Communication Addiction, or, I would've written sooner but I just needed 5 more minutes on Facebook

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for a month, and I am going to post that I’ve written it on Facebook. I will check back frequently to see if people have looked at it. I might go to the stats for my blog to see if anyone has looked at it, probably even check where in the world people may have looked at it (yay! One person in Czechoslovakia likes me!).

Any comments on Facebook will all show up in my messages, linked to my LinkedIn page, and comments there or on the blog will go to my email. But not to my regular email; comments to my blog go to an email address I rarely use but which gets forwarded to my regular email address. Maybe one or two people might text me about it on my cel phone or call me (it’s true, some people still do that) on my landline.  Thank heaven I don’t have a twitter account or a web page; there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to keep track of so many forms of talktalktalk and simultaneously keep myself clean, fed, and employed.

Ironically, it might be a bit rant-y about how electronic communication is melting our minds. So you can leave now if you feel compelled to wander through layers of YouTube videos instead. I won’t hold it against you. I’ve been known to get lost in that vortex as well.

If you still have the capacity (and you’re still here), you should read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

It’s a 2008 article by Nicholas Carr, published in The Atlantic, that considers the way our brains are being reconfigured by our exposure to various forms of media. It’s longer than your average USA Today article and definitely longer than something you might find on Facebook or Buzzfeed, and infinitely longer than any tweet. And it doesn’t say we’re getting stupider, or more antisocial, or going blind from staring at screens or getting fat from so much time sitting in front of our laptops. But it’s important because it talks about our powers of concentration, our ability to focus on a single task.

Another irony: I first read this article on paper, and was fascinated by it. Today when I went to find a handy link for this blog, I had a hard time re-reading it because of all of the moving ads interspersed throughout the text (oooh, maybe I really do want to buy that LED-lit dress that changes color when I walk…). Focusing on an article about focusing was virtually impossible with all of the shiny stuff floating around.

Anecdotally, I’m discovering that there are a lot of people suffering from depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviors and ruined relationships because of the time they spend enmeshed in a web of media. It’s as if they’re slogging through a jungle with a machete, cutting back vines and swatting mosquitos the size of Smartcars and fending off snakes and leopards to get…they forget where.  But along the way they begin to feel that if they step away they might miss something; they think that the amount of friends or followers is more important than the quality of their friends or followers. And if they put something out there and it gets responses it’s almost a high – responses are validation, camaraderie, …love. How could one not want that feeling? Who wouldn’t want to see that other people think the same way they do, or support them, or at the very least, read what they have to say?

So they go back, and back, and back.

BUT. I have had people send me texts when they are in the same room with me, or send me messages that aren’t complete – they admit later they forgot what they were going to say, but pressed send anyway. I have friends that before they even pee in the morning will check Facebook, or will let everyone know they’re peeing by posting about it on Facebook (okay, that’s possibly an exaggeration, but it’s the minutiae like that that boggles my mind). It’s become such a habit to check their various forms of media that they don’t leave the house without a charger for their device of choice; they can’t be off the phone or the iPad in traffic or in a restaurant or even among their family and friends.  Their brains have been altered; they need a constant fix.

Think cocaine, only without the drip at the back of the throat. Lots of speedy babbling, but not always about anything of value or that makes sense.

I dipped my toe into the Great Lake of Facebook because other writers told me I really needed a page; they also advised me to get a Twitter account (but I just don’t have all that much to say a lot of the time, and, as evidenced by this blog, I do NOTHING in 127 or 144 or however many characters Twitter limits you to when I do). I don’t have a web page, or a “platform.” I find that even with the relatively small amount of time I spend monitoring what social media contact I do have, I am losing my ability to focus on the tasks at hand, much less write creatively.  If someone actually wants to publish me eventually, might they then decide I don’t have enough of a following to promote my work to take me on?  It’s a conundrum.

I have a landline phone, people – the kind of phone line that if all of the power goes out, I will still be able to call all five of the other people in the US who still have a landline to see how they’re doing before everyone’s looted. I was perfectly happy with that until all of this “media” became a “necessity.” Well, that and texting. Which I frequently used, originally, as evidence to point out to one of my then-teenagers what they said they were going to do as opposed to what they actually did. Therefore, I am completely cool with texting.

I want to be clear: This isn’t a media bash. I have learned a lot from various types of social media, and research is far less onerous than it was when we used card catalogs and microfilm. Correspondence with friends in far off places is less expensive and nearly instantaneous. News travels faster, and globally, even though it’s sometimes difficult to tell what is real and true news. I think it’s important to figure out how to discriminate between what is valid information and what’s just sensational and potentially hazardous to your judgment and time management and real-life relationships.

