{"id":40245,"date":"2011-06-16T17:13:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T21:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=40245"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:52:42","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:52:42","slug":"what-if-it-was-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/what-if-it-was-you\/","title":{"rendered":"What if it was you?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Eric’s 2000 article called Love on the Line<\/em><\/a> he asks, “In relationships, are there any virtues to virtuality?” He goes on to say: “If we’re really paying attention, though, we can see that loving people online does something else that is quite surprising. It can strip away the masks that cover the extent to which all relationships are composed of internal psychological dynamics. It removes the costume covering how much of what we experience in so many realtime entanglements is actually some kind of internal virtual reality; that is, a fantasy, and how much of the working-out we do with others is really working out ourselves.”<\/p>\n

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There has been a dialogue brewing since the Weinergate scandal —\u00a0which I find healthy — giving us some very juicy, wide open room for exploration: What happens to you when you ‘connect’ with someone online? Do these interactions\u00a0‘count’ as true connection? Was what Congressman Weiner did a form of adultery or a fantasy?<\/p>\n

For a\u00a0person my age,\u00a0perusing these questions feels like a visit to the future, or a science fiction short story. But it’s the present day and now in the news. In the 10 years since Eric wrote Love on the Line<\/em>, we’ve moved from emails, chat rooms,\u00a0blogs, cell phones and computer cameras to iPhones that peer into your\u00a0living room\u00a0and see what you’re eating for breakfast.<\/p>\n

On my iPod Touch I’ve got FaceTime, which uses iPod’s video camera to make a\u00a0face-to-face call with friends\u00a0and family.\u00a0I have to think twice before checking in with the kids using FaceTime, especially before 8:00 am\u00a0or after 11:00 pm on the weekends. I’m not sure any one of us\u00a0could brace ourselves for what we might see of each other.\u00a0There are some things a loving aunt should not see of\u00a0the twenty-somethings\u00a0in her\u00a0family.<\/p>\n

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But that’s about family. The Weiner scandal is about connecting anonymously with strangers, with words and pictures. Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee (the Congressman from New York who resigned office for posing in a beefcake shot for someone on Craigslist) did what everyone does online looking for love and\/or attention on the Internet:\u00a0waltz with\u00a0a fantasy,\u00a0relating in what they thought to be a safe, anonymous environment. Possibly it was to stem feelings of loneliness, or maybe it\u00a0was, as Eric wrote, to find someone to be their\u00a0mirror and help them experience real feelings in a virtual situation denied in the bricks and mortar world. But both these men found the Internet as a communication tool to be as potent as a plutonium bomb is to weaponry.<\/p>\n

Not too long ago, a young gay man named Tyler Clementi,\u00a0hounded by online broadcasts of\u00a0him having sex with a man\u00a0in\u00a0his dorm room at Rutgers, committed suicide. His roommate,\u00a0who taped and shared the encounter online,\u00a0violated the\u00a0boundaries of respect for\u00a0Clementi and faces criminal charges for invasion of privacy. The Internet\u00a0did not kill Tyler, but the\u00a0implications\u00a0of using the Internet in this circumstance showed how much damage it can do. So what about Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing paparazzi who acquired\u00a0and broadcast the\u00a0Twitter feeds of Anthony Weiner’s penis, starting this whole\u00a0sordid\u00a0mess?\u00a0Shouldn’t the same laws used to indict Clementi’s roommate be used to charge Breitbart for the same thing? Just because Weiner shared his penis on a Twitter feed, did it mean Breitbart HAD to show it?<\/p>\n

We have\u00a0witnessed how the Internet has had such a profound impact on this planet: Wikileaks, the Green Revolution in Iran, Arab Spring. The Internet\u00a0has changed the planet, opening places\u00a0we’ve never been, hopefully\u00a0making us a better world because of it. But on an individual scale on the Internet, we find ourselves\u00a0face-to-face with\u00a0our\u00a0own polarized\u00a0values. We’re still\u00a0in the middle of a culture war. Our current economic instability contributes to\u00a0an already\u00a0deep sense of uncertainty.\u00a0Talking about scandal is intoxicating and addictive. We’re returned to a form of the past where moral certitude and the code of\u00a0‘proper behavior’\u00a0was the ‘norm’, when we were more secure and more certain. We find community, unified by pillorying men in high places —\u00a0men caught in moments similar\u00a0to\u00a0that young man expressing his sexual identity, watched\u00a0without\u00a0their permission or knowledge. The politics\u00a0of personal destruction\u00a0used against\u00a0Anthony Weiner\u00a0is the grown-up version of what happened in those Rutgers college dorms with Tyler Clementi, with the ‘net this time a convenient tool for one’s political enemies.<\/p>\n

Today’s\u00a0story of a congressman\u00a0resigning office for exposing himself on a Twitter feed has the feel of\u00a0an\u00a0Atlantean moment, <\/em><\/a>summarized by Eric as “our present technology threatening to outstrip our ability to use it wisely.” This piece is not about judging the Internet, Twitter, Anthony Weiner\u00a0or anyone else for that matter. It’s a plea to learn how to use this powerful and creative medium with respect for one another. As a means to get us mobilized to socialize, communicate and take action, Internet tools are fabulous. As a vehicle for personal interaction, we’re taking awfully big chances with it on\u00a0the sharing and receiving end, and with lives other than our own.<\/p>\n

Will\u00a0the story of Anthony Weiner be a cautionary tale or a story of redemption?\u00a0Could\u00a0“Did he HAVE to tweet?” be answered with “Do we have to care?” For his and all our freedoms now and in the future,\u00a0redemption\u00a0should not just\u00a0be his to work for, but our job as well.\u00a0These days between eclipses in the sign of communication, approaching another eclipse in the sign of birthing, I\u00a0feel yearning for a way for it all to stop. Not to stop technological progress, but the cavalier way in which we handle these technical marvels. Human lives are at stake, and we use these toys like kids. In\u00a0our sometimes vain attempts to find love, acceptance and\u00a0community, online and in person, shouldn’t\u00a0we begin with a frank, open and\u00a0adult\u00a0conversation about consideration and\u00a0respect for one another’s personal and intimate space? Isn’t that also a form of love we need and deserve\u00a0in\u00a0the bricks and mortar world?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Eric’s 2000 article called Love on the Line he asks, “In relationships, are there any virtues to virtuality?” He goes on to say: “If we’re really paying attention, though, we can see that loving people online does something else that is quite surprising. It can strip away the masks that cover the extent to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}