in which Sarah attempts to be less snarky and more complex
After a bit of counseling from Mr Snarky and Best Tech Guy, I am doing something this semester that I never thought I would do. I am taking an online-only course. That’s right kids; I’m taking a class over the internet. I know people do this kind of thing every day, but because I am the biggest snob you know, it makes me feel like I am taking a correspondence course. Someone is going to send me a certificate in Shorthand at the end of the semester. Except not really. Because I am not taking the class for credit. I’m auditing it. I’m auditing an online-only course. Egads. What has the world come to?
It is an online-only course offered by Marjorie Garber (or rather, by Professor Garber’s TA). For those of you not rubbing shoulders amongst the name-dropping set in Cambridge, she is one of the two big Shakespeare thinkers at Harvard. Translation: she is one of the leading Shakespeare scholars of our time. And I am taking her class. Sort of. I am sort of taking her class.
I am taking her class because I am considering writing my dissertation on Shakespeare, and I thought it would be amazing to follow her course in my “spare time.” [Those quotation marks were inserted ironically.] The class is called Shakespeare and Modernity. It’s about how every age has considered and interpreted Shakespeare in a way that is relevant to its time. And so far, it’s delightful. She is delightful. I say that with a hint of surprise because I am always skeptical about a professor who lists her own book as required reading. But I have to admit, after two lectures and 20 pages, I am hooked. She had me at the Introduction. She says, “it is at least as true that the Shakespeare we create is a Shakespeare that has, to a certain extent, created us” (Shakespeare After All, 2005, page 3).
This particular quote may not seem earth shattering to some, but it struck a chord with me as I’ve been thinking a lot about the people in our lives who shape who we are. I’ve been thinking very specifically about my Sicilian grandmother. My feelings for my Gram have changed as I’ve grown up. The ways she has influenced me have also changed as I’ve grown. As I go through the varying stages of my life, I look back with a different perspective. Each new perspective lends itself to a new set of feelings that influence my behavior differently.
Hold on, let’s go back to Shakespeare. The quote—the quote means that Shakespeare, as our ancestor, told every story there was to tell. He wrote it all down: love and hate, war and peace, vengeance and forgiveness. His is the lens through which we interpret our own lives. And we do that because he came first. Something is Shakespearean because he wrote about it; he wrote about everything. Ergo, everything about our lives is Shakespearean. I have no idea what people did before Shakespeare explained the world to them. But I do know that, because of his ability to describe—not to judge, simply to describe—just about everything, Shakespeare has become a guide for life, in particular for understanding how simple deeds can have complex results.
On a personal level, this same argument is made when we talk about nature versus nurture, being the product of our childhoods or a product of our experiences, and when we talk about being like or unlike family members. We talk about being like or unlike our parents in particular, or in my case, a grandparent who was a major player in my life when I was little. My Gram was a dynamic woman. Tiny in figure, but enormously influential, there was never any doubt that she was in charge of all of our lives. We lived and died by her words. Her approval was like rain in the desert.
I’ve been thinking about her for many reasons that I will get to eventually. The connection to Shakespeare (I swear there is one) is this idea of reinterpreting our notions of a story, our remembrance of it, and its meaning as we grow older. Romeo and Juliet was my fav when I was a teenager (big surprise). As a woman approaching middle age, (ugh, that hurt to write) I am more inclined to pick up Antony and Cleopatra. The stories are the same at their core. One is about a teenage love affair and the other is about a middle age love affair. The latter is more relevant to me now as I am older. Because, let’s face it, teenagers are silly and because, let’s face it, I’m getting older.
We grow older and as we do, stories from our past take on different meanings. Shakespeare and my grandmother mean different things to me now as a grown up. I analyze Shakespeare for class. I analyze my Gram because, well, because I can’t stop myself. Cut to the action.
I heard from a friend the other day who chatted me up over instant messenger. He wanted to know why I haven’t written in so long. Mostly I’ve been too busy or too tired. I’ve been too busy because of work and too tired because of family drama, and not the good kind. My aunt died. It’s sort of a long and complicated story. Suffice it to say, she wasn’t related by blood. In fact, she hadn’t been married to my uncle for years. We hadn’t kept in touch since their divorce. But I was devastated. She was dear to me when I was a little girl. And I was gutted by her death. In my sorrow, I began to recollect and analyze every memory that floated, ambled, or forced its way into my head. A lot of those memories included my grandmother.
My Gram wasn’t nice to my aunt when she and my uncle split up. I loved them both and didn’t understand why they were getting divorced. I understood what a divorce was. I was a tween when they split; my parents split up years before. But no one explained to me why they were breaking up. No one let me call her up and ask her. My grandmother, in typical fashion, made up a story that placed all the blame on my aunt and spared my uncle any responsibility. Don’t get me wrong; I adore my uncle. He is wonderful in every way that matters to me. But as a grown-up person with a husband of my own and experiences and opinions of my own, I think it’s safe to say he’s not perfect. He musta’ done something wrong. But my Gram was having none of that.
She wasn’t just old school; she was old world. Her beliefs about marriage and parenthood were downright archaic. She took care of la familia. Had she been born a man, she coulda’ out godfathered Tony Soprano and Don Corleone. The Simpsons’ episode, The Italian Bob, I swear it was written about her. The part where Marge is translating, and she exclaims (something like), “Wait! Vendetta means…vendetta!” I have often said of my Gram, She invented spite. Seriously, they even do Ridi Pagliacci in the middle of the episode. (My maiden name is Pagliaccio for those of you new to the show.) Okay, the Simpsons thing may be a stretch. Let me put it this way, there was a gentleman that lived down the block called Old Man Genovese. (Yes, that Genovese family.) And even he was scared of my grandmother. He respected my grandmother, and he steered clear of her.
What did she mean to me, her oldest grandchild by 10 years and the first girl in her family? I remember thinking she was awesome. I craved her approval like a tulip needs the sun. I wanted to please her. I spent every summer before high school with her and the summer after my freshman year of college. We were very close, although in retrospect I didn’t know a lot about her life. She spoke Sicilian when she wanted to hide things from me, which was frequently. But that didn’t matter. I didn’t understand the words, but I intuited her power over her husband and three sons. She had an unmistakably commanding presence.
