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Facebook Envy

January 31, 2011 | 5 comments

A few days ago on TIME.com’s Healthland page, there appeared an article by one Maia Szalavitz, having to do with how Facebook makes you feel shitty about yourself. In an act both altruistic and mischievously ironic, a former schoolmate of mine shared the article on Facebook. Nicely done, my friend!

Ms. Salavitz’s lead-in:

Have other people’s blithe Facebook updates ever made you feel like a total loser? Or have you ever felt that your best friend’s life is perfectly easy and joyful, while yours is nothing but struggle and anxiety? You’re not alone. Everybody has these experiences, finds an illuminating new study [PDF] from Stanford University, and they tend to exacerbate feelings of loneliness, isolation and dissatisfaction in an already alienating society.

I found this somewhat reassuring, since I definitely identify with the syndrome. I can’t even guess how many times I’ve perused my Facebook newsfeed and thought something like, “Look how all my friends are so happy, thriving and successful, looking great and raising adorable kids. I am so staying away from the reunion.”

The Stanford study is said to have been inspired by the “Facebook envy” experience, but it doesn’t address it Read the rest of this entry »

It Must Be True – The Internet Says So

July 15, 2010 | Comment

All I did was plug in text from this post and this post, and it was definitively confirmed…

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Hey, Dr. Karl Hufbauer – you and your C+ dismissal of my Freshman Billy Budd paper can kiss my baby tuckoo!

What can I say? I try to keep C&B more on the Dubliners/Portrait of the Artist end of things than going all Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake up in here. Read the rest of this entry »

Cameraphone Follies: Dirty Sign in Irvine

June 14, 2010 | Comment

The mindset represented by this sign is what I mean when I refer to the Orange County city of Irvine as a soulless, planned-community hellscape. If I hadn’t spent 90% of my waking hours at the area’s one oasis of culture, the UCI Fine Arts village, I’d never have stayed there for four years.

Full disclosure: I took this picture in 1993, a little bit before the advent of the cameraphone. Still, I think any reasonable person will agree that it qualifies as a folly. This little roadside want ad stayed up for at least a week or two, which gave me plenty of time to remember to throw my camera in my bag before the next time I drove by.

Oregon’s Big Reveal at the Rose Bowl

January 1, 2010 | 2 comments

First of all, welcome to 2010. I don’t know about you, but I feel better already.

Late in the previous decade (i.e., about three weeks ago), at the end of a post about the University of Oregon football team and their Amazing Technicolor Uniforms, I wrote:

This coming New Year’s Day, Oregon will face Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. The questions abound in the minds of the Ducks faithful… will the “steel”-colored pants appear in Pasadena, or will it be one-and-done for the gray trousers? What if they combined those with the day-glo chartreuse jerseys and the yellow helmets, for a perfect storm of mismatching?

Well, now we know: straight-up green and white. Nice restraint. Certainly nothing like the possible train wreck I envisioned. Despite looking good, right now the Ducks would surely rather feel good, which seems unlikely in light of their just-completed 26-17 loss to Ohio State. Read the rest of this entry »