Last weekend, I drove home to Erie, PA, where I was born and raised for most of my first 20 years.  And what began as my annual pilgrimage to eat The Best Pierogi in the World turned into a reconsideration of why these moments matter.

Every August, Erie’s Holy Trinity parish hosts a citywide Polish festival called Zabawa, a celebration of Polish food, heritage and culture.  Zabawa also doubles as a family reunion for the city’s extensive Polish-American population, including my father’s family, which grew up next door to Holy Trinity.  And while the collective spirit of the event is charming — and, according to this year’s traffic and revenue, growing — it sometimes strikes me as a bit confusing.

My uncle noticed this too.  During one of the traditional Polish folk dances, he said,”These people are still thinking with a 100 year-old mentality.”  In other words, while it may be important to see and hear the vestiges of who we once were, there’s no real effort being made to show who we are now.

Where are the examples of modern Polish art, music or film?  It would be wonderful if an event like Zabawa could bridge that gap between past and present.  Otherwise, it risks becoming a folk pageant that carries the torch of a disappearing era while ignoring the opportunity to carry the community forward.

And that’s when I remembered that living in the present isn’t always something American communities have advocated.

Oxtail Soup for the Soul

When I was 18, I moved in with my grandfather.  He was in his early ’80s, he still golfed 4 days a week, and he was always right (even when he was entirely wrong).  Needless to say, we had some differing opinions, but we generally got along well.

As the neighborhood’s unofficial historian — mostly by virtue of being one of the few octogenarians with his wits about him — my grandfather took great pride in educating people about where things used to be, who used to live there and what life used to be like.  At the time, I was partially fascinated (because no one else had that much information about our history) and partially frustrated (because any mention of the present day would invariably prompt an explanation about how some long-dead person, place or technology was better than whatever I’d just brought up).

Above all, my grandfather perpetually reminded me: “Never forget where you come from.”

I think what he meant was, “never forget that you’re from Poland.”  But I’d already forgotten that, because I was born in America — and so was he.  My grandfather was the youngest of eleven (if I’m remembering correctly), and his father had traveled to America from Poland, but the children were all born here.

When I think of “where I come from,” I think of Erie.  I think of my family.  I think of America.  Rarely do I think of Poland.  In fact, I’ve never been there.  But I’m also part of a generation that isn’t afraid to not be there, and that wasn’t always the case.

The Melting Pot Isn’t Always Cozy

Before he died, my grandfather wrote a short personal memoir of his life, so his kids and grandkids could remember all the stories he wouldn’t be around to tell.  His book is filled with Erie’s history, and the clear ethnic lines that divided it.

For example, in one story, a Slavic boy had the nerve to walk one of my grandfather’s sisters home.  Every Polish boy on the block came running out of his house and chased the Slavic boy back to his neighborhood, and man was my grandfather proud.  There’d be no intermixing of Poles and Slavs in Erie if their families had anything to say about it.  To them, remembering where they came from meant defending themselves against assimilation.  And while this is a Polish-American story, it probably sounds a lot like your own grandfather’s Irish-American, Italian-American or French-Canadian past.

As an adult, my grandfather would see one of his sons marry a German-American and another son marry an Italian-American.  His oldest granddaughter would marry a Swiss man and move a continent away to raise his great-grandchildren.  Thus, the great fight to preserve my grandfather’s Polish heritage had lasted a single generation.

This is also partly due to a lack of insistence even on my grandfather’s part.  For example, despite both halves of my family being Polish-American, both of my sets of grandparents stopped teaching their children Polish during my parents’ childhoods.  My parents and their siblings can understand certain Polish words and phrases, but I only know one or two.

When we think of where we come from, we think in English.

What Does This Mean for Our Future?

I think we live in unusual times.  Modern media has made it easier than ever to communicate, innovate and find common ground with our global peers.  As a result, the sheer volume of information being generated about “the present” is ever-growing, and it does threaten to dwarf and eradicate any active memory of “the past.”

Part of me thinks it’s incredibly important to remember the stories of who we were and where we — and our families, and their families — came from, because where we’ve been helps to determine who we are now.  If we forget that, we lose part of our own narrative.

But part of me also thinks we need to do more to involve our past in our present.

Modernity and evolution don’t need to be perceived as threats to an imagined grand old way of life, but that’s how most of our seniors seem to regard technology.  And when we refuse to teach our parents and grandparents how it all works, we deepen that divide — and, ultimately, we do ourselves a disservice.

