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[V-Adore]

Man, now I am jonesing for Runza.

This is kind of sad.

[mudokon]

Pete Yorn is but a footnote in pop music history.

[Golfhaus]

I totally accept that my primary reason for wanting an In-N-Out Burger is the same reason why I enjoy going to Steak N Shake so much - because the closest of the latter is a four-hour car ride away (a drive I have made, for that sole purpose), and the closest of the former is an eight-hour plane trip away. When Sonic was a 45-minute drive away, I jonesed for it weekly. Now that I can walk to one, I have it two, maybe three times a year.

I am a big fan of burgers, and would gladly try some of the local family burger joints, if I were in fact aware of any here.

[Choop]

Wait, wait. Which one are you? Kumar? I'd have thought you were Harold, but the internet makes me bad at guessing.

[AlohaDawg]

If I printed "Acts 29:1-5" on a t-shirt and wore it to your house, would that have meaning? What would it mean to you? Ponder that before you read on.

It would.  My point is that the shirt has meaning without regard to the text it refers to.  What meaning could I gather if I saw you wearing such a shirt?  I would likely infer that you were a Christian, that you were the type of person who wears his beliefs on his sleeve (so to speak) and that the verse in question has special significance to you.  If I was enough of a scriptural scholar to recognize the oddity of the citation it would tell me even more about you.  So while I have not learned anything about Acts 29:1-5, I have learned some important facts.

Apparently, you have learned two opposite 'facts' about me at the same time: First, that I am a Christian sporting a citation of my favorite Bible verse, and, simultaneously, that I am a sarcastic person with an intentionally fictional verse citation on my shirt.

Without knowing the Bible well, which is it?  Either both messages exist truly, simultaneously and in opposition to the other, or there is no message. It can't be both and I think it pretty much has to be the latter.

If the medium is the message, then the paper bag is the message, not the citation.

So what does the paper bag tell me?

(...Lots of stuff...)

The form of the citation raises questions about the intended audience.  Are these bible verses directed at believers who already own and read Bibles?  As such are these scriptural citations a sort of marketing tool -- A secret sign saying, "Buy a Burger from a Christian!" Or are they directed an non-believers as an introduction to the faith?  If the latter, how would such a person recognize the cryptic letters and numbers as referring to a Bible verse?

Please understand, I'm not trying to criticize the In-N-Out people in any way.  The practice doesn't bother me in the least.  I'm not talking about religion here -- this is about communication theory.  

I'm just saying that you can learn a lot about the sender from how the message is sent without even looking at the "content".

I took the statement to mean that the medium independent of the content was the message.

That leaves, basically, just a plain old burger bag which would not carry much significance in terms of telling us about the family or anything beyond the fact that they want to give us a wood-fiber based disposable device in which to carry our burgers.

I'm clearly misinterpreting Mcluhan's quote, though, so that point I'll concede to agreement given your obvious better knowlege of communication theory.

Believers in God and the redemptive power of the death and resurrection of Christ, may tell you that if one of those citations leads one curious person to look further into their beliefs, or to talk about religion with a clergyman, or leads a person back to a life in faith that they left, then it's a good thing and certainly it doesn't hurt anyone/everyone else.

Can we then conclude, based upon In-N-Out's actions, that they (the owners) hold this belief?   Isn't that meaning we can derive that is totally separate from the content of the cited Bible verse?

I don't think so.  There are plenty of verses in the Bible that wouldn't necessarily have this effect. What if the citation corresponded to "don't kill people' or 'don't steal stuff'? These correspond pretty directly to secular law and what we all know about maintaining social order. Personally, I would conclude that they are evangelizing with the bags but the citations alone, especially in the absence of the accompanying verses, do not necessarily support deriving a conclusion about their intent.

Damn I love thse discussions.

[Mantonio]

Damn I love thse discussions.

Is there any other message board on the internet that can take a rather lowbrow subject like a guy scarffing 20 burgers and turn it into a discussion that at some point references Marshall McLuan?

It should be noted, of course, that it's equally possible for this crowd to start off a discussion about, say, complicated math or something and have it devolve into how much of something Gina could fit into her pu$$y.

[side_show]

Marshal McLuan once held a conference for the entire staff of the In-And-Out where he randomly quoted biblical citations.


The medium?  



A large public gathering in a 350 seat auditorium.



The location?


Gina's pu$$y.




Thank you. I'll be here all week.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Damn I love thse discussions.

It should be noted, of course, that it's equally possible for this crowd to start off a discussion about, say, complicated math or something and have it devolve into how much of something Gina could fit into her pu$$y.

Kidding aside, the way that we describe the shape and volume warping properties of Gina's pu$$y, it can best be described as a Riemann Curvature Tensor.

[arkabee]

 Either both messages exist truly, simultaneously and in opposition to the other, or there is no message. It can't be both and I think it pretty much has to be the latter.

yes it can be both.  any communication based upon symbols has a level of subjectivity.

even an "absolute" "empirical" symbol based system like math has subjective meaning, usually based on igorance.  such as to someone who understands the language of calculus, a calculus equation would have an absolute meaning, but to someone who does not understand the language of calculus, that same equation could mean "warning, boringness!" or "you stupid fuck*ng guy, you should have woke up earlier during college" or any number of thing.

in the case of something such as a citation of content, especially somehting like the "bible" of which not only multiple productions exist, but multiple translations and NUMEROUS interpretations of those various bits of langauge exist COMPOUNDED with incredibly vast differences of knowledge of those various bits of language,

i can not see how all the conditions you described COULD NOT exist simultaneously.

to whit and for example (hypothetical)
you know the bible,
he knows of the bible,
she knows not of the bible.

you see a citation and know the verse and therefor the information it refers to.
he knows that the citation is a reference to the bible.
she sees gibberish on a fast food cup.

add to those three reactions a near infinite number of subjective non-rational responses, and the meaning conveyed, while "real" or "perceived", becomes staggeringly large for a simple coke to go.

