The Tragedies of Solitude

By now we've all heard about the tragedy in Isla Vista over the weekend.  We've all heard about Elliot Rodger, the troubled 22-year-old who went on a shooting spree that killed at least six people before killing himself.  We've over-heard of it, and we're sick of thinking about it.  I know that I, personally, look forward to the next full day I can go without thinking about this tragedy and others like it.

But that day has not yet come, at least not for me.  There's something present in the media coverage of this particular mass shooting that wasn't there in some of the other recent ones.  (Caveat: I hate that we live in a world where I can compare mass shootings in a manner similar to natural disasters or national elections: they impact us all and come almost as frequently.)  Various articles written about Rodger--specifically those that chronicle his history of simultaneously hating and lusting after women--bring up his participation in various forums on the internet, most notably one called PUAhate.com (I believe it has been taken down this week?  I can't find it, anyway).  For more on what PUAhate is and how Rodger was involved, click here, here, or here.

I don't want to get into the particulars of PUAhate.com, especially since I haven't been able to look at the site myself. I don't believe that Pick-up artists or their haters are responsible for the lives that Rodger took.  I don't believe gun owners are responsible for the lives that Rodger took.  I don't believe that some poor model is responsible for the lives that Rodger took.  I know that Elliot Rodger is responsible for his actions and that, beyond the man himself, the system of influences that lead him to make the choices he did is too complex to be able to point at a single element of his life and call it the primary culprit.

Nonetheless, I think that this tragedy should cause us to look more carefully at our lives on the internet.  I've outlined my thoughts on internet social life before, and I've even written on this blog about the importance of public goods as a method of keeping people from losing touch with other people.  Elliot Rodger brings these previous thoughts of mine back to the forefront of my mind, and suddenly, I feel like there are few greater causes to champion than those of community membership and worldly citizenship.

The other day, while reading one of the aforementioned articles about Rodger's PUAhate.com involvement, I stumbled upon WizardChan.org.  (Caveat: I urge you not to go there yourself unless and until you're fully emotionally prepared for it; I can say that I wasn't ready for the hate and fear that I met there, and it has greatly and negatively affected me this week.)  WizardChan.org is a forum website populated primarily by men who seem to be aged from teens to upper-twenties, perhaps older.  From what I've read on the site, these men hang a large portion of their identity on the fact that they are virgins and that that separates them from society in a large, often crippling way.  They call themselves Wizards, which is where the name of the site comes from, and they refer to other people (I suppose under the assumption that all other people, even who just don't consider their sexual-inactivity to be fundamental to their being, are sexually active) as "normies."

All of that, taken by itself, sounds pretty harmless, if a bit unfortunate and strange.  I can't speak to why these men think that their virginity is such an enormous and terrible part of their lives, and I don't know what makes these men choose to form a community around such a trait, but those oddities are not things I want to talk about here.

If you've been to WizardChan or other sites like it--sites (most often forum sites) based around one strangely specific common interest, personality trait, etc.--you'll know that they've developed their own language, their own etiquette, their own systems of self-moderation and social hierarchies.  They are not unsophisticated communities.  Users on these sites are often more entrenched in the forum life than, say, I am on the forum sites I've used to find answers to questions about how to jump my Prius' battery, change out the HD on my laptop, or get emoji on my phone.  

If you've been to WizardChan or other sites like it--many of the above sites, but specifically the ones with a large population of very negative, frightening, even at times violent and threatening posts--you know that these communities are not overall friendly.  The user base is not necessarily made up entirely of people who, like Elliot Rodger, will act on violent thoughts and words, but the threatening nature of the forums cannot be denied.  WizardChan is full of posts spewing hatred and bitterness towards "normies," many of which condone violence and rape in an offhand, desensitized manner.

WizardChan makes me physically sick.  Sick because I cannot square the circle of these people's perspective on life and other people.  Sick because I want so badly for there to be a way to destroy the lens of hate and fear that they use to see the world.  Sick because, even those these people are in the minority, I fear meeting them in the real world and possibly becoming one of the "whores" they rail against, simply because I made pleasant conversation with no intention of turning it into a romantic or sexual interaction.

But even forums without an outright violent bend give me considerable pause.  This is a livejournal post from years ago that hearkens back to an old forum I used to frequent: AntiShurtugal.  The forum itself is no longer running, but it was a bastion of editorials and conversations discussing, negatively, Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series of books.  Some time in high school, I went from moderately liking Eragon and its sequels to absolutely detesting them.  (For the record, I believe it was a relatively slow descent, and it probably had at least a little to do with the fact that I was a teenaged writer who felt trapped in an inability to publish my books.)  I briefly found a community of like-minded people in AntiShurtugal: these people would write long articles analyzing the series piece by piece, tearing it apart for its lack of artistry, for its plot holes and inconsistencies, and doing so joyfully.  I don't know that I made many contributions, but I consumed others' like water in a desert.