Your grandfather doesn’t need to understand Facebook in order to teach his grandchildren about a time before computers.  But if we don’t help our past and our present connect in both directions, all we’ll have left is the future — and we’ll be the ones no one remembers.

I can only imagine what my grandfather would have said about the audience at this year’s Zabawa, in which new arrivals to Erie — an Iraqi family, a Burmese family — were among the spectators, taking in a glimpse of an old world culture in their new world home.

And I wonder what stories they’ll tell their grandchildren someday.

SIDE NOTE: For a more humorous (yet equally relatable) story about generation gaps, I highly recommend Kate Beaton’s cartoon journal from her last Canadian family vacation before moving to New York.

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When you’re surrounded by strangers, it can be hard to strike up a conversation.  Presumably, things would be easier if you already knew something about some of those people.

But what if that knowledge actually made you more reluctant to start a conversation?

That’s what I’m wondering about Meet Gatsby, a Foursquare-related program that connects you with fellow users in your proximity who share the same interests you’ve divulged to the program.  It’s basically an icebreaker service for complete strangers sitting in the same room who happen to share a common interest.

For example, if you tell Gatsby that you like comic books, and someone else who also likes comic books checks into your location on Foursquare, Gatsby will introduce you.  You’re under no obligation to speak to each other, but you now have that opportunity.

In theory, this should help us all leapfrog over our fears of meeting strangers.

In reality, I can already think of several potentially awkward scenarios — including:

• What if one person is an expert in a field, but the other’s just casually interested?
• What if someone’s trying to work, but they’re accosted by a bad conversation?
• What if someone’s already in a conversation with someone else?

But while those examples might be disappointing, annoying or uncomfortable, they’re also beside the point.

The real power of Gatsby is in the way it makes you re-evaluate a central question:

What kinds of people do you really want to meet?

Hi, My Name Is ________.

In order to meet a wide array of people, your instincts might lead you to supply Gatsby with lists of incredibly obvious interests.  “Music.” “Movies.” “Sports.” “Blogs.”

But this presumes you’d be happy to meet anybody.  If that were the case, you wouldn’t need Gatsby; you’d just ask the nearest stranger if they’ve seen any good movies lately.  Supplying Gatsby with ultra-common criteria is like supplying it with no criteria at all.

You could also program Gatsby with all sorts of hyper-specific interests that are extremely personal to you… except they’re immediately obvious to anyone looking at you.  Trust me, if your interests are Skinny Puppy, Joy Division, The Cure, and The Crow, I can probably figure that out without consulting Gatsby.

So what does that leave us with?

The future.

I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On… Mentally

To me, the real hook for using Gatsby is the opportunity to meet people I’d want to talk to because:

• they know a lot about something I want to learn more about
• they’re experts in something I know nothing about
• our shared interests are likely to yield new discoveries for each of us

For example, if I said I liked “movies,” that would be nearly useless.

But if I said I was a fan of Whit Stillman or Atom Egoyan, two lesser-known indie directors with very unique storytelling styles, I’d be less likely to find people who matched that interest but more likely to have fruitful conversations with anyone who did.  Because if we both like Egoyan, we can probably each suggest half a dozen amazing films that the other’s never seen.

To accomplish this, we need to rethink the words we use to identify our interests, like…

• Would the people we meet differ if we were fans of “movies” versus “films”?
• Are your interests “politics,” or are they “liberal politics,” or “Libertarian”?
• Do you like “blogs,” or do you like “blogging”?

This isn’t just semantics; this is SEO for your personality.  The more specific you (and others) are, you the more likely you are to find conversationalists who matter.

But this still leaves one loose end: how do we bridge the gap between “students” and “teachers”?

Single White Male, in Search of Enlightenment

Meet Gatsby is still in its earliest stages of development.  (As I type this, their Twitter account only has 61 followers.)

And since they’re currently accepting suggestions from users, I have two:

• Subdivide interests into Things We Know About and Things We’d Like to Learn About
• Allow users to rate their own expertise, and the expertise of others

Why would this matter?  Context.

Let’s say two people with interests in social media happen to meet up through Gatsby.

If Person A knows enough about social media to rate himself a 7 out of 10, he can probably offer advice to someone who’s only rated her own expertise a 4.  But if she disagrees with his suggestions (or thinks he’s making it all up), she should have the same opportunity to affect his credibility rating as buyers and sellers do on eBay.

Ultimately, Gatsby is positioning itself as a marketplace for human interaction.  And people will always want to interact with others who offer them the most value for their time.

