Showing posts with label Social Status. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Status. Show all posts

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Socialization in the Time of Social Media


Today my word for the day was serendipitous.  So I thought a play on the title of the book that Kate Beckinsale wrote her phone number in for the movie "Serendipity" was appropriate.  It was called "Love in the Time of Cholera".  I'll let you sort out what I mean.

Relationship Status
Facebook status goes from "in a relationship" to "single".  Like me I know you've seen this byline in your Facebook timeline.  It makes me miss the days when your relationship status wasn't public property.  Not that it is by any means, but some days the way social media works you think you are obligated in some way to tell the world this unfortunate truth.

I must admit that after my marriage ended it was somehow empowering to go into one of my media networks and boldly go from "married" to "single".  It was more than just a declaration to the people who knew and loved me.  It was a declaration to myself.  Somehow making that one move put me on the path to understanding why I was in the situation I was in and how I could avoid returning there in the near future.

Love and Hate
I have a love hate relationship with social media.  I see it's potential in bridging the gaps between people and I also see the possible destruction from making so much of your existence not as private as it used to be.  I'm a Generation X'er.  By nature we are more skeptical while being opportunistic.  It has a lot to do with being raised by Baby Boomers and their changing value systems.  I think the irony of this is that no one has embraced social media like the generations that flank us.  Those being our Baby Boomer parents (well not mine, but some of us) and our Millennial understudies.

For those wondering, the Millennials are the generation of people who are being born with the Internet as a part of their lives.  The constantly 'plugged-in' set while us Gen X'ers are mostly involved yet quite on the fence with our involvement.  We see the opportunity social media creates, but we are somewhat fearful of the loss of self for the cause.  I see it all of the time as my generation picks and chooses what social media outlets will hold their time and attention, and which ones they just can't be bothered with because it's that step too far.

Live Journal
I think back to the days of high school crushes and random childhood gossip, and I see the implications for what could've been if every time someone in my cliché 'broke-up' it became social fodder.  And I find myself grateful that there isn't an archive somewhere of my high school follies.  I know a lot of people a little younger than me that can't say the same thanks to LiveJournal.  But it brings me face to face with the changing tide of how technology has affected how we perceive and feel about human relationships.  With the ability to make your relationship a matter of public media, you risk affecting the intimacy that good relationships can cultivate.  I find myself wondering if you can also increase it.

Words are powerful things.  I should know I'm a writer : ) And I often prefer writing someone and not telling someone because my written word is always going to be more eloquent, direct, and poignant than my spoken words.  I just don't think in speech like I think in written word.  So I can write tantalizing love letters and flowing poetry yet have the damnedest time getting those words out of my face.  It leaves me to wonder which face is my true face.  What is it about captured language that makes it a preferable option to me and apparently to many of the people in our tech world today who prefer text messaging to phone calls.

I have often read things friends have said to me as a comment on Facebook and I wondered at the authenticity of it.  But not in the way you might think.  My friends have written some of the loveliest sweetest things I've ever read about myself to the point that I have been moved to tears. I know these people well and they know me and I wonder if we were face to face would they reveal that much of their true feelings about me or if the specter of the screen and the loose feeling of anonymity have somehow changed the nature of the discourse.  Has being able to channel these feelings through a source that can feel as intimate as a computer can sometimes opened a door to a true core of emotion that maybe unrealized in any other way.

I know that I have stated true feelings through this medium to other people that I would never have the gall to say to their face and I wonder why.  In those moments of typing as I stared at the words as they hit the page I knew that not telling the truth would be like lying to myself.  And at every turn as I read my own words the lie of it would become unbearable and the message would be left unsaid . . . unsent.

Beyond that personal belief, it was the freedom of knowing that I can get my thoughts out without instant rejection because of response time.  When you state things to someone's face you see instantly how well received or not well received they are.  At least with awkward silence there is a sense of accomplishment because you can't be sure about how someone has taken your commentary, but you can be sure that you made your position clear.

