TMI, or, to De-Friend or Not to De-Friend

The downside of social media:  not necessarily what you think it is.

Ordinarily, I am enthusiastically positive about the Internet and everything it brings to our lives.  Access to information.  Varied perspectives.  Connections.  Used for good, it can foster empathy, understanding, insight.

But then sometimes there are things you just don’t want to know.  Have you ever liked someone a ton until you saw that she joined a group entitled “Marriage = one man, one woman” on Facebook?  Or that his latest status update equates Obama with Darth Vader?  Or that he has absolutely no clue how to spell most polysyllabic words?  Or that she’s wearing (shudder) jeggings in her profile pic?

Yeah.  It’s a problem.

Some friends I like better and better the more I know about them.  Others?  Not so much.

I’m all for diversity of opinions, different voices, food for thought.  Many issues are not all that clear, and any thoughtful discussion or reliable information goes into the mish-mash of mental material that informs my opinions and decisions.  And I spent nine years as a litigator (and many more years engaged in argument or debate of one form or another), so I have no aversion to honest disagreement or thoughtful, substantive discourse on contentious issues.  But you can’t have a meaningful discussion with someone who fabricates facts, who prefers blind fear and instinctual hatred to any form of logic, who scorns knowledge and reflection as somehow stuffy or effete.

I’m sure I’ve been de-friended or blocked in recent weeks for some of my more pointed political jabs.  So be it.  I know I’ve adjusted my settings to block status updates from certain “friends,” just for the sake of my blood pressure.  If online absence makes the heart grow fonder – or at least prevents the heart from wanting to stab someone in the eye repeatedly –  I guess I can live with that.

But poor grammar and bad taste?  There’s no place for that shit.

Not satisfied with simply having me block your status updates?  Want me to de-friend you?  Some helpful tips:

1.  Refer to healthcare reform as “Obamacare.”  Nothing says intellectual honesty and thoughtfulness like parroting Beckspeak.  Referring to the President of the United States as “Barry” or “Nobama” also earns serious demerits.

2.  Deploy other coded language, like “traditional values” (translation:  I hate and fear gay people and women who earn more than men do), “elitist” (translation:  I was too lazy / stupid / short-sighted to get an education myself, and firmly believe that some woman / racial minority / ethnic minority took my spot), “reverse racism” (translation:  I want to revert to a time when mediocrities like me were handed the world on a platter just because we were white males), “big government” (translation:  I only like government programs and services that help ME, not ones that help other people), or “strident” (translation:  strong, opinionated, independent women threaten my fragile worldview).  I can go on, but it’s just depressing.

3.  If you are over the age of eighteen, quote or reference Ayn Rand without irony.

4.  Imply that Muslim = terrorist.

5.  Imply that all goodness and morality stem from religion (or, more specifically, from the “right” religion).

6.  Be an ignorant, intellectually stunted douchebag (see 1-5).

Easy enough?  Apparently so.

Be True to YOUR School

. . . that is, after all, how the song goes.  But if you want to be true to MY school, that’s OK too.

I don’t get rabid college sports fans who didn’t actually attend the school they favor.  Then again, I believe that student-athletes should actually have to be students and that universities shouldn’t just be a big farm system for the NBA and NFL, but I don’t think about that too hard when I’m loving on my school or my 8-clap starts to fade.

Although I now arguably have two schools – UCLA, where I attended undergrad, and The University of Arizona, where I work (this may be the only time I’m grateful that my law school wasn’t affiliated with an undergrad campus) – and even though I may secretly own a UofA Football t-shirt that I DEFINITELY NEVER WEAR OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, there’s never been any question that I’ll always be a Bruin.

And my alma mater does have the most beautiful campus on Earth.  That much is indisputable.

Go Bruins!

(p.s. Happy 229th Birthday, Los Angeles!  You look mahvelous.)

Actually, turns out I’m awesome. And stuff.

1.  I finally finished a work of fiction.  Yeah, it’s fanfic for a truly mediocre television show that I didn’t even particularly like –  and a lot of it is just, frankly, soft-core porn for people who like to spend some quality time thinking about Shane West without his shirt on –  but it’s 17,500+ words of everything I intended to write about something, and it has dialogue and characterization and a bunch of showing-not-telling and even a couple of original characters that I created all by my very own self.  Plus the sex and the swearing!  It only took me a year to finish it….but that’s progress, right?

2.  The Old Spice guy is waaaaay hotter than Brad Pitt. I’m just saying.

3.  Paul Rudd:  too sexy for his own good?

4.  Oh, man, I’ve had the best July.  A not-boring work conference in Marco Island, Florida (no tar balls yet), followed by a very brief Key West adventure, a weekend surrounded by giant green trees in Oregon, and eight glorious days on the Central Coast with my family.  Kayaking in the back bay, playing pirates with my mom and brother in the dunes on the sand spit, hiking Bishop Peak with my brother and Phoebe and letting a guy with a baby strapped to his chest kick my ass on the rock-climbing part but WHATEVER, lots of visits to Avila Barn to ogle the produce porn, shopping in downtown SLO with my mom, early mornings on Avila Beach with my dad and the doggies, actually being a little bit chilly sometimes in the middle of summer . . . it truly doesn’t get much better.  And this week, I’ve been doing my best to honor my generation by slacking the hell off.  I made my bed and burned a CD yesterday and that’s the most productive I’ve been all week.  There’s a Susie-shaped dent in the chaise corner of my couch.

Even counting the week of the not-whooping-cough at the beginning of the month, this has been the best summer vacation EVAH.

On “Multitasking”

Tonight I was messaging with my forever best friend P on Facebook when she asked me what I was doing.  

Well.  That took a while to answer.

Because I was (1) reviewing materials and drafting an outline in preparation for the class I will teach tomorrow night; (2) watching the Dodger game (gotta love that eighth inning rally.  and Andre Ethier!  suck it, D-Backs!); (3) fooling around on the Internet; (4) texting with K’s daughter Pink; and (5) picking the chipped Chanel “Vendetta” polish off my fingernails.  Oh, and Facebook messaging with P.  

So.

I used to have the attention span of a gnat.  Now I long for that degree of focus.  I can’t think about one thing at a time.  I’ve tried.  It sucks.

Is there a cure?  If I deliberately deprived myself of Twitter, Facebook, television, web-surfing in general, text messaging, emailing . . . all that maybe for a month, would I develop renewed focus?  Or is there something particular about my mind that makes me prone to this sort of thing; is this a chicken/egg dilemma?  Is this somehow related to the fact that I am interested in a zillion different things, from movies to music to politics to law to foreign language to travel to reading to writing to making silly videos about my TV boyfriends?  And that I never really develop an expertise in any of them?

And is it really all bad?  We exercise all this hand-wringing over the ever-shortening modern attention span, writing articles like “Is Google Making Us Stupider?,” but are all these constant distractions really such a disaster?  Well, when I spend hours at work trying to focus long enough to write a damn motion for preliminary injunction, then I think they are.  But then I realize that when I’m working against a real, concrete deadline, I’ve always been able to bust out something pretty damned solid in a timely fashion.

So is it really just something that makes me crazier than I already am, with no other real detriment?  

Or no?

Or maybe I should just play another round of Mafia Wars and call it a night.