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November 30, 2005

teenager repellent

At the back of Ms. Magazine, there's a section called "No Comment" where they re-post advertisements of various sorts that are just so wrong it hurts. They don't analyze them but they know their audience will get it given their voice in general. Well, given my actively pro-youth culture voice, check this out:

What's the Buzz? Rowdy Teenagers Don't Want to Hear It

::sigh::

November 29, 2005
Barry Journal
What's the Buzz? Rowdy Teenagers Don't Want to Hear It

By SARAH LYALL
BARRY, Wales - Though he did not know it at the time, the idea came to Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a factory with his father, a manufacturing executive in London. Opening the door to a room where workers were using high-frequency welding equipment, he found he could not bear to go inside.

"The noise!" he complained.

"What noise?" the grownups asked.

Now 39, Mr. Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day - that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can - to fashion a novel device that he hopes will provide a solution to the eternal problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside stores and cause trouble.

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Mr. Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he says, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.

So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in South Wales. Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside.

"On the low end of the scale, it would be intimidating for customers," said Robert Gough, who, with his parents, owns the store. "On the high end, they'd be in the shop fighting, stealing and assaulting the staff."

Mr. Gough (pronounced GUFF) planned to install a sound system that would blast classical music into the parking lot, another method known to horrify hang-out youths into dispersing, but never got around to it. But last month, Mr. Stapleton gave him a Mosquito for a free trial. The results were almost instantaneous. It was as if someone had used anti-teenager spray around the entrance, the way you might spray your sofas to keep pets off. Where disaffected youths used to congregate, now there is no one.

At first, members of the usual crowd tried to gather as normal, repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging me to turn it off," Mr. Gough said. But he held firm and neatly avoided possible aggressive confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic."

A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying.

"It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. "It gets inside you."

Miss Evans and a 12-year-old friend who did not want to be interviewed were once part of a regular gang of loiterers, said Mr. Gough's father, Philip. "That little girl used to be a right pain, shouting abuse and bad language," he said of the 12-year-old. "Now she'll just come in, do her shopping and go."

Robert Gough, who said he could hear the noise even though he is 34, described it as "a pulsating chirp," the sort you might hear if you suffered from tinnitus. By way of demonstration, he emitted a batlike squeak that was indeed bothersome.

Mr. Stapleton, a security consultant whose experience in installing store alarms and the like alerted him to the gravity of the loitering problem, studied other teenage-repellents as part of his research. Some shops, for example, use "zit lamps," which drive teenagers away by casting a blue light onto their spotty skin, accentuating any whiteheads and other blemishes.

Using his children as guinea pigs, he tried a number of different noise and frequency levels, testing a single-toned unit before settling on a pulsating tone which, he said, is more unbearable, and which can be broadcast at 75 decibels, within government auditory-safety limits. "I didn't want to make it hurt," Mr. Stapleton said. "It just has to nag at them."

The device has not yet been tested by hearing experts.

Andrew King, a professor of neurophysiology at Oxford University, said in an e-mail interview that while the ability to hear high frequencies deteriorates with age, the change happens so gradually that many non-teenagers might well hear the Mosquito's noise. "Unless the store owners wish to sell their goods only to senior citizens," he wrote, "I doubt that this would work."

Mr. Stapleton argues, though, that it doesn't matter if people in their 20's and 30's can hear the Mosquito, since they are unlikely to be hanging out in front of stores, anyway.

It is too early to predict the device's future. Since an article about it appeared in The Grocer, a British trade magazine, Mr. Stapleton has become modestly famous, answering inquiries from hundreds of people and filling orders for dozens of the devices, not only in stores but also in places like railroad yards. He appeared recently on Richard & Judy, an Oprah-esque afternoon talk show, where the device successfully vexed all but one of the members of a girls' choir.

He is considering introducing a much louder unit that can be switched on in emergencies with a panic button. It would be most useful when youths swarm into stores and begin stealing en masse, a phenomenon known in Britain as steaming. The idea would be to blast them with such an unacceptably loud, high noise - a noise inaudible to older shoppers - that they would immediately leave.

"It's very difficult to shoplift," Mr. Stapleton said, "when you have your fingers in your ears."

Category: youth culture

Tags: youth

Posted by zephoria at 10:27 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

November 29, 2005

Attention Networks vs. Social Networks

(originally posted on centrality)

Network analysts often speak about (un)directed graphs. In essence, this refers to whether or not someone you know knows you. If reciprocity is required by the system, it's an undirected graph. The vast majority of online social networking tools assume that users are modeling friendship and thus if you're friends with someone, they better damn well be friends with you. As such, they use undirected graphs and you are required to confirm that they are indeed your friend.

