an auto-ethnographic memoir of the ways social media has changed (almost) absolutely nothing

In 2003, I graduated from college and moved to New York. Well, Jersey City, New Jersey to be exact. But I worked in Chelsea. For this small town girl, it was the illusion of “living the dream,” but I was too poor and too depressed that my top-10 University degree was not helping me do anything worthwhile with my life.

Yes, 2003, as you will recall, was pre-Facebook. When I moved from the Midwest to the East Coast that October, I had already begun to migrate away from Friendster and towards Myspace. It would not be until late 2005 when I would, under pressure from co-workers, open a Facebook account.

In 2003, I was employed as a librarian at a boutique architecture firm on 22^nd Street, right around the corner from a Barnes and Noble where people like Betty White and David Sedaris regularly did public readings. The only thing I liked about my job was that it sounded fancy and I once ran into Austin Scarlet (from Project Runway season 1) in the building’s elevator. But really being the “librarian” meant that I opened mail, filed catalogues, and eventually learned to master the art of using Excel as a payroll system. The “boutique” firm did not usually design cool restaurants or private homes. Most of our business came from the hospital sector.

I quickly found that the actual amount of work I needed to do in an eight hour day probably amounted to about 90 minutes. But I had the internet. I read the New York Times website cover to cover (or whatever the appropriate term would be), back in the days when there was no pay structure. I wrote on the billboard site for all of the Discovery Channel shows I watched with my roommate at night. I wrote emails back and forth to said roommate who worked downtown for a large credit card company. We usually averaged about 70 emails a day. Then we started using gchat instead and we lost count. I was obsessed with this website called Flavor Pill which essentially posted free and low-cost arts related events around the city. Every week they had a short 200 word essay contest to win tickets to some sort of film premiere or art opening. I won about every other month, which is a testament to the time I spent crafting these essays, rather than any innate writing talent. And by 3:00 when it seemed I had exhausted all other alternatives, I resigned myself to Myspace. I searched for new music there. I commented on friend’s latest picture uploads. Of course back in those days, people uploaded pictures at the tune of 5 a month. I even met new people. I don’t remember how exactly. Probably through groups one could join. I met a professor of anthropology from Florida who ended up guiding me through the graduate school admissions process a few years later. I also remember essentially planning a lunch date with a woman who worked a few blocks away, but I canceled at the last minute and just went to the Whole Foods salad bar 3 blocks away. I even started this here blog while working there.

Today, I read an NPR article that reminded me of those days. The days when my nokia phone worked just fine. When the internet was a waste of time, but I needed a way to waste time. When I lived a twelve hour car trip from my family and my best friend had just taken off to backpack in Australia for a year. I had no land line, so I called my mother using my cell phone, usually on Sunday afternoons. My roommate and I had internet at home, with Ethernet cables running between our bedrooms (Who needed wifi? Who needed internet in the living room or kitchen? I had my fill of internet at work). My boyfriend did not have internet at home, but he did have a giant television with 200 channels. The article laments, like so many, that “We Are Just Not HereAnymore.”

I offer my story here as an example of what the article gets wrong. In 2003, I spent at least 6½ hours of my eight hour work day, mentally not there. And social networking at it’s early stage was my last resort for ways to waste time at work. I’d then ride the train home, listening to my new mp3 player, reading a book, and barely making eye contact with anyone. Once home I would make dinner and watch tv with my roommate. We were physically in the same room, but our interaction was minimal. We found it so funny that this was our usual mode of existence that we hung a painting of us sitting on the futon staring at the TV (pictured above). On nights that I spent with my then boyfriend, I was often driven crazy by his obsession with television. He often spoke exclusively in quotes from whatever Bravo TV show was hip at the moment. In the morning, if we took the train to work together I was often deeply offended because rather than talk to me while we rode, he preferred to wear his headphones and listen to the news on his pocket radio (maybe I should have known it wouldn’t last). In those days, I paid rent on an apartment in Jersey City, and received paychecks from an architecture firm in Manhattan, but I didn’t live there. I lived through the phone calls to my mom and sister. I lived through the monthly emails sent by my best friend in Australia. And occasionally, when we’d all get together for a backyard barbeque, Sparks, and a rousing game of paper telephone, I lived with my friends. But we did not have rousing, meaningful conversation. We’d watch tv and comment, and generally drunkenly make fun of each other. The adventures would end up retold in my roommate’s livejournal. Photos would be shared via Photobucket or Snapfish. The stories might end up condensed into inside jokes about a hairy rock in the bathtub or what happens after bazooka, but they were not worthy of literary inscription.

