From the monthly archives:

June 2010

Face-to-Facebook with Our Loneliness

June 30, 2010
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Yesterday, I wanted to delete a Facebook friend and found myself face-to-Facebook with my entire list of “friends”. For a moment, I thought: maybe I should sort through my 700+ Facebook friends. At the end of my consideration, I decided that I could probably delete all but 10 people. I might as well delete my account.

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Judging a Book by Its Amazon.com Rating

June 29, 2010
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When I was a kid, I would go to the library and choose a stack of books based on their cover art or clever titles. This was a mostly hit or miss strategy, and I would usually end up picking a lot of stuff that I didn’t like. But, when I was a kid, that was okay – I had a lot of free time!

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The Social Media Psychologist

June 28, 2010
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If you’re like me, and want to better understand your friends and enemies, I have good news! The Internet and social media make it easy to be an armchair psychologist. I started to pay closer attention to his social media presence, in the hope that I could learn something more about him and his personality.

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Staying Tethered, Both Digitally and Metaphorically

June 25, 2010
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For me, writing is a kind of tether lets me fly a little above the world but doesn’t let me stray too far. If I go for too long without writing, I feel heavy, and my mind feels bloated. I need to dump everything that’s in my head so that I can make sense of it, so that it doesn’t overwhelm me. While writing, I can distance myself.

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On Lady Gaga: Sexual Empowerment Is Not about Power

June 23, 2010
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Imagine this scenario: You’re an attractive young woman dressed in nothing more than a few well-placed sequins. Surrounded by a group of young, attractive men, you are dancing expressively at the club. You feel powerful because you have their undivided attention. Is this feminism? Is this sexual empowerment?

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