Well, what about fandom? Orkut actually put the concept of fan into their system, but in order to be someone's fan, you had to be their friend first. Baroo? I've noticed that Friendster introduced fans, although it is not consistent across the site; the system decides who is celebrity. I can be a fan of Pamela Anderson but i cannot be a fan of Michel Foucault or Henry Jenkins. While i can understand that the former is clearly a Fakester, the latter is actually a real academic with a Friendster Profile that i genuinely admire (far more than Ms. Anderson). Even on MySpace where bands have a separate section, i have to add them to my friends; i cannot simply be fans.

The world is not an undirected graph and very little about social life online is actually undirected. Many social relations are unequal; they are rooted in directional graphs - fandom, power, hierarchy. So why do we use undirected models?

Of course, there are many systems that have directed graphs. I can read blogs by bloggers who who don't read me; blogrolls are directed. I can have friends on LiveJournal that do not reciprocate. I can subscribe to del.icio.us feeds of people that i admire without forcing them to do the same. I can make a Flickr user a contact simply so that i can watch their photos. I do all this because i know the world is not undirected.

Part of the problem is that we've built a model off of social networks instead of attention networks and there's a very subtle difference between the two. Attention networks recognize power. They recognize that someone may actually have a good collection of references or be a good photographer and that someone else may want to pay attention to them even if their own collections are not worthy of reciprocation. Attention networks realize that the world is not an undirected graph.

There are many good reasons to use attention networks in systems instead of social networks. Do you really want to force people to get permission to subscribe to public material of someone else? Do you really want to put people through the awkwardness of having to approve someone that they don't know simply because one person respects the other? Of course, the awkwardness of social networks does not disappear simply by having directed graphs. Reciprocity is still an issue whenever the networks are performative (visible as a statement of connection). This is most apparent in the blogging community where people feel insulted that they are not included on the blogroll of a blog that they read regularly. Thus, people feel the need to perform a relation of someone that they do not read simply for good social measure.

Attention networks are far more visible when people actually use the network for some purpose. Friendster networks are meant to be performative first and foremost. There's minimal cost to having more friends. It may foul up your gallery searches but, really, does it make a difference if you see 4,325,935 people instead of 4,311,266? Attention networks like LiveJournal and Flickr combine the network with the subscription process. You want to keep your Friends page clean and to only get information from people you care about. Of course, LJ also recognizes that there are times when you need plausible deniability. It allows you to create a separate group of LJ folks that you actually watch (separate from your "friends" list). The subscription process is inherently a process of attention relations, not friendship.

Of course, the computation needed for directed graphs is much greater than for undirected graphs. Is that the main reason that most services require reciprocity? Even when it's not the best mechanism for the system? Or are there other reasons why folks are obsessed with undirected graphs?

Category: social software

Tags: attention_networks

Posted by zephoria at 9:00 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (1)

November 27, 2005

capturing changes in news

This weekend, i managed to see two distinctly different movies concerning radical shifts in journalism and the differences were chilling - Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck.

Capote is a portrayal of Truman Capote, focusing on his work in creating In Cold Blood. In Cold Blood was the first journalistic novel, taking a true story and adding literary flair to draw you in. It allowed people to fetishize real news. In the film, you see Capote devolve as he creates the masterpiece that makes him famous. Writing the book, getting to know and helping support the murderers killed him... Capote never wrote another book and died an alcoholic. Of course, what is only hinted at in the film is the role that his book had on the living people he portrayed, on the people who were intimately affected by this tragedy. If it weren't for Capote, the murderers would not have gotten their appeals, a the small town in Kansas would never be infamous, and the people could've moved on from the horrors without their lives perpetually being invaded for Capote's gain. Legacies have a price.

Good Night, and Good Luck is the story of how Edward R. Murrow took on Joseph McCarthy by taking advantage of his privilege as a trusted reporter to offer editorialized reporting in order to reveal the underlying problems of McCarthy's approach. Murrow took on McCarthy when no one else was willing and many credit him for ending the Red Scare. In doing so, Murrow was accused of being a red, his good friend committed suicide and he almost lost his job at CBS. Yet, there's a reason why he's an icon to most journalists - he did what was right. Of course, every ounce of this movie makes you think of contemporary times... (are there any journalists today who would stand up to the current regime?)

Both films portray characters who made a choice to write in a way that frames a story, recognizing that the true facts are only one part. Yet, Capote did it for personal gain at a great cost to both him and the town portrayed. Murrow, on the other hand, did it for what he felt was a moral responsibility. Both realized that the reporter did the framing. And yet, at what cost?

What are the moral responsibilities in reporting? In speaking in public? When we recognize that there is no neutral truth, no fair and balanced anying, everything is framed.. then what? How many more Red Scares can we perpetuate? How many communities can we destroy by fetishizing their losses?

Category: reflections & rants

Tags: capote murrow journalism cultureoffear

Posted by zephoria at 9:31 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

November 25, 2005

the demons

I'm often told that academics chase their demons. They study what they can't understand in themselves, following their demons out of a desire for resolution.

