Ranthropologist

Category: Media & Communication

  • Opinions Unhinged

    Opinions Unhinged

    Lately my motivation for writing has been at a low ebb. Even posting more than occasional “Daily Reads” has been an effort. It’s not because I’m not reading anything worth sharing; it’s more that I’ve started to feel overwhelmed with how much there is to share. I use the media aggregator site Feedly to gather all my news sources in one place, and if I fail to check it before the end of the day I’ll often have more than 200 headlines tempting me to click – and I’m only gathering feeds from 14 sites (ranging from NPR to Jezebel, with some blogs thrown into the mix as well). I end up feeling exhausted by it all, even though I end up bypassing many of the articles. Often I will click on a promising headline only to find the article wasn’t worth it; or even worse, give in to the temptation to click on something that is more titillating than thought-provoking (Jezebel does this to me all the time – although the site posts many worthwhile and thoughtful articles, they are also awash in cute animal videos and celebrity gossip). But I’ve decided that the most exhausting part of this whole exercise is cutting through the ideological mud-slinging and self-righteous preening I encounter in much of what I read.

    I am so. tired. of people burying what are otherwise worthwhile arguments about important issues in a heap of hyperbole about how people who have a different point of view are worthless pieces of shit. I am sick of seeing headlines in publications like Salon that describe conservatives as “unhinged,” “foaming at the mouth,” and “lunatic.” I am so over reading descriptions of dissent as “blistering” or “harsh” or “scathing” when the opinions themselves turn out to be reasonable and well-founded critiques. Why does everything have to be described using the most over the top adjectives possible? And more importantly, why is it that having a different opinion makes a person mentally ill?

    This is really the crux of my problem. When you dismiss an opponent as insane, that means that you are not engaging with the meat of their argument. Publications that trade in hyperbolic descriptions and headlines are engaging in click-bait tactics, and it is to the detriment of the carefully considered arguments and opinions that the articles themselves often contain. I realize that these publications need to make money, and page-views are critical to the bottom line… but we as readers are being done a disservice. Moreover, the arguments and opinions themselves are also being ill-served. Believe me, I have my visceral reactions to some of the points of view of people with whom I strenuously disagree; Ann Coulter, for example, makes my blood boil (and not incidentally, she is a good example of a person who cynically leverages hyperbolic and vitriolic attacks into a scheme to separate a certain segment of the population from their money). But in the end, trading in ad hominem attacks and ridiculously over the top exaggerations does no service to reasonable and intelligent debate.

    This is a paradox I have long pondered: the person whose views you find so objectionable finds your views to be equally objectionable. A person who is opposed to gay marriage feels just as strongly about the rightness of their take on this issue as I feel right about my view that marriage should be available to all. This does not make the person who disagrees with me unhinged. People who embrace conservative views genuinely believe that their approach is what is best for the country (and the world), just like I genuinely believe that progressive principles are what is best. How are we ever supposed to have any sort of constructive conversation about our differences when we – and the media we are exposed to – label those with different views as crazy? Why do we take the easy way out by calling names and thus ignoring the substance of what a person believes? By doing that, we run the risk of overlooking sincerely held – and potentially damaging or dangerous – beliefs; that is, if we can arrogantly dismiss someone as crazy (or ignorant or stupid), then we are missing the opportunity to spell out, with rationality and reason, why we believe that person to be wrong.

    When someone defends the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of Southern culture and history, rather than as a symbol of racism, how likely are you to get that person to listen to and acknowledge the deeply rooted and horrifying history of chattel slavery associated with the flag if you start the conversation by calling that person a racist? (If you have any doubt whatsoever that the Confederate battle flag was flown in the cause of defending slavery, I implore you to click that link.) When a person states that their religion prohibits them from acknowledging marriage as anything other than one man and one woman, what are the chances they’ll engage with you in a productive conversation if you tell them they are a bigot? Is an anti-vaxer suddenly going to start vaccinating his kids because you tell him that he is a bad parent who is putting others in danger? Is it possible for us to acknowledge that people can have strongly held beliefs about things that we may consider to be wrong without assuming that those people are 100%, irredeemably bad? The world is not that simple.

