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#Post#: 21836--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Mac Date: August 9, 2013, 11:28 am
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Classic... now. Coincidentally The Dave Glover Show was going
over 'tipping' recently. Many different points of view of when,
who, why, etc.
Me, I tip straight 20% for good food and service. If need be,
the food or service sucks, then I rethink it.
I never tip fast food. Honestly, what is the difference between
McDonalds and Starbucks. Nada
#Post#: 21987--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Chiprocks1 Date: August 14, 2013, 11:26 am
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[center]When You Die, Does Your Facebook Go, Too?
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyBkdo87Oe8
#Post#: 22008--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Mac Date: August 15, 2013, 11:50 am
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Even more proof, social networking, is providing bad habits and
life lessons. This is bad.
[glow=red,2,300]Boys also harmed by teen 'hookup' culture,
experts say[/glow]
HTML http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/52762161
[quote]A 15-year-old girl sits in high school English class when
a text message pops up on her cellphone. It's from a boy sitting
across the room. He hardly knows her, but he likes her. Here's
how he chooses to get that message across:
Him: "So, are you good at hooking up?"
Her: "Um idk. I don't really think about that."
Him: "Well, I want my d--k in your mouth? Will you at least be
my girlfriend."
It's the kind of scenario that's playing out among teens across
America, illustrating an increasing confusion among boys about
how to behave, experts say. In the casual-sex "hookup" culture,
courtship happens by text and tweet. Boys send X-rated
propositions to girls in class. Crude photos, even nude photos,
play a role once reserved for the handwritten note saying, "Hey,
I like you."
According to new research, boys who engage in this kind of
sexualized behavior say they have no intention to be hostile or
demeaning — precisely the opposite. While they admit they are
pushing limits, they also think they are simply courting. They
describe it as "goofing around, flirting," said Catherine
Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and school consultant who
interviewed 1,000 students nationwide for her new book, "The Big
Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the
Digital Age."
How the hookup culture affects young people has long been
debated and lamented, in books and blogs, among parents and
teachers. A general consensus is that it harms girls, although
some have argued that it empowers them. The effect on boys,
however, is less often part of the discussion.
Conventional wisdom tends to oversimplify the situation to
something along the lines of: Boys get to have sex, which is
really all they want. They are seen as predators, and girls,
their prey.
Reality is far more complex than this, in ways that can affect
young men socially and emotionally well into adulthood,
according to Steiner-Adair. It's "insufficient, superficial and
polarizing when boys simply get cast as aggressors and girls as
victims," she said. In her view, girls can certainly suffer
negative consequences from the hookup culture. Her point is:
Boys can, too. "It's such a bad part of our culture to think
that boys aren't also harmed," she says. "We are neglecting the
emotional lives of boys."
In interviews and focus groups, Steiner-Adair talked with boys
and girls ages 4 to 18 at suburban public and private schools,
with consent from parents and schools, about their relationships
and influences. Kids from the fourth grade and up shared their
private texts and Facebook posts, unveiling the dating
landscape. In one case, a boy sent a naked snapshot of himself
to his girlfriend, with a suggestive caption. The girl, who had
never seen her boyfriend naked, was shocked, and said she felt
the relationship had suddenly lost its innocence. "I was so mad
about that," she said. The girl's reaction, in turn, surprised
the boy. He really liked her. His behavior, said Steiner-Adair,
was "aggressive in a way that boys don't understand."
Steiner-Adair also saw the string of texts between the
15-year-old girl in English class and her suitor. The girl
described the conversation as "a stupid, disgusting exchange,"
adding that it was "typical for the boys at our school." Still,
the girl became intrigued when the boy revealed in a subsequent
note that he liked her. The girl wondered if she should tell him
how his initial approach had offended her. Then she started to
cry, questioning whether it was worth the effort.
Teenagers have never been known for their social grace. But this
generation is navigating adolescence with a new digital tool kit
— Facebook, Twitter — that has the unintended side effect of
subtracting important social cues, according to Steiner-Adair.
Nuance and body language are lost in translation.
She also noted the influence of online porn. Students across the
country asked Steiner-Adair about graphic images they had seen.
