A direct message to Yoko Ono: Imagine there’s no Twitter

Ummm… please don’t tell anyone, but I’m on Twitter.

Don’t worry, I hardly ever tweet and have nowhere near the 20-thousand-plus updates like some people I know only via blogging, so my well-entrenched social media avoidance disorder is still intact.

But the other day I somehow realised while playing around on the Twitter directory wefollow.com that with a click of a button I could actually follow Yoko Ono, so I am now doing so.

Since Yoko doesn’t update her status regularly, I soon forgot I was following Ms. Ono. But then, as if in a dream I’d won a lottery I hadn’t even played, the next day I received this bold-faced line in my email inbox:

You have a direct message from Yoko Ono

Yoko, I really, really appreciated your sending me your direct message of Peace, love and understanding. It filled me with great joy to know that despite the asymmetric nature of our budding relationship – you – famous billionaire, me – almost famous wage slave – for the mini-micro-nanosecond that your automatically generated packets flitted down the intratubularities, your message was from you to me and for me alone.

It kind of made me feel like the guy who must have felt while saying, as you tweeted not long ago:

“May I shake hands with the hand that shook hands with John Lennon?”

So in honour of my status as Yoko Ono Twitter follower number 15,482, may I now re-write the song that you must have sung with John Lennon?

By the way, did you know that on that horrible day in December, 1980 when he was so tragically taken from us, I was on a traveller’s high, bouncing from wadi to beach camp in the Sinai desert on a jeep excursion? That we didn’t find out about it until nearly a week later when on our return to Eilat we overheard some people in a bar at the next table shaking their heads about it all while Imagine played in the background?

I’m not famous, so you wouldn’t know that.

Anyway, Yoko. Just…

Imagine there’s no Twitter
If it won’t make you cry
No breakfast updates
To make us all ask why
Imagine all the people
Living off the Net

Imagine there’s no blogging
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to post or download
And no viruses too
Imagine all the spammers
Boiled alive in grease

You may say I’m a Luddite
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll log off
Go outside and have some fun

Imagine there’s no MacBooks
I wonder if you can
No need for feeds or iPhones
Or upgrading your LAN

Imagine sharing music
By trading old vinyl…

You may say I’m on Twitter
Pointless updates one-by-one
I just signed up to join the crowd
And realise it’s not much fun

virulent racism: a psychiatric disorder

Been thinking a lot about people possessed with a blind hatred for those of other races. It’s been on my mind recently because of a most disturbing pair of comments I received about 10 days ago in response to this post on a Jewish cemetery which we visited in South Germany this past summer.

New comments here are moderated, so they went straight to the spam dump. I didn’t read much of them beyond skimming the first and last lines of each, but that was already enough to convince me that the hateful lines of rage, filth and scorn that landed in my mail like a stinking, overturned, rat-infested dumpster would never appear on my blog.

The commenter did, however, take the time to copy his streaks of shit to a racist blog, the link to which will also never appear on my site. They’ve linked to me, however, and so far I’ve received about 50 hits from like-minded sewer scum hanging out on that blog, though thankfully, none has tried to leave a word.

Though the initial shock and disgust is now long gone, I’m still left with a lingering curiosity about what drives these people to hate so absolutely.  I’m not talking about those who casually drop racist terms because they’re ignorant and need a slap upside the head.

What I mean is the kind of hatred that courses through the veins of people whose every breath is filled with a virulent loathing, who see, for example, a Jewish conspiracy behind every turn of events in world history from the killing of Jesus to September 11, 2001, who actually believe that Jewish people would invent a fairy tale about Nazi concentration camp gas chambers and pluck the figure of six million deaths out of the air in order to garner world sympathy, people who claim that their idol, Adolf Hitler, was a great man thwarted in his quest to realise his shining vision to save humanity… For a more current example, how about people who invent vicious lies about Barack Obama?

But as long as the list may get, I simply have no way of comprehending what makes these people tick.

Unless of course, you start to see them through the context of personality disorders.   Then it starts to make sense.   If you go to a psychology site such as psychforums.com, you can pretty well diagnose one of these people in about two minutes.

• Distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent? Check!
• Reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events? Check!
• Persistently bears grudges, i.e., is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slight? Check!
  
• Suspicion, concern with hidden motives, hostility?  Check, check and triple-check!

Only problem is, the DSM-IV, the official catalogue used by medical health professionals outlining the range of deviant human behaviour from bedwetting to Tourette Syndrome to schizophrenia, makes absolutely no mention of this problem. Racism just doesn’t rate, though it does meet the criteria for a disorder.  The symptoms above, by the way, are some of those used to diagnose paranoid personality disorder.

Could that be because this type of behaviour is a symptom of something bigger?  Another paper by a clinical psychiatrist calls on the American Psychiatric Association to designate extreme racism as a mental health problem by recognising it as a delusional psychotic symptom.

Another clue to the root of the problem may lie in narcissism. According to noted British biographer Ian Kershaw, the story of Adolf Hitler himself was the classic example of what happens when a malignant narcissist obtains absolute power.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a good portion of those who still worship him would be described in the same way:

“….(Hitler’s) patronizing contempt for the submissiveness of women, the thirst for dominance (and imagery of the Leader as stern, authoritarian father-figure), the inability to form deep personal relationships, the corresponding cold brutality toward humankind, and – not least – the capacity for hatred so profound that it must have reflected an immeasurable undercurrent of self-hatred concealed in the extreme narcissism that was its counterpoint, must surely have had roots in the subliminal influences of the young Adolf’s family circumstances.”  (Kershaw, p. 13, Hubris)

Of course, it might all backfire.  If racists ever get their very own little disorder, coloured ribbon, charity and forum self-help group, they’ll be able to go on their usual rampages and get off lighter for it.  How else could a kid in England have managed to have charges of murdering his parents reduced to manslaughter if he hadn’t been able to blame it all on narcissistic personality disorder?