The more ways we have to find the people who matter to us, the more valuable every Foursquare check-in will be — and the more relevant our own accumulated knowledge becomes.

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A few years back, I read a story that’s stuck with with me ever since.

It was in one of the many “how to write better” resources (possibly The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, although that one’s still worth recommending regardless).  In it, the author reminisced about something one of her university professors asked the class, which was:

“Are you waiting until your grandparents die before you write what you really want to say?”

It’s the kernel of truth in that statement that’s stayed with me — mainly because I can identify with it.

If you’re like me, your grandparents (and other family) have always taken a keen but passing interest in what you do for a living.  And as much as you enjoy their support, you’d also be mortified if they knew what you really thought about anything.

So you auto-censor yourself.

Not just in terms of language or sentiment, but even your choices of topics and your stated beliefs.

You’d rather be interesting than honest.

The thought of your dear sweet grandmother suddenly discovering that you’re really a left-wing atheist who digs bondage (or whatever your personality may actually happen to be) is so debilitating, you’d prefer to table your truest beliefs and most darkly-held secrets until everyone who could possibly be embarrassed about your choices is safely dead.

Social media is a lot like that.  Except here, everybody’s your grandmother, and you only feel comfortable offending them when you’re popular.

“If I were Seth Godin, I could say that…”

“If I were Chris Brogan, I could get away with that…”

“If I were iJustine, I could act like that…”

But you’ll never be any of them, because you’re you.

Bummer.

And so you type out your life of quiet desperation, waiting for all of your grandmothers to die — or to suddenly become exceedingly popular and, therefore, insulated from the arrows of ridicule and disagreement.

But here’s the funny part: Seth, Chris, Justine, etc., are still who they’ve always been.

What they know may have changed over time.  Who they have access to has obviously expanded.  And what they believe about the world may have evolved in conjunction with their own experiences.

But Seth didn’t become a marketing genius after he was popular; he’s always known what he’s talking about (unless you disagree with him, in which case, he’s always been a liar).

Chris didn’t become a nice guy who enjoys connecting people after he met a bunch of people; he met a bunch of people because he likes connecting them.

And Justine was a quirky exhibitionist long before the whole Internet was watching.*

The problem is not that you don’t yet have the clout to say what you really mean, or that you’re afraid of offending those who think better of you.

It’s that you have no idea what you really believe, or what you have to say.

Because if you did, you’d be speaking, acting and living the same way the idealized version of you would be doing.

So what’s stopping you?

At the risk of sounding self help-ish, here’s a fact: popularity — and grandmothers — come and go, but there’s only one you.  Matter to someone, and you’ll end up mattering to everyone.

* Disclosure: I’ve known Chris and Justine since before they became who you think they are now, so I can vouch for their public evolution.  I have yet to meet Seth in person, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.  However, if I’m wrong and he really did get smart after he became more popular, I owe somebody a Coke.

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I blog a lot about the importance of audience.  Now I’d like to understand my own audience a bit better.

NOTE: This is a long and winding post, and you may be in a hurry.  If so, let me ask you for a quick favor: my whole reason for writing this post is to better understand you.  Here’s how you can help me do that:

• Short version:  In the comments, please list 3 things YOU would like to see discussed more often on my blog.
• Slightly longer, yet ultimately more useful version:  Take this short survey to help me better understand your experience level, what topics you’re interested in and why, so I can better provide you with discussions you’ll care about.

And now, back to the post at hand.

Writing in the Dark

As a writer, I like to be read.  I also like knowing that what I’ve written is beneficial to the people who read it.  And I like to converse and debate with my audience in ways that advance our collective understanding of the topics we’re passionate about.

Lately, many of us who blog about social media have been urging its practitioners to improve.  We’re tired of the mediocrity and we’re demanding more from this rich medium that’s practically overflowing with potential.

The problem is, that potential never seems to be reached because we all spend too much time rehashing the same topics and polishing our own reputations, rather than collectively pushing the medium forward.

But for those of us who would like to discuss these issues at a more “advanced” level, there’s a catch:

Because our audiences come to us for advice and insights, we spend the bulk of our time educating others and far too little time pursuing the lessons we need to improve ourselves.

What we need is to do both at once.  But how?

NOT by Biting the Hand That Feeds You

As our commenters have pointed out across these “improvement” manifestos, the vast majority of the people who read our blogs are the people who need to be educated by us.  Forsaking them would be bad business and bad karma, because it’s unwise (and unprofitable) to turn our backs on those very people who have validated us as being “knowledgeable” in the first place.

