Jewel Mlnarik » Blog

How Facebook is Breeding a Country of Intolerance and Extremism – NOT Bringing Us Together

Jewel Mari — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:21:09 +0000

Can you figure out the next word in this series?

Good. Bad. Right. Wrong. Left. Right. Like. _____

Excellent! Now, let’s look at some numbers. (Quick caveat: this is quick math.)

The USA has an estimated population of 308 Million.
- Of these, roughly 250 Million are 14-95.
Facebook has 400 Million users world-wide.
- 70% are outside of the US, leaving us with 120 Million Americans.
- That’s darn near 40% of our population – or 2 out of every 5 Americans for those of you preferential to chewing gum commercials.
If we look at these by age ranges, I have a hunch that this ratio will creep closer to 50% - or 1 out of every 2 for those of us between the ages of 15 and 40.
- If anyone can find Facebook data on US members by the same age groups, I’ll do the math.

Now let me go back to that word series. On one hand, I want to fill in “Dislike” and start on a rant of how Facebook is perpetuating the teenage fallacy that the world, choices and judgments are black and white. And that our opinions are facts. And there is no room for savoring chocolate or appreciating nuance. That there is only Like and Dislike.

On the other, Facebook has no Dislike button. So I can’t completely back that up, though living in America’s #2 hipster capital, Portland OR, I can begin to argue that the lack of an opinionated “Dislike” is encouraging apathy. Don’t agree with something? Eh, let it slide. No use in caring enough to disagree or debate.

In both hands is a rather scary phenomenon: nearly half of us Americans are being faced with a seemingly trivial choice more and more frequently every day: do we like something? There is no “kinda-like”, “kinda-think-is-funny”, “don’t like it, but curious where this is going”, “my condolences, i’d like to stay in the loop so i know you’re ok”, etc. (The folks over at buzzfeed have quite the range-ometer.)

After seeing more and more disturbing tea party videos where angry constituents blather on about the only 2 options we as Americans have, to LOVE our country and to HATE our country, I grow concerned that we’re teaching our youths and even ourselves to be intolerable. That there is no in between.

I’m not saying that I want to see 5 stars everywhere, but the simple task of rating engages our brain in a much different way than the simple yes or nothing. What would happen to our collective groupthink when we began practicing critical thinking and rational assessments on a daily basis rather than emotional extremism?

Possibly Related Reading: Culture of Intolerance: Chauvinism, Class, and Racism in the United States, by Mark Nathan Cohen.

Facebook Friendly

Jewel Mari — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:00:38 +0000

Aside from my opinion that Facebook is on the verge of being (or already is) too crowded with junk that it’ll soon be unlikely that anything one “shares” will even be seen, I’m diving into the wonderful world of making web sites Facebook Friendly.

Automatically populate the page preview that shows on Facebook when you “share” a URL – overview of how Facebook uses meta tags
- Now that I got this working over on my personal site, I’m going to do some research to see whether there’s a Wordpress plugin for this yet. If not, one will be coming!
Pull Facebook comments on notes BACK into my blog. Over at the Divination Foundation, we have a blog that’s published on Divination.com, Tarot.com and then to the DF’s Facebook page. Right now, if you’re on Tarot.com you only see the comments left by other tarot.com members. If you’re in Facebook, you only see the Facebook comments. And if you’re on Divination.com, you’ll soon see all of them together: tarot.com, Facebook and divination.com
- Looking for folks who’ve done something similar and how they’ve tackled publishing a blog w/in Facebook
Other Facebook Friendly ideas over at mashable.com

Collective + Collaboration = Freedom

Jewel Mari — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:00:20 +0000

Now that I stare at my laptop, all thoughts have escaped me. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve put myself out there in the public domain. For the past decade I’ve worked (not so) silently behind the scenes, absorbing corporate and startup politics, starting businesses, expiring businesses, making other people rich(er) and discovering that I love learning how other people perceive and process the world. It’s this perception (and I won’t bore you with a diatribe into relativity vs objectivity) that’s driving my latest project: a collective of freelancers and small, startup agencies across several industries.

The good news is that other people seem to think like me: to allow ourselves to be specialists, we must open ourselves up to people, concepts and ideas that we don’t normally come into contact with in a day. Furthermore, by learning how we can partner with each other in ways other than the simple referrals, we can take on projects that we may otherwise not be ready to handle (due to our size: often 1-3 people).

The size, diversity and budgets of projects that flow through agencies are very appealing for creatives. Unfortunately, so is fierce independence. The ability to leave town on a whim, or stay home with the kids and pets, inability to wake up before 10am: the list goes on.

So our challenge is moving this collective forward in such a manner that it’s not an agency in disguise, so we can manifest that dream of spending time with our friends (why else would we put in so many work hours in a week?) and retaining our freedoms.

In the last two weeks alone, I’ve met with developers, designers, project manager, makeup artist, modeling agency, photographers, search engine specialist and a digital film editor. One suggested we kick off our collective by writing and producing a short movie, maybe a cool ad for our new joint non-venture adventure.