I had friends in real life who shared my dislike of Eragon, but commiserations with them never got me very far: it wasn't a conversation they wanted to belabor because it just wasn't as important to them as it was to me.  Had there been no AntiShurtugal, I honestly might not have hated Eragon as much as I did, since hatred takes energy, and AntiShurtugal was the only renewable source I had.

And that's why specific community forum sites on the internet always scare me to a degree.  Even if a forum site were based around unicorns and butterflies and making vegan gluten free candies to give to homeless veterans, I would worry about its members.  These internet communities that base themselves around what might otherwise be a single, even unimportant facet of a human life give those facets greater importance than they would otherwise be able to sustain.  Thus, they warp the users' perspectives of the world; it was easy to forget that Eragon wasn't universally hated and that there were legitimate reasons to enjoy the series, because I spent so much of my time around people who took its lack of quality for granted.  

Forming communities on the internet is not in and of itself a bad thing.  When paired with healthy and full lives spent with real people in the real world, especially with people who think differently and have different interests and beliefs than we do, internet communities can be pleasant and even important places in society. 

But even the best internet communities can cultivate dark sides full of hate and bitterness that spreads negative thoughts and worldviews.  I'd like to reiterate that I don't think that PUAhate or WizardChan or their users are responsible for Elliot Rodger's actions.  But they are responsible for making sure they don't allow themselves to follow in his footsteps.  Hate and anger like Rodger's doesn't need mental illness in order to be unhealthy and lead to tragedy.  And lives of solitude spent finding solace in like-minded lonely people on the internet doesn't need much help to foster such hate and anger.

Net Neutrality

The following is a comment I decided to file with the FCC.  Who knows what good it will do, but at least I felt like I was doing something.  I'm not sure I fully understand the nuances and intricacies of the net neutrality issue, but I feel confident that the issue is important enough to warrant proactivity, even from those of us who find ourselves perplexed by its complexities.

To Whom it May Concern:

I second the thoughts of such other commenters as Rob Vasko and Tarrence Van As, that internet telecommunications companies should be reclassified as common carriers. Nearly every major industry and social infrastructure, not to mention a large percentage of United State's citizens, rely on the internet daily for everything from news and entertainment to education and innovation. If ISPs are granted the ability to choose who gets access to whose content, those ISPs' interests will always win out, and that will create an unbalanced, unfair, and undemocratic system.

While some corners of the internet may seem to be luxuries rather than necessities, and still others are even illegal, the decision regarding who should or should not be allowed to either produce or consume those areas of the internet does not belong with ISPs. ISPs are private companies with little to no fair and public oversight or regulation, unlike law enforcement or government, and as such, their decisions are far less likely to be in the public's best interest. Their job is and always has been to provide the means by which information producers and maintainers--YouTube, Wikipedia, Netflix, and Joe the Blogger--get their messages out to information consumers. Their job should not be to decide which information producers deserve to be heard and which information consumers deserve to hear them.

The internet at its best is the most democratic system this country and even this world has ever seen. If net neutrality were to die off, that democracy may not necessarily come to a screeching halt, but it will never be as attainable as it once was. And with something so important as the universal right to information, there should be no higher motivation than freedom and democracy.

Thank you,
Mary Margaret Healy

If you, too, would like to make a public comment to the FCC, you can do so here.

The War on Christmas

If you have completely read the header image of this blog, you have probably noticed that there is a "Lord" in it, which probably tipped you off (if you are someone who needed tipping off) that it was a quote from the Bible.

Secret's out (if you are someone who thought it was a secret): I am a Christian.  I'm pretty deep into it, have been for a long time.  It looks like there's no hope for my rehabilitation.  The heavenly Doctor has given me only an eternity left to live.  In lieu of flowers, please send food because I haven't gone grocery shopping in a while.

All joking aside, I am a Christian.  Through and through, I believe in Jesus, I go to Church on Sundays, I pray as daily as I can manage, I read my Bible as daily as I can remember, and I study that Bible and my God in a community with other Christians.  I take my faith seriously, and while I struggle, I do try to put my love and worship of God before all else in my life.

Which is why I really hate the wars that people--predominantly Americans, I believe--declare on various "Christian" things.  Recently, it has been marriage, but I that's a whole post in and of itself.  A more timely war, though, is The War on Christmas.  This comes around every year at this time, and I am so sick of it.

I guess I should clarify: specifically, I'm sick of people saying it's a thing.

There are some tangentially-religious topics that the conservative media addresses that should be responded to with care, diplomacy, gentle words, and loving language.  But I don't believe this is one of them.

