Social(Media)Life™ Part Deux: Beware The Lovefest
When Dr. Ding first began to explore the exciting world of social media she was puzzled and intrigued, because so few were making a distinction between their professional and personal identities.
Let me splain. In my shrinkalicious and I’m sure very rumpshakin’ world, these are two different things. I’m no social media guru. I have no “solutions” for your web presence, no PR campaigns to my credit, and no brand of my own. Not a thing. I have nothing to sell you and obviously I’m not looking to get famous here what with my alarmingly frequent references to assless chaps, glitter, and enthusiastic tooting. For you see, my relentless pursuit of world domination is fundamentally incompatible with these aims.
So what is my thing? Mostly I just enjoy long walks on the beach, lazy Sunday brunches, and poking giant holes in cherished assumptions that bug the living shit out of me unless I poke holes in them. I can’t help it. I’m an Aquarius, baby — it’s just what I do*.
Web 2.0 Lovefest: Duh
I know, I know. Transparency is the much-touted and au courant working model of web-based communication. The Personal and The Professional are all wond’rously comingled in a paroxysm of nerdish imagination each and every time you log in. The private is the public and we all frigging love each other because we ALL have some sort of ill-defined but, like, totally fabulous social capital we’re leveraging.
Woo de freaking hoo.
I fail to understand this recursive reified narcissism. I fail for a variety of reasons, primary of which is that I’m a shrink.
Of course you should be clear, honest and accountable in your communcations with others. Of course we should be treating each other with respect and listening well. Of course it’s great to share creative ideas, gorgeous music, stirring rhetoric, sublime humor, truth-exposing reportage. Of course. And of course it’s nice to feel important because we’re cozily storing up Gemütlichkeit and fulfilling our Maslowian social-affiliative needs for belonging. These are all good things and it’s about frigging time we feminized** the web, meta-communication and interaction in general.
We should have been doing this type of thing all along, long before Web 2.0. Duh.
Boundaries: Look Into Them
But here’s where this Web 2.0 Lovefest starts falling apart for me: I don’t want to share everything with you. I really don’t. Okay, well after I few martinis I might. But I shouldn’t do it. And neither should you.
Honest. It’s called having interpersonal boundaries. Boundaries are sometimes described as how we know who we are and who we aren’t, where the Self/Other dividing line is placed. They are considered central to being able to closely connect with others while simulatenously maintaining autonomy and individual identity. They’re integral to how we think and feel about ourselves, and how others feel and think about us. And they can prevent you from making a giant ass out of yourself.
Where we situate these psychological structures depends on our life experiences, stressors, and a whole bunch of mystical shit I don’t have time to explain. Suffice it to say that if your boundaries are poorly defined or maintained, you’re going to eventually reveal to much. If they’re too tight or impermeable, people will likely find it difficult to connect.
My Point: Think About Where You’re Drawing Your Boundaries
Some day long after Obama gets elected and just prior to the planet being overrun by robotic alien overlords, everyone is going to be using Social Media. Everyone.
Your boss. You future boss. Your mother-in-law. Your impressionable kids. Your Wiccan High Priestess from the Coven of the Shiny Vagina. Random criminals, hucksters and trolls trying to plan a home or identity invasion. The day shall soon be upon us.
Think about how easily these folks might access your series of diabtribes about a frenemy or your gin-pickled assessment of your job situation or your boiling hatred of Wheaties. By all means, if you don’t give a tinker’s damn about all this, pray continue with your 3 a.m. rants about whatever obscure band you hate or relationship atrocity you’ve committed, underscored by some Flickr’d photos of your recent colonoscopy. Oh and definitely keep blurting out your exact whereabouts on BrightKite so that the stalker folk can track your every move.
But if you plan to ever have a security clearance, a professional license of any kind, a sweeping background check conducted or even just a jaundiced eye turned on you….might wanna be a bit more selective about how you choose to distinguish the public v. private on the intardwebs. Just saying.
*Supposedly Aquarianism gives me the inalienable right to be deeply and profoundly weird, according to my grocery store booklet. I’m okay with it.
**Yeah I fucking went there.
Me So Classy
Dr. Ding was having lunch a couple weeks ago with some of her favorite Houston web ladiez (aw yeah), and got to sit next to The Bloggess. After my usual round of giggling, fawning and gas-passing subsided, I made a spastic play at plagiarism.
“Your Royal Majesty,” I said, managing to toot only slightly in my gleeful fervor, “I would like to make a request of you.”
