Revamping the lost blogosphere.
I've had the itch to do more in the way of writing and our current social media platform has virtually (lol) no place for that. Sure, fb has a section called "Notes", it was like the segway to reassure old bloggers that they still had a place to be after the myspace era. Try to find it on fb. You have to look. Most people now don't even know it exists. Throw into this the frustration of not being able to do any sort of chosen cut on any given status (like an lj cut), the inability to arrange what you write the way you want to with the fonts, sizes, colors and pictures in the places that you want them, and pretty much what you have is an almost idiot-proof forum that attracts, well, lots of idiots, or literally, everyone and their mom. Stir in a little "you have to do this under your real name" and therein lies our recipe for disaster. Suddenly the thing you wrote when you were 17 pops up during your college admissions, or an article you shared in '07 is now all anyone can talk about once you grow the balls to finally make that city council run. I used to not really care if any of these things were important or not, but as of late, my entire being is screaming "Oh my God!!! I just want to write about things without losing 10 "friends" and feeling like someone is going to print my address in some dark, dank room on 4chan somewhere."
I miss having control over my online space. Older forums offer a measure of control, at least in the way that you can choose a name and a picture that reflect aspects of your personality, but are not exactly, specifically just you. A moniker or a pseudonym if you will. Just yesterday someone asked me to define "autonomy" because they were reading an article at the coffee shop and didn't know what it was. I told them it was an overall "personhood" or sovereignty. I used the example that my job was very autonomous. I went to work, opened the door with my key, set the place up, worked, was the manager of my domain, cleaned the place up, locked up and left. During my time there, no one lords over me or micromanages me. I don't have to take all of my work home with me to get peace. I am autonomous. Autonomy is important to me, as I've found, it is important to most people in my particular generation. Give us the problem, let us solve it. Don't stand over us the whole time. Don't stick us in big group-thinks to solve it. Allow us to consult, but don't force us to. It's an X-er thing. Modern social media has ripped autonomy from us, and as useful as it can be (and Lord knows, it is, especially for business or getting a hold of difficult to find people without being intrusive), for those who constantly yearn to create or write, it's become a stifling thing.
In a world where our every thought is tracked, can reverting to this older style of social media be saved? I think it could, at least, for a specific sub-set of people. There are plenty of folks who I enjoyed reading what they've written that I haven't seen write a thing in years, at least, nothing I had access to. I'm considering a slow movement- with our upcoming political climate, if certain, eh-hum, nominees actually become president, I foresee our ability for free speech to become considerably less, that or, considerably less comfortable. If this is a shift, then more anonymous writing forums will become more popular again because people need a place to dissent. People need to feel heard. Writing is also one of the most therapeutic things that we all can do for ourselves as humans. I sense that more art will be created, because art comes from struggle- for that, as an artist myself, I look forward to seeing what people create out of this new world malaise. If things go in a different political direction (the left), I foresee more dissidence from the right than ever before, creating a different type of struggle, of which art will be born. Either way, it should be an exciting time to be an enthusiast or a collector. As for all other things, well, we'll just have to see. Change is both fast and slow. I've seen things change rapidly over the past 10 years, but so slowly that folks don't really notice. With new adults coming of age every year who have never known anything but our current state, the collective memory is slowly erased. I've watched it, we all have.
Last night I worked a concert where I had to literally chase down a young lady who had ordered some things at the bar and simply walked away, phone in hands, typing furiously. She had not looked up from it the entire time she ordered, nor looked up until I tapped her on the shoulder to get her to pay for the things she had seemingly purchased. Throughout my evening, I watched as several youths stood, directly in front of my service area, taking selfies and texting furiously as a perfectly good concert was going on all around them. They gave no thought to the fact that they were blocking the service well for all of the other patrons. They gave no thought to the fact that they were randomly standing in the way of security folks and runners trying to haul materials from one part of the venue to the other. They didn't even move when asked to. They just mumbled "sorry" while their eyes glowed in the blue light. Now, I'm as guilty as anyone for looking at the light box, but at some point I looked at my co-worker and said, "Isn't there something about all of this that makes you almost embarrassed to take your phone out in public again? Look how stupid everyone looks. I now feel more aware of how stupid I'll ever look doing this same thing." She agreed. We laughed, but as we watched people record the entire concert on their phones, knowing damn well that they'll never watch that damn thing and all it does is eat memory, I thought, "Are they just going to put this on YouTube? Who the hell is going to watch 4 hours of concert on YouTube?" Does anyone actually do that? Instead of enjoying this music that they paid to see, they were watching it through a tiny screen while they were recording it. I can do that shit at home. In any case, it made me far more aware of my behavior and I've decided that phone usage will be relocated to toilet sitting, where it belongs. Texting someone while you're at the store about how much toilet paper you have is one thing. Posting a pic of you and a friend somewhere is one thing. Walking without looking up while staring at social media is quite another. My brother almost fell in a hole in New York doing that; another man saved his life by physically grabbing him. As he looked into that hole, he realized that he would have definitely been dead had this stranger not saved his life. One of these days someone is going to walk into oncoming traffic while reading "The 15 hottest outfit Kim Kardashian has ever worn". How would you like that to be on your epitaph?