From what I can tell, this particular breed of warmongers fear the "politically correct" army is soiling the holid--I'm sorry, the Christmas Season by using the word "Holiday" instead of the word "Christmas."

There have probably been lawsuits against public displays of affection for Christmas.  I think I've heard of people suing to have outdoor nativities removed from courthouses and a quick google search turns up some other weird stuff about banners that said Merry Christmas and discussions pro and against the ACLU.  It is unfortunate to me that Christmas, which has already become a time to celebrate capitalism and materialism, has also become the battle ground for free speech.  But to a larger degree, the backlash against and the use of these lawsuits as proof that there is a war on Christmas (and therefore Christianity) is what really troubles me.

Ostensibly, the United States is a Christian country.  A non-Christian has never been elected president, we swear oaths of office and honesty on the Bible, and people like to pretend that the founding fathers were God-fearing Christians themselves.  But, in actuality, we are not a Christian country.  Our country has morals and as a society we have a somewhat stable belief system, but we are hardly Christian on the whole, and I don't see that as a bad thing.  We are made up almost entirely of immigrants who came here from hundreds of countries and many different religions, and it just makes sense that, even if our country started as a Christian nation (it didn't), is hasn't remained one and it can't try to become one again.

In actuality, Christmas is Christian (obligatory "CHRISTmas" comment).  Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, whom Christians believe to have been the incarnation of God who eventually grew up to die for their sins, thus making humans' reunion with God possible.  Ostensibly, around the country, Christmas is more than that now.  It, like the United States itself, has taken dozens of different cultures from around the globe and mashed them into something that Americans can all celebrate if they want to.  The Christmas we get time off work for is based more on an amalgamation of Saint Nicholas's feast day and pagan celebrations of the winter solstice than it is on Christ.  It is a holiday where people travel to see their families, exchange gifts under a tree and in giant socks, eat honeyed ham, and watch It's a Wonderful Life.  If that family is Christian, they will likely also celebrate the birth of Christ, but if that family is not Christian (and even sometimes if they are) they will skip that part.

So doesn't it make sense that the not-actually-Christian State is a little loose with their actually-Christian-holiday terminology? People who get the time off work, who buy the gifts on sale, who put up the tree and lights and excessive lawn ornamentation aren't necessarily celebrating Christian Christmas, anymore than the people who buy the peeps and hide the eggs are celebrating Christian Easter.  So what does it matter to us if they don't want to call it Christmas?  Doesn't the term "holiday" fit it better, due to its ambiguity, its fluidity, and its ability to cover a lot of ground in a single word?

I guess my main beef with "the war on Christmas" propaganda is that I don't feel like wishing people "Happy holidays!" makes it harder for me to enjoy the holidays I personally celebrate (which are actually plural, including my birthday, Christmas, and New Year's Eve...).  I'd feel the same way if I owned a company that sent out holiday cards, put up banners, or threw parties and I'd feel the same way if I were a teacher who wanted to decorate her classroom in December.  Neither my company as a whole nor my classroom as a structure celebrates any holidays. No one is telling me how to celebrate them myself.  No one is telling me I can't talk to others about how I celebrate my December holidays.

I do not see how my freedom is impinged, and I do see how my use of the word "Holidays" fits the mold of the season better that "Christmas" for most people that I talk to.  It's not a matter of a war against that oh-so-terrible concept of political correctness.  It's a matter of accuracy and efficiency.  And you know who values efficiency?

And, seriously.  If you put yourself in a war against the Borg, I won't even wish you good luck.  Luck is irrelevant.

Happy Holidays!

Mary Margaret

What's Mine is Ours

The other day, my boyfriend Ben, his roommate Steve, and I went to CMU's campus to play some badminton.  Steve and Ben picked up the racquets and net--because, strictly speaking, I'm not a student, per se, so I needed to fly under the radar if I could--and then we tromped around the athletic facilities looking for a suitable place to set up and play.

I don't know much about CMU's athletic facilities, and I was just following the guys around, going through doors they opened and up stairs they gestured to, but there are evidently only two areas outfitted for badminton play.  The first place we went to was also outfitted for volleyball, and was evidently outfitted so well that the official volleyball team was scheduled to practice there, therefor we had to leave.  So we went to another place (which, as I recall, was referred to by a set of letters that stood for some words, but I can't remember the letters or the words right now) that happened to be swarming with eager basketball players.  They were just playing pick-up games, and there were four hoops, but evidently, one of the courts was designated for badminton-specific use.  It wasn't being used as one; someone had taken down the net and a bunch of people were playing full-court basketball.