One boy said, "I don't get it — why would a woman get turned on
by being choked?" A girl asked her if it was normal to have anal
sex.
Another boy showed her pornographic notes that two of his
friends had secretly sent to a girl from his own Facebook page,
including, "Your challenge is to go for weeks without d--ks in
all four of your holes." When the boy found out about the prank,
he wasn't upset, but amused. "This is just my friends being
idiots, basically," he said. "They were just trying to be
funny." Steiner-Adair asked why the exchange had turned so nasty
and the boy said, "It didn't turn nasty. That's the norm for our
generation."
To be sure, some boys have always been crude. The new extremes,
said Steiner-Adair, can be damaging. Boys don't benefit, she
said, from learning to be demeaning toward girls or to treat
them as sexual objects. She said boys often expressed a desire
for a deeper connection with girls, but felt confused about how
to make it happen. They are "yearning for intimacy that goes
beyond biology," she said. "They just don't know how to achieve
it."
Andrew Smiler, a developmental psychologist, agrees. He examined
some 600 studies on masculinity, sex and relationships for his
book "Challenging Casanova," concluding that most young men are
more motivated by love than sex. Pop culture helps spur the
disconnect between what young men want and how they often act,
he argues, citing as an example the show "Two and a Half Men."
"The jerk gets all the laugh lines," he said. "The nice guy
always looks like a sap."
That theory is debated. Steven Rhoads, a professor who teaches a
class on sex differences at the University of Virginia, said he
analyzed decades worth of research on sexuality and biology for
his book "Taking Sex Differences Seriously" to conclude that men
and women are "hardwired" differently. Hookups have deeper
psychological costs for women, he said, noting that anecdotes
from his students back up the research: Female students often
tell him they are hurt by casual sex in a way that male students
are not. The boys don't know it, he said, because the girls
don't want to tell them.
For boys and girls alike, crucial lessons in how to relate to
each other are getting lost in the blizzard of tweets and texts,
experts say. The cues kids would pick up from a live
conversation — facial expressions, gestures — are absent from
the arm's-length communications that are now a fixture of
growing up. The fast-paced technology also "deletes the pause"
between impulse and action, said Steiner-Adair, who calls
texting the "worst possible training ground" for developing
mature relationships. Dan Slater, the author of "Love in the
Time of Algorithms," agrees. "You can manage an entire
relationship with text messages," he said, but that keeps some
of the "messy relationship stuff" at bay. "That's the stuff that
helps people grow up," he added.
The key to developing solid relationships lies partly in early
education, said Steiner-Adair. To that end, some schools are
launching classes focused on social and emotional issues, with
teachers talking about gender, language, social media and
healthy relationships.
Also critical, according to Steiner-Adair, is family time spent
away from screens. In her research, teens often said their
parents were embroiled in work or personal interests and simply
not available. Some parents said they were intimidated by their
children's complaints and exploits, and didn't want to seem
ignorant or helpless. The heart of the matter for families, she
said, is good old-fashioned talking — the kind you do face to
face.[/quote]
#Post#: 22544--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Mac Date: September 5, 2013, 11:36 am
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I knew the pendulum would start swinging the other way. I wonder
if it will fully swing to opposite side and people get off the
grid?
[glow=red,2,300]Half of Americans online worry about privacy,
says study[/glow]
[quote]Lynn Boyden, a college professor in Los Angeles who
teaches website design, says she has developed two identities
online: a public one for her professional life and a private one
that only a few close friends can access. She tries to block
advertising trackers when she can and limits what personal data
might wind up on public sites.
It's an approach that she says works, although it takes time and
attention.
"It's a sliding scale," said Boyden of what information she
chooses to share. "Some things are and should be private."
Americans might be sharing more personal information online than
ever through social networking sites and email. But they also
want to better control who can see it, according to a study
released Thursday by the Pew Research Center's Internet and
American Life Project.
The study reported that privacy concerns among Americans are on
the rise, with 50 percent of Internet users saying they are
worried about the information available about them online, up
from 33 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, 86 percent of people
surveyed have tried at least one technique to hide their
activity online or avoid being tracked, such as clearing cookies
or their browser history or using encryption.
More...
