Category Archives: internet/technology

Facebooking in Class–Symptom, not Disease

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FINALLY I get to use this meme in a serious context.

I think I’m going to have a series of posts criticizing GOOD’s pathetic education section, which is currently failing even harder than my insomniac classmates are at their finals.

This is an older article, but I decided to dig it up and poke fun at it anyway.

This article suggests that having a “15-minute tech break” for each half-hour of class would help students focus because they’d do all their Facebooking in those 15 minutes and then put their phones away.

The people who propose these initiatives seemingly have a complete lack of understanding of how young people actually use technology, and for what purpose. For instance:

Rosen says his tech break concept “works amazingly.” For every half-hour of focused work, he recommends allowing a 15-minute tech break. Once a students sees that nothing is happening on Facebook or send a friend that critical text message—they’re able to refocus, he says.

That’s not the way Facebook and texting work, though. You don’t just check it and then forget about it. You like to be on it. What’s to stop people from having their phones out under their desks outside of the “tech break?”

Furthermore, I don’t see how this is even doable. This would increase class time by a whopping 50%—ludicrous when everyone, both students and teachers, are already severely overbooked. (In fact, that may be why students use their phones in class to begin with.)

In addition, like it or not, multitasking is here to stay. If students are forced to learn how to integrate technology with learning rather than strictly separating the two, they’ll be better equipped to handle modern work environments, where you’re usually required to answer phones/emails/messages while working, and so on.

Finally, I still don’t understand why people see Facebooking/texting in class as some sort of crisis of epic proportions that requires a complete restructuring of the school day. Are students actually becoming dumber? Are their grades dropping? And even if they are, might it be because of much-needed and still-lacking education reforms, and not because of Evil Technology?

I obviously haven’t done research on this (though, by the looks of it, this guy hasn’t either), but I’d guess that Facebooking and texting in class aren’t a cause of distraction–they’re a symptom. Back in the day, kids would doodle or pass notes or just stare into space. These days they text and go on Facebook. What’s the difference? Oh, right, there’s a convenient piece of Evil Technology to blame.

That, ultimately, is the argument that I believe overrules everything else I’ve just said. If the problem is–shocker–not Those Darn Kids but the fact that school is worthlessly boring, then it’s time to have a completely different dialogue. This dialogue will have to be about how to make school both educational and fun and not about how to get Those Darn Kids to do what we want them to do.

On People Who Think They’re so Damn Funny

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[Snark Warning]

Like many depressives, I have a love-hate relationship with humor. A well-crafted joke, anecdote, or cartoon can cheer me up during the worst times, but because of the various cognitive deficits associated with depression, I have a lot of trouble processing humor when it’s directed at me or my life.

Enter another thing I have a love-hate relationship with: Facebook. As one of those rare people who’s “out” about having a mental illness (to shamelessly borrow terminology from the LGBT community), I occasionally post something related to my current troubles on my Facebook. Most of the people who bother reading it are fairly good friends of mine who know what’s going on and often stop by and leave a nice comment or a simple “<3” on those posts.

But then there are people who insist on trying to force a joke about the situation. These well-intentioned but insufferably clueless people are the bane of any depressive’s life. They’re our friends, sometimes even pretty good ones, and as much as we know that they mean well, it can be very painful to have a really difficult aspect of your life reduced to a dumb joke like that. And it’s nearly impossible to find a way to respond–any suggestion that the joke was out of place is inevitably met with “but I was just trying to lighten the mood” or “I just wanted to cheer you up.”

Here’s the thing, though–you can’t fix a depressed person anyway. (Sometimes, you can’t even fix a depressed person if you’re a psychiatrist or psychologist.) The most you can do is offer a message of support and refrain from trying to turn a depressed person’s misery into a big huge joke.

Honestly, I doubt that even healthy people are actually “cheered up” by jokes made at their expense. I can’t imagine that’s pleasant for anyone who’s already in kind of a bad mood. But it’s especially unpleasant for a depressed person and can trigger all sorts of nasty stuff.

I think people have a huge fear of others’ unhappiness. The moment you see a sad person, you immediately want to drag them, kicking and screaming, out of their sadness, whether they asked you to or not. This is understandable, but it should be avoided, not only because there’s so little you can really do, but because you should try to understand people before you try to help them.