“Vagina?”‡ she regally replied, delicately scooping hummus and no doubt thinking up more very hilarious, gothic ideas for her future posts. Or she might have been talking to someone else.
“Exactly. I’d really like to cut and paste the contents of your blog di-reckly into my own, without citation, without credit, without so much as a fart in your general direction honoring your überfunny and singularly brilliant intellectual property.”
I lost the thread of the discussion from there, but I totally got the impression she might be okay with this arrangement.
Also, she had on a supercool necklace, over which I made a giant but this time non-flatulent fuss, since it was a single red plastic cherry pendant and reminded me of the fact that I do not own nearly enough red plastic cherry jewelry.
She later sent me the link to the Etsy.com vendor, Mom-o-Matic, from whom she purchased said item, and I found the necklace pictured above and immediately ordered it.
Mom-o-Matic is cool; although on vacation with a closed shop, she put a special hold on her very last green Jello necklace, just for me. Because I’m classy, that’s why.
Next time I’m out gallivanting with Teh Bloggess I’m going to wear it. Also: Beano. I’m looking into it.
‡ She didn’t say this, but if you count disembodied voices residing in Dr. Ding’s head as quotable sources, she did.
Social(Media)Life™ Part Une: The Assless Chaps Years
Dear Unsuspecting Reader:
Dr. Ding has some actual knowledge to lay on you. Yes. The kind of knowledge that doesn’t involve diabolical and insubordinate parlor butlers, drag queens, or silky-smooth religious blaspheming. For once.
Today we’re talking about how Dr. Ding thinks you should constantly be offering her a frosty cold beverage to live your life amidst burgeoning social media influences. After drinking two pints of Guiness and having exactly seven semi-coherent conversations with my geek posse conducting a wide variey of controlled studies examining difficulties as well as triumphs involved in navigating the web 2.0 world, I am chock-full of unsupported conclusions fresh ideas.
You know what I think?
You get to set limits on and make decisions about constructing your Social (Media) Life™. This applies to both individuals and groups.
Trust your instincts. They work online and In Real Life.
Constructing Your Social(Media)Life™
Individual Connections
You control the picture, both vertical and horizontal. If somone starts following you on Twitter and they’re following, say a shitload people and are only followed by a small fraction of that number, you do not have to follow them. Usually, that type of ratio bespeaks
- a spammer
- a famewhore doing famewhorey things
- some kind of bot
- a con artist
At least, that’s what it says to me. There are probably more benign interpretations, but I’m choosing to ignore them. I’m a clinician, amemba? Highly trained in positing a fundamental assumption of psychopathology when I skip out the door to greet the world every morning, all fresh-faced and a hey nonny-nonny ho.
You may decide that you will only follow or friend people whom you’ve met face-to-face. Know that this is a perfectly valid choice, and works really well for a lot of people who wish to limit their connections.
Group Connections
If you decide to host a purely social event but don’t want to broadcast your intentions across the intardwebs, consider sending invitations in a more private manner. You might have to resort to relatively more cumbersome or archaic forms of communication like:
- direct messaging
- text
- IM
- phonecalls
- hand-engraved cards on a silver salver
You know, the stuff we used to do before we all developed thumb calluses, RSS parasthesias and Twhirl addictions.
If you’re having trouble dealing with people with whom you first connected really well online only to later find increasingly distasteful or obnoxious in person, you’re going to have to work on the following skills:
- people-picking (see next section)
- confrontation
- graceful egress
And conversely, if you’re meeting lots of people from your social media connections and feeling shunned, you can draw one of two conclusions:
1) you’re violating some important social norms e.g. sexualizing non-sexual discussions, engaging in relentless self-obsession, interrupting, overdisclosing, overposting, unrestrained flatulence, something relating to assless chaps
or
b) it’s just not a good fit, period.
When did being a member of a social media community mean we all had to like each other anyway? And since when are we supposed to say “yes” to everything just because someone wants us to?
Don’t say yes to everyone and every opportunity to connect. Be selective about who you put into your connections as well as about how you relate.
The issue of respectfully releasing a connection that has soured will be addressed in subsequent posts in this series. Also: toxic flatus.
Trust Your Instincts
If you meet another social media user, or hell, just some kinda regular person IRL at an event, gathering, party or meetup, you do not have to “friend” them back if you get an altogether ookey vibe. You do not have to agree to connect with them in any way, shape, or form. Period.
And you do not need to apologize. This goes for everyone.