HTML http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/today-50-percent-americans-online-worry-about-privacy-8C11079652[/quote]
#Post#: 22568--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Neumatic Date: September 5, 2013, 10:54 pm
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I keep thinking there's gonna be an analog internet type thing
breaking out in the near future, almost steampunky. The
sneakernet is gonna be HUGE, I'm already thinking it might not
be a bad idea to have one computer that's never connected to the
internet. It's a shame we're being driven to this but what are
you gonna do? We're living in a cyberpunk novel now.
#Post#: 23662--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Mac Date: November 3, 2013, 10:41 am
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[glow=red,2,300]Things You Do Online That'd Be Creepy In Real
Life [/glow]
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziQFFh5jznI#t
#Post#: 23678--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Mac Date: November 4, 2013, 1:42 pm
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It seems Pandora’s Box is open. I personally don’t see how we
can go back. At times I do believe there are events that swing
to an extreme end, and people react wildly and the pendulum
swings back. The advent of smartphones is the new culture. I do
agree there are definite benefits, but I think the collateral
damage to the culture is only the beginning. Yes, I’m talking
about decorum and a little old fashioned neighborly respect.
Yes, I don’t know any of these people, but it just irritates the
hell outta me that little 2 X 4 screen is the most important
thing in that person’s life. That they evolved into their life
revolving around that social interaction and they believe that
is their friend.
2 weekends ago, on a long weekend vacation, we met up with some
of my step daughter’s friends. The conversation came around to
these smartphones. It was interesting in the sense, one girl
absolutely lived and died by her phone. She could not imagine a
minute without it, and in fact addressed it many times during
our brief afternoon drink. I found it extremely rude that she
decided the phone had higher priority over a pleasant
conversation. After attending her phone twice in the middle of
the conversations, I quit addressing her. She probably didn’t
even notice. My step daughter’s friend, though young was
completely on the other end of the spectrum. No longer owns a
smartphone and is making efforts to have real friendships,
relationships, discussions and more. My Step Daughter lives by
her phone too. Not to such the degree of a fully dependent
individual, but enough that it has changed her culturally.
I just think this cultural shift will produce some very
unhealthy actions… and years down the road, those folks with the
strange relationships with their phone, maybe asking… What
happened?
I’m fortunate enough to have lived the old way of life and see
the new way of life come in. Since I did not see a real need for
those ‘advantages’, I’ve never embraced it. I know I will have
to on some occasions, to at least to be able to talk to certain
folks, but IMO, I’m OK, living without all that ‘socializing’.
I like the article below. It’s well written and pretty much
addresses many different perspectives of the smartphone
phenomenon.
[quote]The host collects phones at the door of the dinner party.
At a law firm, partners maintain a no-device policy at meetings.
Each day, a fleet of vans assembles outside New York’s high
schools, offering, for a small price, to store students’
contraband during the day. In situations where politeness and
concentration are expected, backlash is mounting against our
smartphones.
In public, of course, it’s a free country. It’s hard to think of
a place beyond the sublime darkness of the movie theater where
phone use is shunned, let alone regulated. (Even the cinematic
exception is up for debate.) At restaurants, phones occupy that
choice tablecloth real estate once reserved for a pack of
cigarettes. In truly public space — on sidewalks, in parks, on
buses and on trains — we move face down, our phones cradled like
amulets.
No observer can fail to notice how deeply this development has
changed urban life. A deft user can digitally enhance her
experience of the city. She can study a map; discover an
out-of-the-way restaurant; identify the trees that line the
block and the architect who designed the building at the corner.
She can photograph that building, share it with friends, and in
doing so contribute her observations to a digital community. On
her way to the bus (knowing just when it will arrive) she can
report the existence of a pothole and check a local news blog.
It would be unfair to say this person isn’t engaged in the city;
on the contrary, she may be more finely attuned to neighborhood
history and happenings than her companions. But her awareness is
secondhand: She misses the quirks and cues of the sidewalk
ballet, fails to make eye contact, and limits her perception to
a claustrophobic one-fifth of normal. Engrossed in the virtual,
she really isn’t here with the rest of us.
Consider the case of a recent murder on a San Francisco train.
