It’s a cognitive bias called illusory superiority and means that we think we’re smarter than everyone else around us.
But we don’t need such complicated terms in this article. We’re talking about stupidity!
Confidence doesn’t only mean being certain about your qualities. Being confident also means that you’re certain you lack some skills. And that’s how it works:
- You realize you don’t know some specific things.
- You understand that there’s so much that you don’t know.
- You become more self-aware.
As studies show, being self-aware is beneficial because improving self-awareness increases the quality of life.
4) You worry less about how others perceive you
You may think that acting like a fool is one of the worst possible things you can do to yourself. But did you know that some people tend to act like idiots intentionally?
The reason is that you can actually get plenty of benefits by acting like an idiot. And smart people who act like idiots have long realized that.
One of the main advantages of thinking that you’re an idiot is that you have no worries about life.
Nobody expects much from stupid people. And when there are no expectations and no obligations towards you, life gets easier.
You eventually stop worrying about what people are perceiving you as, and it helps you become more self-confident.
Indeed, constant worrying about others’ expectations is a waste of time. Just accept the fact that everyone has their own opinions and judgments. You can’t control what others think of you. And you don’t even need to – others’ approval doesn’t matter.
Thinking you’re stupid will help you accept that there are some things that you just don’t know but it’s okay. No one is expecting more. That’s it!
5) You can make mistakes to see what happens
Admitting you’re an idiot will help you be more open to experience.
You will try new things, take risks and learn more about life. Consequently, you’ll learn more about yourself too and your self-awareness will increase whether you’re ready or not.
Most people in our fast-paced world try so hard to avoid mistakes that finally, we forget how helpful mistakes can be for living our lives to the fullest.
Stupidity helps us realize that we don’t need to monitor every single move. We can just relax, make mistakes and learn.
Making mistakes will help us to free ourselves from fears and enjoy the “here and now” moments. You can exist more freely because there’s no rush. You need to make mistakes to experience the thrills and find your true self. But since clever people are afraid of making mistakes, it’s better if you accept that we’re all idiots.
We’re idiots and that’s okay because there’s no alternative.
6) You can accept yourself unconditionally
Did you know that accepting yourself will make you happier? Actually, that’s what studies prove.
It seems like you can feel happiness on a daily basis, but you refuse to be happy for one very silly reason: you don’t want to look stupid.
That’s another reason why we need to think of ourselves as idiots.
Once we learn that human beings are foolish by nature, we won’t feel sorry about making one more mistake, and eventually, it won’t make sense if there’s something else that makes us look stupid.
Foolishness won’t be the news for us. And neither will its accompanying failures. Each new mistake will only strengthen the feeling of self-awareness and make us accept ourselves unconditionally, without any limits.
7) You understand how much you don’t know.
Let’s return to that question one more time.
Back when I was afraid of being perceived as a fool, I tried to focus on the positive things about myself. I tried to think about how much I knew about art, culture, psychology, politics, and other things that don’t really matter.
But I never paid attention to things I had no idea about.
However, being aware of how much you don’t know is the great part of being competent. Accepting your stupidity will help you get more in touch with your thoughts and ideas and see that there is so much that you don’t know about the world.
Wait, does it mean that you can be stupid and competent at the same time?
Yes. As we said, if competence is knowing specific aspects of the world and using them in action, then knowing how much you don’t know and working on it is also competence.
So, by admitting you’re an idiot, you can learn more about yourself and the world in general, no matter how confusing it may appear.
Less pressure, more time to think about yourself
And finally, thinking that you’re an idiot will allow you to think more about yourself. Does it mean that stupid people think more than intelligent ones?
No. The true reason is that dumb people feel less pressure from society to perform well. When people are used to the fact that you just can’t perform better because you lack certain skills or abilities, you’ll be free to progress according to your own pace.
And working on yourself without any hurry is accompanied by plenty of benefits.
Most importantly, you’ll have enough time to think about yourself, about things that are right and things you want to improve in yourself. Needless to say, in this process of self-analysis, you become more and more self-aware, and, consequently, your quality of life changes for the better.
