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| It was written...I am...yadda yadda...
I recently started a MySpace account though it remains completely devoid of content. In fact it actually says John has 0 friends (how did they know?!). Anyhoo, there’s an “About me” part on there where you’re supposed to write a bit about yourself. Honestly, I can’t be bothered to try and figure out who I am while looking like I’m actually doing something that resembles work. It seems as though I should just write what I want people to think I am. Brutal honesty has no place in cyberspace, where anonymity rules. I left it blank.
However, that begs the question: Who are we? Not in the existential “what is the meaning of life?” “the world is an ocean and we are but a drop of water” “through the looking glass” “take the red pill and do whatever Morpheus says” sort of way, but rather: What makes us who were are?
I guess it really depends on who we ask. We’re all someone to different people; however that someone may not always be the same. As all perception is relative and your personal perception creates your reality, you attach unique meanings to everything. That’s great. Everyone’s a snowflake (take that, Chick Palahniuk!)
So as the adage goes, I suppose we’re like onions with many layers and “the more you peel it, the more it stinks”.
To people we’re not close to or do not know that well, there is a certain level of pretense in what parts of ourselves we present to them, right? Every new person you meet is another opportunity to reinvent yourself in a new way, in that person’s eyes atleast. And their perception perpetuates your pretense (the madness!) so as long as you know that person, you will always be whoever you want to be with them. It’s just that easy when you keep people at a distance. They only get what you give them.
Anyone who gets further than this gets a taste of who you really are. But how do you determine who that is? It really comes down to trust. But how do you know who to trust if they’re not given the proper chance? As per an interesting conversation last night, I’m going to have to say it’s best to just give people the benefit of the doubt. Yes, you’re also giving them a chance to screw you over, but you take the risk and if you do get screwed you reserve the right to bury them in a shallow grave behind the gas station off exit 53 on the LIE where no one will ever find them. *ahem* Anyway, the idea is that everyone is innocent until proven guilty (unless you’re OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson). The risk is always there, but it’s better than never trusting anyone enough to let them in. Woe is you, you morose bastards.
So what happens when someone goes a layer deeper on the onion? Well, you start to stink a bit. They start to see all of your quirks and weirdness. Some of it might be endearing while others may be frightening, but hey, that’s you. And the deeper you go, the more intimacy and vulnerability you expose, and that infers a completely different level of trust. And when you get down to the core of the onion, only few remain. Those whom you hold closest to you get the best of you but also get the worst of you. Your best friends are the first to hear when you’ve got something great going on but they’re also the first ones you turn to when you need to bitch about something.
So what does all of this really come down to? Do you define yourself through how others perceive you? Have you invented yourself as who you want to be in the eyes of people you know? We all have to some point or another, but I believe this is truer and more apparent in those overly social who identify themselves by who they know and where they go. Social climbing is a farce because you really only create an image that people may see but never really grasp. Those who are more concerned with their outer selves rather that who they really are really fit this stereotype.
We identify with the fact that we don't know who we are. It's a throwback to the whole early 90's, Reality Bites, slacker culture. But it's evolved since then. It's a much more elaborate than that now. It's no longer just a cycle of self-pity. Is it just that we're all in this transitional stage of our lives that no one really knows who they are and we're still all becoming who we want to be and that person may not necessarily be the person we end up as? (Huh?) "Now is the winter of our discontent"? That’s bullshit. Okay, fine, we’re nameless, faceless and voiceless as a generation, but that shouldn’t mean anything to you really.
So what defines you? If there was no one else left in the world, who would you be then?
Okay, so if it’s that hard to know who you are, how do you really know someone else? There are those things in life that have no metrics but we use these relative terms to try and describe something that's abstract.
So what does it mean to really know someone? Think about all of your friends and what it is about them that makes them your friend. Can you say your really know any of them? How many times have you been betrayed by someone whom you thought you knew because they turned out to be someone else. Or maybe they were just showing you that part of themselves that they wanted you to see.
We all play this game, but doesn't that just hinder us from really knowing each other? We hide ourselves behind barriers and only let people in as much as we want. It's foolish to just be an open book to anyone and everyone, isn't it? So how is it that you come to know people whom you hold close to you?
Utter and complete honesty is rare, but when you really know someone, you'll just feel that they're being real with you, non? I mean, you can't ever know for sure if someone is being totally honest with you, but you trust them and feel that they'll value that enough not to betray it.
It all really comes down to honesty: How honest you are willing to be with yourself and how honest you are about that to other people.
Who am I to you?
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| Right to Write
I recently found this aritcle buried under the aftermath of last week's work. It's actually a very interesting look into the aspects of what we're doing here. Please read it if you get the chance: Washington Post: "More Bloggers Turn to Web Sites For Their Own Person Therapy".
So why do we do this? Five years ago, the weblog phenomenon didn't even exist, and now it is a daily medium for us to exchange ideas and air our dirty laundry. Whether it's Xanga, Friendster, MySpace, Live Journal, Blog Spot, or some other site, if you're reading this you have an account on one of these, if not many. (If you have all of these, please turn off your computer and go outside. Look up. It's called the Sun. You'll thank me later.)
…..
Okay, now that all of the crazies are outside enjoying some much needed sunlight, why do you even have these blogs? Initial answers are usually "bored at work" or "stalk people". Hey, I can sympathize. Sure, I'm bored at work, but not bored enough that I have to blog. If Xanga wasn’t around, I certainly wouldn’t be writing this in a journal as I’ve never really kept one. So what’s the draw of it all? If we feel like authors and orators to an absentee audience, does it make it easier to voice our thoughts?
The motivation for some is apparent: some people just like the attention. There's nothing wrong with that; it is what it is, right? Some people need reinforcement, whether positive or negative; they just want to be heard. Airing your grievances isn’t nearly as fun unless there’s someone who agrees with you. And the web gives them a voice. This goes doubly for people with nothing much to say really as it gives them a forum to say what they want.
I like to think of weblogs as a way of preserving significant thoughts in a cohesive manner. What you are reading right now is my own brain trying to organize all of the thoughts at hand into something coherent enough to be written, and thusly read. It doesn't always work (Please see: all past entries). I suspect this is true for many others out there who have trouble collecting all of their ideas, as well. It's kind of a self-discovery thing where you take things apart and put them back together in a blog and it helps you better understand what you're thinking. I suppose it filters out some of the noise in my head.
The fact that blogs are web-based offers very many useful caveats. Had I just written things down on a piece of paper or verbally discussed them with people, I'd have to constantly allude to the aforementioned article. But here we have that handy-dandy link and I can let things explain themselves. Plus, the nature of the web is that it provides atleast a standard layer of anonymity. Well, not really, since most of the blogs you read are by people you know or atleast know of. Reading blogs of friends hepls you feel connected, but the truly interesting ones are by perfect strangers.
The article above mentions that some hospitals now have space where patients can blog about their treatments, kind of like testimonials, but more interactive, with comments and the whole shebang. And these hospitals use this as marketing. Not bad; they get credible testimony from real patients for close to nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this become a more common way for websites to push their products and services. Where message boards have failed them, blogs will surely succeed, right?
Some people are writing highly personal entries and a lot of times, those aren't meant for those who know the author. People just need to vent and get things out, kind of like at Post Secret. I kind of like the idea of writing my secrets on post cards and leaving them at the food court in the mall or something. That guy is a genius. I guess saying things anonymously really does help people learn to share, huh?
The most morosely humorous thing is when people use their blogs to passive aggressively deliver a message to people. To anyone not in the loop, the entry may seem a bit obscure and out of context. But worry not, Xangsters, it's probably not for you then. You know when someone is directing something at you; sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's lame, but people tend to do it a lot. I guess it's still easier than telling people stuff face to face.
Bill Schreiner, VP of AOL community programming says, "It's like they're writing the novel of their lives and public participation adds truth to their story." Scary thought, though quite a nice way of looking at it. How many of you would want your blogs to tell the story of your life? I would imagine that anyone judging me by my entries would surely assume I was some pretensious, whiny, malcontent with faux-intellectual delusions. Man, that would suck. Not to say that it wouldn’t be really cool if a blog were to actually be able to tell one’s story accurately and succinctly. Those photo journals are certainly pretty cool.
So why do you write?
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| Porn Again
It being early on a Monday morning, I'm still feeling a little groggy. So my boss askes me for some very generic research and, me being the lazy ass that I am, I Google® it rather than run Bridgestation™ as my computer runs at the pace of a sloth. So what is the significance of this? When you are looking for a term with the word "shared" in it, make sure you type an R and not a V. You can assume what my search results looked like. Now, I have a Google® search screen with a bunch of porn links up on my screen. So what do I do? What any God-fearing Catholic™ would do in the given situation: I clicked on one. Duh.
