Your algorithms and metrics are driving me away

There is a real cocksuredness about social media that bothers me. Discussion has all but disappeared, replaced by people who simply post and say 'prove me wrong' or 'fight me' or 'don't @ me'

It bores me to tears. So I mute, unfollow, snooze or simply remove said person out of my life. The frustration grows when facebook only shows me about a half dozen posts at a time. That's not engagement, it's shackling and I do not know how much more I can take.

Despite the pleas of users, the activity becomes worse, the tedium increases and the fun is in the rear view mirror. There's no replacement in sight, other than completely disappearing.

I've already self-cancelled myself out of the local poetry scene here, the only major thing keeping me on Zuckerberg's folly are the deathpools.

Think I need to retire, get a dog, and hope he or she is not bothered by my guitar playing.

A Blogger's Life for...me?

Ten years ago I posted to my Live Journal account for the last time. I did not delete my account, and have made comments on other people's posts but there has been no original content posted by me since then.

It was a site where there were no character limits, where people posted the minutia of their days along with some rather spectacular writing - fiction or not. There was also a lot of drama, but there's no need to rehash that now.

For the most part, linking to tweets non-withstanding, it was a place that avoided the pithiness of today's social media sites. There was a sense of permanence to Live Journal posts that does not really adhere to Facebook or Twitter, and certainly not Snapchat. Even with the drama, it did not feel as cruel as a Twitter mob.

After the Russians bought the site, the demise really happened. Some people deleted their accounts, others (like me) simply abandoned them on the bleak landscape of the internet. Many people simply left with no explanation so you do not know what happened to them. Others (like me) left a forwarding address.

This platform, while useful, does not have the interaction that LJ had, and lacks the immediacy of Facebook or Twitter. It does, however, have the permanence. I can go back and look at posts from 5-10 years ago rather easily and see the demise of my writing and reading. It's not a shock, but a sad reality as I got into the time suck of those other two sites.

Thus I remain here, stubbornly, as well. Trying to find some sense in all of it amid the quick postings of dead musicians, with few pictures and for the most part - even less substance.

Seat the retreat

It’s been just over a month since I got the guitar. I’ve tried to play it about half an hour each day, plugged in or not, except when we were out of town. No, I did not bring it with me. It’s been relaxing, even if my skills are lacking. A definite comfort and I’m having fun. I’ve stopped biting my nails, lost a few pounds and lowered my blood pressure. How much of this is related is hard to say, but it is happening.

The Back Room has become a retreat to escape from the activism of the day. The constant hammering of issue after issue on social media that must be read and consumed now or else you are not paying attention. I’m not sure if I’m out of the loop, or refuse to get motion sickness by witnessing it every hour.

I am paying attention, people are so stuck on their selfies that they fail to see that. Reposting link after link after link is time consuming and I barely have the energy to get out of bed these days.

Picked up a multi-effects pedal that is fascinating to use, but probably a bit out of my depth right now. A friend said to, “play with my hands, not my feet,” and that’s a fair point. Do need a new strap though. The one I have is for an acoustic and I worry about slippage.

My wife said that she hopes I get out of the guitar what she’s been getting out of yoga. She also has a point, and so far she is correct. Although the guitar was more expensive than a yoga mat.

Another friend said I had to put me playing Talk About the Passion by REM on video in two months or he’d send me a wall hook for the guitar. I did respond, a month early. You can watch it here.

I’m very self conscious about my lack of ability, so I have no idea how long the link will be active. But yes, I’m happy as Hell with the investment as I work on proficiency on the instrument. I’m not hiding, but that’s where I’ll be for awhile.

Perot's giant sucking sound has gone in another direction

Back in the late 90's at my horrible job at Long's Bookstore my coworker in the supply department and I would listen to the Jim Rome radio show while pricing merchandise.

Say what you want about Rome, it does not really matter now. One of his 'rules' for getting on the phone in part of the show was, "Have a take, and don't suck."

And get of my lawn I would like social media commenters to follow that Rome Rule, but it does not happen.

Plenty of takes from people who like to see their profile pictures in the comments section, who may seem to thrive on the attention their posts get, negative or not - and plenty of sucking out there.

I do not have much energy to engage with people I know, let alone strangers on the internet. Better for me to keep quiet.

Millie Jackson gets it right

Some days I want to put this in as a comment to a lot of posts on social media.

All of the screens

Still working on how to best utilize social media. It’s hard to reduce the massive time suck that it has become. I have been using FB Purity to lessen a lot of the clutter and for the most part is has been a success. Doing less hate reading as well, which keeps the blood pressure down.