Dr. Ding has spent a lot of time with criminals as well as lowlifes (not to be confused with lowbrow art aficionados with their hotrods and Tiki parties and kick-ass Fifties wardrobes). A LOT of time. And I can tell you that there are plenty of people out there you would do well to avoid. People who give you that rolling or slightly sick feeling somewhere in your body, usually the stomach or solar plexus. People who just seem to always have an agenda, be it online or IRL.
Pay attention. Your body will often provide you with signals and intuition that your conscious mind will take far longer to process. Think of all this as an early warning system designed to protect you from danger. Learn to listen to and honor your own instincts.
This is all I’m giving you for today. I got things to do. And by this mean assless chaps.
Viva La Frida(y)!
Those of you few who knew Dr. Ding when she was but a mere shrinklette in short pants will recall my 1990s-era fascination with the art and life of Frida Kahlo. I was so taken with her mustachioed self-portraiture that I bought every book about her work I could get my pre-Starbucks-stained hands on. I found her artwork at once mystically compelling, intensely personal, unflinching, dramatic, bold, and utterly glamorous.
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
For years people gave me Frida switchplate covers, pins, magnets, prints, and biographies and I devoured them like neocons do natural resources; expansively, greedily, and completely without thought to issues of supply or sustainability.
Eventually, I burned out a little bit, because you can only look Frida in the eye for so long without a certain amount of spiritual discomfort setting in. After all, the woman fetishized her own pain and suffering, and much of her work is a testament to her ability to put up with an incredible amount of relationship bullshit, much of which was self-inflicted.
That armchair critique of course is offered from the fairly irrelevant sociocultural standpoint of a feminist honky headshrinker living in the 21st century with a penchant for satire, sarcasm and probably lots of other things that start with an “s” — all of which which can be safely dispensed without fear of political retribution or professional reprisal. Frida did not have those priviliges, and was poorly understood and often unappreciated in her own time.
The photograph is from a Frida Kahlo lookalike contest, and you can check out some really neat pics from it here by stephan-zielinski.com. You can read more about Frida and her life here. The site oceansbridge.com features a selection of her paintings.
Thanks to Dave
p.s. I’m fairly certain that the person third from the left is a dude, which I find absolutely delightful. This world sorely needs more outsiders, more clowns, more holy weirdness, more mystery, more dudes in drag.
Fear Is The Mindkiller*
Well, it’s Panic Season here in Hellstown. Run For Your Life Cuz We Is All Gonna Die-N-All. It’s that very special time of year when a lil ole Tropical Storm suddenly gets upgraded to a Hurrycane without the blessing or input of the National Weather Service, NOAA or any other legitimate agency that gets to decide when it’s time for us to freaking lose our collective shit and run around like a cat trying to hide crap on a marble floor.
Dr. Ding has bitchily survived the Great A/C Conk Out of 2008, countless blizzards, white-outs, and tornadoes in her native midwest, plus the Totally Fucking Ridonculonk Hurricane Rita “Evacuation” of 2005 or whenever the hell e. helle that was. After 13 hours in a hot vehicle I peed in Pooparella’s water dish, an act she has yet to forgive, but which forced us to regain our senses and actually check NOAA and susequently return home to drink martinis on the roof and watch the arms of the storm spiral overhead. And totally. Pass. Us. By.
Despite the media-generated doomsday cult atmosphere surrounding those of us that chose to stick it out in Houston, we managed to survive. The Beyonce and I lost power for a few hours, slept it off, and awoke to find ourselves miraculously unscathed by all the fear-mongering and governmental existential hotrodding slash nut-grabbing that had gone on for several days prior.
I am no stranger to mass hysteria, general idiocy, and goddamned FOX “News” getting everyone’s ass blown out of shape with their slickly dire and completely unfounded predictions. But that particular brand of extended remix bullshit really rubbed me the wrong way, because buying into it was so incredibly easy.
Why? Because we’re not designed to tolerate it much less attempt to think rationally in the face of its omnipresent and unrelenting message, which of course in my mind plays out in a kind of Shatneresque monologue of “Run, freak out, Jesus is armed and out to get you! Sit in your car in terror-choked gridlock and await further instruction from FOX aka Eternal Triune God!” over and over again.
Case in point: Dr. Ding is used to Great Plains-style tornadoes, where you have, say around 20 minutes to git yore ass to the basement and hunker down for 45 minutes or so tops. There are sirens and everything to let you know exactly when it is Panicking Time, and then it’s all over, lickety-split; adrenaline dump completed, life goes back to normal, minus a few trees and rooftops of course. And better still? It’s perfectly in keeping with the way our nervous systems tend to function best under stressful conditions: 1) Freak out for 20 minutes 2) Cower for a bit 3) Wait until the all-clear 4) Resume normal operations.
