No Man's Filters

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I am old enough to remember a time when we had to wait days, if not weeks to see what we took pictures of.  I had a 35mm Instamatic camera that required sticking a flash cube into the top.  The film came in a cartridge that looked like the modern day equivalent of the voice mail symbol on your phone.  You pointed, shot the picture, then had to manually advance the film by a dial on the top that clicked when in place.  You got maybe 24 pictures and had to mail the film away to be processed unless you went to a Fotomat in the mall parking lot, which would still take days.  There was no cloud. We didn’t have filters. We didn’t have ears and noses to stick on our faces. We didn’t even know if we blinked. It was all a mystery to be figured out weeks later.  And we didn’t seem to mind. Nowadays, we have selfie sticks and Snapchats and Instagrams and weird shit that makes our faces look like fun house mirrors.  And now we also take pictures in games.

Now, to be fair, taking a picture of your gameplay in a video game isn’t a new concept. Long before sharing or screenshotting became a thing, some games required you to send in proof that you accomplished some feat or achievement.  Somewhere in a shoe box, is a blurry photo of my high score from Atari 2600 Decathlon, taken prior to 1984.  Again, the ability for us to snap a perfectly framed, in focus, picture with 70s/80s photographic technology was very low and the game would have been turned off or the television would have been burned out before the developed photo ever came back.  But if you were lucky to achieve something so grand as getting over 10,000 points in Decathlon or 20,000 points in Pitfall.  Activision had this thing called Activison Patches which they would send to you in exchange for photographic proof that you finished or attained a particular score in one of their games.  They were these sew on patches you could put on your jean jacket or backpack.  The 80s equivalent to Xbox achievements or PS4 Trophies.  But those were photos of you playing the game.  Then, something happened.  We added taking photos in the game.

Games like the Sims or Second Life took taking photos of your monitor or television and put the power of the photo op into the game.  Minecraft gave players a screenshot feature so that they could share their epic builds or biggest fails with other players.  And other games offered the feature as part of the basic settings, some tongue in cheek like GTA V, complete with selfie mode, filters and sharing capabilities.  Others were more about sharing the environment like Uncharted 4.  But, when you are immersed into a game like Uncharted or even GTA, having to stop and take time to set up a photo op to capture a moment seems counter intuitive to the game itself.  When Uncharted 4 came out, it brought new gameplay features to the decade old franchise.  The first and last title on the 8^th generation console wanted to tout the advanced graphics of the PS4 with the opportunity for players to take a moment to stop and look around at their environment, snapping a picture and adding filters and other added effects.  It’s a nice little thing to do but again, it takes away from the rough and tumble, puzzle solving action of the game.  Cinematically, it was on par with the 2^nd game which seamlessly blended cutscenes and in game action, but touting the newest bell and whistle brought to the table as being able to Instagram your treasure hunt buried my interest in the game.

But, that’s not to say that in game photography isn’t without merit.  I mean, part of the initial gameplay of No Man’s Sky is to scan and observe your surroundings, discovering new species of flora and fauna.  It only makes sense to enhance that initial offering by adding in the ability to put in documenting of your journey into the great wide open by taking some pics.  After all, even though we’re unknown travelers, caught in some weird metaphysical, philosophical mind screw about will and destiny, we’re still tourists, exploring the universe.

The overall aesthetic of No Man’s Sky is based in that kitschy retro-futuristic science fiction art along the vein of Christopher Foss and Ralph McQuarrie.  Those angles and flared pieces of architecture and the animals that look like they were placed in the Cantina scene, straight out of central casting from the Jim Henson’s creature workshop.  Odd shaped necks and horns and flying fish dragons beg to be captured on film. Caves that resemble overgrown maws and throats, ready to devour you.  The skyscape, streaked with jet comtrails from other travelers dividing the space from atmosphere.  It all looks so pretty.  And now, with multiplayer added, Hello Games has given players the ability to gesture in order to help you communicate… or perhaps pose for a selfie.  Saying Thank you or Help or just sitting among the flowing stalks of grass as you contemplate your place in the whole story of Nada and Polo or Atlas.  You thoughts flash towards the meaning of all this… hashtag pensive hashtag Thoughts before falling asleep.

