Re:The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius
by dunkelheit on Saturday November 23, 2019 @08:35AM
(#21614022)
I love it that on HN my point can be disproved by an actual bus ticket collector! Still I think my larger point stands - Girardian mimetic desire (http://www.imitatio.org/brief-intro) is a powerful force that certainly can get you interested in something.
Oh! I don't want to say I'm disproving your point. I'm only providing a small counter example. Maybe most other people are driven by sharing their collection? Museums have been a big deal for a while and some of that is around collecting the obscure items in order to display them
Eh, I had a large collection. I still have a collection of a few hundred tickets (not worth much, a few hundred pounds). I started the collection in about 1997. I stopped in about 2003. I've never shown other collectors my tickets, and I've only put about 5 tickets online and that was only this year.
I think for this obsessional collecting it's really not about other people. It's about systematizing and categorising the world. Outside is chaos and confusion. In here, with this collection, there is order and control.