And it’s important to know when to stop…to stop getting sucked in to ignorant arguments sane people would never have in person, to stop and look up from your little screen at what’s actually going on around you, to stop looking for gratification without and look instead for ways to be happy and directed from within.

Your brain will thank you.

I now open the floor to anyone who feels that I should still totally get a Twitter account…

When Would You Walk Away From The Hero?

Let's get this out of the way: I am not a Feminist. I believe in equal rights and self-esteem and basic mutual respect between the genders (and that means all of them). I believe in holding the door for the person after you, no matter whether they are male or female, young, old, hairy, bald, snooty or friendly. I think it doesn't hurt to be nice to other people on a regular basis, because maybe they'll pass it on to someone else. Maybe you'll change their day for the better with your little gesture. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, an aunt, a niece -- and I don't want to pass on any negative "-isms" if I can help it.

I also happen to think that people learn from what they are exposed to. I do not mean this as a generalization -- surely not everyone who watches horror movies decides to turn into Freddy Kreuger just as not everyone who reads a biography about Mother Theresa gives up their corporate position to go take care of the poor in third world countries -- but I think, in the absence of seeing different aspects of different subjects, impressionable people might feel certain behaviors are normal and what they should aspire to or expect from life. 

Recently I've encountered some "romance" stories with couples -- the hero and heroine, and sometimes even the supporting characters -- who made me cringe. I thought, "Would I want my niece to read this? My son? My daughter?"

The answer was a resounding NO.

This made me wonder -- have any of you ever encountered, or read, a character or even a real person you just had to walk away from? Someone you wanted to tell the heroine/hero to run like hell from? Someone you wouldn't want to introduce to your friends or family? Someone you wouldn't want to be with? And if someone you loved was exposed to this person, how would you deal with it? What are the boundaries that would have to be crossed in order to make you take action?

Real life example: I was dating someone a long time ago that seemed funny and warm. He had a decent job and a home and southern gentleman manners. One day I walked in on him, after being invited over, to find him beating his dog with a bat. I never found out what the dog did to enrage him, but it had no impact on him at all when I shouted for him to stop. On an upswing, I reached out for the bat and grabbed it, and he turned and growled at me to let it go or I would be next.
I do not know where it came from because at the time I was not the most confident person. Those of you who know me personally know I'm not exactly linebacker-sized. I'm more the opposite of linebacker-sized. Maybe it was that I was terrified and upset for the dog. I looked him right in the eye and bluffed. I growled back, "Oh, you really don't want to do that."
And apparently, he did not. Maybe he suddenly worried that I had some inner ninja he hadn't counted on. Maybe he thought with a growl like that I would be willing to act physically and kick his scrawny (okay, at the time I didn't think it was scrawny, but in retrospect...) ass. That was it for us. Everything that had come before was null and void and that sort of cruelty, that threat -- wow. I just got out.
I heard the dog went to his ex-wife. I will never, ever, forget the look on his face when I grabbed the bat. For a long time I wondered how I'd missed signs in how he'd treated me before that. For months I had nightmares about letting go of the bat, and what could have happened when I did.

The heroes that have recently put me off have controlling, demeaning tendencies that their authors have somehow packaged as romantic. Characters do have flaws and secrets, and sometimes those elements drive the story and make you feel for them. But when does behavior go over the line and make you want to sit down with your niece, for instance, and say, "Look. Don't ever let someone treat you like this. It is not romantic and it is not respectful and it is not an example of how people who love each other should treat each other."

Examples extracted from text:

"Shut up and just take off your [article of clothing] like a good girl."

"I am not giving you the key (this said to a newlywed about their home) until I can trust you to behave."

"Why are you so fat?"

"You're going to wear what I like and you're not going to give me any [expletive] about it. And I will know if you take it off and you will be punished."

Heroes insist on carrying their heroines everywhere, and not always because they've been injured. Or they have the heroine's friends spy on her and report back. They begin as attentive and overwhelmingly romantic, too good to be true. The story becomes so focused upon the couple that friends and family are slowly eliminated from the picture.

Does anyone know the classic beginning signs of emotional, physical, or sexual battering? Would you want someone talking to you, or your friend or family member, that way? What would you do?

So there are things I want to know:

Have you ever encountered a character that you could not stand? Are there characters in classics or bestsellers that you couldn't believe other readers thought were wonderful but that you wished had never been published?

Have you ever encountered someone like that in real life and what did you do about it? Have you encountered someone like that and not done anything?

I am truly curious about how people feel about certain kinds of actions within relationships, both real and fictional. I wonder how we help or teach those around us to understand that some forms of behavior -- negative, disparaging, physically or emotionally uncomfortable or hurtful -- are just not right.

Please let me know what you think.