Things I Don't Understand: A Rant

I am forever late to the party when it comes to what people are doing these days.  I chalk it up to my belief that, in a way, I was born too soon.   I grew up in the 80s and still think it was the last best decade we ever had.  I am solidifying that argument in my own mind after watching NatGeo’s The ‘80s, The ‘90s, and The 2000s documentaries on binge mode.  Maybe it’s generational.  Maybe my dislike or lack of understanding of today is congruent with my parents or other baby boomers lack of understanding of what it was like when I was growing up.  In any case, here’s what I still don’t get.

I don’t get the appeal of today’s music.  Ariana Grande might be a talented singer, but for the life of me, her words are indecipherable and all run together.  Now, that may be because I’ve developed hearing issues over the years.  I know people that can listen to the same song as myself, at the same time, and can pick apart the lyrics while I’m still stuck on the fact that I thought Elton John was singing, “Hold me closer, Tony Danza.”    I could concede that with Grande, but Googling the thought pointed out that a host of other people can’t understand what she’s saying either.  Iggy Azalea?  No clue what she’s about, either.    What’s the issue with her and the public?  I’m still stuck on the fact that I though K-E-Dollar Sign-HA had a career.   I still like music from people who’ve been dead for years… except for Kurt Cobain.  I didn’t care for him in the 90s, and that hasn’t changed in 20 years.  Any kid that comes up to me today and says, “Kurt Cobain is my greatest influence” immediately has a “Get off my lawn” coming to them.   And I don’t like it when someone takes something from the era I like and tries to make it something of their own, today.  Blurred Lines was cool for about a minute before I realized it was a pretty creepy thing and ripped off Marvin Gaye.  However, I do like Postmodern Jukebox and stuff like David Garrett covering a bunch of rock tunes with a cello.  That is kind of cool.  What Kid Rock did with Lynyrd Skynyrd/Warren Zevon a few years ago was not.

I don’t understand that niche of social media like tumblr, reddit, and even Instagram, though I have an account.   How do these things work and how do people get sucked into tumblr?  How does one tumbl...r?  Maybe I should learn so that I can incorporate it into my YouTube or design stuff.  Then again, I get on Tumblr and my head just grinds like a shot clutch in a Ford.  I opened a tumblr account and I just don’t know what to do with it.  Isn’t that what I was doing here?  I’d say I need a teenager to help me figure stuff out but that sounds a little too creepy to openly announce on the Internet.  

What exactly is reddit?   And don’t get me started on subreddits.  Am I even spelling that right?  I know a few YouTube producers who get a lot of conversation going and ideas from reddit, but I don’t know what the hell reddit does.  I know it was partially responsible for hosting all of those leaked photos last year.   I know celebrities go on and do “Ask my anything” posts but seems like a lot of noise and craziness.  And then people vote up or down.  I just don’t get it.  They even have hateful groups like /r/rapingwomen and such.   WTF?!?!

Instagram?  People take pictures, apply some snazzy filters, and voila, they’re… photographers?  Do you mean to tell me we are going to hoist some kid with an iPhone onto the same mantle as Ansel Adams or Annie Leibowitz?  Oh, I just took a photo of a plate of spaghetti… slapped Inkwell filter on it, adjusted the contrast, and BAM, I’m Henri Cartier-Bresson!  And people can make money selling their photos?!?!?  How does that work?  Who would buy an Instagram photo?  Hell, some guy named Richard Prince took people’s Instagram photos and hung them in a gallery and claimed it was transformative and therefore fair use.  Do businesses pay you for taking pictures of their stuff?

I don’t understand SEO.  I don’t understand how it affects websites and why people are always looking to hire people.  Isn’t it just tagging?  And how is that a marketable skill that people rave about on job boards?  I spend a lot of time refining tags on videos and shirt designs and I do not see any difference in the amount of traffic I get from before and after.  And furthermore, the old adage of making money on a blog is crap… I’ve had this blog for almost seven years and have yet to make a dime from just posting content.  Have any posts directed people towards buying something of mine from a shirt site?  Yes.   But the whole point was delivering content, people clicking, profit!   That hasn’t happened and I do not understand how that works.  

The one thing I do understand is the idea of how to get rich and I can share it with you for only five dollars.  :)

2014 D-Bag of the Year Awards Part 2 - Oh The Humanity

In Part 1 I did a semi round up of 2014's biggest d-bags, glossing over some of the moments in order to not really do any damn research.  What I came up with was somewhat of a generalization of what I feel is the biggest d-bag of the year.  I think I've done it before but we win again, Humanity.

Call it a cop out.  Call it what you will, but my pick for the biggest, most vile, hipster hat and non prescription glasses wearing douchebag of the year is Humanity via Social Media.

What is that you say?  Did you just make up some weird nominee off the top of your head like some sub-sub-sub-genre of music like Mathcore or Lowercase…  You’d kind of know what lowercase is if you ever sat and watched the DVD menu of The Social Network.  It’s ambient music with a few notes scattered about with stuff like real life noise, people talking, traffic, clacking of keyboards, footsteps, etc.

Yeah, I just coined it Humanity via Media is the biggest d-bag of the year.  I wanted to just say Social Media specifically, but there’s more to it which I will get to in a bit.

Why Media? 

Social Media has been as pervasive in our lives. 
We post, tag, comment, retweet, upvote, tumblr (sp?), Instagram, blog, film, and basically overshare everything.  The problem is there is no governance in place to weed out the real, satirical, or fake information.  To the point about Bill Cosby, both Kirk Cameron and Raven-Symone were reported to have been raped or assaulted by Bill Cosby sometime in their career.  These stories were both false, posted by Onion emulating sites like HipHopHangover.  But regardless of their incredulous nature, they were shared across the Internet via twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.    The Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths promptly divided friends on Facebook, probably more so than the midterm elections because on one side you have the barrage of people tuned into the “Police State” conspiracy and abuse of police power theories, and on the other there is the contingent of people who stand behind the badge and say that if they were truly innocent victims they wouldn’t have been committing a crime and when an officer tells you stop, you stop.   The problem lies in the dissemination of information via Media and how Humanity shows its colors when it shares or promotes those stories, real, satirical, or fake as it were.   Look at the “fake” media accounts of Chris Rock and other Twitter celebs who were retweeted without any kind of verification of “Did they actually say it.”  It’s akin to everything on Facebook being attributed to George Carlin or Sarah Palin whether they said it or not.   The Media itself is wholly guilty because they sensationalize some things and no one site is truly objective in its portrayal of anything anymore.   Fox is all right wing, MSNBC is all left.  Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert piss everyone off because they get hoisted onto the pedestal of news when they are basically satire and entertainment.   But the media feeds into social media and then we go back down that rabbit hole all over again.

We have no filter and we have social media muscle. 
It’s kind of like beer muscles.  You get drunk and think you are invulnerable to anything you try to punch, animate, inanimate, or otherwise.  In the case of social media or even media, it’s the belief that we have no problem making a comment, vile as it may be, towards someone because we don’t have to say it to someone’s face.   Think back to that Artie Lange Twitter rant.  Go search over the ones tagged to the Adrian Peterson, Ray Rice, or even Hollaback.  Do you think Artie Lange would seriously say, in person, to Cari Champion the things he tweeted?  Have you ever read the comments section on any news article concerning anything polarizing like politics or human rights?  It’s insane.   Now, I joke about hating on PewDiePie as a YouTube content producer because I am one, too and my opinions are just that, my opinion.  But he disabled the comments on his YouTube account, for good this time.  His belief is that the comment section on his videos is just rife with spam, self-advertising, and fights among fanboys.  With about 19 million subscribers, I guess there is a ton of comments.  Well, it may be best for humanity but it’s only one of millions of places to see vinegar and hate on the Internet.  I, myself, jumped into the ring early on, being online for certain things trying to drum up my social media profile after this little moment pushed me a small step towards Internet Fame Mediocrity by calling out John Travolta on Twitter during the Oscars. It was retweeted 1500 times and favorited by 1000 people.  I admit it, I took a little pride in my humor and was continuing to try and make fetch happen throughout the rest of the year.  Then again, I think John Travolta has dyslexia and I just laughed at someone with a disorder.  But, he's famous and knows famous people, and he is musical and should have known that her name wasn't Adele Dazeem.

