Big Questions Online: The Online State of Nature.
”I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues.” I think we hoped in the early days of blogging that open discussions would inoculate against ignorance. Instead, like-minded individuals seem to congregate in flocks, pushing their beliefs to extreme levels. This can be seen in a beneficial niching of interests and hobbies, but also in the dangerous isolation of belief systems or political philosophies. We humans desire to be right, right without the effort of questioning our basic belief systems, right as if rightness were one of our appendages. It’s easier to seek those who agree, than to look at difficult issues and analyze them. Esp. when introspection runs up against how you were raised, and how you were educated. I see so many teens and 20-somethings on Facebook who profess the philosophy of Captain Morgan over anything substantive or worthwhile. Ignorance is celebrated, education is reviled.
Extending further — we watch television, read books, view movies in which characters come up against crisis, and then undergo a change of character. It’s a basic writer’s technique for any work of fiction — required, even — yet it’s not an accurate representation of what happens in real life. People in reality can change, but they’re slow to do so — if they do so at all. Yet we expect others — friends, business associates, celebrities, our political leaders, our religious leaders — to go through crises and change for the better. How often we’re let down on this point! We need “Seinfeld” back again ... a group of people who *never* progress, who show clearly that we need to change ourselves in order to not be miserable self-centered individuals.
I find it all a funny combo of ignorance and naivete, and the need to shout it all from the rooftops [I’m looking in a mirror as I type this phrase]. We all fall into the abyss from time to time, but the sheer number doing it these days is astonishing.
I recommend writing drafts of posts or comments, and then stepping away from them for a period of time.
As I should have done before writing and posting this.
Valet.: Handmade the Hard Way.
Makes me want to start working in leather again. I used to make belts and moccasins in college, to help defray costs. Haven’t inspected a hide in years now.
365/244.
Is Mercury in Retrograde?
Just because I needed to know.
Well now …
I forgot to schedule some posts while I was away this morning. Have to remedy that, right fast.
PapaScott: It Was Twenty Years Ago Today.
Great story, Scott. Food for thought; thanks for sharing it!
365/243.
My office buddy, the Western Scrub Jay who seems to enjoy watching me work ... or else I just fascinate him with the tapping noises from my keyboard. Whichever, he’s a joy to see.
I keep trying to get my internal blog engine going …
... but it keeps stuttering to a halt. I’ll get there, eventually.
365/242.
This little bugger twined himself in the latch of my back sliding glass door. Boggling, because I was going in and out and briskly *closing* the door. By all rights, s/he should be flat or dead. A pair of barbecue tongs allowed me to remove her/his little butt from my doorframe (not until I elicited a few screams from Sandra) and place him/her outside the courtyard wall.
This falls right into place with everything else that’s happening ... power outage yesterday, when I needed to work ... fridge ends up partially thawed, and the icemaker decides to clog up after the power’s back on and coat the inside rear of the freezer with a thick later of ice.
It’s just one o’ them weeks, I guess.
Run along elsewhere.
I’ve got deadlines this morning, so I won’t have any links up until after 12 noon MST.
365/241.
Didn’t have time to get fancy ... we had a long power outage in Eldo this afternoon. Just a sunset angle.
365/240.
Nathalie, Canyon Road, at night.
365/239.
Another car club Friday night on the Plaza! And, a sunset.
Google calling just went live in my Gmail.
Call quality seems better than Skype. If that continues, I’ll retire my $3/mo. Skype account.
365/238.
Dusk is a fantastic time to go walking along Canyon Road. Fewer cars on the narrow roadway than during the day. and peeping in windows is fun, too. Remember a sweater. It’s chilly out there!
365/237.
The old wagon in front of the former Galisteo Inn. What’s more remarkable is the size of that cottonwood; many folks don’t realize we have such large trees here in the Southwest. These things grow into monsters, if the water table’s close to the surface.
Later: almost forgot the herd o’ pronghorn.
Sandra walks in …
“YOU’RE in LONG pants?” Shorts are my summer uniform. I draw the line on them at 60 degrees F.
Yeah, yeah, yeah …
I’m getting to links. Patience.
365/236.
Alas, it is already too cool to sit out on this recliner in shorts. Autumn’s cool comes right after Indian Market, like a switch. Zozobra is next, and that’s when the fall really kicks in. I’d better get my butt up onto the mountain trails to enjoy the rest of the season ...
Meme generation, and thoughts about the old blog.
