| Goodbye San Francisco! Hello Biloxi! If you would have told us in 2017 when we were hardcore urbanite San Franciscans – all our lives – that we would be living in Mississippi we would have laughed in your face. But here we are, on the Gulf Coast in the Mississippi Sound, defying our past and breaking our own former glib San Francisco narratives. We made the decision to leave Pittsburgh, which was nothing more than a brief 5-year stepping stone (jagged rock) to take us to the rest of our lives, in January 2023. Through Divine Intervention, carried through with a sprinkle of Magic, we unclenched just enough to allow Fate to do her thing and on March 10 of this year we closed on a house in Biloxi, Mississippi.   Over the course of 2023 we took several small trips to our new home, gently diving in.  You Guys Do Great Work. You Must Be Rolling In It! Well, thank you! But actually, no. We could really use your support. Please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/bookofours or making a donation on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/bookofours! Don’t like donating online? No problem. Send us an email at info@book-of-ours.com and we will give you our home address so you can send us some cold hard cash or, if you’re so inclined, we also take gift cards and even silver and gold! \ We Did Not Jump In Feet First This time Unlike our Pittsburgh move, where we jumped in feet first without really knowing what we were getting into, this time we decided to do as the South does, take a leisurely stroll into our new digs. Why the Mississippi Sound you ask? Seriously?    The Secret Coast, as real estate agents affectionately refer to it, has already offered the inspiration and space we need to stretch out into our destined creative spirit. We are writers, musicians, painters and story-tellers. We can find our voice again and again on the Gulf Coast as we dip our toes into the salty Gulf of Mexico or rock lazily in a hammock under dangling Spanish moss.    How to Support Book of Ours. We could really use your support. Please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/bookofours or making a donation on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/bookofours! Don’t like donating online? No problem. Send us an email at info@book-of-ours.com and we will give you our home address so you can send us some cold hard cash or, if you’re so inclined, we also take gift cards and even silver and gold! Enough with the chit-chat. Let’s move on to the good stuff! Perhaps you’ve watched a few Book of Ours video essays and found what we intended you to find: to rebelliously break through all prevailing narrative. Eternally grateful for finding us, sharing our work and supporting us, we have come to some conclusions about the medium on which our work is populated.Unfortunately social media has been the only real place that we can showcase our unique rebellious spirit. This bittersweet milieu has led us to the conclusion that the real world and the social media world cannot intertwine when attempting to relay meaningful nuance and lived experience with a touch of that razor sharp rebellion.  The examples of this tragic but timely discovery are too vast to count. And the crossover is practically impossible. If you meet us in the real world, we will surely disappoint. If we meet you in the real world, you will surely disappoint. Social media was created out of the pathos and narcissism of San Francisco tech bros who incorporated their own social dysfunctionality into algorithms and manipulated talking points and set the trend for highly flawed human behavior that cannot be reversed. These flaws pulsate out into the nation of Users like beacons of honor and recreate themselves. From our view it becomes more of a social experiment than an experience and the madness of two folding into the madness of many creates a world of tired out repetition. The madness of two becomes the madness of manyUsers will always be right. Users will live in glibly crafted memetic imagery. Users will always talk and shout over others, whether those people disagree with them or not. Users will share too much of their personal lives. Users will display themselves, their lives and their personal habits for the world to either praise or admonish. Users will forget. Users are contemptuous of that which they do not know or experience. We tried to jump into this frayed, decayed, defective world and assimilate, always putting Book of Ours before us, to shield us from the acidic vitriol, fragile egos and stinging hubris that is the foundation of a world which we clearly do not belong. Sadly we were not left unscarred by this volatile underworld.  How to Support Book of Ours. We could really use your support. Please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/bookofours or making a donation on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/bookofours! Don’t like donating online? No problem. Send us an email at info@book-of-ours.com and we will give you our home address so you can send us some cold hard cash or, if you’re so inclined, we also take gift cards and even silver and gold! BLOCK! It was a dismal and dismaying revelation as we watched the entirety of the complex and beautiful human experience whittle down to nothing more than gossip and the inevitable Block Button. Petty differences or simply strong opinions seemed to be the rallying cry for Dunning-Kruger and bifurcation of intellect splintered this fragile world comprised of nothing but digital addictions and habits falsely translated as connection.  