For every Social Media win there are millions of fails.
Everyone thinks that revolution will not be televised, it will be posted.    We had countless videos of people dumping buckets of ice water on themselves, all for… charity?  Was it really charity or attention?  The Ice Bucket challenge was probably the most videoed moment of the year and people challenged each other to donate to ALS and film themselves being hit with a bucket of ice water, supposedly how it feels to have symptoms of ALS.   But what started out as a way to donate to a worthy cause became a “look at me” moment as everyone posted videos of themselves but probably not everyone donated.  And in doing so, did they actually fix anything?  Social Media Cause of the Week Awareness comes off more like Evil Political/Business Figure Karma Washing by building libraries or parks in areas to offset their horrible practices or platforms.  And while the initial ALS Ice Bucket challenge started off with a good message, it was polluted by the fails videos and other “Staged” event videos and copycat challenge videos that followed.  And it didn’t just hit the everyday Joe, celebrities got in on the challenge as well.   Glorification of the self outshone the message in the end.    Another case of fail was that Hollaback video where after it went viral, tons of parody videos including everything from someone dressed as Princess Leia to a Lamborghini became the subject of catcalls or lack thereof.  The Arab Spring was filmed on a cell phone and that lent a face to what was actually going on in the region.  That was social media for the win.

We have no context or objectivity.
 Recently, Sarah Palin tweeted out a picture of her son Trig, standing on the family dog to reach something on the counter.  As a proud grizzly mom, she said her son was a problem summer, the tweet went viral and the Internet did what it does.    She pointed out in a fiery article that Ellen Degeneres posted a similar picture in July of the same year.

A: Sarah Palin touts the problem solving skills of her son, Ellen says "Well, that's one way to reach the sink."  Both are bad examples of how treat animals. 

B: That's Sarah's kid and dog.  The other is fan submitted to The Ellen show.  Ellen can't stop someone else's bad behavior.  Sarah could.

The difference is, one is Sarah Palin, and the other is Ellen.  Righties, including Palin, will say "No one cared when Ellen did it."  Well, they did.  If you go to the Facebook post and look at the comments, A LOT of people called it out.

It's called context.  They pulled that Ellen pic because she is a well known liberal and lesbian.  It's a tactic of taking something that looks the same and then use it as a juxtaposition.  The more visceral and equally non contextual comment would to be to say, "Obama ate a dog once."   

We also look at things non contextually such as photos depicting a moment in time, free of whatever is going on before and after that moment.  Someone's face say the Obama daughters looking disgusted.  Then, media adds the context.

Or, as I did last month on Facebook to prove a point, "An armed white man killed three police officers in Pittsburgh, was in a long standoff with the law, and was taken into custody, alive."  Immediately, my conservative friends accused me of trying to associate this event from a few years ago to the Michael Brown case.  I did no such thing.  I simply made a factual statement with no context.   Everyone attached their own context based on their beliefs.   It was a dick move but showed the nature of what I am speaking to.

 We have no long term memory.
"Hey, did you hear the one about the price of gas when a certain President took office vs what they are now?  Blame so and so!"  
"Hey did you hear how so and so is giving all these illegals clemency?" 

Chances are, you have seen your friends share something on social media, touting their political leanings.  Usually, it's bashing the person they didn't vote for.  Chances are, they didn't do any research into the subject and just re-posted or re-tweeted something from a site or feed that uses these little subjective posts as click bait for traffic.  What usually occurs in some of these situations is that people cling to the notion that this country is going to implode because of the people in charge and nothing like this has ever happened before in anyone's lifetime.  Let's face it, nothing is new anymore. Policy and political strategy is about as fresh as Hollywood script ideas.  The problem lies in that people tend to have short term memory when these things occur.  They tend to forget that other administrations and other environmental influences recur, like the seasons.  Gas prices fall in the winter, and rise in the summer, so when someone points out that the price of gas was lower in the January of an inaugural year vs. the Memorial Day of a midterm, everyone grabs torches and pitchforks.  Moreover, Presidents have no direct influence on the price of gas.  The market fluctuates based on fear and speculation and time of year.  But social media, and by proxy, we tend to wear our hate right out on our sleeves and feed the trolls of viral mud slinging because why?  See the next point.

We are despicable human beings.

Everyone wants to see the train wreck.  There are far more disasters and fires started on social media and media outlets than good feel, faith in humanity stories.   Everything is hashtagged for social media glorification.  #NotAllMen  #YesAllWomen #NotAllPolice #NotAllBlacks #AlexFromTarget #BlackLivesMatter #PoliceLivesMatter #GamerGate  But, you cannot change the world with a hashtag.  Let’s face it.   We are not Gandhi, Maya Angelou, The Dalai Lama, or Whatevertheirnames are like Bukowski or Poindexter.    Slacktivism is not helping fix problems.   If it were, we wouldn’t need a name attached to a social media account.  It would be anonymously attached to a building or a billboard.  Stop the glorification of yourself in the name of some cause.  In a more despicable note, GamerGate was a form of victim blaming in that someone posted something, maybe true, maybe not, about a female gamer who released a game and then she and her family received threats by misogynistic people on social media.  People came to the defense of Person A and were threatened as well.  Others criticized Person A and they were threatened.  The funny thing is, I wonder if those same people who sent death threats would ever, ever follow up on them if they were face to face.  It's the Social Media Muscle at work.  "Yeah, I'll kick your ass from behind my firewall."  But, in person, you're peeing your pants at actually following through.  If it actually happened, it'd be like this... (NSFW - Language)