I’ve been noticing an effect here on the blog. You all know I work hard to be ‘first’ to a particular kind of eclectic story ... and you all notice I don’t seem to get any cred for it. My dominance as a meme generator ended in 2004, but most significantly in the months after Twitter opened the floodgates. My thousands of unique visitors a day dropped to below 500 within six months. In the last few months, a pattern has been becoming all too clear to me, a pattern that has been gradually becoming more clear since that time:
There’s now a social aspect to news.
I’ve seen this effect over and over again now. Being first to a story does not matter as much as posting a story when the social conversation is peaking. The story’s only important now when everyone else is talking about it. Even folks who I know read this blog regularly, will pick up and post a story I’ve reported days before from another source than mine - when it’s peaking in popularity. I felt it was a stab in the back, until I realized the importance of the social buzz. Folks seem to feel safer forming opinions and expressing opinions within a group environment, where the consensus can be built from multiple sources. Most importantly, however, building consensus opinion is now entertainment.
I was discussing this with Brian Tercero (Santa Fe’s Twitter powerhouse and Wordpress MU master) at a party the other night, and he suggested watching Twitter trends and perhaps delaying posts until trends peak to maximize reach. Traffic has never really been my goal, reputation and authority are ... but Brian laid out convincing argument that popularity, social trending and authority are now inextricably linked.
My ‘00’s romanticism of how weblogs should influence people is no longer accurate, nor is this ‘old school’ romanticism effective. This has been niggling at the back of my brain for a while, but this romanticism got laid out on the road and run over a couple of times Saturday night.
It was also mentioned by party host and occasional commenter ‘Eric of Santa Fe’, that one of the main reasons he frequents my blog is for Santa Fe news ... Santa Fe ‘flavor.’ I’ve gotten away from that a bit, and it needs to be restored.
So I’m going to be doing some experimenting here, watching my stats a little closer to see what trends within the blog. This blog is really an extension of my own wide-ranging curiousity, shaded a bit by what I know certain readers enjoy reading.
I picked up “The Four Hour Workweek” the other day, and though I have doubts about the ethics behind some of it (my brain screams ‘con’ at some of the chapters), I cannot deny the author’s contention that maximizing effectiveness is the way to go. This blog is not at all effective. In fact, it’s almost a living fossil, a coelacanth. Time to change things up a bit, narrow the focus, play to my strengths. I need to take into account how you all are absorbing your information.
Should I echo posts in Twitter? Use Twitter as a sideblog of sorts? Focus more on longer narratives? Local color? Emphasize art more than tech? More/less photography? Show you how I’m remodeling my house? Deemphasize politics? Add video? Do a podcast? Do all these things? None?
Let me know, if you have time in your busy days, what you come here for ... what you’d like to see here. I know what I’m planning to do (it’s a surprise), but I’d like input. I’m interested.
Downtime last night.
Someone tried an SQL injection here late last night, screwed up a MySQL table. A quick rebuild of the table put all back right again. Sorry for the outage.
365/235.
Two thunderstorms just merged, a little to the north. This is the main shot, here’s the southernmost tip of that left-hand monster.
Our late August storms are usually not as potent as those in June, and it held true in this case. It’s sort of spread out widely and lost its power. We may still see rain out of it, but not the sharp, torrential downpours of June.
Sure beats watching TV, however. New Mexico skies are endlessly entertaining, for those with eyes to see (and ears to hear).
Later: A funny little pic from Indian Market, on the photoblog.
Valet.: Tie Week: Up Your Tie Game.
As far as I’m concerned, you get extra points for secretly rocking a fish tie. I’ve got a nice blue/silver one that gets rolled out when I want to have a little fun.
You’ll forgive me if I’m running a bit late this morning.
Indian Market weekend is, as you know, the high point of Santa Fe’s year ... and the whirlwind of activities require enormous amounts of energy. Esp. if you try to see and do as much as we tried to.
From my amateur observations, it looks like Indian Market did extremely well. Previous years, there was a pall of sadness on Sundays because of lack of sales. This year, there was an aura of happiness and celebration. Buyers were out, art quality was extremely high ... it was a great Indian Market (except for tent flaps, a minor gripe - see previous post).
This is why I gave up on the clothing contest and left.
They need to raise that tent over the seating area by about two feet. Or ... and I’ll volunteer to do this ... duct-tape the flaps to the top of the tent. Put an adult on stage in a headdress, you can’t see a blasted thing. Completely frustrating. I know some of you will cry no tears that I didn’t shoot the clothing contest, but it’s something I enjoy and I missed my annual ‘thang’. Oh, I could have sat closer ... but who wants the ‘look up’ perspective under people’s chins? I sit at the back, with a very long lens, to get an almost straight-on perspective. Just wasn’t gonna work today.