The Social Connection Recently for 10 days we went without social media, not because we wanted to. We made no conscious decision to walk away from it out of some sort of last gasp for self preservation. We were just busy. When JP returned to Biloxi with the final haul in the middle of November, he had our friend in tow. She helped with the driving and some of the heavy lifting and cleaning up the old house to prep it for the new owners. We then hosted her for the next 10 days so she could get a taste of the Gulf Coast. This friend is not on social media and Julie packed a very busy itinerary for us.   “Let’s see, today’s adventure was to walk the Biloxi Boardwalk. Box checked.” Three’s A Crowd, But Not Really Having someone live with you for 10 days is challenging enough. Having someone stay with you when you’re living around boxes and anxious to get your life started on your own terms and even get to know the house you’ve finally moved into completely, adds an extra layer of challenges. The complexities of emotions, having another human being in your own home, having to purchase amenities which you typically do in private, and monitoring your own personality quirks and offenses around another person is not easy. But because we are humans, we assimilate. We offer meaningful apologies if we’ve offended and have open dialogue. We allow each other to inspire us despite these complex challenges. We take careful steps to show courtesy and respect and we understand we will judge but those judgments won’t define the long term value of friendship and face to face interaction. We don’t shout. We don’t drink too much. We don’t talk over them.  And when we fall, they help us up. Always leave a place cleaner than how you found it. In turn, she was as you would expect any polite guest to be and behaved as graciously as she could. She didn’t open or close drawers or cupboards and start poking around, she made no offensive comments about our home. She rarely went to the back of the house and kept to the kitchen, the living space and the guest room. She offered to help move furniture, clean up, paid for all her own meals, kept our cat occupied while we were busy with taking care of tasks that needed our immediate attention. She even stripped the bed and folded the bedding and placed it neatly on top of the cabinet on her last morning with us.   Trust All Around I’m sure that any user on social media would have offered the same courtesy. But, as it stands now we are skeptical of that. Although, to be fair we have connected to a few supporters and fans and although we have never met them in person, their generosity of spirit, their virtual kindness and their belief and investment in us as individuals and creatives has in turn inspired us to offer the same to others, some through social media and some in real life.  How to Support Book of Ours We could really use your support. Please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/bookofours or making a donation on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/bookofours! Don’t like donating online? No problem. Send us an email at info@book-of-ours.com and we will give you our home address so you can send us some cold hard cash or, if you’re so inclined, we also take gift cards and even silver and gold! Talent Wasted. Passion Wasted.The passion found on social media has been a window into the soul of every addict, every poet, every entrepreneur and every dissident. Trotted out into the ether with no filter, at first we felt in awe but then we felt like cheap voyeurs. What we were reading, seeing and viewing should be in books of poetry, magazine articles or even in calendars of Beautiful People and Beautiful Things. We started to wonder about the users behind these resplendent displays and were dubious that their concocted and carefully curated pages were actually who they claimed. Once, we broke the Fourth Wall and our skepticism was confirmed.  Don’t Fear Loneliness When did the virtual space originally designed for connection between family members who had moved far apart, or to stay in touch with school friends now scattered to the winds become a crutch for existence and false connection? It seems as though loneliness has taken on new depths and new meaning with the invention of social media even though it was marketed as a place to cure loneliness. Loneliness is part of life and it must be something we live through as humans. Without the feeling of loneliness then chances are your human experience isn’t complete. As humans we are social and yes, we are meant to work together in egalitarian ways to create a harmonious existence, but we are also individuals and that individualism can create loneliness. We must find the strength within ourselves to master our loneliness and not use social media or even socialization as a crutch to temporarily ameliorate feeling uncomfortable in our own skin for a brief time.  How to Support Book of Ours.We could really use your support. Please consider becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/bookofours or making a donation on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/bookofours! Don’t like donating online? No problem. Send us an email at info@book-of-ours.com and we will give you our home address so you can send us some cold hard cash or, if you’re so inclined, we also take gift cards and even silver and gold!  