Tag Archives: Facebook

The Trouble With Quibbles: A Study in Political Intolerance (UPDATED)

banned

Well, the big name writer who loves Hillary Clinton and preaches a lot about how those on the left need not to “trash” each other’s candidates (and will stomp you if you criticize Hillary in his threads, though somehow her supporters who say nasty things about Bernie don’t seem to get stomped) has unfriended me on Facebook. Again. This is, I think, the fourth time he’s booted me in the past six months, and because I actually really like and respect him (feelings clearly not reciprocated), previously I’ve just sent him a fresh friends request each time, which he’s then ultimately accepted. Not going to bother this time; maybe I’m learning to take a hint.

Why did he boot me? Was it because of the article I posted citing the actual history of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s relationship with the Children’s Defense Fund and the Clintons’ horrible record in the war on poverty? Was it the essay by black writer/preacher/civil rights activist Shaun King defending Bernie Sanders’s exceptional record on black issues and civil rights? Was it because I posted a funny meme that satirized the two candidates’ position on the issue of “Jazz?”

I dunno.

I don’t think he’d tell people not to criticize (as opposed to insult) his candidate, because his self image is plainly that he is fair and open to dialogue. I also don’t think he’d say people shouldn’t joke around and satirize her, because his self image is that he is a defender of free expression who has a great sense of humor. But I think he’s hypervigilant and overly sensitive to things that he doesn’t want others seeing (particularly solid, critical facts about his candidate that may “trash” her shiny veneer even more than nasty insults about her), and he’s like a twitchy young gunslinger who’s too fast on the draw at any perceived slight.

I may wind up following him again, because I often enjoy his posts (when they’re not just screed after screed telling people not only how to behave on his wall but on theirs). And I’ll miss our virtual friendship because I do think highly of him and I’ve enjoyed our interactions. But I’m never going to censor my own damn speech just for his sake, and if he’s such a delicate hothouse flower that he can’t countenance our political disagreements, that’s too fucking bad.

I posted the above on Facebook, and naturally people started asking who I was talking about. I said I wasn’t going to name him because I wasn’t calling him out, I was just citing his behavior to make a point. But I did say folks could message me privately and guess, and I’d let them know if they got it right. I had a feeling that his imperious behavior would be immediately recognizable to anyone who regularly sees his posts.

Twelve people guessed. Eleven got it right.

One of the eleven shared with me a thread on his wall in which a woman calmly and politely critiques Hillary Clinton on policy and the writer snidely asks her if she’s a Republican shill or being paid by the GOP. So much for the elevated dialogue he’s allegedly promoting.

I’m still not looking to call him out or start a feud or anything, and he may have booted me for a different reason. And he has a right to control his friends list any way he likes. So if you mention him directly or badmouth him in a comment, I won’t let the comment post. None of this piddly stuff really matters, when you get down to it, and I just wish we could all treat each other at least a little bit better.

Oh, and SANDERS 2016!!!

UPDATE: I’ve been hearing from more Sanders supporters who claim they were booted from the writer’s friends list because they either defended Sanders on his wall or posted political stuff he disagreed with on their own. At the same time, he posts rants about how some people are obnoxiously complaining that he shouldn’t post whatever he wants to. So be careful what you say on this guy’s wall, or even your own, lest he transport the whole kit n kaboodle of you to their engine room. Er, I mean off his friends list.

 

This Is Why I Don’t Like You

Last night, I saw that I was going to lose another friend.

This was vexing, but not as vexing as it might have been. The friend is a friend on Facebook, a friend I have some positive feelings about, but also a friend I don’t actually know, even by the standards of social media. She’s a writer, and I’ve enjoyed her posts and had an occasional bit of casual interplay with her, but that’s about it. So, little lost, except perhaps the opportunity to actually become friends down the line through further interaction.

The reason I’m losing her as a Facebook friend? Because she’s switching from her personal account, which is limited to 5,000 friends, to a fan page, which has no such limits. By doing this, she opens up her page to many more potential readers she can talk to, and hopefully sell books to, which is completely understandable.

The thing is, the key words in that last sentence are “talk to.” She can talk to them. And when she does, they can even respond, getting into pleasant chats on her page about whatever it is she wanted to post about. Nice, right?

Fuck that.