Best perhaps to let racists keep screaming from the depths of the sewer.  That’s where they belong anyway.

Blogging for nothing, but the kick’s for free

Nobody likes to do something for nothing at all for very long, so it’s no surprise that most blogs peter out and die after a while.

I started this blog exactly two years and nearly 250 posts ago on January 19, 2007. Back then I had vague ideas of writing posts as if they were the letters back to my family, something to replace the emails they’d for one reason or another stopped responding to over the years.

If you subscribe to this blog in a reader, by the way, that’s the sub-heading you’ll see.

Because I quickly realised how confining that would be, after about six weeks I dropped the letters and simply started writing about whatever I was doing, thinking about or had an urge to let loose on,  occasionally indulging my wildest fantasies of being chief editor of The Onion and posting a photo or two to gussy it all up a bit.

So given the format change I suppose I should follow all the how-to sites out there and re-do everything, give it a punchy name and graphics and monetise my blog, but that whole thing just seems too much like work.  I’d just rather concentrate on writing about what interests me and perhaps a few others out there.

The thought occurred to me only a couple of months ago, but in the process I hope to have built up something that one day my daughter will be able to read, so that she can learn about her old man in a way I never got to know mine.

Still, there are times when I ask myself why I keep doing this.

And, once in a while, the answer just lands like a bird on the balcony railing:

So Ian isn’t particularly hidden.  But if you’re a fan of satire, irony, beautiful photography, a world-view wide as the horizon and occasional posts as poignant and touching as could be found,  expat Ian in Hamburg’s  point of view may be exactly what you’re looking for.  His Desiderata for Bloggers, 20 Blogging Commandments and What If the Buddha Were Just Some Guy in His Mom’s Basement are as inspirational as a 2×4 to the head.  Read him.

That comes from Linda, a most under-rated blogger who in the past nine months has not only rebuilt her life in the wake of Hurricane Ike, she’s kept her blog going and is now starting to get her writing published in “the real world.”  Linda, it really touches me to know that my writing has been an influence on you, and I hope you keep at yours as far as you can take it.

In a comment a while back the author of Deutschland über Elvis needled me as usual: Now, 2009 is the year that both of us get published thanks to our heroic blogging efforts. What’s our plan?

Good question, HB8.  We’re already getting published, aren’t we?  Or did you mean for real?

Do you suffer from Social Media Avoidance Disorder?

Psychiatrists and researchers compiling the update of the American guidebook to mental disorders and treatment have had to make room for a new malfunction for people who just couldn’t be bothered with social media.

“It’s really become prevalent over the past couple of years as social media has taken hold,” said Cologne therapist Nutsin Parks.   “With the explosive growth of social media sites like Twitter, those who don’t want to join are beginning to look like real losers.  It’s our duty to help them.”

Called SMAD for Social Media Avoidance Disorder, researchers are trying to pin down a set of diagnostic criteria so that health professionals can more easily spot the disorder.

Among the biggest red flags is a stubborn refusal to quit blogging.

“Look, blogging is just so 2004, OK?,” said Thad Ramjum Dab, a radio personality.  “It has to be, because I read it in Wired.  They know everything.”

Dab is referring to a recent Wired article which declared that if you’re still blogging, you’re a complete and utter waste of skin, because everybody is now on Facebook, AssCrack, LinkedIn, FlippedOut, and Twitter.

After bursting on the scene early last Tuesday, Twitter is the fastest-growing social media platform, with between 5,000 and 10,000 new accounts every day.   Twitterers are in a race to be the one who compiles the most stalkers followers. Your followers can find out the latest on what you’re doing whenever you post, called a tweet.

“If you have fewer than 1,000 Twitter followers, everyone thinks you’re boring and really should get a life,” said Twitter enthusiast Drather B. Haffinseks.  “I have nearly 6,000 and that figure is jumping every day.”

A survey of the most frequent utterances on Twitter include “Is this working?” “Stuck in traffic on the way to the mall,” and “Just got spittle on my iPhone while brushing my teeth.”

“I get people all the time these days coming into my office and complaining they can’t figure out why in hell anyone in their right mind would want to waste their time on an iPhone letting strangers on the other side of the world know they’re about to order a hot pastrami sandwich on rye,” said Amy Osborn, a therapist in Truth or Bum’s Rush, Texas.

“I tell them, look.  The first thing you have to realise is that it’s just like blogging, only shorter and more pointless.  Sometimes I see a light go on, but with most, we know we have a long and painful journey ahead of us.”

Recent reports of a major Twitter password hack allowing miscreants to post joke tweets from celebrities and news sites only confirms the platform’s arrival.  Psychiatrists say the longer those suffering from SMAD continue to indulge their avoidance, the worse off they’ll be.

“Just look at this poor sap,” said a   “He’s signed up, but hasn’t the faintest idea why.  You can tell by the fact he’s not been posting at least 80 times a day.  Any fewer than that and we start to get worried.”

This Definitely Not the Daily News update not brought to you by the makers of Prozac.