May/092
Stuff I've Been Looking At, Volume 1
News Stories I have been paying attention to:
1. Known as Father Oprah in Miami, Father Cutie leaves the Catholic Church and goes to Episcopalian church. Latin American media are obsessed with this story, especially now that Cutie has turned his back on the Catholic church. What happened was he got caught canoodling with his girlfriend on the beach, the Church told him to go take a spiritual retreat until he got that crazy lust out of his brain and then he came back and was all "No thanks" and is now joining a different church and is engaged to his lady friend.
I've seen some talk on the spanish news shows that he was the one who leaked the photos (I guess the girlfriend met with the paparazzi who took them?) and orchestrated this entire event in order to get the hell out of the Catholic church. The priest is rather media savvy, so he may have cooked this up with a crazy publicist. Many Catholics feel betrayed and a higher up in the church says that only God can forgive him. I don't understand the complete unwillingness of the Catholic church to change the celibacy clause. Clearly, it doesn't work. And what's up with all the outrage over the priest having consensual sex with an adult woman vs all the covering up of the priests molesting young boys?
2. Sonia Sotomayor's nomination and the avalanche of racist & sexist garbage being spewed in the media by the usual suspects. Jezebel has it covered, so I won't even bother to comment except how sad it is that everyone is acting exactly as expected.
3. Elizabeth Wurtzel's piece in Elle and the commentary on Broadsheet. The piece itself is kind of long and whiny but it makes me sad that a woman of such insane privelege and obvious smarts and opportunity is obsessing over her looks and over the attention of gross dudes. We all do it, we're all taught as women that our social value is in how fuckable we are, but perhaps I was naive and optimistic to think that this kind of obsessing diminishes as you get older and stop caring. Apparently, not so much. I feel kind of lucky that I'm extremely average looking and won't have to be dealing with "losing" my looks when I get older because you know, there were never any to begin with.
4. I keep trying to get excited about new television shows but when you write about television for a living, it sucks all of the fun out of it. I'm extremely excited to cover Top Chef Masters however, only because the Real Housewives while fun, are draining. The reunion of the NYC housewives (both epic parts) made me want to get a lobotomy. I think everyone's fame has gotten to their heads (especially my previous favorite, Jill Zarin) and I am completely over the NYC housewives. My previous second favorite, Bethenny, is also on thin ice with me, especially with her drunkorexia diet book.
Finally, we have books! Stuff I'm hoping to read this summer:
1. Camgirls
2. Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg about the history of blogging
3. Finally finish the anthology of graphic novels I got for my birthday last year
What have you been looking at?
May/091
Soda Driven Writing
It was bound to happen: your girl has gotten herself a sponsor. Well, kind of. The Pepsi Corporation has now earned a strange place in my life as a company that somehow likes what I'm selling. First, they picked me as one of their 20 finalists for the SXSW "What's Your Pitch?" contest (which I just found out I didn't win, instead going to TeeCycle). My idea was for an internet safety advocacy organization, focused more on legal advocacy for people getting harassed online (since the current legal system is inadequate) and training programs for kids, namey what to do with boys to teach them not to post photos of their ex-girlfriends online to get back at them. Anyway, that's one idea that will have to come alive later on in life.
The second way is that I was chosen as part of a group of people to cover Internet Week New York, a kind of week long schedule of events to talk about the Internet, new media, social networking and all those buzz words you love. One of the things I get out of it (besides access to some pretty incredible events) was a fancy Flip HD (ultra, even!) camera. And yes, an honorarium, which is nice. Thanks Pepsi, for paying your contributors. Intrigued by what the online peanut gallery could possibly be saying about this, I found a few blog posts decrying the sponsorship deal and the fact that they were looking for both journalists and journalism students. I find the latter attitude to be a typical sense of entitlement from "real" journalists. To that I say: times have changed and you need to get used to it. Whereas 10 or 20 years ago, working writers may have gotten their start working at a small town newspaper or working their way up a newsroom, now we get started on blogs. I've called writing my b5media blog, BravoFan "writing boot camp" because that's exactly what it is, constant writing, not to mention I am fact checker, copy editor, and image editor all in one (and yes, I do fact check & I do research, even on my little celebrity gossip blog. I don't get off on posting unfounded rumors as fact like many of my brethren). My first job as a writer, for a trade blog called CMSWire taught me how to look for good stories, to never just copy and paste the press release, and to always ask questions.I think the reason it's not fair to compare blogging to traditional journalism is we don't have the access, staff or time. Yet.
The other thing is that we are soda sponsored contributers. Without going into any confidential details, I will say that this isn't a project where I have to constantly talk about Pepsi and how much I love it. So, don't look for me to tweet anything like: OMG I LOVE PEPSI!!! Like say, Julia Allison and her sudden love of Sea World. Or Heidi Montag's constant tweeting about pizza hut. But, here's the thing: we're getting paid and that is nice. This is a job that is so devalued and it's nice to see someone actually paying people for contributions. I'm not opposed to writing for free, not at all, but for a person/company I really care about or for myself.