Instead of lamenting what we perceive as a lack of quality in social media, we’re better off leading by example.  This includes:

• Producing the best media that we can create ourselves
• Providing examples of work that we believe is exemplary
• Explaining HOW to create work that matters, with examples
• Interviewing the very practitioners that we would like to learn from
• Conducting experiments to gather, analyze and summarize our own data
• Focusing less on the quantity of our own output and more on the quality
• Refraining from “doing it wrong” when we recognize our own bad habits
• Innovating within existing tools and formats to show what’s possible

By doing so, we can continue to provide the insights we’ve become known for, while streamlining our own processes and minimizing the amount of white noise that we, ourselves, generate.

But there’s still one missing link:  we need to know who we’re talking to in the first place.

Preaching to the Void

This week, I taught a two-hour “social media crash course” at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance.  The attendees varied widely in their experience levels and their intentions for social media.  Some wanted to sell their work, some wanted to network with peers, and some had almost no online experience whatsoever.

But they all had one thing in common: I could see them.

Online, we never really know who we’re interfacing with.  We’re never sure how much attention they’re giving us, or when they lose interest, or why.  All we know is that X number of visitors read what we write, and a subset of them share our media with others.  Even the best analytic tools can’t provide the same context as a personal relationship.

So let’s try asking for one.

As I mentioned above, I’d like to know more about you.  This is not so I can market to you, or place demographically-appropriate ads on my blog.  As you may have noticed, this blog is ad-free and I don’t expect to change that anytime soon.  What I am interested in is better serving you.

Because you want to learn, and so do I.  And the more I know about you, the better equipped I’ll be to provide you with the information you care about, in a format that will encourage debate and discussion.  When both sides feel they’re directly connected, that’s the first step toward improving social media (and our overall experiences), day by day.

Have a second?  Leave a comment and let me know 3 things you’d like to see discussed more often on this blog.

Have a minute?  Take this short survey, so I can wrap my head around the slightly bigger picture of me, you and “us.”

And thanks for sharing.

(Also, thanks to Jordan Cooper, Christopher Penn, Lindsay Baish, Steve Klabnik and verso, whose tweets helped me shape the direction of this post.  See?  Audiences do make a difference…)

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Last night, while I was conducting a Social Media 101 workshop at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance, my Twitter account was hijacked… by my girlfriend.

I’d logged in on her laptop before the workshop began, and then I forgot to logout.  Since she’d accompanied me to the workshop, she suddenly found herself with two free hours to masquerade as me, and I’d be none the wiser.

Fortunately, Ann has no reason to dent my reputation by making offensive or controversial statements in my name.  Instead, she has a wicked sense of humor, and she started offering play-by-play commentary on my presentation style.

After awhile, she switched gears and started offering “fun facts about Justin,” which then morphed into a #funfactsaboutjustin hashtag.

And while anyone who didn’t see Ann’s original tweet probably thought it was bizarre that “I” would be tweeting about myself in the third person, my friends and my familiar Twitter conversationalists got a huge kick out of it because they were suddenly privy to a side of me that they wouldn’t otherwise see: me, as explained by someone who knows me a little too well.

Then, in order to illustrate a point, I pulled up my Twitter account during the presentation.  Ann’s cover was blown.  And the audience (and I) got a handy reminder that you should always log out of your personal accounts when you’ve accessed them from a public computer.

Afterward, I finally had time to read back through what “I’d” said, and see what others said in response.  It was entertaining.  And (mostly) true.  And surprising, because I never would have expected so many people to be so interested in the arbitrary details or commentary about my life…

… and yet, that’s what I already share with the world on a daily basis.

It took me awhile to realize that what Ann had been saying in my name isn’t all that different from what I already say myself.  But she was able to offer a slightly different viewpoint that I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have provided because… I’m me.  And because she channeled her commentary as me, the people who follow me got to be in on the joke in a way that wouldn’t have happened if Ann had tweeted from her own account (which she doesn’t have).

I’m happy to have my own account back, but I’m also thankful for my out-of-twitterbody-experience.  Not many people get to attend their own funeral, but hearing what they have to say about you (or as you) is priceless.

Now all we need to do is convince Ann to rejoin Twitter (which she quit years ago), and then I can patiently await the day when she leaves her account logged in on my laptop…

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Lately, I’ve been arguing against the perpetual “us vs. them” method of storytelling because I think it’s ruining our ability (and desire) to understand each other.  Opposing groups have always been quick to condemn “the other,” but the degree to (and zest with) which we do it these days borders on alarming.

