Social Networking / Jif / A New Pair of Slippers

How I feel about social networking is it gets really confusing. It’s a lot to keep track of. I feel sometimes like Facebook is a desert island I’m stranded on, only I got to bring everything with me. It feels really distracting. I find myself not reading people’s blogs as much. I don’t like that. I feel other people may be experiencing this, too, to some degree.

Not many people visit my blog anymore—though I doubt Facebook is 'to blame'. I can’t help but think maybe a couple of my reviews have alienated me from some people (it seems, since I started writing more reviews, people visit my blog less). I don't know. It seems my ‘internet presence’ is mirroring my ‘real-life’. The ‘internet’ is becoming ‘real’. Seems sadly humorous.

I’ve been thinking a lot about euphemisms lately. They’re very funny, and only serve to further infantilize adults (who behave and speak the same way around their children: as if nothing exists the way it exists, as if the concrete world can be altered simply by using a different set of words to describe it). Funny, but somehow ‘sinister’.

I don’t like it when Jif peanut butter commercials manipulate my emotions regarding family. Jif, please don’t make me feel like I’m not a good father because I don’t spread your creamy product on my daughter’s toast. Choosing Jif is not a simple way to show someone you care. It's peanut butter.

Television inspires me to imagine that someday I can stop watching television, that I can go out into the world and live a happy and fulfilled life, but it’s also gracious enough to make me too comfortable, make me feel secure and calm and thoughtless, makes me think I like watching television.

Most my time is spent reading things that make me feel incompetent and jealous. With almost the last bit of money I have in the world, I bought a pair of slippers at the dollar store the other day and wore them home. In them I felt my toes wiggle, and that gave me hope.

5 comments:

xTx said...

your words are creamy jif (that sounds slightly sexual)

DJ Berndt said...

tumblr and twitters and faces on books, oh my!

Eric Beeny said...

@xTx: I think of you when I make toast...

@DJ: I'm clicking my heels and swiping at monkeys flying overhead...

Ethel Rohan said...

I hear you, Eric, and I heart you. It's all a fine balancing act. Just keep doing your thing, all is well.

I don't have the same time, energy or tolerance for cyber world as I once did. It makes me a little crazy and I have to regularly step away and back into the real world.

The real world is centered on connection and connection is interacting with, bonding with, and touching others. Just keep touching others, whatever that is for you. (And again that sounds rather sexual :-))

Peace, my friend.

Eric Beeny said...

Thanks, Ethel. Time, energy and tolerance, yes. But there are so many people I want to touch... :)