Really, Molly McAleer said it best when posting about about advertising and sponsorship on her personal blog because, as she puts it, "it's what makes shit possible." I disagree with her about disclosure, I think you should tell people when someone hooks you up with something, but that's me.
In any case, thanks Pepsi. My blog posts about Internet Week will go on a site that I can't share just yet, but I'll be linking to them on my Twitter. And Tumblr. So, if you're interested, that's where I'll be. This is the very first time I'll be doing much with video, which will be interesting. I'm going to be on the hunt for a tripod this weekend for the Flip and taking some (likely humilating) test videos which I will post here.
And now, a final word from our (starting on June 1 and ending on June 8 ) sponsor:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tign09D5IgE]
May/090
The Future Is Now
I love synchronicity. I've spent a bulk of the evening engaged in a free write with my writing partner, to get our heads together for a fiction chapbook of sorts we're going to self publish very soon and I've been spending the whole weekend researching non fiction book proposal etiquette for a book I want to pitch. Clicking around Twitter, I see Joanne McNeil just put up a great post on what she calls "the new self publishing." As a new writer, I think a lot about our fucked economy and how exactly I'm going to make it out of this alive, with the actual career I want in tact. And I think it's time to start thinking of new ways to get our work out -- evolve or die, as cliched as that is.
Anyway, in an experiment to open up to new distribution models, to open up to the future as it were, I've started by adding the RSS feed of this blog to the Amazon Kindle store to try out their new Amazon Kindle for Blogs Program. It doesn't work for the iPhone Kindle app or I would buy it for myself. I don't expect anyone to subscribe, it's more an act of symbolism of being open to what is going to happen to text.
I do like the idea of my blog on the Kindle. I've been casually putting together some of these entries in book form and it becomes so apparent how different blogs and books really are. Putting the words on a physical page completely changes it. What sounded fun & light on the screen becomes frivolous garbage when you are typesetting it into an actual document to be printed.
books by alex roman
Back to self publishing: the snobbery towards self published books is pretty substantial and unfortunately, there is a reason for it. When anyone can publish anything, you end up with the Yelp of bound books (as in, very few good writers and most repetitive junk). So, the general consensus appears to be that self publishing a book is a waste of time and you should just continue to send out query after query and wait until you get a real publisher to publish your stuff. Which is great for established authors with agents and multiple books or writers of genre fiction who are basically one people book factories. For those of us in the literary fiction world, good luck. I know it can happen, but do we all have to go through MFA programs to get there?
I want there to be a new zine revolution. I guess that is what is happening with blogs, but the truth is, the process of blogging -- the way people blog now, the "micro-blog", the sound bite version that is neither intensely personal or that significant, isn't going to cut it. The new culture of real name social networking has destroyed any chance of anonymity, so the long, chatty entries we used to write about everything are now stuck in the purgatory of Livejournal friends only or a blog where everyone is referred to as a nickname like "Mr. Mojito" (a blog that shows up frequently in my google alerts). And the rest of the Internet appears to be dedicated to teaching you how to use Twitter. I don't want this generation's amazing writers to be swallowed up because there just isn't enough room for them. We need to start making our own rules, having our own parties.
But, here's the other thing, I want us to get paid. And that's the problem. I agree with Joanne's post that the hard part is finding the audience and getting them to buy, which in some ways I don't understand. Support of independent media isn't really a far fetched thing. Look at film festivals, indie bands getting audiences through Myspace, web shows are becoming more and more common, we eat at non chain restaurants and shop at independent stores. (Some of us do, anyway.) But the point is that buying independently produced books shouldn't be that big of a stretch. I wish more people would do it, instead of waiting to be invited to the publishing prom.
(PS - David Carnoy of CNET wrote an extremely thorough, non haterade look at self publishing his novel. It's very helpful.)
Image: Alex Roman
May/090
On Tumblr, No One Has To Know You're Un Popular
My addiction to my Tumblr stream is so strong I had to install LeechBlock in order to get anything done. The mindless way I would just refresh my Tumblr page and not even participate in the culture of copying known as the "reblog" (where a Tumblr user just blogs someone's post, typically with no comment of their own) , just idly reading or watching what people were posting, was making me lose it. So, I've been experimenting with detoxing. It's hard, but I'm (mostly) avoiding it.
But I bring up Tumblr because they just introduced Tumblarity, an index of your popularity on the site. Alice Marwick posted a really smart take on it, explaining how Tumblarity is a number that stands for social status. What Tumblarity reminds me more of is when Yelp introduced a similar feature way back in 2006, a directory of Yelpers listed in order of popularity, and "useful, funny, cool" votes (you can vote on every Yelp review for its usefulness, coolness and humor). The difference was that Yelp made all of these numbers public. When Yelp introduced that feature, the site did take on a popularity contest vibe, with Yelpers competing to see who could be in the top lists for most funny or most cool (no one wants to be most "useful").