Then I remembered that she was kind of awful to me. She was awful to my mom. She was awful to my aunt. I could do no right in her eyes. Nothing I did was good enough. I didn’t try hard enough in school. I wasn’t a good enough daughter to my father. It was never enough.
And then I remembered when she died. I remembered all the people. Hundreds of strangers turned up during visiting hours at the funeral home. Scores of people sought out any member of her family—her husband, her sons, and her grandchildren—to tell us how she helped them, how she changed their lives, what she meant to them, how kind she was. They described a woman I did not know.
When my friend IMed me the other day, we got on the subject of social networking. He said he hadn’t spent any time on Facebook recently because all of his friends’ posts made him feel sick. He was “sick of wasting time on the site” and tired of “mentally filter[ing] out ‘stuff that doesn’t matter’.” And then he said, “I was sick of using up space in my brain accidentally remembering crap.” And I thought, Whoa, is that possible? Can we “accidentally remember” stuff? Do we have the capacity for remembering things that simply do not matter, things that are wholly unimportant? What the heck does it all mean?
When my aunt died, I asked myself a lot of questions about the things I remembered, what they all meant and why it mattered. Disconnected from the action, the memories have become stories. These are the same memories and the same stories I’ve been telling myself for years. But now, they mean something different to me.
Mashing up the drama, tragedy, family memories, and reinterpreting Shakespeare, I have come to the conclusion that my Gram was not the person she claimed to be. Rather, she was not the person she encouraged me—her first grandchild, her first granddaughter, the daughter she never had—to be. She told me to always defer to my grandfather, my father, and my husband in my thoughts and actions. Replaying the same old stories in my head today, I realize that she had an archaic view of the world that was not aligned with the life she was living. She was more in charge of her life, her family, and her career than any person I have ever known. She did not defer to anyone about anything ever. She never said, I don’t know. And she sure as shit never asked, What do you want to do? She scoffed at feminists, preached deference to men, and ruled like a queen. And she was not just any queen, she was a Shakespearean queen. She was as generous in her love as she was in her scorn. A terror in her own right, she fought tooth and nail to protect her family and her loved ones. Like Margaret of Anjou, the oft overlooked dowager queen in Richard III, she did not hesitate to wage a war when her son was slighted after all other parties had negotiated peace. There were days when I thought vengeance was her job. Somehow she balanced that with her real job; she was a pre-Kindergarten teacher. She was a nursery school teacher with a mouth like a sailor. She “taught me” how to swear, and I am damn good at it too. She was a complex contradiction, and we loved her despite that fact, in spite of it, because of it.
Looking back on it all now, I like to think that, also like old Queen Margaret, the inheritors of her title have learned how to take care of their families with more poise and grace than she managed. We are the better for having learned from her actions rather than her words, tempering those actions to exceed modern expectations of what women can and should be. She never did as she was told, and neither will we. In fact, I’m rather proud of the fact that I am choosing not to do as she told me, but rather as she did. And I can do it all with better balance because of the battles she fought for us. I can take care of my family without trampling over other people. I can be generous without being a tyrant. I cannot however write a blog post without being verbose, but we can’t be good at everything.
As I reexamine my relationship with my Gram from this new perspective, I realize that it’s time to let it all go. From now on, I will tell stories about her without wondering what it all means. The stories are the same. The stories will mean different things to different people at different times. But the lessons are the same. Life, as in Shakespeare, doesn’t require judgment. It’s like they say in Grosse Point Blank, “Some people say forgive and forget. Nah, I don’t know. I say forget about forgiving and just accept.”
I can accept that my Gram was incredibly generous and an incredible bitch without judging her. Just as I can write my dissertation on the tempestuous Margaret of Anjou and have fun doing it.
Postscript
In honor of Mr Snarky’s birthday (which is tomorrow), I threw a dinner party Saturday night. We were expecting a lot of guests and needed extra place settings. For the first time since my grandfather died three years ago, I unpacked a box full of china that came from my grandparents’ house. As I was setting out one of the plates, I snapped a picture and sent it to my dad, asking if he recognized it. He replied a few hours later that he had never seen it before.
The next 48 hours were spent fretting and wondering at the immaculate condition of the plates, feeling passed over as the recipient of plates no one ever used, and agonizing over the slight. (My Gram had a tendency to buy dishes from the secondhand store for us to throw out at New Years, in a sort of out-with-the-old ritual. I considered these might be for such a purpose.) My random outbursts punctuated our weekend until Mr Snarky suggested that I make up a story about the plates that made me happy.
In the end, I didn’t have to make up a story. This morning, Dad sent me another note. It said, “Getting to where I remember better from when I was a kid than from an adult. When we were kids, we used to run thru the house back-to-front playing whatever. The flooring in the dining room was wood, different than the concrete flooring in the back. So, we used to shake the whole room, most especially the china cabinet, when we ran thru. Mom used to holler at us that we were a gang of _____ (insert Italian word that I forgot meaning roughnecks, cowboys, vandals, barbarians, or some such) who were going to break all her precious stuff. I do remember her taking out a china plate one time and saying that she had been saving it for a daughter. I remember because I suggested that she trade Joe for a daughter, and then not pay so much attention to what me and Elliot were doing.”
For those of you who have never rubbed shoulders with these characters, this many not seem like much. Translation: The story and the plates were a gift.
Thought #55
Using Facebook as a PSA system is a great idea. It’s cool to see people spreading the word about Amber Alerts and other time-sensitive messages over social media channels. The problem is when the post that the child was found is hidden way below the post that says the child is missing. These actions (the finding and the losing) happen in a chronological order. Therefore the finding should appear at the top of the chronological list. Except Facebook is curating content so that items that meet a set of rules only understandable to Facebook appear at the top of the list. In this case, the losing of the boy generated tons of comments. It was deemed more important and bumped to the top of the list. The finding of the child was met with sighs of relief and fell below the fold.
Thought #54
I like a good curated experience better than the next person. I think that’s why Spotify is not for me. I’m an old-fashioned kind of girl. I have a favorite DJ (John in the Morning on KEXP) and he turns me on to new music. I will take his recommendations and browse the iTunes store and Amazon MP3s (I only buy from Amazon now though—fewer DRM restrictions) and listen to the related artists. I buy what I like, and add the new songs to existing playlists or create new ones. Could I apply that same process to Spotify? Probably. But it feels harder somehow. Like I have less control over the experience and the music. There’s no help there, no recommendations. There’s no process of discovering new things I will like. Maybe there is; at this point, that’s my perception. I do like Turntable though. It’s nice to turn it on to a fun channel and listen to what other like-minded people like. The only thing missing is a Buy button.