I've also noticed that many of my professional colleagues work to avoid their demons. They travel to outrun them and work so excessively in fear that their demons may confront them.

I started wondering what it means to be a workaholic academic. Does it mean that you're chasing your demons as they chase you? Or does it mean that you find masochistic joy in constantly facing those demons? Or does it mean that you become your demons?

Category: social observations

Tags: demons

Posted by zephoria at 12:18 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

November 22, 2005

framing the discourse of drugs and death

Last week, a friend of many of my friends died. Frostbyte (Kevin McCormick) was a brilliant light artist whose live should be celebrated. Unfortunately, the circumstances of his death have introduced some troubling conversations about drugs and production. What is most horrifying is how it has been taking up by the media; i can't help but watch the news clippings with absolute horror.

What we know is that when police officers investigated Warehouse 23, they found an array of chemicals and glassware. According to the Herald, "Police say they found hundreds of chemicals used to concoct club and date-rape drugs such as crystal methamphetamine and 'Special K.' ... Investigators found chemicals used to manufacture crystal meth, ecstasy and the date-rape drugs gamma hydroxy butyrate (GHB) and ketamine hydrochloride ('Special K')." In response, the "state Senate passed a bill that would prohibit consumers from buying more than 9 grams of pseudoephedrine at a time" and the Fort Point district was closed down to investigate (Globe). In much of the coverage, the lab is being called "impressive" and the Northeast's largest. (And of course, then the articles discuss the fear and horrors of crystal meth.)

There are three different things that are bothering me about what's going on. First, producing meth is very different than producing GHB. Meth labs are highly toxic (and thus the reason for the hyper panic involving the closing down of Fort Point) because they produce byproducts; they also usually involve large containers, not glass vials. The coverage focuses entirely on the presence of chemicals for meth; there is no mention of byproducts. Interestingly, the chemicals for meth are also used in producing other drugs (both legal and illegal). If this were a large meth production house, there would be byproducts, not just potential chemicals. This itself made me very wary of the information i was getting.

Based on information about the presence of chemicals, it has been taken as a given that this is a meth lab. The result is a moral panic in Boston which the legislature responds to by passing laws that do little in the way of stopping meth production. So much for innocent until proven guilty or logical outcomes. What role does the press have in actually determining someone's innocence or guilt? I get very very worried about this. What's worse is that when the police realize that it's not a meth lab, it won't hit the papers, laws won't be turned back. Everyone will continue to be convinced that it's a meth lab. Gah.

Finally, i can't help but scream when i see the press cover GHB as a "date-rape drug." (And since when did ketamine become a date-rape drug too?? It requires snorting or injection!) This framing presumes that the reason to produce this drug is to engage in date-rapes, supporting the moral panic. Unfortunately, i don't think that it would be nearly as news-flashy to talk about GHB as the "alternative to alcohol with no hangover." GHB has a lot of problems and it makes me very nervous to see it in clubs because the OD dose is not that much higher than the desired dose. The bigger problem is that you cannot under any circumstances mix it with alcohol because this will most definitely produce a black-out (and thus, the "date-rape" claim). That said, most people who make or use GHB know this, prefer it to alcohol and know better than to mix the two. To assume that it is a precursor to rape is misrepresentative and irresponsible. Internally, i'm troubled by this framing. On one hand, it's inaccurate and what happened to truthful reporting? On the other, i detest the presence of GHB in clubs and i understand the urge to use scare tactics to keep it out.. but does that really work? And what damage does poor reporting cause in the long run? (::cough:: This is your brain on drugs... Oh no it's not.)

I'm worried about how much power the press has over cultural interpretations. I see a lot of my friends hurting right now, trying to come to peace with the death of their friend and cope with the chaos that has ensued. And while some things make sense, much of what is being reported does not line up. Furthermore, it's being used to frame a larger debate in a pretty problematic way. And it sucks to having the death of one of your friends be used to such ends, particularly when he wouldn't have wanted it that way. Some folks are outraged, arguing that we should make certain that such situations never happen again. Personally, in the back of my mind, i can't help but think that i'd rather die having sex on E than decaying alone in a nursing home.

Update: Globe reports that it is not a meth lab but that it was most likely used to create designer (psychedelic) drugs.

Category: altered states

Tags: frostbyte kevinmccormick meth drug

Posted by zephoria at 8:08 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

November 20, 2005

fun party invitations

Last night, i went to a housewarming at the house of George and Jason. Their party invitation was hysterical so i had to share:

Come warm the house and drink the beer while we BBQ and dance the night away. In order to maximize your fun, we're set up a strict timetable for events. Please coordinate your attendance accordingly.