Final thoughts
As it turns out, realizing that you’re an idiot is not a bad thing at all. But only if you accept that it’s a fact – you’re stupid, we’re all stupid and nothing is going to change. Only in that way will it lead to self-awareness.
Yes, we are all stupid and we should accept it. We’re all idiots in the given moment, we’ve been idiots in the past, and tomorrow we will still be idiots. However, you don’t have to worry about it because it’s part of human nature. It’s universal.
There’s no other available option. Normality is not possible. It’s a collective fantasy. So, if someone tells you you’re normal, don’t believe it! You’re uniquely stupid, just like the rest of the other individuals in our world.
But your stupidity also means that you’re smart enough to think about yourself, become more self-aware and improve your well-being.
How Thinking You’re an Idiot Lends Confidence
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Sociability • Confidence
To boost our confidence ahead of challenging moments, well-meaning people often try to draw our attention to our good sides: our intelligence, our competence, our strength.
But this can – curiously – have awkward consequences. There’s a type of under-confidence that arises specifically when we grow too attached to our own dignity and then become anxious around any situation that might seem to lower our prestige. We hold back from challenges in which there is any risk of failing from a heightened fear of looking ridiculous.
In a foreign city, we grow reluctant to ask anyone where the station is, because we’re afraid that they might think us an ignorant, a pitiable lost tourist. Or, we might long to kiss someone – but don’t out of a fear that they could judge us a desperate predatory loser.
Or at work, we might not apply for a promotion, in case the senior management decided we were arrogant and deluded. In a concerted bid never to look foolish, we don’t dare do very much; and thereby – from time to time at least – miss out on the best opportunities of our lives.
At the heart of our under-confidence is a skewed picture of how dignified it is normal for a person to be. We imagine that it might be possible, after a certain age, to remain consistently respected and beyond mockery. We implicitly model ourselves on people who don’t walk into doors, don’t make clumsy advances on lovers, don’t fail horribly at networking and don’t make enormous errors at work. We imagine it is an option to lead a good life without regularly making a complete idiot of oneself.
One of the most charming books of early modern Europe is In Praise of Folly, written by the Dutch scholar and philosopher Erasmus in 1509. In it, Erasmus advances a hugely liberating argument. In a warm tone, he reminds us that everyone, however important and learned they might be, is a fool.
No one is spared, not even the author. However clever he was, Erasmus was – he insists – as much of a nitwit as anyone else. This is deeply cheering, for it means that our own repeated idiocies do not have to exclude us from the best company. Looking like a prick, making blunders and doing bizarre things in the night doesn’t render us unfit for society; it just makes us a bit more like the greatest scholar of the northern European Renaissance.
There’s a similarly uplifting message to be pulled from the work of Pieter Bruegel. His central work – The Dutch Proverbs presents a comically disenchanted view of human nature.
Everyone, he suggests, is pretty much deranged and ridiculous: here’s a man throwing his money into the river; there’s a soldier squatting on the fire and burning his trousers; someone is intently bashing his head against a brick wall, someone else is biting a pillar. Importantly, the painting is not an attack on just a few unusually awful people: it’s a picture of parts of all of us.
We come away from Bruegel’s and Erasmus’s work with a sense that the way to greater confidence isn’t to reassure ourselves of our own dignity; it’s to grow at peace with the inevitable nature of ridiculousness. We are idiots now, we have been idiots in the past, and we will be idiots again in the future – and that is OK. There aren’t any other available options for human beings.
We grow timid because we are otherwise over-exposed to the respectable sides of others. Such are the pains people take to appear normal, we collectively create a phantasm – which hurts everyone – that normality might be possible.
But once we learn to see ourselves as already, and by nature, foolish, it really doesn’t matter so much if we do one more thing that might look a bit stupid. The person we try to kiss could indeed think us ridiculous. The individual we asked directions from in a foreign city might regard us with contempt. But if these people did so, it wouldn’t be news; they would only be confirming what we had already gracefully accepted in our hearts long ago: that we, like them – and every other person on the earth – was a nitwit.