Thought #53
Another thing that got me wondering at UI16: the number of people in the room my age or older. I was surprised by the general middle age of the people present. I expected the attendees to trend toward a younger crowd. Was this due to the experience level of the folks in the room? Our familiarity with the sponsor organization? Access to budgets to be at the conferences? Maybe they are learning it all in school while we are learning it on the job. Or was it something else…was it because younger designers know (or think they know) how to design for mobile and handheld devices because they were born with cell phones in their pockets? It’s native to them in a way it cannot be for the rest of us.
Thought #52
At UI16 in Boston last week, I witnessed the second reference to Google+ as a professional network in about three weeks. Statistically speaking, these data are not impressive. But anecdotally, they are interesting. The idea of using Google+ as a collaboration space—a space away from your friends (on Facebook) and away from your resume (on LinkedIn)—within a private networking is fascinating. It’s fun to think geeks and academics have a new place to hang out together and talk about research and writing. I wonder, and kind of hope, it will catch on for this specific purpose. It doesn’t seem like it’s catching on for any other purpose.
Thought #51
Why did they change the shape of the butter? Did the butter just wake up one morning and say, “I need a new look.”? Or did it suddenly realize its past has all been a façade and declare, “Hey, it’s time to face facts people. I’m fat. That’s right…fat…and short. It’s time that I revealed my true fat self. No more tall skinny sticks for me.”
Thought #50
Instead of doing the work that’s causing me stress, I’m stress eating like there’s no tomorrow. Except there is a tomorrow. You know how I know? Client meetings. Lots and lots of client meetings.
Thought #49
I spent 100 bucks at Whole Foods the other day and I feel like I came home with a bag full of bread and cheese. Now my brain is telling me it’s the best damn bread and cheese I’ve ever eaten. Is it really? Or is my noggin trying to avoid the cognitive dissonance associated with spending 100 bucks on bread and cheese? This is my brain. This is my brain on cheese.
Thought #48
NPR referred to this kid as a mastermind. He’s 19. Call me ageist, but that seems a little young to be a mastermind.
Thought #47
Don’t worry, you didn’t miss random thoughts 1-46. I just thought I would start in the middle. And 47 seemed like a good number.
Ok here it is. Once and for all people, lions do not live in the jungle. Tigers live in the jungle. Tigers don’t have spots; they have stripes. Lions are born with spots, but they lose them when they become teenagers. Thank you. That is all.
On a recent Tuesday morning at UI16 Kevin Hoffman, from Happy Cog, gave a talk on strategies for successful discovery meetings (not as boring as it sounds). As an example, he referenced the work his team recently did for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He described the many meetings they facilitated, which ones worked and why. And then without a pause, a beat, or a breath, he asked the crowded room, Does anyone remember that warehouse scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Yes, I thought, but what a strange question. My brain instantly conjured the sight of that vast and gloomy warehouse where the government men leave the Ark of the Covenant to collect dust among thousands upon thousands of unmarked crates and boxes. That’s a real warehouse, Kevin said. It’s in Linthicum, Maryland. It’s where the USHMM stores the artifacts and evidence documenting the Holocaust.
It felt like the air was sucked out of the room. For a second that lasted an eternity, no one moved. No one spoke. No one breathed. And then, Kevin continued speaking. I have no idea what he said next. I missed the next five minutes of his talk while my brain processed this highly affecting and unexpected fact. My thoughts sounded something like this. That can’t be true. Please say that’s not true. I don’t want it to be true. He wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Oh my god. I wish I didn’t know that. Why don’t more people know that? Everyone should know that. Those crazy Holocaust deniers should know that. That fact—the image in my head right now—would shut them up for good.
As the goose bumps subsided, the thoughts that followed were a jumble. I thought about all the crazy things we learn as Web designers. I was relieved I wasn’t on the project. (Ten minutes earlier I wished I was.) I imagined myself at the discovery meeting or field trip to the warehouse. I imagined myself sobbing uncontrollably. I also thought about how difficult it must be for Kevin to have this knowledge. And I wondered what I would do with it. I would tell everyone I knew. I would work it into every conversation, just as he did, just as I am doing know.
Two days later, I posted it to Facebook. I wanted this fact to go out into the world, all 175 of my closest friends and relatives. (Yes, my Facebook friend list is intentionally short.) Here’s the thing though. I didn’t expect the post to generate any sort of conversation. I did not expect a single comment or Like. It’s not the kind of fact that people should Like. And what could my friends say? I didn’t ask a question or leave room for conversation. I just put it out there.
This is what makes the Like button so great—and so inappropriate in this case. It has turned that old adage on its head. We used to say, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.” Now, if you have warm feelings toward a thought or conversation but don’t have anything to say, you can Like it and move on. Conversely, if one of my friends says something of interest, I let it sink into my brain. But I don’t Like it if the content is not likable, i.e, happy, positive, friendly. I also don’t comment on it if the post speaks for itself or if someone else has expressed what I wanted to say. The Like button is to register your approval of the content, not the person posting the content.
Here’s the distinction I am making. Wait, Steve Pordigal said it better than I can. When speaking about culture and cultural norms, he said, there’s a difference between knowing about something and liking it. By way of example, he projected two photos on the big screen. One was of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame, and the other was of pop music sensation Justin Bieber. I recognized the photo of Justin Bieber, but I like Julian Assange. Knowing and liking: not the same thing.
So back to my Holocaust fact: I didn’t expect comments or Likes. It was the kind of post that gives you the shivers. It registers deep in the emotional parts of your brain. And then you move on, because there is nothing likable about it.
Later that evening I received one comment and one Like. The comment was spot on. A friend said, “Wow. Just got the chills reading that!” I replied, “I believe chilling is the right word.” We shared an emotional response. There was nothing else to say. A couple of hours later, one of my crazy aunts Liked the post. And I immediately kicked off a rant in Mr Snarky’s direction that sounded something like this, “How could she…? Doesn’t she…? What the f…?”
