Tag wordpress

48 Hour Technology Strike

Heather Christena Schmidt 4 Comments

Keep track of my strike time at http://countingdownto.com/countdown/223092

I’m going on strike. Not from a job because – I think we all know – I don’t work. I mean I work at the most thankless job on the planet (housewife and SAHM), but there is no monetary compensation for that.

Yet.

No, I’m going on strike from technology. For the next 48 hours I’m ditching my cellphone, laptop, and iPad, and I think you should too. Here’s why:

#1 There Is A World Outside Your Cellphone

I just have had it up to about my eyebrows with sitting at dinner with people that spend the entire time texting and BSing on their cellphones. My husband is notorious for doing this; and the most egregious part is that he’s just scrolling through his apps doing mundane updates that are entirely unnecessary. It’s so rude, and reeks of the implication that the only world that exists to the people committing this etiquette faux pas is within their cellphone and computer. That the world in which I am – sitting across from them at the table – does not exist when the world of technology is around.

There is a world outside your cellphone. And your computer. Not getting Facebook updates is manageable, dare I say – not a big deal.

Just today I read an article about the growing problem of Facebook addiction, in which it was reported that as many as 1/3rd of people that were interviewed admitted to experiencing feelings of envy when viewing photographs and other updates of others on Facebook. This implies a number of things, but as for this point I think this has a lot to do with the fact that some of us think there is no world outside of Facebook.

1313897240072_6858395Do you faithful blog followers actually believe that life is as wonderful and exciting as it appears to be for some people on Facebook? Every photo is from a party; therefore life is a party? Every update is positive, fun, and full of excitement; therefore nothing bad ever happens to the people on your Facebook page? Nonsense! The only reason why people post on the social networks great and wonderful and awe-inspiring news is because it’s looked down upon to report anything real that happens. People call reality “bad” and “negative” – two words that have been demonized by our terribly childish social network culture.

There is a world outside of your computer. A real world. A world where you are not alone.

#2 Capturing Photographs Is Not the Point

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Recently I realized that I spend more time capturing some moments than actually experiencing them. A blogger, I’m constantly trying to shoot things that can be used for my blogs; but now it’s leaked into every aspect of my life. Yesterday I snapped over twenty photographs of my car being towed. The experience from beginning to end was captured on photograph, and yet when it came time to recall the tow truck driver’s name today when AAA called to survey the experience, I had no idea. The guy really went the extra mile in taking care of us and I was so focused on my own photographic evidence that I couldn’t even take the time to learn his name.

The point of having a good meal is not to capture a photograph of the food. The reason for going on a hike is to get exercise, fresh air, and experience the outdoors. I have friends that have so many photographs of their experiences that I wonder if they even would remember what happened if it weren’t for the photographs, much like I can’t recall the tow truck driver’s name.

And is a memory not sufficient anymore to prove that something happened? Take a picture of your kid at this park, then that park, then this other park, then another. We get it! You take your kid to the park. We would have believed you if you just said it once. 7,000 shots a day of the kid running in the grass gets old. Really old. This isn’t to say that the kid isn’t cute, or the food doesn’t look as tasty as you describe it.

It’s just that technology is replacing even our most intimate moments and experiences.

#3 Technology Really Makes Me Hate People

And lose respect for them. This person didn’t respond to an email I sent in due time. A text message got ignored. People didn’t “like” or comment on my blog.

How many times have you Tweeted someone for them to never respond? How many times have you followed a blogger only for them to ignore you, as if they are too “big” to follow back?

The list of Internet etiquette grievances is a long one – not just mine, but the conglomerate list of all the billions of people using the Internet regularly. Sometimes it makes you hate people to be connected all the time. It makes you hate how not everyone operates by the same standards you do. And it makes you loathe the ways in which they think and act – from political posters on Facebook, to people that use their cellphones and computers as a way to bully; technology has just made it easier for the whole of humanity to act like assholes.

While I am definitely a fan of general misanthropy, I get too angry when I’m online too much.

#4 I Need a Break From Web MD

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I need a break from Web MD. And the news. And Google flu trends. And Sickweather.com. I’m such a hypochondriac, with a glaringly unhealthy level of OCD, that I am obsessed with what’s going on around, who has which diseases, and whether or not I have [insert obscure, unlikely disease here].

I need a break from all that nonsense – I wash my hands; cover my cough; and avoid sick people. How exactly does checking up on where people are sick in my area every day make us any more safe? Am I going to avoid running errands because a few people Tweeted that they had the stomach flu in my area? No. No – we still need milk, eggs, and bread.

But it’s also a matter of not just health, but of the news. This is another thing my husband is horrible with – he is obsessed with the news, and occasionally I am too. It isn’t just one article on something that happened, or a study that was done; it’s all of them that show up in the Google News Aggregate. While I don’t think it’s good to stick our heads in the sand, sometimes shutting it all off is for the best. There is nothing I can do about the fact that North Korea issued another threat to the United States. The fact that emergency room visits from energy drinks have increased by 47% bears absolutely no effect on me.

Obsessing over all of these things is just another way that technology has a hold of our lives, just as in the case of cellphones leading us to believe there is no world outside, and photography applications robbing us of having actual experiences.

Realistically, 48 hours off technology is nothing. I still remember a day when I never used a cellphone or a computer. When I never used a computer – oh what I would give to say I still did that now. What I would give to be able to say that any of us could be successful at anything without all the advances computer and cellular technology can offer. Sure, my Klout score may go down about a point from being offline for 48 hours. I may offend someone much in the way I have been offended by not responding soon enough to an email or a text message. But think of all the things that can come of unbinding myself to the chains of my technology. I don’t even know what the next 48 hours holds. It’s kind of exciting to know that they won’t involve a cellphone or computer.

The real question isn’t “why should I do it?” though. It’s “can I do it?” Can you?

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Why My Blog is Doomed to Fail

Heather Christena Schmidt 10 Comments

Could I be any more melodramatic?  Probably.  The truth is that this blog isn’t necessarily about the destiny of the b(itch)log to fail, so much as it is just a blog about why I won’t ever be featured on Freshly Pressed.  Wordpress suggested it might Freshly Press me if I come up with a catchy title, though, so I tried…

For those of you not hip to the lingo of the blog-o-sphere (and you may all shoot me if I utter such atrocities as blog-o-sphere again), Freshly Pressed is the daily showcasing of what WordPress considers the cream of the crop, so to speak, of recent postings on blogs hosted by the Internet giant.  It claims to be showcasing those besties for today, when in reality the majority of the Freshly Pressed blogs I have read are – on average – a week old.  But let’s not bicker over mere days, what I want to really do is bicker about who gets Freshly Pressed and why.

For a while, being showcased on the front page of WordPress was one of my ultimate goals.  I started this because I attended a writers meeting where the speaker said that her blog had been Freshly Pressed; only to my dismay, I learned later that while the blog had, in fact, been featured, the topic was something many of us would rather not have learned about:  the graying of her pubic hair.  (That is an image now forever burned in my head, thanks Freshly Pressed.)  For a while, I even researched what I could do, and of course went by the guidance of the WordPress editors.  They said to post good content, I posted good content.  They said no typos, I triple-checked my work.  They said original photos, or at least a credit, and I did everything they wanted.  And yet after weeks and months of trying, I still was never featured.

Of course, with over 370,000 bloggers, tallying close to 500,000 daily posts, of course it would seem rare form for me to expect to be featured on Freshly Pressed.  Surely there are gads of writers much better than me out there, posting topics much more relevant than things like literature, marriage advise, and carmageddon.  I was convinced that the odds were just too stacked against me:  too many good writers, mixed with too many uninteresting posts by me.  And then I visited Freshly Pressed last week to find that they had posted a blog about some random guy’s completely mundane and uninteresting week.  It was so boring that I don’t even remember what he did:  something like take a bus to work and run away from someone because they had a bee on their sleeve.  The guy didn’t even credit his stolen pictures – every bit of the blog flew in the face of what WordPress says not to do; he even had a few misspelled words.

Now, it’s possible that WordPress has a computer which randomly selects blogs to showcase.  This seems plausible given the basic fact that blogs on graying pubic hair and some random guy’s week don’t exactly warrant the titles “cream of the crop.”  Really, I’d lke to think it’s more than that, though.  I like to imagine people at WordPress reading my blogs every time I post them and saying “well … there it is … another post we can’t feature!”  Here are the reasons I like to think why:

I never take my own pictures.

It’s true.  I don’t.  Never.  I think maybe two of my blogs – ever – have contained photographs that have actually been taken by my phone, other than that they are always stolen from other places on the Internet.  I always follow the WordPress rules of crediting (be it underneath the photo, or on the direct photo link), but I never take my own photos.  Why, you ask?  Because unlike the rest of the world, I don’t believe I am a professional photographer just because I own a digital camera and a nice camera phone.  Unless it’s a topic that I can emphasize with one of the many random photos I do take on my camera phone (most of which my faithful blog followers will not understand anyway), I prefer a nicer, cleaner photo, or a video.  Hey, that’s just me … I don’t hold delusions of grandeur.

I swear a lot.

It’s true.  I do.  Always.  My blog’s homepage even includes the word “bitch” (even though it’s intended to be a play on the word blog – b(itch)log).  Something I realized recently is that the most intelligent people I know swear, and swear often.  In all honesty, we could wax philosophical on this one, because they are just words.  Just because colloquially they are considered bad by a group of old ninnies who still think “poppy-cock” is offensive does not actually make them bad.  And anyway, I don’t say anything that doesn’t find its way on primetime cable.

I’m honest and talk about things people don’t care about.

Yep.  I am honest, brutally so.  And people don’t care about a lot of the things I talk about, even though they should.  Why would I be featured on Freshly Pressed when I talk poorly of planking and owling, when probably the last month has featured at least five or six blogs on the excitement of the ridiculous Internet trends?  And why would I be selected to be featured when more than half of my blogs are more misanthropic than anyone should be?  Honesty and educated topics are not what people want.  Gray pubic hair is.

Look at this WordPress!! It's a PHOTO CREDIT for a photo that is much better than anything I would have taken on this topic! Thanks Melonbloggers!!

The truth in it all is that either the computer isn’t randomly selecting me, or the editors at WordPress just really don’t think there is anything special about my writing.  Maybe they even think it’s downright bad.  Am I bitter?  I was at first.  I was outright resentful; possibly I still am.  In truth, I think that not being Freshly Pressed has given me to the impetus to keep blogging.  Not that I think I will ever be Freshly Pressed – but as a matter of proving that in at the end of the popularity contest, it’s always the nerds and unwanteds that wind up the most successful.  So my blog is doomed to fail at the game of WordPress’s Freshly Pressed front page “cream of the crop”athon… but to be honest, gray pubic hair lady and the pansy who ran away from the bee are not my kind of crowd anyway.