Monday, January 31, 2011

#twitterupdate

I almost, but not quite, miss posting to twitter. I'm still spying on most of you though. I may yet take the shame and resubscribe, but so far, meh. Twitter is not fascinating anymore. I'm all about Burp. Send your thoughts in 4 characters or less.

Editing to add: Have I mentioned I'm going on no sleep today? It's true. And no one has shown up at the office yet so I have to keep myself entertained. I would feel bad, but I'm not chaining any of you to my blog, eyelids clipped up so you have to read it. Well, except you Ed. You'll be released when you pass the test. It's no use complaining, no one can hear you.

#IlovePaulSimon

Every now and then I accidentally hit the Paul Simon section of my itunes collection and wonder how I forget how much I love "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes" and "You can call me Al". Perfect. So many of his songs are just perfect.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

#thepromisedrant

The rant I was referring to earlier is this:

In general, the most common response to my complaints of "it's monumentally stupid that our society does X thing" is something along the lines of "oh, you worry too much. It's the human condition, it will work itself out." Which I understand the point of, who can say what our society will eventually end up like? And it is a very complicated question, and establishing metrics for "smart and constructive" society versus "shallow and self-destructive" society would be very hard to construct, in that society is a fancy word for a bunch of really different people all mushed together.

But is it impossible to establish ANY metrics, or to comment on broader trends? If our society were dumbing itself down into full-blown idiocracy, would there be any way to call it out without being shouted down as a worry wart? There are many days I feel it would be a vicious circle of people getting dumber, with all the idiots shouting down people who "think too much". The problem, of course, with calling out other people (be it individuals or as a whole) on their shit is that we all have our own shit, and run the risk of being ah hypocrite, which seems to translate for most people as "calling people out on anything is hypocritical" which is not really true. I think there is still room to call people out on stupid, dangerous or self-destructive activities, without being too much of a hypocrite. At least, as long as you're willing to take what you dish out.

And that's my story. This was a better rant a few days ago when it was fresh in my mind. Ah well.


Monday, January 10, 2011

#IguessI'mcrazy

News that the gun-toting psycho from this weekend is probably mentally ill was not surprising. If you read what he wrote, he'd lost connection with reality. As I said on my Facebook feed, it's kind of surreal to read someone bragging about his command of grammar in garbled, almost gibberish, sentences.

But it's made me a little bit self reflective. His kind of craziness resonates a tiny amount with me (really just a tiny amount, this isn't my usual understatement). I CERTAINLY don't feel violent, but I do frequently feel frustrated by the grand absurdities of our society. And fixate on them to a degree that other people seem to find unhealthy. It probably is. I kind of resent attitudes that I just don't have enough to do though. Is the only way to get through life happily thinking as little as possible? If you don't find your life filled with mind-numbing tedium that keeps you from thinking you aren't doing it right? I find that train of thought disturbing. But again, am I fixating too much?

In the spirit of experimentation I am going to try and focus on other things for a few weeks. Well, aside from one more blog post on our stupid society that I've been wanting to write for the last week or so. But after that one I swear. Or may be the next. No, no the next one for sure. ;).

Also, related to the shooting I read some anti-pot propaganda about how "the pot" must have set him off. I think it's rubbish, largely because he'd apparently been clean for a few years. But apparently research exists to show schizophrenia can be exacerbated with pot use (but also sometimes helped with the right kind of pot!). The main point being the new strains of pot with high THC (schizo enhancing) are a little more destabilizing since they have less CBD (anti-schizo) in them. Regardless, I think I'm going to start smoking less as well. I think it probably hasn't helped that my means of ingestion give me a huge dose every time. But this news times nicely with my internal feeling of "I'd like to be sober for a while." Although that includes alcohol as well. I'm more or less done getting drunk too I think.