4pm Jason attempts to light BBQ; George and Jason have their first beer
4:10 Jason realizes he has no skillz
4:15 Jason douses BBQ with highly combustible compounds
4:16 Fire is once again rediscovered by man
4:30 George finishes her fourth beer; Jason still nursing his first
5:00 George takes over BBQ; Jason passes out on neighbor's lawn
6:00 Jason watches George blow smoke rings
7:00 George and Jason arm-wrestle for who has to take out the trash
7:13 First guest arrives
8:00 Jason threatens George with lawsuits for being funnier than him
9:00 George threatens to delete Jason's flickr account
9:30 Jason uploads photo of George threatening him
10:00 Prince comes on the iPod and a dance-truce is declared
11:00 ...

Where: George and Jason's new pad
San Francisco, CA 94114
map: http://tinyurl.com/xxx
drunk directions: (510) xxx-xxxx

What to bring: Something to BBQ or drink
The Noise
The Funk
It On
Up Baby
The House Down

Category: social observations

Posted by zephoria at 2:18 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

November 16, 2005

EFF and Bloggers' Rights

Support Bloggers' Rights!

I strongly encourage folks to support EFF in their efforts to support bloggers' rights!

Category: blogging

Tags: eff

Posted by zephoria at 8:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

November 13, 2005

homosexuality

Homosexual is a term originating from the greek words Homos, meaning "same", and sexual, meaning "sexual." It is used to describe couples who have sex in the same manner each night. This is different from heterosexuals who have sex in varying positions.

Homosexuality is especially popular in most Christian religions where anything aside from missionary style sex is considered sodomy. Most christians are outright homosexuals and believe heterosexuality to be a sin. -- Uncylclopedia

ROFL. ::crash::giggle:: Oooh... my belly hurts. ::laugh::laugh::laugh::

Category: gender & sexuality

Tags: homosexuality

Posted by zephoria at 2:44 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

God will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger

During the elections last week, Dover Pennsylvania chose to replace their school board with eight new members. Why? The incumbents had supported "intelligent design" and the citizens were outraged and expressed it by voting. Well, this did not please Pat Robertson who issued a pox on all their houses:

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city... And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there" -- Pat Robertson on The 700 Club

I read this and my jaw just fell slack on the floor. I know that i haven't paid much attention to Pat Robertson lately but since when is it permissible for judgment to be made by anyone but God? And how does this rhetoric of hatred and vengeance represent God? And let's assume that the citizens of Dover did poor by God - since when can you not ask for forgiveness? Since when will He not be there?

Somehow, the version of Christianity that i learned entirely missed this type of hate. If Jesus were to descend again, he would be lynched in a matter of seconds by those who worship him for trying to help homeless people, drug addicts and prostitutes. How is it that people cannot see the problems and hypocrisy of such a hateful interpretation of the Bible?

(For the loving side of Christianity, check out Jo and Cross Left)

Category: social observations

Tags: christianity religion hate

Posted by zephoria at 11:00 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

November 11, 2005

Homophily of Professional Conferences

(reposted from centrality)

Ever notice how many professional conferences tend to lack diversity (in ideas, methodologies, demographics)? Ah, homophily. Ever wonder why this might be problematic? Or why it might stifle innovation and creativity?

sitting in the boardroom / the i'm-so-bored room
listening to the suits / talk about their world
they can make straight lines / out of almost anything
except for the line / of my upper lip when it curls -- Ani

Following from network analysis, we know that birds of a feather stick together and that they invite more like minded birds to join them. And we also know that networks play a key role in innovation and that disparate networks are critical to creativity. Let's keep those two bits in mind when we think about conferences.

Professional conferences are fundamentally social networking events; don't let anyone convince you that people are there to listen to lectures. We attend to connect with the people that we know and meet new people who might inspire us (or hire us). Professional conferences are also primarily word-of-mouth events, particularly the smaller ones. You go because your colleagues are going or because someone you know is going and you track their whereabouts. Additionally, speakers are frequently chosen by organizers who they know; they hope these speakers will attract a particular (paying) crowd. Well, by and large, we are friends with, listen to and know of with people like us, making conferences painfully homogeneous affairs.

Unfortunately, even the most conscientious organizers tend to have difficult diversifying their audience because they are under pressure to make certain (paying) audiences attend. Attendees also magnify the homophily problem by choosing events based on their friends. Likewise, companies attend if they're guaranteed their target audience (for either marketing or hiring). If homophily works so well for these groups, why should we try to diversify?

While we go to conferences to see our friends, the opportunity to learn and really think from a new perspective is still there. We all learn from new people and yet we rarely leave a conference having met more than a handful of people. But try going to a different country - it's a mind-opening experience. You see your own culture from a new lens. You come back to your home environment and you bring with you ideas based on observations abroad. There's something very powerful about really moving oneself out of one's comfort zone, out of the norms.

