bad metaphor

Lately I’ve been getting a little creeped out by the amount of oversharing people do these days. Primarily Facebook and Twitter, because these are the primary social networks I use, but its definitely spilled out into other areas of mass-consumption: reality shows, tell-alls, insta-fame sex-tapes, etc. Now this is an odd and maybe even hypocritical sentiment to express on a blog, of all places. And maybe part of the reason I haven’t been posting as much lately is because I am in some subconscious way pulling myself back, as others pour more of themselves before me and everyone else on the planet. (The other, more influential reason being that I am lazy).

Facebook has unfurled into this new, monstrous beast of information and connectivity; the full societal implications of which will probably elide experts until, say, twenty years from now. A friend posted today that she was taking her significant other to go get a colonoscopy. Ehh, no biggie, it is good for one’s health to get these things. But did her SO really want the entire world to know she was off to get a camera shoved up her colon? Another friend made a jokey, lighthearted status update about her stepson’s pants wetting problem. ! How would that help stepson’s anxiety issues, if he ever found out that hundreds of strangers knows that he pisses himself? I could devote a lengthy post to relationship complications of mere acquaintances: I can easily divine that some guy I haven’t even spoken to since before high school really needs to get marital counseling, pronto. He’ll post updates about how he thinks his wife hates him because she doesn’t call. His wife is on Facebook, of course, and commented on that status update to defend herself.

It’s not just cringeworthy Facebook relationship updates, or a constant stream of dull Twitter updates about anything and everything that a Twit may see or breathe. I’ve listened to interviews on Fresh Air featuring Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon, two authors who are married to each other. Waldman caused a furor a few years back when she wrote that she “loved her husband more than she loved her kids.” Now I thought it was great that she admitted such – in this instance, her oversharing made it easier on mothers currently grappling with their own mixed and complicated emotions about their children. Not everybody can be June Cleaver, and it must have been a relief to some to hear echoes of their own controversial thoughts aired in public. Still, I am certainly glad I am not the daughter of two authors who make a living by oversharing!

And even when people don’t offer up so much of themselves for display, there’s so much emphasis on uncovering every facet of one’s personality, particularly for celebrities. I know, boo hoo, poor rich and famous people being photographed all the time! But I think it’s gotten beyond out of control in this day and age. Before digital cameras and Youtube and Star Magazine, I’m sure celebrities got into just as much antics…but you didn’t hear about it, and it didn’t cloud up the real news. I don’t need to see the latest Disney star falling down drunk with her pants around her ankles, nor do I care whether or not an actor happens to be gay. I read some item about Robert Pattinson had to eat a burger furtively in his car in a shady park, next to some woman giving a guy a blow job, just to get away from papparazzi cameras. Let the man have his In-N-Out in peace, just like the non-celebrity couple next to him!

Of course I read that item on Jezebel, which, although a little more feminist and high-brow than other gossip sites that are content to scrawl dongs in MS-Paint on celebrity photos, is still a gossip site. And maybe if people didn’t go to gossip sites anymore, or actually purchase magazines featuring the vampire from Twilight eating a burger (but did he order it rare?) – maybe this would stop. But I suspect the Information Beast has reached a critical mass of mundane details about our lives, and cannot be so easily defeated.

Personal detail about me: I freaking love Duran Duran.

Between my parents, I never imagined that it would be my mother who would first make the generational jump and join Facebook.

This is the woman so utterly defeated by email that I didn’t think she’d recover. Last Christmas, I bought her a shiny new (well, new to her) iMac and tried to train her how to use it, but she would repeatedly insist that she was too sleepy and would rather go watch the pirated DVDs she rents from the local video store instead. I’ve burned her mix CDs before (replete with Mom-friendly music, of course), to find out later that she has recorded these CDs onto tapes using her early 1990′s boombox. She’ll record songs she particularly likes twice or even three times in a row, so she won’t have to rewind.

I had given up on the idea of my mother abandoning her Luddite ways. “On the bright side, she’ll surely never join Facebook and see the X number of photos of me with a beer or a wine or ten in the vicinity.”

And even when I saw that my Aunt Rosie had joined facebook, I was not concerned because she’s the most tech-savvy of our aunts. She would try to talk the other aunties into buying DDR, for instance, because it was “a good workout.” And the other aunties would nod sagely and return to gossiping about us kids.

Then today, my sister hits me with the absolutely shocking news: Mom has somehow stumbled onto Facebook, and has created an account.

My first reaction was to rush to my profile page and de-tag frantically. After a good few minutes of this, which resulted in Facebook crashing for me and refusing to cooperate (damnable evidence, I bid thee SINK into the ocean), I had my second reaction: “wait a minute, why hasn’t she friended me yet?”

As a matter of fact, none of my other aunties have friended me, either. I could friend them, I suppose, but I’d rather not as I’m not sure I want to really reveal my life to my whole extended family and whatnot. Not that I am ashamed of how I live, or that I have photos of me shooting up in a ditch or something. In fact my photos are super tame and actually kind of boring. I’m just not really quite ready to reveal much about my life to my own family for some reason. I guess in some odd way I am more comfortable with complete strangers knowing the thoughts rattling around in my head than family members or even some of my friends. I was definitely impressed when krissy, for instance, related chatting about her PMS cramps with her father. Oh my god. I can’t even imagine talking about Aunt Flo with dad, and I am twenty-six. I have to leave the room even at the thought of it!

“Hmm,” said my sister, “maybe she tried to friend the other ‘karenology’.” It turns out that my sister has a friend who has the exact same name as me, and it is a little weird when I look at her profile and see a comment that really does not sound like anything I would ever say, and I go “whoa, has my account been hacked?” and then I remember that it is bizarro me.