I miss having control over my online space. Older forums offer a measure of control, at least in the way that you can choose a name and a picture that reflect aspects of your personality, but are not exactly, specifically just you. A moniker or a pseudonym if you will. Just yesterday someone asked me to define "autonomy" because they were reading an article at the coffee shop and didn't know what it was. I told them it was an overall "personhood" or sovereignty. I used the example that my job was very autonomous. I went to work, opened the door with my key, set the place up, worked, was the manager of my domain, cleaned the place up, locked up and left. During my time there, no one lords over me or micromanages me. I don't have to take all of my work home with me to get peace. I am autonomous. Autonomy is important to me, as I've found, it is important to most people in my particular generation. Give us the problem, let us solve it. Don't stand over us the whole time. Don't stick us in big group-thinks to solve it. Allow us to consult, but don't force us to. It's an X-er thing. Modern social media has ripped autonomy from us, and as useful as it can be (and Lord knows, it is, especially for business or getting a hold of difficult to find people without being intrusive), for those who constantly yearn to create or write, it's become a stifling thing.
In a world where our every thought is tracked, can reverting to this older style of social media be saved? I think it could, at least, for a specific sub-set of people. There are plenty of folks who I enjoyed reading what they've written that I haven't seen write a thing in years, at least, nothing I had access to. I'm considering a slow movement- with our upcoming political climate, if certain, eh-hum, nominees actually become president, I foresee our ability for free speech to become considerably less, that or, considerably less comfortable. If this is a shift, then more anonymous writing forums will become more popular again because people need a place to dissent. People need to feel heard. Writing is also one of the most therapeutic things that we all can do for ourselves as humans. I sense that more art will be created, because art comes from struggle- for that, as an artist myself, I look forward to seeing what people create out of this new world malaise. If things go in a different political direction (the left), I foresee more dissidence from the right than ever before, creating a different type of struggle, of which art will be born. Either way, it should be an exciting time to be an enthusiast or a collector. As for all other things, well, we'll just have to see. Change is both fast and slow. I've seen things change rapidly over the past 10 years, but so slowly that folks don't really notice. With new adults coming of age every year who have never known anything but our current state, the collective memory is slowly erased. I've watched it, we all have.
Last night I worked a concert where I had to literally chase down a young lady who had ordered some things at the bar and simply walked away, phone in hands, typing furiously. She had not looked up from it the entire time she ordered, nor looked up until I tapped her on the shoulder to get her to pay for the things she had seemingly purchased. Throughout my evening, I watched as several youths stood, directly in front of my service area, taking selfies and texting furiously as a perfectly good concert was going on all around them. They gave no thought to the fact that they were blocking the service well for all of the other patrons. They gave no thought to the fact that they were randomly standing in the way of security folks and runners trying to haul materials from one part of the venue to the other. They didn't even move when asked to. They just mumbled "sorry" while their eyes glowed in the blue light. Now, I'm as guilty as anyone for looking at the light box, but at some point I looked at my co-worker and said, "Isn't there something about all of this that makes you almost embarrassed to take your phone out in public again? Look how stupid everyone looks. I now feel more aware of how stupid I'll ever look doing this same thing." She agreed. We laughed, but as we watched people record the entire concert on their phones, knowing damn well that they'll never watch that damn thing and all it does is eat memory, I thought, "Are they just going to put this on YouTube? Who the hell is going to watch 4 hours of concert on YouTube?" Does anyone actually do that? Instead of enjoying this music that they paid to see, they were watching it through a tiny screen while they were recording it. I can do that shit at home. In any case, it made me far more aware of my behavior and I've decided that phone usage will be relocated to toilet sitting, where it belongs. Texting someone while you're at the store about how much toilet paper you have is one thing. Posting a pic of you and a friend somewhere is one thing. Walking without looking up while staring at social media is quite another. My brother almost fell in a hole in New York doing that; another man saved his life by physically grabbing him. As he looked into that hole, he realized that he would have definitely been dead had this stranger not saved his life. One of these days someone is going to walk into oncoming traffic while reading "The 15 hottest outfit Kim Kardashian has ever worn". How would you like that to be on your epitaph?