Well, the same thing can occur at conferences. The more diverse the audience, the more potential for really new ideas because you can engage with more disparate world views. People of different theoretical, methodological, ethnic, religious, political, cultural backgrounds, genders, races, socio-economic classes, lifestyles, perspectives... Diversity matters for more than some PC idea of what's right. Diversity matters because it helps us see the world in new perspective and engage with development that supports a diverse world. It fundamentally helps innovation.

Those looking to hire at conferences should also care about diversity. If you meet someone at a conference who's exactly like you, what do they bring to your company? Most companies want innovative minds. Well, you don't innovate best when in a room full of people like you; you innovate best when you get to play with a lot of different people because you take their throw-away ideas, remix them with yours and voila, new idea!

Organizers want to have a diverse audience because their event will be remembered as the place where someone's new idea came from, where the ideal employee was hired. Of course, it's also tricky because over time, as excited attendees return, they too will end up being homogeneous, at least in ideas/perspective. This happens everywhere - events/companies/schools that were once a site of innovation become stale because it's difficult to keep things fresh.

Of course, it's also difficult for newcomers to attend a conference that is so solidified in its attendees. It makes it hard to penetrate, to be a newcomer. The amount of effort it requires to attend as a stranger, to learn the cultural values that bonds attendees... it is much higher. Yet, so are the potential rewards. But not if the attendees have so much centrality that they do not wish to meet newcomers.

So, what do we do about it? How do we support diversity in order to evolve? How do we help integrate new people to meet the consistent attendee? Conference organizers design programs; how can they design the event as a whole? There is an art to event organizing and it is not solely one of choosing good topics. But it is definitely a tricky social network problem. You want there to be just enough but not too much centrality. You also want to use the topics and common interests to bond people, not segregate them. You want to help people who will only really meet 2-3 people to meet people most unlike them but who they will still have enough in common to have reasons to engage. What else? What else can social network theory tell us about conference organizing to support innovation through diversity?

Category: reflections & rants

Posted by zephoria at 4:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

November 10, 2005

MySpace blamed for alienated youth's threats

Another beautiful MySpace article: Online Terror Threat Hits Local High School. The "terrorists" are two boys who are threatening to show up in school with machine guns. As a result of their posts to MySpace, most students didn't show up for school. The school district is pissed and blames MySpace for enabling students to "post their thoughts and ideas" without surveillance. They are deciding whether or not to sue MySpace.

::smacking forehead:: We didn't learn from Columbine did we? Both of those kids also posted their threats on websites. What they were doing was a cry for help. I'd bank money that those kids are feeling alienated and disillusioned with authority. Goddess knows the number of times i had dreams about blowing up my school growing up. Why is MySpace at fault? Because they are letting kids speak their minds? Is it better that they speak their minds so far removed from adult vision that they can't actually be supported when things go horribly wrong? Why not learn from the kids and try to support them rather than take away their tools for expression?

I was talking with a friend about this and he reminded me that these services help kids who are alienated come together and, sometimes, this means that they get validated in their alienation which exacerbates the situation. He's right and this is a problem with some of the cutters on LiveJournal - they try to outdo each other with more severe images. But then i talked to a psychologist about the cutters and she pointed out that she's so thankful for LJ. Now, she can see into the lives of people like her patients, better understand their psychology than anything they say in therapy and be a more effective therapist. Sure, she has to deal with the peer validation issue, which she admitted was more significant on LJ than in everyday life, but she said it's worth it because knowing what's going on in their heads helps her help them overcome the peer pressure bit as well as the actual damage. She told me it was far more effective this way.

In my research group, we started talking about cultural differences regarding peer groups and age-related validation. In the US, it's expected that you will be friends with people your age, but elsewhere, it's more common to socialize with cousins and family members of all different ages. Throughout our lives in the US, we're chunked by age and then we're spewed out into the adult world and it's so weird to make friends with people that are older than us. And we think it to be weird when friends span large age gaps.

The problem with a lack of diversity around age is that you're constantly being validated by people who are in the same stage as you, who are dealing with the same problems and don't have much in the way of perspective. I was thinking about how Manuel Castells always talks about the solution to ending violence starts with having diverse groups of people always interact. He thinks about this mostly in terms of socio-economic class, but does this apply to age too? Would we stop more youth violence if teens weren't so age-segregated? If the groups that provided them with validation were from different age slices?

It's pretty horrifying that we're talking about teens as "terrorists" now. More fear, always more fear. Of course, the more we fear teens and place restrictions on them, the more prone they will to seek agency through whatever means possible, even violence. We're creating our own demise through oppression. (::cough:: Paris.) When will we figure out how to support people through feelings of alienation?

God, i feel like a broken record on this one, but it seems like the media is doing a damn good job acting as one too.

