Social(Media)Life™ Part Deux: Beware The Lovefest
When Dr. Ding first began to explore the exciting world of social media she was puzzled and intrigued, because so few were making a distinction between their professional and personal identities.
Let me splain. In my shrinkalicious and I’m sure very rumpshakin’ world, these are two different things. I’m no social media guru. I have no “solutions” for your web presence, no PR campaigns to my credit, and no brand of my own. Not a thing. I have nothing to sell you and obviously I’m not looking to get famous here what with my alarmingly frequent references to assless chaps, glitter, and enthusiastic tooting. For you see, my relentless pursuit of world domination is fundamentally incompatible with these aims.
So what is my thing? Mostly I just enjoy long walks on the beach, lazy Sunday brunches, and poking giant holes in cherished assumptions that bug the living shit out of me unless I poke holes in them. I can’t help it. I’m an Aquarius, baby — it’s just what I do*.
Web 2.0 Lovefest: Duh
I know, I know. Transparency is the much-touted and au courant working model of web-based communication. The Personal and The Professional are all wond’rously comingled in a paroxysm of nerdish imagination each and every time you log in. The private is the public and we all frigging love each other because we ALL have some sort of ill-defined but, like, totally fabulous social capital we’re leveraging.
Woo de freaking hoo.
I fail to understand this recursive reified narcissism. I fail for a variety of reasons, primary of which is that I’m a shrink.
Of course you should be clear, honest and accountable in your communcations with others. Of course we should be treating each other with respect and listening well. Of course it’s great to share creative ideas, gorgeous music, stirring rhetoric, sublime humor, truth-exposing reportage. Of course. And of course it’s nice to feel important because we’re cozily storing up Gemütlichkeit and fulfilling our Maslowian social-affiliative needs for belonging. These are all good things and it’s about frigging time we feminized** the web, meta-communication and interaction in general.
We should have been doing this type of thing all along, long before Web 2.0. Duh.
Boundaries: Look Into Them
But here’s where this Web 2.0 Lovefest starts falling apart for me: I don’t want to share everything with you. I really don’t. Okay, well after I few martinis I might. But I shouldn’t do it. And neither should you.
Honest. It’s called having interpersonal boundaries. Boundaries are sometimes described as how we know who we are and who we aren’t, where the Self/Other dividing line is placed. They are considered central to being able to closely connect with others while simulatenously maintaining autonomy and individual identity. They’re integral to how we think and feel about ourselves, and how others feel and think about us. And they can prevent you from making a giant ass out of yourself.
Where we situate these psychological structures depends on our life experiences, stressors, and a whole bunch of mystical shit I don’t have time to explain. Suffice it to say that if your boundaries are poorly defined or maintained, you’re going to eventually reveal to much. If they’re too tight or impermeable, people will likely find it difficult to connect.
My Point: Think About Where You’re Drawing Your Boundaries
Some day long after Obama gets elected and just prior to the planet being overrun by robotic alien overlords, everyone is going to be using Social Media. Everyone.
Your boss. You future boss. Your mother-in-law. Your impressionable kids. Your Wiccan High Priestess from the Coven of the Shiny Vagina. Random criminals, hucksters and trolls trying to plan a home or identity invasion. The day shall soon be upon us.
Think about how easily these folks might access your series of diabtribes about a frenemy or your gin-pickled assessment of your job situation or your boiling hatred of Wheaties. By all means, if you don’t give a tinker’s damn about all this, pray continue with your 3 a.m. rants about whatever obscure band you hate or relationship atrocity you’ve committed, underscored by some Flickr’d photos of your recent colonoscopy. Oh and definitely keep blurting out your exact whereabouts on BrightKite so that the stalker folk can track your every move.
But if you plan to ever have a security clearance, a professional license of any kind, a sweeping background check conducted or even just a jaundiced eye turned on you….might wanna be a bit more selective about how you choose to distinguish the public v. private on the intardwebs. Just saying.
*Supposedly Aquarianism gives me the inalienable right to be deeply and profoundly weird, according to my grocery store booklet. I’m okay with it.
**Yeah I fucking went there.
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |
Dear Dr. Ding
I need you
r wisdom Dr. Ding. I have had a very weird dream this week that
is confusing to me. I shoot myself in the head about 4 times. It
doesn’t hurt and I am fine. The only thing I remember being concerned
about is that one of the wounds was on my forehead and others would see it.
In the dream I was worried about what I would tell others about what had
happened.