A couple of weeks ago there was a culling of about 15-20% of my Facebook contacts list. These are people who I never had any real interaction with, nor I with them so what’s the point? I think one person noticed and sent me a friend request, which I approved - and neither of us have acknowledged each other since. Again, what’s the point?

I have no idea how people manage thousands of contacts. Sure there’s a lot of filtering involved I get that, but when does a person with over 4,000 contacts get to actually interact with all of them? Do they treat it like a giant Rolodex from the olden days? Sure it’s great to have a lot of contacts. You never know when you can help a person and they you, and people are going to use the application differently I know. Personally, I need a bit more back and forth - and to control my social media content and not have it control me.

All this scrolling takes away the time I could be writing, reading, goofing off with my kid, talking to my wife, watching a decent movie, fixing the gate in the backyard - something else. Even this inane little blog post feels better to accomplish than clicking like. It is something that has been actively completed.

Now, to see what those four new tweets are all about.

Some peace has been added.

Earlier this week I was fed up, and it did not have much to do with the lack of sleep. Tired as fuck of seeing the comments of friends on other posts. Tired of seeing everything they clicked like on. Tired of scrolling past all the shit I do not want to see but cannot control though facebook's lame ass privacy features.

And guess what? I do not want people to see all the crap I comment on or click like on either. We all need options.

Yes, I know when you're not paying for something you are the product, but instead of pulling the plug or being subjected to Zuckerberg's social experiment I took initiative and installed FB Purity as a browser extension. It's a neat feature than allows you to customize your feed right down to words you may or may not want to see when you scroll.

All the warnings about how it might screw up your browser settings seem to be coming from social media apologists so their cred is instantly questioned. As of now there has not been any real problem. Maybe the feed is a bit slower to download, but that's because all the crap I've filtered out is being taken out. And if anything I might want to see is disappearing, so be it. It's social media, I can live with the consequences.

The past few days have been a fresh breeze of usability. I use Chrome.

Yes, I've seen that Oatmeal cartoon

The World Cup began on Thursday. It's not the Stanley Cup, the Super Bowl, Game of Thrones, a movie about a graphic novel, a sequel about a movie about a graphic novel, a reboot of a movie and its sequels about a graphic novel.

People on social media write about all of these things. All of the time. Sometimes too much, and then they complain about it. There are bigger things in this world happening than a sporting event, or a television show. I know this. People are dying, being oppressed and killed all the time and to live tweet that would put anyone in the looney bin.

My social media friends and contacts may not be that diverse, maybe they are, but they're from all over the world, and some of them are going to talk about The World Cup.

So am I.

And if my friends were as tolerant as they profess to be on social media, they would understand.

The missing phone call I cannot make

First Mother's Day without Mom around this year and it's solemn. You scroll through all the pictures on the social media of friends with their Mothers who are still thriving and you can't be mad. Life is for the living. And some friends recognize that the people in their circles have Mothers who are no longer around, and that's alright too I guess.

I want to call her and say that her Grandson is going to have the same caretaker this summer as last, and they're going to have fun because they will not be going to the hospital every day like last summer.

I want to call her and say I had a great time at Kafe Kerouac's 10th anniversary bash and that Scott Woods hosted an excellent and compact 45 minutes of poetry and assembled some great poets.

I want to tell her that being involved in an increasingly bureaucratic organization is taking the fun out of it for me and I'm not doing the thing about the thing that I should be doing.

I want to tell her how wonderful my wife is at putting up with my nonsense but that we did not get into an argument at IKEA yesterday despite her not liking the coffee mug I wanted. Oh, we could afford to buy stuff at IKEA yesterday, thanks Mom.

I want to tell her we're going to have a heat pump installed later this month so we'll have central air in the house for the first time in 11 years. Thanks Mom.

I want to tell her that a lot of people miss her because she's not around. And that people will always love her.

You know who else did that?

To maintain a presence on social media means a near constant solicitation by others known and unknown. If it's not a kickstarter type campaign, there is someone out there needing money, asking you to buy their book, music, like their business page and on and on. For the most part I'm fine with this, it's easy to scroll past, to acknowledge or even donate to the cause on occasion.

It's the guilt trip that irks me. Do not try to make me feel guilty if I do not vote for your pet salamander as the cutest in the midwest. Do not say I am not a real friend even after I notice you did not offer any sympathy after my Mother died, you will not get my vote. And if you threaten to unfriend me if I do not click like, well guess what? It's already been done.

April is National Poetry Month with means that many poets will be attempting a thirty poems in thirty days project. I wish all of them well. I will not be doing that this year. Taking off in the middle of the month will not give me enough time to commit to it daily. Plus, I am not feeling confident. Done it before, along with other projects. Even had an idea in mind for this April, but winter sapped my spark. My idea is still with me though.