Pop-ups....everywhere.... I should note that when you click on a pornographic advertisement, the miscellaneous pop-ups that come up are not always for straight porn. So, if you are easily embarrassed or are of dubious sexuality, be mindful of this.
At this very moment, my boss walks in to add something to what he'd asked me for. So I'm scrambling trying to get this off the screen. He takes a gander over my shoulder, sees what's going on and bursts out laughing. (This was more embarrassing than the time some dude farted in the elevator and got off just as a lady was getting on, so, of course she thought it was me). However, apparently, this happens all of the time so it's not like anyone in my office thinks I'm some kind of closet porn junky, homosexual sodomist who's into beastiality (well, if they do, it's not because of this) because everyone stumbles upon porn every once in a while (I actually clicked on it though, heh).
The fact that this type of thing is such a common occurance is a bit disturbing to me. If you choose to see it that way, it could definitely be a sign of social digression. If society has gotten so perverse that widespread pornography is actually a problem, what does that say about us? It used to be that you had to go out of your way to find porn; now you have to go out of your way to block it.
Using Google as a benchmark, I tried a couple of searches to see what they'd turn up, just for fun. It's pretty obvious what you're going to get with some search terms, so I was careful not to click on some. An initial search on the word "Paris" yields a bunch of hits about the city of Paris regarding history, tourism, yadda. However, search for the terms "Paris video" and yup, you guessed it: Paris Hilton Sex Tape. Surprised much?....Me neither. I'm happy to report that initial searches of words "Amateur", "Housewife", "Gorilla Mask" and "Money Shot" turned up without anything linked to porn. "Farm Girl" did.
And because I was bored, I tried a few just to see if there was anyways to not get perverse results. Searches on "Roman War Helmet", "Arabian Goggles", "Rusty Trombone", and "Barely Legal" turned up with material that was both highly inappropriate for the office, and at the same time, pretty funny (Someone please remind me to clear the cookies on my computer).
Back to the point: have our lives and tastes become so perverse that, as much as we like to convince oursleves of the contrary, all we ever do is to just appeal to our baser instincts? I mean, the Internet is a great thing right? And it's pretty safe to assume that if it was invented on March 1st, Internet porn was invented on March 2nd. All of this sophisticated technology and so much of it is dedicated to this specific purpose. I mean, we all know Sex Sells, but I think it's come to the point that most are desensitized to it. Pornography may, and often does, come up in regular conversation and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would be extremely squimish about it because it's so in your face nowadays.
A perfect example as to how twisted things have gotten: Paris Hilton. This hotel heiress's only claim to fame can be summed up in two words: Sex Tape. And yet she's on the cover of Vanity Fair, on T-Mobile© commercials, modeling clothing, etc. The fact that she's got her own show is simply rage-inducing. And, though I know it makes me sound like a moron that this is actually one of the sticking points: She's not hot. She's actually got a bit of a googly eye which is a little weird. Anyhow, she's really actually famous because people love watching the rich and how their lives crumble. A bit sadistic, but I'm willing to surrender that point to human nature. But, this chick is everywhere. I thought she would have went the way of William Hung, but she's holding strong. Why? Because no one is bothered by the fact that her only merit is a night-vision enhanced sex tape that was made by her then boyfriend when she was under the legal age of consent. And because of this, people are throwing endorement deals at her? I mean, she's obviously got great PR, but you'd think that they'd try to downplay to slut angle a little more. She's actually working that aspect retty hard. Really Paris? That's hot©.
It may be a good thing that we can actually be more open and honest with ourselves about what we really care about. I'm not really the most wholesome person, and I'm not really offended by this kind of thing, but the idea of it becoming so commonplace in our lives is a little disturbing. I mean, I guess no one can be blamed for taking the low road but when the words "Paris Hilton" and "role model" start occurring in the same sentence, you've got to admit, it's a bit scary.
Lessons of the day:
- Pay better attention when Googling at work.
- The Firewall at work helps keep you from getting fired; don't screw with it.
- Don't let people make sex tapes of you. | | |
| Nothing More than Feelings...