The risk of trying and failing would have its sting substantially removed. The fear of humiliation would no longer stalk us in the shadows of our minds. We would grow free to give things a go by accepting that failure was the acceptable norm. And every so often, amidst the endless disasters we’d have factored in from the outset, it would work: we’d get a kiss, we’d make a friend, we’d get a raise.
The road to greater confidence begins with a ritual of telling oneself solemnly every morning, before heading out for the day, that one is a muttonhead, a cretin, a dumbbell and an imbecile. One or two more acts of folly should, thereafter, not matter very much at all.
I'm an Idiot: A Strategy for Successful Idiocy in Development
Developer Richard Turton spoke at RWDevCon and talked about why we all need to understand that we are idiots (hint - to successfully work together).
Hello. My name is Rich and I'm an idiot. Today I want to tell you three things: that I'm an idiot, that you might be an idiot, and how to be an idiot.
You may not believe the first point. But probably some of what I have to say will interest you and you will start thinking: “Maybe I want to be in this club of idiots, because it consists of cool and successful people.” If so, you will be interested in the third point, because I will tell you how to release your idiocy in order to achieve, if not great, then not bad results. nine0005
Step 1: I'm an idiot
I'm on the left
How can I prove to you that I'm an idiot? I'm standing in a room full of potential colleagues, clients and employers wearing this T-shirt.
All the signs of an idiot
Not the smartest move, right? I perform in public, which makes me terribly nervous. I could not do it. I could come here for free, or buy a ticket, or stay at home. But I came here to perform. What for?
I am constantly confused about the most basic and simple things in life. Here's an example: I have two little daughters and they each have two drawers for clothes.
I work from home, so I do laundry while Xcode crashes or whatever. So, after washing, I put things in two drawers. One drawer for the top, one for the bottom. The T-shirt is the top. Leggings are the bottom. nine0005
And the dress? Is the dress top or bottom? I don't know. Science doesn't know. Every time I give a different answer to this question, that's why my children take so long to change clothes every time.
With the same level of incomprehension I go about my work, which means that sometimes I feel fear. Fear that this is not my place. The fear that I'm doing this until I just figure out what I really want.
This dog knows more than I do
I don't have a programmer education. I was a biochemist, then I was a cook, then I became a biochemist again. I tried to cure cancer. It was complicated. Then I was working on the bone marrow registry at the blood bank and thought, “I kind of want to be a programmer.” But I couldn't get a job because I never programmed.
The only possibility for me was to get a job at a company that developed its own programming language - all the candidates for the position did not know how to write it. nine0005
While I was there and learning to code, I learned Objective-C, I learned how to build iOS apps, and managed to get a job that paid me to do it.
But I never had one of the of those interviews. If you asked me to write a binary sort on the board, I would have two problems:
- I don't know what a binary sort is.
- I'm left-handed, so when I write on the board, everything gets erased. nine0040
- Actually, three problems, because my handwriting is unreadable.
When I'm working on code, I keep making the same mistakes. For example, the greater-than and less-than operators. I constantly confuse them, although I know the rule about a hungry crocodile. It just doesn't pop up in my brain at the right time. The same goes for the minimum and maximum.
Now I'm working with super smart people at the MartianCraft agency.
I don't know if you've heard of it, but the people who founded MartianCraft write books about building iOS apps. You can easily imagine how sometimes I feel like I don't belong there, because these people can use the greater-than and less-than operators correctly the first time. nine0005
But that's okay. If you think you are the best person in the room, you are either wrong or you are in the wrong room. If I'm at work or in a conference/Twitter/Slack and I'm like, "Oh, this person is way smarter and better than me," that's great! This is my chance to learn something new.
But it is quite possible that these people think the same way. It is possible that we are all idiots, and successful people are just good at this business.