Category: myspace

Tags: myspace youth alienation cultureoffear

Posted by zephoria at 2:08 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack (2)

November 9, 2005

election day: analysis of California Proposition 73

hold me down
i am floating away
into the overcast skies
over my home town
on election day -- Ani

When the election results started pouring in tonight, i was in a state of horror. Initially, it looked like Proposition 73 was going to pass. Thankfully, with most of the returns in, it looks like it will die a well-deserved death.

Some folks have asked why i am so obsessed with Proposition 73 and i feel the need to articulate the problems that emerge because of it. First, take a look at the propaganda:

• Protect Our Daughters - Parents have a right to know

  

• Campaign for Teen Safety - Their safety, our responsibility: If she can't come to me, I just want to keep her safe

  
  

There are some amazing linguistic messages there: protect vs. safety, right vs. responsibility. The Yes folks give parents ultimate power while the No folks are invested in youth agency. The imagery from the Yes folks is directly targeted as parents and speaks past youth, never inviting them to participate in a dialogue about this proposition. The Yes folks are speaking a protectionist rhetoric while the No folks are speaking the language of respect. Protectionist rhetoric comes from a place of ageism, a belief that there is a clear division between adults and youth: adults know what they're doing; youth do not.

Unfortunately, ageism is one of the least acknowledged forms of oppression in this society. As a society, we're pretty shitty to our youngest and oldest members, thinking them too stupid to deserve agency. These groups often have no voice, no power. Adults will never go back to being youth and they can't see life from a youth's perspective. Instead, they project their own needs onto youth. They create hazing rituals following the "we did this, you should too" mentality. Why do we try to strip those we have power over of any agency?

As with most political propaganda, the problems are not addressed. The target market for the Yes folks is clearly middle-upper class parents. Yet, the effects of this proposition would place undue burden on poor or working class teens, abandoned and abused teens. I think back to the time that i spent hanging out with teens on Haight. Many of them came from abused families and found the street to be safer. Unfortunately, these are teens are quite susceptible to rape and unwanted pregnancies. Can you imagine them needing permission from parents?

There is no doubt that parents should know, but this does not mean the government should mandate it. Parents need to earn the respect of their children, not demand obedience. Parents are informed when parents engender a trusting relationship. But when parents don't, teens should be able to turn to those that they do trust. This is not to say that there aren't fucked up stories... the Yes folks certainly highlight them. But what they don't highlight is what the consequences would be on abused youth. And sadly, there are far more abused youth getting pregnant in this state than sad stories like Holly Patterson (who wouldn't be covered under Prop 73 anyhow since she was 18).

I'm actively pro-choice, but this doesn't mean that i like abortions or want to see youth getting them. I want to structure a society where youth don't have to face that choice, but if they do, they have one to make. I want to see parents be supportive and trying to build a meaningful relationship with their children based on trust and respect. I don't want to see oppression and regulation, ageism and condescension - this destroys our society. And it pains me that people don't realize this.

Of course, Lakoff has gotten far too deep inside my head. I know the response... good kids don't get into those situations... good parents make their children behave... the world is evil and a good parent has to protect his kids... you can't solve a sin with a bigger sin... God, it makes me angry. I wish Dobson a good long painful spanking.

Category: politics

Tags: proposition73 election youth abortion

Posted by zephoria at 1:48 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (1)

November 5, 2005

the power of social structure in World of Warcraft

Earlier this week, i was talking with Joi about his "research" on World of Warcraft. He was telling me about how some of the social norms get maintained by members in the community (and particularly within guilds) and how newcomers learn the social structure.

The thing about World of Warcraft (and many other MMORPGS) is that people who fail to work within the social structure get penalized. Most tasks cannot be done without collaboration. Guilds are the formalized version of groups that gather to complete tasks and the most effective way to achieve within the system. Achievements have a measured component - leveling, possessions, honor points, ranks, etc. Pissing off one's guildmates is foolish because it results in being left out of quests and other group activities needed for advancement. Also, since most quests require groups to work together seamlessly, people practice. They also get to know each other and joke around because the level of intimacy is super helpful in team building. Personality compatibility is necessary both within a guild and also essential when guilds team up with one another.

Joi told me about a teenager who was fucking off and how members of the community reprimanded him. He told me he thought it was a fantastic environment to learn sociability, to learn team work and to figure out how to compromise. The structure and incentives were so explicit that even the most socially clueless individuals could work out what they needed to to do advance.

I'm very proud to be a feminist, but a pro and con of feminism is that it destabilized social structure. There was a time when women knew what they were expected to do. They could hate it, resent it, rebel against it, but the norm was there. Those norms were hugely oppressive to women but they also provided a framework to work within. Today, we have no structure and i live in a mecca of people trying to "find themselves." How do you build an identity from scratch without having it pre-defined? For many, this seems to be a hard task. Personally, there are days when i revel in my ability to escape gendered norms and then i dream of being a Hollywood-image 1950s stay at home mom. Even in my chaos, i realize the power of structure.

