Social Media Destroying Connections?

It usually starts out relatively simple.  Someone on Facebook will post a video clip of something and then say:  “OMG you’ve got to see this!”  And...I’ll pass right on by.  Then another person completely unrelated to the first person will post the same video and say:  “Brilliant!”  And, again, I’ll pass right on by.  Within the next few hours, though, it will spring up more and more.  This time from another person.  Or Huffington Post or even a friend of a friend’s friend and it’ll be:  “So true!!  Take a look at this!”  And, finally, as if having to go to the dentist – I will click on the video to watch it.  Partly because I want to see what all the fuss is about and partly because I don’t want to be the one person to NOT watch it and feel like I’m missing out on something AMAAAAAAzing!

This happened this week with a video called “Look Up.”  This music video is kinda “rapped” by a British Guy (and when I say rapped by a British guy – I mean he just rhymes really really slowly – referred to as spoken word poetry or, as I like to call it:  White People Rapping.  And the fact that he rhymes really slowly it is as if he’s talking to someone who won’t GET IT).  The plot of  the video takes to task all of us people who don’t look up from our devices.  Our computers.  Our laptops.  Our smartphones, etc.

Of course the irony being that many people watching this video and posting it on Facebook are watching it on their cell phone or their lap top or other device.  And the other irony is that the technology that this song is dissing is the same technology that is, probably, going to make the video makers quite a lot of money.

Destroying your chance for a relationship?  Maybe?

Now, I don’t want to be too hard on the message here as it’s a good one and the story the video tells is about a young man who is looking for an address.  Instead of using a smartphone, he’s going completely old skool and using paper.  Because his handwriting is terrible (or something) he has to ask a hot gal passersby for information.  Three minutes later they’ve lived a full and wonderful life with marriage-child-death-love-happiness-sadness, etc.  Then the twist shows him using, not a scratched on piece of paper but a cell phone and, sadly, she just walks on by and they don’t “connect” neither spiritually, physically, sexually or whatnot (ESPECIALLY not whatnot!).  And then the British guy tells us again that we need to ‘LOOK UP!’  Okay, I GET IT.  Put the damn phone (laptop/smart-phone/cell-phone/GPS/tablet/Kindle) down and connect with the world around you.

It's hard to hold flowers on your wedding day, if you're holding a cell phone.

But here’s the rub...the overall subtext of the video is that we are becoming less social in our world of social media (I think he actually “raps/rhymes” about that).  That it’s pushing us farther and farther away from true connections.  But is it?

These are just electronic devices bent on destroying your social life.

I have a friend who refuses to use any and all types of social media.  Be it Twitter or Facebook or Snapchat or MySpace or...  He refuses to have a cell phone or a tablet.  His answer is not that he wants to connect with people face-to-face but that he doesn’t want the government tracking his every move.  And that’s a legitimate concern.  But, he’s telling me all this on a computer.  Which makes me assume that when the first books were published there was someone who was like:  “Hortence!  Jedediah hath postponed his gathering of wood and is just partaking in READING!  Does he not knoweth that reading will lead to evil?  Certainly it can’t lead to anything good, unless, of course, it’s the Bible!”

Books, just a downward spiral to loneliness and depression.

And then, when the radio was invented and placed in every home, I could see furrow-browed parents lamenting:  “Doris, Elmer Junior is on to his fifth hour of listening to the RCA radio.  He needs to go outside and play, I swear that kid isn’t going to accomplish much listening to “The Shadow” and “Edgar Bergin and Charlie McCarthy” all day.”

Oh, yeah.  You know she died old and alone with only her 52 cats, all because of that damn radio.

Certainly, we knew how the TV turned out.  Parents around the country frustrated at the box.  Calling it the “boob tube,” it was turning us all into couch potatoes – festering starches growing directly into the couch like some sub-human mutant half-human/half-couch/all-potato hybrid freak.  Hell, we even ate TV dinners.  Certainly our ability to interact with others was going to suffer greatly.

The downfall of society as we know it.  No one will interact with anyone again...EVER!

But...wait for it...the PC was just on the horizon – but before that it was the Nintendo and Atari and gaming systems solely designed to turn us into more freakish bits of nature – hiding us in our rooms like Golum, calling our Super Mario Cartridge “Precious.” Certainly we weren’t going to interact with people, right?  Certainly we were going to just lock ourselves in our rooms and forget to be social...right?

Yeah, they may be connecting now, but his love for Pong will be too much for her...

Since I grew up in an age where phones had cords and this rotating thing you actually had to rotate to call someone and have merged, semi-successfully into the world of PC’s and smartphones and gaming systems (I’ve had, over my years an Atari Pinball Game, a Nintendo 8-Bit System, an Atari 5200,  Playstations 2 and 3, three pinball machines and a handful of electronic devices from Gameboys to Coleco “football” – seriously just red LED dots) – I think I can consider myself learned (note, I didn’t say expert).

Seriously.  Red dots.  And it was fun.

So where has this world of Social Media taken me?  Over the past couple years I’ve been able to re-connect with people I, seriously, thought I would never connect with again.  Richard, my mentor.  Taso, my other mentor.  Mike who I bullied in High School – finally got a chance to apologize.  Jeff, a high school buddy, who I found out had married his partner and is very happy.  Monika, the girl I had a total crush on in Jr. High School.  Still seeing her photo makes my heart skip a beat.  And so many others:  good friends from my past, church friends, writer friends, acting friends.  Certainly you can call me crazy and say that these “relationships” don’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things.  And I would tell you to kiss my a**.  It’s certainly far more than me just wondering quietly how so-and-so is doing, when I can see what they had for lunch...or read their political views.

It's all this thing's fault no one connects anymore.

And what of the outpourings of support I read when someone’s pet or parent has just died?   Or the support we give to performances that we’ve seen or photos of someone’s garden or when someone posts that they’ve lost 50 pounds?

But, I know what you’re asking:  Aren’t there some serious issues at play here?  Well, I would assume that there are some serious issues when the electronic device starts to take over some aspect of one’s existence.  I know I became a bit panicked the other day when I realized I left my phone at home when I went to get Miriam from her work.  And, yes, I’d like to see studies done when it comes to those who are extremely introverted or extroverted and how they connect and use electronic devices.  But, honestly, I see no real sustained issue here.  So what, that when I look up on the bus and see that most of the people are staring at a device.  10 years ago I looked up on the bus and most people were staring at a book...and we seemed to go through that stage okay.

Looking at the video it implies, in some way, that if we don’t stop looking at a device we’ll never find love.  I only have to look so far as my friend Shannon’s facebook page (and the photos of her handsome husband and beautiful daughter) to see how connecting through a computer can work.  She met her husband through an on-line dating site and, just like the video, they looked up (probably at a computer screen) and got married and had a child and this has been years ago now.  Who’s to say that you can’t make a “love-connection” through a screen as opposed to accosting someone on the street because your 55^th ave. looks like 53^rd ave?

Or this thing's fault...

I don’t fear that Social Media is keeping us away from connecting with other people.  I just see Social Media as connecting in a DIFFERENT way with other people.  Like the examples I gave above, there is a beauty about connecting – even if just for a moment, just to think about another person, just to relate to someone’s struggle.  That’s connecting.  And, besides, until they make a computer or a tablet or smart phone that has sex with you and can cuddle with you at night, hold your hand, cry on your shoulder and make you feel like you’re the greatest person in the whole wide world...I wouldn’t worry.  Still...they might have an app for that.

Lent - 2014

My wife and I watch a TV show called “Little People, Big World” it’s about an Oregon family of little people (except for three of their four children) and how they get along in the world.  In one episode the family was at some event somewhere and some people were calling them “midgets.”  They explained that calling a little person a “midget” is akin to calling a black person the “N” word.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that a national association of little people had contacted all the major networks to please refrain from using that word and explaining that it was, in fact, offensive to little people around the world.

http://www.lpaonline.org/the-m-word

Ever since that episode, I have become hyper-aware whenever that word is used.  Just recently it was used in an SNL “Weekend Update” sketch.  The more I hear the word dropped – even by the most unassuming, didn’t know it was offensive, person – the more it clangs around in my head like bell.

Years (and years) ago, I remember meeting up with a friend of mine who was bothered by the fact that I had not thought of him in regards to trying to option one of my scripts.  He was deeply offended that I had become so selfish to not think about him and his desire to make my film.  Granted, he had no resources at his disposal and the script is, admittedly, a big budget film but I was taken aback by his challenge of my selfishness because, simply, I’ve always tried to be “hyper-aware” of my own failings.  If anything I try to be UNselfish and work towards that so, yes, I was bothered by his insistence that I had insulted him.  I certainly didn’t mean to and that was not my intention and, damn, I had screwed up again.

Let me be clear, though, about one thing.  Even though I try to be hyper-aware of my own idiosyncratic issues and limitations, I’m not a falsely modest person. (Wait, is saying I’m not a falsely modest person being falsely modest?)  I know what I’m good at (writing, teaching, editing, managing, being a parent, being a husband, being a friend, film-making, film knowledge, grilling a hamburger) and I know what I’m bad at (pretty much everything else) and I also know, very clearly, that there are others out there who are even better at the things that I consider myself good at – so there’s always something to strive for, something to reach for, something to get better at (wait should I finish a sentence with the word “at?”  Maybe I should re-think that editor part.)

Kinda feels like a jail-cell...don't it?

