Self Liking Media

Or: Like Me! Like Me! Like Me! I have opinions. Let me show you this on on Self Liking Media. Enjoy, Gentle Reader. 

I take in a lot of content on the internet. I watch YouTube videos. I have a lot of podcasts I listen to on iTunes. I use (or have used) Spotify, TuneIn, Pandora, Netflix, Vimo, Hulu, Last.fm, Bandcamp, Mixcrate, Stitcher, Blog Talk Radio, and Ustream just to name a handful. I use web site media players, game site videos, social justice media wherever I can find it.

What I am saying is that I have a lot of time where it is difficult to do anything, so I consume the content of others. I have even made a tiny little bit, so I have an idea how hard it is. As I have talked about here before: I have no problem letting folks know I dig their stuff with a plus or a like or five stars or email or whatever. I think it is (the definition of) the least we can do for those folks trying to inform, entertain, and/or educate us. 

The best creators never tell you how to feel about their creations. You should be allowed to experience it on your own and form an un-beleaguered opinion. Like something or not, you should have the ability to form that opinion based on the media itself. You should not be inundated through the piece to form an opinion you do not have yet, or badgered to change a non-glowing opinion at the end. 

Mea culpa: I have been guilty of the "like me!" mess, but I will not anymore. You get to decide what you like.

But if you put your stuff out there on a system that has an opinion system, then you have voluntarily agreed to letting people voice their own opinion on that system. I respectfully address that you get over it, or get off of those systems. YouTubers and Facebookers and iTuners and whatever: quit telling me to give you a good rating and spend that energy into your project and make it even better.

Now, contrary to what you might think, I am not dogging everyone that made something on the Internet ever and then asked you to dig it. There is a one word cure to this: if. Well, you know, and variations of it:

• If you liked this video, please remember to hit the like button. 
• Hit the subscribe button if you like it so much you want more.
• Did you dig this G+ post? Let me know with that +1 button, okay?
• We work a lot on this podcast. Want us to keep it up? Five stars will let us know! If you hear an issue, please give us a heads up!
• We are able to get help with equipment and stuff based on our like counts. So please help us out with a good review - you listened to the whole thing, so you like us, right? 
• Enjoy our skits? Let us know! There is a donate button, too!
• Please use our comment section to give us accolades, guidance  opinion, whatever comes to your head for us. Well, almost whatever - behave! Check out our posting rules for questions.

For all that is good in this world, quit telling us to like your stuff and make it likable instead, okay? Okay. Thanks. Look, the creators I am addressing are giving out mostly free content: we are predisposed to like you. "Yea, free stuff!" said the Internet. Then we spend time on you, further prepping us to like you. People do not like to be wrong, so we are going to want to like you the longer we spend time on your content. 

I know, there are trolls, but they are actually a tiny fraction of people on the Internet. They are just the loudest because it is easier to shit on something than to hold it up. Sadistic lulz are no longer witty retorts, now they are usually just the flatulence of the bored. 

On perks: if you give a perk to the best opinions, good for you. But I think it does a disservice to you and your fans. How can you know what they really think if you have some raffle prize for shining reviews. A lot of the folks that hound consumers about it never give a breath to telling them what you actually think, they just want the like/plus/stars. So if your content has a problem like a faulty/misplaced light or bad levels or misinformation, who is going to tell you? It should be your fans, but you have them giving prize-eligible reviews instead. I think that can cause content creators more harm than good. You know your content's needs better than I, so take that as you will.

Down with the phenomena of Self Liking Media! Remember, you can show me some love below if you like what I do:

So Much Depends on a Little Red Plus Sign

Most social networks have a method by which you can show your approval of a post. Whether it is "plussing" on G+, "liking" on Facebook, "favoriting" a post on Twitter, pushing/trusting/liking on Sulia, and pinning and/or heart'ing on Pinterest you have a way of saying "I approve of this." The problem is, there is no way of adding why you approve of a post, and I want to break down why I give things this silent mark of approval:

• I may like your post because I believe the same thing, word for word. This is the damn for me, although it seems it is the one that folks always assume is meant when you plus.
• I may favorite your tweet because I am glad you said a thing, whether I agree or not. I may just believe that your thought needs to be out there in the ether. I believe in fostering intelligent dialog when possible.
• You and I may be friends, so I plus your stuff that makes sense in order to encourage you to express yourself. 
• I may appreciate the opportunity to see a product or idea. Maybe I did not even know it existed until you posted it.
• I may pin something just because it is pretty or suits my aesthetics.
• Maybe you posted something that took skill or bravery to post and I noticed.
• Sometimes I may actively disagree with a post, but appreciate the way something was said. Maybe it was an innovate way of looking at the issue, or had a personal touch that made the post evocative. Maybe it was just damn good writing. This goes back to fostering intelligent dialog when possible.
• Maybe you were just damn funny and I lol'ed.
• Every once in a while, I will fat-finger a post and plus/like/pin something I did not mean to. You know what I mean, you are looking at one thing and press the button you think will favorite your target but instead you ended up "liking" something horrible. Sometimes, it takes someone pointing it out to find out that it even happened. This is the most rare of cases, and I will immediately correct, if possible, when asked about it. Because I am a grown-up and can admit I screwed up.
• Liking/+1'ing are good ways to keep track of a post as it develops. I may just want to see what happens next...

I bet you experience this problem: someone sees that you put your stamp of approval on one thing a person wrote and now you are responsible for everything that person ever wrote, ever. There are a lot of reasons to stamp someone's post, but people will usually assume that you did it for whatever reason makes them the most angry. I ask first before I assume, and it is my opinion that other folks should ask first too. We should not let assumptive, aggressive anger overrule common sense. 

On most services such as G+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Sulia you can undo your stamp of approval. Usually you can just click the same button again, the label on the button usually changes to reflect this functionality, but not in every case. If you no longer wish to have approved a post, a group, or a person - you can change your approval status to reflect that, to a degree. I rather like Buzzfeed's method of giving the user several adjectives to choose from to voice an opinion on a piece.

"Solidarity Is For White Women"

This post assumes that you have a least seen some mention of #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen and skips some 101 ideas. I am not much of an online presence, but I want to do something useful, something purposeful,  contribute something good. I will talk a little about my own opinions, but that is not my focus. What follows are pointers to some really good work you may not have seen: work by folks involved, works by women of color, works that give background. 

If you have found or produced something I should link here, please let me know below. My spoons are limited, and there is a lot of stuff out there about this. If you are here, reading me, then you probably already know that it can be rough for women on the internet.

The key person you should know about in all of this is brownfemipower. This was not her first rodeo, as it were, and her fortitude and class is amazing. Flavia Tamara is another writer I have admired from afar, when she was writing (wrote? Not sure what is up at TB) for Tiger Beatdown. BlackAmazon is on Twitter and so is Jamilah Lemieux, writers I have seen and respected but was not following 'til recently.

Speaking of terrific women, go to this great article from the Guardian, written by Mikki Kendal, that sums up a lot of what was going on around this hashtag. #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen is her doing, and I congratulate her for it and thank her for the hard work of dealing with the fallout. You can also see her in this interview, where she mentions the erasure of intersectional activists that are disabled, "lower" class/poor, non-Western... you get the idea.

Jamie Nesbitt Gordon wrote about this for Salon. This Week In Blackness talks about it here. Angry Black Lady had already rightfully and righteously gone to town on the sexist. This is another good piece (I have met and like the authoress). Also left out were feminist disability folks, feminist QUILTBAG folks, poor feminists... you get the picture. Gradient Lair has a terrific piece up that highlights the voices of of the people harmed in all of this. 

Student Activism has a whole lot on Schwyzer, but I will just point out one article  It has enough links that also have links to give you a good rundown on the man's career of upsetting folks. AJ's The Stream has a solid piece up.

The HG meltdown is captured on a "Men's Rights" page, but you can Google the pdf if you want to do so. I make it a general policy to not link to MRA sites. No, I have no idea why MRAs would even care, except maybe to celebrate the pain of women, particularly feminists. These guys are the mustache-twirling villains of the equal rights set. 

Feministing attempted to apologize and explain their position here and in a less triggery way here. Both of those links have long comment sections, (and in this rare case on the Internet) I believe you should read the comments. The efforts met with mixed results. There is some doubt as to whether this was motivated by honesty or capitalism. In the places I have linked, you will see opinions vary. I am giving credibility the women that were right about everything in the first place. 

If we are going to take feminism and make sure that it is for everyone, then we are going to have to look at white power in feminism. Yes, I include me in that we. That societal power is given to every white, yes - that is undeniable. HG could not have gotten away with any of this had he not been male, straight, and most of all: white. During his career numerous women of color called out his bad behavior only to be ignored and or discredited and further marginalized. They were right, but they were silenced.

One of the best things I have read about intersectionality in real life: My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or It Will Be Bullshit. 

Note: not every link is an endorsement. Some may contain good information, but be otherwise problematic. Be careful out there.

EDIT: spelling fix at post.

Fuck Fair: Favoring the Injured (On Safe Space)

There are a lot of places that need your time today, thank you for spending a moment or two here. Please see the Red Cross if you want to help out Moore, Oklahoma. They will need your help for a long time coming. So if you could not donate the first time around, like me, keep them in mind for when you can spare something to help, please.


A “safe space” is a convention where a chat room, a comment thread, a blog, or what have you is considered more safe than the average Internet site for expressing thoughts, experiences and conversations regarding societal oppression, patriarchy, or other designated topic, grouping of people, or sharing of an idea.

Safe space is not about not getting hurt. No one can police for everything. It is knowing that you are in a space where it is safe to get hurt.


There's no OED for social justice, so we all need to spell out what we mean when we say things like "safe space." I have to be honest about conversations here: I cannot promise folks will not get hurt. Somebody is not going to know "g*psy" is an insult or that a band name is triggering or whatever. I do understand that sometimes genuine mistakes get made - and I will judge those as they occur. We are people, mistakes get made and when your wounds are out they sometimes get opened.

I say this again: fuck fair, favor the injured. In the rest of the world, people with privilege are actually fucking privileged and can have their say as they will. A safe space puts the dis-empowered on the at least the same level, with the same expectation of opportunity to speak, to be, to live.

You give people space, let them know you are there, you listen when they are aggrieved. You care. You do not just let them know that you care, you fucking do it. Give other people reason (since the injured party should never need to) and opportunity to apologize and maybe even go learn more and be a better person. I give the injuring the opportunity to grow in a way that is not hurtful to the injured... And if they do not take it, fuck ‘em.

Bigots and cads and shit stirrers get tossed. Here, that is by my discretion alone at this point. Mistakes among the rest of folks means giving genuine opportunity for real recovery, and for folks learning - really learning, real space to do that too. Probably not together, though. But they voices dimmed out there are favored here, and that is that.


Finally, if need be, I am comfortable asserting that I Am The Bitch Boss Here if needed. A lot of this is hard to put down in solid rules or guidelines. If you are here, then you have decided to trust me as the arbiter of that. I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that you can go almost anywhere else and say what you want. More power to you, as if you need it. I stand (sit) behind what I have written here and elsewhere on the subject.

Struggle Days

Lately, I have more struggle days than not. A struggle day is when some symptom, some part of something out of my control makes the day harder than it should be. Sometimes it feels like a victory to see the end of one day and the beginning of another. Now, I do believe that in general, but I rarely actively feel it.

One rabbit hole that has made this last set of struggle days better is the Green Brothers. Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, all of their efforts. They are amazing. I recommend pretty much everything they do as far as I can tell. I knew John Green was on my computer before, and I could not remember why until I saw him talk about being on PotUS's first G+ hangout.

Another was Yo Is This Racist, which you can enjoy here. 

The Buddhism thing is moving along at a pace. What is helpful is that so far there has been nothing I have learned that has contested my own standards of honesty, compassion  and trust - while I do not always meet those as I would like, there they are just the same. The Boyfriend and I went to a weekend local event and it went well. I had a crushing moment of vulnerability and moved through and with it rather than pretending it was not happening, or taking it completely private.

I am trying to live more honestly, which brings up the vulnerability thing again, which I am experiencing quite a lot of lately (even if I need spell check to tell you that!). That means shedding the facade of not being in chronic pain. This is awkward, because good people are made uncomfortable by people in pain - they want to fix it for you, bless 'em. And they just cannot, which makes them feel bad. Now, I do not mean griping about it all the time, I just mean being honest when something hurts a lot, not hiding the signs of pain as they happen, and just going with whatever I can do every day: if it is just to get my ass dressed and sit and be with folks, or head downstairs and do some crafting or minor sewing (I love making actual things that can be held or given.)

So here I am. I hope you have been well.