What’s lost by doing this is the very thing that elevates Facebook to something more than solipsistic whining and self promotion: community. My writer friend is removing herself from the community of friends and acquaintances she has built so far in order to better advertise her brand. Before making this change, she could see the posts made by all her friends, and they could see hers, and many a discussion could occur. Now, community dialogue will be replaced with authorial monologue.

Her current friends will be automatically converted into fans. Facebook will add her page to the things they have “Liked” without letting them know it’s doing so, or that there has been a change. They’ll still see posts from the writer in their feeds, as if she is still their friend, but she’ll see nothing they post unless they comment on the things she posts on her page. They will be diminished from equals to advertising targets who’ve been opted in without their consent.

Me, I’ll probably un-Like her. Nothing against her, but I accepted her friendship in the first place not because I’m a fan, but because she was a peer I thought I might like and learn something from. I thought she might become an actual friend. It happens. Now, I’m forced to be a fan, and as interesting as her posts might be at times, apparently my posts, and the posts of all her other friends, are worthless to her. Frankly, I’m on Facebook for dialogue, not monologue.

I interact daily with people who found me through my writing, and with writers I’ve been reading most of my life, people who entertained me even as they taught me bit by bit via osmosis how to write. Some of them have become pretty good virtual friends, commenting frequently on my posts even as I comment on theirs. Am I interested in the latest news about their work? Yep. But that’s not the gold in them thar Facebook hills. The gold is the friendship, not the marketing.

The irony is that not only is there a better way to deal with Facebook’s lousy friends list limitation, but switching to a fan page is going to actually narrow the field of contact she’s going to achieve with her fans.

If she’s at the friends limit, all she has to do is enable Subscriptions to her account. This would allow an unlimited number of fans to subscribe and follow her posts, just as they’ll be doing on her fan page, but it would keep her current friends list as is and fully interactive. And subscribers would all see everything she wants them to see.

By switching to  a fan page, however, she makes herself subject to Facebook’s latest innovation, which is severely limiting the number of fans who actually see any post she makes and then charging her an elevated fee structure so that more of her fans will see her posts. She’s giving up her community of friends and fans to instead pay Facebook to advertise to her fans.

Have I said “fuck that” yet? Well, I ‘m saying it again.

Introducing Sydney Rhame… (Song of the Week, 5/21/2012)

Before we get to the good stuff (and it is very good stuff), I wanted to let everyone know that my “Tim Byrd” account on Facebook has been disabled for some arbitrary, unexplained reason, possibly forever. Apparently they do this sometimes. I’ve sent in a request that they reconsider, but apparently they also take weeks to get back to you at all. So if you are (or were) my friend on Facebook, please feel free to befriend my “Doc Wilde” account which was established to promote my books, but which I’ve never really used. For the foreseeable future I’ll be interacting on there. I miss all my friends. (UPDATE: After nearly three weeks, and repeated requests for action from me, Facebook ultimately enabled my account again, all without having ever actually contacted me, in any way, to explain).

Now, on with the music.

There seems to be something in the water here in beautiful Decatur, GA. The town is a font of musical genius, and acts ranging from the Indigo Girls and Shawn Mullins to Sugarland and the Civil Wars have their roots here. Michelle Malone, who I’ve raved about a few times on the blog in the past, is another wonderful example.

On her way to greatness is Decatur’s Sydney Rhame, who is only thirteen and already a singing, songwriting sensation. This week’s song is her cover of Brett Dennen’s great “Sydney (I’ll Come Runnin’),” which I’m going to post two versions of. The first is a live performance, and I love its vitality and what Sydney does with her voice during the song. The second is a “studio” version, which Sydney made on a Mac using GarageBand, presented in a video she made using iMovie. This second video was shot around Decatur (or “the hood” as some unenlightened folk have called it), and you can see not just the charismatic young singer bouncing around but quite a few views of our great hometown.

If We Shadows Have Offended…

So I lost another friend on Facebook.

He’s a writer, and a fellow pulp fan, and I’d enjoyed knowing and occasionally interacting with him. I liked seeing what he had to say, and what he had going on.

I knew he was a conservative, while I am not. The fact that he holds to certain ideas didn’t make me think less of him as a person, it just made me wonder how he could reconcile those ideas with observable reality. But we all have our filters and our failings and our blindnesses, and I hoped that he, and the many other right-wing friends I have, wouldn’t allow disagreement with ideas to lead to discord between us as people. That has happened, of course, and people have fled my friends list over such issues, and even issues more trivial. The game writer S. John Ross unfriended me and actually blocked me on Facebook for a single polite comment disagreeing with his opinion of Johnny Cash. Talk about the courage of your convictions.

My attitude is usually that a friend lost in this way is no friend worth having, and I tend to operate on the principle of “If I offend you, that probably just makes us even.”

But anyway, I hadn’t seen anything from this friend for a while, and I grew concerned that maybe he was having health problems or something. So I visited his page, where I found that we were no longer friends. I naturally suspected the reasons for this, but I sent him a message and asked why he’d unfriended me, telling him that if I had offended him it hadn’t been because I intended to.

This was his response: Continue reading →

The Fives on Facebook (Another Cool Meme)

I’m enjoying the latest meme-thingy on Facebook, which allows you to choose a list of 5 things (“5 Favorite Foods,” “5 Jobs You’ve Had,” “5 Best Comic Book Characters,” that sort of thing), and allows you to pick pictures to show those things. The results look something like this:

Tim Byrd – Who would you want to play you in a movie?
Viggo Mortensen Aidan Quinn Mel Gibson george clooney Tim Byrd
Tim Byrd chose Viggo Mortensen, Aidan Quinn, Mel Gibson, george clooney, Tim Byrd.
Tim Byrd – People you would like to Punch In The Face!
George W. Bush Dick Cheney Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity George W. Bush
Tim Byrd chose George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, George W. Bush.
Tim Byrd – Favorite movies of all time
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark The Lady Eve Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl The Dark Knight Casino Royale
Tim Byrd chose Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lady Eve, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Dark Knight, Casino Royale.
Tim Byrd – biggest celebrity crushes
Shania Twain Salma Hayek Kate Beckinsale Shakira Veronica Lake
Tim Byrd chose Shania Twain, Salma Hayek, Kate Beckinsale, Shakira, Veronica Lake.
Tim Byrd – books you love
Winter's Tale Something Wicked This Way Comes Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Lonesome Dove The Stand
Tim Byrd chose Winter’s Tale, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Lonesome Dove, The Stand.
Tim Byrd – Where you have lived
Jonesboro, GA Chattanooga, TN Treysa, Germany Kassel, Germany Decatur, GA
Tim Byrd chose Jonesboro, GA, Chattanooga, TN, Treysa, Germany, Kassel, Germany, Decatur, GA.

(I searched for images that truly captured the heart and soul of each of these places).

I’ve been having a bit of fun coming up with my own versions. Here are two I liked doing:

Tim Byrd – Ingredients You’d Mix To Make Me
Indiana Jones Groucho Marx A Werewolf Wyatt Earp Joss Whedon
Tim Byrd chose Indiana Jones, Groucho Marx, A Werewolf, Wyatt Earp, Joss Whedon.
Tim Byrd – People I Should Have Married Instead.
Felicia Day Shania Twain JK Rowling Caroline Dhavernas Mary Louise Parker
Tim Byrd chose Felicia Day, Shania Twain, JK Rowling, Caroline Dhavernas, Mary Louise Parker.

The New Telepathy of Social Networking

telepathy

In his excellent book On Writing, Stephen King sets out to define “What Writing Is.” His answer?

Telepathy.

It’s a mode of transmitting thoughts from one brain to another, through space, through time. As King writes in Maine in 1997:

We’ll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance but over time as well, yet that presents no real problem; if we can still read Dickens, Shakespeare, and (with the help of a footnote or two) Herodotus, I think we can manage the gap between 1997 and 2000.

As well as the gap between Georgia and Maine, as I read those words now, and 1997 and 2009. And whatever spacetime gap there is between him, there in 1997, me here in 2009, and you where and when you’re reading this now. We’ve got a telepathic chain goin’ on. That’s pretty wonderful.

I’ve been thinking about this lately as I’ve tried to grok the whole social networking thing. I was one of the cynics, originally, proud and determined not to get caught up in MySpace or Facebook or Twitter, not to hoard countless “friends” I didn’t know like I might collect marbles, not to sublimate my social life (such as it is) to the virtual gulfs of skinless cyberspace. Continue reading →

The Google Name Game

Facebook is full of list memes, swarms of friendly spam that ricochet through communities of acquaintance, asking for folks to share their favorite whatevers, tell facts about themselves, or just goof off in some weird or creative way. Earlier, I posted my response to the “25 Random Facts About Me” meme (Two Baker’s Dozens of Things About Me, Minus One), which, once I actually applied myself, I found to be an enjoyable endeavor, and I’ve had nice feedback from my friends.

I also partook of a few others, like the one listing my favorite musical performers and the one listing authors who’ve influenced me. Trivial stuff, maybe…but like status messages and many other minor features of Facebook, it’s a sort of virtual small talk that informs friends about each other’s tastes and notions and general headspace. It encourages dialogue, and that’s not a bad thing.

Most of it’s not really blog-worthy, but I found the 25 Things meme cool enough to share here, and here’s another one that I found really entertaining. It’s one of several called a “Name Game,” but maybe ought to be called “The Google Name Game.” It asks that you insert your first name into various phrases and search for them on Google, then choose the best result off the first page of hits and put that in as your answer. I added comments to each because I’m always looking for new places to be a smartass (and I think doing so personalizes what would otherwise just be a bit of random fun).

Here’s the exercise, with my altered version of the directions. Maybe I’ll see yours on Facebook.

The Google Name Game

Google the following, then select the best result from the first page of hits and add a {personal comment} for each answer.

1: Type in “[your name] needs” in the Google search:

Tim needs haircut.

{which is true}

2: Type in “[your name] looks like” in Google search:

Tim looks like Eminem–Hawt!

{thanks…?}

3: Type in “[your name] hates” in Google search:

Tim hates sick orphans.

{damn their hides}

4: Type in “[your name] goes” or “..has gone” in Google:

Tim goes nutsball wacko.

{it is the full moon}

5: Type in “[your name] loves” in Google search:

Tim loves dolls.

{please, they’re action figures}

6: Type in “[your name] eats” in Google search:

Tim eats the first electric pickle.

{at least I’m a pioneer}

7: Type in “[your name] has” in Google search:

Tim has the experience and insights to make your home’s electrical installations, maintenance, and repair projects easy, safe, and fun!

{because I ate the electric pickle}

8: Type in “[your name] works” in Google:

Tim works at a bakery and can prepare a birthday cake in 4 hours.

{made from sick orphans}

9: Type in”[your name] lives” in Google search:

Tim lives in F-land.

{or I used to, anyway, before I got married}

10: Type in “[your name] died” in Google search:

Tim died while doing what he enjoyed with the woman he loved.

{if this is an advance peek at my obit, maybe I’m headed back to F-land!}

11: Type in “[your name] will” in Google:

Tim will work with Joss Whedon again, this time on DOLLHOUSE.

{dammit, now the universe is just mocking me}

Wilde Flair for Facebook

flairAll you Flair fanatics on Facebook can now share official Doc Wilde™ Flair with your friends.

The pic above is just one of several available. Just do a search for “Doc Wilde” to find the others.

And don’t forget, you can also find the Wildes adventuring with many other heroes on the “A Pulp Hero to the Rescue” app!

Two Baker’s Dozens of Things About Me, Minus One

Yes, I’m on Facebook. Yes, I’ve been tagged.

I started one of these “25 Random Things About Me” lists last week and in trying to think of things to share, ran about twenty-five things short.

Then I decided to be a witty prick about it, and make a list of things like this:

1. I am a biped.
2. I can count on my fingers and toes, but only so high.
3. I’m carbon-based, biologically speaking.
4. I absorb sustenance from food I take in at the mouth…

Then, for those who’d suffered through, I’d throw in a zinger:

25. I’m hung like a horse.

But sometimes the effort to be a witty prick is more than it’s worth. And I found myself enjoying some of my friends’ lists, those who made an effort and actually shared some interesting things.

Then, in re-connecting with someone I’d lost long ago, I discovered I remembered far more of what we’d gone through together, and meant to each other, than she did. And she, with the logical precision of one who has spent most of her adult life in the financial sector, actually tallied up the things she “felt she really knew” about me, a list of three things, and decided that we were acquaintances, not friends.

It was all very silly, and I realized immediately I don’t really need friends in my life who track relationships on a spreadsheet. But I did have the witty prick thought that, “Maybe if I’d done one of those lists, and you knew twenty-five things about me, then I could be your friend.”

But sometimes the effort to befriend someone is more than it’s worth. All the same, I decided to make another sincere attempt at my list of 25 things, because I do have friends out there I know will appreciate the effort. So here goes: Continue reading →