I find it interesting that Tumblr isn't placing these in public places, and that you still can't see how many followers a particular Tumblr has, or even who people are following. Some of the Tumblr templates allow you to put the list of people you follow on your blog, but no one has any way of knowing what your Tumblarity is or how many followers you have unless you tell them. This weird omission fosters what I've always felt about Tumblr, that the way it's structured intentionally creates lots of isolated cliques that only read and reblog each other. Unlike Yelp, which forces you to interact with people outside your friends list by logging you in to a main page every time time you go to it. Or, like Livejournal (what I consider the Tumblr of the early days), which also creates more interaction outside your main circle with its communities and by virtue of letting you see who your friends are reading.
I don't think Tumblarity means much for now. Since no one knows your number but you (and the people immediately above and below you on the list, which is ever changing) the status it signifies only means as much as you want it to. If Tumblr were to take all these directories public, we'd see a lot more angling for followers, likes and reblogs (if that's even possible).
May/095
Red Tape
Today I found out that my name is actually Maria Diaz-CRUZ. I did not know this because everything I have ever done has been without the hyphen. When I was naturalized as a citizen (I wasn't born here), my mom signed my name as Diaz-Cruz.
Somehow all of this fell through the cracks when getting my CA ID card and my US passport. Today, at the New Jersey DMV, while attempting to get state ID and a permit so I can drive and have something resembling a life while I get my shit together, I was not allowed to get either because my INS certificate has this Diaz-Cruz name. The employees there said I didn't have enough proof of ID and looked at me like I had two heads when I said I freelanced and did not have insurance (no insurance card).
So my mom calls and asks how the DMV trip went. I explain this whole Diaz-Cruz thing and she says "Oh yeah. That is your legal name." I had no idea how to respond to this; I have NEVER gone by this hyphenated name. I should have noticed when I got this INS certificate in 2003 (which was another enormous ordeal that I will talk about another time) but you know, I didn't. So, it's just as much my fault. Do not consumerist-comment me about it, please.
The moral of the story is: read your government documents carefully. And don't lose your social security card. And don't expect a trip to the DMV to ever occur without a tear or two.
May/091
My Sex 2.0 Session
So Sex 2.0 is this coming weekend. I'm excited to get some time in hotel rooms (I love hotels) and to go to DC as an adult and not an AP history obsessed teenager. I'm super excited to be around a bunch of smart sex people and unlike most conferences I go to, this one won't be about monetizing the Internet. Sex and tech is uh, kind of my thing.
Because I always want to be in the front of the room, I am leading a class on the "revenge porn" trend. My updated description never made it onto the schedule, but here's what I wrote:
I just saw your ass on Myspace: A discussion on revenge porn
With smart phones and your mom on Facebook, what used to be private polaroids and video tapes can now get sent to everyone you've ever met within seconds -- whether or not you want it there. This class will discuss ways to express ourselves sexually using new technology and dealing with the ever present risk having the evidence disseminated online the minute things turn south. This class will cover ways to cope with a Revenge Porn & "Sexting" world.
Basically, it's my usual private vs public discussion. What inspired this was the Gretchen Rossi drama in late February. For those of you who don't know, I am a paid TV blogger and my beat is the Bravo network. Gretchen is a Real Housewife of Orange County. She was the latest addition, younger than the other cast members and she had some conflict with the other cast members. Anyway, there were a ton of rumors floating around that Gretchen was cheating on her dying, twice her age, fiance Jeff during filming. When the show was over, this dude, who she dated after Jeff died when the show wrapped, started to post photos about her on any website that would have him. This continues to this day.
So, I was fascinated by this story because Gretchen thought she had her tiny story line wrapped in a bow. We've already seen that society loves to hate "gold diggers" and Gretchen played the reality show game perfectly. And then this tool came around and blew her reputation up. Around the same time, I found a Details story about "revenge porn" and how many amateur porn videos on the tube sites (fantasti.cc, xtube, etc) get labeled as being from ex-es. And that's where this idea came from. I also thought bringing it up at Sex 2.0, where a bunch of the attendees have been naked on the Internet for either money or because they're sex bloggers and put their own naked photos online for things like "Half Naked Thursday", would make for an interesting session.
But my point for clarifying here is, the class is meant to be more a discussion on how technology makes it possible for us to express ourselves, but can also create things like this, because it's so easy to distribute and copy. Photos don't really belong to their owners anymore. It's much more about privacy than about porn or sex itself. I also want to discuss the idea that maybe at one point society will change and putting this stuff up won't be used as retaliation. Not that I realistically think this, but its one question to explore.
Anyway, I'm irritated that my session is at the same time as Melissa and Joanne (from Tomorrow Museum) but I'll deal. I'm a little concerned by the things Amber brought up in this post (namely by how some of the feminist stuff has fallen by the wayside and the more kink-centric feeling of the event which is fine but not what I'm going to the conference for and just not my thing) but I'm going into it with an open mind.