As I am, strictly speaking, not a student, I let Ben and Steve handle the court situation.  Since the badminton-ness of the gym was officially sanctioned, both Ben and Steve felt that it was within their rights to ask the basketball people to split into half court and let them set up the net for play.  They promised we'd only be there for an hour at maximum, and gave them ten minutes to wrap up their game.

Needless to say, it was an awkward arrangement; forgetting the fact that both halves of the basketball court remained in use throughout our little badminton match so that we kept nearly beaming people with our racquets, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that we had just inconvenienced a bunch of people, not to mention that those people were all generally bigger and sweatier than Ben, Steve, or I.  As my Girl Scout training helped tie the knots to secure the net, my escapist tendencies imagined a wonderful world in which such socially awkward situations could be avoided.  "Maybe I could buy a badminton net..." I mused.  "If I owned a badminton net, we'd never inconvenience big basketball guys again, and we could play whenever we wanted.  That would be great."

Obviously, the thought was short-lived.  I am not going to buy a badminton net.  CMU has them, and I'm even allowed to use them as a guest of Ben and Steve (though I didn't, strictly speaking, follow protocol on this particular visit) and then I don't have to pay for any damages, I wouldn't have to find a place to store them, and I always have a place to play, even when it's raining or when I don't own a yard.

The longer we played, the less I cared about how we'd inconvenienced the basketball guys.  I mean, yeah, I still felt bad about getting in their way, and I couldn't help but think how ridiculous it must have looked to them: three people pushing out ten people just to play some vaguely old-fashioned game with pathetic-looking skinny racquets and a dinky little birdie.  But when they stumbled into our part of the court, they apologized and one of us would say, "No worries," and when we hit one of them with one of our gaming instruments, we apologized and they would say, "No worries."  And at the end of 40 minutes, Ben was too tired to keep going (playing single to Steve's and my doubles) and we packed up and left, giving them their court back.  The rules set down by the CMU athletic facility authorities did their work, the compromise was struck between us, and everyone survived and got to enjoy a bit of physical exertion.

Public goods tend to do this, I think.  Public parks, public schools, public hospitals, public sidewalks...they force us to interact with each other, to practice compromise, tact, and civility.  They may not explicitly teach us the inherent value of the people around us, but when fair rules are in place, they implicitly teach us to acknowledge other people's rights as designated by those rules.  Public goods give us access to thoughts and feelings that are not natively our own, but that might help shape, redefine, or strengthen those thoughts and feelings that are.

Private goods are nice: I like owning a car, in large part because it means I am not at the mercy of the bus routes and schedules, and I don't have to worry so much about the size or shape of the things I need to carry from point A to point B, as long as they fit somewhere in my trunk or backseat.  My car does probably cost me significantly more than bus fare would, between gas, insurance, maintenance, and depreciation, so I always have to make sure I'm getting what I pay for, that my car remains a better option than the public transportation system.

But sometimes I pass a bus stop where people stand waiting, or I watch people climbing on or off the sectional behemoths as they stop on the side of the road, and I wonder if I'd feel more connected to the people around me if I were forced to get that close to them every day.  I live alone, I don't have a job, and my neighborhood is pretty quiet, so I can avoid human contact for days if I want to.  Add my car into that, and the isolation only deepens.

For me, for now, this isolation is primarily just a sort of depressing reality.  I don't see many people, and most people don't see or talk to me.  But over time, such separation from society could conceivably become something more sinister.  If public places teach us compromise and tactfulness, over-privatization could cause those skills to atrophy, perhaps to the point where not only am I not explicitly seeing the value in the lives of other human beings, but I start denying those human beings' rights as human beings.  If I were to become completely self-sufficient, without need or desire for any public goods, that sufficiency might become my only goal, the only thing I fight for, in which case, the needs of others seem of little consequence to me.  Suddenly, I don't care about the other people on the road, their convenience, or their safety; I only care that I have someplace to be and I've got to get there, so I'm going to do what it takes to get me there, no matter the cost to others.

I'm fairly certain this hypothetical is an exaggeration, an extreme form of isolationism that probably only occurs in concurrence with some form of serious social or mental deficiency.  Nonetheless, as I played badminton that day, I wondered if, perhaps, there might be a connection between a person's consumption of public goods and their political leanings.  Could someone who frequents their public library ever consider school vouchers to be a socially responsible response to the decline in public education?  Would someone who only ever drank water out of a Brita filter think that Social Security needed to be completely revised, not just privatized?

Obviously, someone who uses public transportation has a vested interest in that transportation's funding and subsequent quality, but does habitual use of public goods and services influence a person's outlook on public goods more generally?

What about you?  What public goods and services to you rely on most heavily, and how do you think they've influenced your understanding of the value of the public?  I really want to know.