I had a bad sleep night last night (for no good reason - it just happens). I will be using today's post to purge junk from my fatigue-addled brain. No need to read any more, this is just a cleansing process for me.
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What did people expect when they chose a Mayor whose name hints at car theft? (And whose brother's name hints at burying the evidence?)
Let's speak frankly about something that everybody's been careful not to say: there isn't really an elephant in the room.
If there is an elephant in the room, it's that kites are really quite boring.
I have a great idea for an app: a lying version of Shazam. I would put it in my "Lying Apps" folder together with my weather and map apps.
Sure, the Leafs blew a 4-1 lead in Game 7 in an historically unprecedented manner. But it could have been worse. They could have won the game and gone on to enjoy a Cinderella playoff run...maybe even have made it to the Conference finals. That might have been the catalyst that changed the franchise into a dynasty for years to come. Imagine how sad we'd all be feeling when that dynasty is at an end. It's better that it ends now before we get used to winning.
I think you could learn a lot about a person by getting to know them.
Why aren't all the political correctness police out there objecting to the use of the word "viral" to describe things that become really really popular? Isn't it an insensitive word given the number of people who have died from viruses throughout history? It's really crazy.
Isn't it a blessing that your various senses decline as you age in parallel with a decline in how you look, how you feel, how you smell, and how interested you are in what others have to say?
My dog doesn't have fleas. I don't even have a dog. If I did, I would teach it to play the ukulele.
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Purge complete. Fatigue continues.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
An Opinion
I thought that a piece written by Mitch Potter in the Toronto Star this weekend was spot on: Tragic Cleveland Saga Often Descended into Voyeuristic Media Farce Driven by Vanity. In it, he refers to a "self-incriminating screed" by CBS News anchor Scott Pelley.
In Potter's words, the 'screed' summed it all up:
In Potter's words, the 'screed' summed it all up:
...adding up the mountain of mistakes, from the massacre in Newtown to the bombings in Boston to Cleveland, as evidence that journalism’s house is on fire.
“We’re getting the big stories wrong over and over again,” said Pelley.
He railed against “vanity” and “self-conceit,” as the drivers of a real-time scramble to be first with any new crumb of information, often lifted without scrutiny from the uncorroborated pages of social media.
Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, said Pelley, are “not journalism. That’s gossip. Journalism was invented as an antidote to gossip.”
It’s “a world where everybody is a publisher, no one is an editor, and we’ve arrived at that point today.”
Like I said, spot on.
I know a lot of intelligent people are sounding the alarm bells even as this plays out around us. But I can't tell if their message is being heard amidst the din on the web.
To whom should we listen?
Where do you go to find a good old fashioned expert opinion on something these days? Way back in the previous century, if you wanted to get an opinion on a movie, you sought out one of a handful of reputable movie critics. If you needed news, it was in the newspapers and TV news reports. If you wanted medical advice, you asked your doctor. And while the weather was always a 50/50 proposition, you at least knew where to look.
I think that those of us who grew up in that world still make the extra effort to find our own cadre of experts...but what about our children? To whom are they listening? Each other?
Who should listen to 'me'?
It used to be that the first 30 (or so) years of your life were an extended training period during which you were being carefully groomed to take your turn contributing something back to society. If you had something to say, you'd get a chance to say it once you had paid your dues. When you first entered the workforce, you spent years paying attention to the experienced folks around you and learning from them. Every now and then, they'd ask your opinion.
If you were much younger than that and you had an opinion about a world event, or poverty, or climate change, or... you would feel free to share that opinion with the people in your immediate vicinity. When you went off to University, you might have worked for the paper or the radio station and been in a position to share your opinions with a broader spectrum of people who were within your local sphere of influence.
Today, EVERYBODY can say ANYTHING about ANYTHING to EVERYBODY else. No editors. No credentials. Few rules. No age restrictions. No consequences.
So we have people barely starting out in life who feel free to speak with authority on subjects about which they know very little. They are also making mistakes that will haunt them forever because long before they've had the opportunity to develop any kind of wisdom, they are out showing their face and sharing their thoughts in front of the world.
And with so many people contributing to the din in real time on every subject imaginable, there are no experts. Our trusted institutions are crumbling. And people's lives are being ruined.
Lives are being ruined
It used to be that the mistakes you made during your volatile formative years were your own mistakes, and they made you wiser. But now it's dead easy to make those mistakes in front of everyone and never ever live them down.
It's also dead easy to take aim at someone else and destroy them. In fact, there are a small number of people who see this as a game and know how to play it very well.
So?
Society has had its "wild frontiers" before, and we always tame those frontiers by - amongst other things - establishing some rules that allow us to live together. This is what's got to be next.
In the meantime, I think we can all act a little more responsibly while the frontier is being tamed. My opinion:
- Don't just share everything you see or hear. Don't try to make yourself part of a breaking news story. Don't weigh in on things just because you can.