A few days ago, Michael Hasko tweeted something that sums up our increasingly polarized world:

Apparently any sort of dissenting comment on a message board is trolling. -sigh-

And he’s right.  While you might think “social” media should involve an exchange of mutually-respected POVs, that’s rarely the case.  Instead, like-minded tribes flock together and hurl stones at one another with such zeal that anyone offering even a mildly disagreeable opinion is immediately branded as The Enemy.  With “discourse” like this, is it any wonder we all cling so desperately to our own fishbowls and echo chambers?

Since when did we become so convinced of our own infallibility that we’re now completely unwilling to consider the opinions of others?  Shouldn’t global access to information make us more skeptical of absolutes, and therefore more accommodating of our individual differences?  Or maybe it’s just the opposite: when we’re presented with so many opposing viewpoints, perhaps we cling to our own ever more fiercely because admitting we might be wrong would undermine one of the only “truisms” we don’t feel compelled to question on a daily basis.

Whatever the reason for our social decay, things have gotten out of hand.  From the Senate to the cubicles, we’ve lost our willingness to listen to, learn from and discuss any assertions other than our own.  And as this erosion of civility continues across all walks of life, we run the risk of handing future generations tracts of dogma instead of the ability to reason.

But it doesn’t have to go on like this.  We just need to take incremental steps away from our own intellectual isolation.  As such, here are 11 ways you can stop perpetuating the cycle of exclusion.

1. Stop preaching to the choir.

Everyone loves being told how smart they are — or, more importantly, how right they are.  The assurance of being correct is a drug like no other.  And the “connectivity” of the Internet provides you with an endless supply of listeners who’ll fall all over themselves to agree with you, no matter what you believe.

Avoid that.

If you really believe something, try selling it to someone who thinks you’re wrong.  If you’ve ever tried pitching social media to a hostile boardroom, debated the existence of God with an atheist or argued with a child who refused to buy into your set of rules, you quickly realized that “just because” is never the right answer.  Defending your beliefs helps remind you why you do believe them in the first place — and, occasionally, it reveals the gaps in your own logic that might lead you to question your own certainty.

2. Stop letting yourself be preached to.

If you only consume streams of information that reinforce your own presumptions, two things happen: you’ll never learn anything you didn’t already suspect was true, and you’ll never be surprised.  The people who sell you the information you’re imbibing already know that you’re naturally opposed to philosophical conflict, so they have no reason to rock your mental boat.  And the more candy they feed you, the less likely you are to stray.

You wouldn’t consent to eat the same three meals every day for the rest of your life, so why sign up for the informational equivalent?  Start sampling.

3. I agree with you, but…

A good friend of mine once noticed that I always got extremely aggravated whenever I’d argue with a certain ideologically opposed family friend.  His point of view made as little sense to me as mine did to him, and each of us refused to concede any points because we were both dead sure we were correct on all counts.

After hearing us debate our polarized philosophies on several occasions, my friend suggested I employ the concession above.  By doing so, he explained that two things would happen:

• I’d establish a common ground, thereby dissolving the brutal tone of the debate, and
• I’d clarify the specifics of what we were actually disagreeing about, rather than allowing the discussion to roam unbounded.

So I tried it.  And it worked.  And no, even today that family friend and I still don’t see eye to eye on the vast majority of the world’s problems.  But we can also drink a beer and talk about football without every conversation dissolving into an indictment of our belief systems.  Sometimes a truce is a two-sided victory.

4. Ignore national politics.

As someone who’s spent the past decade getting irate over American politics, only to look back and realize I could have been doing something useful with all that energy, I say this with all sincerity: we care way too much about what Washington is doing.

Thanks to our jingoistic American news cycle, people are more aware of what the President is doing on a daily basis than what their neighbors across the street or around the globe are ever doing.  Our priorities and sense of scope are broken, with our own government being portrayed as having a disproportionately large impact on our daily lives and well-being, compared with the larger and smaller influences that actually mean more to us in the long and short term.

Yes, we elected them.  And yes, they’re going to rape and pillage us as their way of saying thank you.  But obsessing over lofty claims, party rhetoric and things that may or may not happen only distracts us from the real news that we could have an impact on, if we only knew it was happening.

5. Focus on what matters directly.

You have bills to pay.  You have mouths to feed.  You have love to find, and some to give.  You have goals, hobbies, passions and concerns.  And you have a nagging sense that things could be better in your life, “if only I could ___.”

So does everyone else.  Get those basics squared away and you’ll have time to spend on filling in that blank, rather than alleviating your frustrations by obstructing someone else’s attempts to do the same.

6. Focus on what matters globally.

Every time I watch the TV news from another country, I find myself quietly astounded that there is another country besides America.  In the US, we only talk about world news when there’s a war, a disaster or a missing blond girl in a hard-to-spell place.  But if you venture beyond our borders, you’ll find there’s a swath of other people with other cultures, values, beliefs and problems that need to be solved.

You don’t need to solve them yourself, although that is a pretty American thing to want to do.  But just being aware of those problems so you can not contribute toward making them worse would certainly be a good start toward making things better.

And, as a bonus, you might not be so afraid of people with different skin colors, wardrobes or last names.

7. Take direct action in your locality.

Hating either national political party doesn’t get you very far.  Neither does making sweeping generalizations about systemic national problems like failing education, absent health care, abused ecology or a corrupt economy, and ending with a proclamation that these problems are “too big to change,” or that “someone should do something about it,” is just an excuse to keep whinging.

Surprise: you’re someone.  And no, you can’t wake up tomorrow and fix nationwide problems with a wink and a smile.  But you can probably make a difference in your neighborhood.  You can probably call your city council representative and ask for help.  And you can probably conduct yourself the way you wish your elected officials and other people of influence would, and lead others by your example.

It’s not as folksy as bitching about Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow over wing night with your buds.  But it might make everyone’s life a bit more palatable.

8. Hold people accountable.

When your friend, lover, coworker or boss doesn’t do something he said he would, point it out.  Don’t be a dick about it, but don’t let it go uncorrected either.  Because the more lax you are in your accounting of others, the more lax everyone — including you — allows themselves to become.  We’re only ever good people when there’s a reward for it, or when there’s a penalty for being bad.  Don’t wait for someone else to enforce acceptable standards; that’s how mediocrity takes control in a lazy culture.

Oh, and when it comes to politics, forget party affiliations: if your elected official didn’t do what he said he’d do, or if she did things you find reprehensible, vote ‘em out.  Fear that “the other party would only be worse” is irrational; focus less on how bad it could get and focus more on holding your representatives accountable for doing the job you paid them to do with your tax dollars.

9. Be unafraid of change.

As mentioned above, fear of change is irrational.  We’re always petrified of “how bad it could get,” but we forget two things:

• Whatever “it” is, it’s probably already pretty bad now, and
• No matter how bad “it” gets, we’ll live through it.

Look at the vast amounts of shit people have lived through for centuries.  For every enlightenment, there’s a dark age.  For every scientific advance, there’s a worldwide cataclysm.  Your parents always had it better and had it worse, depending on the topic of conversation.  And the past always looks more romantic than the future, because the past is something we’ve proven we could get through while the future just might involve that one insurmountable challenge we just can’t overcome.

Don’t bet on it.  We’ve come this far without destroying the planet, so one more bad piece of legislation or ill-timed hurricane won’t do us in either.  Worry less about the unknown obstacles and fear more the possibility that if we don’t move toward change, this might be as good as it gets.

10. Refuse stereotypes.

The problem with stereotypes is that they’re usually accurate.  Clichés don’t happen based on once-in-a-lifetime irregularities; they happen because the same kinds of people repeatedly do the same kinds of things, and those things tend to be irredeemably stupid.

But instead of seeing those aggravations as uncorrectable offenses, ask the larger question: why does this happen? What cultural, sociological, geographic or political influences cause certain people to act in certain ways, or to believe certain things?  How do those habits get started, and why do they perpetuate despite their impractical disadvantages?  Are they even considered disadvantages by the people who do them?

Once you understand that everything has a root cause (or multiple causes), you can understand our differences rather than writing them off as cultural deficiencies.  And that brings us one degree closer to not hating each other.

11. Question certainties.

If you do nothing else, doubt everything.  Doubt what you’ve always believed.  Doubt what everyone else believes, too.  Refuse to say with certainty that any one thing is irrevocably true.  See the world as a massive grey area, rather than pillars of black and white.

The world is full of conflicts and riddles, and we have the capacity to quell some of them and solve others.  And yes, by doing so, we just might create more problems in the process.  Such is life.  But whatever worldviews we form, and whatever actions we take, we should be making our decisions based on data, not ideologies.