I think that it's fascinating that some gaming systems have worked hard to create a formalized structure such that people know their positions and can visibly see how certain actions help them ascend. Are we building structures in our virtual lives because they are easy to compute? Because we desperately desire a structure where we know the rules? What does it mean that many active gamers were the types of individuals alienated historically for being socially deficient? What does male dominance in gaming mean given that men historically defined the social structure? Is it possible to build structure that is not oppressive?

Category: social software

Tags: MMORPGs WorldOfWarcraft gender norms

Posted by zephoria at 1:28 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

November 3, 2005

what is "social software"?

"A lot of programmers, seem to me to think that the whole point of social software is to replace the social with software. Which is not really what you want to do, right? Social Software should exist to empower us to be human... to interact... in all the normal ways that humans do." -- Jimmy Wales

Clarification: Sorry for the earlier version without the full context - i didn't realize how badly it would read. I didn't mean to suggest that Jimmy thought that social software should be about replacing the social with the software, but that he was criticizing what had emerged with the techno-centric development of tools meant to help with socialization in the last couple of years. I'm soo sorry for implying anything else (and thanks to the wonderful commenters for making me realize that i boobooed).

Anyone who wants to hear the full audio of Jimmy's talk should check it out here

Category: social software

Posted by zephoria at 5:30 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack (3)

November 2, 2005

growing up in a culture of fear: from Columbine to banning of MySpace

I'm tired of mass media perpetuating a culture of fear under the scapegoat of informing the public. Nowhere is this more apparent than how they discuss youth culture and use scare tactics to warn parents of the safety risks about the Internet. The choice to perpetually report on the possibility or rare occurrence of kidnapping / stalking / violence because of Internet sociability is not a neutral position - it is a position of power that the media chooses to take because it's a story that sells. There's something innately human about rubbernecking, about looking for fears, about reveling in the possibilities of demise. Mainstream media capitalizes on this, manipulating the public and magnifying the culture of fear. It sells horror films and it sells newspapers.

A few days ago, i started laying out how youth create a public in digital environments because their physical publics are so restricted. Since then, i was utterly horrified to see that some school officials are requiring students to dismantle their MySpace and Xanga accounts or risk suspension. The reason is stated simply in the article: "If this protects one child from being near-abducted or harassed or preyed upon, I make no apologies for this stance." OMG, this is insane.

In some ways, i wish that the press had never heard of these sites... i wish that i had never participated in helping them know of its value to youth culture. I wish that it remained an obscure teenage site. Because i'm infuriated at how my own participation in information has been manipulated to magnify the culture of fear. The culture of fear is devastating; it is not the same as safety.

Let's step back a few years. Remember Columbine? I was living in Amsterdam at the time and the coverage was brilliant - the Dutch press talked about how there was a school shooting by kids who felt alienated from their community. And then the US coverage started pouring in. Goths (or anyone wearing black, especially black trench coats) were marked as the devil incarnate. Video games were evil and were promoting killing. Everything was blamed except the root cause: alienation. There were exceptions though. I remember crying the first time i read Jon Katz's Voices from the Hellmouth where numerous youth poured out their souls about how they were treated in American education systems. Through his articles, he was able to capture the devastation of the culture of fear. My professor Henry Jenkins testified in Washington about how dangerous our culture has become, not because there are tools of rage, but an unchecked systematic creation of youth alienation. He pleaded with Congress: "Listen to our children. Don't fear them." And yet, we haven't. In response, youth went underground. Following one of his talks, a woman came up to him dressed in an array of chaotic pink. She explained to Henry that she was a goth, but had to go underground. What kind of world do we live in where a color symbolizes a violent act?

We fear our children. We fear what they might do in collectives. We ban them from public spaces (see "Mall won't allow teens without parents"). We think that we are protecting them, but we're really feeding the media industry and guaranteeing the need for uncountable psychiatrists. Imagine the weight that this places on youth culture. Imagine what it's like to grow up under media scrutiny, parental protectionism and formalist educational systems.

During the summer of 1999, i was driving cross-country and ended up at an outdoor rave outside of Denver, Colorado. I was sitting in my tent, writing in my diary when a group of teens wrapped at my door asking if they could come in and smoke because it was too windy outside to light the damn thing. I invited them in and we started talking. They were all from Littleton and had all dropped out of school shortly following Columbine and were now at a loss for what to do. I asked them why they dropped out, expecting that they would tell me about how eerie the school was or how they were afraid of being next. No. They dropped out because the media was hounding them everywhere they went. They couldn't get into the school without being pestered; they couldn't go to the mall or hang out and play basketball. They found underground venues for socialization. Here we were, in the middle of a field outside town at a rave, the only place that they felt safe to be themselves. The underground rave scene flourished in the summer of 1999 outside Denver because it was a safe haven for teens needing to get away from adult surveillance and pressure. Shortly later, the cops busted the party. I went and pleaded with them, asking them to let the kids camp there without the music; they had the permits for camping. No; they had heard that there were kids doing ecstasy. Let's say they are - you want them to drive on drugs? Why not let them just camp? The cops ignored me and turned on bright lights and told the kids that they needed to leave in 10 minutes or they would be arrested. Argh! I'm not going to condone teenage drug use, but i also know that it comes from a need to find one's identity, to make sense of the world removed from adult rules. These kids need a safe space to be themselves; overzealous police don't help a damn thing.

