Facetime…, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

September 6, 2012 Whitney Farmer 9 Comments

Whitney works at a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an MBA and will always dangle participles.

facebook stock should stabilize now because the last possible person in the world has signed up. Me.

I have also decided to figure out how my LinkedIn account works. I signed up for it years ago because it was a condition for interviewing for a dream job. Didn’t get the job. But years later I was able to reconnect with a beloved cousin days before a hurricane hit Long Island. If the account hadn’t have been free, it would still have been worth whatever cost to know that he and his family were safe and well.

My realistic concerns are still there. An author reported within the last year that now people freely provide personal information about themselves that in the past used to be acquired through torture in despotic regimes such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet KGB, through coercion in the U.S. during the McCarthy times: Who are my friends? Where do I go? What groups do I associated with? I concluded that any bad guys probably already can access this information, if anyone cares enough to develop a dossier on me. Just to be thought of as dossier-worthy is something to aspire to. These aren’t realistic fears, at least until it’s too late.

Realistic threats instead are fear of stalkers, of people posting ugly pictures of me before I can stop it, and self-reporting slipping into self-worship. Fairly soon after that, the lying starts.

But three issues persuaded me to woman-up and do this thing. Those group Christmas letters, inserted into a signed card and that gave an annual update, were one. People used to say these newsletters were a sign of someone not caring enough to write to them uniquely. But it became worth the time to read them as we got over ourselves and learned that it was a way for us to know about what had happened to a family over time, rather than us requiring them to prove how much they loved us through writer’s cramp. I want to know about people that I love in any way that they will allow.

Then my reading style changed. I have shifted away from novels and have been captivated instead by nonfiction, biographies, and then autobiographies. Reading what someone believes and writes about themselves can be more fascinating and revealing than objective reporting. Learning this way about people that I love, then people I admire, then people who have power has been a growing interest. That I can facebook Netanyahu or Twitter Obama seems miraculous.

And career-wise, it’s a good idea to own the brand that I am. But having a secret identity like a superhero fits my personality more. Being a surprise to others as well as to ourselves must have some creative currency. It’s nice to be able to mirror the moves of gangstas or jefes on the dance floor while the Chiclets watch from the peanut gallery. No one expects that from someone who lives with her parents, except my parents. And it’s nice to be able to let my mind think about solutions to reforestation in Haiti while the person in front of me wants to find out what my lip gloss tastes like second-hand. It keeps my brain from desiccating and becoming jerky.

But maybe having secret identities are secrets to no one. When Clark Kent put on his glasses, did it fool anyone? And Spiderman isn’t having such an easy time right now. Just ask Bono and the Edge.

As I now work to master the technology that will help tell the story that is Me, I hope that I actually have a secret superpower or three. And I hope that stalkers don’t hunt me because I don’t want to pay attention to them. And it would be nice to know how to always take a great picture, just like Gypsy kids are taught. But it’s probably better to know what we look like when we slouch and have bad hair days. That which does not destroy us makes us stronger. That was the ONLY wise thought that Nietzsche wrote during his too-long career before he had a breakdown after seeing a horse being beaten in the street. He went to bed after that and died a few weeks later.

So like Muad’Dib, I will bend like a reed in the wind. I am alive, so I will go live.

Quote of the Blog from Jim Morrison who is buried in Paris: “No one here gets out alive.” Additional bonus quote from Dante Alighieri in “The Inferno” said to appear over the Gates of Hell: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”.

Image of “The Thinker” by Rodin, featured at the top of his larger work “Man Contemplating the Gates of Hell” on display at Museé d’Orsay in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre.