Back in 2013 I joined a website then called “twitter.” I was not an early adopter (I rarely am) but I new I would be traveling and many of the folks with whom I wanted to be in touch were almost exclusively (anti)social-media-only communicators.
Folks I knew had fancy-schmancy pocket computers from Apple and Samsung that had built-in cellular telephone capabilities, but never used them as phones. Their mode was all-text, all-the time. Preferably on one of the two major (anti)social media sites: Facething or the Twits.
Some time ago I left the former, as it was simply, too much. I was never too much of a user of the latter site, for which I kept my account alive primarily to be able to access posts of others – some can only be seen from within that particular sphere. In the intervening years the site was purchased by a very wealthy megalomaniac and transformed into the service of another, far less wealthy megalomaniac, arguably playing a role in getting the latter re-elected to the highest office in the land.
My account counts. Not much, but it’s a tick on the grand tally of accounts that allows the owner to say: “I’ve got so many accounts…”
So many minus one now, Bub. The flood of lies, disinformation, and misinformation that are the “X” content stream are not something I can in good conscience be a part of – even a passive one. So I am leaving, deactivating my account, and turning my back. I shall no longer be counted as one of the millions that make the site whatever the hell it has become.
It’s a small step, but if every like-minded person (and there are tens of millions of us out there, based on the Nov. 5 tallies) took the same small step, the collective leap would be impressive.
Meanwhile, it’s been a rough week. There is still a giant media channel to which I remain a member, and it is through them I can offer this needed distraction:
And if you like that, there’s more!
And for those looking for wallpaper, you can catch the boats in Portsmouth harbor here:
As we enter a year of conflict and disinformation all rolled together with the goo that is politics, it is more important than ever to have access to quality information, if one is to know what’s happening in their world.
This is tough even in the best of circumstances – and we are not now in the best of times for either responsible journalism or for media literacy.
That’s not to say there is not a lot of responsible journalism out there – there is. But the noise to signal ratio is higher than ever, what with the flood of disinformation across (anti)social media sites and the scads of imposter sites that look like news outlets but are only designed to look that way to camouflage propaganda mills.
Put most folks into this information environment, and suddenly the lack of media literacy in our population magnifies the troubles exponentially.
It’s tough – but not impossible. And it begins at home. Literally, in your own home. What do you do to read/watch/hear the news each day? Chances are, it’s going to be done online, which allows you access to more information than ever before – but also allows malefactors more information about what you are looking for and your viewing habits, so they can tailor bogus news to fit nicely into your own, personalized sweet spot.
So, what to do? First: know what you’re consuming for news! It may seem obvious, but knowing the difference between the Washington Post’swebsite and the Washington Examiner’s makes a huge difference in what you are consuming for your daily information intake.
And, yes, every place you go on the web will have a bias of one kind or another. I subscribe to the WaPo even though I know it’s owned by Jeff Bezos (yes, that Jeff Bezos…) – because I know that organization cares about its journalism, and I can trust the veracity of their reportage fare more than, say, the OAN.
Media literacy can be learned. There are excellent resources out there to help decipher what things you read about really mean. All the understanding about the journalism that’s available to you don’t mean squat, however, without quality journalism being available to you in the first place.
And this really does start at home – with the journalism available to you that represents your community. Your local paper. Your local radio station. Hell, even local facething groups and blogs count as local media – and creating quality journalism at the local level takes the support of the community.
That’s why I also support my local public radio stations (plural). They are doing boots-on-the-ground reporting on local and state issues every day, and they deserve my support for that, as I listen to them every damn day to know what’s happening int he world.
You may have noticed that I’m asking for your support for the Eugene Weekly. Click the link for the full story; the short version is just before Christmas the publisher discovered they had been embezzled and had to lay folks off.
The Eugene Weekly is an “alt” weekly – it’s not the biggest paper sold in town, but, given that the biggest paper in town is published elsewhere, it’s literally the only paper made in town. Now, Eugene is not my town – it’s south of here about an hour, but it’s a close enough community that I enjoy the connection offered by the weekly (it’s also my connection when I’m Jonesin’ for a crossword…)
During the pandemic, the paper kept going…thinner, but still going. It has provided an alternative view, of the area; it has provided opportunities for J-school students to do real-world reporting; it has garnered awards and accolades. And its letters are a trip and three-quarters most of the weeks.
Having an outlet for local journalism such as the Weekly makes a city more livable. To have someone gut it in such a cruel and petty manner is even worse than the ways hedge fund board rooms have been gutting newspapers for the past few decades. I mean, yes, the latter is a long, slow, and lingering death of some of the finest newsrooms in the country; but what happened to the Weekly was just a mean, ugly sucker punch below the belt.
At the same time, though, it was kind of a wake-up call.
Once the Weekly was off the street, and folks heard why, the floodgate opened in ways one might not have though imaginable. It’s been described like the scene from It’s A Wonderful Life when the town comes together to bail out the Bailey’s – tens of thousand of dollars (and, yes, you know I gave!) have flowed into the Weekly to make them whole again. The once-great Register Guard has shriveled over the year to a hollow shell of itself, run from the Statesman Journal up in Salem. Over all those years of troubles, the community did not stand up and make its voice heard about the need for the paper.
Faced with the dastardly loss of the Weekly, the community appears to be speaking.
If you can help the Weekly, please do. But if you are somewhere else, what’s your “Weekly”? What have you done for them, lately?
As we enter a year of conflict and disinformation all rolled together with the goo that is politics, it is more important than ever to have access to quality information, if one is to know what’s happening in their world.
Life has kept me busy. Of course, who hasn’t been kept hopping these days? Most folk I know are, well, busy, be it keeping up with work, managing health issues, dealing with their families. When I set myself down in the home office to do some kind of activity on this computing thingy, I find myself doing work – that is to say, working on material brought from the job, spending extra time in an edit doing tweaking, mixing, and such other things as I might fuss over before I send a project out for review.
Lately, too, when I set myself own in this chair to write, I find myself writing for work. My job hasn’t changed, per se, but the focus of some of what I do has shifted somewhat. These days I am writing to document what I do – the great Brain Dump as we call it in my quarterly reviews. With more staff in our department, and, lets face it, the imminent reality of my aging out toward retirement in the actually foreseeable future, it is incumbent upon me to delegate more of what I do to others. I can’t keep doing it all, myself, especially now that I am not alone. Which is nice – but there needs to be a conduit between my grey matter and the tasks our new folks are picking up.
I also get to work more on communications-oriented writing, especially to promote the strategic alignment of our larger department within the division, and the university writ large.
All this is nice, but I need to start carving out time in the new year to write more for myself. To work on projects that have been piling up, one way or another, on the desk here in the home office.
It can be done. Life has been busy, but, let’s be real – not any busier for me as for many others. One person in particular continues to astound and amaze me with her daily output. She writes, each day, for us; for all of US. Her output demonstrates a discipline and ethic that humbles. I type of Heather Cox Richardson, whose substack column, Letters from an American, should be required reading across the board.
Richardson has a new book out; as she’s been hustling around doing the author boogie, she keeps cranking out the daily submissions. Each day I see her name in my inbox, I am awed.
Yesterday’s filing, for Thanksgiving Day, was, as usual, inspirational, and I leave you with her final words from yesterday:
In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.
A recent WaPo article tells us that leaving the facething is “Easier said than done.”
[facething] is bad! Nevertheless, more than 2 billion of us are still there — some reluctantly, some enthusiastically. Because even though the platform is a cesspool of toxicity, there are reasons to stay. Maybe it’s the only way you keep in touch with your aunt. Or find out what’s happening in your hometown. Or catch up with gossip from your high school friends. That’s [facething]’s trap: The emotional connections are inextricable from the algorithm that keeps us clicking against our own best interests.
It’s easier than you think. First, download your activity to your computer. This gives you a copy on your computer of your account activity, including posts and – important for many – the photos you’ve uploaded over the years. Once you have a copy of your old life, you can deactivate or delete your account.
It’s a lazy-ish Sunday, and instead of looking for cupcakes and a movie, I popped open the lappy and started to go to … that site. Muscle memory? Laziness? Upon seeing the login page, I just shook my head. Old habits, especially those habits that are designed to deliver dopamine hits deep inside one’s brain, are hard to kick.
But I caught myself, shamed myself, and moved on to the newspaper site to which I subscribe so I could check the day’s headlines instead. It’s a better way to see what’s happening in the world that … that site.
Tonight I once again suspended my activities on a large (anti)social media site. I’ve downloaded my account, so I have all the inanities I’ve posted, photos I seem to only have located therein, etc.
The account is deactivated now. Maybe, after some time has passed, I’ll delete it. Who knows?
It’s been an interesting ride, but I’ve been weaning myself for a few weeks, and I’m ready to go cold turkey again. My big concern is that I don’t know how to reach many of the folks I’ve come to be in touch with via the (anti)social media behemoth because that’s our only connection. But I can’t worry about that too much. I am, as they say, in the book if someone’s looking for me, I am not hiding underground.
Card and letter use via the mail has and will continue to increase. It takes more time, and it feels better to stick an envelop in the box on the corner and wonder what may happen – or not – and not have to worry about the interval before someone presses the “like” button. There’s no instant gratification in slow pace of the mails, and waiting around for such a thing creates its own stress.
What with all the hubbub and hoo-hah about the behemoth in recent weeks, it’s time to go. The technology is not evil, but the folks running the company have proven themselves time and again to unconscionably put their own growth and valuation above the impacts on the communities their product touches.
I hope you might consider joining me out here in the empty, less-connected wasteland of the rest of the internet. At the very least, I encourage you to spend less time on social media than you do now. You’ll be a better person for it. I say this with conviction, as I did this once for the better part of a year, and probably would have continued away from the beast but for the onset of life during a pandemic.
It’s served it’s purpose. It’s played me, I’ve played in it, and it’s time to grow up and move on. In the meantime, watch this space…
