Recently I saw a complaint arise in GQ that the thread was crufting up with jokiness and snide comments, that it was making the thread hard to read (which was not my perception, but TETO). It got me to wondering about the value of distraction to learning stuff.
I mean, one cannot earn a proper, worthwhile MBA without going to a few toga parties, just as one must get sleep from time to time in order to remain rational. But are there any studies that indicate that distraction, at the very least as brief wry comments or digressive quips, benefit the reader’s ability to absorb information?
tl;dr, and all that (no, I am not summarizing here)
This really is a question (about whether this has been studied), but I put it here because the subject just cries out to be plopped all over. So, tell me what you know, or try to start a crapfest, either way works for me.
Nobody can do 2 years of intense work without a day off and still be doing good work. But somebody who can’t go 2 minutes of intense thought without a distraction has a problem. Or at least has behaviors that will interfere with learning and understanding complex things and performing complex tasks.
Certainly the research of “flow state” shows that the more virtuosic the performance, the greater the adverse impact of interruptions. Which is why engineering and software development organizations run by ADD-addled marketing types can be so unproductive.
There have been some big businesses (no cite) which impose specific quiet hours, periods where no employee may communicate with any other. No emails, texts, IM, or phone calls. Just do your own work; no communicating. It appears to work wonders.
It refers to threadshitting, but I did not want to be quite that vulgar in the title. The question is whether a joke or pun on the subject matter is possibly a positive thing, giving the reader a brief break from the serious subject, or whether it is a problem. I was just curious if this had been studied at all.
You might get a discussion going if you’d been that clear in naming your thread, or been more direct in your OP, I think.
No, I don’t think you’re right. Many are threads where people are talking about serious things women sometimes want to talk about issues with their bodies without people making lame boobie jokes. Likewise people would like to discuss cases of rape in the news without all the clichéd comic relief.
I’m sorry but there are decidedly threads where it is simply not appropriate. Furthermore, ‘I was just joking, lighten up!’ is THE very lamest of excuses. Usually by people who want to be rude without owning it, in my opinion.
My take is that for SDMB GQ threads, joking is almost always pure distraction with zero benefit to the core purpose of education. Now the embedded jokes may make the thread-reading experience more entertaining, more fun, but it doesn’t make it more educational. And I’ve seen many threads where the OP is asking questions way beyond their competence level and the jokes (especially in-jokes) end up totally confusing them.
But … ultimately, even SDMB GQ is entertainment. Few of us would read or post if it wasn’t “fun” for at some semi-serious value of “fun”. So the jokes are mostly tolerated if there aren’t too many and they occur late enough in the thread.
Other forums have lower standards for their serious/silly ratio. But between the serious & the silly the former is at least mostly signal and the latter is 99% noise. [Game] threads in the Game Room are the limit case of no serious / all silly, or equivalently no signal / all noise.
Google doesn’t help.