On Sept. 23, in a crowded car, a man pulls a pistol from his
jacket. In Vivian Ho’s words: “He raises the gun, pointing it
across the aisle, before tucking it back against his side. He
draws it out several more times, once using the hand holding the
gun to wipe his nose. Dozens of passengers stand and sit just
feet away — but none reacts. Their eyes, focused on smartphones
and tablets, don’t lift until the gunman fires a bullet into the
back of a San Francisco State student getting off the train.”
The incident is a powerful example of the sea change that public
space has suffered in the age of hand-held computing. There are
thousands of similar stories, less tragic, more common, that
together sound the alarm for a new understanding of public space
– one that accounts for the pervasiveness of glowing rectangles.
The glut of information technology separating us from our
surroundings extends well beyond our pocket computers. “Never
has distraction had such capacity to become total,” writes the
urban theorist Malcolm McCullough in “Ambient Commons: Attention
in the Age of Embodied Information.” “Enclosed in cars, often in
headphones, seldom in places where encounters are left to
chance, often opting out of face-to-face meetings, and ever
pursuing and being pursued by designed experiences, post-modern
post urban city dwellers don’t become dulled into retreat from
public life; they grow up that way. The challenge is to
reconnect.”
McCullough sees ambient information, from advertisements to the
music in shops to Taxi TV, as an assault on our attention. But
he’s no Luddite, and he’s not oblivious to the powerful ideas
that spring from the shared ground of technology and urbanism,
like Citizen Science, SeeClickFix or “Smart Cities.” What he’s
calling for, in Ambient Commons, is “information
environmentalism,” the idea that the proliferation of embedded
information deserves attention and study, from planners,
architects, politicians and especially from you and me.
Personal technology may be only a small part of McCullough’s
interpretation of “peak distraction,” but for most people, the
computer, tablet and phone are a focal point. What permanent
connectivity does to our minds is the subject of great debate.
What it does to public space is less often acknowledged.
Essentially, smartphone users in public operate under the
illusion that they are in private. They exist, in the words of
two Israeli researchers, in “portable, private, personal
territories.” Their memories of visited places are much worse
than those of control subjects.
Our current strategy is to wire everything, everywhere — Wi-Fi
in parks and subway tunnels; chargers in the squares bubbling
with free electrical current like Roman drinking fountains.
McCullough believes this freedom is irreversible. “To restrict
information would be unacceptable,” he writes. “The
communications rights of individuals and communities must be
inalienable, insuppressible, and not for sale.” The tasks of
filtering and decorum, he believes, fall to us as individuals.
Not everyone is so sure. Evgeny Morozov, reviewing McCullough’s
book in the New Yorker, approvingly cites the Dutch writer
Christoph Lindner’s argument for “slow spots” in cities. Morozov
points out that the candy bar Kit Kat (“give me a break!”) has
set up benches with Wi-Fi blockers in Amsterdam. Would we like
to see such a thing occur on a larger scale, in a museum, park
or in a neighborhood?
Of the three interwoven motivations for such regulations —
danger, civility and health — the first has been the most
effective. Just as 41 states rapidly banned texting while
driving, there are rumblings of “texting while walking” bans in
reaction to pedestrian fatalities. Last year, Fort Lee, N.J.,
made international news when it began issuing jaywalking tickets
to errant, phone-in-hand pedestrians who had veered into
traffic. Distracted walking bans have been proposed (with little
success, so far) in Arkansas, Illinois, Utah, New York and
Nevada. New York City paints “LOOK!” in its crosswalks.
In Japan, more than a dozen people fall off railway platforms
while looking at their phones each year. Some pundits there have
called for bans on texting while walking modeled after
successful “smoking while walking” campaigns. Train station
announcements remind commuters to look where they’re going, and
even mobile phone companies have begun to educate users about
the dangers of looking at a phone while walking.
But for all the talk of danger, it’s clear that the more
frequent problem with “distracted walking” is that it’s annoying
– and one of several uncivil side effects of smartphone growth.
Thus we have the “phone stack” game, where participants compete
not to use their phones, and the Guardian columnist who has
pledged to almost bump into smartphone walkers, to teach ‘em a
lesson. Blind people in Japan say they are being jostled like
never before; a man in a Seattle restaurant took a break from
his three companions to watch “Homeland” on his iPad. Some
restaurants, bars and coffee shops have banned smartphones and
computers for their corrosive social effects.