Anyway, that's the news from crazy-town. I think my overall feeling is, if I want to obsess about all the wrong-headed ways our society operates, then I need to become a politician or somehow focus my career on advocacy of some sort. Maybe the crazy thing is obsessing about broken things that you have no intention or inclination to fix. "People should listen to my words," is not really enough reason to bloviate endlessly about the state of the world.

Although having said that, isn't the whole reason blogs exist so you can scream endlessly into the ether about things you can't change? Wait, or is that just me? Just me? Okay.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

#ragequit

I rage quit twitter because someone hit a little too close to home about my bloviating. Prouder moments I have had.

Having said that, I am unswayed by "aw you have too much time on your hands" arguments trying to figure out new technology's effects on our behavior and thinking. I think trying to argue whether new trends are better or worse is kind of a fool's game, as it can be hard to prove either way. But, the environments we build for ourselves have effects on our mental and physical habits. So I don't think it's crazy to suggest that confining your thoughts to 140char is going to have an effect on the length and depth of the thoughts you try to express.

We seem to have a raven's sensibility about new technology: It is shiny, therefore I must have it. Twitter feels less to me like "oh hey, this technology is exactly what I've been looking for!" and more "Oh hey, it's the new hip trend!" which everyone excitedly embraces without regard for how it will affect us. I'm not saying it's necessarily evil, I'm just wondering why no one else gets frustrated that it's poorly designed in terms of organizing ideas and conversations and that 140char is not really long enough to express a thought other than texting your friend/lover/robot about what kind of food they want for dinner. And our species seems to have a remarkable capacity to embrace the new and exciting while ignoring possible unforeseen consequences, and dismissing people who bring it up as very silly indeed. Which is to say, for a bunch of apes who got where we are by thinking critically, we seem to dismiss critical thinking a lot.

Speaking of texting, wasn't twitter originally designed with the 140char limit because the creators expected updates to mostly be posted by sms instead of a straight internet connection? How insane is it then that in modern usage, in which twitter is updated and read almost entirely over the internet instead of by SMS, the message limit is still 140char? Is it just the novelty of trying to fit a thought into 140char? It boggles my at LEAST 141char mind that this is superior to being able to write a full sentence, or construct a full thought, complete with proper spelling, big, accurate words, and, in my case, absolutely horrid grammar and punctuation (so many commas in this sentence! I wonder how many are correct!).

I think the most disturbing aspect of twitter is how readily the political class took to it. CNN follows Sarah Palin's tweets, and then tries to infer what she really meant in her tweets, because 140char was not enough to express the fucking thought properly. Watch CNN, watch how much time they spend analyzing twitter feeds and interpreting what the tweeter could possibly have meant and just let the horror of that wash over you (or is it just me? Just me? Okay.). Out-of-context sound bites and "interpreting the will of the founders" by selective reading of the constitution was bad enough, but our solution was to move to trying to interpret the meaning of the tweets of our legislators because 140char is not enough room to express a complex political thought fully. Am I the only one that thinks complex political arguments should be argued in a format friendly to complex thoughts? For instance, one that doesn't hamstring sentence length? There's a lot to be said for simplifying the language and length of legislative bills, but 140char may have been something of an over-reaction.

Perhaps the appeal of twitter is a reaction to the complexity of the internet age. Less drama than Facebook, less time consuming than RSS feeds, simpler to keep track of a small group of friends. In fact, it may be the alternative to facebook for some.

I just don't understand our collective blind spots sometimes. I don't understand the appeal a service that limits the depth of your thoughts and then organizes them poorly.

Regardless, I think what I've decided is it's simply too constraining a format to express myself in. It certainly satisfies my inner egotist, but in all other ways I find it horribly frustrating. I don't like what it does to the way I think and express myself. And the 140char limit just chafes and rankles.

Anyway, now that I've firmly established myself as an old crank, I want to assure real life friends that I will still be following your feeds through Flipboard, since that's the only way to keep track of some of you. I just won't be posting. Since I cancelled my twitter account in a moment of pique.