If anyone ever bothered to ask me what they could do to help me feel better, you can guarantee I wouldn’t say “crack a dumb joke at my expense.” And, don’t worry, I wouldn’t say “sit here for hours and listen to me cry,” either. I would probably ask you to have a conversation about something interesting, like politics or culture, with me. Or I’d ask you to come over and bring a good movie. Or I’d ask you to bake some cookies with me. Or, I’d say, “Nothing, but thanks for asking.”

What people don’t understand about depression is that it’s different from normal sadness not only in quantity, but in quality. To put it more simply, it’s just a different kind of sadness. When someone has a depressive episode, they go to a really dark place that healthy people don’t go to ever. Not even when their significant other breaks up with them or something like that. It’s a darkness that can’t be lit up by a stupid joke. Really, it can’t be fully lit up by anything. But human connection, love, and support can sometimes help.

Obviously, not everybody is willing to provide that for everybody else. That’s fine, and that’s how it should be. But if you can’t give me what I need to feel better, don’t give me something that makes me feel worse, either.

Like many problems that I come across in my life, this turns out to be something that’s actually a much larger issue. I believe that the reason people are so desperate to immediately try to “lighten the mood” the instant they see something unpleasant is because our culture has an extreme fear of negative emotion. We avoid it like the plague, and it comes as no surprise to me that most of our culture’s solutions for achieving happiness seem to focus on eliminating things like fear, sadness, and anger entirely, rather than incorporating them into one’s life in a normal, healthy way. Clearly, what I have isn’t healthy, but it’s only the extreme end of spectrum. I see this sort of blind and terrified avoidance of anything that’s sad, whether it’s severe like depression or totally normal, everywhere I look.

If you’ve just read this and realized that what I’m describing sounds exactly like you, I hope you’re not offended. If you are, my apologies. But I hope you trust that behind all this snark is a lot of pain.

And, if you’re still reading, I have a challenge for you. Next time you come across a post from a friend that’s unhappy in some way, don’t rush to make a joke about it. Don’t try to drag your friend away from what they’re feeling. If you absolutely need to comment on it somehow, say “I’m sorry, that really sucks,” or “I hope you feel better.” I guarantee that unless you happen to be Jon Stewart, that’ll work better than any joke.

I’ll leave you with a quote by Dutch priest and writer Henri Nouwen:

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion… that is a friend who cares.”

“Yeah, well, what did you expect?” (Or, Douchebag Apologists)

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There’s a story that’s been running through my mind all week. It’s about a woman who posted a photo of her beaten face on Reddit after she was sexually assaulted, and the community responded by claiming that it “looked fake.”

One user claimed that since she’d used makeup to dress up like a zombie before, then it was probably fake. Another user claimed that he was a medical student (and therefore qualified to judge) and that the bruise just didn’t look genuine. Yet another user claimed that because the woman in question had mentioned previously that she has anal sex and that she likes being burned during sex, she must be faking.

The douchey Redditors didn’t let up until the woman responded, saying that she’s unsure of how to prove that the wound is real short of running a wet cloth over it and posting a video. They convinced her to do it. She did. Only then did they start going back on their previous judgments.

What disturbed me most about this story wasn’t the fact that there were a few douchebags on the internet. Rather, it was many of the comments on the Jezebel piece I linked to, which included the following:

Of all the places on the internet, why the fuck would you go to Reddit looking for sympathy and support?

This whole thing is pretty stomach turning. But I still don’t understand why one would want to take their story of sexual assault to a space like Reddit. It doesn’t, uh, seem like a safe space.

That’s what I was just thinking! Of all places, why would you post there?