Anti-technology zoning for cognitive health – to protect us from
our own worst instincts – is a more complex challenge. Ought
urban parks, designed as restorative environments for a
different age, be adapted to insulate visitors from the Internet
as from noise, traffic and commerce? The fact that you can
address the connectivity problem yourself – just turn it off –
doesn’t preclude the possibility of an enforced solution.
Airlines turn off the cabin lights despite the existence of
blinders; earplugs don’t reduce the popularity of Amtrak’s Quiet
Car. William Powers’ idea for digitally free “Walden Zones,” for
example, has caught on in libraries – though because work,
relaxation and distraction look so similar, the rules are hard
to design. (A ready counter-argument: We are all so addicted to
our media that withdrawal could be more stressful than blissful,
buzzing distraction.)
Broadly speaking, any such regulations would require agreement
that public computing has negative externalities — that your
hand-held device is my problem.
McCullough is eager to situate these concerns in history, and
refers to movements against invasive advertising, light
pollution and smog. Morozov is particularly interested in the
history and success of the anti-noise campaigners who reshaped
the sound of the city.
But while it is obvious that light, noise and smoke corrupt
darkness, silence and clean air, the consequences of smartphone
use are far more opaque. What, exactly, does the man texting at
the bar disrupt? Is the situation different if he is watching a
violent movie or playing a visually arresting game? What does it
mean to fellow patrons if his face is bathed in the steady glow
of an e-book?
In the past, it has taken decades to pinpoint the external costs
of other people’s activities. Though smoking was often
considered a bother in the 19th century, it wasn’t until the
1920s that the aggravated parties coined the expression
“secondhand smoke.” (All this far before any awareness of its
health risks.)
It seems clear that there is such a thing as secondhand glow. It
impedes our movement on busy sidewalks, breaks our concentration
in movie theaters and libraries, and makes our public places as
dull and private as phone booths. The question is what to do
about it.
[/quote]
#Post#: 23686--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Chiprocks1 Date: November 4, 2013, 10:54 pm
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I've dealt with a few people lately that were glued to their
gadget instead of engaging in conversation. I didn't even wait
as long as you did before just bailing. Didn't care or bother to
even say I was leaving. All the people that I see when I'm
walking around look like idiots being glued to something that is
so trivial. If people wanna live like that, then so be it. It's
just not for me. Rotary 4 Life!!
#Post#: 23689--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Mac Date: November 5, 2013, 5:45 am
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I've had to give my wife shit for doing this. She hates this
technology, but on occasion at dinner, she's pulled this crap.
#Post#: 24765--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Networks
By: Mac Date: December 27, 2013, 11:54 am
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An interesting and well written perspective about a part of the
social network workings...
[glow=red,2,300]Justine Sacco’s aftermath: The cost of Twitter
outrage [/glow]
[quote]PR executive Justine Sacco wrote an offensive tweet
before boarding a flight from London to Cape Town, South Africa.
“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m
white!” she said. Between the time Sacco tweeted and when she
landed in South Africa twelve hours later, the hashtag
#HasJustineLandedYet trended worldwide. A great many of the
tweets including the hashtag were downright hilarious. Even
Donald Trump, a paragon of ignorance, chastised Sacco on
Twitter, saying, “Justine, what the hell are you doing, are you
crazy? Not nice or fair! I will support @AidforAfrica. Justine
is FIRED!”
Internet sleuths figured out which flight Sacco was on and when
she would land. Her work and cell phone numbers were uncovered.
Her entire online footprint was revealed. She had made
inappropriate tweets before. She had Instagram and Facebook
accounts. These have all been deleted but nothing on the
Internet really disappears. The digital echoes of her mistakes
will endure. Sacco’s former employer, InterActiveCorp,
immediately distanced themselves, condemned her words and she
was fired. During her flight, Sacco gained thousands of Twitter
followers, an audience raptly waiting, somewhat gleefully, to
see what would happen next. Justine Sacco unwittingly scripted a
gripping, real-life soap opera and she wasn’t even there to
watch it unfold.