The point is, maybe we’re not “here.” But if we are not now, we never were. People have been interacting with people in other places since the beginnings of modern humans’ existence. They have been preoccupied with what’s going on “over there” with “those people” for 200,000 years.  To think that new forms of technology are creating supposes there is some prior, “more authentic” form of communication we’ve left behind. But that simply did not exist. We are still human. We still communicate with other humans in the mode of our time…from cave painting to Snapchat, these modes help us share information with people close and far, for now or later. So let’s stop lamenting the social ills that everyone seems to want to find to be emerging from social media and get on with the usual business of being social with those in our immediate vicinity and those far outside of it.

el doctor joven

this blog was recently compared to the musings that appeared at the end of Doogie Howser, MD. i took this as extreme compliment. not because I remember 'ol doogie writing anything terribly interesting, but because i loved that damn show. i loved doogie. i loved vinnie. i love that whole "wiz kid aces SATs."

well, it occurred to me that the reflexive journal writing as ending to television episode genre did not end with doogie. indeed, that neoliberal bastian of consumerist womanhood, sex and the city, also used such a convention. needless to say, i was pleased this was not the show chosen for comparison.

that is all. just some meta-reflexivity today.

adendum

oh my

"women are hard wired to want peace....its i our DNA"

"boys will be boys"

this just gets better and better

aye, television

ok, so i somehow just started watching GREEK on abc family. i'm not sure why i did not surf around after turning the television on to this channel, but i didn't.

and now i just have to rant (i know, i know, its my own fault). but so on the show (which i know absolutely nothing about) there's a women's studies class of all women and one man. the professor asks a question, what 3 female leaders have in common (i've never heard of any of them....shows you what kind of womanist/feminist/queer/political scientist i am...) and the one man answers correctly: they all have a strong record of conflict resolution.

the professor affirms that this is correct then goes on to say "it is their instinct as women that has cultivated their abilities at conflict resolution." i waited for the "Psych!" and fully expected it, especially because the professor was being portrayed by Janine Garofalo. but no....apparently they were serious.

WTF? I guess I'd expect them to at least consult some sort of women's studies textbook. Maybe they did. Maybe it was written in the 1940s.

Makes you wonder what gross inaccuracies are being perpetuated in the art history class scenes.

la raza

i'm probably not as qualified to write about this as i'd like to think, but rumagin, delf & i were talking last week about comedy skits that satirize racial stereotypes, and (no matter their intentions) whether they serve to reinforce and naturalize sterotypes and ghettoization, or whether they destabalize them. i, being one to usually argue for the revolutionary potential of performance argue that comedic representations of stereotypes do destabalize them. perhaps people find them funny because they think they're "rooted in truth" but i think they also find them funny because they realize that they are satire-that they don't represent reality, but an exaggeration. and this tends to call into question how these things are constructed. overly-"ghettoized" language makes us realize that people who might talk in similar ways are themselves engaging in a social performance. satirizing the employment options in low income neighborhoods focuses attention on social inequalities.

