The Moment

i've been watching the aftermath of the news of Osama bin Laden's death unfold on the internet, feeling really disjointed and weird. i feel like this should be one of those momentous moments that ppl remember, like when 9/11 was happening – i remember being in my sophomore AP Psychology class and remember my teacher saying to us while we watched things unfolding on the tv "you're going to tell your kids one day that you remember exactly where you were, who you were with, and how you felt the day those towers fell." and i knew then he was totally right. i remember going to AP English after that, and seeing everyone completely devastated, collapsed on their desks, sobbing and clutching onto their friends. one boy in particular caught my eye, my friend David, who sat underneath the tv, ashen-faced but silent, and unemotional. it was his birthday. his father was murdered when he was younger. somehow that last point is relevant because it made me think he was experiencing this in a way none of us could understand. i wanted to experience his Moment, the way he was feeling things. i wanted to know what strength or understanding or strange disjointedness he was experiencing that made it possible for him not to cry. i remember thinking that it takes a strange kind of strength or self-knowing not to cry just because everyone else felt obliged to cry together. i wonder now if he could foresee the aftermath of this very public grieving, the impending, unavoidable result of such a moment. already, not even before the end of the day, i'd heard classmates, even friends, wish aloud for Osama to die. not long after, and we were propelled into a war that has lasted almost half my life.

and now this. i just got back from visiting my grandparents, opened up my laptop and went to facebook, and saw my friend's post:

when i read that, i was excited, because i read "got" as "captured and took into custody," not "have his dead body in possession." i checked twitter next.

perhaps there is something to be said about the places in which we experience these Moments. when 9/11 happened i was surrounded by people, just as perplexed and distraught as i was. there was comfort and also escalation to that. there was a sense of acceptability, of belonging, to a shared sense of sorrow. you couldn't buy an american flag for weeks. everyone's tree had a yellow ribbon on it. neighborhoods never felt more united. and isn't that weird? i felt weird about it, how strange a Moment could make your world, and never knowing when it would return to normal again. that is how 9/11 and the days after felt. or maybe it was high school (although, one could argue That Moment lingers still, even nearly ten years after it happened).

this time around, i am alone, in my room i lease from an old lady i barely know, where i just moved about a month ago to start a job i didn't feel particularly strongly about but took out of desperation because my unemployment was running out and i got laid off from my school district last year. there was no one around me when i heard the news, i watched it happening from my laptop screen, one page refresh after another, a stream of posts on twitter, facebook and tumblr. i'm not sure if my physical alienation can take full credit for my sense of detachment in this Moment, but perhaps it plays a part in the experience.

my feelings on This Moment, as i'm experiencing it thru my lens of the internet, are that it feels totally alienating and weird and definitely sickening.

like, i'm really disturbed to see how many people are coming out en masse to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden. and what's more, to do it with such camaraderie. reports were saying people in NY were honking their cars, screaming jubilantly, people in LA were going to the bars to have drinks with one another, chants of "USA" reverberating down every street. what?? the very public performances of celebration (who can be the most excited, the most patriotic) coupled with the unquestioning acceptance of such are making me feel very uneasy. everyone delighting so publicly in the USA successfully exacting revenge on ONE individual is really, really weird. i can understand a feeling of relief or closure, feeling like we can finally end the war and bring all our troops home, but screaming and hugging random "fellow Americans" in the street and feeling like America is super awesome? i just don't feel like this is one of our prouder moments. in fact, it makes me really sad, because what we are celebrating is not Justice, but Vengeance. it is the eruptive self-acknowledgment of a society and culture of violence, one that does not end with this death, but continues onward from it. Obama has already said that the "work" in the middle east will continue, and Homeland Security is already predicting "retaliation" attacks from the aftermath. it reminds me of the end of the movie Memento, in which *SPOILER ALERT* Lenny crumples up and burns the polaroid of the murder he committed, in order to perpetuate a narrative that gives him a sense of purpose but ultimately necessitates further murders.

what i would like from This Moment is some reflection. i would like public officials and leaders and the media and celebrities and my friends and everyone to rethink our narratives. if our world would find it just as easy and acceptable to celebrate peace, as we do revenge, we would have an entirely different world.

i feel like i've had several of these Moments in my life already. 9/11, The Day Obama was Elected President, and now The Day Osama bin Laden Was Killed. i'm still waiting on The Day The War Was Declared Over.

oh and also, because of This Moment, this happened...?