    I want to be very clear here: I am not making an argument for excusing racism, prejudice, intolerance, irrationality, or bigotry. I am making an argument for engaging with people respectfully, even if we don’t respect the basis of the opinions they hold (although, to be sure, there are some opinions and ideologies that don’t deserve to be engaged with at all because they are so extreme, e.g. Holocaust denial or the Westboro Baptist Church. In that case, I think the best approach is to not give those people a platform). As I said above, the person you disagree with feels just as strongly about her opinion as you do about yours. Would you be willing to listen to what she has to say if she leads off by telling you that you are crazy for having your opinion? Nobody’s mind has ever been changed by insults; if anything, minds are solidified when faced with personal attacks and vitriol. Sadly, in this new media world of clicks, ads, and anonymity, I’m afraid that the attacks will win, and debate, rationality, and respect will continue to lose.

  • Web of Echoes

    Web of Echoes

    I remember when I got my first email address. I was an undergrad at Humboldt State University in my third or fourth year (somewhere around 1993-94) when the administration decided to assign every student, teacher, and staffer their own personal address. I don’t recall being particularly excited by this development; I do remember that I embraced the usefulness of email pretty quickly.

    Coming around to accepting the internet in general was harder. If there was a World Wide Web, I didn’t know about it yet, and my brief exposures to technologies like Gopher that were used to remotely search the computers at other universities only made me confused. I didn’t see the point, and I dismissed the idea that I would ever need to use this new technology. I was fortunate that my roommate had a computer that I used for word processing (if I remember correctly, the program was WordStar, and it relied on function keys since this was a pre-mouse PC), but it never occurred to me that I would have a need for one of my own once we went our separate ways after graduation. Even as I got better at using the computer in my job at the Interlibrary Loan department at the HSU library and saw its utility for making it easier to match people with books and articles from other institutions, I had no inkling of what the future held. Stubbornly, even as I moved back to San Diego and got a computer expressly for the purpose of emailing with my long-distance boyfriend who was still at HSU, and signed up for my first commercial internet account (AOL, of course!), I told myself that I had no need for “surfing the web.” What a silly waste of time, I scoffed.

    Who’s scoffing now?

    Over twenty years past that first email address, I am now a daily and steady consumer of web-based content. I get my news from online sources. I communicate primarily through email at work (and by text with friends). I open my day with a bowl of cereal, a mug of coffee, and Chrome; I read online articles in the company of lunch at work; I skim through my social media accounts while eating dinner at home, or while standing in line at a store, and even right before going to bed. And for a while now, I have come to feel that all this exposure to online content has made my brain feel… clogged. A month or so ago, I started addressing the clog by reducing the amount of time I spend on social media (I only skim through the top few Facebook statuses when I get online now) and I don’t click on every single titillating headline on Feedly, where I aggregate most of my news and information sites. I had developed a severe case of FoMO (Fear of Missing Out, for the uninitiated) and that was contributing to the brain clog. I feel a little more clear now that I have stopped manically scrolling through post after post on FB until I find the last one I saw. I have a little more time to read actual paper books now that I am only clicking on the Feedly articles about real, hard news and mustering up the will to pass up the gossipy soft “news” about celebrities or car wrecks or scandalous-sounding crimes (I have written about the difference between hard and soft news before, only I called it News and news).

    I am feeling more at peace with the amount of time I spend reading online content, but I am still uneasy. In particular, I feel that we long ago passed the point of diminishing returns with the internet. As much as there is to praise about the democratizing power of the web and the ability of people from all over the globe (at least, those with internet access, which even in the United States isn’t everybody by a long shot) to access information, there is as dark side to all this instant access. The dark side is the fact that anybody who can access the web can add content to the web.

