Winners Wear Yellow.
YES and. I maintain I was born at the precisely right moment in technology. I entered 1st grade the same year the library got its new Apple IIe. “Computer time” was spent waiting for the light by the disk drive to go off. “Don’t touch it while the light is on!!!”
I was the first class in high school to take Keyboarding instead of Typing. To this day it remains the only marketable, vocational skill I pulled out of 20 years of formal education.
I got my first email address when I got to college.
Facebook and internet sharing didn’t become an option until I was out of college, living as an adult — and it didn’t become a priority until I worked in professional internet sharing, and was well aware of the consequence.
There are photos from college and other early adult milestones but they are safely emblazoned on, as Mel says, the glossy paper of prudence.
And in a storage shed, in a box marked: MEMORIES/KEEPSAKES/PUPPY/GARAGE.
Right where they should be.
SEE?! This is why. I say I’m getting hitched and instantly Facebook gives me diet ads?
The entire Wedding Industrial Complex can eat my cookies.
No wait, they can’t either because I’M eating them.
A heroic effort to calm my righteous indignation (also the name of my fragrance, should I ever launch one): “Yeah, when I said I was single, I got dating ads.”
Yes, but you see kids, that’s logical. Single/How not to be.
This pairing is insidious. Engaged/Must lose weight. That thread there, is just part of the thousands of ways the wedding industry is anti-woman, and also pretty insane.
Nope! This bride is cheerfully not spending one red cent to support this nonsense. I will wear clothes and there will be a fun party, but I’m going to see if I can have a wedding with no WEDDING. Nothing, no invitations, flowers, cake, that is marketed with white wedding bells and little birdies and interlocking champagne flutes, and certainly nothing selling competition and gender hate along with it.
I cannot with this ad.
Many years ago, a very wise lady posted the following on Facebook:
“How come a woman can update her status to say she’s engaged and she gets a million replies, but if she said she’d just gotten a graduate degree, there’d be crickets?”
I sent her an email immediately, Subject: OMG. YOU’RE ENGAGED? Reply: Of course not. But did you send an email saying, “OMG YOU GRADUATED?”
She made a fine, fine point.
Yesterday I did that thing, I updated the Fantastical Book of Faces to earn the little pink heart status. I’ve never done it before, as I’ve historically been wildly opposed, and I had to get special permission from Mr. Zuckerberg to do it.
But I did. And right after, I had a panic attack.
For no other reason in that it’s so not me. May the powers of LOLcats strike me down if I’m lying, but I don’t internet to draw attention to myself. I may do it to draw your attention to a cool thing or offer a thought to the project, but if you can’t stand the squee, get out of the kitchen? I just think I had enough attention as a kid, it makes me all weird to get it now. At least attention that comes from seeking behavior.
But, I updated. I updated because it wasn’t about me. It was about…releasing happy news expediently. About not being so, “Seriously, no. No big deals, no surprises, no fuss,” that horrible instinct I have that ruins other people’s fun.
But that’s it. There won’t be dresses posted or menus discussed or flowers debated here. There’s no need. As much as I love the internet for encouraging creativity, it also encourages a metric dump truck of special snowflakery. “I am the first person to ever eat oatmeal, get married, have a kid READ MY JOURNEY.”
I am absolutely looking forward to what will be a wonderful day with family and friends. But the details, the details that we as women are taught to obsess about and worship because this will be YOUR ONE (ahem) SPECIAL DAY, need not be blogged. I mean I picked out a dress online in 15 minutes. I post boring stuff sometimes, but I’ve had microwave hashbrowns with more of a narrative arc than that.
And truly, the only important detail of the whole affair?
No Sister Sledge.
Okaaay, today, today I do not hate Facebook. I mean I will always affectionately know it as the armpit of social media, but AWWWWW!!! After a family forensical drama played out over comments yesterday…*
The Dad and the Bro are on an Iditarod dog sled training adventure and I woke up (way, way) before dawn and got to see it. All kinds of win. (Why is there no “awwwwww!!!!” button? I want one of those way before a “Dislike” button.)
UPDATE: I was going to mention how righteous it was that the musher was a woman, which it is — and then an update from Dad: they got back from the ride and were making conversation, “Isn’t there a musher from Bend who’s visually impaired?” “You just took a sled dog ride with her.” AWESOME.
*So you know, and so your children may someday know, OH MY GOD. If I, the distaff heir to the manor, had posted a picture of a snowy pass road clearly taken from behind the wheel while the car was in motion, Dad would have not been the first one to “Like” it. He would have maybe mobilized a Highway Patrol helicopter. And not only did he know, he was there. Ohhh being the Canary Child is fun and games people, and excellent fodder for sweet, sweet martyrdom.
