140 Charachters
I pull out the phone and click a button. A space for 140 characters makes way for me, a place for me, welcoming my words out into the world.Social media is a tricky concept. We currently live in a world where these systems can be used to organize political campaigns, or to report on the volume of our defecation. To share pictures of our burrito or inspire the masses with thought-provoking articles. To complain about our aches and pains, or ask our friends for advice on what to do about them.For myself, social media has a complex place in my heart. And I say heart, because it holds an emotional place for me.Yes, my social media is a business tool. It is a platform for informing people of my upcoming projects, where to find me, and how to purchase my wares. Yes, my journals and podcast drive traffic to those wares, those projects, that hope that someone might click a donate button and five more dollars, euro or pounds (or 500 yen) might make their way into my account. An artist needs to eat after all.But that is not where it started, and not the whole of my reality. I admire those who start into these platforms and have a clear purpose. My twitter, facebook, livejournal, wordpress, pinterest, podcast, audioboo, tumblr – they will all serve one purpose. Perhaps it is a regular stream of information on human rights violations. Perhaps it will be information about cleaning products, with cleverly slipped in information on their own cleaning products that they sell. They have a clear why, and how, from the start.But mine began out of a desire to share. A desire to have others go “oh, I get it,” but also a desire to not be silent. I talk. I tell stories. It is a part of my make-up, a part of the thing known as I AM. Let the bard ripple out from my lips, my words S.P.E.L.L. out a spell with each word I spell out on the page.In the 15 years I have journaled, the reasons behind it have shifted, sometimes tweet to tweet. And it’s an issue, because folks don’t know what to expect from me. Thus, they are unsure whether to follow my “feed.” They do not, after all, know what I will be feeding them.I like forwarding posts, articles and videos that I find inspirational, innovative, funny or thought-provoking. In the past few days, that might include this artistic hulahoop video or this 3-minute summary on the complexity of gender and sexuality. And, I like that others that I follow do the same, inspiring me, and getting me thinking. We cross-pollinate each other’s realities. I almost missed this video poetry performance on race, place and food as facebook skimmed by at a thousand posts per second, which would have been a sorrow for me, a blossom that would have never opened at this time without it.The internet is amazing, but it is also full of waste. That we spend our time and energy on that which uses up our bandwidth but doesn’t “help” or “do anything.” But in processing last night as to why I do some of these things, I have been sitting with the why, with how it helps, what it does.
Yesterday I posted that I was at 16 Handles Frozen Yogurt with the Foursquare check-in of “Pumpkin froyo for the win!” This is far from moving or inspirational. The likelihood of anyone caring is not that high. Maybe I become an advertising bump for the store, with another New Yorker going in the next few weeks to have frozen yogurt themselves, having had my voice whisper this compliment in their head.But thinking about it as I drifted to sleep, I realized I did it for those 2 “likes” at the bottom. That my sister and friend were each keeping an eye on me, and for that little moment, I crossed their mind enough to click a button. No, it is not a deeply moving conversation, and no, it is not “a big deal,” but I am not alone. In that moment I am not alone.This, of course, is absurd on many levels. Instead of posting about froyo, I could have spent that moment to actually text my sister or friend and say “hey, I adore you.” I could create actual human contact and connection, rather than spewing self-centered concepts of consumption in a place where I can hope others might trip on it and push a button. Where we build friendships rather than “friends,” find out what each other like rather than collect “likes.”But I am sitting on the floor in a massage studio, the floor I am subletting when I am in NYC at this time. Each morning I pack all my things back up into the closet, fold up the foam mat I am sleeping on and turn it back into a chair. Each morning I vanish.But online I am not invisible. There is someone to see me and say, hey, I like froyo too. There is a random stranger who will repost the article about how social media may be lowering our quality of life, and together we contemplate the circle of logic we find ourselves in. Or they may strike up a conversation with me, and say that they saw a different article, and now, both of us are sharing, connecting, and affecting each other.Now I could go on a diatribe about the value and validity of what we share, about how our brains are taking in too much to process, about how we may be assimilating false information… but that’s not where I am going right now.Instead, I reflect upon my desire for those likes. Those desires for folks to care that I even exist. And I’m not talking about the hundreds of “loves” I got on fetlife for a recent post. That was actually overwhelming, which I find hilarious as someone who is building their work through social media and says they want to have articles that move people to dialogue… that I would get overwhelmed at it “working.” Well, human minds are complex and full of contradictions.My desire for those likes is based on a desire to be loved. Yes. And a desire to be seen. Yes. A desire to have somebody care. Yes. A desire for shared experience.Huh, yeah. When I am with close friends or my beloved, I do those kinds of check-ins far less. That is, unless we are all on Foursquare and are using check-in as a group bonding tool. Ha ha, I cry out to Mollena, beat you too it! She shakes her fist, and proceeds to up the ante, beat herself at her own game. It becomes humor, a shared story, a thing we laugh about over dumplings.When I am walking around New York alone, I can enjoy it. I am happy to vanish into a coffee shop and read my next Orson Scott Card novel (I’d never read him before, and now I am hooked, doing the whole Ender’s series book at a time). I am happy to walk through the park and be in my own company. But I also get lonely. I wish someone were at my side to share this moment with. And its stupid little stuff, so I don’t want to text my partner and say “I’m eating pumkin froyo” for no good reason – if they were there with me, they would see the look on my face, see my delight, see how my face scrunched up when I tried the apple cider flavor, how I debated as to whether to have that cookie topping but went for mochi bites instead. How I looked at the mochi and smiled because it reminded me of mochi that we eat at home.Instead, because it is too small, or too little, or too vast… I hop online and say “Pumpkin froyo for the win!” The bubbling vat of pressure in my body that wishes I were not alone, that is feeling, that feels silly feeling… it vents.However, I am now myself spewing useless data points, pixels, pieces of information onto the ‘net that could have been much better used for reading an article about Mennonite women being “ghost” raped in Bolivia. But that, it gets argued, is replacing something light with something heavy. So it becomes some sort of joy-equation. Take away twenty posts about Grumpy Cat, and there is space to watch a video of the hot military boys doing a cover of “Call Me Maybe.” Ten silly videos and there is time for the newest episode of The Daily Show, where news and interviews get snuck in between the lines of scatological humor.Let me inspire, my thumbs type out.Let me not be alone, my 140 characters say.