    Why is this bad? The answer should be obvious: people can say and write whatever they want, and they have no burden of proof. There are obviously websites and sources that are more trustworthy than others, but that doesn’t stop people from finding things on websites that are misleading, manipulative, or outright fraudulent and accepting them as true. The internet is the modern version of the snake-oil salesman’s wagon, but instead of traveling from town to town looking for marks, the snake oil peddlers of the internet are never more than a click away. For somebody like me, who values critical thinking, the scientific method, rationality, and skepticism, this aspect of the information age is ominous indeed. The democratizing power of the web has bred a vast and expanding digital library full of truth and fiction, but there is no librarian to make sure all this content is appropriately catalogued. It has become an enormous echo chamber, where we shout what we want and hear it echoed back to us from the sites and articles and social media posts that we already want to believe. No matter how crazy an idea may sound, I can all but guarantee that you can find some source backing it on the web.

    None of these ideas should be revelatory, and I expect that everyone reading this has already drawn these conclusions. Still, as I continue emerging from my brain clog and find new ways to cope with the ceaseless internet echoes, I believe these are things worth thinking about. We would all do well to think more carefully about the amount of time we spend online, and certainly to think very carefully about the conclusions we draw from what we read. It’s too easy to believe that the echoes are the only sounds we need to hear.

     

  • Death and Life on Facebook

    Death and Life on Facebook

    A friend of mine died yesterday. I knew it was coming. He had already beaten a different kind of cancer once, but this one, in a different part of his body, was fast-growing, virulent, and untreatable. I learned of his diagnosis, earlier this year, the old-fashioned way – someone told me about it, in person. This man – Steve – was closest to my uncle, but as someone who had worked first for, and then with, my uncle since I was in my early twenties, I definitely considered him a friend. When news of his death came yesterday, again it was the old-fashioned way – my mother called me to tell me. When I hung up the phone my first urge was to post something about it on Facebook, but as my fingers hovered over the mouse to click to the page, I stopped. I thought. I started to cry. And I didn’t write the post.

    What stopped me from sharing this life event with my social media circle? My first thought was that it wasn’t appropriate. Steve and I did not share many friends on FB, but we shared a few, and I didn’t think this was the way they should find out if they didn’t already know. My second thought was that it’s not the way I would want to find out, either. I tried to assess my initial desire to post about this loss right away and what I hoped to gain from it, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this issue is more complicated than I thought – and more complicated than I want it to be.

    This isn’t just about death or other bad news; it’s about sharing our lives in general. As those of you who read my blog already know, I have an uneasy relationship with social media. Obviously I use it, but I am ambivalent about it – sometimes deeply. There is nothing inherently wrong with sharing news about our lives, and the positive thing about sharing the news of my friend’s death was that I would get comforting words from other friends in return. That’s a good thing… right? Of course it is. But can it also be a bad thing? Is our urge to share on social media right away, especially when it comes to deeply personal news, something we should always do? Of course not. But when do we know? This is the tricky part, because I think this line is drawn in a different place for every person. It makes the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – uncertain. And because social media is ubiquitous, and because the posting habits of others are out of our control, sometimes things we wouldn’t share about ourselves get shared anyway.

    When I thought more about Steve’s role in my life I realized that if it weren’t for Facebook I probably wouldn’t have had much interaction with him at all over the last several years. I would see him in person from time to time in social situations, but we didn’t have a one-on-one relationship. So when I saw and friended him on FB, it was an opportunity to reconnect with somebody I had always enjoyed seeing. Steve was deeply, brilliantly sarcastic, with an acid wit and a tongue to match. He was quite liberal in many of his politics, and once we became FB friends we would trade private messages with links to political cartoons or articles that we would laugh over together. Sometimes he would engage in sparring matches with some of my friends in the comment sections of some of my political postings, making sharp points couched in jokes and eye-rolling mock disdain. I always loved to read what he had to say. I will miss that very much. But I have to ask myself: what would I have to miss if it weren’t for the fact that we reconnected on Facebook? In other words, if it weren’t for FB, I probably would not have talked to Steve for years, and I would not have had an online relationship to miss. That would have been a shame. But I have to ask myself: if people didn’t have social media, would they have more incentive to maintain the relationships that are important in their lives? Would we reach out to people more frequently in person if we didn’t see them online?