Here was instant comeuppance for someone who said something
terrible. Here was comeuppance for a white person generalizing
shallowly about Africa, the continent, as if it were one large
country with only one story to tell. Here was a woman reveling
in her whiteness and assuming that her whiteness was some kind
of shield against a disease that does not discriminate. I was
amused by the spectacle. I followed along even though something
in my stomach twisted as the hours passed. It was a bit surreal,
knowing this drama was playing out while Sacco was at 38,000
feet.
At the same time, I was horrified. It all felt a bit frenzied
and out of control, as interest in the story mounted and the
death threats and gendered insults began. The online outrage and
Sacco’s comeuppance seemed disproportionate. The amount of joy
some people expressed as they engaged with the
#HasJustineLandedYet hashtag gave me pause.
Somewhere along the line, we forgot that this drama concerned an
actual human being. Justine Sacco did not express empathy for
her fellow human beings with her insensitive tweet. It is
something, though, that the Internet responded in kind, with an
equal lack of empathy. We expressed some of the very attitude we
claimed to condemn.
To be clear, Sacco’s tweet was racist, ignorant and
unacceptable. Her cavalier disregard for the global impact of
AIDS was offensive. In that regard, it was heartening to see
that someone purchased the domain www.justinesacco.com and
redirected it to Aid for Africa so that some good might come out
of such a crass and careless remark. Justine Sacco’s actions
should not have gone without consequences. In her case, though,
the consequences were severe and swift. She made a cheap joke
and paid a steep price. She has since apologized, though it is
hard to take the apology seriously because we have become so
accustomed to this cycle of public misstep, castigation,
apology. Nothing really changes.
We can excoriate Justine Sacco but we need to interrogate white
privilege and the relative comfort Sacco felt in demonstrating
such poor judgment. It seemingly did not cross her mind that it
would be inappropriate to make that joke in such a public forum.
We also need interrogate the corporate culture where an attitude
like Sacco’s was clearly not a deterrent to her success. As Anil
Dash noted on Twitter, “That @Justine Sacco is offensive is
obvious. The bigger problem is that her mindset is no barrier to
corporate success.”
At the same time, we are only outraged about Justine Sacco
because we happened to hear about her tweet. She was, before
this debacle, someone with only two hundred Twitter followers.
She made her comments in public, but her public was quite
limited. If someone hadn’t tipped off Gawker, if thousands of
people hadn’t shared Sacco’s tweet, if Buzzfeed hadn’t latched
onto the story, making it go ever more viral, we would have
never known about Sacco’s racism and ignorance. This does not
excuse her words, but is Justine Sacco different from any of us?
We like to think the best of ourselves. We like to believe we
always say and do the right things. We like to believe our humor
is always politic. We like to believe we harbor no prejudices.
At least, that’s the impression we give when we are so quick to
condemn those whose weaknesses and failures are subjected to the
harsh light of the Internet.
The world is full of unanswered injustice and more often than
not we choke on it. When you consider everything we have to
fight, it makes sense that so many people rally around something
like the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet. In this one small way, we
are, for a moment, less impotent.
In many ways, 2013, particularly online, was a year of
reckoning. More than ever, people were held accountable for
their words and actions. Outrage was spoken, not swallowed.
After the Boston Marathon bombings, people shared grief and
outrage on social media. From all around the world they stood
with the people of Boston, often using the hashtag
#BostonStrong. Some became amateur detectives, sifting through
the images and other information law enforcement officials
released to the public, as if they, too, could play a role in
bringing the responsible culprits to justice.
In June, Texas senator Wendy Davis rose to national prominence
during a 13-hour filibuster protesting SB5, a bill further
restricting abortion laws in Texas. People from all around the
United States watched the live video feed provided by the Texas
Tribune. The hashtag #standwithwendy allowed people to voice
their support for Davis’s efforts and their disdain, and to a
lesser extent, their support for legislative attempts to curtail
reproductive freedom. The legislation ultimately passed but a
vigorous protest was heard and will be remembered.