Step 2: we are all idiots
I hope I got my first point across. Now the harder part: I need to convince you that you're an idiot. I will do this by showing you some quotes from people I call "highly effective idiots." I hope some of the quotes will make you think, "Yes, I've been in that situation.
" And maybe you will start to think that you are an idiot.
We've all had it so that all day long you try to do something, but it doesn't work and doesn't work. Then you suddenly realize what's going on and you feel like a genius! This transition and this feeling... This is the main reason why I love my job. The transition from being a genius to being an idiot is not so pleasant; but I think William Shakespeare once said, "Life is a roller coaster, you just have to ride it." nine0005
The following tweet is from Alexis, who spoke before me. “No one really knows how to code, we all just wander around fruitlessly praying for release.” Very poetic, isn't it? You've most likely had days where you just sorted through random things to fix a problem. Then, all of a sudden, you fix everything. You just do it and move on.
How does it all really work? I think a lot of people understand the technology they're working on and maybe a little more, but the human brain can't grasp the full scope of knowledge needed to be an expert in something like SpriteKit and be an expert in everything else.
all the way to subatomic physics, which makes the electron dance inside the chip. There is too much knowledge in this area for anyone to know it all. You cannot do this. Don't expect to know everything. nine0005
Great quote. “The most important skill for programmers is to feel comfortable not knowing what you are doing.” Almost every time I start something, I feel very comfortable in this situation.
When Swift first came out, I was starting a new project at work and thought, “I'm going to make it in Swift! What a great opportunity.” So, I create a new project, select a language, and Swift appears. But… how to work with it? I don't know! It's okay, that's how you learn something new. nine0005
Xcode doesn't really like it when characters are not where they should be, so when working with Swift in Xcode, a problem in the code causes an error message at the very top of the window, and it can be very difficult to understand what happened.
Ready to join the club?
I hope you are familiar with such situations and are ready to join my club of idiots.
If you're still not convinced, here's a recent post search on GitHub. This is a big club. We have a very open membership policy. nine0005
If you still don't believe me, you may be in a risk phase on this chart.
This is a graph, therefore it is science. Let's assume that I convinced you that you are idiots. Now we can move on to the third part: how to be an idiot.
Step 3: How to be an idiot
The first step to success is to always remember that you are an idiot. Don't give your idiot brain too many tasks. Don't try to remember everything. Take notes. Use a task list. Use the snippet manager. nine0005
Once you understand how something works, write it down because you won't remember it tomorrow. Don't keep everything in your head, she can't handle it. This is how our brain works.
And when you work, remember that you are an idiot. The colleague whose code I look at the longest is probably me, and I'm an idiot. But I kind of like my code, and other people like it.
It works and I do everything on time.
How do I deal with this? I use my idiocy to code better. I write code for an idiot. nine0005
Write for idiots
I've been doing a lot of "rescue projects" where you get a bunch of what should be an app and the client says, "We can't get it to work and we have a release next week."
These projects are always too complex. You can't just look at the code and understand what it does. You have to really think about it and take it apart, and the code shouldn't be like that.
If I don't understand what a piece of code does or why it does it, then it shouldn't stay that way. Maybe you just need to add comments, or rename a couple of things, or completely rewrite everything, but you can’t leave everything like that. nine0005
I don't know who will be the next idiot to look at this code. It could be me. That's why I always write for the next idiot who will have to be able to read and understand the code.
I'm writing for this idiot
This means you have to write your code to be read.
You spend much more time reading code than writing it. I believe that writing code should be like writing prose because I always wanted to see myself as a writer. I'm trying to write code that tells a story and gets ideas across to the person who reads it. nine0005
Important note: I'm talking about the prose that you can read in the book you took to the airport. James Joyce would be a bad programmer, he would probably use Perl.
James Joyce didn't know how to be an idiot
You might be doing it all wrong
Another thing to keep in mind if you treat code like prose: I might be doing it all wrong.
As in literature, there are an infinite number of ways to write something. If there are infinitely many ways, then statistically, you have chosen the wrong one. If it's not completely wrong, it's not perfect. But it's not that important. The main thing is that everything works and your code can be easily changed. Remember: it will never be perfect. nine0005
I have become comfortable with this idea.