I heard an adult talking to an infant the other day and it struck me how complicated things have gotten.
The lady was asking, "Do you love mommy? Do you love mommy?" Over and over again. This was a non-speaking infant so I'm sure it was somewhat a rhetorical question. I'm sure every parent does this so it's not a weird thing but it poses a question: how is a baby supposed to know what love is? Hell, I'm 24 and I still haven't quite figured it out yet, and who knows if I ever will. I mean, I know that I do love my mom, but maybe it's a learned behavior from my mom asking me, "Do you love mommy?" when I was a pup. Well played, Mrs. Vo....well played.
So how do we learn to feel? When I was in pre-school and kindergarten, my teacher (Hi, Miss Josie!) had all of these notions as to what she wanted us to believe love was (or atleast, should be). It is a given that you love your mom and dad, and if you have siblings, you may kind of like them too though you may fancy a pet more than a particular sibling. It was a lot simpler to explain it back then; if they went away and you missed them, you cared about them. And anyone you loved, you hugged. That was pretty much it. I really do kind of wish it was still like that. Hugs are nice.
*ahem* Moving on, in later years, when I stopped listening to crackpot teachers tell me what their notions of love were, the idea was shaped by books and media. To a great extent, it still is. The point is, it's gotten much more complicated. Love isn't just missing people and hugging people anymore. Words like trust, loyalty, compromise, compassion, reciprocation and sacrifice come into the picture. And to further complicate things, somewhere along the line, girls decided to make a play for our affection as well (and us for their's). Well, cooties aren't such a big deal anymore. Circles and dots be damned.
So now that we're adolescents, we're learning a billion different things about ourselves and each other and a we think we're so freakin smart. All of our ideas were fed to us through TV and radio. Girls got it from magazines as there wasn't a girl between the time I was 10 and 16 who didn't carry around a copy of YM and/or Seventeen. And through it all is an idealized view of what love should be. Since boys are inherently stupid around that age, we haven't got a clue as to what's going on in those silly girls' minds.
I can't help but laugh when I think of how foolish and cocksure I was when I was younger. When I was 12, if a girl let me touch her sprouting boob, then clearly (clearly!) she loved me. hahah. The scariest thing about that is that, to this day, I still have no real way of knowing. I've only got what I'd learned when I was a teenager, which is kind of sad if you choose to look at it that way. I always say that I'll know it when I find it.
But how does anyone really know? I hear people saying that if you do this <insert random deed> then you don't love the person and if you do this <insert another random deed>, then it's love. But, are you sure? It's certainly dangerous to make such comments about something so abstract. Just saying that it means something different to everyone allows the chance that whatever your blanket comment about love was can and probably will be negated. The fact that so many people get divorced is a testiment to how wrong people can be. Although he wasn't talking about love in particular, surely it applies that "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." (Thanks, Socrates).
Growing up with the TV washing over me, I can't help but give in to what it tells me sometimes. And if we take a look at some of the typical relationships from TV, we can see that no one really has a good idea about anything.
- Donald and Daisy (Duck) - I don't know if they're married, but they do shack up from time to time. You kind of get the feeling that they were modeled after a typical 1950's working class household. Donald is short tempered and belligerant, though he's completely whipped when no one else is around. His three impish nephews are like distant children, so much that everytime they try to spend quality time together, something always goes wrong. Daisy is the cool headed voice of reason who only rarely asserts her dominance over the angry mallard. Somehow, they make it work though they seem to be hanging by a thread most of the time. He probably beats her. I haven't taken into account that they are, in fact, toons.
- Zack Morris and Kelly Kupowski - Zack, the ever prototypical popular guy douche only touches on the fact that girls are constantly all over him but we all know there's some underlying issues there. His best friend (Screech) is a self-loathing, borderline homosexual. The cheersquad captain, popular ditzy girl, Kelly, seems to fall victim to Zack's hairbrained schemes a lot but is much dumber than he, so most of the time remains blissfully unaware.