The edited version sounds something like this. I have serial Likers in my life. They generally consist of middle age women who love me, who I don’t see very often. They are very well-intentioned, unsophisticated consumers of the Web.
I want them to stop. I want them to cease and desist all this inappropriate liking. Before you think I’m mean, hear me out.
First, Liking a post about the Holocaust—any post, in any context—is totally and completely inappropriate, unless that post says, “Let’s make sure that never happens again.”
Second, the button says, “Like.” Liking expresses a sense of enjoyment. It is not an acknowledgment that you’ve read and understand what I am saying. You are not accepting terms and conditions. You are acknowledging the post as likeable, i.e., favorable, positive, good. It’s not a sarcastic Like; it is not an Ironic Awesome button. It’s for genuine liking. Before clicking Like, I expect you to read the post, let the words register deep in your brain, and let your reaction bubble to the surface. I took the time to write it and put it out there for my Facebook world to read. Please take the time to be thoughtful in your reply. Don’t just hit Like because I posted something on a day that ends in y.
Finally, I know they love me. I wouldn’t be friends with them on Facebook (or at all) if I didn’t know they loved me and reciprocated those feelings. That’s what the Facebook friendship represents: public acknowledgment that they are part of my life, and I like that fact. The Like button is not there to advertise that. It’s for liking a particular post. It says, “I like this specific thing that you said.” It does not say, “I generally approve of everything you say and do.”
In the immortal words of Anonymous (no, not Shakespeare), “hate the game, not the player.” Or in this case, Like the content—if and only if it is likeable—not its contributor.
In a recent interview with author Jennifer Egan, Tom Ashbrook, host of On Point on NPR, asked the question, Are we living curated lives? With so much of our lives happening in real time, on social media channels that may or may not include privacy walls, are we being our honest selves or are we self-censoring? It’s an interesting question. But a better question is, How can we afford not to?
Between July 2010 and October 2011, we went from “most companies use social media for recruiting” to “91% of Hiring Managers Use Social Networking to Screen.” After calculating for margin of error, ninety-one percent is just about everyone. And this trend is not unique to hiring. The use of social media as a research tool among college admissions boards has doubled in the last year, according to a recent survey. Twenty-four percent of respondents revealed that they use Facebook or other social networking sites to learn about applicants. According to the survey sponsor, Kaplan Test prep, 20% of respondents Google applicants as part of the admissions decision process. The most shocking thing about these numbers (to a hyper-connected individual like me) is how low they are. (It reminds me of Luke W’s statistic that 39% of survey respondents admit to mobile phone usage in the bathroom. Which makes the other 61% liars.) It seems to me that savvy admissions counselors, those most likely to use social networking sites as research tools, are also the ones least likely to admit they are doing it. They don’t want to give away their secrets to prospective applicants. (Which makes this like the worst kept secret in town. We know they are doing it. They know we know. Why the charade?)
And of course dating can kick the butt of all these statistics. With most dating meet-ups happening in virtual territory way before any in-person interaction, can you afford not to Google a potential mate in this day and age? Just today I had lunch with a girlfriend who admitted she checked LinkedIn before emailing a friend of a friend. She was proud of herself; she was being smart.
In the absence of honest information from a friend with good intentions who will probably skew the facts in favor of her recommendations, we rely on self-reported lies from a prospective date. Whoa, that was snarky. My point is matchmakers have their own agendas; we want to see our friends happily matched. And so we tend to stretch the truth a bit to fit our ends. Meanwhile, people in Dating Land need to put their best face forward at all times. That face may be a bit of a mask to make it beyond the screening process. When dating feels more and more like an interview, we resort to the same tactics we use to land a new job. We all do it. I’m just as guilty as the next person. I choose the words on my resume carefully to make myself look good. That’s the point of a resume; to make my professional life look good, especially now that it’s so easy to find on the Web. And that’s why I agreed; LinkedIn was the perfect place for my friend to look for information about her potential date.
My friend would be remiss if she did not check out this potential date wherever she found information he has posted about himself. If he’s the kind of person who posts the unedited, unvarnished version of his life on the Web, that says a lot about him. That fact alone means something. It can mean different things to different people. It could be a turn off for some and a turn on for others. Whatever it may mean to my friend, surely having that information is better than not having it, right?
So do I think we are—or that we should be—choosing our words carefully when we post them out here? Heck yeah, I do. Am I constantly self-monitoring and filtering? Heck no, I don’t have time for that! Some days I just want to rant, vent, snark, swear, criticize, and complain. Some days I want to sing, praise, applaud, admire, and adore. That fact says something about me. It means different things to different people. I want it to mean different things to different people. Because I mean different things to different people. And because I want to cultivate relationships with people who are attracted to me, personally and professionally. That first impression happens online now. And I want it to be a good one. Therefore I am the curator of my own words and thoughts and deeds. And I am proud of that fact.
During Luke W’s talk at UI16 this week in Boston, he spoke a lot about location-aware services on mobile devices. Changes in technology make building handheld devices faster, better, and cheaper. Luke explained that technology has advanced so far that it’s cheaper to include than leave out wifi antennae in these devices. As a result, we are starting to see products like Amazon’s $79 Kindle, which Luke referred to as a “disposable Web browser.” The proliferation of handheld devices means more GPS-enabled gadgets in our hands, in our pockets, in our purses, and in our backpacks at all times.
He asked the crowd to list our favorite new applications for mobile devices. He wanted to know what amazed us. My answer was simpler than most. I was amazed by others’ responses: Apple’s new app can Find My Friends; Groupon and airlines can scan the bar code on my iPhone as a proof of purchase or boarding pass; Yelp provides a street view of restaurants nearby; banks accept check deposits via pictures taken with a mobile phone; Instapaper allows you to scroll through a book simply by tilting the device; digital snow globes get all shook up using the accelerometer. The list went on for quite some time while many jaws, including mine, dropped in awe.
Luke spoke about an app (I’ve forgotten the name of it) that will text his wife with his location and his estimated time of arrival at home based on current traffic, weather, and road conditions. Most of us smiled and nodded in assent or encouragement. The married people in the room laughed knowingly as he explained he uses this application when he is late for a meeting or late for his wife. And then he went on to note that, for him, this is a great service, as long as he could turn it off [the location-based services / location-aware tracking] when he was doing something he considered private. He raised both hands, tracing quotation marks in the air to punctuate the word “private.” That’s when my jaw really dropped.
I was with him up to the point where he made bunny ears around the word private. A low twitter filled the pause that followed. Strangely that laughter sounded like approval, rather than nervousness or anxiety. I was floored by that. The question that hung in my head was, “When did privacy become a thing we put sarcastic air quotes around?” When did we get sarcastic about, rather than defensive of, our privacy? After all, the expression is “our right to privacy.” At what point did we start taking for granted that we have no privacy rather than taking for granted that our privacy is a right established by the U.S. Supreme Court so long ago that most of us believe it is part of the Constitution?
I don’t have answers to these questions. I suspect it has something to do with cultural shifts, the Freedom of Information Act which recently made public tens of thousands of documents relevant to politics when the Baby Boomers were most politically active (really active, like let’s-get-out-the-vote active, not voting-with-their-money active like they are now), the WikiLeaks scandal, and of course the Patriot Act which allows the government to track your library checkout list. This technology has become so ubiquitous, agencies in the federal government are arguing that they be allowed to track criminal suspects using GPS without a warrant.
Baby Boomers and following generations can use GPS-enabled devices to keep track of their kids at all times. And they are. According to another NPR story, they have been since 2006. And it seems like teenagers everywhere are habituated to and accepting of this behavior from their parents. Kids today (here I go again, dating myself) won’t know what life was like without maps at their fingertips and Foursquare check-ins. Privacy is not a concern for them because they don’t know what it was like before every part of their lives was for public consumption. Every word and action is now just another piece of content on the Internet.
This shift is likely also related to the convenience of these location-based services. In a world full of information (so much to read, so little time) that can leave us all feeling a bit fatigued, it’s nice to know where we are and where we are going and who will be there when we get there. For busy multi-taskers and anybody on the go, we no longer have to plan ahead before leaving the house. We don’t even need the address of that new place in Cambridge in that unfamiliar neighborhood where we hate to drive. Forget about printing directions before we leave the office. (There’s neither ink nor paper in the printer anyway.) Now we have Siri to tell us where the restaurant is and how to get there. She can even send a text message to our dinner date via voice dictation if we’re running late.
And now that I’ve summarized both sides of this argument, I’m going to walk away from it. It’s not like me to ask a question without positing some kind of conclusion in response. But I’m going to do that this time. Mostly because I don’t have a clear position, not yet anyway. And because this Read Write Web article summed it up for me. “Now it’s strange to think that your phone might not know where you are at this very moment.” It’s strange to learn that usage of location-based services among American adults is only at 25%. For now.
Rather than getting dressed up and walking around the neighborhood, blending with children of all ages, reveling in their delights, and soaking up vicarious thrills and chills, I was stuck in class last night. Monday is a school night for me and ditching class for Halloween is a no-no. Mostly because I’m a big nerd, but also because…well, really just because I’m a big nerd.
Driving home from Harvard Square, I passed several Trick-or-Treaters wandering aimlessly in a sugary daze. Their costumes were great. Silly, obvious, creative, esoteric, nonsensical, and beautiful. It reminded me of a class from a few weeks back. We were discussing Shakespeare (as one is wont to do in a class on Shakespeare). Specifically, we were discussing the concept of character in Shakespeare.
Characters, in Shakespeare’s time, were letters on a page. They were symbols and hieroglyphs. The Bard used the word character as a simile for handwriting. There was no concept of character as we know it, as a person, persona, or personality. There were plays, and there were parts. And there were actors to act them. It’s like that great scene stealing moment in Shakespeare in Love (yes, I am going to make a goofy but apropos pop culture reference) when Ben Afflect (yes, really, Ben Affleck) struts into the theatre and demands, “What is the play, and what is my part?” Plays and parts. “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” (Shakespeare said that in As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7.)
Halloween is about parts and playing and costumes. That reminded me of a recent chat with a friend about her daughter playing dress up. We reminisced about our own childhood dress-up days. I remembered walking around in my mother’s high heels, pretending to strut in front of her tall mirror while throwing shawls over my shoulder and wrapping scarves around my neck.
And then we talked about my friend’s new volunteer position, the first formal work she’s done since having two kids. We talked about how strange it was for her to get dressed to go to the opening event in her official capacity. She wanted to make a good impression, one that screamed, “I’m not just a stay-at-home mom! I belong here!” She needed to look smart and artsy, professional but not boring, memorable for the right reasons. I could relate. Every morning I think, Who am I going to be today: artsy, professional, fun, silly, serious, an eclectic combination of those characteristics, or will jeans and a sweater do?
My friend and I talked as most of us talk about our jobs and our lives, our personalities and our roles in terms of the clothes we wear. We claim to put on different hats. They say, The clothes make the man. Dress for the job you want. We don costumes every day. Those costumes reflect our characters. For some people, this is a simple decision: same costume, different day. For others of us, the costume changes with a mood, our plans, with the weather. Some of us dress for whatever role is most important to us on a given day. With so many varying roles to choose from—sister, daughter, friend, neighbor, niece, wing-woman, wife, partner, consultant, designer, godmother, confidante, pal, athlete, scholar, professional—the changes in costume can be more dramatic. Each of these characters has its own wants and needs and ways of expressing itself, making these roles tough to balance in the best of times.
In tough times, when the push and pull of competing roles gets overwhelming, it’s helpful to have a sturdy shoulder to, hmmm, not cry on exactly, but rest on. I took advantage of a friend’s shoulder a few months back. (It was a four funerals and a wedding kind of summer.) The Shoulder I chose was very supportive. It allowed me to play my Needy Friend, Seeking Advice role. As the need passed, I shrugged off the empathy on offer. Summer turned to fall. The weather changed. My wardrobe changed, and so did my attitude. School started anew. When The Shoulder suggested (the very same evening of the lecture on character) that my stress was due to a “situation” that needed to be “resolved” so I could fix the “fragmented aspects” of my life, I realized suddenly that there was nothing to fret over. I thanked The Shoulder for his kindness and explained that I was okay. Better than okay, in fact. I was good. I wasn’t Humpty Dumpty. I didn’t need horses or men or glue to put me back together again. Because nothing was broken. Each role we play is a part of us. I can change my costume and still be me. I bet you can too.
