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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2569 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 29, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Last night I read Ted Chiang's short story/novelette "Liking What You See: A Documentary", whose premise is the invention of a reversible brain procedure which induces a condition called "calliagnosia" (or "calli" for short), which renders the subject unable to identify beauty in other people's faces. They are still able to identify faces and recognise familiar ones: they just have no special attraction to beautiful faces nor any special revulsion towards ugly faces or people with facial deformities, and are hence immune to the "halo effect". This invention is hailed as a powerful means of combatting "lookism", unwarranted societal discrimination against ugly people.

Among the handful of male Asian-American writers whose work I've read (Tony Tulathimutte, Adrian Tomine), sexual frustration and romantic rejection are recurrent themes. At the outset of the story, I was expecting it to be Chiang's mask-off moment where he permits himself an opportunity to air his grievances about being discriminated against for something outside of his capacity to change. But of course I'd underestimated him, and this story is just as rigorous and even-handed as anything else in his oeuvre. In the story, at least a dozen characters offer their opinions on the pros and cons of the technology, and it's to Chiang's credit that absolutely none of them come off like strawmen or stock characters being held up for our derision. It's also subtly prescient for 2002, describing a mobile phone on which you can make video calls and apply effects to your face to make it look like you're wearing makeup - he predicted Snapchat filters! Thought-provoking stuff, although not quite as good as some of my favourites (especially "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom", "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" and "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate").

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