I would like to call this past year The Year of Awakening, and quite possibly it has been.
I might need an aggregator and a data-analysis machine to prove it. Or I might need only the talent of smart curation. I might need simply the power of being first. Or of putting the claim first in this post—before the one I am not so convinced of—because, as it turns out, what I say to you first is surely what you’ll remember.
So, before I go any further, let us call this past year The Year of Awakening. Or perhaps the Year of Beautiful Toast. And if you want to share links you know of that support it, we can make our happy case together.
Second in line, because I prefer it to have less power over your psyche, I will note that some journalist declared last year—rightly, or just as click-bait—to be the year of outrage. Maybe. Maybe not. I would like to see his data-analysis machine.
Before I heard the claim, and before I came up with my own (This is the Year of Awakening!) I already had a lot on my mind: Watching people take other people down on the Internet. Watching people be hurt in the process. Watching perfectly intelligent writers stoop to new lows to get page views. Watching observers become embroiled and then, eventually either get burned or burned out. I’d rather call this past year The Year of Awakening. Trouble is, the voices that yell the loudest or on the largest platforms often get to declare our reality for us, until, in the end, it truly becomes our reality.
So we have two possible realities before us: Awakening or Outrage, Life or Exhaustion. Here is a quote from one of our readers, that suggests the first option:
I walked away from both [articles here at Tweetspeak] with far more than I came to see, feeling I left with something both private and something shared. —Richard Maxson
And this, from a reader who feels she may have spent a little too much time taking in “attack journalism” elsewhere this past year:
Being hooked leaves me exhausted, tossed out of the boat, and panting through my gills on the side of the riverbank while the writer reaps monetary and ego rewards. —Donna Falcone
from Refusing the Hook of Online Provocation
What is a Citizen for a Saner Internet—and Life?
We can let the Internet control us and serve up whatever it wishes, or we can take solid steps to claim a saner Internet experience—and life. It’s not easy. Social media sites, email, and news and blog sites are designed to distract and attract us, even despite our best wishes for our well-being and the well-being of others and society at large.
We can talk more about this in the coming year—how to skirt what amount to these “controls” on our lives and our communities, and how to replace them with new ways of being and doing. For now, we simply resolve to try out a few ways of being (see below, in “Ten Resolutions”).
It’s time to start leaving links OUT of my twitter feeds and Facebook posts. If a piece does not add to the conversation in meaningful, thoughtful way, I refuse to share it. Debate and dialogue are important. Opposing views are vital to growth and understanding, and anything that thoughtfully furthers a conversation is share-worthy. Attack journalism is not share worthy. It might make me feel better to share the dirt, and to shoot my comment off in a moment of passion and defense, but this only feeds the fisherman, encouraging him to increase his efforts to gain name recognition and/or money.
—Donna Falcone
Why Bother? I Mean, What Are the Costs Anyway?
Take a moment to consider the costs. To you. To your life. To society. We can look to studies that discuss addiction, depression, irritability, lost productivity, even crimes, and those are important.
But simply begin with yourself. We know what some of the benefits of the Internet are (here at Tweetspeak, we avidly pursue those benefits for you and for our larger society), but right now we simply want you to think it through… what are the costs of an uncontrolled, angry or sensationalistic, attention-demanding Internet to you, and are you willing to bear those costs?
Psychologist Susan Weinschenk talks about the random reinforcement that comes with the arrival of an e-mail or a text message…and the dopamine the interruption releases into the brain…The effects start small, but frequent users know it’s almost impossible to ignore…Plenty of studies make this technology-addiction connection, but here’s a disturbing one…a study on infomania that found checking your email while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment ten points. That’s the equivalent of not sleeping for thirty-six hours…
—Sullivan and Thompson
Another study offers even bleaker results. It found that following an interruption, such as an e-mail or phone call, participants get so distracted that they simply move on to something else—40 percent of the time! Perhaps not coincidentally, they also waste about 40 percent of their time.
—Sullivan and Thompson
And in the largest study of this phenomenon to date, a company named Basex found that its employees lose 2.1 hours per day to interruptions…It pegged the cost of interruptions to the US economy at a stunning $588 billion annually.
—Sullivan and Thompson
Distraction and interruption are the enemy of focus and concentration, and they attack with the force of addictive drugs, billions of dollars of new technology, biological rewiring of your brain, and seemingly inexhaustible resources….It’s no secret that distraction is the enemy of every successful venture.
—Sullivan and Thompson
from The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success
The Internet’s best (and worst) tools, then, are alerts of all kinds, from technological to anger-inducing posts and headlines and conversations. What has the cost been to you and your community? Are you willing to bear those costs?
What Does it Really Mean to “Share”?
