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Work and Life and WTF Internet
Nov. 3rd, 2017 08:29 amYesterday I got the dreaded call from the library sub coordinator: "They need someone at Roseville tonight."
I have no official hours for November AT ALL and I like Roseville, so I couldn't come up with a rational reason to say "no." After a vaguely unsatisfying dinner (I need to add some new things into my repertoire), I headed off to work. I had, in point of fact, the perfect schedule for me. I worked the AMH (the big book sorting machine that used to terrify me) for the first hour, an hour shift on the phones, and then two hours on the desk, with one of my favorite people Dominque.
When I was working the phone shift, I could hear one of the volunteers in the cubicle behind me. She is mentally disabled in some fashion, but I was very much struck by the fact that, if I were her, she's just who I'd be. She kept up a running monologue with herself about what she was doing, step by step, as well as some kind of amazingly positive self talk. For instance, she would tell herself, "Oh! That was a good one!" or "Wow, you really got that done quickly!" These positive comments were interspersed with little, gentle reminders, "Now, count carefully, okay?" and "You're going to have to start over from the beginning! Go slowly!" But, I don't know, all I can say is that I was deeply charmed by it. If only we could all be so positive in our own heads, you know? I mean, I do often talk myself through tasks out loud. I do this unthinkingly. I've been told by my martial arts instructor they they miss my "running dialogue," and I would NOT have thought that I talked much through those sessions. But, I did, or did often enough for it to be noticeable.
I'd be embarrassed, but a number of people have told me that they find it charming, too. (Also? It's clearly something I'm not entirely aware of, so I'm not sure how I'd change it, even if I wanted to.)
This morning the thing I talked to myself the most about is how I really need to find a new caliber of friends on the Internet, as Captain America might say. On my favorite social media outlet, I seem to attract a very literal, pedantic set of people. Like yesterday, I posted this little gem: "My new response to any "Trump supporter" (but especially those who can't spell or seem to grasp basic English grammar): "Вы робот, товарищ" (Google translate tells me this is: "You're a robot, comrade.")" Because I'd been thinking a lot about the reaction to Donny, Jr.'s Halloween post and I happened to run across someone else's feed where the lone Trump positive voice could spell "socialism" flawlessly, but didn't seem to grasp that theres is not a word, it needs the apostrophe to make any sense in English. The point was, however, to be funny.
A friend saw my comment and asked if she could re-post it, attributed to me, which meant that I was essentially tagged and was notified of her friends' reaction to my post. I decided to check in late last night just to see, especially since she told me she had several Russian-speaking friends. Reading through her feed was uplifting and wonderful. People had posted .gifs of people appalling and that sort of silly, positive response, other people said "brilliant!", "clever!", and "saving for later use!" Some people noted a few different bits about the Russian, but it even the most argumentative of her commenters were very much, "ha, ha, though! Good one!"The point is, these friends of a friend of mine totally GOT it and reacted how I would have hoped.
The majority of the comments on my own feed were similarly positive and in the right spirit, though I had a LOT fewer replies of any sort. But, there's something about me, I think, because I managed to attract that one person who wanted to 'fansplain' (she was a woman, but it was still very much in the vein of "the thing you have to understand is....") that my "joke" was harmful to.... (wait for it!)... people with dyslexia.
It's possible, if you are reading this journal, you are unaware that being dyslexic has very much defined my life. I have spent a lot of time being haunted by the phrase "careless inattention to detail." That was a phrase that followed me all through my public school career. Teachers would say, "Lyda seems intelligent, but if ONLY she would apply herself. She makes silly mistakes and is CARELESS in her attention to detail." NOT ONE OF THEM ever considered the fact that *maybe* I wasn't just a lazy-ass, but was actually struggling with a mild learning disability. To be fair, my public school education all happened before 1985. Learning disabilities, especially ones like dyslexia's more mild iterations, were not on a lot of people's radars. It was only when I was an adult in the 1990s and my boss at the Immigration History Research Center really, really wanted to fire me that I got officially tested and got the amazingly smug satisfaction of handing her the results and getting to say, "ACTUALLY, you have accommodate my disability BY LAW."
