Love Languages and Showing Off

[sorcyress]

So there are the "love languages" and their validity is debatable (something something, originally written by evangelical Christian, so automatically take with grain of salt IIRC). The biggest problem however is that they just don't cover enough things. There's definitely a lot of jokes about how sharing memes is the sixth love language (jokes which I absolutely support, and I have at least one friend with whom my relationship is largely that yessss)

One of my favourite love-languages isn't an official one though, and it doesn't have a name. It is the concept of "let me look at your cool things/let me show you my cool things" and it is one of my very favourite things to do with people. I adore getting to Examine The Spaces of people I like, where "space" can be anything from their bedroom to their wallet.

(Seriously, I love looking through people's wallets. It is a deeply satisfying and fascinating thing for me to do, and I will always offer in trade when I do it, although my current wallet is embarrassingly falling apart and I need to remake it sometime)

In the broader sense though, I just really enjoy and appreciate learning more about a person through examination of the objects they possess, display, and value. And it doesn't even have to be a person I know well --ask me why I love estate sales, because it's not just the chance of a Good Bargain! I _want_ to see what books you have on your bookshelf, and I also want to see what order you put them in, and whether you separate by genre or type, and if there are any knickknacks crammed onto the shelves as well.

I want to see what art you put on your walls, and how you store your clothes, and how many pillows you keep on the bed, and which toys are next to your computer to fidget with while working. I want to hang out in your kitchen and watch you cook, keeping my eyes peeled for where you store the potatoes vs the salt vs the big stockpot. I want to go with you to your office and check out the notes you have on your whiteboard (and the different notes on stickies attached to your cube wall.)

And I want you to get to see all these glimpses of me. I very very much want to Show You Cool Things I Have. Here is my altar with pretty rocks on it. Here is my favourite LEGO minifig. Here are my Star Wars action figures, and here are the My Little Ponies. Here is the fiction bookshelf and here is the nonfiction.

Here is me, chaotically organized and swearing I know just which pile is which.

Show me something cool from your life please?

~Sor
MOOP!

PostScript 1: This post came out of me musing about why I like shopping, and realizing it's just an extended corporate --or better yet, indie-- version of this. (I got to visit the _best_ sex store in Providence recently, and wow was it so much fun to poke around and admire all the Tom of Finland art posted on the walls and the random ken dolls with clay prostheses and the packer hanging delicately in a birdcage. It was a store and full of things to purchase, but it was also a work of art!)

PostScript 2: One of the best theatre experiences of my life continues to be the collected twice-so-far I've seen Sleep No More (and I am genuinely considering picking a weekend for once they reopen and going down to NYC specifically for this). Because there's a lot to be said about Weird Kink And Being Owned By Hecatae (but I'm not going to say it, because it is personal in a way so very few things in my open-book life are) but there's also a lot to be said about just the sheer joy of running around a multi-story open set where you are encouraged to look in all the drawers and find the room of trees.

Comments

[agnes_nutter]

yesss

adjacently, I really enjoy “narrative told through objects” — I’m loving Unpacking for that reason (in part), for example. I really want to start a project where I record people showing me things they own/use and telling me about various scratches/dents/wears and what caused them and the stories around them!

and, a little bit further away from the topic of this post, the podcast Everything Is Alive (which I’ve mentioned before, but still haven’t played for you/recommended an episode to try) is just so good — the stories of the objects themselves, not only the ones that happen around them.

p.s. oh and I just remembered I ordered something cool from MSCHF in a similar vein, which should be arriving soon… I’m excited :3

[ckd]

I was coming here to mention Unpacking for the same reason!

(Gone Home and Tacoma might also scratch a "story through objects" itch; GH tells it through letters more than other objects and Tacoma has the AR scenes as its core, but there's a lot of "why does this person have this thing, and why is it specifically here?" in both games as well.)

[someonefromthewater]

I honestly *love* this and this makes perfect sense. It's also way more intimate than any of the "official" five languages, since you're sharing unique things about yourself that people might judge or ridicule.

[keshwyn]

Do you want photos or just descriptive words for this thing? I suspect I will be showing you my favorite tea mugs (and explaining what I love about each individual mug and why I keep them) but I could do a picture, or I could just do words. :-D

[jducoeur]

When Kate and I were in couples' therapy some years back, the therapist (great guy, enough of a geek that he's actually done Mystery Hunt) spent a while on love languages, but completely ignored the "official" list. Instead, he took the concept as a framework to tease ideas out from us much more personally. Made way more sense that way.

To the actual question -- it's so hard to choose! But I'll semi-randomly pick my pantry, full of spices and sauces and toys (oh my!). And yeah, sharing one's Stuff is fun -- a concrete expression of Enthusiasm.

(And one of these days, I really want to finally see Sleep No More. I totally missed it while it was in Boston, and am chagrined by that.)