When Lent comes around every year it feeds right into my own world of self-examination and my relationship with God but, and I’m being honest here, I don’t like giving up “stuff.”  I don’t truly understand the concept of giving up meat or chocolate or whatever for 40 days.  Yes, Jesus fasted, good for him.  Not my shtick.  Michelle gave up Facebook one year.  My mom gave up “Sudoku” for Lent.  My mom has the brain of an 80 year old (since she’s 80) and it can use all the exercise it can get.  Why give up brain games for Lent?  I don’t really understand.

And, inevitably, I run into that person who’s over at my house, or we’re out to dinner and I say:  “You want to split some cake?”  And I get the response of:  “No, I’ve given up sweets for Lent.”  And then I feel both bad that I offered to split a cake and then think you know you could just lie and say:  “I’m full.”   I don’t need to know why and what you gave up for Lent.  But that’s just me being all judgmental and feeling like I should step the hell up and give up something for Lent.

Instead, over the past few years, I’ve tried to “take-on” something for Lent.  Lighting a candle every night to think about love ones who have passed.  Reading the Bible.  Reading a daily scripture thought.  Doing random things for people.  Try to shift the focus of my hyperawareness about myself and taking away from myself and instead shift that focus to others and what I can do for them....even if I inevitably fall short.

 Candles are neat.

This year during Lent I decided to send a message to three of my Facebook friends every night.  I determined, early on, that this message should be more than just say “Hi.”  And more than just something that gets hastily scribbled in a yearbook between classes:  “Hey, let’s hang out this summer, stay classy, see you in P.E.”  It had to be personal and that means bringing up a story or a memory.  It couldn’t be too long but it also couldn’t be too short.  It had to have substance and I actually had to THINK (something that many of you probably know that I don’t do often enough).  It had to mean something.  I couldn’t half-ass it like I do most things.

So I started.  I tried not to say:  “This is my Lenten discipline” like some kid saying “this is what I have to do because my mommy told me to.”  This wasn’t to be a punishment – or the equivalent of such.  Like when you were forced by your parents to send a thank you note for the $5 bill you got for your birthday to the grandmother that still thought you were 9, even though you were 17.

According to Twitter - what people were giving up for Lent.

Beside the rules above about having it have to mean something, I incorporated a few more rules:  Minimum three people.  You can’t just slam one person but you also can’t do them all in one evening and be done with it.  They had to be parsed out.  Three seemed like a good number.  It’s the magic number (according to “Schoolhouse Rock”).

Another rule:  No doing them on Sundays.  Sundays are, technically, feast days during Lent (they don’t count in the “40”) and there was a reason for this.  Not to give me a much needed break of sacrificing my vastly important time from sending three whole people messages – but to give me time to pause and reflect what I was doing.  To make sure that it was “real” and not becoming rote and boring and stupid.  A day to pause and think about it.  To make myself hyper-aware of what I was doing.

Another Lent meme.

And the final rule, which didn’t really come into play until a week or so in, was to do them at night before I went to bed.  Reason one is that it gave me the entire day to think about what I might say to the person I chose next on my list.  Reason two is that it meant I couldn’t just go to bed and do them in the a.m. or during the middle of the day – again, I was trying to be intentional here.  Reason three was, hopefully, when the other person opened their Facebook message in the morning after a long commute or a spilled coffee or a stinky bus rider they’d find this message and they would be happy.  Maybe it would start their day out right.  Maybe it wouldn’t get lost in the clutter of voice-mails/e-mails/facebook statuses (statusi?) in the middle of the day.

Out of the 40 days, I only forgot 3 times and then quickly recovered with three the next morning (breaking that final rule).  I felt bad that I didn’t get to ALL my friends but, again, the caveat was that I needed to have a memory or something specific to reference.  Casual friends of friends on Facebook upon which I know because they’re a screenwriter friend to a screenwriter student, etc. didn’t get top priority (of which I still felt kinda bad).  And, of course, I just couldn’t get to everyone and didn’t want this to dissolve into:  “Hey, this is Matt.  Have a nice day.”

What did I get out of the 40 days of doing this?  Well, the first thing I got were positive messages back.  That’s always swell.  Not everyone, mind you, but most.  Some were pleasantly surprised by my message.  And some told me that my message of love or encouragement or re-enforcement that they are, indeed, AWESOME struck a chord with them just at the right time they needed it.  I would say, at least, 10 of the 120+ people responded that they needed what I had to say just when I said (wrote it).  Is that God at work?  Just good timing?  Or just the blatant reminder that just saying something nice to someone is worth it, as we never know what struggles they are going through at the time.  I also learned one of my favorite teachers in High School also went to West Woodland Elementary School in Ballard.

So the Lenten Discipline is done and as the last of the chocolate marshmallow eggs get more and more stale (note: that won’t stop me from eating them) I look back fondly on my Lenten season.  I feel both closer to God and I feel both closer to my friends and, I hope, they feel a tad bit closer to me.  Now, maybe I won’t need a self-imposed structured season to get off my ass and tell my friends how much I love them, miss them and hope that they are doing well.