If you know me in person, you've probably heard me identify as dyslexic. I tend to do this a LOT when I'm teaching, because it's easy to dismiss someone's intellect when they misspell a simple or common word on the chalkboard--because, you know, a teacher is supposed to be an expert, how dumb are they if they can't even spell "Egypt" (a problem word for me). So, I ALWAYS start my classes--adult and teen--with the explanation "I am dyslexic. If you see me fumble a word just let me know. If you spell it for me, slowly, I can fix it."
I bring up my dyslexia at science fiction conventions for two reasons. First of all, a lot of writers are dyslexic. It's a weird thing, particularly given how hard it is for us to spell things properly, but I think some kind of compensation happens in the dyslexic brain that lends itself to some aspects of storytelling. Plus, see above. If I misuse a word, I want people to cut me a tiny bit of slack (important among highly smart, but often also deeply judgmental science fiction fans). Secondly, I can't read as fast as a lot of my colleagues. I actually credit comic books for my ability to read AT ALL. I struggled through my issues with reading because I was interested by what was happening in comic books (the graphic format, too, meant that there was a lot for me busy brain to process and actually seeing the WHOLE PAGE AT ONCE was a feature, not a bug.) That makes for a good story, but it's also my "I'm sorry I can't read 100 novels a year" excuse. I probably read 500 graphic novels a year, but you know, it's just an interesting difference that's worth pointing out, IMHO.
Okay, that's all background for this stupid thing that happened on my feed. So, I make the Russian bot joke that goes over SUPER WELL on someone else's feed, and, meanwhile, on my own, not only to have to deal with the person who clearly thinks I'm thoughtlessly insulting HER PEOPLE, but when I come back on to try to lighten the mood and say, "Yeah, I hear you. I'm dyslexic, too, but we're talk about Trump supporters here..." which is, I think, PRETTY CLEARLY A DEFLECTION.
In point of fact, I feel like, if we were talking in person, this commenter would get it, they'd understand that this is me saying, "Right, okay, but this is a joke, targeted NOT at YOU, so let's just acknowledge that, sure, it's tough when our misspellings make us look as moronic as Trump people, but ha, ha... still a good joke." NOPE. She has to come back and go on for a paragraph about how she hates how people equate proper English and good spelling with intelligence, but well, that's my pet peeve, I guess, sorry! smiley face, smiley face, but I'm still going to sit here and ruin your joke because... I don't know, because maybe life on the internet has caused me to assume literally everything is all about me, all the time.
*sigh*
What is frustrating to me in this whole thing isn't even that people on the internet don't know how to behave like civilized human beings anymore. I'm pretty sure that's a well-estabilished fact. What bothers me is that, somehow, the EXACT SAME JOKE, told in the EXACT SAME WAY on someone else's feed gets the response I actually wanted, without a _single_ annoyingly pedantic person coming on to take it all as a personal attack.
Why?
Why is it that when I do it, I fail the Internet? Why is it, when someone else takes my thing and posts it somewhere else, do they win? WHY? Am I doing the Internet wrong?
Probably.
I mean, Shawn and I talked about this, this morning. She very carefully curates her feed. If anyone annoys her for the slightest reason--it doesn't even have to be egregious, she can just decide that you've posted one too many pictures of the stew you made last night--they're blocked, hidden, or even unfriended. I have literally never unfriended a person until this last year. When I finally needed to, I didn't know how to do it. I hid someone that I meant to unfriend and that produced very different results, unbeknownst to me.
Now that I know HOW TO, I've been happily unfriending all the Trump posters I come across. But, that still leaves me with this very large pool of people. (I might have that dreaded social bubble everyone warns about, but mine is a BIG bubble.)
Maybe this friend of mine has a better feed because she's more like Shawn, only keeping the people who react the "right" way. Maybe I should take this to heart and weed out all the people who annoy me in any way, shape, or form. I haven't done that because I HAVE managed conversations where I've watched people who started out saying the sort of thing that would have triggered an insta-block from Shawn, like, "There are no women science fiction writers!" (on my page! MY page.) Who then, after a civil discourse, are asking politely for a reading list of the women I consider hard science fiction writers.
For me, this is how this is supposed to work. I'm not quite ready to admit the whole Internet is broken and that we need to burn it all down and start over from scratch.
I guess this means I will have to put up with all the annoying people.