 

Fear sells better than cheer.
When Ebola entered the country, pundits went nuts saying "CLOSE THE BORDERS!" and "OBAMA IS TRYING TO KILL US!"  First of all, Ebola was already in Atlanta at the CDC.  The level of spreading of Ebola in the US vs. Africa is ridiculously disparate.  We are a first world country with better than average healthcare.  And quite frankly, how the hell do you close the borders to air traffic?  Ebola isn't just walking over the Rio Grande.  We had an outbreak of mumps in the NHL this past fall, did anyone, ANYONE start yelling to close the border to Canada?  Ebola is a dangerous disease if you don't have the capacity to deal with it.  But it's a lot easier to get people glued to their sets when you have that newscast with the scary music, biohazard graphics, and fear than it is to give out good news.  We are a society that likes Schadenfreude.

We are ALL the problem.
Was the iCloud hacks a sexual crime?  Maybe.  I am not a lawyer.  I am not a woman, either.  But, those involved did steal private images and videos.  They did re-post them and that, in itself, is probably worthy of some investigation.  If anything, digital theft or invasion of privacy, breaking and entering if that applies to digital environments.  And not as if I am downplaying the severity of what Jennifer Lawrence went through, but to say that anyone who viewed the images are also committing a sex crime, that is a stretch.  OK, I admit it.  I saw the images.   I wanted to know.  And I'm not claiming Pete Townsend "research" as reasoning, but really, is it a crime.  The sites that host the images, yeah, probably guilty of something, but best you can do is say, "Take it down or face litigation" over copyright.   What happened to the people who had their cloud accounts invaded is awful and this victim shaming/blaming mentality is horrible, but quite honestly, if you're using your digital accounts to store naked images and videos of yourself then you shouldn't be surprised that this is going to happen.  Not to say it's apples to apples but if I walk down the street in a bad neighborhood with $100 bills hanging out of my pockets, I don't deserve to be mugged, but it's probably going to happen eventually and I can be pissed off about it and say it's wrong and it is, but it's still something that can be prevented.  Flame me all you want, but the same goes for the cloud.  And yes, the hackers are the worst in humanity, but the victims calling it something it probably isn't doesn't help.  It is what it is, wrong and unfortunate. So, there it is.  As cliched as a wrap as that is, and pretty much ever word I say,  "That's That"  We have a lot of cleansing to do in 2015.  To quote Neal Sampat from The Newsroom, you embarrass me. 

I embarrass me, too.   I am just as bad.

Since 2008, I've pretty much dedicated 98% of this blog to pointing out what's wrong with the world through the pop culture lens.  The last two years have been particularly crass or depressing depending on the day.   And while I am probably going to continue to uphold the "Angry" moniker since it is my brand.  I want to be different.  I got old real quick in my late 20s and 30s and I will be starting a new decade of my life.  I gave up a lot of what made me... me.  I still haven't given up all of my snark as a resolution but I do plan on making substantial changes in my life starting now.  So, let's see if I can get back to being a little more like who I used to be before Mongo took over.  Hopefully, I can bring some of you along with me.

Happy New Year, d-bags. 


Sorry, I couldn't resist. 

2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: The Internet Vs. Humanity

The Internet Vs. Us

It has gone online.  It has become aware.  We are screwed.   Why?

In 2013, the Internet gave us such wonderful things like “What The Fox Says” and Doge and a host of others, but with great fame comes great fail.  The Internet has proven, like so many other things that technology only serves to make us dumber.   And in that space between our ears we have heard a pin drop and the ocean roar.     We now have given fame to a group of people who were made famous by their picture being captioned by other people.  So much so, that they get to attend conventions and other events.   Twitter has made it easier for people to say stupid things and then try to erase them but you can’t erase cyberspace.  (We’re looking at all you idiots that don’t know who so and so hosting an awards show is and think that Kurt Cobain was a failure because he didn’t amass as huge of a following online as Justin Bieber). 

Then, there’s the whole, “X wants Y removed from the Internet.  Share it with everyone.”  Pictures of unflattering poses by superstars and Presidential skeet shooters got passed around everywhere.   Facebook became a ridiculous mess of Paul is Dead posts (Walker) and then when Nelson Madela died, no one cared.   "Let's see if this potato can get more likes than X".  We hashtagged everything that wasn’t anchored down.  Phil Robertson spoke out in a GQ piece about Gays and African Americans and got suspended from his television show job and all the Internet could say was that his freedom of speech was being violated.  (It wasn’t just so you know.  You people really are idiots… Yes, you too, Sarah Palin.  Someone who was the governor of a state and possibly a heartbeat away from the Presidency should know what the Bill of Rights covers.)  And with all that going on, we just know that the mainstream media is going to cover it, RIGHT?!?!?

Truly the Internet is a giant douche bag, allowing all of this failure to occur.   But wait…  It wasn’t the Internet, was it?

No, it was us. 

We did all of those things USING the Internet.  We gave all the twerkers and Harlem shakers fame via views.  We retweeted and favorited all of the hate speech and fail to a hilt.  We defended Phil and cherished an actor who died in an accident that had some irony as to his claim to fame.  

We did all that. 

We let Justin and Miley and all of them be even more famous because of social media.   We were unfriended by countless numbers of people on Facebook because they didn’t share our same outlook, flawed or right as it may be, and we got into flame wars on Twitter over stupid things.  We sat back, and watched the world burn and loved every minute of it.

I think we know the real winner of this, it’s us.  We are the bigger douche bag.   Look, as much as I hate what the Internet has become, it is an inanimate object.  For every picture of a drone or GMO plant or Illuminati conspiracy, there are people out there like John and Hank Green,  Hannah Hart and Talia Castellano.  We are making the hate and fail the bigger stories.  That’s why we are the bigger douche bags.   There are people out there using the Internet to try and make the world a better place but we can’t have nice things.  We ruin it like everything else in this world.  

Alone Time

I recently watched a clip of Louis CK on Conan where he talked about not getting his kids a Smart Phone.   I’ll embed the video so I don’t have to paraphrase it.

The basic gist is that we are constantly reaching for technology when we find ourselves in a moment of being alone.

It really is sad to think that we, as a society, are too hooked into social media and technology that we can’t sit with our own thoughts for five minutes without wanting to text 20 people just to get a response.

I’ve found myself in the same situation, but to Louis CK’s point, I wouldn’t just randomly text people while I’m in my car driving.   Besides being illegal, I’m somewhat of a luddite when it comes to texting (I have 250 text limit). I tend to only text when it’s absolutely necessary.  There are times when I go a little crazy and get close to that limit but it’s still usually because there is something that actually needs to be addressed.   And there are times I just want to say something because I am feeling that loneliness, too.

What did we ever do before cell phones or the Internet allowed us to be only a few bytes away from getting a hold of someone?  We used to hand write letters and mail them.  Now, depending on the distance to that pen pal, it could be a week before they actually receive the letter, read it, and then write you back.   Then, you’re talking two weeks from the time when you mailed that first letter until you get a response.  And we were OK with this process.  Do people even write letters to one another anymore?  Do people correspond in handwritten, random life event telling letters to each other?  Isn’t that what email has become?  Hasn’t the postal service been relegated to delivering holiday or occasion cards to friends these days?   Today, as long as we have access to technology and the Internet we can reach out and simply say HI, send a picture, or share a video.   And in the time it takes to say “Reach out and touch someone” we can get a response.

But why?

There are times in life when we need to be alone.  We need to be with ourselves.  We spend so much time building profiles and likes and showing the world who we are.  Do we even believe it?  Are we really our online selves?  Do we like the things we REALLY like, or do we like the things that make us more likable?

Maybe being in the spotlight is what has destroyed our sense of selves.  There’s a concept in sociology that our self image is  simply made up of perceptions of who we are by other people.   And we are constantly looking for that approval.  We constantly put our lives out on the Internet, looking for someone to respond.  I do it.  This blog is evidence enough of that.