Reply?
We are a society accustomed to speaking over each other.  In ordinary conversations the person who has the most aggression will usually be heard over all while the meeker participants will be overshadowed.  However in the written word, in an online chat sense, everyone has a position of potential equal say.  Like nothing else, written messages demand that the normal call and response procedures of communication be adhered to.

If you're like me then there is nothing you hate more than an unanswered message.  The very nature of sending a message calls upon habits that should be ingrained by any participant in 'polite' society.  If someone has taken the time, energy, and effort to communicate with you, you at least owe them an acknowledgement of the effort. Often in face to face conversations the subject can be rerouted, changed, and ultimately ignored as you substitute surrounding incidents for current 'undesirable' conversation.  However it is hard to deny a message.  It is almost like a receipt.  The sender and the recipient know this took place and how they choose to deal with it usually determines the level of care and regard you give the person because they have stated the level of care and regard they hold for you. These are all factors that would aid in understanding the level of involvement you can or cannot have with another person.

In a relationship my partner will get both.  I'll say the words I'm thinking, and then reinforce them with poetry, cards or other little notes of affection.  But does this create its own from of intimacy without the content of being there in person?  I imagine my lover can look at the words on a screen or page and then remember how I smell, my smile, how I look at them, how I touch them. Written words can touch, but they can't feel.  They can imply, but they can't determine. Beyond that, they bare more weight when they are private, and not made available for prying eyes.

How does one create intimacy through a social media?  Is this something that is even remotely possible?  Studies have shown that people make judgment calls on others based on some of their social media choices yet I'm not always sure if reposting a cute kitten picture is the best identifier for a person.  Memes have been dedicated to the insensitive things people are willing to say from the safety of a computer screen yet there haven't really been any that talk about what people feel are inappropriate matters to be discussed in an online format.  All is open for discussion apparently.

It is very easy to find a blog post or site where people come together to discuss their heartbreak and what they are going through.  Love in the digital age has become more digital than social.  What was once something between 2 people and their closest friends and relatives has become searchable by the masses.  In many ways it does remind us that we are all the same.  But in other ways it stamps out those wonderful fundamental differences.  In the end, this is another face we place on just like any other.  How is this relationship, picture, status a true indication of the person that speaks about it?  How is this reflection to be perceived?  At face value or as a characteristic of something that is more evolved than previously thought.

Failbook
This face is one that can be constructed to a larger degree than any other face.  I like experimenting with look, style, and perception.  My photos are a clear indication of that.  I like playing with the idea that with a few simple changes I can become or appear to be someone other than who I am.  Well I think online characterization can be taken a full step beyond that.  What is real and what isn't?  Who is real and who isn't becomes more of a concern than in face-to-face encounters.  As we become overwhelmed by our own creations and they start to bleed into the reality of who we really are, who is to say that this is not who we really are now.

Personalities
The key to understanding online personas is understanding the nature of the beast.  The internet, while it was originally created as a means for academics to communicate with each other, has become a venue of entertainment.  People online have to be taken with a grain of salt because more than anywhere else, you are being sold something.  It doesn't matter where you are, in a chat room, playing Xbox live, on a dating site, or just browsing news stories, someone wants you to 'buy' something.  Either that they care, don't care, that their view is correct, or this angle is the truth.  And in many cases they want your money. 

At our very base level we are a nation of con artists. It's called capitalism and the bottom line is gain. Is it no wonder each generation is able to instantly spot what will garner the best advantage and then take it?  At our most enlightened we are a nation of Buddhists abandoning the suffering of trade for altruism.  Deciding that the only way to stifle the will of capitalism is to disavow it.  But most of us are somewhere in the middle trying to make a worthwhile existence for ourselves and those we love.  So how does online interactions facilitate this is what I'm asking?  How does one go from being a stranger to being a friend through a social media site?

I think in the end it's like with all things.  You regard someone and recognize the traits they have in common with you.  Through this you build up a repoire, and then over time you become accustomed to their ways and methods of communicating.  Who they are has no choice but to present itself.

