Module 5 - Externalizing thought is good for us

When I saw the task Jessica set for us this week, I decided to focus more on the Facebook posts of a few of those I follow on Twitter. I do not have a Facebook wall and have only a passing knowledge of its GUI and types of content that can be found on Facebook, yet it’s clear that there is a synergetic product yielded from its “gossipy text” (Mickes, Darby, Hwe, Bajic, Warker, Harris, & Christenfeld, 2013, p. 487). Indeed, as many others here have indicated, I was surprised to see that narrative abounded. We need to be heard to feel significant, but we also need to listen and respond to feel significant.

The Cyborogology article spoke volumes to me as a member of Gen X, the last generation to know what it’s like to live without SM. I was intrigued by the argument “that identity-change is something that should be hidden, reinforcing the stigma that generates the phrase to begin with” (Jurgensen, 2012, para. 3). Instead, “we might also think of how it could have also been a foundation of encouragement, assistance, and validation that many of us might have benefited from” (para. 4). This was echoed in one of the 420 Characters narratives:

THE PRISONER OF NOISE stood before the bathroom sink, fingers in his ears, head down, mouth wide open, willing the sounds in his head to spill into the basin - the yelps and booms, screeches, screams and howls, crashes and groans, explosions and roars and babel and bangs. What if they formed a hairball of din, clogged the sink, scared the children when they came in at night to pee? He closed his mouth, went back to bed.

SM journaling facilitates a voice for those who wish to chronicle their evolution. I agree with Jurgensen that we’ve gone from a society that supresses feeling to sharing freely, and it does seem that those wishing to continue with the suppression are finding their power base eroding quickly, if not voided altogether.

One example that of personal evolution being chronicled via online journaling that caught my eye recently is the story of Chevi Rabbit, a U of A graduate who was attacked in 2012 on his way home from campus. As an openly gay man, Chevi was targeted for his appearance and attire. Of course, one would understand if Chevi decided to crawl into a hole and attempt to become invisible. However, the resulting outcry on SM served as a vehicle for Chevi to find his purpose and his voice – he reversed his initial response to hide and brought his career-based daydreams into fruition.

Chevi’s Facebook profile promotes his business as a makeup artist; it also chronicles his evolution from victim to a humanitarian symbol for the Metis culture as well as his intent to become active in Alberta politics.

So yes, Chevi is using SM to chronicle his evolution via FB (1,739 likes) and Twitter (702 followers). But SM response to his assault was the impetus for this, implying an inherent and inextricable link between oneself and the society within which one lives. It took SM to not only motivate Chevi to embark on his evolution, but SM now is the vehicle by which Chevi continues to develop. In that, the Chevi Rabbit story “promote[s] the idea that those embarrassing tweets, or anyone’s embarrassing digital dirt, can be used to validate identity change and growth” (Jurgensen, 2012, para. 7) as echoed in another of the 420 Characters narratives:

HE WAITED all his life for a splashy catharsis, irrefutable evidence that a profound change had transformed him. It took him many years to realize that he had been altered each day by the sun's rising and the moon's movement, by the unfurling of his daughter's tiny hand to grasp his thumb, by the cat on his chest, by the glass of water his wife brought him before bedtime, by the questions his son asked.

Anyone remember the 1997 Jodie Foster movie Contact? One of the more memorable scenes for me occurred when Jodie’s character, Ellie Arroway, gets to finally interact with an alien life form, who notes:

You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.

As cliché as this may be, the truth is that we are inextricably linked to each other, and it seems that our growth depends on our connectedness. Facebook appears to be a seminal vehicle for this.

REFERENCES

Jurgensen, N. (2012, November 26). Glad I didn’t have Facebook in high school [blog post]. Retrieved from http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/11/26/glad-i-didnt-have-facebook-in-high-school/

Mickes, L., Darby, R., Hwe, V., Bajic, D., Warker, J., Harris, C., & Christenfeld, N. (2013). Major memory for microblogs. Memory & Cognition, 41(4), 481-489. doi:10.3758/s13421-012-0281-6

Quotes from Contact. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/quotes?item=qt0379373