Just Say No To Digital Dopamine Those brief interactions on social media create dopamine hits in the brain of the user and addictive traits start to materialize. This is especially habit-forming and detrimental to individuals who struggle with drug or alcohol addiction. There is no cure for the addiction to social media. It is simply a decision to stop using it, as any addict cannot be cured of his addiction. If he wants his life or habits to change then he must simply decide to stop using. Even hypnotists tell you this. Once you decide it’s something you want to do then every book you read or every program you invest in will work, not because the books or the programs have the secret answer to breaking addiction, but simply because you decided you want to break it.  Digital Twin On the flip side of this are the individuals who don’t have any social media presence or it’s very minimal. Recently a real-life friend was telling us about a troubling experience he had while out walking a dog. He runs a dog walking business where he is the sole owner and walker for all his clients. Another dog-walker ran into him walking her dogs and after some discussion about the economy and how business isn’t as booming as they’d like, out of nowhere she launched into him. She told him how he should run his business and chastised him for not doing enough to be more successful. He doesn’t use social media to market his business. He simply relies on word-of-mouth referrals and occasionally if he meets a dog owner walking their dog while he is out walking a client’s dog he will offer his services. But this other dog-walker didn’t take the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude with him, instead pushing into him even more. It got so bad that he simply cut her off mid-sentence by walking away. It sounded like her social media digital twin, who has the answers to everything in life, had taken over her real-life personality and she forgot about basic respectful dialogue. His only escape from her vitriol was to literally just walk away from her. Sometimes you just have to shut the door on individuals who don’t know how to differentiate between their condescending, accusatory tone they’ve adopted on social media and their real-life tone.  Digital Twins Don’t Know Shadow Work The personality flaws that social media has created has made it almost impossible to interact in the real world. I’ve read quite a few posts from users lately who will say “Does anyone else feel like an alien out there? Like we just can’t connect to people in the real world anymore?” The comments and reactions to these messages always blame the outside world for this recent phenomena of not being able to connect. They say it must be because everyone else in the world has allowed interventionist medicine to change their personality, or they have poor eating habits or they have allowed themselves to be overworked. I’ve never once read a comment or a post where a user might say “Maybe if I didn’t spend so much time creating digital connections my real-life connections would be easier to build.” It’s difficult for users to do any shadow work on their digital twin.  Montana Tried To Ban TikTok Case in point is the recent ruling from a Federal Judge that overruled Montana’s TikTok ban. To give it context, Montana’s goal was to be the first state in the Republic to ban the Chinese-based social media app as of January 1, 2024. This would have been the first of its kind and no doubt many States would have followed suit had the Federal judge not overruled it. The reason the State of Montana gave for wanting to ban TikTok comes down to one salient point: they felt it an infringement of rights that data from TikTok users would be collected by the Chinese government. This is one of the main bottlenecks of social media dangers that tends to veer users and interested parties off into a direction that will never serve them, in court or otherwise.  Put A Dollar Sign On Your Time To summarize, we learned, in general, from Edward Snowden and Wikileaks that institutions, including the US Government, were collecting data from United States citizens without their consent. Many users boiled this down to feeling well, used. If they “liked” or bookmarked a brand, then that data would be collected, sold and marketed back to them to incentivize them to buy the brand. Or, many users feel that if they respond to messaging about criticisms of the US Government that they would be catalogued and this opinion could be used against them in some way. Although this cataloguing whether by public (government) or private (corporations) is probably true, the real money comes from the behavioral changes and digital twin interactions that I’ve been writing about in this newsletter, er Substack piece masquearading as the end of 2023 Newsletter. Plus, there are certain citizens that simply won’t have any social media presence at all because they are fiercely dedicated to the idea that time and energy is money. A real-life friend of mine only has a LinkedIn account and he uses it solely to look for work. His position on data collection in social media is this: if he isn’t going to get paid for his value added asset on opinions or ads (likes, dislikes, posts, re-shares) then what exactly is the point. Somebody is making money and it isn’t the user. Therefore, it’s a bad investment of time and energy,  |
