loud. brash. has never met a stranger. sal wants to know what's wrong and how they can make it better, preferably with some tasty street food from their solution 9 stall! can they tell you how they invented pizza rolls? please let them tell you.
they're learning what wanderlust feels like now that there's a world beyond this lightning dome. and they have no shortage of bravery; when they're not on the clock, they're helping oblivion try to smuggle folks with roots in etheirys out of alexandria and back to their homeland.
There are lots of non-round coins in the world. In my own country, we had a 50p piece that looked like this:
Most coins are round, though. Round coins will not have salient bits that get stuck in everything (so you can, for instance, just grab a handful of them and throw them in your pocket and they probably won't tear a hole in your trousers).
They also won't wear unevenly. A coin with salient bits will naturally attract thinning and damage at those ends. The least salient shape available is a circle.
Whenever I hear about what is arguably the best way to read manga online that supports the manga industry in North America, I usually get one answer - Viz’s Shonen Jump app. The app is promoted by almost all manga industry/press/bloggers/podcasters in the West as THE option to read manga legally.
The Shonen Jump app has almost every series from the Japanese version of Jump along with a few other Jump titles published in other Jump-related magazines. They come out the same release day as the magazines do in Japan. You get all of this for about $2 a month.
It’s an amazing deal and yet I’m somewhat concerned about Shonen Jump being treated as the answer to satisfy one’s digital manga needs.
There are a few manga folks that feel readers have to be exposed more to other legal manga sources besides Jump. I have to agree with those people.
Just because it’s the prevalent option doesn’t mean it will satisfy everyone’s needs. Not everyone likes material from Shonen Jump or shonen in general. There’s other services that don’t get as much attention due to lack of promotional resources. I also realize that certain notable manga services are terrible (Crunchyroll Manga being one of them).
Why is it that people talk about the US edition Shonen Jump like that’s the best option to read cheap legal manga when it may not exactly be the case? I think I’ll discuss this by talking about how cognitive biases play a role.
It could come down to salience. Shonen Jump series are prominent among comics and manga fandom. Many series from Jump are recognizable to fans all across the world. What anime/manga fan doesn’t know about One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, etc.? All of those series were/are published in the pages of Jump. They’re also easy to remember due to constant exposure via anime and merchandise.
Salience is a notable cognitive bias because we usually recognize certain features that make something worthwhile without considering a larger picture. For Jump, it can be the price point and the amount of content available for that price point. The larger picture being that there’s other excellent manga worth reading outside of Jump. This isn’t to place blame on Jump advocates; the mind can make you think more about what’s directly apparent compared to what’s more realistic.
Another cognitive bias with regards to “Jump is your answer to every digital manga need!” is the availability heuristic. What this bias does is that it makes you overestimate the importance of any information that’s available to you. Because of how available Jump is, any advocate with this bias might say something like “Oh, you can read Jump online. A lot of my friends read it as their legit option. It’s got what you want.” Because Jump is read by “everyone,” it must be important. As we sometimes know, importance can be different for certain manga readers.
One final cognitive bias that I think that applies here is the bandwagon effect. If multiple people believe in something, you start to feel the same. I sense this with Jump. When you have so many manga folks tout Jump like it’s the best digital manga experience today, the people around them start to tout it too. The bandwagon effect is very associated with sports, with regards to successful teams and casual fans flocking to them and leaving them when the joyride is over. It can be harmless at times, but the problem with the bandwagon is that it leads to groupthink. Groupthink can lead to people ignoring valuable outside opinions and feedback in favor of what their own circles say.
I love what Viz has done with their Shonen Jump service and I know it’s not enough. I do take Shonen Jump for what it is - a mainstream gateway into a world that leads to possibilities for manga readers to see what’s out there. While there is open variety (Jump today is fantastic with its current lineup), it also feels closed due to how much freedom one can take. Some Shonen Jump titles start off well and end up falling flat as they get longer. This felt very apparent with regards to how the popularity of Food Wars (which had a great premise) fell off a cliff after a certain point.
Perhaps the next step (or even a better idea) is how to address the cognitive bias of manga readers and help them get past their own form of groupthink. There’s no guarantee that many casual online manga fans will read more than just Jump or any “mainstream” manga titles in general when so much emphasis is placed on Jump. I wonder if that’s enough for an industry that’s still facing a lot of problems. A majority of legal digital manga aren’t exactly budget-friendly. It will take the right manga service provider to give a user-friendly outlet that delivers an even wider variety of titles for manga fans itching for alternative works. Some folks are trying and it will be a process.
Dealing with any kind of bias is never easy. At the very least, acknowledging them is a kind of “jump” that can fill someone with the same principles Shonen Jump preaches. Friendship, hard work, and victory all mean something with reading and promoting noteworthy titles that lie outside of one’s own comfort zone.
Dopamine, unlike what people believe, is not released as a reward for a job well done.
Dopamine is released at the EXPECTANCY of reward, which is what causes us to want to continue doing it/ finish it. Dopamine makes the task feel more appealing. (Anticipating reward has also show to enhance memory formation.)
Its why we have trouble starting things. We look at a task, and our brain thinks, meh, not worth the effort. Our brain doesn’t consider the task to be worth doing for the result, because of our brain’s dopamine issues.
However, it’s also why meds help us do things. If it just released dopamine which made us happy, we wouldn’t do anything at all.. just take the meds and feel happy. No, it makes tasks that our brains would find boring, more appealing.
If anyone wants a term to start reading up on, besides the links above, look up Motivational Salience.
(I’m simplifying it but the premise is sound. I’d recommend everyone to read up on it; it’s how I’ve made significant progress with my own symptoms)
