Long Conversation: Life Online

I'm taking part in a cross-country writing group called Long Conversation. This month we were asked how our relation to the internet has changed. Here's what I wrote.

Before moving to Edmonton four years ago I didn’t use the internet for much beyond downloading music, reading articles and sending emails. This city gave me may first opportunity to live alone, without the comforting distractions of roommates. As I started my program, I realized most of my academic work and most of my leisure activities depended on the glowing screen sitting on my desk. As some friends of mine pointed out, my presence on Facebook had dramatically increased during my first semester of grad school. I was averaging five Facebook posts a day when I finally joined Twitter, a better home for all the stuff I felt I needed to share.

Work and Facebook consumed most of my days, while my lonelier evenings were filled by Megavideo. I streamed the entire series of The Wire in a few short months and got through most of Friday Night Lights just as quickly. Back then, Megavideo had a viewing time limit (around 58 minutes); once you hit that limit you were forced to wait for an hour or so. Eventually this limit began structuring my study routine. I would go through an entire day, watching 6 episodes of the Wire and reading Derrida for the remaining hours that I could muster the concentration. Each time Megavideo forced me back to work, I knew that after an hour of study, I’d earn the reward of another episode.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I wasn’t very good at living alone. I needed something (or, better, someone) to give my days structure and with only three seminars a week, the internet was the best option I had. I could watch shows when I was bored and when I was feeling isolated in my basement suite, I could relocate to social media. At it’s best, the internet gave me immediate access to all kinds of data, allowing me to share content and communicate with friends; I could adopt a grammar of sharing. At its worst, it was (and still is) a form of social control that it’s become hard to do without, a place where popularity and visibility are synonymous, not unlike the logic of high school.

Fortunately, I no longer live on my own, but I'm not sure how much my online activity has changed. That being said, my ambitions definitely have. It’s been two years since I humbly entered the world of graphic design, a world built on freelancing, a world that once looked entirely different without the web. I suppose I’m now much more aware of my identity on the internet, in part because I’ve been forced to see it as a place for self-promotion, a place where I can present my work and connect with clients. Over the next 6 months, I’ll be preparing for this to become more of a reality, as I set up a personal website (with my own domain name!) and assemble an online portfolio. The thought of this near future fills me with dread and a degree of excitement. At the same time, it means that I’ve also entered an increasingly precarious work environment. For every illustrator or designer who sees mild success there are twenty more equally talented people who have to pursue their work as a labour of love, or, more realistically, not at all. At least I have some sense of how to navigate the web. In fact, I’ve been thinking about my online identity much longer than I’ve been in Edmonton.

Back in 2008, I started a blog to share bits of writing I was working on and catalogue lists of my favourite things (mostly related to indie music and literary theory). I’ve averaged about 60 posts each year since, and the blog currently figures as an archive of my interests as they’ve emerged over the past six years. Even though writing has become less of a priority, I still make the occasional blog post for no other reason than to extend my archive into the future (and I’m slightly alarmed at how patriarchal that sounds). In many ways, my blogging has prepared me for the kind of online identity I’m now slowly building. It’s allowed me to track hits and views from across the world and see what kinds of posts attract visitors. Every once in a while I’ll find a comment on an old post and sometimes it’s not even spam! 

Last summer I decided the time was right to start two new blogs. One is used strictly as hosting site for mp3s from a radio show I’m part of. The other one is on Tumblr, which I’m finding to be one of the most interesting and surprising places on the internet right now. Part of its charm is the way it accommodates visual media. It also connects with what I do because of how many illustrators, photographers and designers use it to show off their work and process. The structure is more or less like that of Twitter or Instagram, where you have a stream of posts compiled for you on your home page (or “Dashboard”) that’s based on the users that you follow. As a fellow user, you have the option to “heart” or reblog any post you come across. There don’t seem to be many limitations on what you can post, and artists have been known to experience theft of their work or, at the very least, posting without proper attribution. When you visit someone else’s page you see the images they’ve posted or reblogged, arranged according to their page’s structure or theme.

This is what it looks like when you appear on the "Radar," which randomly happened to me just after I wrote this.