It doesn't matter if what I write is not the best, smartest, or most elegant way. If your code can be understood by anyone, you like it and it passes the tests, everything is fine. Your clients and users won't know what the code looks like. They just need a working application.
If you feel like you're doing everything wrong, ask yourself questions. Is this part too big? How hard would it be to drop that part and make something else instead? Keep asking yourself as you write, and you'll end up with a very reasonable structure in the end. nine0005
Don't be smart
There is another question that you should constantly ask yourself: "Am I getting too smart?" I have quotes about it:
Smart code cannot be fixed.
A smart code is like eating an entire Outback onion flower. You will be proud of yourself, but later you will pay for it.
Smart code is not a virtue. Last summer I worked on educational materials for people who want to learn Swift with zero programming knowledge.
It was interesting to go back to the basics with all the knowledge I had accumulated in my head. What is a variable, what is a constant? How to tell the computer what to do? And Swift allows you to express these ideas in a very, very simple way. nine0005
Unfortunately, it also allows you to write absolute nonsense. And writing nonsense is now considered in our community as something like the king's new dress.
Entire blogs are filled with such things. Can you tell what this code does? Can you do it again in three months? Even this code is confused - look at that face in the middle.
Don't be such a blogger. Don't write code like this. Idiots do not understand such code. Yes, you can. You can use custom statements, you can wrap things in things that handle other things and give you everything in one line of code. But are you really helping someone or are you just masturbating in public about how smart you are? How many hipster language features can you cram into one little snippet? Who can you help with this code? nine0005
Brevity is not clarity.
Write to read. Write for idiots. Now on to the more positive things idiots do: you can ask for help.
Ask for help
People are afraid to ask for help. They don't want to look stupid. They do not want to show that they are not experts. This is ridiculous, people shouldn't do that.
If you're afraid to ask questions, how do you think all people know what they know? You just need to ask for help. It's not like you don't know anything and everyone else knows everything. You just have overlapping areas of expertise. nine0005
In these two diagrams, you are standing in the center of a blue circle surrounded by yellow. But the truth is closer to the right diagram than to the left. If it's part of your team's culture to ask and answer questions, you'll be happier and more productive.
If you are working alone or your colleagues are not helping you, you can ask questions on Stack Overflow. To ask questions on such a site, you must use your idiocy.
You need to explain everything clearly and not use unnecessary details. Imagine this question being read by idiots. And a lot of idiots will try to answer your question. nine0005
Help others
How can an idiot successfully answer a question? Use your idiocy.
Ask more questions. "What does this part do?" And so the person understands that this part is his problem, and they feel great, because they solved it. And you feel great because you helped them solve a problem without knowing anything. Remember how hard it is to know nothing and ask for help. Don't be surprised when someone doesn't know what you know. You didn't know that either. Give simple but reasonable answers. nine0005
This duckling learned how to swim (and code) by asking questions of helpful idiots on Stack Overflow
And of course, you may not know the answer to the question. This is fine. You can do a little research and try to find the answer yourself. I learned so many different things on Stack Overflow this way! And it is much more efficient than just creating a project, because the project usually involves fewer areas of knowledge.
Be an idiot
We can see that the strategy of successful idiocy consists of two things:
- Communicate clearly
- Help each other
We must communicate clearly with ourselves and with other idiots. It is much more important to be clear than to be smart. You must understand that your idiocy is covered by the idiocy of others and that we can create amazing things if we help each other and work together.
There is too much knowledge in the world for one idiot to keep it all in his head, so we just need to share it; there is no other way. nine0005
If you find a typo, select it and press Ctrl + Enter! To contact us, you can use [email protected].
Fur Phenomenon | 04/20/17 | Yarkub
Having released in March the mini-album "As a rule - without rules!", Alexander Pushnoy set off (one wants to write "breaking bad", and this may be true) in mini-tour .