Beyond not writing things in all caps, online etiquette is this unrelenting, unestablished hierarchy of mismatched rules and sometimes lacking in manners rhetoric.  It is up to the person to decide what constitutes as real human interaction, and what is just a pale reminder that the object before us is only a machine with parts instead of heart.

The real issue is that sometimes people make the mistake of believing that the people on the other end of the line are just as unfeeling as the machine they are using to communicate with when the exact opposite is true.  Usually on the other end is someone who is all too human and for whatever reason needs the parts to help them declare and expose their heart.  It would be a shame if we as other human beings suffering the same fit weren't available to help them understand the difference between cold unemotional parts and moments given from the heart.

(Dedicated to all those who have never left me hanging ; )





Personalities Courtesy of: http://mikepascucci.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/personalities-2.jpg?w=490

Reply? Courtesy of: http://www.macstories.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/notification1.png

Love you Courtesy of: http://www.bronzeframing.co.uk/scrabble/love_u_thb.jpg

Caps Lock Courtesy of: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_xM6S1O620QE/TGnrzz5a8OI/AAAAAAAAmdw/omEKGFa1R_U/Caps%20Lock.jpeg

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Celebrity Crisis


Confidence
I feel like I need to start this blog with a disclaimer because I'm going to talk about things that need to be clearly identified as not belonging to each other.  They are the differences between confidence and self-absorption. I am all about confidence.  Everyone should have it and everyone should display it.  I've been told I'm in fact much too modest.  Trust me I do this on purpose because the megalomaniacal beast that I hold at bay daily is no cake walk I assure you.  I try to channel that through my characters.  Let them be larger than life and I can just be me. 


I suppose I find myself wondering about the state of wealth and celebrity.  The wealthy are pretty obscure.  Very few people even know the names of the wealthiest people in the world.  They couldn't pick them out in a crowd, and can't easily identify their names in print or vocalized.  However celebrity is all the rage.  People can identify a celebrity without even trying, thus they become the image that is often associated with the wealthy.  Even pop cultural anarchists like myself can tell you a few basic tenets of modern pop culturalization. 

The best way to get press is to get caught doing something amoral by 'good' American citizen standards.  As an entertainer it is nearly impossible to not eventually do something that other people disapprove of.  Never underestimate the ability of people to do two things, misunderstand, and then judge what they never understood. The irony is that the best way to keep fame is to then somehow transcend what got people's attention in the first place. Which I believe is that crucial step between confidence and self-absorption. It’s 'I got away with it' syndrome.  It leads to a life of 'getting away with it' and expecting to always do so.  This is when the first inkling of "I'm better than you starts" to really cement itself.

Remember this story? I do!
Self-absorption starts with that one basic idea.  I am better than you.  Every case of it stems from that one primary thought. I've had brief brushes with celebrity and I hated it.  I hated it because this entity of celebrity can somehow prevent and hinder the ability of making true connections. My life has no meaning without true connections to other people.  It was hard for me to tell the difference between the truth as it was, and the truth as it was being presented as.  The biggest favor I ever did for myself was to discover the difference.  From time to time I still slip up.  But with less people involved in the process to snow me over for their own gain, it’s easier than it could've been.

The only aspect of celebrity that I didn't mind was the idea that financial woes would cease for myself and those I loved. However at what point does your financial success when combined with the specter of celebrity make you not see anything beyond yourself.  To be successful in any industry a certain level of personal choice and compliance has to be given up.  To be successful in a performance based industry this is multiplied by 10 because usually you aren't talking about just a job.  You are talking about doing something you are passionately in love with to a degree that it is a part of you.  You need it to exist more than you need breath. Sometimes that peak is very far away. So far in fact that people have to convince themselves beyond what is actually true to reach it.  Which means you have to negate reality as it is and replace it with one of your own (shameless Mythbusters steal).

