Social Media Social Schmedia

Are social media sites making us less social? Think about it. There is not room for small talk in a 140 character message. We all skip the pleasantries, and get down to business. Just 10 years ago we were required to strike up conversations, learn pleasantries, and ask meaningless questions to act like we cared. Despite this previous post, I have rejoined the facebook/twiiter world, but wonder again if it is more damaging than good.

In some regards, this is a benefit. I was never good at small talk, because I typically just did not care. Sure, its polite to ask how the family is doing, and if there is anything new at the office, but in all honesty, do we really care? Furthermore, do we even understand? Further-furthermore, are we even honest in our answers? Imagine this conversation:

Me to casual friend #1: “ Hey, how you been? It’s been a while eh?”

Casual Friend: “Yeah, it sure has. What’s new?”

Me: “Same old, same old I guess.”

Casual Friend: “I hear ya man. How’s the family?”

Me: “Well, my oldest daughter is really concerned about one of her friends at school always teasing her. She comes home each day talking about how she really wants to be friends with this girl, but that she is mean at recess. She has also been doing so well with her assignments that her friends accuse of her being the teachers pet. My boy loves to come home and watch old episodes of Tom and Jerry, and has recently been playing in a basketball recreation league. He's also obsessed with Star Wars, just like I was and and still am. My youngest sucks her thumb and can’t wait until the next Mickey Mouse clubhouse episode comes on. She also spends all day making messes of the house for her older brother and sister to clean up when they get home from school.”

Or suppose he/she asked me, “how’s work?” Does the casual friend really want honesty? “Well, we responded on a young adult that got so mad at her boyfriend that she overdosed on some medication, ending her life. Her parents found her dead in her apartment when they decided to stop by for a surprise visit. Then later that day, a new driver wrecked the family car while driving home from the drivers license division. Right after that we got called to a care facility for a woman that couldn’t stop throwing up. We were also called by the police office to do a welfare check on a man who lives alone with 96 cats and doesn’t bother cleaning up after them as they crap all over the house. A young family has to replace their entire basement carpet after a sewage system backed up, flooding the place. Then we had to go enforce the new EPA regulations and tell a family to put out the fire they were using in the backyard because another anonymous neighbor down the road was annoyed with the smoke. And to cap it all off, a young kid was left unattended and played with matches, burning down the families dream home.”

At what point does the casual friend zone out? At what point did you zone out just reading about it?

So yeah, social media may be helping our lives? My thoughts though, are that it makes us dumber. When we are with good friends or family, our conversation pieces are lacking, and I bet at any given family party, the majority of attendees are doing something on their smart phones, and hardly interacting at all.

What are the long term consequences of this? Perhaps the Mayans stopped the calendar at Dec 21st because they knew we would all have phones that announce the date to us each morning when we awake? Our social skills are going to deteriorate to the point that it will become a module in history classes in high school before too long.

Perhaps this is the extreme outlook, but think about it next time you are at a social gathering. Pay attention to your next conversation with an acquaintance. Think about if you really care about the answers you are asking for, or if you are doing it because you just want to end the conversation as quick as possible so you can get back to updating your facebook status!

Gender Roles

Maybe by the time this post is finished, it will contain enough to elicit a response from Rebecca, since this is a "He Says She Says" blog after all. When was your last post Rebecca? 1994?

I absolutely hate ironing. H. A. T. E. it. With this hatred comes bad feelings, cursing, evil speaking, bad thoughts and on and on. That said, I have had to iron a shirt about 20 times in the last month. It all started with some online shopping from Kohls. I needed a new white shirt, and Kohls was having an online special for a wrinkle free white shirt. Perfect right? I was hooked, lined, and sinkered right away (that's a fishing reference). I couldn't wait for my new shirt to arrive. My previous wrinkle free white shirt had served me well. Faithfully keeping the wrinkles off and being wearable right out of the dryer week after week. At about age 10, it gave up the ghost. The other white shirt in the closet was not wrinkle free. It was more like the birthplace of all wrinkles. A wrinkle extravaganza. It required the services of a seldom used item in our house...the hot iron. After just one episode of the hot iron, I started shopping. That's where Kohls comes in. So the day arrives that the Kohl's shipment also arrives. I think I was excited for this as I was for the release of Achtung Baby. I tore open the package like a 6 year old at Christmas. I took it right to the washer and washed it. Then I put it in the dryer. When the dryer buzzed I was there to take it out. Imagine my dismay to see a horribly wrinkled shirt. How could this be? I was mortified. I read the label. No mention of wrinkle free anywhere. As the anger in me began to rise, I once again fetched the iron and ironed out the wrinkles. I did that for the next 5 weeks, including today.

Here is where I interject this thought: Shouldn't my wife do the ironing?

Life Without Facebook

It was harder than I thought it would be, but I am finally Facebook Free. Since deleting my account I feel so liberated. I don’t miss it one bit. I realize this is bucking the system slightly, especially in a world where everything is turning to social media, but it just had to be done.

I have so much more time each day to be productive without Facebook. Yes, I was getting that bad, checking status updates, browsing friends profiles, browsing fan pages at all hours of the day. It seemed if I didn’t have something specific to do at any given moment, that I would open the computer, or get on my smart phone and pull up Facebook. I was starting to update the world through my status updates. I was starting to wonder if Facebook was made by Skynet and Cyberdine, then I remembered that is actually Google.

My Facebook departure has really got me thinking about the days before we were so “connected.” Remember when we had to carry dimes (and later quarters) just to be able to use a telephone. Do pay phones still exist? Are we “too” connected?