Social media sites and websites use the language of friendship and sharing. But what does it really mean to share? This is such an intriguing question. We’d love for you to answer it in the comments. Here are a few quotes to consider as you think about what it really means to share…
Study the stories at Digg or MSN and you’ll notice a pattern: the top stories all polarize people.
—Tim Ferris
What thrives online is not the writing that reflects anything close to the reality in which you and I live. Nor does it allow for the kind of change that will create the world we wish to live in.
—Ryan Holiday
What keeps us mindful [in person] is often the reactions we SEE physically manifested in another’s face, eyes, body language when we speak – and we adjust what we say often times if we sense we are over sharing, dumping, or being aggressive.
—Donna Falcone
10 Resolutions from Citizens for a Saner Internet—and Life
We resolve to:
1. Consider sharing three beautiful posts for every negative post we feel we must share
2. Share angry posts only if they significantly contribute to an important conversation
3. Understand anger as important, a red flag type emotion, that loses its strength if all we ever do is feel angry
4. Write headlines that are intelligent, witty, or intriguing without exhausting our readers by frequently playing the “outrage card” to get click-throughs
5. If we feel we want to listen to an angry Internet conversation for what it may be able to teach us about a subject, we resolve to do so silently for a “waiting period, ” in a stance of learning rather than one of defense and counterattack
6. We will not link to attack journalism from our websites, so as not to give more power to the writer or website of said journalism.
Related, we will not link to or re-share iterative journalism, which is a sloppy form of journalism designed to deliver a “scoop” that may have no foundation yet in truth.
(Insider tip: you know you are being “played” through iterative journalism when you see its typical words and phrases: “according to a tipster, hearing reports, escalating buzz, is reporting, likely, still a mystery, reports are”)
7. Consider ways to move beyond the “page view model” of Internet sustainability (which is one reason attack or sensationalist journalism is often pursued by individuals and websites, because it can result in high page views, which can translate into staying financially sustainable. Yes, it might be time to actually subscribe to The Guardian!)
8. Get offline for periods of rest—optimally, two offline days a week and getting offline by a certain cutoff time in the evenings—and use this time to cultivate face-to-face relationships, read, exercise, or otherwise interact with the world around us (we recommend cinnamon toast as part of the deal 😉 )
9. If we are unsure about our own angry or sensationalistic post on a subject, we will first pass the post by trusted friends who come from different viewpoints, in a more private setting, before deciding whether to hit the publish button
10. If we have been online for hours and are finally simply “surfing” because we feel lonely or unfocused, we will get offline and spend time with people face-to-face, read, exercise, play, or delve deeply into a new interest-area… one that will seriously challenge us and open up new avenues for our learning and our lives
Bonus Resolution:
11. Once a week and then, occasionally, for a whole week, consider adopting a taboo word approach. Don’t share or write anything with certain negative words in them. You could pair this with sharing and writing things that contain certain positive words you’ve identified. Such a practice can stir an awakening!
The Short Story of Our Resolve
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of (real) happiness.
Please Feel Free to Take This Post and Share
You don’t need to link to us. Feel free to take the 10 resolutions above and publish them on your blog. The resolutions are a community thing, and they belong to you if you want them to.
You can also take the visual below and use it in your post and on your sidebar. Link back to your own post on your blog with it, so you can return to the resolutions whenever you need them (and inspire others to join you).
Photo by Chris Potako, Creative Commons, via Flickr.
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Patricia @ Pollywog Creek says
Yes, and thank you. A few days ago I started making a list of the people, places and activities that awaken negative feelings that create unnecessary stress/anxiety/depression in my life — so that, if at all possible, I can avoid them. The internet — a least in part — is on that list. I don’t want to isolate myself. I already live an isolated life in the boonies. The internet enriches my life with beauty and people I’d otherwise miss, but it also stirs up strife and discontentment and tells me more than I want/need to know and sucks otherwise productive time and energy from my already depleted stores. (Interestingly enough, as I’m in this process, our main computer died and my laptop has multiple purple streaks across the screen from when I stepped on it a couple of weeks ago. My only decent means of viewing the internet right now is on my phone and that’s such a hassle that I rarely spend/waste much time on it.) All that to say, I’m in the process of establishing realistic boundaries. When I log onto FB, it’s to my page rather than the news feed, and only if I feel I have time to “kill” do I click over to my news feed. I’ve already removed from my feed those “friends” who are known sharers of bad/gossipy news, people who only share about themselves (parties, trips, their glamorous life, etc.), friends who are always marketing something (books, beauty or health products, etc.), and political junkies (even though I tend to be one privately).
Again — thank you for this. Add my name to the list of “resolved citizens for a saner internet world.”