So I test drove it.  This new reality for me was dark. It was filled with pitfalls and attacks.  An unending landscape of fire pits and terrifying creatures ready to snap your head off for fun.  I explore this idea more in a romance I'm writing featuring a Hollywood movie producer and a grassroots painter. It explores how alike they are yet how their choices made them seem so different from each other. Working on this again made me think about my own peccadilloes with fame, celebrity, and the price that I thought was too high to pay for the promise of money, glory, and popularity.

Overconfidence
I've never thought well of celebrities or people who needed and wanted fame.  That is my prejudice developed from people I've met and known in my past in addition to my disgust at the assumption they made that I was in fact just like them. I made assumptions about them based on my value system.  As unfair as that is, I do it because I realize they have done the same. The truth is I am just like them, we all are.  Some of us just channel it differently. But the core that makes someone choose to pursue fame and choose not to are basically identical.  The need to associate, develop, and ultimately belong to something. Always trying to find the formula to a happy fulfilling life. We just make different choices as to how to fulfill our core.

Celebrity Weddings
There were things that I attached to celebrity and fame because the actions others encouraged me to propagate in order to achieve it left very obvious victims. I never wanted to believe it was okay to look down on people.  I never wanted to think that some people just deserve less because I was able to achieve something considered 'more'.  I never wanted to be able to justify making ridiculous amounts of money and not starting a charity.  I never wanted my need to express my talent to mean more than human decency, kindness, and empathy.

The point is I never wanted to be able to ignore another person because I thought I was better than them.  I always think about the people who I know now that I most likely would not have met had I chosen a different path and what a grave loss that would be in my life.  Most importantly I never wanted to wrap myself in that cynical cocoon I was developing that didn't even allow grace in.  I wanted to remain human enough to understand the importance of humility. To ultimately keep the magic of meeting special people that the world for whatever reason ignores.  That feeling of discovering this perfect meadow that has somehow remained untainted by the filth of the world.

Yes this is that car
When I see that some rapper has blown $370,000 to destroy a car in a music video I cringe at what I could've become.  When a musician refuses to do a charity concert because they aren't getting paid I wonder why do they need more money.  They already have more than they need to live well. When I see music, art, dance leaving schools and very few of the people who benefitted from these programs care enough to do something about it, I wonder how can they claim to love what they do if they don't care enough to make sure that it always exists.  You can hear it in everything they do. I am better than you. And all I can think is I no longer care about anything you do.

Why?
Why does celebrity lead to this 'us versus them' mentality no matter what type of fame it is? This 'I as a celebrity cannot be bothered by you a regular person' nonsense.  I've meet people that aren't like that, but the majority abide by and prefer this separation that is in essence contributing to the class war that the wealthy is waging.  The extremely wealthy are using celebrity as their front line fodder. Celebrities bear the brunt of the criticisms for overt wealth and wealth flaunting practices. If celebrities would take a moment, and just be with 'regular' people they would be moved to discuss their plight and be less villianized.  But in this country our celebrities are sometimes even worse than our politicians.  Because for entertainment careers being a savvy politician is necessary for success.

Love word clouds
The question I could never answer, and was too afraid of losing myself to confront was this.  Is it even possible to retain any empathy, compassion, or reality when fame is your reality?  What would lead a character who is being victimized by his own fame into understanding the plight of a person on the other end of life?  In this case I choose magic.  A witch to be exact.  I wonder how their story will end?  Coming soon. . . .

Confidence courtesy of: http://danpetrosini.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/confidence.jpg





Word Cloud courtesy of: http://www.compassnt.com/Compassion_Quotes.html

Celebrity Weddings courtesy of:

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Power of Inheritance


Albert Einstein summed it up best, one sentence, 3 words. Everything is relative.  I think for the most part people in general don't really apply this to all aspects of human existence.  I'm not going to speak for the late father of physics but something tells me that if you had thought to ask, "Do you mean some things or everything?" he would've given you a knowing smile and replied "EVERYTHING".  Because of the nature of perspective and personal understanding, everything is relative to what your mind has assimilated.