Given the unprecedented interest of listeners in the artist, "YarKub" decided to get to know Fur personally. nine0036
Having released in March the mini-album "As a rule - without rules!", Alexander Pushnoy set off (one wants to write "breaking bad", and this may be true) in mini-tour . Given the unprecedented interest of listeners in the artist, "YarKub" decided to get to know Fur personally.
Alexander, why is the tour so tiny - only three cities, not counting the capitals?
We regularly go on small tours of 3-4 cities. We have been doing this for a long time, but have not yet reached the level we need. Rationality is difficult to explain our trips, but it is hard for us to do without them. For me personally, this part of life is important, for the guys these are also pleasant moments. And how pleasant they are for the viewer is the question! nine0035 (laughs)
Who comes to your concerts?
People coming to a concert don't know what to expect, but everyone leaves with a "WOW!" feeling.
After all, often I am not known as a musician. Someone saw me in Galileo, “Thank God you came”, someone noticed in an advertisement, someone still remembers KVN merits. There are few who have heard our songs, but it's one thing to listen to them on record, it's another thing to be present at a concert. Until now, I am a new artist for everyone. Therefore, the main task remains to make it so that it was “WOW! We did not expect it to be so cool and loud!” nine0005
What is the average attendance for this tour?
About 150 people come. Clubs can't afford a low entry price, so by raising ticket prices we become uncompetitive. Moscow remains an indicator for us. The concert in YotaSpace brought together 1300 people. Since this is a hobby for me, I think it's a good result.
However, is music a major part of your life?
Music is what I was born with and what I will die with. But to say that I am constantly looking for musical projects would be wrong.
Now I have returned to television, to a project on the Russia 1 channel called Gold of the Nation. Now there are many programs with children as the main characters, but we are doing an intellectual show. There's no music at all, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested. Just another facet of life. nine0005
Is it difficult to work with children?
Children are unusual. The program involves children aged 5-12, very smart and gifted. They look like children, but when you talk to them, it becomes clear that they are smarter than many adults. Outwardly, it looks like an almost 42-year-old teacher is talking to a student. And if you listen, in fact, the kid explains to the adult uncle how the world works. Of course, emotionally, they remain children, fantastically educated for their age. And this is entirely their merit. The goal of our program is to popularize this way of becoming famous. nine0005
What is the fashion now? A girl comes on TV, and now everyone makes out whether she was raped or not.
She makes money from it. The youth looks and thinks, "Oh, this is a good way." It's impossible to fight it. But it is necessary to show that there are other ways to glory!
Are you going to festivals this year?
We really want to be on the "Invasion" again. We really hope that a strong friendship with the "Invasion" will drag us there. By autumn we want to record something else. We finally found a way to do it perfectly. You just need to go to the country. Everything is there, just turn on the button and record. But where to get the material? nine0005
Do you have such a problem?
I have a great friend Dima Breitenbikher, with whom we wrote many songs. He is the lyrics and I am the music. This is my only creative union so far. Sometimes I get something, although more reworking of songs. There was a great desire to release a full album of covers, but in Russia what the hell is going on with copyright. The parody seems to be protected (you can call everything a cover parody and play freely), but you have no right to officially release it.
I think this album would be a success. Right now we're mostly doing experiments, conceptual questions like "what do people ask on the internet?". So the song "Why am I an idiot?" appeared. nine0005
You performed in various roles, both humorous and intellectual. What is closer to you?
I started playing KVN in the last century. My first number, which is the only memorable one, is Sting's number. If you look at it carefully, it becomes clear that it should not be funny. In KVN then it was possible to perform original songs of driving performers in order to pump the hall. It seemed interesting to me, but if I love Sting ... Is it possible to pump the gym with Sting? It turned out that it is possible. And then, if you look at my entire humorous "career", I never really got into it. I came to Comedy as a guest, performed there a couple of times. I showed those numbers that fit the format. They offered to stay and refused. I know I can't stream jokes and numbers. Many people think that I am a comedian.