GPOYW: The “in which I throw Facebook a bone” Edition.
I hate Facebook. I’ve said as much in 17 different ways. And yet, sigh. The daily happenings are perhaps deserving of this sentiment, but the actual platform, the long-term utility of it, if used correctly? Fine. I will concede.
I am Facebook friends with everyone pictured above. That would be: the Bro (duh) but also, the girl who lived across the pasture from me when we lived in England in 1986 (who I found through my mother’s Facebook page) and a the kid who was camp counselors with me in 1995 and who took me to his school’s Homecoming.
Are these people I would have been able to keep in touch with in a regular world? Probably not.
And does it entirely eclipse the ancient days of perennially unchanging Christmas card lists, mimeographed holiday newsletters, and “oh my gawd what have you been up tos?” every fifth year at reunions?
Yeah, it does. Sigh. “Like.”
“Are you an internet snob?”
Asked of me yesterday, after I delivered an impassioned soliloquy on why Twitter is far superior to Facebook.
YES. My kingdom for my LOLcats, yes.
Because wanna know why? If you use it correctly, it gives you wonderful things like this new vYou thing where you can ask/answer questions via video to people like Chuck Klosterman. I just die. C.K. is on video loop in my computer like a perfect author aquarium.
Anyhooah, because the internet is also a land-grab, I got me one-a them vYou accounts too. It goes nicely with my other 22 social media acquisitions.
I might make a video too, if I ever decide to brush my hair today…
(OMG watch his videos. His house. He has an Eames over his shoulder. This man is perfection.)
And this is the point where I find out that Chuck Klosterman and I did exactly the same thing yesterday, and diametrically disagreed about it on the same social networking platform, and then I proceed to imagine that we went to the movies together and had a nice little debate while walking through FYE on the way out of the mall (because there was a life-sized Justin Bieber cutout in the door, and that’s too good not to exploit somehow.)
For the record, he’s totally wrong. It was distracting as all get out. (OMG. I just said Chuck Klosterman of the Eponymous Index was wrong on the Sabbath. Not even the Black Sabbath. I shall burn.)
I mean, I read the book, I understand the scene of them outside of the party was winter, but truly you can tell me “Ooh I’m cold,” and I’ll take your word for it and not notice that the characters can’t see their breath. I swear. On the other hand, if you spray fake dragon breath mist all over the screen, I will watch only that and hear nothing of the dialogue.
“Hey look. There it is again. Wow. They’re really committed to this party trick.”
But despite our disagreement, Mr. Klosterman was a fine date, let me have the arm rest and understood that I like to sit in that dividing row with the extra legroom. He also listened as I ticked off all of the female characters who were portrayed as empty-headed, psychopathic, disposable whore-like props. Which was all of them, except the Rashida Jones lawyer character who quite frankly didn’t need to even be a female.
I don’t remember that being the case as blatantly in the book, and don’t know whether it’s a function of the reality of Zuckerberg’s life, or a say-it-ain’t-so emphasis of Sorkin’s screenplay. It was kinda icky.
I don’t think I missed out on Sorkin actually engaging with the world of the site itself, because he’s said publicly that he doesn’t care at all about social networking, and to be honest, dudes. I’ve danced around it, but it’s time to decloset.
Facebook is totally boring. I’m only there for the free samples.
This movie, on the other hand? Entertaining, and maybe it’s my Robot Rising, but Zuckerberg really isn’t a monster.
And Aaron Sorkin? Talk fast to me, baby.
So. You seen?
For all the controversy surrounding the cultivated recollections and synthetic recreations in The Accidental Billionaires, this is the one new take-away I had after reading the seven-page (ahem, digitally) profile on Mark Zuckerberg of the Fantastical Book of Faces in The New Yorker this week.
However, regular people removed “The West Wing” from their favorites when Alan Alda came back from the Korean War and decided to run for president. Not because Aaron Sorkin worked on an unflattering movie about us.
Which I CANNOT WAIT to see, despite the fact that The Accidental Billionaires didn’t grip me as much as Bringing Down the House (or the financial and Dubai ones in betwixt) though that could easily be blamed on the audiobook reader who was abysmorrible.
And despite the fact that Facebook/phonebook is the least entertaining wing of my interwebs shack. I check it first, mostly saving the other feeds (twitter and tumblr) for best. There is just something about it that does not draw out gems like a twitter does.
I’ve tried to figure out why. Maybe if I do someday, people will care which TV shows are listed as my favorites. (I think they’re whatever I copy/pasted from MySpace. See? DEGI. Doesn’t encourage good internet.)
Status updated!