I primarily write to hear myself type.  It’s a writer thing.  I like to write to TRY and keep my skills somewhat more than blunt.  I don’t have nearly the amount of time needed in this world to hone those skills.  I also don’t have the life that would deem anything I write worth reading, but I do it.  Sometimes I think about things in Pop Culture that amuse me and I write that.  That’s definitely a “look at me” moment.  I’m showing off my Pop Culture prowess in an effort to prove to the world that I am talented and clever and need a job in the industry.  Well, if anyone actually this stuff they would say, “Yeah, and you wonder why no one reads your stuff?”

Other times I reflect.  I reflect on what life has thrown me and I try to make sense of the things in this world by way of Pop Culture.   Finally, I write from the place just below my gut and above my ass.  That’s where my head usually is.   These are things I write for myself.  You are just privy to them.  But, by posting them, knowing that people aren’t reading them, I’m focusing on that alone time.    Half of my hour long commute involves me frantically switching stations for good driving music.  Revelation; there isn’t any on today’s stations.   The other half is me thinking.    If I’m not listening to NPR, I have the radio off most commutes.  I run through thoughts in my head.  Concepts.  I look for meaning and worth.  I also argue a lot.  Fictional arguments or debates with myself are the norm.

And while I probably never miss an opportunity to comment on something, I try to listen.  Granted, I am probably a HUGE offender in the Facebook First Responder club.  Every time that little green light goes on next to one of my friends I immediately think of something to strike up a conversation.   I’m like that kid that shows up at your house the first day of summer vacation and doesn’t leave until the street lights come on.  I am Dennis the Menace.  I am trying to not be alone.  And while I am not alone, I have a family after all, the times when I do these things are when I am usually by myself.  Technology has given us the greatest gift, engagement.  We never have to be alone ever again, and yet sometimes I think we are more alone than ever.   After all, technology has removed the biggest obstacle to being alone, physical presence.  We don’t have to go to stores and engage with other customers or employees.  We can just shop online.   We don’t have to go to bars or public places to meet people in person.  We have Match.com.   Hell, we don’t even have to meet down in the park to play chess.  We have online gaming.  Dennis the Menace just squatted on your newsfeed for the next 20 minutes.  Being alone means you have to deal with yourself, though.  And when you are alone, do you like what you see?  

 

First Responder Shirt 

Strip away the opportunity to post a lyric, a video, a quote, or to comment on someone elses life and who are you?  

That’s what you need to find out.  Alone is a good thing.  Alone allows you to feel life.  Alone means you’ve got nobody to impress but yourself.  And if you can do that, then you are ready to not be alone.

We Used To Eat the Food

Five years ago, I did a four part series on “Good vs. Evil:The Internet”.

In my four post rant, I evaluated how the Internet has affected us as human beings, the movies we see, and our inherent nature as charitable vs. greedy people.  The overall assessment was that the Internet was evil but it was child that we ignored and did not discipline to the point it became evil.

In five years time, my thoughts have not changed.    But, in those five years, we have gotten worse.  We are the problem. 

The iPhone debuted in 2007, three years after Facebook came about on the Harvard campus.  However, the Smart Phone revolution has become one of the biggest proponents of stupidity since social media was first introduced.

We’ve passed laws to keep people from texting while driving.

We’ve seen video of people texting and walking into fountains and poles.

We’ve seen stories of celebrities having their phones hacked and personal pictures displayed on the Internet.

We’ve seen stories of celebrities and politicians sending inappropriate texts to other people, usually not their spouse.

And yet, people still do all these things.

Oh, and they take pictures of their food.

We used to eat the food.  We didn’t take a picture, put snazzy filters on it, and post it to social media sites.  And to that point.  We’ve come a long way since we had to take a roll of film to PhotoHut and wait two weeks for it to be developed.  We’ve come a long way from taking a picture that was instantly developed and had to shook vigorously back and forth, as if to accelerate or enhance the developing of said picture.

Now, we turn all of our fancy gadgetry into vintage displays.    WHY?  As if anyone believes it’s a vintage photo.   It’s pretentious.   Then, we Instagram our food.

WHY?

WHY DO WE TAKE PICTURES OF OUR FOOD?  WHY DO WE MAKE IT LOOK LIKE IT CAME FROM THE 70S?  

Just eat the damn food.

And what better way to poke fun at such silliness than to parody it by parodying another fake grunge-like style… Nickelback.  It’s like someone Instagrammed Rock to make it look harder than it really is.