of course, people often bring up Chappelle's resignation from his show because he felt people were laughing at him, not with him. and i don't doubt his reasons for feeling that way. but what this argument ignores is that at one point, and presumably for some time, he felt that his performance did have potential to change things. to denaturalize. perhaps to break down and reform popular and ideological notions of race. and maybe it didn't happen as quickly or as completely as he'd have liked. and he certainly had every right to decide what he did. but i think he was more effective than he thought. npr did a series in 2002 addressing these issues, and some other comic did seem to feel effective in dismantling stereotypes, at least to an extent.

but then again, maybe i give audiences too much credit. maybe i assume a critical viewer, where there are none. now, leap would say at this point we need audience reception studies. so, despite the fact that no one ever comments here these days, i know you're out there. so how do you think this stuff is received?

when you watch WacArnold, does it highlight for you the structural inequalities and violences of urban ghettoization, or do you laugh because, oh, those crazy black urban folks....they really do need to get a job.

Chappelle's Show
WacArnold's
comedycentral.com
Charlie Murphy Videos Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs Black Comedy

do you laugh at bon qui qui because it presents critique of racial stereotypes, or because "those people" really do talk funny?

seriously, i'm curious.

mis chicos

oh my.
a new season of my boys in impending.

this does not bode well for my ability to defend my television viewing habits.

4 de noviembre

tuesday when i got home from class i did laundry and watched cnn. but of course, nothing much was happening before polls closed, so there wasn't much point, except to see wolf blitzer and anderson cooper say the same things over and over. lou called shortly after i arrived, to say that she wasn't going to grant park as planned. i told her i was disappointed because i wanted to live vicariously through her.

but at 7:30 i went to julie's to watch the returns. the truth is though, i wasn't paying much attention to the tv. rumagin, ezra & i made some predictions as to timing and electoral numbers, but mostly i was concentrated more on my whisky and a conversation about umphrey's mcgee.

then ohio went to obama. and florida. and virginia. i had said to rumagin earlier, that if ohio goes blue, i'd be pretty convinced of victory. but somehow when the cnn powers that be announce such things with 14% of precincts reporting, it just doesn't feel real yet. so we continued to watch. the crowd of 15 slowly dwindled until it was just julie, phil, ee, and I.

and then mccain conceeded. i had a bottle of champagne that dvine gave me for my birthday, which we opened during his speech. However, we had to sort of work the cork out. no popping across the room. which is, unfortunately, how the announcement felt. but we toasted. it looked like obama wasn't going to speak for a while, so ee and i hopped in my car and i started to take him home.

but as we neared his place, the streets were getting crowded and we decided we should probably head down 16th street. we got to M and we were seeing more and more people, so we parked and walked to the white house. and there was a small crowd. there's a fence along the back side of the house, across the street from Lafayette Sq. and we worked our way through a few hundred people to it. there wasn't much going on other than chanting and singing and really we were both sort of tired and just taking in everything around us.

we stayed for about an hour, both running into students in the classes we TA. But things weren't too crazy. when we decided to leave, we realized the crowd had grown exponentially around us. by the time we got back to the car, and npr, they were announcing that the crowd had reached "several thousand." there were GW cross country team members running and singing, a guy wandering around in his underwear, people in suits, people with cameras, off duty security guards, kids who looked 15, old hippie activist types, young punk activist types. but everybody was happy and yelling. the streets were basically a constant stream of cars honking continuously, and pedestrians running with their arms up down the middle of the street shouting happily.

dc returned 92% in favor of obama by the last count i saw. and on the streets last night you could certainly tell. everyone was out. everyone was shouting or honking. and for once, nobody seemed to care how slowly traffic was moving.

mis chicos

i watched the My Boys season finale tonight without seeing any of the rest of the season.

suffice to say, i'm still convinced it is a reflection of my life.

and despite the fact that anyone with with unimpaired hearing can tell the show is total crap, i love it.

dos en un dia

more navajo...