“Phew,” said I, “That must be it. Bizarro karenology is totally taking the hit for me, and befriending my newly Facebooking aunties and mom.”

Now if this is the case – I guess I should be slightly annoyed that my family members don’t know what I look like well enough to realize that I don’t look a thing like Bizarro karenology – “hello, don’t you know what I look like? Also haven’t you learned by now that your own daughter never wears make up and dresses like a broke college student?”

But maybe this is a good thing. BK is apparently quite the shopping enthusiast, fashion plate and Asian club princess. Closer to the kind of good, normal Asian daughter that my parents want me to be. No distressing politics links or rants about the anti-abortion posters on our campus or beer or anything uncomfortable. Well, I don’t know that for sure, since BK’s profile is not public. Maybe she posts that kind of stuff too, which would be cool – and a little creepy, too. There can only be ONE!

Carrie Brownstein, of Sleater-Kinney and NPR music guru fame, posted a thing today about comments. Specifically, about the slew of nasty, awful comments that proliferate on sites like Youtube and what the proliferation of comments like these say, if anything, about us today. I’ve seen enough of these comments to just kind of mentally filter them out – kind of like how, during campus political season, my eyes just stop seeing sidewalk chalk on my way to work.

The worst I’ve seen, probably equivalent or even surpassing the terribleness of Youtube comments, have been on the website for my local paper. These are bad because the people behind these comments, if they are in fact different people and not just the same horrible misanthrope posting with multiple accounts…these people live in my town! My neighbors might be psychopath ultra arch-conservative assholes who actually believe that every homeless person, Mexican, and Topekan should be rounded up and shot! For that reason I never look below any news stories or commentaries that are vaguely political on the LJ World. Otherwise I’d be hyper suspicious and paranoid around half the people I saw on the street.

Occasionally, though, they are just so over the top ridiculous that you just can’t help but laugh. Here’s a news story about a cat who accidentally hitched a ride in a van to california, and made it back. Totally cute, innocuous fluff piece sans controversy, right?

WRONG. Somehow that still sparked a mean comment that led to a mini-flame war:

Why was this cat running about “at large”? There is a City leash law for cats. It really needs to be seriously enforced.

I’m pretty fed up with “kitty” urinating and defecating in my gardens; howling at other cats and other “tom catting around”…..and I don’t really care to read about “…they’re an outside pet….”. Nonsense. Keep your cats inside please or within your view at all times. That’s the law. Also, you’re welcome to come on over and clean all the feces your cats leave…..

I think there are, and always have been, people that are just naturally that cantankerous. Posting on the internet just makes it easier for these people to share that with the rest of the world, instead of just the few people that happen to stroll in front of their house and bear witness to their porch-hollerin’ tirades.

Crossposting from Facebook, because I am lazy. If you’re reading this and you have a blog – tag, you’re it! Now you have to think of twenty-five dumb things to write about yourself!

1. I didn’t start cooking until I was 18, and I didn’t start cooking things that weren’t out of a box mix until I was 23
2. From first grade through fourth I rarely spoke at school, and when I did it I used a fake voice.
3. I have knit more sweaters for cats than for people.
4. 80% of my theological knowledge comes from a Jehovah’s witness children’s picture bible.
5. I learned how to ride a bike when I was 22
6. When possible I avoid walking directly on grated surfaces.
7. I hate lists like these and this is the first time I have responded to one.
8. I did not care one iota for politics at all, beyond watching the Daily Show occasionally, before last year.
9. The only animal I have ever killed with my car was a kitten, at 10th and Mississippi
10. Once I got hit in the face during volleyball in gym class, and a boy I had a crush on laughed at me, and so I cried. I did not want to admit to my friend that I was crying over a boy, so instead I told her I was crying because it was Vietnam Veteran’s day (it wasn’t).
11. I spent years addicted to text-based MUDs. If you have no idea what these are, then you are a MUCH cooler person than I will ever be.
12. Once I poured liquid dishwashing soap instead of detergent in the dishwasher, and my kitchen flooded with bubble water like something out of an episode of “I Love Lucy”
13. Re: #4, I thought that merely “lying down next to” someone else would get me sent to hell. Sleepovers were traumatic until I discovered euphemisms.
14. I live in a house with no central heat, in the midst of a terrible Kansas winter, and sometimes I feel like I’m Laura Ingalls Wilder. Especially when I’m rooting around in my neighbors’ yards for kindling.
15. I ended up having what I -thought- was my new pet duck for dinner, and didn’t realize this until ten years later.
16. I evidently like to overshare.
17. I’m embarrassed that after two years I’m still working at the same place I worked while I was an undergraduate student.
18. I’m embarrassed that I am embarrassed about having a secure source of income with benefits, while others are getting laid off or are endlessly searching for jobs right now.
19. I’m mortally jealous of my friends who are currently globe trotting and having way more interesting lives than me. They keep posting photos and accounts of their adventures, which come up on my Facebook feed. Jerks.
20. In the two years since I’ve graduated with my creative writing degree, I have not written any fiction.
21. I know just enough Vietnamese to say “Hi,” “What’s your name” and maybe enough to order food in a restaurant, rudely.
22. I do a lot of Internet-surfing and list-posting at work.
23. I am a terrible klutz – two weekends ago I spilled two drinks in succession, one of which belonged to the bouncer at the Taproom, and I am kind of scared of going back there again.
24. Sometimes I worry that my sewing machine will eat me!
25. A number of these items are bullshit, guess which ones and how many and you get a gold star.