L. L. Barkat says
Patricia, I like the idea of sitting down for the new year and making that list of people, places, and activities that awaken negative feelings. It might be an interesting exercise to take a followup step and indicate what kind of negative feelings they awaken and why.
I’m not against negative things altogether, if they have something to tell us, and can awaken us in ways that go beyond the initial negativity.
But the kind that ends us in depression, despair, or inaction, well, it might be time to take a stand (or a sweet nap away from it all 🙂 )
Looking forward to hearing how it goes for you. Do you have any plans in place that will help you follow your resolve? (You know, besides breaking the rest of your equipment 😉 )
And one more thing. It could be so interesting for all of us to ask… who are we in that FB feed? Would a CSI be inclined to block us too?
Patricia @ Pollywog Creek says
I realized after I commented that it must sound like I’m trying to live life in a bubble – removed from negative thought and people entirely. There’s much to learn about others and myself through negative experiences, but I was mostly referring to the unnecessary negative effects of the internet. I subscribe in a feed reader to a diverse group of bloggers I trust (like TSPoetry)as well as any links they post. Not everything they post is positive and encouraging, but they’ve proven to be ethical in the process, so I read and listen. Hope that makes sense.
My plans to follow through? As I already stated, I recently changed how I log into FB so that I don’t go directly to my news feed. I set notifications to let me know when family and close friends (as well as certain groups I’m in) post so that I don’t miss knowing about something important. I’ll be able to see those notifications from my page when I log on. I know I’m probably going to miss important news from other friends, but I have to draw the line somewhere. I’d determined some time ago that I wouldn’t engage in certain online debates/conversation.
The rest of my plans – including when and how long I’m online – are still in the works.
I do hope no one would want to block me on FB these days – though they might have wanted to a few years ago. It’s a great question to ask, though.
Megan Willome says
Here is the first line of the mission statement of the magazine I work for is “The editorial mission of the WACOAN is to present positive images of our community through articles that entertain, enrich and educate.” That’s also my focus when on the internet. If it’s not entertaining, enriching or educating me, I walk away. Real life is hard enough without senseless negativity.
L. L. Barkat says
Love that mission, Megan. Do you think there is any place for negativity? And, if so, what is the best way to bring it forward?
Megan Willome says
I think there is a place for discussion and thoughtfully airing different points of views, a place to say, “I disagree” or “in my experience.” I don’t think there’s a place for negativity in the public online space as it exists right now. And I see more and more places that regulate comments and seek to raise the tone of discussion. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
Megan Willome says
Found what I wanted to say in a poem! From “South Carolina at War” by Jacqueline Woodson in “Brown Girl Dreaming”:
“You can’t just put your fist up. You have to insist / on something / gently. Walk toward a thing / slowly.”
(all that should be in italics but my phone doesn’t do that)
Donna says
Maybe this is our challenge as a society (one of many) – I’m pretty sure the internet is here to stay, and thank goodness for that, actually.
With this relatively new place called the web, which is always “open” and influencing our lives (and our children’s lives) I experience a growing feeling that we have to DO something!
Citizens for a Saner Internet! YES! Where do I sign up?
I want to know more about the health impact of this online outrage that is available 24 hours a day. Perhaps our ability to awaken and be conscious consumers of communications online (as well as participants) might reap even more health benefits than our BMI or other currently trending “predictor” of physical health.
L. L. Barkat says
Because it is relatively new, we’re still in the process of figuring out how to integrate it in a healthy way in our lives. It reminds me of early societies (which tend towards disorder), that eventually come to find ways of living and working that are more stable and sustainable. (Let’s hope it doesn’t take as long, though 😉 )
Any particular plans in place, Donna, for making your experience with the Internet the best it can be?
Donna says
I was thinking that, too. We are like pioneers, yes? It’s an exciting time filled with opportunities.
I have really changed the way I use and interact on facebook. I don’t “LIKE” everything I like. I don’t comment every time I have something to say. So what, especially on “PAGES” or articles that I wander “into”. The internet tends to freeze time in some ways, and so a comment I made a year ago may elicit responses any time in the future that someone may stumble upon it. My ideas may have shifted, or I may just want to move on. By resisting the urge to like and comment I find myself freer to do that.
I have started to ‘unfollow’ a lot of people, too. I mean, a LOT. I love that fb lets us unfollow rather than unfriend bc people tend to take that very seriously, like a knife through the heart, even if it was done in self preservation with complete trust that they would understand. They don’t, often, understand. They are, often, wounded. I have come to think of facebook as my kitchen… I have a lot of friends, but do I really want them all in my kitchen all at the same time, making their case, arguing their point, venting, or telling endless knock knock jokes? No. I prefer to go visiting on my own terms, when I’m ready for anything. 🙂
It’s my version of closing the front door – it gives me a little bit of control.