it seems everyone's favorite (or least favorite) Micky D's eating documentarian is on the loose on the rez. yes, mr. spurlock spent 30 days on the rez in tohachi (beth yazzie's stomping grounds, in fact). it premieres tomorrow night, and i think i will break my 2 month long moraorium on television to see whether it surpasses Discovery's Going Tribal (my thoughts on that show can be seen here, here, here, here, and probably most elloquently here). I have high hopes for ol' Morgan, and I'm especially interested in seeing the sheep slaughter, given my own experience with it.

if i watch (and i'll be home alone in hey-town that night, so likelihood is high), i'll be sure to follow up with a full report. until then...hagoshii'

buscando para una casita y amor

well, the homehunt was a failure. i had 3 appointments, but 2 were already rented by the time i got there. the third was a studio in a big complex. it was ok. livable. close to whole foods, and not terribly terribly far from the metro. but nothing worth coveting. so i'm passing on it. perhaps this will prove to be a foolish move, but i think i should keep looking. maybe the realtor will find me something amazing.

i do, however, have a much better idea of neighborhoods. by no means comprehensive, but better. au really is surrounded by residential zones. not much by way of a little downtown nearby. but its not far from georgetown, which is very cute and inviting, so i suppose that works.

after all the looking (& walking!) i headed back to chinatown for the bus. i ate a little, got on the bus, read a bit and eventually, i started thinking a lot about jk and questioning things. i got a bit misty-eyed, and then fell asleep.

then, somewhere around edison, nj, we got a flat tire. thinking i was fairly close to home, and know someone with a car, i gave him a call. he lied about being sober, then made up excuses (involving pizza) about why he couldn't come get me. and its not so much the fact that he didn't. it more that, in my thinking, in my worldview-if you will, when you care about someone, you go out of your way to make them happy. you try to help them out of predicaments without being asked. making them smile makes you smile.

so, eventually the tire gets fixed, and we're back on the road. we got into the city around midnight, and i was home by 12:45 (now, if i had been picked up in edison, even with bad traffic, i would have been home by 11). now, k had told me to call when i got to the city so we could hang out, and i first called right before going through the holland. then when i got off the bus. then between the subway and the path. never an answer, so i just went home. and when i walked in the apartment, sitting on my desk was a box from a friend of mine. perhaps friend is overstating. it was from a guy i knew in college, who was a friend of several of my friends. we had a few im conversations here and there. we spoke at parties, but i have never been in posession of his telephone number. and as far as i know he has never had mine. but a while ago i sent many people nyc condoms from work and he was among them. in return he sent me, priority mail, a box of cookies, homebaked in his own kitchen. and i thought....now that is what i've been looking for.

now, this is not to say that i've been looking for it in this particular pseudo-friend. not at all. but that is the type of thing i would expect a loved one to do.

so, then yesterday, i was at work all day. 9 hours to be exact. i did get free dinner out of it, but it was still annoying and stressful. i got home just in time for the sopranos finale, and k & clay brought over some pizza from pizzaland. i didn't have hbo for the first 85% of the sopranos run, and as a latecomer, i never understood the acclaim it had earned. i never found the stories that compelling (though i had taken an interest in the anthony jr. storyline i suppose), i found the ways that women were treated at time appalling, and i've never enjoyed graphic violence. it just wasn't my bag. but everyone (especially in jersey, but including my parents) has been enchanted by it, so i gave it one last shot. i figured it would go out with a bang, and i'd finally be swayed.

and then it ended. and i was miffed. i'd call it awful, but it isn't even deserving of a reaction. at that point i said i was fed up with tv and wasn't watching anything else on hbo. so i went to my room to read. when the john from cincinatti ended, k came in and said he was leaving so he could do some ironing. i wimpered a bit and he left. then i called him and wimpered more. then i had a good crying session. then i called my mama, and had a very long chat about all things relating to love.

today i still feel deflated. i don't know what i want, or if i want anything at all. i suppose it doesn't really matter what i want. i have a certain set of circumstances to deal with and from those i will make my own history.