And if that means you spend a little less time watching TV news, a little more time talking to those neighbors you’ve never actually introduced yourself to, and a lot less time posting anonymous hate screed to your social network of choice, then maybe 2011 won’t seem like the festering shithole 2010 seems poised to become.

And that’s a start.

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Last week, I wrote about Spokeo, a service that lets people who barely know you find out more about you than either of you might realize.  But the problem isn’t the service itself — it’s our expectations of privacy, and our intentions for wanting privacy in the first place.

As Ian M. Rountree writes in his sharp-eyed post about the fallacy of privacy:

“Because anonymity is futile, we need to guard our manners.”

Services like Spokeo — or even just Facebook — dilute privacy to the point of meaninglessness.  Anything you’ve ever done online is increasingly searchable and findable by the people who want to do so, which makes obsessing over the things we want to keep hidden from them futile indeed.

On the other hand, secrets are now easier than ever to find — and, therefore, worth ever less to those seeking to destroy you.  (“Destroy you?” Someone has a high opinion of himself…)  Which means secrets are cheap, and muckraking is cheap, and tearing apart someone’s reputation by divulging their own worst actions means less and less as those worst actions are, by nature, becoming more and more public.

What Happens When the Skeletons in Your Closet Don’t Matter?

We impeached a president over a blow job.  We indicted a quarterback for murdering dogs.  We’re currently fascinated by whether or not a golf hero will survive the exposure of his seemingly endless adultery — not professionally, because such transgressions obviously never impacted his game, but publicly, “in the eyes of the people,” which is (we tell ourselves) all that really matters.

Except it isn’t.

What other people think of you matters infinitely less than what you do.  We’re taught this in gradeschool, and then we promptly forget it, because the rest of life is predicated on presumption, opinion and appearance.  Facades are a goldmine, while accomplishments (or a lack thereof) are quickly dismissed and easily forgotten.  And if that’s the case, why should failures be such taboo?

Everyone has secrets.  Everyone does things they’d prefer to keep quiet, or which seem to be in direct opposition with their public persona.  That’s life, and it’s the duality of human nature — we’re forever torn between who we wish we were and who we are right now.  Yet, paradoxically, whenever someone’s private secrets have been divulged and their public persona has been tarnished as a result, we become fascinated with the spectacle — despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that the exact same thing (minus the fame) could happen to us.

People who never cared about golf a month ago are now riveted by the saga of Tiger Woods and his seemingly endless harem, and the only question asked more than “How did he get away with being such a duplicitous adulterer for so long and still play golf better than anyone else on the planet?” is “How will he handle this?”  Because as much as the public loves to see a good implosion, it’s also watching for instructions on how to handle this same kind of PR nightmare, should such an expose ever happen to them — or us — or you.

Because “public relations” isn’t actually about relating to the public; it’s about convincing the public that your own version of a story is the most relevant.  Nobody cares what actually happened; we only care about what the stories we tell each other mean, and who’s believing them.

Which is ironic, because who we are is always more interesting than who we pretend to be.

Somehow, even though it’s been around for years, I managed to remain unaware of Spokeo until yesterday.  But lord knows they’ve been aware of me — and you.

If you’re also unfamiliar with the service, it’s basically an aggregator of anything you’ve ever done online.  You join, and then Spokeo scrapes your email contact list and shows you what everyone on your list is doing across every one of their web profiles.  It’s like stalking by accident — as evidenced by the color-coded gossip mongers on their homepage.

Spokeo currently boasts input from 40 different websites, giving anyone who’s ever emailed you before a pretty detailed picture of who you are and what you do — and have done.  Ever.

Check out these pull-quote testimonials about the power of the service, also pulled from their homepage:

Got that?

If it’s hard to read in these screen caps, PC World, ABC News and TechCrunch each laud Spokeo’s ability to “dig up information on friends, foes, ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends and everyone in-between — and the best part is they don’t have to know you’re keeping track of them.”

Yay!  Now it’s stalking on purpose!

And while it’s obviously appealing to people who just can’t stop cyberstalking everyone they know, that’s just the gateway to it’s actual usefulness: business and law enforcement (as noted in the nav bar in the first image).  By luring in the nosy next-door neighbors of the world, Spokeo automatically populates its database with information about everyone its users know — which then becomes legitimately useful to the people who can make actual use of that information by marketing to or, potentially, litigating against you.