I just wish I could figure out how to balance them out with the people who post cute .gifs. I fucking LOVE cute .gifs.
I have no official hours for November AT ALL and I like Roseville, so I couldn't come up with a rational reason to say "no." After a vaguely unsatisfying dinner (I need to add some new things into my repertoire), I headed off to work. I had, in point of fact, the perfect schedule for me. I worked the AMH (the big book sorting machine that used to terrify me) for the first hour, an hour shift on the phones, and then two hours on the desk, with one of my favorite people Dominque.
When I was working the phone shift, I could hear one of the volunteers in the cubicle behind me. She is mentally disabled in some fashion, but I was very much struck by the fact that, if I were her, she's just who I'd be. She kept up a running monologue with herself about what she was doing, step by step, as well as some kind of amazingly positive self talk. For instance, she would tell herself, "Oh! That was a good one!" or "Wow, you really got that done quickly!" These positive comments were interspersed with little, gentle reminders, "Now, count carefully, okay?" and "You're going to have to start over from the beginning! Go slowly!" But, I don't know, all I can say is that I was deeply charmed by it. If only we could all be so positive in our own heads, you know? I mean, I do often talk myself through tasks out loud. I do this unthinkingly. I've been told by my martial arts instructor they they miss my "running dialogue," and I would NOT have thought that I talked much through those sessions. But, I did, or did often enough for it to be noticeable.
I'd be embarrassed, but a number of people have told me that they find it charming, too. (Also? It's clearly something I'm not entirely aware of, so I'm not sure how I'd change it, even if I wanted to.)
This morning the thing I talked to myself the most about is how I really need to find a new caliber of friends on the Internet, as Captain America might say. On my favorite social media outlet, I seem to attract a very literal, pedantic set of people. Like yesterday, I posted this little gem: "My new response to any "Trump supporter" (but especially those who can't spell or seem to grasp basic English grammar): "Вы робот, товарищ" (Google translate tells me this is: "You're a robot, comrade.")" Because I'd been thinking a lot about the reaction to Donny, Jr.'s Halloween post and I happened to run across someone else's feed where the lone Trump positive voice could spell "socialism" flawlessly, but didn't seem to grasp that theres is not a word, it needs the apostrophe to make any sense in English. The point was, however, to be funny.
A friend saw my comment and asked if she could re-post it, attributed to me, which meant that I was essentially tagged and was notified of her friends' reaction to my post. I decided to check in late last night just to see, especially since she told me she had several Russian-speaking friends. Reading through her feed was uplifting and wonderful. People had posted .gifs of people appalling and that sort of silly, positive response, other people said "brilliant!", "clever!", and "saving for later use!" Some people noted a few different bits about the Russian, but it even the most argumentative of her commenters were very much, "ha, ha, though! Good one!"The point is, these friends of a friend of mine totally GOT it and reacted how I would have hoped.
The majority of the comments on my own feed were similarly positive and in the right spirit, though I had a LOT fewer replies of any sort. But, there's something about me, I think, because I managed to attract that one person who wanted to 'fansplain' (she was a woman, but it was still very much in the vein of "the thing you have to understand is....") that my "joke" was harmful to.... (wait for it!)... people with dyslexia.
It's possible, if you are reading this journal, you are unaware that being dyslexic has very much defined my life. I have spent a lot of time being haunted by the phrase "careless inattention to detail." That was a phrase that followed me all through my public school career. Teachers would say, "Lyda seems intelligent, but if ONLY she would apply herself. She makes silly mistakes and is CARELESS in her attention to detail." NOT ONE OF THEM ever considered the fact that *maybe* I wasn't just a lazy-ass, but was actually struggling with a mild learning disability. To be fair, my public school education all happened before 1985. Learning disabilities, especially ones like dyslexia's more mild iterations, were not on a lot of people's radars. It was only when I was an adult in the 1990s and my boss at the Immigration History Research Center really, really wanted to fire me that I got officially tested and got the amazingly smug satisfaction of handing her the results and getting to say, "ACTUALLY, you have accommodate my disability BY LAW."
If you know me in person, you've probably heard me identify as dyslexic. I tend to do this a LOT when I'm teaching, because it's easy to dismiss someone's intellect when they misspell a simple or common word on the chalkboard--because, you know, a teacher is supposed to be an expert, how dumb are they if they can't even spell "Egypt" (a problem word for me). So, I ALWAYS start my classes--adult and teen--with the explanation "I am dyslexic. If you see me fumble a word just let me know. If you spell it for me, slowly, I can fix it."
I bring up my dyslexia at science fiction conventions for two reasons. First of all, a lot of writers are dyslexic. It's a weird thing, particularly given how hard it is for us to spell things properly, but I think some kind of compensation happens in the dyslexic brain that lends itself to some aspects of storytelling. Plus, see above. If I misuse a word, I want people to cut me a tiny bit of slack (important among highly smart, but often also deeply judgmental science fiction fans). Secondly, I can't read as fast as a lot of my colleagues. I actually credit comic books for my ability to read AT ALL. I struggled through my issues with reading because I was interested by what was happening in comic books (the graphic format, too, meant that there was a lot for me busy brain to process and actually seeing the WHOLE PAGE AT ONCE was a feature, not a bug.) That makes for a good story, but it's also my "I'm sorry I can't read 100 novels a year" excuse. I probably read 500 graphic novels a year, but you know, it's just an interesting difference that's worth pointing out, IMHO.
Okay, that's all background for this stupid thing that happened on my feed. So, I make the Russian bot joke that goes over SUPER WELL on someone else's feed, and, meanwhile, on my own, not only to have to deal with the person who clearly thinks I'm thoughtlessly insulting HER PEOPLE, but when I come back on to try to lighten the mood and say, "Yeah, I hear you. I'm dyslexic, too, but we're talk about Trump supporters here..." which is, I think, PRETTY CLEARLY A DEFLECTION.
In point of fact, I feel like, if we were talking in person, this commenter would get it, they'd understand that this is me saying, "Right, okay, but this is a joke, targeted NOT at YOU, so let's just acknowledge that, sure, it's tough when our misspellings make us look as moronic as Trump people, but ha, ha... still a good joke." NOPE. She has to come back and go on for a paragraph about how she hates how people equate proper English and good spelling with intelligence, but well, that's my pet peeve, I guess, sorry! smiley face, smiley face, but I'm still going to sit here and ruin your joke because... I don't know, because maybe life on the internet has caused me to assume literally everything is all about me, all the time.
*sigh*
What is frustrating to me in this whole thing isn't even that people on the internet don't know how to behave like civilized human beings anymore. I'm pretty sure that's a well-estabilished fact. What bothers me is that, somehow, the EXACT SAME JOKE, told in the EXACT SAME WAY on someone else's feed gets the response I actually wanted, without a _single_ annoyingly pedantic person coming on to take it all as a personal attack.
Why?
Why is it that when I do it, I fail the Internet? Why is it, when someone else takes my thing and posts it somewhere else, do they win? WHY? Am I doing the Internet wrong?
Probably.
I mean, Shawn and I talked about this, this morning. She very carefully curates her feed. If anyone annoys her for the slightest reason--it doesn't even have to be egregious, she can just decide that you've posted one too many pictures of the stew you made last night--they're blocked, hidden, or even unfriended. I have literally never unfriended a person until this last year. When I finally needed to, I didn't know how to do it. I hid someone that I meant to unfriend and that produced very different results, unbeknownst to me.
Now that I know HOW TO, I've been happily unfriending all the Trump posters I come across. But, that still leaves me with this very large pool of people. (I might have that dreaded social bubble everyone warns about, but mine is a BIG bubble.)
Maybe this friend of mine has a better feed because she's more like Shawn, only keeping the people who react the "right" way. Maybe I should take this to heart and weed out all the people who annoy me in any way, shape, or form. I haven't done that because I HAVE managed conversations where I've watched people who started out saying the sort of thing that would have triggered an insta-block from Shawn, like, "There are no women science fiction writers!" (on my page! MY page.) Who then, after a civil discourse, are asking politely for a reading list of the women I consider hard science fiction writers.
For me, this is how this is supposed to work. I'm not quite ready to admit the whole Internet is broken and that we need to burn it all down and start over from scratch.
I guess this means I will have to put up with all the annoying people.
I just wish I could figure out how to balance them out with the people who post cute .gifs. I fucking LOVE cute .gifs.