[source]

and this:

text reads: "PARTY IN THE USA! let's be honest... it's what we were all thinking." oh? i guess i never got the memo...

[shakes head]

i'm quitting facebook

as loyal readers would know, i have a problem with facebook. in fact, i was so steadfastly adamant about not joining it that my eventual giving-in was seen as weakness, hypocrisy and a sign of the apocalypse by some. in retrospect, i was grievously nostalgic and afraid of losing touch with college classmates when i made the decision to jump my happy ship and enter into the facebook-enabled abyss. but now, i'm considering quitting, FOR GOOD.

as i write this, i am afraid Facebook is watching (yes, i capitalized the F because it has now become an Entity). i've been doing a lot of reading this week, esp. concerning the topic of Facebook and its thinning privacy policy, and it's making me feel like i have no choice. i know, Facebook and its success are based on the gratuitous overshare of information; but holy geez, i only want to share what i want to and choose to share. it can't have all of me!

as the years of Facebook use have gone on, it's changed the way people see themselves, each other, and the right to people's personal information. The Age of Facebook has been one of oversharing and a gross sense of entitlement to people's personal business. Facebook has rendered us incapable as friends, and made us better voyeurs.

i've seen it in my own use of Facebook: i started out with little information, just my name and college, one profile picture that obscured my face, and a limited list of friends that had to be real friends (people i actually talk to and have spent qual. time with). but then it grew into adding a list of interests, joining a few groups, starting photo albums and tagging people in them, adding applications, and adding friends, from ppl i maybe talked to once in college or contacts i made thru different organizations, to now adding people i've never even met and even actually dislike in real life because i was just interested in seeing what they are up to nowadays. in short, i went from being Facebook-aloof to being a Facebook junkie. and i think it's burgeoning into a big problem:

now, every time i get on the internet, i check facebook. i check my notifications, check friends' statuses, comment on photos, etc. and by the time i emerge from my Facebook-sustained coma, an hour, two hours, a whole afternoon has passed! coming to work is such a productivity-fest because the acceptable use policy strictly bans Facebook, and thank god! i can actually get work done!

Facebook almost ruined my family! (not really, but it has hurt my relationships with people i actually care about in a genuine, real-life way.)

and now, i am finding out that Mark Zuckerberg, that King of A-holes, is making himself the youngest billionaire ever, by selling our information to advertisers and third parties. i'm not sure how it works (and that's part of the evil plan, to make it as confusing as possible), but i guess when you log on to Facebook, when you give it your email address, it keeps a record of all the websites you visit to determine your interests and catalog personal data on you, so it can sell your interests to advertisers who can better exploit you.

this article sums up the history of Facebook's privacy policy quite nicely, but this was the part that most alarmed me:

"If you are uncomfortable with [information] being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not providing) the information."

so basically, Facebook has no responsibility to protect our information, because we forfeit that right the moment we decide to use it. and protecting information is the user's responsibility, despite the ever-changing and ever-eroding privacy policies. this website does a nice job of graphically representing the growing circle of information now available to users and abusers of Facebook.

furthermore, Facebook invites you to tailor your own "ad experience," choosing how your information should be exploited best. is this what i joined Facebook for?

the point is, i'm getting sick of this information age. it's the wrong kind of information we are increasingly exposed to. i want demand to know how the BP oil spill happened and what the government is going to do to stop it and future oil spills from happening. i want to know how we're going to fix public education and restore civic health. i don't need to know all the microscopic details of all my friends' lives the very second they occur. i would like life to resume the way it was, when some things were better left up to the imagination, and ppl lived their lives in private and shared really important things with one another in secret conversations.