If you can read this, you are being tagged

Working on various projects, including the Arts Festival, is taking up some creative time. Wish I was not so distracted and unfocused. A piece of paper flew off the table earlier, written on it are the names of two schools to research. My son will most likely be attending one of them next year. He'll be in sixth grade and in middle school.

Time flies.

I do not read comic books. The published works of DC Comics and Marvel and their filmed editions have no real meaning in my life other than small entertainment.

I have never watched an episode of the Wire and still, somehow, have managed to hold down a full time job.

I avoid doing anything in binge format, although I've watched a few episodes of The Kids in the Hall in a row since finding it on Netflix.

There is not enough Life to watch or click on everything that I'm told is important, or life changing or worth my time.

My own things are going. I do not telegraph everything I do months in advance. I got stuff going on even while I'm looking through who died this month on Wikipedia. You do not want me to post about how my physical health has been the past 48 hours. My TMI has filters that respect the audience. Even if I knew no one would read it, I would not post any details.

I'm in the last few months of 1962 in this fantastic book on The Beatles. I was mistaken in thinking the Bob Spitz book would be the end of a close to definitive biography of the band, but Mark Lewishon's research and scholarship is amazing. I hope to write more about this volume when I finish it.

I like Peter Capaldi as an actor and welcome his interpretation of Doctor Who. Is that a high crime?

I'm disappointed in the new Arcade Fire record, is this reason for me to get spammed?

As I write this, The American Music Awards are on. I have no idea who these people are that my friends are tweeting about. Nor am I particularly concerned enough to change the channel to find out. Life goes forward. No need to hack.

I do not take my pop culture personally when it goes against me, but find something else to take up my time. Maybe even do something that is important and life changing, but I usually watch a soccer documentary about a great player from Hungary on youtube through my television instead. A friend tweeted a link about the Hungarian soccer team in the fifties and I was intrigued, so I found the documentary on youtube. It did not change my life, but it was worth my time.

I hold grudges. Tom Glavine for giving up seven runs in 1 1/3 innings in a game the Mets needed to win. Kevin Dyson for catching that ball. I will go to my death knowing it was a forward lateral. At least one ex-wife hates me enough to block me on Facebook. I did not like Lou Reed after seeing him live.

You do not want to see me with facial hair. I tried it years ago. It looked like crap. I am not making myself look like crap for a month of manufactured awareness of a horrible disease.

And do not be that guy by correcting me about the Glavine stat if I'm wrong. I have not looked it up. I'm just a guy on my couch, watching New England get their ass beat on Sunday night football. It's in the second quarter, the game can change. The game can always change. I'm a Bills fan, I know this. I'm a Mets fan, I know this. I support Everton, I am used to mediocrity. I would never tell anyone that the Bills/Blue Jackets/Everton/Mets/Celtic are important, life changing or worth your time.

It's become much, much easier to scroll past than comment.

Buster Keaton though, you should consider.

Anyway, Arcade Fire's next record might be good, so can Mumford and Sons'.

What happened to the hope in all the vitriol?

I am imperfect though, taking in some schadenfreude while the Patriots are losing badly, at home.

Taking matters into one's own hands

One thing that I have really noticed from my visits to Glasgow is that the people there root out pretense, and will rip the crap out of it when given the opportunity.

That is one reason that I am always given a reason to smile whenever I've gone by the Wellington Statue in front of the Museum of Modern Art.



The statue has been in the city since 1844, but the traffic cone placement is said to have started in the early 1980's, if not sooner. It's become a rather iconic image of the city and it gives the world a glimpse of the city's humor. It's not a negative image, and far from a depressing one.

Yesterday, the city council tried to obtain funds to make a larger plinth for the statue, that would have made it more difficult to place the cone on the head. The city claims that it costs 100 pounds to take the cones off the head, and that it happens about 100 times a year.

My question why is even do that?

By making it more difficult to put the cone on, you're really encouraging those who put it there. Not the smartest move by the council.

Social media went all a-twitter, the Wellington Cone set up his own account, there were petitions started and #savethecone hashtags spouted up. It reminded me of the Hurricane Bawbag event a couple of years back. Another D.I.Y. and viral protest was happening.



By the end of the day Tuesday, the people had spoken, and they city council plans to withdraw their request to have the plinth raised.

Everyone look at your hands

I'm going to set my barometer of internet outrage to react with great sanctimony when the midget in this video offers an online opinion on anything people are getting ticked off about on social media.