I said to The Shoulder, perhaps it’s best to think of life this way. We are all men and women of parts. The parts are what make us whole.
I’ve always known that I have no poker face. This fact is a point of pride for me. Although on the rare occasion when I want to negotiate with a car salesman, I generally end up getting screwed, I appreciate the fact that people almost always know what I’m thinking. (I hope they appreciate it too.) Forget wearing my heart on my sleeve; my feelings are plainly written across my face.
I learned today that I also don’t have the equivalent of an online chat poker face. A witty salesman named Simon—analogies to Simon Says and the Pied Piper are suddenly running through my head—got me to give up some information today that I wanted to keep to myself. It turned out well in the end. But had it gone the other way, I could have learned a very hard lesson about my online privacy.
It all started out as an innocent chat. We were just talking (boy, if I had a nickel for every time I used that line as a teenager…). That’s how it always starts. Just talking. I was researching a merchant account provider for a client’s new ecommerce site. This is a thing I know almost nothing about: the back end of credit card processing for online retailers. And I wasn’t in the mood to talk to a salesperson. So I took advantage of the online chat feature. Simon eagerly popped into that happy little window docked in the corner of my browser. He answered all of my questions and then asked a few of his own. When I asked about higher education discounts, he asked what school I was referring to and what they were selling. I answered the latter question and declined to answer the former. The answer to the product question is digital downloads. Simon understood that I couldn’t divulge the name of my client. And he seemed genuinely interested in the digital downloads.
“Very green,” he typed.
I sent him back a smiley face. He took that as encouragement and buttered me up by asking, “Are you interested in our partner program?” He explained that if my client bought their service, I would get a commission.
I typed, “I think that would violate the terms of my contract with them. And they are a law school, so I probably shouldn’t mess with them. Thanks for asking. But no thanks.”
He laughed in reply and was understanding once again. “We work with lots of universities. You may be able to negotiate discounts with our enterprise team.”
“Great,” I typed. That was helpful information and it got them on my shortlist.
What I didn’t realize was that Simon had me right where he wanted me. And then he pounced. “Can I get your name and email for my boss? So we can send you an email with his contact information.”
I typed my email address and let him know I would have my client contact his boss directly. A split second later, the following words appeared in the popup window. As I read the words, the happy ding sounding the new message suddenly sounded like funeral bells: “if it’s [Acme University] my boss is going to @#$! himself.”
My mind raced. It stopped. It started. How did…What did I…What the f…. With a brief pause for me to giggle and think, Did he really just…? And then back to panicking, Hmmm…Email…Oh, my Web site…Dammit! It took Simon approximately 0.4 seconds to go from my email address to the name of a major university that I work with. Extract the domain name from the email address, put a www in front of it, stick it in a browser, and hit Enter. One click to the About page and there it is.
It took another 0.4 seconds for me to beat myself up and formulate a response. Rather than confirm or deny, I went with the un-denial. I replied, “no comment.”
That earned me another smiley face and a very eager inquiry regarding what other questions he could answer for me. We chatted a bit more and I pondered whether I had done the right thing for my client or if I had been naively duped by a clever 23 year old salesboy. (For the record, I have no idea what Simon looks like, but I’m imagining a young, floppy-haired, techie, hipster who rides a bike to work and listens to bands I’ve never heard of.)
As I write this now, I realize the part that really stings is that I reluctantly learned two lessons I would have preferred to avoid. 1) That my clients really do have legitimate reasons for asking me not to list their names on my Web site. And that they are in fact looking out for their best interests and not in fact trying to screw me out of taking credit for the really good work I do for them. Sigh. And 2) I now know what it feels like to be completely disarmed by some flattery, a little witty banter, and a clever boy with a better online chat poker face than I’ve got.
“You flash that smile and make your clients do what you want them to do, even when you’re wrong,” Best Tech Guy said to me once. “Turnabout is fair play,” Mr. Snarky says to me often. Is it really?
In this case, my openness worked to my client’s advantage. Simon used his powers for good, and his boss offered them a juicy discount. But it could have gone the other way. My inadvertent disclosure could have made the prospective vendor see dollar signs. I would have wasted my client’s time. I could have looked like an ass for recommending a vendor that attempted to overcharge my client with malice aforethought. And it would have been entirely my fault for trusting in all this internet stuff. But hey, I sort of have to, right? I’m adding this to the list of occupational hazards. If I don’t fully embrace the technologies and communities I help design, then I would be a hypocrite who’s not very good at her job.
The other night, Mr. Snarky risked invoking my wrath by explaining to me, “You can train yourself…”
Before he got any farther, I demanded, “Did you just say, ‘that’s a training issue’?”
His immediate reply, “Of course not. I’m not stupid.”
All of this was in reference to the way I’ve been using my iPad, and the way I want to be using my iPad. Wait, let me back up a bit more. I admit it; I haven’t had my hands on a lot of tablets. But I can tell you that my iPad 2 has completely assimilated itself into my routine. I can no longer read my New Yorker or rich HTML promotional emails from DailyCandy, Groupon or browse LinkedIn groups without it. And don’t get me started on the Pulse app. I would need a whole ‘nother blog post to describe my love for Pulse. Beyond my iPad, I’ve seen a Kindle from a distance (which looked great). And I played very briefly with an HP TouchPad (which has a way cooler name). My immediate impression of the TouchPad was that the gestures and controls were better. Better in this case equals more intuitive and more in tune with my expectations. Specifically, it has something that feels like a Back button.
The iPad has nothing that feels like a Back button. This is a little confusing because my iPod has a back button. Of course, my iPod also has a dial on it. But my iPad does a whole lot more than my iPod. And it has just one button: one lonely button to control a mini super-computer. I completely understand that I (like most people) do just about all of my browsing—interacting, experiencing, iPading, stuff—inside an app. But I (like most people) have a pretty short attention span, lots of apps, and (most importantly) apps that interact with one another. For instance, I jump from my Mail to my Calendar pretty often. I sometimes go from Mail to Safari to YouTube. I’ve even been known to navigate from Pulse to Safari to YouTube to Twitter all in one go. Pulse to Safari is a path I travel frequently. Getting back is not so easy. There’s no breadcrumb trail, either real or virtual. I have to hit the Home button, remember where I started, and reopen that application. The speed of that journey does not get faster with repetition. Each time I do it, I pause for thought. The act of remembering where I came from slows me down every time.
