Update on my Social Media Detox:
I’ve done a “cleanse” like this before, and as always, I’m surprised by how much time suddenly appears in my day. But this time I’ve noticed something else.
I am thinking like a writer again.
Seriously. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Social Media Cleanse
Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged fact-free zone, going dark., Paris attacks, social media on 19 Nov 2015| 10 Comments »
Remember what I said about that first type of reaction to the Paris attacks? The xenophobic rants against Muslims specifically and refugees in general? Remember how, in Monday’s post, I said that this kind of reaction had, “for the most part subsided from the social sphere“?
Well, never mind.
Tuesday and Wednesday saw a resurgence, and my social media feeds were filled with these memes of bigotry. I ended up spending all of my social media time either arguing with the posters of those rants or trying to ignore them entirely.
I failed. At both.
Some people are so willing to hate other groups of people, so eager to hate our government and all it does, that it is pointless to argue with them. No amount of factual reportage in support of my position nor any amount of factual refutation of their opposite stance make any difference. I truly was in a “fact-free zone.”
By yesterday, noonish, I felt ill. My guts were churning. My head ached under a sharp vise-like grip. I could feel the blood pounding in my neck, hear it in my ears.
I had a clear case of social media poisoning.
So I shut it down.
I am now “dark” on social media, and now, less than eighteen hours in, I already feel much better.
Instead of spoon-feeding facts to wailing, hate-filled tantrum-throwers, I am learning how to repair fountain pens (Sheaffer vacuum-fill models, specifically), preparing meats for a long cure (bresaola and capicola), working on my bread-making skills (dough: check; baking temps/times: needs work), and getting Pepper back from our new mechanic (he’s a bit of a goofball, but excellent work).
This “social media cleanse” will last through the weekend, at least. At the end of it, I may have to “cleanse” my friends list as well.
I recommend it.
k
Grief Shaming: Social Media’s New Orthodoxy
Posted in Culture, tagged Daesh, ISIS, islamophobia, paris, Paris attacks, social bullying, social media on 17 Nov 2015| 8 Comments »
Some folks are going to find this post offensive.
I don’t frakking care.
In the days following the attacks on Paris, social media had two major reactions. The first (and fastest) was the predictable xenophobic rants against Islam, Muslims, and refugees. These are the now-standard spoutings of eentsy-minded fear-mongers who don’t like anyone unlike themselves and who use any excuse to close ranks and point their lily-white fingers at “the other.” These racist tirades were met with strong opposition from almost every quarter–in Paris itself, here in America, and online as well–and except for the rabid right-wingnuts, they have for the most part subsided from the social sphere.
The second, slower, and longer-lasting response was a series of “How dare you?” memes directed not at the perpetrators of these unconscionable attacks, but at people expressing their sorrow, sympathy, and solidarity with Paris. “How dare you?” these trolls demanded. “How dare you feel outrage over an attack on Paris when there have been attacks in Beirut and Baghdad, when Burundi officials have killed citizens, when over a hundred people were killed in Kenya?” These social memes are designed for one purpose: to shame us cheeky bastards who dare to express our sadness, grief, anger, or outrage regarding the events in Paris. These holier-than-thou bullies find my outrage offensive simply because I am not outraged enough. My outrage didn’t match their outrage, and I therefore deserved to be put in my place.
My response: Shut the frak up. (more…)
Miyako and the Art of Mindfulness
Posted in Culture, tagged beauty, erez sitzer, Japan, Miyako, short subject, Travel on 09 Nov 2015| 6 Comments »
I watch people. I observe, quietly and from a distance. Like a naturalist out in the wild, I do this so that I might better understand the behaviors of others—all y’all are often a mystery to me—and, in seeing what it is that makes them tick, take that knowledge and use it to create more believable characters in my writing.
If you study what moves someone emotionally, you can learn a lot about them, but while this works well with other people, I find that it doesn’t work well when I try to do it on myself. That is, I can’t seem to learn much about myself when I study the things that affect me. Other folks? When something makes them happy, sad, angry, it’s usually pretty clear why. But for me? All my deductions, all my insights are obscured by the fog of my own feelings, and the reason why I feel the things I feel remains a mystery.
Example: Miyako. (more…)
Stop! Thief! — For the Love of Books
Posted in Books, tagged allison hoover bartlett, book collecting, book review, books, john gilkey, ken sanders, the man who loved books too much on 02 Nov 2015| 2 Comments »
This weekend I finished reading a book, the first one in a while. I enjoyed it a great deal, but it was an unusual read in that, from the book’s very first page, I felt a very real connection to it. You see, my library also includes a few stolen books.
On my “old/rare books” shelf lies an 1892 edition of The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott. A family member—enamored of its exquisite etchings—checked it out from a library in the early ’40s and just “forgot” to return it. When it came into my possession, forty years later, it was agreed by all that returning it was unnecessary. Probably.
A few other books on my shelf have sketchy backgrounds, too. One is a Bible illustrated by Salvador Dali that I didn’t ask too many questions about, and another is a large-format book of the works Michelangelo that had been so obviously mismarked at a garage sale that paying the 50¢ asking price was nothing short of theft.
And so, when i
n the prologue to her non-fiction bestseller, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, author and journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett describes how she came into possession of a book with a less-than-pristine provenance, I felt the echoed pangs of my own guilty conscience. (more…)
Godspeed, Harriet
Posted in Books, tagged amazon, book reviews, Harriet Klausner on 27 Oct 2015| 4 Comments »
Book lovers never die; they just get carried away by a story.”
You may never have heard of her, but in the publishing world, Harriet Klausner was legendary.
This week, she passed away, aged only 63.
Harriet Klausner was the uncontested Queen of Book Reviews. A speed reader who easily consumed four to six novels a day, she was (and remains) Amazon’s #1 Hall of Fame reviewer, with over 31,000 reviews to her credit.
In 2006 (when she had only written around 13,000 reviews), Time Magazine listed her as one of the year’s most influential people. “Klausner is part of a quiet revolution in the way American taste gets made.”
Indeed. (more…)
Fingersmith: A Surprise
Posted in Movies, tagged Acorn TV, Charles Dance, Fingersmith, Imelda Staunton, movie reviews, Sally Hawkins, Victorian drama on 17 Oct 2015| Leave a Comment »
“I didn’t see that coming.”
That’s something you’ll rarely hear me say when watching a movie or video. Truth be told, seldom does a plot-line surprise me to the point where I sit back and blink. Here’s a movie/show that not only made me say that, but also made me pause the playback to understand why I was caught so by surprise.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 