Spreading rumors to our dogs

A few months back, I sat down with my lovely sister Leigh in her downtown LA loft to discuss the impact social networking sites have had on our lives. Leigh's a very social lady, a 25 year-old fun-in-a-bottle who has worked as an event organizer in the past and admittedly relies on the internet for social efficacy. She's a world travel with connections all over the globe, and her most recent stop was in Portland, Oregon for one year. Read on for some of her insights into what social benefits and detriments we run into in the internet age.

Rhonda: What is your first memory of the Internet?

Leigh: My very first memory of the Internet was using it to chat with people. I don’t remember the format of it, it was a super old one on the first computer we got in 1996 or ’97. I was eleven or twelve and I thought it was cool to be able to chat with people really far away, so when mom and dad would leave I used to chat on it and stay up really late to try and talk to grown-ups. I would lie about how old I was, but it wasn’t a sexual thing. I didn’t know yet that there were pervy people on the internet, I just wanted to talk to people who didn’t live in Marietta, Georgia. And I wanted to pretend that I was older. I wish I remembered what the name of that system was…

R: It wasn’t at all associated with AOL?

L: No, it was pre-AOL. I think it was pre-ICQ.

R: So you originally saw the Internet as mainly a form of communication.

L: Yes. Totally.

R: Do you think that continued on into your teenage years? Did the Internet play a big role in your social life.

L: Yes. Not so much as a teenager but definitely as an adolescent. Over the next three years with the rise of AOL and AIM chatting and all of that, it was big part of my life. Because when you don’t have any autonomy, and you’re at that stage where you are seeking it, it was a great way to find it. You could meet up with your friends without having to get a ride from your parents. You could talk to your friends all the time. But I stopped caring about it once I got older.

R: What role does the internet play in your social life now?

L: It’s another method of staying in touch with people. And its how you figure out what’s going on 90% of the time. Once or twice in the past few weeks since I’ve moved to LA I’ve checked what’s been going on in Portland, since, you know I miss my friends and I want to know what’s going on with them. Its weird because I don’t even realize that I’m doing it, but I’ll check the Mercury, and realize where all my friends will most likely be that night.

R: So you’ve mentioned using facebook. Is maintaining your facebook profile something that is important to you? Do you feel like your profile is representative who you are?

L: I don’t think its UNtrue. I don’t think its disingenous. I think it’s a facet. I’ve always had a pretty blaisé attitude to all that. I was one of the last people I knew to get a facebook and a myspace which was around the same time actually, when facebook become open to more than just college students and myspace became really sleazy.

R: Yeah! There was this weird shift where facebook became much more acceptable to everyone and myspace became creepy and weird. And riddled with ads.

L: And it was right before Rupert Murdoch bought it, so that adds another level to it. So I didn’t really want it or care. The same way I didn’t AIM people all the time. It didn’t seem relevant to my real life. But then it became relevant when I left the country.

R: For someone who has ties in a lot of different places it’s a great tool to stay in touch.

L: Exactly. That’s how it originally was. So when I built those profiles at the time I made a point of putting as little information about myself on them as possible. I still don’t. I don’t have my favorite books or movies listed on them, because, first of all, I don’t think that’s how I would describe myself to anybody. I mean, they are facts about me, but they don’t really contribute that much to my persona.

R: That’s an interesting thought. When you look at the questions that are asked on these different profiles they seem really banal, as if these are the things that are most important to know about a person. There’s a certain level of superficiality to it that is deemed acceptable.

L: They ask you your political views and your religious views, but what I think is more relevant, especially to people of our general age group, is to be kind of snarky or sarcastic when you answer these questions. Its more about displaying yourself through wit than actual facts. So in a way, I think my profile displays me pretty accurately, because it shows that I don’t really care.

R: Or that you have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

L: That too. Also, spending the last year in Portland, there's something about Portland culture that is very facebook-oriented. People will be chatting it up in facebook before meeting up at the bar. Like in middle school or something.

R: I don’t think its singular to Portland. I think its everywhere.

L: Right, but in my experience, Portland was the first place I really encountered that. And having that experience while also being at a job where I was sitting in front of a computer all day, suddenly facebook became a lot more relevant to my life.

R: Because its this esacpe that’s really close and accessible.

L: Exactly. And I was bored. So I’d be like “What are my friends doing?” Or I’d kill time looking at their profiles.

R: I had a funny thought recently. I was thinking about how based on the photographs that exist of me on facebook, if someone started at the beginning of that series of pictures and went through the whole thing, someone could easily see the past three years of my life and understand the major events and the track my life has taken. Obviously, someone would have to be pretty creepy to do that because there are over 500 photos of me, but it made me feel slightly uncomfortable. Do you have any discomfort with the idea of that much of your life being accessible in that way?