Tumblr works for a variety of media, but for me it’s a hub for illustration, photography, and design, both amateur and professional. Some use it for documenting process, others for web comics, and still others (like me) use it as a less discretionary portfolio of current work. Like Instagram, it’s a way of sharing the stuff I’m doing with whoever cares to see it. Unlike Instagram, your work can become incredibly popular if the right people reblog it. I have several images from a year ago that are still getting reblogged, and when I think about the network that exists between my computer and the many Tumblr pages where my image currently appears, my work feels infinitely far away. I don’t expect that anyone currently viewing it will try to trace it back to its proper origin, but at the same time I’m flattered that something of mine has resonated with so many strangers.

Suffice it to say that on Tumblr, you can see something of yours quickly spiral out of your control. You can see your work become part of someone else’s visual language. You can, for instance, see how your image fits into the mosaic of erotically charged pictures on the Tumblr page of a high school student who’s used Tumblr to build the visual ideal of her identity. This might, and often does, turn her followers into your followers. But much more effective for gaining loyal viewers is Tumblr’s built-in system of curation. Certain popular tags (“Artists on Tumblr” for example) that accompany your work can be highlighted and used to prioritize a post in relevant searches. Your page might also appear on the Tumblr “Radar” if you’re deemed worthy. It’s almost enough to convince you that all the labour of making your art is actually valued, but the only return is visibility in a system over-saturated with images. Every now and then I remember that, by all appearances, it’s followers like the high school student with a taste for the macabre that I’m really working for. The only real difference between her and I is that I did this kind of collaging before I had a life on the internet.

In junior high, I had a bulletin board in my room that I covered with photos and clippings from magazines. As I got older, I realized that the bulletin board was a sham and covered my walls with postcards and handbills from concerts. A Tumblr page projects that same kind of archive outward, where the gaze of others is more immediate. But both instances of self-fashioning are fundamentally discursive. They each assemble signs and symbols in a way that suggests an audience, even if that audience is, in the end, a reflexive self. Social media now facilitates this, but despite the possibility of updates, the options for individual users still remains frustratingly limited. Our online “selves” remain fixed in order to be recognizable, often skewed in favour of the privileged and popular. For all the possibilities of our projections, some of us can’t help but be consistent.

The Chief's Two Bodies: Theresa Spence and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty

Long Conversation: Alcohol

I'm taking part in a cross-country writing group called Long Conversation. This month we were asked to explore our relationship to intoxication. Here's what I wrote.

I enjoy the occasional solitary drink, but most of my experiences with alcohol point to an overwhelmingly social drug. For many of us, alcohol is more than just a substance. It names a way to imagine and practice an idealized set of social relations. Alcohol is effective and attractive. It can elevate and degrade. It can help groups cohere just as easily as it can fracture longstanding relationships. As with most drugs, those of us who use it are always in danger of turning it into a crutch, relying on the substance just a little too much. In certain situations, it goes without saying. I find it far easier to be at a club when I’m a bit tipsy, and having a few drinks makes it easier to be at a party where I only know a few of the guests. The conversation flows. Big deals can become small deals, and vice versa. Unlikely friendships are made quickly and forgotten.

Another thing common to a culture of drinking is the idea of initiation. Since the early days of high school, parties and drinking have been bound together but I’m sure many of us can remember our first time drinking in excess.

Even in that first, supposedly free encounter, my attitude towards alcohol has always reflected a certain understanding of my immediate social context. My track record, in other words, has a lot to do with where and when I grew up: in a sporadically dry town—the tightly fastened buckle of Manitoba’s Bible belt—a decade or so before the opening of its first liquor store. Along with all the extra effort involved in acquiring alcohol, its somewhat forbidden nature should have made it more enticing. But unlike the teetotallers in my town, I never really saw alcohol consumption as a moral issue, and by extension I never dreamt about an end to its repression. To me, the alcohol issue seemed symptomatic of the community’s contradictory relationship with the outside world: strictly Mennonite in the petty ways but more than happy to support an unjust government hellbent on going to war and whose policies actively promoted the destruction of the environment.

My parents counteracted the puritanical nature of our town by having a well-stocked liquor cabinet and bringing me up to appreciate a good wine and cheese pairing. Early on, I appreciated the taste of wine and beer but by the middle of high school I was slightly paranoid about what might happen if I over-indulged: an uncontrollable change in personality or, worse, irreparable brain damage. Judging by all the parties I’d been to, people did really act out when they were drunk and, on a few occasions, I was no exception.

Before my first experience of real “drinking,” alcohol was a pretty neutral part of adulthood. However, it quickly assumed a social importance in my grade, and as someone who played on several sports teams, I had plenty of opportunities to become part of the elite group of kids who drank at parties. I had my first night of drunkenness at the end of grade 10. As I recall, it was plotted one evening after a baseball game. My friend’s parents were out of town. We had an older acquaintance who we knew would be willing to buy us a 24 of Coors. It was a weird night, not least because our buyer wouldn’t leave. We weren’t expecting him to actually hang out with us. It definitely put a damper on things. Not long after that, I decided not get drunk again.

In those first few experiences, I treated intoxication the way most young people do: as a way to escape or rebel, an excuse to act belligerent. My identification of booze with rebellion quickly waned when I realized that if something as easy as drinking was the most secure route to a better high school social status, it wasn’t really a status worth having. And if drinking was simply a right of passage, I could move on. Besides, there always had to be at least one person willing to look after all the unfortunate souls who’d consumed more than they could handle. I have a distinct memory of my friend passed out on a couch in another friend’s basement. He was covered in sweat, snoring away while my other friends threw Cheetos at him, trying to get them to stick onto his face. Oh, the joys of high school drinking.

Chivalry aside, my decision to no longer get drunk during this period in high school also came from an embarrassingly narcissistic fear that I wasn’t a very bright kid and I had a vulnerable brain to protect. I was growing anxious about university; I knew I’d have to rely on scholarships and I had the wild ambition to transcend my rural upbringing. So yeah, along with a threat my assets, I associated drinking with a part of small-town culture that I wanted to escape. Occasionally, I managed to romanticize it and see our group participating in something that was rustic and removed; but more often it left me feeling cynical and out of place. Perhaps without that rural association, perhaps if I’d grown up in a more cosmopolitan space, I wouldn’t have adopted such a skewed, elitist perspective about drinking. At that point it was hard think differently.

When the scenery finally changed, I changed with it. But the transition was slow. I didn’t attend any parties during my first semester at university, and when I did I noticed a small group who went to parties but didn’t drink. They were fellow first years, but unlike me they were armed with more altruistic intentions than shyness. They tried to make the point that you didn’t need to drink in order to have fun and do stupid shit. It wasn’t lost on the rest of us, but no one was surprised when these same people started showing up with beer at parties months later.

In terms of intoxication, those years were probably the wildest I’ll ever have. They allowed me the space and safety to figure out my limits and establish a relatively comfortable relationship with my own intoxication. I now know generally what to expect when decide to drink. During my first year I remember being able to count the number of times I’d been drunk. As drinking became a more standard part of my routine, I recognized that this finite number would soon become a thing of the past. I found some small comfort in knowing that. Once I lost track of my drinking escapades, my fears about its consequences would also slide out of view.

Whether you condemned it or celebrated it, drinking played a pretty significant role in my undergraduate experience and was a frequent topic of discussion both on and off campus. There were forums and committees to deal with the issue, and occasionally students involved in leadership roles would draw fire for instances of drunken belligerence. Most of us understood and accepted that it was a contentious issue, but saw no need to change our lifestyles. My university placed a great amount of importance on promoting and fostering community, both publicly and internally. Although my friends and I were at times critical of the way this idea got thrown around, we recognized that our actions did occasionally make others uncomfortable and, at times, made efforts to hold alcohol-free events (one of which I remember being quite successful). I’m glad we did. In a few short years, it had become natural for most of us to assume that social life automatically included alcohol. It even related to what we were studying. We had biblical examples of drinking (the Wedding at Cana was a favourite) and a long tradition of Eucharistic celebration to back us up. At parties, we took it as our rite to celebrate the sacred connection between booze and community, but it was equal parts profound and stupid, like most ideologies are.

The days of excessive drinking are, I hope, long past. But it remains difficult to imagine a social gathering that doesn’t bring with it the expectation that most people will be drinking and the feeling that you are strange for not doing so. The pressure isn’t as overt as it once was: no one is forcing you to drink or mocking your decision to abstain. At this point many of us just drink out of habit, often without the expectation that we’ll get drunk. Sometimes it almost feels like if drinking isn’t going to be part of a social gathering, we expect it to be unmemorable or at the very least, unremarkable. Or, if drinking is involved, new possibilities are opened up (and paradoxically, a tradition is continued); the very idea of alcohol acts to dissolve the mental barriers that prevent us from doing things like climbing onto buildings, playing dumb games, or eating too much greasy food.

As these conditions persist in certain friend groups, I’m also getting to know more people who opt out of drinking at social events, for whatever reason. In the last couple years I’ve tried giving up alcohol over lent. It’s not an easy thing to do, especially since my birthday usually falls within that forty day period. It can be quite frustrating, both for me and for the people who want me to drink along with them. By this point, some friendships almost require it, while for others it simply serves as a nice addition, a slightly different way of relating. Still, I’ve found giving up alcohol for prolonged periods worthwhile, not just for the perspective it affords, but for all the money it saves me.

Jian Ghomeshi and the ways of judgment

I have no desire to comment on the shitstorm that erupted over the weekend involving Jian Ghomeshi and the CBC, except to join my voice to the chorus of support for the victims of sexual assault and reiterate that this is not and never has been an even playing field, that crimes like this mostly go unreported, and that the immediate dismissal of the women involved reflects a broader structure of misogyny. As a friend pointed out in a post today at GUTS, it's not enough to simply stand by and wait for the facts to emerge. We need to make space for voices that are, under the current conditions, too afraid to speak.

Over the past few days, I've been interested in the way I've seen people react on Facebook and Twitter, and I've tried to be relatively cautious in my own interactions. The sheer amount of people who initially jumped to Jian Ghomeshi's defense was striking. His manipulative, PR-fashioned Facebook post was itself an interesting tactic, but I was more impressed with how quickly it circulated. For all of us who rushed to judgment of Ghomeshi's actions there were many more who rushed to judgment of his alleged victims. Now, as some of his victims are beginning to speak out, we're seeing momentum swing the other way. It would be petty to start calling out those who came to Ghomeshi's defense and are now recanting. That said, I hope the conversation shifts, that there is more awareness of how difficult it can be for victims to come forward, and why a broader understanding of consent is so important. Although it's been a slow, secretive issue for some, I'm struck by how fast the news of Ghomeshi's shameful activities has spread, how quickly we could take sides, and how quickly we all wanted to. 

It's an impulse I experience frequently on different forms of social media. I see something and my immediate response is to endorse it, ignore it, or condemn it. We "like," we "share," we "retweet." We trust others who are doing the same. But how often do we think through what we're doing and how it might affect others? Much of our social media activities are there to be seen. We share, but we do it mostly for ourselves. Exposure, visibility, followers -- these are the conditions of social life online. Our reach can be broad, but the form of this spectacle occurs with the speed of lightning. We are part of a public forum but it's first and foremost a system of representation.

Using social media is a performative activity. You're always seen by someone, even if that audience chooses to ignore you. At the same time, the rapid, live nature of recent events suggest that these platforms don't really condition the same kind of thoughtfulness or caution one might adopt if they were speaking to crowd. In many ways, it's an obvious point, but it's been on my mind as this scandal has grown. Are we prepared to have our judgements judged, especially by those who, unlike Ghomeshi, don't have the privilege of 100,000 likes on Facebook or 300,000 Twitter followers to raise the profile of their statements? Are we prepared to have our words judged by victims, those whose voices have been taken away?  How are we benefiting from sharing and tweeting about a case of sexual assault, where a simple statement or retweet can trigger a survivor's trauma? 

Not surprisingly, Ghomeshi's Facebook post went as far as it could go in the opposite direction: not a snap judgment but a postured, "personal" defense, a blanket claim of full consent made on behalf of all parties involved. 

The return of Sleater-Kinney

Last week, Sleater-Kinney announced their reunion and comeback album No Cities To Love, but calling it a "comeback" isn't totally fair. 2005's The Woods saw Sleater-Kinney at the height of their powers, and each member has kept incredibly busy with a range of other worthwhile projects (from Wild Flag and solo albums to Portlandia and the Jicks).  By the time they called it quits in 2006, Sleater-Kinney had successfully transitioned from the riot grrrl movement of the mid-90s through  indie rock's internet-fuelled critical mass.

If their new track "Bury Our Friends" is any indication, Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss haven't lost any jam. Like many who came of age during the late 90s, I was instantly hooked when I heard Sleater-Kinney for the first time. The combination of raw energy and insight in their music was something I'd never heard before. It was heavy, direct and full of political outrage. Just what I was looking for.

A welcome return from an absolutely vital band.

A Jest of God

Last week, on a whim, I picked up a two dollar copy of Margaret Laurence's 1966 novel, A Jest of God. Halfway through the book, I'm shocked at how much I enjoy Laurence's prose. In two brilliantly uncomfortable scenes, she presents a pair of contrasting church services. The first takes place after Rachel reluctantly accepts the last of several invitations from a fellow elementary school teacher. At this church, or, "the Tabernacle," as her friend Calla calls it, speaking in tongues isn't a rare occurrence. Rachel is on edge the entire time and, on this particular night out, things don't end well. 

Most reviews of the book focus on Rachel's inner struggle, her self-alienation. Rachel is a compellingly complex character with plenty of problems, many of them internal and many more derived from circumstance. But even with all her neuroses, I find Rachel's accounts of these services incredibly resonant. 

Singing. We have to stand, and I must try to make myself narrower so I won't brush against anyone. A piano crashes the tune. Guitars and one trombone are in support. The voices are weak at first, wavering like a radio not quite adjusted, and I'm shaking with effort not to giggle, although God knows it's not amusing me. The voices strengthen, grow muscular, until the room is swollen with the sound of a hymn macabre as the messengers of the apocalypse, the gaunt horsemen, the cloaked skeletons I dreamed of once when I was quite young, and wakened, and she said, "Don't be foolish -- Don't be foolish, Rachel -- there's nothing there." The hymn-sound is too loud -- it washes in my head, sea and waves of it.

Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophet's warning!
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!

I hate this. I would like to go home. Sit down. The others are sitting down. Just don't be noticeable. Oh God -- do I know anyone? Suddenly I'm scanning rows, searching. Seek and ye shall find. Mrs. Pusey, ancient arch-enemy of my mother, tongue like a cat-'o-nine-tails, and Alvin Jarrett, who works at the bakery, and old Miss Murdoch from the bank. How in hell can I get out of this bloody place without being seen?

Of course, Rachel doesn't escape before the end of the service and we're treated to more of her sardonic inner monologue, occasionally interrupted by the words of a zealous preacher. The next chapter finds Rachel attending church again, this time with her mother (the unnamed woman scolding her for her young superstition in the passage above). While the Tabernacle service is full of flare, the Presbyterian church service is as bland as the members of the town establishment who attend it. Rachel, again, sees the service for what it is: an expression of the neutered desires of its congregation.

Here we are. Mother flicks through the Hymnary to look up the hymns in advance. I wonder what she believes, if anything. She's never said. It was not a subject for discussion. She loves coming to church because she sees everyone, and in spring the new hats are like a forest of tulips. But as for faith -- I suppose she takes for granted that she believes. Yet if the Reverend MacElfrish should suddenly lose his mind and speak of God with anguish or joy, or out of some need should pray with fierce humility as though God had to be there, Mother would be shocked to the core. Luckily it will never happen. 

Mr. MacElfrish's voice is as smooth and mellifluous as always, and he's careful not to say anything which might be upsetting. His sermon deals with Gratitude. He says we are fortunate to be living here, in plenty, and we ought not to take our blessings for granted. Who is likely to quibble with that? 

The wood in this church is beautifully finished. Nothing ornate -- heaven forbid. The congregation has good taste. Simple furnishings, but the grain of the wood shows deeply brown-gold, and at the front where the high alter would be if this had been a church which paid court to high alters, a stained-glass window shows a pretty and clean-cut Jesus expiring gently and with absolutely no inconvenience, no gore, no pain, just this nice and slightly effeminate insurance salesman who, somewhat incongruously, happens to be clad in a toga, holding his arms languidly up to something which might in other circumstances have been a cross.

Flying Lotus - "Never Catch Me" (feat. Kendrick Lamar)