Paula Deen’s racism was revealed in the contents of a
deposition. Before long, most of Deen’s business relationships
had shattered, including those with Food Network, WalMart,
Target, Walgreens, JCPenny, Sears, QVC, Smithfield Foods and
others. Black Twitter responded with the #paulasbestdishes
hashtag, using humor as a means of coping with the painful
reality that Paula Deen is but one of many people who harbor
racial prejudices. Deen’s comeuppance seemed more appropriate
than Sacco’s because she was a far more prominent and powerful
figure.
Hanna Rosin declared the patriarchy dead, which gave rise to the
#RIPPatriarchy hashtag, used by feminists to mock the incorrect
notion that somehow all was right in the world for women. The
GOP made an ill-advised attempt at honoring Rosa Parks, implying
that her efforts had ended racism, which led to the
#whenracismended hashtag. Russell Simmons’s All Def Digital
released the “Harriet Tubman Sex Tape,” and was quickly forced
to take down the video and offer an apology. People were not
going to stand silently by as the legacy of Harriet Tubman was
diminished so recklessly.
Mikki Kendall started the hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen to
challenge the exclusion of feminists of color from mainstream
feminism. Jamilah Lemieux started the hashtag
#blackpowerisforblackmen soon after, to challenge sexism within
the black community. After Renisha McBride was murdered in
Detroit, dream hampton brought much-needed national attention to
the tragedy with the #RenishaMcBride hashtag. People began
sharing their stories and demanding justice. Theodore Wafer, the
homeowner who shot and killed McBride, will now face trial. For
once, perhaps, there will be actual justice for the death of a
young black woman.
As R. Kelly released his latest album, some people refused to
forget that R. Kelly is an unabashed pedophile. During an online
Q & A, R. Kelly tried to use the hashtag #AskRKelly and quickly
lost control of it as people used the hashtag to mock and
rightly shame R. Kelly for his crimes. Mikki Kendall and Jamie
Nesbitt Golden created the hashtag #fasttailedgirls to address
the sexual violations black girls face and the fact that all too
often, the responsibility for these violations is placed on the
backs of black girls and not the perpetrators. Writer and
activist Suey Park created the hashtag #notyourAsiansidekick to,
in her words, create “a space for [Asian-American, Pacific
Islander and Native Hawaiian women] to use our voices, build
community, and be heard.”
A common thread between the most powerful hashtags this year is
that many were created by women and/or people of color, people
whose voices are all too often marginalized in the forums where
they most need to be heard. These hashtags not only inspired
necessary conversations, they were the catalyst for all manner
of activism.
Social media is something of a double-edged sword. At its best,
social media offers unprecedented opportunities for marginalized
people to speak and bring much needed attention to the issues
they face. At its worst, social media also offers everyone an
unprecedented opportunity to share in collective outrage without
reflection. In the heat of the moment, it encourages us to
forego empathy.
It is, perhaps, fitting that 2013 has come to an end with the
story of Justine Sacco. I confess I do harbor a certain amount
of empathy for her and honestly, this empathy makes me
uncomfortable. I don’t want to feel sorry for Sacco. I don’t
even know if I feel sorry for her, exactly. Instead, I recognize
that I’m human and the older I get, the more I realize how
fallible I am, how fallible we all are. I recognize that Justine
Sacco is human. She should have known better and done better,
but most of us can look at poor choices we’ve made, critical
moments when we did not do better.
As I watched the online response to Justine Sacco’s tweet, I
thought of Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” first
published in 1948 but quite prescient. In a village there is a
ritual that has gone largely unquestioned for generations. There
is a box and in the box are slips of paper. Each year, the heads
of each family draw slips of paper. One will be marked and then
the members of that person’s family draw slips again. Whoever
selects the slip with a black mark is the sacrifice. Everyone
takes up stones and sets upon the unlucky victim. Every citizen
is complicit in the murder of someone who, just moments before
he or she was chosen, was a friend, a neighbor, a loved one.
Justine Sacco was not sacrificed. Her life will go on. We will
likely never know if she learned anything from this unfortunate
affair. In truth, I don’t worry so much about her. Instead, I
worry for those of us who were complicit in her spectacularly
rapid fall from grace. I worry about how comfortable we were
holding the stones of outrage in the palms of our hands and the
price we paid for that comfort.
Roxane Gay's writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories
2012, Oxford American, the Rumpus, the Wall Street Journal and
many other publications [/quote]
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