my initial gripe with Facebook and its antecedents has always been that i believe it ruins people's ability to communicate with one another: people are constantly on their smart phones on Facebook chatting in traffic – this is the new experience. and i honestly believe it is ruining our society (a whole generation of tweens raised on the iPod and iPhone, incapable of functioning in a real-time social situation with unpredictable and erratic individuals – this is the failure of our modern age manifest in a classroom on any given day).

and now i am learning that the dissolution of our relationships, our communicability, is simultaneously eroding our privacy, and that we're all complicit in this, because we are oblivious, or worse, because we choose to continue using it anyway. has it gotten to the point in American history when we will wage a war on terror in the name of defending our civil liberties, but willingly give up our right to privacy for the sake of social networking? i tell you, we are choosing a sad fate for ourselves: death by distraction.

the group QuitFacebookDay.com is urging ppl to quit Facebook on May 31, and in the three or four days since i had the window up and first started reading articles in preparation for this post, they have gained membership, from a little over three thousand a few days ago, to over eleven thousand this morning when i checked again. impressive growth, but considering the number of Facebook users/ potential quitters, i am sad they are not doing better.

for me, it's a matter of respect. Facebook doesn't care if it abuses its privilege to our information, and it will continue helping itself to more and more of it because it has proven profitable. Facebook users should not have to choose between keeping in touch with their friends or keeping their information private/ not being harassed by advertisers. there are plenty of other sites (flickr, twitter, tumblr, blogger, gmail, etc) that can do the same things as facebook but without the creepy prying. i'm tired of the idea of my information being fed to third parties so they can learn how to better manipulate and exploit me.

so, i'm quitting facebook. if you're a real friend, you'll know where to find me.
-stephan!e

oh, The Internet. how i love thee.

in the span of thirty minutes i went from reading this article complaining about Lost, to reading about Original Sin, to reading about The Fall and then learned that...

"The term 'prelapsarian' refers to the sin-free state of humanity prior to the Fall. It is sometimes used in reference to sentimental recollections of a past time when conditions stood in sharp contrast to the present; this situation is called nostalgia." [source]

huh! i am learning so much about Star Wars and pop culture and human nature, according to the Old and New Testaments.

thanks, Internet.

i got it from my momma

sometimes venturing onto the internet can be a torturous experience. so many young girls growing up in america quoting emo lyrics, lamenting lost "love" and compromising their self-esteem, seeking redemption in fleeting romance, and demeaning themselves to ... sound their age? i don't know, has anyone studied it? is there some self-fulfilling prophecy regarding "age-appropriate" white-suburban-teenage-girl internet behavior?


regardless of precedent, i'm becoming concerned. each day, reading anything on the internet inevitably delivers more wincing reminders of the severe lack of self-love and confidence among our digital-age youth. have the kids grown up so saturated by the media that they no longer know how to exist beyond its limited scope, to the point that they can't imagine a self-image beyond those proliferating the 'net? has society's over-abundance of visual imagery taken all the imagination and mystery out of growing up?

these are things to be pondered in more depth at a later time. the real reason that brings me to this medium right now, is what all this makes me realize: that i am insanely grateful for having grown up with strong, independent women in my life. my mother set a solid example of strength and confidence for me as a child, and i grew up thinking anything was possible if i demanded it of myself. these things are important to acknowledge, for future reference. what kind of woman do i want to be for my child, and how will she see me? will she grow up thinking she needs a man to feel worthy for the world, or will she seek to be her best self, and someone who loves her for that?

hm, an unusually ponderous saturday night post.

a-twitter: life in the digital age

i'm amazed by all the means by which the internet helps ppl keep in touch these days. does anyone even remember how to use a phone or make a house call?

i think technology is seriously incapacitating us. i remember before i even got a cell phone how different my personal interactions and relationships were. i mean, i remember having to plan ahead and set times to meet people - wow, can you imagine?! if i was meeting a friend for a date, it was a specific time and place, no if's, and's, or but's about it. you actually had to keep your obligations and commitments, you couldn't just call them at the last minute and cancel or say you were running late.

i'm sensitive to these things lately because of the amalgam of online applications i have recently started using (what i have come to collectively term my "e-life" applications). first, i finally caved and joined facebook. this was a huge personal defeat for me, since i had held off on joining for the entirety of my college career, because i found the idea of online social networking to be shallow and ridiculous. i had better ways to waste my time on the internet, and, as i constantly reminded others, there are other ways of keeping in touch with people.