I am also very reluctant to LIKE and comment on random posts, too. I like to interact iwth friends, but I try to stay away from everything else (I’m getting better at it). One day my husband opened his newsfeed while I was beside him and I saw all the notifications that were from articles I LIKED or commented on or shared. It was overwhelming and I felt not only overexposed, but it had a sort of aggressive feeling to it… so many, all at once – a barrage of me. I didn’t like it at all, and it really impacted my perceptions on how I use the service (and how it uses me).
In other words, learning to use facebook filters in ways that support my own mental health without hurting anyone else has made my facebook experience much better.
Diana Trautwein says
With you 1000% on this one. And I already refuse to follow strongly negative threads. Now ‘negative’ carries lots of valences that may differ from person to person. For me, it shows in the comment threads and/or the headlines in my FB feed. And I made the mistake (??) of saying yes to every friend request and now there are tons of people in my feed whom I don’t know at all. So I’m carefully ‘unsubscribing’ from those without defriending – that’s a new option, I think. I’m ‘small’ on the web and will stay that way. I’m increasingly happy that is true.
L. L. Barkat says
It surely does carry different valences. What does “negative” mean to you?
Also, I love that you’ve come to know who you are on the web, and that you’re finding your way with that. I think that raises good questions for all of us to ask: Why am I here? What is my role? What would I like my role to be?
Sandra Heska King says
The Internet has opened up a whole new family for me. Friends who have become real, in-life friends and family. I’ve learned to love poetry 🙂 and new ways to wield words. I’ve been encouraged and able (I hope) to encourage. I’ve learned how to look at issues with new perspectives. I think I’ve grown in a lot of ways because of it.
I think I’m pretty good at avoiding the negativity, but I have to admit I do struggle with jealousy when I see the “success” of other writers. Yet I realize I don’t have the same energy level as others.
I’ve also spent too much time scrolling for fear of missing something good, and I get frustrated when I miss it. I, like Patricia, have lists that need to be updated so I don’t miss the good stuff and “unfeed” those whose posts/stories don’t enlarge me, inspire me, make me smile (or even weep), or make me think in new ways. I’m okay with a righteous anger, but I don’t want to get caught up in sensationalism.
This year I’m embracing “home.” I want to focus as much on my physical space and people around me as I do on cyberspace. I want to find a better balance in all things, including the Internet.
I can adopt these resolutions.
L. L. Barkat says
Ohhh, I really like the emphasis on “home.” We have virtual homes (this is one for me), and physical homes.
I could see you doing a blog series on the meanings, the ways of being in, and the intersections and departures of virtual and physical homes. (Next December, our Every Day Poems theme is actually “Home”!)
Also, I’m interested in seeing what plan you will use to be assured of focusing on the physical space.
Yay, an adoption. (Love an adoption 🙂 )
Sandra Heska King says
Ohhh, I like how you think!
Laura Brown says
What Sandra said.
Will Willingham says
I read hard content that some may find to be negative, or simply more than they can or wish to bear. And I also follow a particularly angry stream on Twitter.
I do it intentionally, though, and maybe this is where it could differ from the random, mindless, get-sucked-in-by-clickbait type of reading. I’m fairly purposeful about it, and selective about the topics as well as the voices.
It’s not something I imagine others would like to or ought to do. But it’s something I do as a means to see things another way, through another’s eyes. And that has to be balanced with other rich content that is hopeful and optimistic, that is poignant or whimsical, and even that addresses those same things in other ways.
It’s important to me to see things from many perspectives, and I know for myself it is difficult without that intentionality, in both directions.
I am, by the nature of the work I do, online for ridiculous amounts of time each day and I recognize the distractions. Sometimes I am successful in avoiding them, other times I am not. But setting boundaries — for instance, trying to be done by 8:00 at night and then reading a book, etc, is helpful.
That article about the Year of Outrage was a very interesting one. I won’t link to it given the context here 😉 but the editors of the site had marked the calendar for each day of 2014 with whatever the outrage was for that day.It was fascinating, that for each day we had (at least) one issue of enormous contention (even when it was a small thing). The writers of the article had a number of thoughtful perspectives on the collective outrage we express, and particularly the ways that social media mobilizes us to so quickly respond (and in many cases, pile on).
Finally, this is long, I’m sorry, I am reminded of the study done by Linda Stone (coiner of the phrase “continuous partial attention”) which showed that we breathe differently when we read our email. She also coined the phrase “email apnea” to describe the phenomena, as we tend to hold our breath while checking email and she discusses the ways in which holding our breath contribute to significant health problems.