[V-Adore]

 Either both messages exist truly, simultaneously and in opposition to the other, or there is no message. It can't be both and I think it pretty much has to be the latter.

yes it can be both.  any communication based upon symbols has a level of subjectivity.

(...snip...)

to whit and for example (hypothetical)
you know the bible,
he knows of the bible,
she knows not of the bible.

you see a citation and know the verse and therefor the information it refers to.
he knows that the citation is a reference to the bible.
she sees gibberish on a fast food cup.

add to those three reactions a near infinite number of subjective non-rational responses, and the meaning conveyed, while "real" or "perceived", becomes staggeringly large for a simple coke to go.

And this is before getting into additional layers of obscurity. For example, almost anyone raised in or around the Christian-normative American paradigm is going to recognize "John 3:16" and have some idea of its meaning; give many of the same people a citation from Thessalonians, and they might recognize it's an epistle at best. (Some might not even be able to name the right Testament. As a kid, I distinctly recall assuming that any book that had a name that was long and confusing was Old Testament.) So, yes, there is a further layer of content embedded in whether you choose commonplace biblical citations people are likely to recognize (John 3:16 et al.), obscure ones people will probably look at and say "hey, that's from the Bible, right?" (Thessalonians &c.), and total gibberish (Acts 29 and so on).

[robot_roll_call]

The location?


Gina's pu$$y.



Thank you. I'll be here all week.

Yeah, it's pretty tough to find your way out of that thing. you'll be lucky if it only takes you a week.

[AugustWest]

Here's all I'm saying:

1.  Anything communicated to us has both form (the medium of communication) and content (what's being said.)

2.  We can derive a great deal of meaning from the form of the communication.  Sometimes more than from the content.

Here's another f'rinstance:  One commercial airs at 3 a.m. Sunday morning on the local WB affiliate.  The other airs during the first timeout of the Super Bowl.  Given just those facts, are you willing to hazard any guess about the content of the commercials or the identity of the sponsors?  I am.


Here's another example.  Tomorrow you are delivered the following:

A luridly printed flier on flimsy paper advertising used cars.

An obvious mass mailing for a credit card company.

An envelope with a preprinted return address and your address inkjet printed on a clear label.

A business envelope from a local firm and your address typed on the front.

A small envelope made of expensive paper with a handwritten address.

A Fed-Ex envelope with a corporate Sender and your name and address hand-written.

Which do you open first?  Which do you throw away without opening?  Why, given that you know nothing about the content of each envelope?  Aren't you making decisions solely based upon the form of the communication rather than it's content?

Dawg, in response to your post, I would say the fact that I might get a mistaken or entirely erroneous impression from your T-Shirt doesn't change the fact that I have received information from it.  It might be misleading information, or I may draw the wrong conclusions, but I still was able to make an educated guess about you based on your T-Shirt.  This is especially relevant in light of your example, which is intentionally misleading.

[CortJstr]

And this is before getting into additional layers of obscurity. For example, almost anyone raised in or around the Christian-normative American paradigm is going to recognize "John 3:16" and have some idea of its meaning;

"John 3:16"? Who's John? Don't you mean Austin 3:16?

I wonder if the Rainbow Man is still in jail

[aparrish]

I don't think so.  There are plenty of verses in the Bible that wouldn't necessarily have this effect. What if the citation corresponded to "don't kill people' or 'don't steal stuff'? These correspond pretty directly to secular law and what we all know about maintaining social order. Personally, I would conclude that they are evangelizing with the bags but the citations alone, especially in the absence of the accompanying verses, do not necessarily support deriving a conclusion about their intent.

I think most people would conclude that the bags are tools of evangelization.  The test is this: if, later, we all found out that the Bible verse they referenced actually read "Verily I say unto thee, No Fat Chicks" or something, it would be funny precisely BECAUSE Bible citations in this context are taken as overt expressions of faith and desire to convert. Fake citations like "Austin 3:16" are funny because they play on our expectation that citations of that form are used by Christians trying to proselytize in public places.

No one looks at "Austin 3:16" and thinks, "Damn, if only I could find this Austin book and look up verse 16 in chapter 3 ... then I would know what that guy with the sign is trying to communicate to me.  Damn."

In other words, there is a divorce here between the sign and the signified.  A Bible citation on a t-shirt or paper bag or billboard or whatever, regardless of what the citation actually references, is functionally equivalent to writing "Jesus Saves" because, for better or worse, they've been used that way in the past and we can expect people to understand them that way in the future.

(Note that this only applies in certain contexts, e.g. the above-mentioned t-shirts, paper bags, billboards, sporting events, etc.  Obviously if you were in a seminary or something and the teacher wrote Acts 14:12 on the board he would probably be trying to communicating something other than "I'm a Christian and I wouldn't mind converting you.")

[Ben-San]

I think every argument about the cultural significance of visible religious references should be held simultaneously and colocationally with a conversation about a cooter with mythical properties and powers. This could only improve the tone of public discourse in America today.