We’re not designed for this kind of prolonged and sustained anxiety where we have days on end to worry about statistical probabilities and what kind of sidearms Our Ford Jesus carries, or about ice cream cones of impact and such. It’s wrong. Although I enjoy ice cream I simply don’t think we deserve to have it forced on us against our will. There, I said it.
During times like this I find it helpful to review a few quotes about fear and anxiety. I also find it helpful to stockpile things like Oreo cookies and martini ingredients and to have my legs shaved just in case I have to swim somewhere in a very sexy way. I don’t want that pesky stubble somehow knocking me out of contention for that last can of spaghetti-os at the corner Walgreens. Fuckers.
Where was I.
Ah yes, the Litany Against Fear from “Dune”
- I must not fear.
- Fear is the mind-killer.
- Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
- I will face my fear.
- I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
- And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
- Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
- Only I will remain.
Und auch “Believe” von Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run)
I don’t believe in panic
I don’t believe in fear
I don’t believe in prophecies
so don’t waste any tears.
And who can forget ole Bertie Russell:
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Jimmy Thurber:
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
Dr. Ding:
So long as I’ve got some diet Pepsi and the hope of someday purchasing glittery flip-flops to prance about in, I’ll be okay. Also some dry underwear might be nice.
* You know what else is a mindkiller? Huffing paint thinner mixed with old episodes of Airwolf. Which I’m pretty sure is what happened to Jan-Michael Vincent. God(dess), he used to be so hot.
Firing Your Boss
Dearest darlingest Dingers, Dingerites and uh Dinguses.
Dr. Ding has had teh drama lately. As some of you may know, I fired my old employer in May 2008, got a new job and then fired said new employer. In the meantime I applied for a longshot “dream” job back in Denver, got it, and after much consternation turned it down because it didn’t pay what my services are worth. I now have an entirely new job. Seems I’m living the Buddhist blessing-curse of “May you live in interesting times” here lately in regards to work.
This post was inspired by a recent discussion with JJ4TLR here in Houston where she talked about being accountable for one’s gifts and about accepting responsibility for maintaining one’s prosperity. Check out this article for more on that notion.
Back 10 years ago when I was but a fledgling shrinklet, I would undercharge for my services, thinking myself lucky just to have the bidness. Not so anymore. I’m no longer willing to accept anything less than what my services are worth, period. That doesn’t mean I won’t do some pro-bono work or that I won’t occasionally donate my time to provide inservice trainings to agencies with true needs; in fact I do both. But I no longer undercut myself financially due to a continual existential mood of spiritual inadequacy, feeling like “I owe” everyone somehow.
Nor do I suffer fools anymore, gladly or otherwise. If someone can’t communicate in an upfront, timely, and respectful manner with me within the first week of the job, then they’re sure as helly helle not going to be able to do so later on. A work relationship is like any other relationship in that regard, and it’s important to establish mutually beneficial communication patterns and boundaries early on, because they’re only going to worsen with time if left unattended.
I’m getting to the point where I regard not just job interviews but also employment itself as a two-way partnership street: you have the right to terminate me if you see fit, but the same applies for me. If you as my employer aren’t meeting my needs, expectations and plans after I’ve made them abundantly clear, then your ass is politely fired. It’s not quite the same as quitting because it comes from a sense of empowerment. Firing one’s employer feels very different — it feels MUCH better than quitting. Trust.
Today marks the festival of Lugh, Celtic sun god. It’s traditionally a time of celebrating the first harvest, dancing around bonfires, and, strangely, horse-racing. Dr. Ding has never been very good at any sort of organized religion, whether mainstream or pagan or Buddhist, but I like Lughnasadh because a) you don’t have to wear pants* if you don’t want to and b) no one’s going to look at you funny, even if, say, you would happen to comically singe your naked buttcheeks jumping over a bonfire. Sure they’d laugh, but there would be absolutely zero funny looks.
To celebrate my new job (which I forgot to mention) and in honor of the holiday, I’m embarking today upon a marathon of Hulu.com crime drama-watching, diet Pepsi-drinking, and generally reposing on my benefice.
*Some would call this “pantsless” but I prefer the less pejorative term of “pants-free” or even the French “sans britches“. It’s a well-known fact that italicizing makes stuff French.