So, there’s that, too. 🙂
L. L. Barkat says
So I am also in need of a calendar 🙂 (I think I could prove it to be the Year of Awakening with such a method.)
For the rest of this comment, I’ll be asking a lot of questions. They’re to be read in the spirit of curiosity and interest (not as me countering with questions as a form of weird disagreement).
I like the idea of courting only what you want, for the purpose of hearing a perspective. Is there any point at which you decide there is saturation for you? What do you do with the negativity? And do you actively share it with others or comment on it?
Are we really expressing collective outrage? How does one determine that that is truly happening? (And what else are we collectively expressing, if anything?)
Yes, I have heard that about email. So when we say we feel suffocated by these things, we perhaps… really are.
Will Willingham says
I do share, sometimes. Perhaps I’ll post a link on Facebook or tweet a link, but I hope I am successfully posting only those that I think are thoughtful and offer a useful perspective, not merely things that will add to the noise or needlessly enflame. I recognize I could call that wrong sometimes. 🙂
Sometimes I have conversations, offline, about what I’m seeing. I think that’s most often a better place for such conversations.
And yes, there is a saturation point, and I can feel it physically or emotionally. It’s best for me to be done then, but depending on the subject matter and how much I might feel a personal stake in it, it might be harder for me to actually be done. If that makes sense.
I think as for outrage, part of the crux of that article was that sometimes our outrage is not commensurate with the issue. And this is me now, not the article, but I think we’d do well to learn to measure in degrees. As you say above, anger loses its strength as a valuable thing if all we ever are is angry. If we react to everything with the same measure of outrage, what do we do when something really horrific happens?
L. L. Barkat says
To that final part, and I didn’t put this in the article, but some sites engage in dishonest “enflaming,” where people will come in deliberately under pseudonyms and try to get the trolls non-commensurately angry. It’s an attempt to get the post to go more viral. So I like the idea of taking it offline in a sane conversation if possible.
I notice The Guardian is cracking down on this over-the-top commenting and deleting comments they feel are potentially under false names and that are not adding in a civil way to their conversations.
Overall, I think it’s interesting how we accept a journalist’s estimation of a situation if it is well-framed, when perhaps statistically there is no basis for accepting this estimation. (What is that called? Is it circular reasoning, or it there another name for it?)
Will Willingham says
Well, opting not to read comments is a great first step in avoiding some of the worst vitriol, regardless of the subject, and this could be a good strategy for someone who finds himself reading on the more volatile subjects.
Some publications are doing away with comments altogether because sustaining a constructive dialog seems all but impossible.
Of course, they haven’t been to Tweetspeak, I imagine. 😉
Donna says
That is so interesting – your intentionality in following hard content. I wonder… do you notice your internal reactions to these have changed over time, with practice?
I’m wondering about the collective outrage thing. In some cases I think a lot of people may be upset about similar things/events/circumstances… but at other times I think people jump on bc they are reacting to other outrage, quite unrelated, but they’ve been triggered by the original author or the other comments. For example, I am connected to a population of people filled with many whom, if you tell them they look great, will be triggered to conduct a days long rant on fb or twitter about how no on understands their pain or suffering. It has become a THING. Posters. Quotes. Blogs devoted to it. I do understand the kernel of where this comes from, but I encountered a young girl on twitter about 12. Her grandmother told her she looked beautiful and the young girl went off on a rant because her community told her this symbolized a lack of compassion. Usually I avoid responding to these comments bc I know people get cranky, but with her I felt something bigger was at stake, so what I told her was that I wasn’t really sure what her situation was, but for me -when I love someone, they always look beautiful to me because I am always so happy to see them. There are so many layers flowing under the surface of what the author you mentioned calls collective outrage, and so I guess I’m wondering if they addressed that, too?
Will Willingham says
I think what happens sometimes is as you have described, that something is triggered that may not even be directly related, but there’s the opportunity to jump into the stream and express that anger somewhere, so off it goes. And sometimes I think there is this group mentality, things I might never think or say by myself but here is this throng of people saying the same thing, I think I’ll join in. (Remembering how I used to counsel my kids about the choices they make in a group that they might never make on their own, and how we have to be more watchful of ourselves because of that.) Sometimes there is pressure as a member of a group to be mad about all the same things the group is, and sometime reason goes out the window.
Sometimes, too, there is reason for anger and outcry, and there is a place to join in that collectively.
As for my own reactions, it’s hard to say. I think that mostly I am listening, working not to formulate for/against arguments in my head, and more wanting to understand where the sentiment is coming from, and that is enlightening. I hope it’s making me a better person, more empathic, less polarized in my own thinking.