There’s some truth to these comments, of course. Reddit really isn’t anything close to a safe space. However, I’m pretty disturbed by the idea that many people have–even commenters on a progressive blog like Jezebel–that some places are just unsafe and some people are just bad and all we can do is avoid those places and people.
As members of a sentient race, yes, we have the right to expect and demand a reasonable degree of civility from our fellow humans. I’m really no idealist, but I still don’t think there’s any reason we should assume that where we are now is the apex of human development. Shrugging your shoulders and saying, “Yeah, well, what did you expect?” doesn’t change anything, and it doesn’t help anyone.
One commenter put it this way:
The whole “You should have known better than to post here” thing gets really close to victim blaming, IMO. The Reddit community is perfectly fine with providing group therapy and noncontroversial messages of support 90% of the time. Safe spaces exist (though with all the transphobic shit occuring in /r/femisims, I’m not sure it is one), but that doesn’t mean you should expect to be harassed and denigrated in “unsafe” spaces. That’s akin to saying “Well of course you had some people catcall you when you went out in the street. Why didn’t you just stay at home, where it’s safe?”
Like this commenter, I can easily see the connection between “Yeah, well, people are just assholes” and “Yeah, well, men always catcall and rape women.” Not only do statements like these put the onus on the victims to change their behavior (don’t go out alone, don’t post your story on the internet), but they’re pretty dismissive towards our fellow humans. People can be taught not to catcall and rape, and they can be taught not to be assholes to others on the internet. Not immediately, perhaps, but over time.
Like I’ve mentioned before, I think that people have become too cynical about changing the status quo. We’ve gotten into the habit of selling people short by assuming that they can’t change. But I think it’s worth pointing out that there was a time when a woman who was beaten by her husband for not fixing dinner would’ve been met with the response, “Yeah, well, what did you expect? You didn’t fix him dinner!” An African American who was beaten for using a “white only” drinking fountain would’ve been told, “Yeah, well, what did you expect? You should’ve used the ‘colored’ fountain!”
Obviously, beating people up for stepping out of their culturally-sanctioned proper place is in no way equivalent to being a dick to a woman who’s just been sexually assaulted. But the similarity lies in the idea that some things, while unfortunate, are “just the way things are.”
Don’t be an apologist for douchebags. Next time you see or hear about a story like this one, don’t ask, “Yeah, well, what did you expect?” Instead, ask, “What could we do to change that?”

New Comment Policy

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From now on, I will delete any negative, anonymous comments from this blog. This is because I firmly believe that if you have a constructive comment to make about something I wrote, you should be able to put your real name on it (or a screen name you use elsewhere online). If you find yourself writing a negative comment that you’d rather keep anonymous from me, this is probably because what you’re saying isn’t helpful or constructive.

If you don’t feel comfortable having others read your comment with your name attached to it, you are free to email it to me at miriam[at]brutereason.net or contact me through Facebook.

If you don’t actually know me personally but found this blog through the internet somehow, I would prefer that you link to your blog or other sort of site. Although, if I think your comment is really interesting and/or constructive, I might leave it up anyways.

Regardless, if I decide to delete an anonymous comment, I will leave a note referring to this comment policy and inviting you to repost your comment with some sort of identification attached. If you don’t want to, that’s fine.

Ultimately, this is an issue of accountability. I criticize a lot of people and institutions on this blog, but I use my real name because I prefer to take ownership of my opinions. If you can’t do the same, then, with all due respect, keep your opinions to yourself. I never expect more of others than I would expect from myself, so I think I’m being fair in this regard.

In other words, no more of this “an acquaintance” or “someone you know” crap. If you know me and disagree with me, own up to it.

Thanks for reading.

Update: Here’s the rest of the comment policy!

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Periods and Misogyny

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This is what I hate.

This is from a Tumblr called, appropriately, “Fuck Periods.” It exists solely to bitch about various feminine problems, most notably, periods. As a woman, I’m all in favor of bitching about periods, but the stereotypes that are often expressed are pretty problematic.

First of all, this isn’t even accurate. I don’t know about any other women who may be reading this, but personally, I don’t “sit in one fucking place for fear of leakage” when I’m on my period. I also don’t get pissed the fuck off by “anything with a face.” When I’m on my period, I go to class, do homework, hang out with friends, go shopping, work out, eat, and sleep just like I do when I’m not on my period. Shocker! Women don’t stop functioning just because it’s that time of the month. Life goes on.

Second, this whole public period-bashing thing makes it even more likely that others (notably men) will attribute any negative mood or opinion expressed by a woman as simply a consequence of her menstrual cycle. If you’re female, chances are you’ve said something negative or gotten upset or angry and had a (again, probably male) friend say, “Are you just on your period or something?”

Honestly, there are few things more offensive than that. The idea that a woman has no legitimate, external reasons to ever be angry or upset–only the internal vicissitudes of her hormones–is preposterous.

Third, and most importantly, rants like these only reinforce the stereotype of women as crazy, overemotional beings controlled entirely by their hormonal cycles. People. Give us a bit more credit than that, please. And I understand that that’s difficult to do when women themselves are painting themselves that way.