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Prompts

I love the prompts from bloganuary. I participated in bloganuary last year and enjoyed it. First, it’s a great way to get back to blogging regularly. It’s also a great way to discover new blogs to read and meet new people. Of course, it also helps get the creative juices flowing, especially on days when writer’s block is killing you.

If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

I found today’s prompt thought-provoking with an easy answer. If I could in-invent something, it would be social media. Honestly, it’s turned us all into terrible, self-centered bullies with no sense of decorum. We have become inured to violence and bullying as internet trolls hide behind the safety of social media. Naturally, these internet trolls would never be brave enough to say anything or do anything in public, which makes them cowards.

Social media bamboozles people into thinking everyone else is living a perfect life. The problem is most people aren’t and the image being put forth on social media is fake. Or how about the influencers who are impossibly skinny, plastic, and over-filtered that create a false idea of what women look like.  Honestly, I’m glad I have boys, so I don’t have to combat the impact those images can have on a women’s psyche. My job is to ensure my boys can delineate what is true and what is false.

Perhaps in its infancy, social media did what it was supposed to do, which is connect us. Now it’s a bastion of misinformation, hate, fake images, and impossible beauty standards. Before the internet and social media, most uneducated fools had no platform to spread their garbage. Now social media amplifies their inaccurate and dangerous messages. In the final evaluation, I think we’ll find social media did more harm than good to our society.

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Overwhelmed?

Does this whole quarantine situation have you feeling a bit overwhelmed? If you answered yes, you’re in good company with the rest of us. Since this is a situation we have never been in or lived through, the experience of everything is emotionally taxing. Not only are the dynamics of the workplace changing, but those working from home are now tasked with teaching their children. Okay, maybe we’re not teaching our children, but we’re trying to manage their schoolwork, project, odd and even day schedule and Zoom meetings.

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Honestly, it’s a lot. In the couple of weeks, I’ve noticed people starting to buckle under the pressure of this virus. For example, our neighborhood Facebook group has always been a source of entertainment. People liked to complain about driver’s inability to navigate the round about properly or the snow birds driving 20 miles under the speed limit. Most of the time, the quarrels on there were mostly benign.

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However, the virus has brought out the crazy. To be honest, it started pretty early on when a guy from our sister neighborhood came through ours and saw kids playing basketball on our courts. (Our neighborhood kept its courts open.) This particular neighbor felt that it was totally cool to take pictures of the 12 year old boys playing basketball, so he could post them to the group and shame them. Moreover, his approach was probably the most pathetic aspect of his post. Why a grown man would post on Facebook that he didn’t know how to explain to his son why they kids could play basketball and he couldn’t is beyond me. I don’t know dad, but grow a pair and tell him you’re not comfortable with him playing basketball right now.

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Flash forward to the last couple of weeks and things have really gotten unhinged. Perhaps the funniest is the lady that took to Facebook to complain about a man that spit into the grass while he was walking. Now said lady wasn’t on the path or near him, she just witnessed the act. I’m guessing she’s not a runner or she would know people have done a lot worse on the path. Logically, I can see how she’d be upset if she was planning to lick the grass or roll around it. Otherwise, I don’t get the need to complain on Facebook about it.
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Oh but this week brought in sheer Facebook gold. First, someone distributed a letter about the tribulation and the rapture anonymously via mailboxes. While I agree that this person was wrong to use mailboxes in the distribution of this letter, believing in the rapture and end times does not make you a religious zealot or mental health patient. Nonetheless, this poor kid has been compared to the criminal that mailed anthrax to people post 9-11 and school shooters. Clearly none of these people have spoken to my grandma. I guess believing and sharing tenets of the Christian faith in this manner is terroristic. Fortunately, they’ve called the police and the postmaster general. I’m sure both officials will be anxious to throw the book at this perp for sharing their religious beliefs.

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But perhaps the most egregious and offensive post came at the expensive of a mom and her child at the local grocery store. This resident was horrified that this child felt the need to touch things in the laundry aisle and wasn’t within an acceptable distance of their parent. Now it’s okay to have your opinion, but to publicly post it to shame the other mom is awful. What if the child had sensory issues or special needs?! What if the mom was feeling completely overwhelmed and let her kid have space? Why the judgment?

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This pandemic sucks, undoubtedly, but we have a choice in how we respond. We can choose to be a light and extend people grace. We can choose to support our friends, neighbors and small businesses. Moreover, we can choose to take this time to make our lives better by improving connections and improving upon ourselves. Or we can choose to be assholes. I don’t know about you, but I choose to be kind, positive, the best virtual teacher I can be and to give people grace during these difficult times. And most importantly, as you may have guessed from all the memes I’ve posted, I choose to laugh.  Rant over!

 

Here’s a list of our day’s activities:

*Reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and loving it!

*Cleaner Anakin’s cage after he experience some nighttime, explosive diarrhea. 

*Completed BBG day 5 week 8 – full body workout 

*Took Anakin, Maya and Athena on multiple walks

*Picked up dinner from J. Alexanders 

*Pulled my hair out (again) managing my teenagers virtual schooling.

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Can I Be Candid?

Can I be candid for a moment? Yeah, it was a rhetorical question.  You actually don’t have a choice.  Most of us are on social media, with the exception of my parents, and see the daily shit show that is social media.  Two of my favorite groups to follow on Facebook are our neighborhood groups and the state’s hockey forum.  The groups are filled to the brim with people who are completely unglued.  Consequently, some days its more entertaining than Netflix.

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We’ve actually nicknamed our neighborhood as the restaurant killers.  No matter which restaurant they try it’s either: not as good as it was in New York, crappy service, too expensive, decor bland, etc.. I could go on for days.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to open a restaurant near our neighborhood.   We recently have a restaurant open up near us and lots of our neighbors went to the soft opening.  Oh the diatribes that followed about all the glitches they encountered.  Apparently, they completely missing the fact that it was “soft opening.”

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From time to time people will make ad hominem attacks on HOA board members, which are unfounded given their volunteers. There’s one guy in our neighborhood that blasts the board on the page if the pool deck is dirtier than he’d like or the plants are overgrown.  Fortunately, he’s kind enough to post photos.  I guess people who aren’t hockey moms have a lot more time on their hands.  I can’t comprehend how he has time to do these things, but whatever.  They also like to blame renters for property damage or stolen property.   Oftentimes, their kids caused the damage  or the “stolen” property was misplaced.  What makes these pages so puzzling is that our neighbors are incredible, so confusing.

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On to the hockey forum, it is a complete and utter gong show at times.  Again people go on the page and call out organizations or worse people by name.  If you have a problem with someone, why wouldn’t you address it to them instead of blasting them on a Facebook page?  It’s fucking cowardly.   As for calling out organizations, it’s not always uncalled for, but seriously have your facts together first.  Lastly, if you don’t like the rules of the league, take it up with the league.  After all, the organizations do not own the rules and regulations, the league does.  Tonight’s I’ll be toggling back between NetFlix and the utter disaster that is the hockey forum.  It should be a night full of laughs.

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Tonight’s song, very apropos that the disaster that is the hockey forum, performed by the 4 Non Blondes is “What’s Going On?”  I’m really stuck in the 90s this month… I remember this song fondly as I would watch the video at my great uncle’s house in California.  The song always reminds me of that wonderful trip. 

 

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Keeping Up Appearances

When Snap went public in March, investors had high hopes that they’d see Facebook like returns on their IPO dollars.  That might be a stretch, but the thought was that Snap would be a good addition to a portfolio.  Since the IPO, shares have fallen by 28% due investor concerns surrounding slowing user growth and lack of profitability.  Class actions lawsuits seeking to protect investors have followed.

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In the wake of Uber’s troubles, comparisons between Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick and Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel have been common place.  Now that Snap is a publicly held company, Spiegel is more likely to lose his job as a result of poor user growth and low profitability.  Both are known to be egotistical, brash, and narcissistic and both have gotten in trouble for their comments.

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Monday night Snap threw a party in Cannes at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.  Ironically, there were no cameras allowed in the event and guests were not allowed to take photos.  Additionally, journalists were not allowed into the party either.  Sounds like Snap likes being in the camera business, but doesn’t want the cameras in its business.  Perhaps they are trying to maintain an illusion of austerity in the face of the numerous class action suits or a contrived sense of exclusivity.  Meanwhile stateside, Kalanchick resigned Tuesday as CEO of Uber.

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When it comes to maintaining illusions, it isn’t just powerful CEOs, but regular people via their social media accounts.  Society has created a web of perceived perfection via filters, influencers and viral videos.  The illusion becomes dangerous when people can no longer cope with real life against the juxtaposition of the illusion.  If your kids were to look at your pics, would they see you or would they see a contrived version of you?

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Living Life as a Paragon of Perfection (Not!)

In a world dominated by social media and social media influencers, the use of filters and the crafting of a careful social media presence exists far from the glare of the Hollywood lights.  We use Instagram to perpetuate an image of our lives that we want the world to accept regardless if it is accurate or not.  It has a created a society that looks towards almost unattainable and unsustainable happiness based on the false pretense of everyday life the social media has created.

Think about it.  When you select your Insta or Facebook profile picture, you’re going to pick the most flattering picture.  You may even select one with one of those ridiculous and fun Snapchat filters.  We certainly don’t select a picture where we look horrible that’s for damn sure.   The picture where we’ve clearly drank too much and are making the most ridiculous face that are friend tagged us in on Facebook?  We instantaneously remove the tag.

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The thing is we can’t pretend like this didn’t exist before the socials did.  It’s not like people picked their crappiest photos and worst moments to highlight on their Christmas cards.  Just like the photos we post to our profiles now, the photos selected and the moments shared always crafted a good picture.   Was it always accurate? Probably not.

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The problem with socials is that they exacerbate the perception that many of our friends are living lives that are the total paragon of perfection.   Meanwhile, their life may be a complete disaster or completely normal.   As I looked through pictures from graduation last month, I found myself laughing at the outtakes.  We had some great pictures, but there were some completely disastrous photos, which are pretty accurate of how life sometimes feels in a house of all boys.

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For today’s blog post, I’ve interspersed some of my favorite photos of the boys and the numerous outtakes.  You’ll notice one Christmas (2007) the Mayor decided he didn’t want to cooperate at all.  At the end of the day, social media can be a great tool to keep in touch with family and friends across the globe, but we can balance putting our best foot forward with the creation of a completing fake and narcissistic social media persona.