L: I don’t think that much of my life IS accessible on the Internet in that way. I only have like 200 friends of facebook because I don’t friend people, and usually the people who friend me are people from college that I don’t really identify with anymore. The thing that makes me most uncomfortable is that these people from college who were in my life but aren’t a particularly huge part of my life are more likely to put photos of me up, so there are some FUCKING AWFUL pictures of me on facebook.

R:[Laughs]

L: But back to this whole not-caring-about-my-internet-representation thing, I could go through all the trouble of de-tagging myself so no one would ever have to know what I looked like from that terrible angle with the blunt black bangs, but at the same time I don’t really care, and I don’t want to deny that at one point that was me.

R: There is an element of openness about it that feels kind of beautiful. Like we’re not as scared of each other as we were when social networking sites first started popping up and we felt the need to edit out so much information because of stalkers or because employers might look at your profile. People seem to view it as a safe space for expression now. There isn’t a lot of judgement that goes with it.

L: I think that’s accurate. I’ll swear in my status updates when I’m friends with people I’ve met through volunteering, which might come off a very unprofessional. But it doesn’t really matter.

R: But I won’t be friends with mom on facebook for those same reasons.

L: Yeah, but that’s about basic personality types. Like, I have lots of friends in real life who I’m not friends with on facebook. It doesn’t really matter. So with mom, that’s a basic character thing. She really likes to have boundaries.

R: Right. She definitely prefers not having to know too much. Have you ever had an experience where you felt like your own boundaries about the internet were crossed?

L: Yes. When I literally ran away from New York City and I changed my phone number so I could get away from these people who were a really negative influence on my life. However, that didn’t matter because I would get a ton of myspace messages from them instead. I wouldn’t call it harassment, but it was extremely disheartening, bad communication.

R: It sounds like you were trying to disassociate yourself from this life you didn’t want anymore or this group of people you didn’t want to be a part of anymore and because we’re so easily accessible through the internet, they could keep getting to you.

L: The boundaries hadn’t necessarily been set yet, but it was painful. That was the first time I ever thought, “Shit, the internet could ruin my life.” Because I just didn’t want to hear the things they had to say or feel bombarded by them. But most recently, I’ve found it so detrimental to having healthy functioning romantic or post-romantic relationships with certain men.

R: Absolutely. I agree with you 100% on that. And not just with men.

L: Of course. It effects you regardless of your sexual preference.

R: If I were to answer that question I just posed to you, I would have to say it’s the impulse post-break up to basically become a stalker. I mean, that’s a harsh way to put it, but I would definitely feel like a stalker after I spent some time leering on my ex-girlfriend's profile. It would be this combination of making myself feel shitty by having this weird voyeuristic view into how her life has continued on without me and secondly having this self-loathing for being a creep.

L: For me it wasn’t so much of me feeling like a creep, but more thinking “THIS is how I’m choosing to spend my time?” I felt like I should be better than that. It becomes this vice, going back to someone when you can’t have them near you anymore. I felt like I should be a bigger person. If the Internet didn’t exist I would just be sitting around thinking of them, writing a sad song or something. But instead, I’m looking at a picture of their face and seeing that a new girl has commented on their wall and freaking out. So in terms of boundaries I’ve set with other people I feel like that have been breeched in the past, but breaking boundaries I’ve set up for myself is even worse. I feel like I should only date people who don’t have facebook profiles from now on.

R: What websites do you think you use the most? We’ve already talked about facebook a bunch.

L: Yeah, that’s definitely the one, but other than that, I have two gmail accounts. One that’s more professional and the other that’s more personal. I used to be really obsessive about vegan food blogs when I was first learning to cook, so sometimes I still look at those. Ebay, i've got a soft spot for Ebay. And craigslist! So mostly commerce.

R: Right. Is that something that you think is a positive thing about the Internet? More localized, democratic form of commerce. Like craigslist you can directly talk to people who have something that you want instead of relying on some major chain like Target.

L: Yeah, its direct, but you can also get in contact with people on the other side of the world. You have access to things you never had access to before, especially through EBay.

R: How do you feel about the internet’s ever-increasing and important role in our lives?

L: Its funny how quickly it becomes a given, you know? Even for someone who doesn’t feel particularly savvy or connected, it’s still a daily thing for me. Multiple times a day. And when I don’t use it for awhile and I realize it, I feel much better about myself, because I’m not chained to this machine.

R: You feel free.

L: Yeah, free from the habit. The fact that it’s habit-forming is the most interesting thing about it to me. I think we need to think about why it’s a habit instead of just noticing it is increasingly a part of lives, but the fact that it’s a habitual repetitive act, like smoking cigarettes or compulsive eating.

R: It’s just another vice.

L: Yeah. And I have thought about why suddenly facebook has become more important element in my life in the past year, and it definitely is a social fixation.

R: Right. And I think for people like us who are hyper social, that can easily turn to a vice, relying on this thing to feel connected.

L: I think that’s completely true. My favorite Andy Warhol quote is “I have a social addiction. I have to go out and if I don’t I stay at home and spread rumors to my dogs.” I feel like facebook is spreading rumors to my dogs.