    I don’t know the answer to that question. The reality is that I have reconnected with people on FB that I most likely never would have seen or talked to again if it weren’t for social media. Looking back on my life pre-FB, how often did I feel the urge to find some of the people I am connected to now? I have to be honest and say that I probably didn’t think of them at all. However, once this venue became available to us we had a way to look for people, and we could give in to the novelty and the curiosity to find out what people from our past might be up to now. But again, the hard, honest truth: my life would not be any worse if I had never reconnected with some of these people; and I don’t think it’s necessarily better because I have. This is not meant to be a slight; to me, it’s simply reality. The people who are the most important to me are the ones I know, and have always known, I am going to see again. They are the ones I will contact personally if I have something really important to share. They are the ones I can count on if I need them when something bad happens. I don’t want to discount the value of online interactions in general – like most people, I enjoy the likes, the shares, and the comments on what I post. But I think it has become too easy to rely on electronic feedback to provide us with the squirt of dopamine that reassures our brains that we have been noticed and validated. My fear is that we will think this is enough, and we will not nourish the relationships we have with people in the real world.

    This post probably seems hypocritical in some respects, because in deciding not to post on Facebook about the death of my friend I felt inspired to write this post talking about the death of my friend, which I will shortly be posting, via Twitter, on Facebook. But this isn’t about Steve. It’s about making sure that I keep my online interactions in proper perspective. I value the interactions I am able to have because of FB but I don’t, in the big scheme of things, think I will be missing anything important if I decide to back away. If I want to have actual relationships with people, not just digital interactions, then I think I will ultimately have to back away.

    In your memory, Mr. Marchetti. I enjoyed having you as a friend in the real world and the digital one, and I will miss you.

  • Mini Rant: Television Sucks

    Mini Rant: Television Sucks

    I went to the gym at lunch and had a choice of three TVs to tune into. I chose the one showing reruns of Law & Order: SVU over the two showing sports talk shows. I have never watched an episode of Law & Order of any kind. I am now very grateful for that. I know I can be a terrible snob, but seriously? This is what passes for quality television programming on the networks? It is unfathomable to me that such mindless, derivative, predictable dreck has ruled the airwaves for all these years. I have never been a fan of crime procedurals because they are predictable by definition; after all, they are about following procedure, right? But I was honestly shocked at how lame the dialogue was, how stereotypical the characters are, and how little nuance there was to the plot. Now that Breaking Bad has retired to the meth lab in the sky, I have been seriously contemplating canceling my cable altogether because other than sports, I don’t watch any shows (I do like The Walking Dead, which starts again soon, but I can live without it). I know there is good television out there but I don’t want to make the commitment. My stack of unread books just keeps getting higher, there are papers to grade, lectures to write, research articles to outline, crafts to make, friends to hang out with… I just don’t have time for television, and I think today’s shock just nudges me closer to cutting the cord.

  • Mini Rant: Opium of Irrelevance

    Mini Rant: Opium of Irrelevance

    I’m taking a yogurt break at work, and as I headed towards the fridge to get my snack I heard the downstairs lobby TV blaring with the latest irrelevant bit of nonsense from the Jodi Arias trial. If you’ve been following this blog you already know how I feel about this sort of thing being dressed up as real news. For whatever reason, though, today I felt incensed. For crying out loud, a bunch of people, including children, died yesterday in that huge tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. Syria is in the midst of a civil war where even more people are being injured, traumatized, killed. The US Justice Department is essentially staking out reporters and potentially threatening press freedom. We’ve now surpassed an atmospheric carbon load of 400 PPM – beyond the threshold where we can recover from the effects of climate change. And THIS is the day’s big news? I’m horrified, saddened, jaded, cynical. This is the bullshit – the irrelevant, completely pointless crap – that lulls people away from the real news. Jodi Arias should only be relevant to Jodi Arias, her family, the victim’s family, and the criminal justice system in Arizona. IT IS NOT NEWS. It is an opiate that keeps people sated and hallucinating that what they hear is relevant, and it makes me furious.