Marc y Terwilliger says
Well, I don’t tweet, my phone is not set-up for that, I have a face book page but limit my friends to only 50. Why? It’s so consuming & takes so much time to read the posts that come through, most I delete. Most are good friends but I don’t chat, chat. Leave my poems and ask for feedback. So now my goal is to make a second face book page, add my own photo’s with my quotes and poems underneath. Leaving my real name totally out and coming up with a theme name instead. What I would like to do is bring happiness to others when they find my page. At the same time I love the comment section here, when one of you writes what they think about a certain poet, I find that very interesting. It’s fun if it prompts us to join in with a poem, because I sure work hard at trying to come up with a good one.
Marc y Terwilliger says
To be honest with you girls, I read all of this in the beginning and it’s a bit over my head where your going with it. It’s odd you should bring it up now since our Pastor at church is going to talk about the topic of being on the computer, texting, all the avenues of media at the tips of our fingers for the next coming month. I remember sitting in a SUV with friends younger than myself, we hadn’t been together for six months. Instead of them soaking in each others conversation they choose to look at their phones instead. That really spoke volumes to me, has it really come to this, that media is more important than seeing old friends in person. It gave a great topic for a story, how no one ever calls you anymore, everyone drops a text, you leave a message, you never here a voice. Maybe because I’m older than you girls, I love relationships and value friendships and being together over a cup of tea. To linger, to touch a hand of someone if they shared a private thought. Is it going to reach a point that I never hear the sound of the children laughing anymore. The grandchildren come over but with a device in their hands, I want to play a game, work a puzzle, ride a bike. They engage with a one on one machine, what will they remember about me? Does anyone remember laughing over what someone said face to face? Maybe I’ve totally lost the point in what you guys are trying to convey? I really ponder, and don’t know the answer.
L. L. Barkat says
Actually, Marcy, I think you’ve got the point exactly. Technology has its benefits (here you and I are talking to one another, thinking together), but if it becomes a wedge rather than a bond, that’s problematic—both online and offline.
As for offline, we need to laugh together, face to face, to drink tea together. Without devices between us, yes.
Marc y Terwilliger says
Thank you L. that helps me a lot.
SimplyDarlene says
Wow, there’s so much in this piece. Interestingly, I saw it in my FB feed this morning but I waited until I had distraction-free time to devote to the reading. And the responding.
That’s my planned mode for this year: distraction-free & devoted. I want to focus. I need to focus. Whether reading an interesting article or working on my off-line writing or listening to my son talk in great detail about characters in a novel or making dinner…
I cannot be everywhere all of the time, nor do I want to be. Does anyone? We weren’t made for that. I’m sure.
As a person who has had a traumatic brain injury, I’m super sensitive to all the flitting around, the whiz-bang headlines, and the fancy. It’s.Just.Too.Much. I could live in a cave. Really.
But on the flip side, I’d have to come out of my cave for community. Real. Slow. Connection. That sort of community.
So, all that being said, for me, what does it mean to share?
It means being on one side of the equation at a time. It means giving without feeling an entitlement of getting something in return. It means slowing down. It means caring about another’s likelihood of being influenced for good. It means loving your neighbor as yourself. It means carrying a load, or offering, or helping, someone who’s struggling. It means a smile and a handshake. It means breathing deep in another’s presence. It means small circles. It means lending one’s heart to another, like a library book, but never sending an overdue slip.
Laura Brown says
“It means lending one’s heart to another, like a library book, but never sending an overdue slip.”
I love that.
Donna says
Me too, Laura… Darlene that is a great way to put it into words… really love that. I also loved when you said “I cannot be everywhere all of the time, nor do I want to be. Does anyone? We weren’t made for that. I’m sure.” I often think about this – how unnatural this all feels – the constant access. Whether we choose to avail ourselves or not, it’s there – the web is constantly available and I’ve seen it really impact my own sons as they learn about boundaries and cell phones. So many things they have to deal with that I never, ever encountered in my youth. It opened up lots of conversations and I’ve watched them learn to use privacy features according to their needs – they are both in their 20s so it’s not like I have children that I am supervising – once they hit adulthood they had to figure out these things for themselves, and they still are. It’s been a struggle, as a mom, but we talk about it a lot around here as it resurfaces. BUT, again, it’s an opportunity to create solutions if we take it.
Marc y Terwilliger says
SimplyDarlene,
I’ve read over what you said four times now, totally understanding where you are coming from. I’m a “Hermit” not that I want to be but because of diseases that will never go away. This site, T.S. Poetry gave me a reason to keep going, to keep writing, improving, loving each comment, loving each person, finding friends I’ll never see but sharing a common goal is enough for me and makes me smile at the thought. At least you guys read my poems and when you get poem of the week you cry because finally you got one right. So you try harder the next time. I’m a cracked up egg who can’t cross the road, so I’ll just stay on my side, it’s nicer over here.