This assimilation and understanding comes from the pattern your mind has developed for a certain sequence of events.  The synapses in our brains are like little roads and usually we take the same path to get to a place on that road.  This is the analogy usually given to describe Alzheimer’s.  The road that the patient is accustomed to using gets burned out and is no longer available. On our little brain roads sometimes we stop short and sometimes we move on.  Upon occasion we can't get to where we are trying to get to on our pre-existing road. When this happens we have to branch out and make a new one. When this pattern is broken and a new understanding comes into play, this is the process of learning.

The issue is that sometimes these roads aren't new roads at all.  We just built a short cut to get back to the road that we were already on.  But because of this feeling of being on a different road we have a tendency to believe that it is a different road just because we didn't get there the same way. Even though you may always go to that one stop on the road, somehow you have convinced yourself that it's a new stop and what feels like new information is actually stagnant ideas that you have gotten to in a new way.

We are pattern loving creatures and are hesitant to believe something that deviates from the set patterns. So when we are focused on one road without thought of how to get to this destination from every road, or better yet how to find a new destination, we will allow any circumstance to form the pattern we are so desperately seeking.  A self-fulfilling prophecy of getting exactly what you're after. A process that unwittingly justifies and reinforces those old familiar roads.  And in those situations humanity truly finds itself missing the forest because of the trees.

Gamer Camp
For this thought I will go to video games.  Video games are an interesting media and a distinctive subculture.  Like all things and subcultures video games speak their own language. Game designers and players have their own way of relating to each other.   In this world there are just gamers and none gamers.  There are the people who know where to go, how to play, and where to look when they need help.  They know the common tricks of game designers, and how to get past them to successfully finish these complex worlds and simulations. It is a culture because most outsiders have a hard time breaking into it because of the age of the culture.  Game players and designers have formed a symbiotic relationship.  As the games became easier to beat, the designers sought to make them harder.  As they sought to make them harder, the game players rose to the challenge.  Now new gamers have a wealth of catching up to do because the media has continued to feed itself by only interacting with an elite basis of individuals that have been involved with the process since day one. These gamers have advantages in game culture, language, technology, and experience.  These benefits will be passed on to anyone who is around them as they grow older in this gaming environment.

Game designers have a different experience than the players.  Game designers have constructed these worlds.  They know all of the ins and outs because they put them there by hand.  Either by themselves or by a group development committee, every nuisance of this game has been determined by a person; programmed, drawn, and interfaced to the best of that person's abilities with modern technology.  And if the technology doesn't exist for the plan, then game development teams have been known to create them.  Simple quick fix. If it doesn't exist, then now it shall.

Society and game design have a lot in common. Recently I was reading articles about the 1994 controversial book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by the late Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.  This book speaks on the concept of intelligence. The arguments for and against the claims of this work abound as the controversy of it has caused people to pick sides.  You have the one side that finds the work a crime against race relations and negotiations.  You have the other end that cries that just because the truth is ugly doesn't mean it's not the truth.  Frankly I think both sides are not actually looking at the forest because they are all too wrapped up in the trees.  Because if they did, I think they would see that technically both sides are right.

The game culture analogy was not just witty banter to make this writing more interesting.  It is a subsection of an idea that should be applied to the grand scheme of things to understand the nature of inequality as a much more holistic concern that isn't recent, but has been building since the beginning of formalized education. I don't know how many people understand the evolution of education.  In order to understand this one would need to pick up Plato's Republic and start from there.

Education was founded under a few assumptions; women, slaves and other less socially sophisticated people need not apply.  Education was a construction that was never intended for all.  So with this in mind, years and years were spent with certain sections of the population not being 'formally' educated.  And what is formal education you ask.  It is a construct of principles that the very people who declared that other populations should be exempt from learning created.  It was their game world.  And in this game they were the only ones allowed to know the rules and actually play the game.  So amongst themselves a new culture of 'educates' bred.