  • Stereotypes, Generalities, and Banalities

    Stereotypes, Generalities, and Banalities

    Another Super Bowl has passed, and with it has passed several attempts by corporations to trick us into thinking we need to buy what they are selling. We all know that the Super Bowl is about more than the game of football; for many, it is a social opportunity as well as a sporting event. Over the past several years, the commercials have become as big, if not a bigger, draw than the game itself. It seems to me that before this became the standard, the commercials were actually better. Madison Avenue saw it for what it was: an enormous audience of sports fans and their associated hangers-on. No longer did the commercials need to be tailored specifically to football fans; they could be crafted to appeal to the general American public, which included the spouses, friends, and families of the actual football fans. I feel no shame in admitting that for years I, too, was more interested in the commercials than in the game. Now, however, my interest has taken a decidedly different turn.

    Two commercials in particular caught my interest, and they were both produced in the service of the same corporation. Chrysler created one ad for its Jeep division, and another for its Ram truck division. The Jeep commercial features a serious narrative intoned by Oprah Winfrey, telling us that we cannot be “whole again” until our men and women in uniform are back home with their families after completing their heroic service. The Ram commercial is soundtracked with an old speech by famous conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey, who extols the virtues and values of the American family farmer. In both commercials, the money shot of the product being sold is saved until the end. This serves the purpose of luring the viewer into a particular state of mind – one of admiration for our heroes, whether military or farming – and then associates that feeling of pride, nostalgia, and lump-in-the-throat patriotism with the product. Manipulative? Absolutely. Does it work? Absolutely.

    So what’s my problem here? I don’t assume that every Super Bowl ad viewer is credulous enough to fall for the Madison Avenue hype. Most viewers know they are being manipulated, even if unconsciously. But how many people really stop to think about it? I’m sure there are reams of research on effective advertising strategies that trick consumers into believing they need things that in reality, they simply want. However, I do think the kind of shameless manipulation manifested in the Jeep and Ram ads is particularly egregious. What do Jeeps have to do with the socioeconomic realities that make so many young Americans believe their only real hope of success in life is to join the military? These young men and women are not heroes in the sense that this commercial wants us to believe; that is, they are not heroic because they put themselves in harm’s way. They are ordinary people with ordinary foibles, and serving in the military does not, in and of itself, make them “heroes.” (This is also a rant for another day; I believe the word hero needs to be defined much more narrowly and that it is cheapened by applying it to every single person who does a difficult job.) If anything, their heroism lies in accepting an extremely narrow range of choices in life and making the best of it. Jeep has nothing to say about changing the structural realities of our society such that status inequalities are erased and military service truly becomes one choice among many, as opposed to an avenue of escape for those who have very few avenues to pursue.

    I have the same issue, although slightly less so, with the hero farmer portrayed by Ram. Undoubtedly family farming is strenuous and difficult work that is not taken lightly by those who pursue it; but at the same time, being a farmer does not somehow instill men (and the commercial features only men as the farmers, with women and children as support staff) with deeper, or truer, or greater values than the rest of us. I realize that the commercial is not meant to imply that only family farmers have these strong, quintessential American values of hard work and sacrifice; but the symbolism of the farmer is very powerful in our national gestalt. And just like the Jeep commercial, I wonder what, exactly, Ram trucks have to do with these values. In my reading about these commercials I read a comment stating that in reality, Ram trucks are probably out of the price range of the average family farmer today – especially since family farms are a dying breed and those that succeed do so without tricked out Rams that are really luxury cars in disguise.

    So we get back to the original point: tugging at our patriotic and bootstrap individualistic values; wanting to see in ourselves what the commercials stereotype, generalize, and banalize about the essential symbols of American culture; and being tricked into thinking that cars, of all things, have anything whatsoever to do with it. Feel free to admire the values, but think carefully about what they really mean… and think extra carefully before accepting the false, hegemonic notion that you can purchase them.