Simply Darlene says
Marcy –
I agree, poetry (read, written, tucked away, or shared) has a way of inking bandaids over fissures. So, just go at it, slow and steady.
out of cracks the most
beautiful flowers
grow. imagine a sidewalk
with no dandelions.
Donna says
A bit off topic, but not really: the easy access to adult content is a huge concern because young minds cannot UNSEE or UNHEAR things that they stumble upon or seek out intentionally because they’re curious. These are our youngest citizens and it’s I think the impact of the www cannot be underestimated in both it’s value and its risks to them.
Even music, my first love, can be a real concern these days. The fact that many songs now have videos is even more disturbing (to me) for our youngest citizens. My oldest son is very involved in the music scene and he worries about kids who don’t have any adult sounding boards or guidance – what do THEY perceive/understand/emulate (he is working to build a career in the recording industry).
We really need to find ways to help kids figure out how to take care of themselves in this often demanding world of the 24-7 world of constant buzzzing. Sure, for some of us it’s easy when they’re little, but eventually we cannot control their exposure nor should we.
There is a lot of talk about light disturbing sleep by disrupting melatonin production… for my kids the bigger issue was the pressure from friends to be available at all times. Okay, that’s a cell phone thing, but I guess I morphed into another related topic. Who? ME? 😉
Donna says
P.S. Attack-journalism really reveals my foot stomping, flag wagging ego… which also shows me where I need to resolve and let go of something… so I guess it’s a good thing to get riled up now and then. I just don’t like to make a habit of it. 🙂
Richard Maxson says
This is a much needed discussion. I regret I have not supported it sooner than today.
Somewhere in the early 90s I bought a Personal Computer. It had a Microsoft 3.0 operating system and included Microsoft Works that became the precursor to Word. I have poor handwriting and prefer to print in uppercase letters. Even so, back then I felt I could never compose on computer screen; it was inorganic I thought. I used the computer to organize my budget, bills and other utilitarian tasks. Then I joined AoL. My first online experience was on a “bulletin board” screen where I connected with someone I did not know in North Dakota from my home in North Carolina. It was thrilling that they were typing words over thousands of miles away that were showing up on my screen. It seemed “personal” somehow; I felt “connected” to someone who represented a place to which I had never been. It was snowing there, very cold in rural North Dakota; they had just bought “this computer.”
I never “spoke” with that person again, but many others I came to know “personally” and we stayed in touch several times a week from all different parts of the country.
Because I slowly gained an affection for my PC, because I typed on it for increasingly longer periods of time, I began writing poetry on it although I kept my notebooks organic and handwritten. There was a poetry group called “The Cuisinart” I joined around 1995. We met in chat rooms to discuss and read our poetry. It was in The Cuisinart I discovered the dichotomy of the Internet, its personal and isolating characteristics, as well as its ability to insulate some participants from the outcomes of their words. There was no body language, no tone of voice, no eyes; it was no-more-tears human interaction, or so some folks thought. The ability to say what we felt from within our padded cells of anonymity was addicting. Maybe we unconsciously acted on the adage we heard so many times growing up, “words can never hurt me.” Oh, but through the years since those voiceless, soundless days, we learned words can do many things, especially when hurled by the googleplex into the world at the speed of light. Heeding this, we should keep in mind in our own Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty’s exchange with Alice:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean — nothing more, nothing less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so
many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”
I have been guilty of dashing off a furious response to a news anchor, forgetting my own characterization of what passes for journalism these days as “news as entertainment,” something more concerned with ratings than substance. It’s easy to do and that is the curse of this technology. But I believe with every curse there is a blessing; it may be that in some cases the curse IS the blessing. Which is master, that’s all.
William Stafford wrote a poem that is one I take to heart every chance I get to do what it says. It begins:
A Ritual To Read To Each Other
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
Donna says
What a poem. “Following the wrong god home we may miss our star.” I loved this excerpt so much that I looked up the whole poem via google… stumbled upon it on PoemHunter.com along with an audio recording that just happened to be a computerized voice, which for me made it all the more powerful considering the context of this thread. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-ritual-to-read-to-each-other/
There are so many different reasons that people use the internet a lot or a little… thinking deeply about our reasons and wondering how those reasons guide us through the ‘web’ – overly connected or not, here it is – a giant web.
How big is the internet? Infinity plus 1.