How do youth come of age in this society? What good is it to restrict every social space that they have? Does anyone actually think that this is a good idea? Protectionist actions tends to create hatred, resentment. It destroys families by failing to value trust and responsibility. Ageist rhetoric alienates the younger generation. And for what purpose?

The effects are devastating. Ever wonder why young people don't vote? Why should they? They've been told for so damn long that their voices don't matter, have been the victims of an oppressive regime. What is motivating about that? How do you learn to use your voice to change power when you've been surveilled and controlled for so long, when you've made an art out of subversive engagement with peers? When you've been put on drugs like Strattera that control your behavior to the point of utter obedience?

We drug our children the whole way through school as a mechanism of control and wonder why drug abuse and alcoholism is rampant when they come of age. I've never seen as many drugs as i did at pristine prestigious boarding schools. The wealthy kids in our society are so protected, pampered. When given an ounce of freedom, they go from one extreme to the other instead of having healthy exploratory developments. Many of the most unstable, neurotic and addicted humans i have met in this lifetime come from a position of privilege and protectionism. That cannot be good.

We need to break this culture of fear in order to have a healthy society. Please, please... whenever you interact with youth culture (whether you're a parent, a schoolteacher or a cafe owner), learn from them. Hear them from their perspectives and stop trying to project your own fears onto them. Allow them to flourish by giving them the freedom to make sense of their identity and culture. It doesn't mean that there aren't risks - there are. But they are not as grandiose as the press makes them out to be. And besides, youth need to do stupid things in order to learn from their own mistakes. Never get caught up in the "i told you so" commentary that comes after that "when i was your age" bullshit. People don't learn this way - they learn by putting their hand in the fire and realizing it really is hot and then stepping back.

Post-Columbine, we decided to regulate the symptoms of alienation rather than solve the problem. Today, we are trying to regulate youth efforts to have agency and public space. Both are products of a culture of fear and completely miss the point. We need to figure out how to support youth culture, exploration and efforts to make sense of the social world. The more we try to bottle it into a cookie-cutter model, the more we will destroy that generation.

In line with Henry's claim to Congress, i want to plead to you (and ask you to plead to those you know): Listen to the youth generation - don't fear them and don't project your fear onto them.

(Note: my use of the term "kids" references the broader youth population using a slang very familiar to subcultures where an infantilized generation reclaimed the term for personal use. I am 27 and i still talk about my friends as kids. What i'm referencing is youth culture broadly, not children and not just teens.)

Category: youth culture

Tags: myspace xanga columbine cultureoffear

Posted by zephoria at 12:17 PM | Comments (32) | TrackBack (5)

Jimmy Wales speaking at Berkeley tomorrow

Who: Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia)
Where: School of Information, South Hall, UC-Berkeley, Room 110
When: November 3, 4-5:30

For those who love Wikipedia, i'm hosting Jimmy Wales to speak at my department tomorrow about Wikipedia's culture. It is free and open to the public. It should be a fun talk and question/answer discussion.

Category: academia

Tags: wikipedia

Posted by zephoria at 11:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

November 1, 2005

on books

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. - Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

Category: social observations

Tags: books

Posted by zephoria at 5:53 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

drowning during Halloween in the Castro

As i was walking down 16th to go home, i realized i was in deep shit. The crowds began at Mission and were getting thicker and thicker as i headed towards the Castro. By the time i reached my apartment, i was hyperventilating, surrounded by a solid wall of drunken, costumed people who were clearly not from my neighborhood (and i doubt from my city). They were loud, aggressive and generally unpleasant. They had no respect for my street or my desire to sleep. So i sat huddled in a ball with my kitten cat watching all of the funny people from my second floor perch.

I should note that while i love crowded indoor events, crowded outdoor ones terrify me. Full on claustrophobia. If i can leave a crowded situation, i can be in a crowded situation. But not when i look down from my window and see non-stop mob. Eek.

All of the crazy humans were using my dead-end street as a porta potty. They were pissing everywhere, all over my steps and my stoop. I must've watched 200 guys piss on my street. And then my neighbors came up with the most hysterical plan. They got a big bucket and poured it from the second story onto the next guy pissing on their steps. He was sopping and really pissed off. I was laughing hysterically.

Category: social observations

Tags: halloween castro

Posted by zephoria at 4:38 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)