Reel in the Suckers, and They’ll Drag the Whole World Behind Them

How did I hear about Spokeo?  Oddly, not from any of the blog articles written about it over the years, which (correctly) point out the system’s uncanny resemblance to an uninvited Big Brother whose tentacles reach farther than its users initially realize.  I heard about it when someone who’s emailed me once before evidently signed up for the service.

I know Cristina in passing, but we’re not on a “hey, let’s grab a beer” level of acquaintanceship.  But because I’m in her address book, she now knows everything about me that Spokeo can tell her.

Notice the creative wording in this email, which makes it sound like people are using Spokeo to voluntarily follow me out of convenience, rather than as an automatically triggered response to a pre-set instruction from the service.  That’s a much cuddlier approach than the “Warning: Your privacy is being breached” type of emails they used to send out a few years ago.

Also, notice the other twist in this “opt-in” puzzle: in the fine print of Cristina’s email, it says: “If you wish to opt out of all future emails, click here.”  As though, because Cristina signed up for the service, everyone in her address book must now choose to opt out of also being part of the service by association.  How cosy.

Of course, as most observers have pointed out, there’s nothing Spokeo can find that isn’t already “out there” anyway.  In fact, they’re even doing you a service by showing you all the unused accounts (or incriminating information) you’ve left littered behind you on the information superhighway — and you might want to clean those up.  But the purists will argue that just because I’ve responded to an email from a client or a Craigslist seller, that doesn’t mean those people deserve to know everything they can discover about me with one click.

Too late: the Internet is here.  And it knows you.

Lately, I’ve been discontent with the state and quality of social media.  I’ve lamented the lack of trailblazers, questioned the purpose of an audience and even called for an outright rebellion.  And now, amid all this white noise that passes for communication, we have yet another sign that independence in America is more discouraged than ever:

PittGirl just got fired.

If you’re not from Pittsburgh, you may not be familiar with PittGirl, the blogger who (until this week) posted anonymously hysterical rants and bittersweet observations about Pittsburgh for three years on her old site, The Burgh Blog.  Due to the increasing difficulty of maintaining her anonymity, PittGirl finally outed herself this week.  It turns out her name is actually Virginia Montanez, she’s 35, happily married and a mother of two.  She’d blogged anonymously because she was concerned that her comedic evisceration of local targets like mayor Luke Ravenstahl, UPMC, and Steelers Ben “Duke of Fug” Roethlisberger and Jeff “Skippy Skeeve” Reed might get her in trouble at work.

Turns out she was right.  One day after going public, Montanez was fired from her job as the Director of Marketing and Communications for NEED, a Pittsburgh-based scholarship program for minority students, where she’d served for the past 6 years.  (Amusingly, Montanez is still listed on NEED’s employee page at the time of this post.)

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Montanez’s story so closely resembles that of Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce), who was also fired after posting sarcastic and unflattering anecdotes about her day job.*  (In fact, Montanez was technically “dooced,” according to popular web parlance.)  In the aftermath of her dismissal, Armstrong parlayed her considerable writing skills into a full-time career. PittGirl’s fans undoubtedly expect her to do the same; it’s not Montanez’s career options that worry me.

It’s that the paranoiacs were right.

Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that Armstrong and Montanez are each strong-willed, sharp-tongued women who were fired for daring to detail the idiosyncracies and idiocies of their daily lives.  Let’s also kid ourselves into believing that a man who’d done the exact same thing would have also been fired by his face-saving male superiors.  (Sexism would only muddy these waters, so let’s keep our paranoia clean.)

For me, the bigger issue is this: since when did America become a nation where holding a contrarian opinion is a fireable offense?

I understand the politics of always needing to appear positive, and I find them wearying and fraudulent.  That’s one of the many reasons I’m a freelancer; this way, I only have to kiss my own ass.  And yet, even my own sarcastic opinions and unpulled punches have allegedly cost me work, so I can only imagine how many people are lining up to not hire someone like Montanez for fear that she might eventually point out their flaws, or otherwise challenge their obsessively bubble-wrapped self-image.

When Montanez temporarily pulled the plug on PittGirl last year for fear that someone else might out her, I lamented the need for her anonymity in the first place.  When she decided to go public this week, I gave her credit for being resilient enough to withstand the impending slings and arrows she’d been fearing these three long years.  But now, realizing just how right she was to be paranoid, my respect for her has doubled, even as my respect for society in general continues to plummet ever downward.

* Correction: I originally wrote that Heather Armstrong blogged anonymously at Dooce.  I was wrong; she blogged in her own name.