But I did a little humor. nine0005
On the other hand, to engage in serious creativity, frown and say: "I'm a musician, I write songs about how the world works, you should listen to them and indulge in admiration" is also wrong. I have enough self-irony, so I will never be considered a normal rock musician in Russia. Because a musician must be serious about himself and what he writes. If a musician has self-irony, he is not a rock musician. That's how it's done.
If you treat yourself so ironically, how do your colleagues in the music scene perceive you? nine0012
They don't take it seriously. For them, I'm a clown from the TV, who, more or less, plays something cool on the guitar. Although, if we go on stage with them, then our band will play a hundred times harder in terms of sound and energy.
If I were serious about the matter, dealt only with music, would begin to say that my work is changing the world for the better, would start spinning in a musical get-together, would praise the work of other musicians, then they would eventually begin to praise mine.
And everything would be fine. And when I myself am not serious about myself, it is logical that they do not take me seriously. Although I really like the environment of Evgeny Margulis. They are relaxed guys and very pleasant. nine0005
Fur Phenomenon
Have you been heavily criticized for doing commercials?
Yes, I'm not just talking about advertising. For four years now, the Galileo program has not been on the air, and people still come up to me and talk about it. And bearded uncles thank for their happy childhood, small children download issues on the Internet, show schoolchildren in the classroom. The program is still alive and has a fantastically positive energy. And when the Galileo program just went on the air, I was bombarded with so much negativity. They said: "What kind of moron, what kind of freak is broadcasting?" nine0005
Then we started showing experiments, people let go a little, like a dude says something smart, probably understands it.
But still, there was uncertainty on my part. I reflected, thought that maybe I really am doing it somehow wrong, maybe I need to behave differently? Therefore, if I endured all the negativity towards Galileo relatively calmly, then the negative from advertising was even more so. I do not give a damn.
Many people think that I myself came to the company, saying: “Guys, please remove me. I'll pay any money." No! This is the genre in which we work. Everything is spelled out in the script, and smiles, and horn-corching, and eye-punch. I'm just doing the task at hand. And most importantly, that everyone who is shaking from advertising with my participation will be released when it ends. If someone is worried that I am doing it for free, then I am doing it exclusively for a lot of money! nine0005
Why do you refuse to act in films and serials?
Because I'm not an actor, the explanation is banal. If someone is interested in me as a person who only needs to play himself, I would understand what to do.
And when they call me to act in films without trials, I understand that they stupidly need to stick my face on the poster. Even for the Gold of the Nation program, I auditioned twice.
If I come to the site as an artist and the director asks me, for example, to look at the girl in love and cry, it will be difficult. My high level of internal cynicism will not allow me to do this honestly. What I can easily do is get angry and kick someone. But I will not be able to fulfill the task of the director. For some reason everyone is surprised by this. Such a trend: if a person appeared on TV, then he urgently needs to release a book, record an album, and then act in films. I do music and I hope that I have earned the right to "sound emission" on stage. nine0005
What do you want to achieve in music most of all?
Write a song that in 300 years will be remembered, but not me. So that everyone sang it, but no one knew who the author was. This is genius.
Considering that you are a techie, how are music and exact sciences connected?
No matter how stupid it may sound, but mathematicians (not the humanities) have obvious problems with girls.
Because girls need ranting, poetry, flowers, candy. Girls, when they are in such a period of maturation, it seems to me, are more like the humanities, who can read a poem to them. A techie never does that. Therefore, when techies grow up and they need the attention of girls, they cannot get it. Because they don't know how to do it. Girls at a tender age love romantics, and techies are offended by this and go into heavy music. It seems to me that all lovers of heavy music are people who were once disliked by the opposite sex. nine0005
They say that people with a technical mindset also succeed in humor ...
What is humor? It's a rule change! Understanding the rules and changing them is humor. Among KVNshchikov there are a lot of representatives of technical professions. There are very few humanitarians. Humor itself lies in the fact that a person builds a beautiful, unusual scheme. It can be a stage scheme, a performance scheme, some kind of parallel view of reality.