| Capitalists Don’t Care About Your Data Or Shoes Captains of industry don’t find any value in whether you purchase that pair of shoes advertised and curated to your page. We’ll admit. Julie has mobility constraints and when an ad for Kizik shoes appeared on her feed, no doubt because she has posted about having mobility issues, she bought a pair and it’s the best pair of sneakers she’s ever owned. But, for the most part industry and government aren’t necessarily thinking short-term value added asset. They’re thinking long-term. Their long game goal is to create a civilization that has completely eradicated the social and human experience that existed prior to the introduction of social media. Ask yourself. What’s more beneficial to a capitalist? You buying a pair of $40 shoes based on your collected data or changing your entire human experience and creating a new kind of civilization that will reframe our entire existence?  Digital Conflict Rips Apart Fabric of Society So, this is where Montana failed. Instead of placing their entire case (TikTok ban) on the issue of user data collection, perhaps they would have found a better outcome if they had simply used the reason the founders of social media admitted to years ago: to rip apart the fabric of society. The fabric of society is surely torn and we can see it in real-time examples. Every time there’s conflict users pick and choose their sides in some sort of pantomime of altruism and find within them the regurgitation of historical fact and imagery that washes away all sense of skepticism of propaganda and instead bathes viewers and connections with sentimental nostalgia. Odd that the same users who were in support of the destruction of Ukraine cry rivers of digital tears over the plight of Palestine. It’s the same with any holiday. I’ve lost count on how many users I noticed would post how they are boycotting Thanksgiving in honor of the Native Americans or war or violence. There lives a duplicity in these digital proclamations but that duplicity is lost on users especially as Cynthia Nixon, formerly of the popular HBO show Sex and The City, announced she was going on a hunger strike in support of Gaza and to end all wars. I guess she’s the new Gandhi? Will these same users who constantly announce when Hollywood is involved in anything it means the cause du jour is now compromised have enough critical skill to view this as the hyper-normalized bread and circus that it is? This story about Nixon was nothing more than a cheeky mockery of social media and very few users see it. In fact, very few users see how modern entertainment, establishment news and media and other venues are constantly trolling and mocking users for their own duplicity. Try to have an intelligent and meaningful conversation about this with a user in real-time in the real-world and their digital twin will take over their real-life personality and go on the attack.  You Have Nothing To Prove Another real-life friend who has a nearly non-existent social media presence has never moved her discourse or connections online. She has a full time job and works remotely but the rest of her life is busy. She visits her son occasionally who is away at college. She speaks out in front of her City’s municipal leaders, admonishing them to do better. She writes for a small local neighborhood newspaper. She has dinner with her parents once a week. She is a part of at least two writing groups that I know of where she goes to people’s houses and interacts in real-time. She became conservator to an abandoned house in her neighborhood and is wanting to start fundraising to fix it up and turn it into a public park/urban farm. Her goal is to raise chickens and plant food and make it a fun, community space. Using her as a trial balloon, imagine what we could accomplish as a society if we didn’t spend so much time interacting on social media but redirected our passions and interests back into ourself. I understand the value in promoting work that is already being done. We are Book of Ours after all. But the second someone has an opinion or comment, instead of reacting or engaging, simply go back to working on what it is that is fulfilling you in real life like you did before the invention of social media. For my friend, no one is keeping score. No one is judging her. Even if her writing doesn’t take off or her project for the community park/urban farm doesn’t happen, she will find something else to fulfill her. .  Don’t Stymie Fate! After all, as the title of this newsletter says, this was our year of preparing for new beginnings. If we had spent more time whittling hours and hours away in front of our social media screens, we would have never known what we were capable of, Fate would have been stymied and the Magic that brought us here would have been stifled into dust.  … More To Come …As the year winds down we are unpacking boxes, and setting up our new home. Be sure to look out for more interesting and creative content in 2024!HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND BE OF GOOD CHEER! |
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