- Continue (or start) supporting real journalism by buying newspapers, subscribing to news sites, etc.
- Have grown up conversations with your kids about what's going on out there. At first, we were just worried about our kids being targeted by bad people online for an eventual face-to-face encounter. Now, we should be just as worried about their 'information' encounters online. As it says in the Star article I mentioned above, try to emphasize the ethics that are under siege.
- If you're young, be okay with listening to your elders on matters they understand better than you do. Believe it or not, there is some value in experience.
In case you've noticed the irony of me writing this blog post as if I'm some kind of expert, let me just say that I'm not. And I don't think I'm pretending to be. I also don't think that I have any greater right to share my opinion than anyone else does.
My opinion isn't news and it isn't fact and there's every chance it's not even right. If you don't know me, you have no reason to believe me. But for the family, friends and work colleagues who do know me, you now know my thoughts on this matter. I'd be interested in your thoughts as well. And isn't that how it should be?
Saturday, May 4, 2013
"You're Stupid", love anonymous
The Secret Admirer
A long time ago, there used to be something called a "Secret Admirer" (this was long before stalkers were invented).
Anyone could become a Secret Admirer by following a few simple steps:
- Write a love note; type it if you are worried about your handwriting being recognized
- Sign it "Anonymous" or "Your Secret Admirer" or something like that
- Put it in an envelope addressed to the Admired, leaving off the standard return address
- Drop it in the mail
- Wait 1-3 weeks and see what happens.
The Secret Nemesis
I don't remember there being a corresponding "Secret Nemesis" persona back then. That's probably because 'snail mail' wasn't (and still isn't) a suitable vehicle for anonymous and angry expression. When you're really mad do you really want to patiently wait a few weeks to vent it? For anger, it's about instant gratification, and it's also about ensuring that the arrival of your documented anger isn't out of sync with what's happened since you felt that anger (e.g. a subsequent apology or sober second thought).
In both cases, admiration or anger, the desire to express the emotion anonymously was (and still is) understandable, if a little cowardly. But when it comes to a sense of urgency, the two emotions drive us in opposite directions: With admiration, patience is reasonable and can serve a purpose; with anger, waiting doesn't seem like an option. Hence we used to have Secret Admirers using snail mail, and would-be Secret Nemeses throwing notes wrapped around rocks through windows.
Moderate and patient people used snail mail to communicate their moderate feelings, usually positive ones. They never threw stones through windows.
And what of today?
These are funny times when it comes to anonymity.
On the one hand, there are many more ways to communicate with at least superficial anonymity. On the other hand, everyone is much more exposed than ever to the risk of doing something that seems anonymous or private but really isn't.
We have more choices for anonymous communication than ever before and we are less able to act with true anonymity than ever before. It all comes down to how hard someone wants to try to discover our identity. So for acts that aren't likely to provoke an investigation, people tend to take their anonymity at face value and behave accordingly.
It used to be that to express extreme anger (or hatred) anonymously and in the moment, people had to do something blatantly illegal - skulking around in the dead of night or behind a mask to protect their anonymity. And if you weren't willing to do that (i.e. you were not that kind of person) you could either confront someone face-to-face (or by phone) with what you were feeling, or write a letter and wait a few weeks - which usually wouldn't happen because of the moderating delay that would require.
Today, anyone who gets angry - no matter what kind of person they are - has many ways to express their anger anonymously and immediately. Under the seemingly protective veil of anonymity, a relatively moderate person caught up in an emotionally-charged moment can say things they might later regret, but can never take back. And while these words might make the target feel bad, unless he or she feels threatened, nothing is likely going to come of it.
Likewise, people can (and do) say really nice things anonymously on these same platforms. These words make their target feel good, even if he or she doesn't know the source. In those situations, why bother trying to find out who's behind the kind words? A thank you is enough recognition.
Thus anonymity today depends on an implicit 'code of honour': "I won't pierce your veil of anonymity as long as your behaviour remains reasonable."
Secret Nemeses (aka "cyber-bullies", "trolls", etc.) abound because they feel safe in the conditions we've created. Codes of honour are for honourable people. Secret Admirers, on the other hand, seem nearly extinct. If they're still out there, they're using more private settings where they can voice their admiring words without risk of those words being read by the Secret Nemeses.
What's out of whack is the risk / reward equation for angry people who use their anonymous online presence to communicate their anger: There's no understood threshold of acceptable expression of anger beyond which their "right" to free expression no longer holds. And people who feel victimized don't have much they can do to stop it from happening. Right now, it's the wild frontier. Fear holds the Secret Admirers back; and we need more fear to bridle the Secret Nemeses.
What also seems to be going wrong is that smart people who should know better aren't taking their time to think before they communicate something, whether anonymously or with attribution. Who will this hurt? Will I regret this later? Why don't I wait to see if I still feel this way tomorrow?
I think I just said that we need less instant gratification and more consequences. Man, I'm getting old.
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