stormdog | Entries tagged with facebook

Milk Morinaga, the mangaka who wrote Girlfriends, took her pen name from a product called Morinaga Milk. Guess what I keep turning up trying to find groups and such related to her on Facebook!

"As-salamu alaykum, is there any alternate of Powder milk Morinaga BF3?"

"Grab this bundle promo of our US Strawberries with our bestselling Japan's Morinaga Condensed Milk in a tube!
A sure perfect meal ender or perk me up snack anytime, anywhere!"

It's kind of funny, actually. Except it makes it harder to find people to squee over yuri with!

Something I wrote on Facebook, after an incident that led to me unfriending someone over racism.

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Maybe this is a sort of AITA (Am I the Asshole) post. Maybe it's just an expression of confusion and anxiety and sadness.

Today, a thing happened that, though different in details, is the same in shape and form as other things that have happened in the past. There's a pattern.

In an otherwise-justified angry rant, someone invoked the stereotype that people in Nigeria live in huts and share their space with livestock.

This is a racist stereotype.

Isn't it? Am I wrong about that? Because this evening, I keep questioning myself about this, repeatedly and at length. I question whether I am wrong because when that stereotype was invoked, no one else said anything about it. Even though I'm sure many of the people reading the conversation truly care about issues of social justice like racism, no others in the over 1000 potential readers seemed to notice or feel the need to say anything. (ETA: I'm told that one other person did follow up on what I said and agreed with me, and that makes me feel a little more confident in what I did.)

I tried to gently point out the problem. Maybe I'm not good at being gentle. Or maybe I was too vague at first and too direct later. I don't know. But I said I was specifically objecting to the stereotype of Nigerians living in huts that they share with livestock, and the person who wrote the original rant said that they were being intentionally insulting with that phrase and did not rewrite their comment or acknowledge the problem.

It was terrifying to say anything in the first place. I'm terrified of conflict, and of taking up social space, and of criticizing other people. And when the person did not acknowledge the point, I felt like there was nothing else I could do. Nothing else I was brave enough to do, or that would be effective. And to let it go feels akin to saying that, if someone is angry enough, racism just gets a pass.

So I unfriended them.

We all have racist ideas in ourselves. I certainly do, having been enculturated as a white individual in the sea of racism that is the United States. That's part of what makes it so important for me, as a person of privilege, to be aware of and call attention to racism when other people of privilege are engaging in it. This is our responsibility.

This is my understanding of what anti-racism is meant to be.

But things like this leave me questioning myself and my understanding of social interactions, and even of racism. Am I wrong? I have such a hard time believing someone else is wrong and I am right that it's easy for me to start thinking I must be in the wrong. I must be making something out of nothing.

It's really hard for me to call out instances of discrimination. I feel torn between my fear of causing distress and anger vs. my belief that it is my responsibility to point these things out when I see them. I've been alternately anxious and angry and sad this evening. I cried a little. I talked to Miriam. I took Ella to the dog park to relax, but I kept thinking about this even as we walked around the field and Ella chased and played with new doggy friends. I want to know what the right thing to do is.

I'm looking for people to tell me that pointing out what appears to me to be racism is the right thing. Or that it's the wrong thing and I shouldn't trust myself to tell when I'm seeing something racist. I'd like to know that if I am doing the right thing, people support me, even though it feels so isolating and confusing sometimes.

I'd like to understand why, if I am doing the right thing, I am the only person doing that thing among so many other people who also care about social justice.

I know I have readers who may have seen this interaction. I don't mean to call anyone out. I mean, I don't even know if calling people out is the right thing to do. I just wish there was someone or someones to talk to about this who understand the whole situation and could tell me what they think is the right thing to do. If you fit that description and are up to talking about it, maybe we could talk in messenger to avoid discussing it in public if you want?

Current Mood: sad

I told my therapist I feel like I am poorly suited to typical forms of communication used by humans I might like to be in touch with. I recalled a speaker at an anthropology conference who opined that most anthropologists are maladapted to their own culture, and that trying to use Facebook makes me feel that way.
In part, she replied that humans are able to make choices about what kinds of systems of communication they want to use, and are able to learn how to use those systems in ways that work for them.

I feel a lot of loneliness. I have no social contact with other people other than that mediated by the internet. This doesn't seem likely to change in the near term, so I'm trying to figure out how to manage Facebook better.

I have always felt like if I have someone on my "friends" list, I should be reading the things that they post. Yet, thanks to Facebook's algorithms making its own decisions about what to show me when I look at my friends list, I've never been doing that anyway. But I tried, and I think that's the wrong approach.
I've been trying to figure out how to use Facebook's content filtering. I created a custom list of friends, and then realized that you can only use those to *post* content, not to read it. I looked at the "favorites" system, and was aggravated to find that it is limited to 30 accounts. Whether that's a limit I'll come up against is an open question since I'm reducing the number of accounts I'm reading tremendously, but the principle bothers me. There seems to be no way to have a reading list with an arbitrary number of people on it, nor can you have more than one "favorites" list. I won't ask why Facebook has designed an interface like this: the answer is that it makes them money in some way. But it will never make me happy. Ever.

But maybe I can work with it. I'm going to give it a shot.

Another major problem I've had with Facebook, probably the whole time I've been on it, is that it makes me feel alienated. This happens both with content I have actively chosen to view (memes and such posted by friends) and content I am unintentionally exposed to (things that friends share from accounts I am not following). It happens a lot with political content (and really, everything is political) from all sides and perspectives. It's because of the way content for Facebook is typically simplified to fit the space and attention spans.

I can't get away from the aggravation and frustration I feel when something I care about is being over-simplified. And then I feel extra-aggravated and frustrated because many of posts in favor of things I care about are that kind of over-simplification, and then I feel alienated from the people I agree with as much as I do from the people I disagree with. I think I just need to avoid all of that entirely, and that's one chunk of the content filtering I'm going to try to apply.

I don't know if Facebook is the platform for me at all. But I'm going apply a ton of content filtering and then try to interact with people in some kind of regular way, and see if it helps. It's worth a try, I think. If I can find a way to use Facebook that keeps me from feeling more alienated that connected, and more aggravated then happy, that would be cool.

I don't feel like I have a lot of spoons to put into learning how to manage systems in my life, but I also need to find ways to chip away at the anxiety and depression that is taking up most of those spoons. I need to find somewhere to start a bootstrapping process for my mental health.

Current Mood: okay

I keep seeing an ad for a board-game table on Facebook. The thing that most stands out to me about it is there's a Marshall half-stack right up on the wall a few feet behind the table.. Why is there a Marshall half-stack behind the table? What does this have to do with board games or furniture? It's just such a weird thing to see...

Current Mood: confused
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1376470.html

A Facebook post of mine from a few days ago:

I get uncomfortable when any kind of group-thinky memes start proliferating, but even more so when they are about terms that I feel apply to me and whose use I disagree with, or make statements that directly address thoughts I have and choices I make in ways that I think are wrong.

So I feel extra-uncomfortable with a number of pride month memes like that. Some of them have a clear 'if you don't agree with this you are the enemy' vibe, and that makes it really hard to point out problems I see with them without being seen as the enemy.

At the same time, this past weekend I pointed out some unintentionally trans-phobic language in a silly Facebook post and and had several negative responses and no support from people I know who are mutual friends.

These sorts of things makes me feel like advocating for myself and people I care about doesn't seem to do any good and I shouldn't try. These things make me think that I'll never be able to overcome my aversion to group-think enough to be accepted by wider queer community, or any community of shared identity of that sort. They make me want to give up on Facebook entirely. It's a balance between the interactions that give me joy vs. the interactions that take it away. Sometimes, I'm not sure which side of the scale has more weight.

One part of Facebook that *is* giving me a lot of joy is the Poly Geekery community. While there are a few posts describing hard situations and looking for advice (which the community there is happy to provide), the majority of posts about relationships are celebrating happiness in people's lives. A woman writing about how excited she is that her husband found a boyfriend. A man talking about his personal growth in learning to let jealousy go and sharing the joy his girlfriend's partner(s) give her. Happy stories about other human beings sharing joy. Maybe a lot of us need more of that.

Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1315427.html

From Facebook:

In response to me saying that, in fact I had read the article and was aware of the context, but I felt that the thing I said needed to be said anyway:

"Chris Allen If you read his comment in the context of the article, you would never have gone there. Seriously."

It boggles my mind how people don't seem to realize that it doesn't make any sense to tell other people what they are thinking when said person has explicitly noted that they were not thinking that thing...

But it does not appear that continuing the conversation there would be productive.

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I just got back from a tooth extraction at a free clinic in Elgin. My teeth, the doctor said, have strong, broad roots. It took a bit over an hour, and involved sectioning the roots a couple times and removing some bone around them. He was a periodontist and doesn't regularly do extractions, if I understood correctly, but I thought he did a fine job. There was a second doctor watching and helping too, as well as a high school senior in a pre-med/dental program. I hope I helped her learn something!

Actually, I may have helped her learn a few things. I was talking about my work in libraries and my time in grad school and we ended up talking about journal article databases. I noted that I wasn't too familiar yet with medical databases, but I talked about Web of Science and the way it shows you links to both the article's citations, and the articles that cite it. She thought that sounded really great!

And then I offered tips to the dentist on doing better searches in databses in general (Use 'search within results' and make it an iterative process!)

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I got a mint milkshake on the way home, but my socket is still bleeding and I don't want to take the gauze out long enough to consume it. Soon I hope.

I was at a stop light in Evanston, almost home and ended up sitting still through the end of the yellow light. I wanted to make sure that the car approaching opposite me was actually going to stop. Before deciding for sure that the other driver wasn't going to run the yellow/red, I realized the driver of the car, a little-old-man, behind me was waving his fists around and possibly yelling at me inside the car. Amusingly enough, I was listening to the second track of an Offspring CD I picked up at a Goodwill stop near Elgin; that track seems to be a sort of ode to road rage, with the singer going on about how he keeps a gun in his glove box and threatens people with it regularly. It includes the line "Stupid dumbshit goddam motherfucker," and as I snickered as I imagined the little-old-man behind me swearing like a sailor (actually sailors are probably more creative, but you get the point) along with the song.

After I got through the intersection, he blatantly ignored the light to turn the other way and got honked at. See, this is why I don't assume people are going to stop on red...

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It's good to be home. I got tons of cleaning done yesterday and am going to be unproductive the rest of the day. I think that's fair.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1314990.html

From, and largely referring to, Facebbook:

I haven't managed to have much social interaction recently. For quite some time, really. Facebook is my primary form of interaction with people other than my partner, and I don't seem to be very good at Facebooking. One form taken by the social anxiety I live with is a feeling that my interactions with other people are often unexpected and intrusive. I shouldn't respond to frivolous stuff because I don't feel like I know that person well enough for them to want me to participate in a form of communication whose significance is in the enjoyment of connection rather than the content of the messages. I shouldn't respond to serious stuff because, again, I don't feel like I know that person well enough for them to want my input on more serious things. So I just shouldn't talk to anyone I don't know well about anything. That means that I never get to know anybody well because I don't know them well enough.

My brain is broken.

I'm going to try to change the way I occupy this space. I just joined a number of groups (a few poly-related groups and one for demisexual folks) and have been actively engaging there. I'm trying to respond more to miscellaneous posts by FB friends and acquaintances too. Maybe that will even turn into more in-person interaction, in time. There are a number of people who I feel like have been on the periphery of my life for years, at a more or less constant distance from actual connection. And there must be many people in the Chicago area who I'd get along with really well, if I could only find them.

So I'm jumping into my latest round of attempting to put myself out there more. It's a really hard thing to do consistently with the varieties of mental illness I have; depression makes doing most anything social feel impossible. But maybe I can at least get into the habit of regular, pleasantly frivolous interactions with people online.

Current Mood: hopeful
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1252232.html

I came home yesterday and told Danae "I'm weird!"

A podcast I was listening to was talking about the incredible amount of cherry-picking behind the choice of patients for drug studies. A doctor being interviewed talked about a study of a depression drug that was done on patients who did not use alcohol. It's practically "unheard of" he said to have adult patients with depression who do not use alcohol. I'm weird!

"We can be weird together!" exclaimed Danae.

Personally, I've just never liked the concept that I am not fully in control of my brain. Of course, now that I am happily using prescription psychiatric drugs for mental illness, that position seems inconsistent...

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( Facebook thoughts )

Current Mood: okay
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1230972.html

I'm going to stay away from Facebook this week because I can't avoid lots of second-hand news there (to be fair, I've selected for that by blocking all the trivial crap that I kept being annoyed by), and the news is bad for me right now. Yesterday was pretty good, though I realized just how much I was looking at Facebook during the day and that I have some gaps to fill now.

My back *still* hurts, though it's much better. A coworker loaned me one of those lumbar support pillows and it is surprisingly supportive and feels good against my back. I biked to work today, now that my derailleur is fixed and I'm feeling up to it, and made the trip in an hour and twenty seconds, with fifty-four minutes and twenty-eight seconds of moving time. About average for me. (I like that my Bryton computer gives me both total time and moving time. My old one would only record one or the other.) It is very humid indeed here; my shirt, which I typically use to wipe a bit of sweat off of my self before changing into my button-down, was just saturated. I may have to stick a towel in my bag.

Looking at the trip, I realized that my daily one-way commute is very close in length to a half-marathon. I tried to imagine running all the way from Evanston to the Chicago Medical District and back and suddenly had a little more understanding of how difficult it is to run a marathon.

Danae is dealing with thesis stuff and is feeling down and pretty sleepy. I often wish there was more I could do for her, other than making food and offering cuddles and what-not.

I've gone out for walks a couple times during lunch lately and will probably bring my camera to photograph some interesting buildings. There are several that are more modern than a lot of what grabs me, but that I like none-the-less. I don't know that kind of architecture well enough to describe the style; I'll have to do a little reading.

Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1218785.html

I may not be able to block Facebook from showing me comments that people I have friended make in other groups, but I realized today that I could just block any group whose comments tend to devolve into vitriol. That helps.

I also left Dogspotting. It's a fun group with lots of cute pictures that make me smile, but I'm tired of the cycle of someone posting an invalid spot followed by that spot being called out followed by yet another argument about whether there should be rules or that this one should be an exception.

Danae is in Hawaii for a conference through Monday, so Piper Ann (a co-worker with two Yorkies of her own decided that her middle name is Ann, and I'm going with it) and I are home alone. She was out of insulin for a day because of sytem-related delays, and she drank too much water and peed on the floor. I felt bad for her; I know she didn't mean to. I wish she'd use puppy pads.

Today, she's going to be in her crate for longer than I'm comfortable with. I got up early (4:30 this morning instead of 5:00) to give her food and a walk. Therefore, she ate too early too, but I'll give her an early dinner and I'll keep her schedule that way until Danae is back to take care of her in the morning.

And now she'll be in her crate until I get home around 4:30. Twelve hours is too long, and I feel anxious about it and like a bad doggy-parent. But it's only for today and tomorrow.

With Danae out of town, Piper slept in bed with me last night. It was soothing, lying down next to her and looking over at her, watching her occasionally resettle herself, or groom her paws, or just rhythmically breath. I like to think about the feelings she may be having in her little doggy mind, hoping that she's feeling pure feelings of safety and happiness.

Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1192034.html

I thought about buying some gloves a the hospital gift shop. Something windproof to replace my more Fall-oriented purple knit gloves. They are $26 here, so I will probably be stopping at Target on the way home.

I guess I've resolved the issue I had with getting unwanted notifications about Facebook comments by one person. I unfriended zir because of the nature of one of those comments.

I'm probably being too frequently over-sensitive lately, but I don't have the tranquility to let things go or the fortitude to try to talk about delicate issues with people I don't actually know that well.

Current Mood: okay
Crossposts: https://stormdog.livejournal.com/1183941.html

I may have gotten the first comment on a NASA post by fortuitous timing of refreshes. They posted about needing a name for a small spheroid they're planning to visit. I wrote that Asteroid McAsteroidface seems like the obvious choice. And it's picking up likes!

One person pointed out that it was in the wrong belt; it's in the Kuiper Belt, not the asteroid belt. That's fair. Another person responded with "Kuipery McKuiperface?"

And one person says it should be named after his gamer tag and proceeds to embarass himself by trying to flaunt his gamer-dick in public. "Named after my gamer tag and other usernames for years.

I was a top 30 no scoper in halo 4 and was dubbed #1 in the world after competing against ImAProSniper1 and won a standoff."

Uhhh, sure, guy. Sure. ('Cause you know it's a guy.)

Current Mood: amused

I kind of wish I could make a little note about why I'm blocking someone on Facebook. Something like "Referred to President Obama as a nigger", or "Said that a person with a uterus is crazy for identifying as a man." Just so that if it happens that I've blocked a friend of a friend and said friend is curious about why, I can tell them. But I suppose 99% of the time it boils down to "Provided ample evidence of being a giant asshole," so maybe notes aren't that important.

Current Mood: annoyed

I was having a depressive episode a little earlier tonight. The worst one since I started on the new meds, which is to say not that bad in comparison. But I still felt like lying on the floor and doing nothing, nothing seemed worthwhile, blah blah. I permitted myself some extra ice cream and am feeling better. And I haven't even gone over my calorie total today, which I feel good about. I've been managing that so much better over the last couple weeks.

After ice cream, and spurred by the occasional notifications I get from people I really care about over in Facebook land, I thought more about that venue. I decided to start going back there, but in a more controlled way. Here's the post I just wrote there:

"I'm going to be on Facebook again semi-regularly. At least, I think I will. It's a grudgingly-made decision. There are people on Facebook who I don't communicate with in any other medium who I'd really like to stay in touch with.

Because of that, I removed a bunch of names from my friends list and will probably remove more. People I don't remember, dead people, people who never post anything but games and memes, blah blah blah. I want Facebook to be as low-aggravation an experience for me as it can be, so I will likely make liberal use of the unfriending tool, and be quite judicious about adding new people. It's likely not personal. It's just that my goals for my use of Facebook are not in line with those of the vast majority of Facebook users, so there often isn't a good mesh.

I may get frustrated again and leave. I may stay. I dunno. For the moment, I'm going to cross-post from my Livejournal, which includes a lot of stuff about my mental health, therapy, daily goings-on, hobbies, activities, and whatever. It's important to me that there be less of a stigma about mental health, and being 'out of the closet' on that topic is a small thing I can do to work toward that goal.

I guess the only other thing to say here is that I have little to no patience for conservative social politics these days. In an ideal world, I'd be up to having what would hopefully be a productive conversation about the issue that we could both learn from. This is not an ideal world, and I'll probably just unfriend you if it's in your space, and unfriend you with great prejudice if it's in my space.

Feel free to unfriend me without hurting my feelings, and I'll do the same for you. Life is too short to make ourselves needlessly unhappy."

Current Mood: okay

Not that it happens often, but I'm going to begin to let people know the reason I unfriend/unfollow them in social media when I do so, if it's about something other than personal disagreement. If someone's position on issue(s) makes me too upset to engage in rational discussion about it, I can at least not take part in making making my position invisible by saying nothing.

At the same time, I think a private message is sufficient. Part of what's made me do these things silently in the past is thinking of newsgroups (yes, newsgroups; kids, ask your parents) where people left in a giant public huff of drama. That's really uncool. It's performative, not communicative. Deities know, we could use some more communication down here, which why I feel a little bad about withdrawing in the first place. But sometimes I just can't deal.