I find all of the comments here very poignant, and isn’t it powerful the level of sharing which can exist? How words can connect us, and how we trust that each person here is who we imagine them to be, since none of us are making claims to be anyone at all. Doesn’t it change the word pair of “virtual strangers” adding another layer? Maybe I see it as we are physical strangers, but virtual friends… It makes my head spin. Which reminds me of the last stanza:
“For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”
Richard Maxson says
Donna, it is a powerful poem. What a statement you make: “we are physical strangers, but virtual friends…”
I was hoping the fist two lines would cause someone looking up the remainder. The last stanza is words to keep in the front of our minds at all times.
Thanks for commenting.
Katie Andraski says
This is a wonderful post, insightful and inspiring. Your using the word Awakening is telling because I’ve found that the internet puts me into a kind of stupor, Facebook especially. My brain gets very tired from the fragmentation of commenting on assorted threads. I scroll through when I’m tired or want to avoid my own thoughts. There’s usually some nugget from a favorite author that keeps me coming back. Thank you for pointing out how addictive it is. I feel like the machine has trained me to check it when those dings go off.
I’ve also had friendships that bloomed into great conversations but then faded over time.
It’s going to take work to set boundaries FB and clear my mental space so I can get some work done. At any rate thank you for this post, for addressing this stuff.
Susan Arscott says
As a firm believer in living he golden rule in real life and online, I thank you for these. I step away from the internet and social media at least one day a week to focus on my writing, or at least try to. Sometimes the call of the internet can be compelling beyond all reason and I succumb, but at least I fight it.
L.L. Barkat says
Yes.
It used to be more of a fight for me. Now I look forward, with great anticipation, to my weekends, when I often take up to two full days off the internet. I read, I walk, I dream, draw, play the piano, bake, sit and listen to my teen age girls (often we sit close on the couch and I joke that we will limbically regulate each other… which is a reference to an amazing physical recalibration that all mammals can provide to one another if they are happy together and in close proximity… it actually gets your heart rate and physiology in line. Cool, huh? I think, in the absence of daughters or otherwise, this can even be found by snuggling with one’s cat! 🙂 But don’t quote me on that 😉 )
Susan Arscott says
I teach English at a local college and find the students unable to cope without their cell phones and the internet. Today I asked who read newspapers and not a single one did. Sad. Many of them don’t even read the news online. Instead they follow social media and watch cat videos I guess. For the most part their respectful to me, and think of me as an odd, out of touch, eccentric ancient. The idea of reading a book is anathema to them.
As to curling up with your daughters, mine is grown, but when she was younger,we’d do the same. Now, since I’m not much of a cat person, I curl up with my husband. Ah well, you take what you can get.
Laura Brown says
My cat supports your hypothesis. I suspect she’s been conducting a longitudinal study.
Donna says
This is quite unexpected and encouraging – when people share a story with me that riles them up for very obvious reasons, stirs that fight response and they ask me to join by commenting and sharing whatever the offending post was I have a new response: I commiserate, and sometimes I’ll share my reactions, but I won’t share the post or comment on it – I tell them that I don’t want to encourage such bad behavior by giving the author the ego-strokes or monetary reward that would come from increasing their page view. The best way to make someone’s posts irrelevant is to stop feeding their machine.
The surprising thing is, so far people really LIKE that approach. They like the NOT sharing approach and I suspect they’ll think twice next time they get the urge to share a provocative piece. I think I’ll write some more on my blog about this and title it “Let’s take a breath and think about this” or maybe “Think before you Link.” Maybe I’ll pull out my old educator’s hat and dig out the behavior mod approaches to extinguishing bad behavior by removing reinforcement. 😉 Yeah, yeah… that’s it.
L.L. Barkat says
LOVE “think before you link.” And I’m really inspired by the thought of you putting your educator’s hat on to work towards change.
Let us know if you find a way to do a series on this at your blog, or whatever it is you come up with, so we can support it 🙂
Going back to the opening of your comment here, it’s interesting how sometimes all we need is permission. I am suddenly reminded of an incident with my sister when we were little.
My stepmom would let us record our singing along to instrumentals and listen back. My sister didn’t seem to understand that the process could end whenever she wanted it to. So she kept singing along with the instrumental loop “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me.”
I wish I still had the tape, because you hear her singing the words and then “nah nah nah” where she couldn’t remember the lyrics and then the chorus, over and over and then you hear this mournful aside between singing…
“Beasie? Please? Can I stop now? [big mournful sigh and continued singing until she was extricated by my stepmom]”
You’re granting permission. And the singers, I see, are feeling some relief 🙂
Donna says
Ahh…. what a story and I can see exactly how it ties in. I hadn’t thought of it like that. That is really, really helpful to me. You’ve put your finger on it. Permission. 🙂
And yes, I will let you know where I go with this Think Before you Link idea. I’d love the support… and it will be a good place continue to share the 10 resolutions…they are on my page with a link back to this post.