I want to hit the Home button and go back to the previous application or see all the applications I’m running. I know. I know. If I hit it twice it will pop up that ribbon at the bottom. Why do I have to click twice to go back and once to go home? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Here’s the catch. I probably wouldn’t have a problem with any of this if I didn’t know the following (okay, I would because I am totally OCD about these things, but I might not be ranting about it if I didn’t know the following.) The Touchpad Home button will show me all the open applications with one click. That’s what I want; that makes sense to me.
It’s a very human impulse to want to go back. It’s also very natural to want to go home. Sometimes they are the same place and sometimes they are not. That’s why we have two different buttons for Home and Back in our browser windows. These are conventions so alive in our (real and) computing lives that it seems natural that they should be carried with us wherever we go. It’s baffling to me that we can’t have separate functions for Back and Home in the devices we carry. Apple understood this when they designed the iPod. So why didn’t I get both of these features intuitively integrated into my iPad?
I know this will annoy me to no end. It’s possible it will annoy me even more in a few weeks as I say the last rites for my Blackberry and switch to a new iPhone 4S. I would take my mobile phone and tablet purchasing power elsewhere, but I don’t have good options. Blackberry’s demise has been written by the Fates via the technology blogs. I could possibly consider one of the new Windows phones. But let’s face it; I probably won’t. No one is building apps for the Touchpad. And don’t even get me started on Android. I’m out of luck. It seems there’s nothing to be done except complain.
Don’t get me wrong; I love my iPad. But it’s an inanimate object. I’m not now, nor was I ever, blind to its faults. And it’s never going to reciprocate my feelings, which is a good thing in theory. That means I should never have to compromise with it. I’m the boss of my iPad. It should do what I want it to do, right? Apparently not. Apparently I need to train myself to do it The iPad Way. I suppose I can live with that. But the fact that I have to train myself means I will love it a little less and be more willing to replace it when something better—more intuitive and fully supported—comes along.
Updated 9/28/2011
Okay, it’s official. Instead of tuning out the Ticker, I am annoyed by it. And the top posts at the top above the recent posts in my feed? Please just show me everything in order!
The music recommendations are great and the streaming through Spotify et al is a wonder. But so I really need to stream what I am playing in order to get the recommendations?
On the plus side, I did figure out how to turn off the Subscribe feature (I think). Click on your name > click Subscriptions (under your profile photo) and turn off the thing that says Allow Subscriptions. Hope that does what you want it to do.
Updated 9/23/2011
Right, it’s the very hyped Ticker. Funny that I did a ton of reading about it and still couldn’t put that together. And I’m still not convinced it makes a ton of sense. Because the Notifications icon will let me know what my Close Friends are up to, it feels like information overload.
And I remembered (sort of) it was Top News and Most Recent. I sort of remembered when the version of Facebook my iPad is loading showed me a hybrid version of the old and new sites this morning. I’m not sure if the updates haven’t spread all the way across the interwebs to my iPad or if I’m seeing a different mobile version. If this is intentional, it’s irritating. Oh well, no way to know I guess.
Still looking forward to the Timeline and Music feature roll outs.
Original post 9/23/2011
I love them. And I’m tired of hearing all the griping. Facebook has made several changes this week and plans to continue rolling out new features in the next few weeks. Everybody has an opinion about the latest changes. Most of those opinions seem negative. But I’m not sure why.
Change is good. Some of the changes were forced by the recent launch of Google+ . Those may be the best. The new lists are easy to use and totally intuitive. The split between Top News and Recent…damn it’s been two days and I’ve already forgotten the name of it. See, that right there is an indication that the bifurcated feed never made sense. But I have to admit I have had some twinges—those FOMO pangs. You know, Fear of Missing Out? Because I got so used to clicking between the two to see all my news, I’ve caught myself feeling as though I’m missing something the last day or two. But I’m sure I will be over that in another day or two.
The right column showing all my friends can be hidden forever with a single click, which is terrific because I have no idea what that’s meant to do. However, the mini-feed that now appears over the events, suggested friends, and sponsored links makes no sense at all. It appears to be a cross between my feed and my notifications—and it follows me down the page. I can’t decide if it’s redundant to something else or really helpful. The fact that I can’t figure that out means the feature gets a thumbs down. However, (as oh so helpful Mr. Snarky pointed out) it pushes the ads to the bottom of the page and out of my line of site so that gets a thumbs up.
I’m excited for the roll out of the new social music feature. The only thing left to say is, “Glad the Facebook redesign helped distract you from everything actually wrong with your life.” http://some.ly/nG2jTh via @someecards
Confession time: I’m particular about words, and I always have been. I’m an avid reader, and love to write. But I struggle sometimes when I communicate. This may (or may not) be super obvious to the people who know me well. Sometimes when I’m overtired or worn out, I stutter and lose words—that’s how it feels in my head. I attempt to speak, to use the perfect word, but my brain goes dark. There’s a gaping black hole the size and shape of the universe where the word should be. It’s incredibly frustrating, which makes me upset, which worsens the situation. I have taken to calling this condition stress dyslexia.
I bring this up because I was recently catching up on some reading on my iPad. The Dictionary.com app popped up the Word of the Day. It was a word that I knew, but I followed it anyway, just for fun. (Side note, the iPad app is not great, but it’s okay. The Word of the Day push feature works well, but doesn’t automatically update today’s word when you click through.) Beside the definition of the word that I followed (that I cannot recall now), there was an article about dyslexia. Due to my recent obsession with this condition, I gave it a read. It turns out it’s not a retention or memory problem but a problem with recall. Yup. I got that. Nothing wrong with my ability to learn words or my memory. I just can’t conjure the words I need at crucial moments.
Perhaps that’s why I try to be so particular and tend to criticize others’ word choices. (For the record, that’s a reflex, an impulse, and not something I do with malice aforethought or intent to criticize.) For me, writing is easier than speaking. I can take the time to make deliberate word choices and edit those choices. When I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I do ok in person. I am probably never as clear as I think I am except in those rare moments of controlled rage when I manage to say the things I want to say exactly how I mean to say them. Perhaps the adrenaline helps. That seems like a reasonable assumption based on the drugs used to improve kids’ attention spans. (But that’s another tangent or possibly two tangents, not necessarily on the same curve.) I am easily distracted, but that’s not the same as having an attention problem. I don’t think.