Let us fast forward to the United States of America and its founding fathers.  These were well bred, highly educated men.  For almost a century their family lines have benefitted from their exposure to education.  But not just any education, because all cultures have education, but the type of education that will one day be promoted as the only needful education in the world. An education that will take precedence over all other forms in the modern world. This education was revisited with a few exceptions; namely some women could now be educated in certain subjects.  However an entire core of native people and a displaced slave class would be not only denied this education, but relegated to being the ultimate victims of it as all rules and regulations operated on the statures set by this form of education.  Thus it became necessary to make sure that they never truly had an education lest they endeavor to use it to free themselves.

Black Monopoly
You accomplish this in several ways.  First you make their education illegal. Then you make the associations between them and the ones who are educated properly illegal. Finally you endeavor to convince them that even if they attained this education, their minds are not equipped to actually benefit from it.  This last damaging crippling blow is why things like the bell curve resurfaces every so often citing tests and data that tells the story of cultural and racial inequality.  The need to resurrect the ideas of inequality as an intelligence qualifier as opposed to a socialized one.  Or as I see it, oppressors attempting to justify their oppression.

Let's really look at this for a second while considering the gamer analogy I mentioned earlier.  Simple math is a game designer's specialty.  Now if you have spent 4 years playing a game, and not only just one game but every instance of this game. Wouldn't you be better at it than someone who has only played the same game for 2 years and not all versions of it?  While after 2 years your proficiency should be relatable, can they ever be the same?  Yes, if somehow the other player slacks off and you place double the amount of effort into learning this game while they are slacking off and creating a new learning curve. But this would only come from a consolidated effort of the other player slowing down and the new one being determined enough to catch up.  It happens but it's just like running a race.  Successfully balanced races start at equal footing with skill being the determinant and
definer of the winner.  It is nearly impossible to win a race, even if both cars are equal, if the other car is given a hundred meter head start.

Now let's apply this simple cause and effect to decades of education keeping in mind that legislation for equitable schooling had to continue throughout the 70s.  Education is not just book learning; like gaming, it is a community.  A set of guides, cheats, strategies, learned and applied paradigms that enable the gamer to get the most out of their experience. Education is a combination of teachers, schools, parents, students, and the resources available to them.  Frankly just based on the amount of resources alone at low income schools with high minority populations, the difference in the race shouldn't be as minimal as it is. I'm talking about school environments where students share one computer, a few have to group to have access to a textbook, are taught by teachers that did not achieve as highly on tests, and sometimes minimal to no community and parental support. Compare that to students who have well educated parents who influence them daily with their habits, a safe neighborhood to return to, abundant educational resources and the ability to attract high quality teachers. Tell me, what does this race look like?

Social Mobility Graph
How can racial intelligence be the cause of housing discrimination that forces even middle class minority families into low- income housing thus their children into low income schools? How can racial intelligence be the cause of work force discrimination that has only heightened since the implementation of affirmative action as the average man has convinced himself that unqualified minorities will take the good jobs even though hiring based on race is actually illegal and somehow minorities are not being hired in equitable amounts?

I don't believe that the writers of the bell curve acted maliciously.  I believe they acted rather foolishly because it is painfully apparent that in an attempt to discover new truths they merely took shortcuts that lead them back to the very thoughts that they claimed to be distancing themselves from.  I believe that in their heart of hearts they wanted to provide answers and to reaffirm what was once 'known' in a way that was more socially acceptable.  The horror of this is that I believe that they believed they were telling the absolute truth as they saw it and as science found it.  A truth that did not account for the different race starts and how the echoes of that will be felt decades from now.

Every game designer knows that if for some reason your game doesn't work, isn't balanced, or is unplayable the fault isn't with the intelligence of the player.  The fault is in the intelligence of your design.

Black Monopoly courtesy of:
http://failfun.com/wp-content/uploads/black-monopoly-fail.jpg

Social Mobility Graph courtesy of:
http://latepromises.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/social-mobility-grapgh2.jpg

Gamer Camp courtesy of
http://media.next-gen.biz/files/imagecache/small-list-article/gamer_camp_1up.jpg