I don’t re
member feeling depressed or anything that would
make me want to hurt myself. I don’t think the process of shooting
myself was about killing me becuase that just doesn’t resonate with me.
I can’t figure out what it means. What is your intrepretation?
Hard Headed
Dear Hard Headed:
You think Dr. Ding has actual wisdom? May the Lords of Kobol and GirlJesus™ Herself bless you, but I suspect this assumption explains like 90% of your issues right there. I’ve got plenty of the following things: hair products, black clothing, red thumbtacks, the perfect moue of distaste when confronted with people that don’t think feminism is a good idea, KFC “fixin’s” and withering sarcasm. The whole wisdom thing is debatable and varies according to my mood, the planetary alignments, and whether or not I’m getting my fill of words that haven’t been used since Agatha Christie bought tampons.
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |
Dr. Phil: Dr. Ding Is Coming For Your Sorry, Dockers-Wearing Ass
Dr. Ding just read that Dr. Phil’s henchmen bailed a passel of teenagers out of jail what put the beat-down on another teenager and filmed it. He’s been trying to claim that it’s all a big misunderstanding and that said henchmen weren’t acting on his behalf and that they were just supposed to provide the means for these thugs to be able to appear on his show.
Shrinky say wha?
Nice job, Phil. Way to enable the living shit out of a bunch of junior-grade psychopaths. Here’s the message you’re sending: Want to get on national TV sporting some new threads and a pocketful of cash? Why, just mount up your bepimpled posse to go assault someone you wouldn’t have the courage to face mano-a-mano, and film it so you can relive your incredibly daring and well-choreographed triumph! When Dr. Phil springs your sorry ass from the jailtime you so richly deserve you can feel extra good about yourself and your choice of hobbies. No guilt! No consequences! Easy peasy.
I don’t even know what else to say here except that the world deserves Dr. Ding-style justice* and not Dr. Phil-style sensationalistic and utterly immoral quackery. But quick.
So Phil-baby. Consider this your official challenge: you and me, sans handlers, henchpersons and manservants, noon tomorrow, AskDrDing Comments, any choice of weaponry. Me, I’ll use my wits, my sass, and my keen sense of moral outrage. Also, I should let you know that my tiara doubles as a deadly, highly-glamorous boomerang. I’m assuming here that you will probably just bring your moustache, your grody attempts at folksy charm, and your boundless greed.
It’s on, Philly Mac. Come prepared to marshall some serious arguments in order to defend your actions from my scathing logic and general pissed-offedness. Bring it.
*Superficially, Dr. Ding-style justice looks a LOT like Drunken Monkey-style kung-fu, but let me assure you; it’s far more swift, and twice as deadly what with all the purse-windmilling, arm-flailing, and cheetah-like screaming going on.
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |
Geek Love: Brief Elegy for Gary Gygax
Dr. Ding’s almost brother-in-law, Nater, requested that I discuss my first experience with Dungeons&Dragons, thereby repping my set, aka Gamer Nerd Brethren and Sistren. Nate knows a closeted gamer when he sees one, and he’s right, I need to let that phreak phlag phly¹.
Picture it: Shampoo-Banana, Illinois. One languid summer, 1981. Polyester plum-smugglers had just come into vogue, and there I was, playing D&D in our basement with a family friend, and a buddy of his he’d invited over. I don’t remember said buddy’s name, but I think it was something exotic like “Wesley” or perhaps “Todd.” He had a peachfuzz moustache and was wearing (non-ironically you see, for it was 1981) a tight ringer tee-shirt and the aforementioned plum-smugglers, with dark, feathered hair. I also recall that he (more…)
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |
100 Years Of Gradual School
One of Dr. Ding’s very favorite prison shrink colleagues used to refer to his time in a doctoral psychology training program as “gradual school” and I’ve co-opted the term ever since.
The following video leaves me incredulous. I cannot believe I spent 100 years of my life in gradual school, and all of my twenties when I could have been watching Thursday night Must-See TV and drinking Zimas whilst getting my flannel-shirted grunge on, training to become a psychomacologist.
I could have learnt instead the arcane arts practiced by the fellow below. He’s a better psychologist than I am, and I’ll bet he never had to hand-write 90 pages of comps. Lazy bastard.
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |
My New Favorite Quote
“The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.”
Sir William Osler
British (Canadian-born) physician (1849 – 1919)
| Etsy: QueenBodacious |