- Dylan McKay and Brenda Walsh/Kelly Taylor/Valerie Something - Dylan is a motorcycle/surf/alcoholic rich boy. He's a bad boy and it only makes all the girls want him more, apparently. Self pity must be an aphrodisiac in Beverly Hills. Brenda, bitchy and dark was the coolest one of all of them, but became a retard around this guy. Kelly, blond homecoming queen, was the enabler in her codependant relationship with Dylan; she wanted out but could never leave. Valerie was just a less cool, but more edgy Brenda. They abused one another throughout their entire relationship, which seemed to make it work. And finally, once this hapless bastard finds the one, she accidentally gets whacked in a hit meant for him a la mob boss dad. I hate when that happens...Despite the fact that these are the oldest looking high school kids outside of Chernobyl, people never seemed to notice.
So what does that teach us about what Walt Disney and Aaron Spelling know about the subject? Nothing. Nothing about love is absolute. So why do we put so much into an abstract? People live for it and die for it all of the time. And for what? Maybe it's the innate need for something to believe in (i.e. religion?). People need a reason. And this isn't said to downplay love or make it seem less than it is. I have my own ideas as to what it really is. Whether I'm right, depends on whether or not I'll ever find it.
We are taught to love by others who are just as clueless as we are from a very early age. And I can say that I do love my mom, and my sister. I guess loving family is something we stop learning after a while (probably right before puberty, when we learn to hate them) and just accepted. It's just learning to love anyone outside of your family that takes the rest of your life to learn to do. And after a (short) lifetime of learning, I can only conclude that I don't know anything. | | |
| Be Cool: Do or Do not. There is no try.
What is it like to be cool? I don't think I'll ever know. It seems to be a delicate balance of contradictory factors. You have to be down with popular mainstream events and culture because cool people will scoff at you if you don't know about something that they expect you to. Even if you don't like it, you've got to know about it or risk being mocked by your peers, with tar and feathers to follow. We are expected to innately be aware of popular culture at all times, though it isn't always aware of us. To be ignorant of it is to be viewed as a non-participant.
At the same time, to maintain your individuality, you have to be somewhat unique and esoteric when it comes to certain tastes. It indicates that you are well rounded in the unpopular, implying that you are open minded. It also plays into the exclusivity that apparently makes people cool. People don't want to do something that everyone else is doing because once something becomes popular enough, it's easily overdone (a concept that Z100 and HOT97 haven't quite yet grasped). Though we strive to flow with the mainstream, cultural oversaturation changes the tide very quickly.
To be extreme to one end is socially unacceptable. If you lean to much toward the popular, people view you as a mindless zombie child of the mass media with no real opinion of your own. This is very much how I see people who can't tell what good music is but just know what they like. On the other side of it, if you delve too much in the obscure, you are kind of a geek, weirdo, backpacker, what-have-you.
In very much the same way, it's cool to be uncool, in an indifferent sort of way while people who actually try to be cool are penalized. These are the celebrities and public figures who can get away with whatever they want because they're cool enough to be uncool and get away with it. People who try too hard are posers as it's not cool to be that aware of yourself and probably care more about it than they should.
Now what does this really mean? That in order to to be a functional part of contemporary culture, you have to be into it enough to know what you're talking about but removed enough to be able to think outside of the box? It's harder than it seems though people would have you believe otherwise. In a world where we are bombarded by images and ideas so much that it feels like popular culture is being injected into us, it's hard to achieve both concurrently. It's hard to say no to it as everyone has some instinct to follow the pack while it's equally hard to just take everything in when your sense of individuality begs that you separate yourself from it all. They are inherent contradictions so people get it twisted a lot.
These situations spawn phenomenon such as "Vote or Die". Being proactive is apparently trendy, thus, so is voting. People feel that by supporting a cause they are voicing themselves while they are just fooling themselves. Partisan politics aside, they are trying to be part of a mainstream movement while seemingly taking an individual stand for something. I'd hate to make a blanket statement about the whole thing, but honestly, if you need Puffy to come and tell you to vote and give you a t-shirt, you probably (a) don't know enough about it that you should vote (b) obviously don't care enough about voting to do it for the right reasons, (c) both.
I believe that no one is ever complete balanced in all of this but rather in a state of constant flux (aside from people who are adamant about being on polar extremes). You can go from one end of the spectrum and back at any given time. And all the while you can be cool or fall to the uncool. There is not one constant or absolute except for the fact that are (almost) never aware of where they stand. As sad as it is that I have to fall back on the classic idiom that contradiction is human nature, it's true, in the same way that there is an exception to every rule.
My conclusion? I won't say it doesn't mean anything, but it only means as much as you make it. Don't try; Just be. | | |
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