Back to bad word choices. My husband and I were recently driving through one of the wealthy Boston suburbs (one of the Ws) and drove past a pack of teenagers waving signs and shouting at passing cars. If you’re thinking car wash, you guessed it. There were easily 12-15 of them on the corner attempting to raise money for a 9-11 memorial. I know that because one of them was holding a sign that said “help impact the 9-11 memorial.” My reaction to this was slow…very, very slow. I mean I’m pretty quick most days, but this was…wow, really? Did they really say that?
Not only is “impact” the most overused word of this and the last few years, but I’m struggling to think of a word that could be less appropriate in the context of a 9-11 memorial. We want to support, build, raise (not raze) a 9-11 memorial. We do not want to have any sort of impact on it whatsoever. We may want to have a positive impact on fundraising efforts, but that is not the same thing, and that’s not what the sign said.
Words can be trendy. I get that. I’m just as guilty of following the trends as the next person. Often those trends relate to slang or neologisms that spread through casual conversations or evolving business practices. All perfectly natural. I am especially prone to overusing slang when my stress dyslexia kicks in. It’s the propagation of misused and meaningless words that I find intolerable.
I blame consultants (like me) for the proliferation of empty jargon. In fact, I had a boss about five or six years ago who used the word impact so frequently, it’s possible that he is Patient Zero for the Impact virus. The fact that this disease has spread among children is a travesty of the highest order in my opinion.
It makes me wonder how this happened. Are their teachers responsible for not teaching them proper grammar? Is it because they are too lazy to understand the difference between affect and effect? Is it not enough for them to affect something or to have an effect on it? Is the physical implication of registering an impact, landing a blow, or creating a crater just too much to resist? Should I be blaming video games?
Seriously, maybe this all stems from kids sitting around too much and not being active enough. They don’t do verbs. They are avatars. In the real world they actually are. They feel compelled to add the “actually.” Perhaps because they spend too much time in virtual reality. This has spread to grown-ups as well. We don’t believe that something has happened unless it has actually happened. Not figuratively. Not basically or generally. It literally, actually happened.
I’m not sure which of these word phenomena I hate more. The effect on our culture is ridiculous. And I mean that in the original definition of the word: deserving of ridicule. In case you’ve forgotten, ridicule is a bad thing, not a good thing (unless you’re from the school of thought that believes any attention is good attention). Calling a thing ridiculous used to be derogatory. Now it’s so bad it’s good. I don’t have a problem with that. Not really. Except when I’m tempted to order the Ridiculous Sundae at Emack & Bolio’s, I want to know if it’s so ridiculous that it’s good or so ridiculous that it’s bad. Is it so yummy and bad for me that I have to have it, or is it so bad for me that I will regret it in the morning? I really need an answer to this question, people. For reals, has anyone tried one? Did it make you sick? Should I run right out and order one now? I need to know so badly, it’s ridiculous.
It bet it’s awesome. That’s traditionally my go-to word. Similar to ridiculous, awesome is a word I use a lot and often mean sarcastically. Even I know it’s difficult to tell when I’m using the word sincerely. And then there was the whole ironic awesome story. This one is worth the digression, trust me…
Mr. Snarky and I were in Seattle for July 4 visiting friends from college and their new baby, SBJ. After SBJ went to bed, our host and hostess invited a crowd of friends over for dinner. As the wine flowed, the conversation turned to Turntable (hah, no pun intended there). Our host was streaming music from the music sharing site, and we were discussing how it worked, specifically the Lame and Awesome buttons. One of the guests made a joke about frequenting a room (the Turntable lingo for a radio station) that occasionally included songs from Journey and REO Speedwagon.
If you’re wondering what’s wrong with that, think of any overplayed song from the early 80s. You’re remembering how much you loved those songs at the time. And you’re secretly thinking they were kind of awesome, right? But something else is happening in the back of your brain. Most of you would be embarrassed to admit that you ever listened to (forget admitting that you liked) those songs when they were current. Just thinking about it makes you cringe, right? Well that’s how the dinner conversation went. After another bottle or three of wine, someone suggested that what Turntable really needs is an Ironic Awesome button for those moments when you just “Can’t Stop Believing.”
We’ve become such a jaded, sarcastic, world-weary society that we don’t want to click Like. We want a Dislike button on Facebook. And we want an Ironic Awesome button on Turntable. We want it so badly that these words had to be spoken later in the evening, “John, you know there’s not really an Ironic Awesome button, right?” John [name changed to protect the gullible] was silent for a spell, and without a hint of embarrassment hung his head in disappointment. I laughed so hard, I cried. It was awesome.
Here’s the catch. There are [actually] things in real life that inspire awe: the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, Table Mountain. These are things that must be experienced with all of your senses. Watching the Travel Channel on a big screen tellie is not enough. Standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon on a 100 degree day in a spot where you cannot see the other side or the bottom or either end while wondering how long your water will last…standing under the Eiffel Tower and bearing witness to the gray-brown metalwork holding it all up, the three elevators it takes to reach the top, the whirling-vertigo feeling of standing below and craning your neck up, searching for the topmost spire…these things are truly awe inspiring.
Climbing Table Mountain on a summer afternoon in December (Southern-hemisphere summer) thinking of a friend who made it to Cape Town and didn’t do the climb and a friend of a friend who mistook the conditions and was overcome by fast-moving weather that changes in the blink of an eye from clear and dry to heavy and wet with poor visibility and unsafe climbing and dire consequences…these are things that must be experienced firsthand. How else would you appreciate that the walk up is cut into the side of the mountain like a staircase? The steps are [ridiculously] steep, requiring you to reach a hand to the cool, dusty stone and pull yourself up. How else could you grasp the perspective from the top across wild, unfamiliar ocean as the fog rolls in and the temperature drops twenty degrees if you can’t [actually] stand there and feel the breeze on your face? How else would you taste the sea on the wind or register the hue of the water or comprehend the scale of the Cape and its city if you don’t [actually] experience it yourself?
It’s not ironic awesome. It is awesome.