but, over the years, as more and more people joined facebook, and i continued to refuse, i noticed i was getting left out of what appeared to be a digital modification - no, transformation - of modern life. my friend Robert likes to talk about transhumanism, and i think that now i finally understand what that term (and its philosophy and associated ideas) means. could it be that humans are really adapting themselves, overcoming "undesirable aspects of the human condition," by plugging ourselves in, and loading ourselves up?

i've discussed before my belief that humans are becoming increasingly technology-dependent. let's think about this: life support. "pulling the plug." we liquefy our lives, distill the essence into digital data, and upload it from any port in the world, as long as we have high speed internet access and an outlet. this process of uploading, of instant publication, of visibility, transparency, inescapability... it's invigorating. makes you feel alive, makes you feel real, makes you feel like you've got an audience and what you're doing matters (because it matters what you're doing). "overcoming involuntary death" - everyone a 15-second internet celebrity, everyone an immortal, everyone inhabiting a webspace. my life was contained in the microchips of a small whirring piece of hardware, until it decided to die. when that happened, i felt like it was i who had been erased. so what did i do? i turned to my virtual self and recovered what i could from the internet. life doubling up on itself: all the music i originally found on the internet, recovered again via my own past posts.

the digitalization of our lives has other impliations as well. facebook is not so much a way of keeping in touch with people as it is about keeping track of people. ah ha! - surveillance! yes, it seems that what we're all really doing is keeping tabs on one another. is there any other way to justify or explain the news feeds? we watch for changes in biographical information, relationship statuses, we track the lives of our friends as if our lives were online dramas being played out for entertainment.

now, a shameful admission: i don't necessarily dislike the idea of being able to track every change in every person's life. i actually rather like seeing what people are up to. example: i love using gmail. the chat feature is one of my favorite tech tools of recent memory because it allows me to see when my friends are online and what they might be up to:

i never used AIM as a kid, even when it was all the rage and all my friends used it to keep in touch. i preferred calling people on the phone or riding my bike to their house to say hi (it seems being behind the technological times has always been a proclivity of mine.) the same is true now: i could easily call someone and get a response just as quickly as i could if i sent them a chat. but, i wouldn't get the luxury of a status message for context. it's sometimes nice to strike up a chat with a friend who, by the look of their status, is feeling down, stressed, or lonely. and i'm sure lots of people would agree that it's a great window for expressing emotions without feeling like you're unloading or being extremely desperate, of putting yourself out there without having to risk anything, because the audience you want is there, in that little sidebar, and if they want to talk to you, they will. and you get the benefit of feeling a slight sense of relief and catharsis, without having to wear your heart on your sleeve, so to speak.

it's also a great way to share a link you like, a clever thought or quip, or even your latest poetry: one of my friends wrote a series of sonnets using the gchat status message as a creative medium (he found the character limit to be an interesting creative feature). i used to document away messages, finding them to be fantastic narratives (that document has since been lost in the death of external harddrive, boooo.)

but, as much as i love status narratives, twitter has taken this to a completely new level. holy shit, man, this thing is madness!!


here is a sight [sic] where you can upload away messages, as if it were a blog, and it stores them for you, as a narrative! and, you can "follow" people you know, or people you hardly know at all! (right now i am following Achewood and a Miami professor who i never took classes with, just talked to occasionally about living wage issues).

the striking thing about twitter is that, unlike gchat or facebook, it doesn't aspire or pretend to be anything other than a news feed for your personal life. there is no use for it beyond occasionally reminding people "yes, i am in fact, alive." in a digital age where we are constantly connected and plugged in, i find it fascinating that our everyday actions can find outlet and audience in cyberspace. ("i am typing... i am thinking... i am breathing... i am living...")

now, that said, YOU SHOULD BE MY FRIEND AND FOLLOWER ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!!

;-)
-stef lee

p.s. speaking of narratives, a twitter conversation unfolded on the 'net this (6/6/08) morning: