Short Story Long - an endless conversation: May 2019

...not in my professional life, but in my personal life, for sure. I am the same person in both, don't get me wrong, it's just that after a few careers, I learned I can do jobs more efficiently and thus have less stress in them, when I communicate more directly, less tangentially.

Anxiety exists, I believe, on a spectrum measuring how it affects each of us. It fascinates me that emotions like that, or fear, can be both life saving and life crushing. Survival is a matter of finding a balance. Always within humans is a dichotomy, so like the structure of much of the universe (until you get to the quantum level, of course.) At any rate, picking up the thread again (clicking new links, reading, watching, listening to files streaming from my internet browser brain and mouth and hands...) I communicate differently in each situation, but am the same person, you follow? Click. Click.

See, now there is that use of the 'clever' writing hook, of sound effects associated, in order to bring it all back to the metaphor of the header, the lead in, above. I think that way in part from this world we find ourselves in, one where we have all become little editors and promoters of the product that is our life, our lives, that is, we craft ways to shape a vision of ourselves to present to the world (as a musician and artist and writer of over 30 years, I had already done self promotion for a long while by the time social media networks came along, and fell right into that format.) I don't see all of this as necessarily bad thing. People are getting better at writing, and people who never read much news who have discerning, intelligent friends get access to good news, and they read more than they ever did (yes and there are miles of bullshit facades some present, and data quicksand, now weaponized by foreign adversaries.) I speak, of course, of Facebook.

Image result for cartoon of guy using facebook as a periscope

Illustration by Pawel Kuczynski

I used to have a lot of fun on Facebook, but I recently deleted my account. I had always told myself that when the cons started to outweigh the pros on there, I would bail, for real. No 'deactivate' but delete. Click, click (there he goes again...) It had creeped me out when I learned that the reason the notification status on Facebook swirls and spins, and stalls before it loads is because they designed it to tap into the same part of one's brain that is stimulated by slot machines, the spinning pictures, waiting for a reward. I always knew private messages weren't private, always warned people not to send their phone numbers or addresses in messages, some thought me paranoid, hell I did experiments and typed in certain keywords and waited for the related ads, and yes, it worked. And remember that recently it was revealed that through a loophole in contracts with corporations, Facebook allowed these companies to comb not just your data, but that of your message recipients as well. Am I paranoid now ; ) ?
[Hey, Now Wayne formerly Past Wayne soon to be Future Wayne here, adding something that just happened, outside of Facebook, to show there is hardly any escape from this bullshit. I had talked to a co-worker about how I knew there had to be lots of Seinfeld bloopers out there. Yes, I had looked up other Seinfeld stuff, interviews, etc. but nothing yet about bloopers, ever. The very next day, after mentioning this, my YouTube feed was topped with...Yeah, Seinfeld bloopers. If it had happened a week or a month out, I would chalk it up to algorithms based on my searches, but this was a clear connection. Remember when we thought people paranoid for claiming that they, the corporations, are spying on us by listening through our phones? It has been revealed lately that this is also true. And even if there is a way to disable it, do we really trust that will end it? Nah.]

I have a background with a ten year career in related areas to all that, or that is, my first career led to a short one after in that industry. I knew a bit about how it all worked, and for a time, it mostly was innocent, they used the data to target relevant ads to users. But hell, human greed won't stop there with all that sweet, money growing DATA!

When I still lived in Boston (I lived there for 5 years, moved there from Seattle for a job in 2003) I was in New York City for a meeting of the people from a bunch of newly acquired tech companies to the fold of the company I worked for, one of the companies was a new thing at the time, a network of publishers where advertisers could pay them to track people's browsing habits and ad target them. They gave users cute classifications like 'shopping maven.' I had one of those rare moments we as ordinary folks sometimes have, where we make a whole room of people we don't know laugh. I had asked a question of the presenter and in the course of his answer, he said, "We can tell you who you are, if you like?"
I answered, "No thanks, I am happy with who I think I am." If I had a mic, it would have been dropped.

There are ways to exist in that realm and not let it screw you, but they will always get a piece. In 1999 I fronted a very short-lived band called Panic Bird and wrote a punk song that didn't fit with the style of the other songs, but well before the advent of the NSA and Snowden and all that, I thought about how of course since Hoover there was massive data being collected on everyone, and I worked in the tech industry, had just started what would be a ten year career, and I realized the potential of what was to come, or what was already happening, to all that info, our stories in DATA, ripe, attractive, ready for harvest. Of course it was a feast. And still is, more meal courses coming constantly. And I thought, I can't stop this. So the lyrics to this Panic Bird punk tune were simple; 'I'm not paranoid/I'm not paranoid/I'm not paranoid/I'm not paranoid/But if they're watchin' me/If they're watchin' me/If they're watchin' me....Go ahead and let 'em/Go ahead and let 'em...' This song is now done by a band I play drums in, The Commonauts, a band reformed from the early '80s, when I was a sophomore in high school, before I ever played in a band, and I helped put on their shows. They reformed in 2014 and asked me to play drums. A very fun band! I have also been playing drums for reunion shows last year and this year with a band I was a founding member of in the late '80s, Treepeople. Yep, for now my music life is mostly reunions from decades past, it seems (but starting work on a a long procrastinated solo record, more later.)

Me drumming in the Commonauts in a robot suit - A rarity in this band - I am usually the boring one in Commonauts!
Photo by Jason Sievers

I have shed no tears since leaving that digital village (Facebook, that is, sorry, sometimes I jump around, and sometimes my cut and paste editing needs work...)...Well, in full disclosure it has only been two weeks! But I don't see it changing, honestly. And I don't judge anyone who stays, either. It is a great forum for many, and I met up with some people in person that I reconnected with through FB. For so long, Facebook had me by the short hairs with those connections. But there are phones, video chat, email, and fucking planes. To each their own, of course. But I do like me some HI (Human Interface ~0 0~)

All of our modern world is made of pros and cons, choices, because life is a choosing game, a balance game, of what helps, what harms. We each decide what is best for each of us, and what to avoid. Some among us are better at it than others.

I used to fool myself into thinking it was different for me, though still it was fun, because me, you see I was messing with the paradigm of Facebook (above it all! Yeah, right!) I posted things like my 'chili recipe,' which consisted of a series of photos of me opening a can of Nalley's chili, pouring it in the pan, into a bowl, signed off with 'You're welcome.' I did things like Make Shit Up Monday, Tell the Truth Tuesday (kinda stole that from a post of a friend, thanks TJS!) What the Fuck Wednesday, and I continued to play the already extant 'Throwback Thursday,' though it eventually faded in popularity, it was one of Facebook's organically arisen community activities that I liked.

That also fascinated me, how there was this self created culture emerging right there within the data candy land that so many corporations were, are, dipping into (And brief moments when people used the threat of pulling their sweet, juicy data out over some controversy or another and bucked Facebook to comply and change some things.) I did shit like ALL CAPS DAY and stream of consciousness jokes. I kept trying to stem what wasn't working; the arguments with friends that would never have happened in person, the ex of a friend ruining a happiest moment post, the political toxicity, the embarrassing ventures into arguments with strangers, friends of friends. People reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to things. Me doing the same.

Talking to me may be like browsing the internet, but I am a nice enough fella. I didn't like slipping into that. I regret venting about family members who were Trump voters in a public forum. I was traumatized by that election, by how loving, good and intelligent people I knew could have supported that walking scam and who should have been, by their measure, seen as a sinner and blasphemer, at the very least morally repugnant. It is beyond mere political and ideological differences, which never stood in the way of any of my relationships, family or otherwise, before. We find ourselves here. Still processing all of that. It may take until he is out of office for me to complete that processing. I will have oh so much more to say on that subject (meaning the subject of the president, not my family) in later entries.

We are all in it, this digital world, we sign on to most of it, without reading contracts. That was another thing I reminded people of on Facebook, or tried to, was free speech wasn't applicable there, it was an opt in network. We signed contracts that said we were ok with all of that shit. I saw it as, oh well. They have my data. Boring. Have fun. 'Go ahead and let 'em.'

Here we are, as I always say. And so it goes, Ok, for now, to quote Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim and Hunter S. Thompson's sign off on cables and faxes, respectively.

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Technology is what it is, it is mostly how you use it, but after what happened last presidential election and the compromise of data, our true value to them, that becomes trickier. It's possible. I know people who make it work. I couldn't any more. I would take week or month long breaks, and whenever I did, my general anxiety levels went down, I did more creative projects. This was my experience, it is different for everyone.

Ahem. See what I mean about my brain, my conversation style? Like that time you looked up something...something you ended up eventually forgetting, on Youtube once that led you somehow to a video of long, strange infomercials on self defense, or old William F. Buckley interviews. But that is what this blog will be. Some entries will be more structured. Some will be entries of just photos and weird captions. Yes, yes Instagram, not ready to just jump right back into a social media platform quite yet...I will write more structured, article like entries sometimes, or political stuff, but only subscribers can comment, Blogger won't let me turn them off entirely, I want to mainly because I don't want the negative aspects that were part of what turned me off on Facebook to come back into my life. I am not here to debate, but share top of mind shit. Send me an email, I will respond to respectful correspondence. Share the blog if you like where I am going.

I will try and be fairly prolific on here, and try different stuff, try and keep it entertaining.

For now, have a walk in some images and words and have a lovely day. Maybe I will just sign off that way, with photos, every time, for photography is a great love of mine...Already, in the first entry, this blog is morphing...Living data we can choose to shape, in stories. Back to the digital cave walls!

Love to Folks and Critters,
Wayne Ray Flower II

Little friends I made in my art studio, and robots being built. More to come.

Creepy manhole cover I saw on the way home one night. Maybe it reminded me of the show Lost, and the endless horror of it's lost writers, writing themselves into a corner...