So I have cut the puppet strings. Feels good, like when you are sitting on a beach and the sun is warming your naked body. Don’t deny it, you know what that feels like.

No Facebook, no twitter. Only blogs. I love the blog world, except it seems like many bloggers are easing up on their posts lately, including me. I liked when it was such a trend and almost everyone was blogging. I have always been a “keep in touch” kind of person. Except not the Facebook kind of keep in touch, the meaningful kind of keeping in touch, with substance. Blogging fills that void much better than Facebook.

I remember when I first joined Facebook. Paul Newman, yep, Paul Newman told me about it. He thought it would be a good way for us to keep in touch. It was so cool at first, reconnecting with old friends. “Liking” random things. Playing all those games. Then it sucked me in like the Mega Maid on Spaceballs. So much time spent doing nothing. Tagging the elementary school photos is only entertaining for a few weeks.

Now its all done. My Mafia is underground, my bejewels are losing their luster, and my large bankroll in poker is just burning a hole in the cyber-casino. “In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.” Franklin D Roosevelt said that. “Once free from the vice of Facebook, life gets better.” I said that.

Like I said, I don’t miss it. I enjoy that I have reconnected with old friends, and though Facebook provided that reconnection, it has served its purpose, and ran its course. And I am done.

The United States Equivalent to that Space Between Your Toes...

Oakland. Enough said? Probably, but I will say a little more.

As many of you know, I am "questing" to see a professional baseball game in every major league stadium. Then I want to write a book about it. This quest sometimes takes me to places I would never consider visiting otherwise. Occasionally, this is a pleasant surprise. Sometimes, though, it is worse than anticipated. I have tried to group my trips to get as many games per trip as possible, which can be logistically challenging, but also fun. Hence it was with Oakland.

My intent was to go see a San Francisco Giants game. I was once a huge Giants fan. Will Clark is still my all time favorite ball player. I lost my Giants flavor a little through the cheating Barry Bonds years, but now kind of peek in their direction, like when you play hide and seek with the kids, and don't quite close your eyes fully...

Anyway, since San Fran and Oakland are just a bridge away from each other, I had to get both stadiums done on one trip. As I got to planning, I quickly learned that everything in San Fran is more expensive. Flights, Hotels, Food. All of it. So we looked at Oakland: the space between the toes of the United States. Seriously, to call Oakland the armpit would be a promotion.

My plan all along was to land in Oakland, go to the game at the Coliseum, and get back on the BART as soon as possible to get to San Fran. We took AirBART from Oakland airport to the Coliseum, which is very convenient, fast and easy. (I guess convenient means fast and easy, so forgive the double superlatives.) Once at the Coliseum, which could also be called Industrial Park Stadium, or even "The Stadium near the Junkyard", we wandered around to see the sights. The sights consisted of the Coliseum, and the Arena where the Golden State Warriors play basketball. They were about 50 feet apart from each other. I didn't mind being inside the Coliseum, it was actually better than I had expected after talking to others. Cool, old fashioned baseball diamond and field. And that is all there is to see in Oakland. Honestly. I hurried to San Fran as soon as the game got out.

If this post were about San Fran, I would write a bunch more, but this post is about worst places to visit. I submit Oakland. I challenge you three readers to post (in the comments) about the worst place you have visited and challenge the title I am currently giving to Oakland. Read on.

At the end of trip, we had to go back to Oakland to fly home. Getting there: Easy. Cheap. Once there: Run for your life. Yeah, we got swindled at the BART station. We needed a ticket for AirBART to get us from the Oakland BART stop to the airport. While buying tickets we had unsolicited help pushing the buttons on the automated ticket dispenser. This local thought we would not be able to figure it out all by ourselves, so he helped. The catch was: He was not just a good samaritan helping some tourists get home. Nope. Apparently his services cost money, being the valuable commodity they were. So after helping us he told us we had to pay him. I gave him my BART ticket that still had $2.40 of unused fare. A travel buddy, Sean, "gave" him three bucks. Small change sure, but a priceless cap to the Oakland experience. Glad its done. Eight of us went on this trip, and none of us could think of a reason to ever go back to Oakland. Perhaps I should call the Raiders and see what convinced them?

Over Under

Maybe I have been listening to too many podcasts about sports that all eventually talk about gambling, but last week in church I could not help but let my mind wander to other things. So I came up with a betting table for sacrament meeting. For example: I could be the bookie arranging bets on Fast Sunday. You could bet against the odds on whether someone was going to be the one to bear or not. I would arrange an over under for the ending time. Which reminds me, Eli asked me about Fast Sunday, and at the end of my best five-year-old explanation, he asked which one was ‘slow’ Sunday? I told him the third Sunday, High Council Week.

Our house really likes The Office. When the opening jingle plays, the kids stop what they are doing, run to the sound, and watch intently until it is over. An episode around Halloween really disappointed me though. In the episode, Michael goes to a website called monsters.com. The website has all kinds of roars, screams, and other monster sounds that he plays around with. Well, I went to monsters.com and it is nothing like it was portrayed on the show. I was so sad. I really wanted to get some monster sounds. This is one of my disappointments in life: Not enough websites with monster sounds.

Update wise: all is status quo. I am really eager to get out of winter this year. Rebecca is every year. The kids don’t care either way. I feel like I write this exact thing every February. One of you ambitious readers can go back and look at past posts and let me know. Once Groundhog Day passes, it drags until baseball gets going full speed at the end of March. March 21 cannot come quickly enough.