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follow the yellow brick information superhighway: gossip, hearsay, and tone deafness among the Epinionator tribeMay 29 '05 (Updated May 31 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Meet-and-Greets are good. They would probably be good even without lots of free pizza. But maybe not, so let's not test that theory.
The weekend before this one, from Friday afternoon to obnoxiously early on Sunday morning, I spent a holiday in Washington, D.C., a large city in the eastern portion of the United States, the most recent “superpower” on the planet Earth, which is located smack in the middle of the planned Vogon hyperspace bypass – a city a mere one-hour airplane flight from my home. The people of the United States consider Washington, D.C., a major tourist destination, and a wiser, more prepared tourist might have chosen to spend the time seeing much-loved D.C. sites: the capitol and legislative buildings, the National Spy Museum, the used CD stores, and the Washington Mall (which I’m told contains impressive monuments, several art museums, and both The Gap _and_ Old Navy, the latter a very short drive from the New Navy headquarters in a lesser city called Annapolis). I, however, went to Washington to talk, eat, sing, and otherwise amuse myself in the company of random people who – and this was what made D.C. itself so special – did not live in D.C. any more than I did, by and large, but wanted to gather there anyway. Those people were (and are) fellow members of Epinions. And while I didn’t see any great artists painting any of them – there was a surrealist taking suspiciously close notes about my hairstyle, but that’s it – I figure I had more fun this way than with any museum. Here are some things I learned. (1) Epinionators, in person, tend to have just the personality you’d guess from reading them. I already knew that; I only bring it up in case you didn’t. Really, everyone I’ve met in person after first meeting online has matched their online persona; even in the late 1990’s when I experimented with the use of online dating services, and ran across a fibbing user-pic or three, I could tell in advance which dates were going to be most awkward (although at that point I was awkward enough myself that I went on them anyway). There’s a still-common belief, birthed in the era when only oddballs socialized online, that millions of people troll the chat rooms and message boards pretending to be a different age, occupation, sex, and race from in reality. I’m sure that’s true, if you’re looking for small talk and cybersex. (Indeed, if you’re looking for small talk and cybersex, I assume the fakers make your journey more interesting.) And there’s a fear of predators and stalkers, which also makes sense: those six gazillion junk-mail solicitations for money are being sent by someone, and not someone who makes it easy for me to oppose capital punishment. And even on Epinions, if someone claims to be a professional model and posts model pics, she might – duh – be a 55-year-old scam artist. (Actual scandal, that one.) But generally speaking, an Epinionator is not something anyone would pretend to be. Read a bunch of SpeedMike’s reviews, and what you learn, before you learn anything else, is that he has the spare time to listen to Michael Jackson albums in obsessive detail and tell you all about what he hears; who’d fake that? So he’s also not posing when, in the process, he emerges as a funny, sweet, quasi-employable black man who periodically, for a week here and there when he isn’t being a round cuddly glasses-wearer, looks exactly like Anderson Cooper. Caroline, online, claims to be a married born-again Christian who favors gay marriage and would likely-as-not marry a gay Scandinavian man herself if bigamy was a workable route to his Canadian citizenship; that fits _whose_ dream-girl checklist? So of course she also wasn’t faking her intelligence, curiosity, or the mild overlay of cheery sarcasm that barely coats her intensely loving nature (and her bullying need to make everyone around her dance; one of the only types of bullying I’m ever in favor of). The mad doc Lori, host of me and many other weekend visitors, is flippant, exuberant, generous, fun, fond of dragon memorobilia, and informal enough to figure everyone should be able to sleep on a floor together; somehow, I promise, all of this could be sensed by anyone reading her list of the Top Ten Medieval-Themed Movies and any two of her random write-off essays. And now that she’s living with a travel writer who works at a hotel, she housekeeps good too. (2) The Epinionators I have not met are probably as smart and weird as those I have. I know because I hung out for hours with some of them too. Example: there’s an equal-opportunity rude person in the Kids & Family review section, a lovely 39-year-old named Nancy who has four kids, who dresses like she’s young enough to be one of them, who has little buttons of Pink Floyd and the Clash and Public Enemy and the Ramones and baby Stewie from the Family Guy on her backpack, and who had the rare guts to write an essay in the category "What Should I Know about Children with Disabilities?" on the subject of why she really, really, really does not like her own 16-year-old daughter. (If this sounds mean of her, consider what an absolute relief it must’ve been to hear for all the readers in a similar predicament; we tend, as a society, to give parents too much blame and too little empathy.) I’d never heard of Nancy; now I know she’s charming, an excellent writer, and responsible enough to leave us the moment a family emergency came up. My own kids, once they exist, will benefit from her product-review wisdom, too: tough pose or no, she still writes far more 5-star reviews than 1-star reviews, although perhaps with a shade less relish. I’d also never heard of David, the sort of goofy, flamboyantly homosexual young man who utterly justifies the hijacking of the word “gay” (and suggests, by his bearing, that maybe homophobia comes from the envy of straight people too fearful to throw themselves around a tavern floor while singing “I Will Survive”). I’d barely heard of Krissie, a pretty blonde girl who would surely be popular and too busy to write were her feet not deformed, each ending in but one, very long, pointy toe. (Her shoes bravely passed off her disability as a choice of style). I’d definitely read stuff by Garrett, but not knowing that he's a handsome young Epinions employee who crashes parties in order to spend them quizzing people on how to make Epinions a more pleasant and user-friendly place to write – and listens so intelligently, asking such wise and supportive follow-ups, that you almost want to point him to a website where people write nothing but questions, and lie back waiting for the comment section to enlighten them. Of course, there aren’t enough like him for a site like that to exist. Pity… (3) Epinions is, however, a cult. I feel irresponsible, not having known this. See, I’ve been behind on my site reading even _not_ knowing this. Every once in a while, I’ll find the time to go through my last half-dozen “the following 19 good writers you care about have posted, again” e-mails. Proud and determined, I'll actually finish reading – sometimes even responding to! – their urgent missives about heavy metal cd’s, movies that often weren’t directed by George Lucas at all, good books, goofy hotel mishaps, and opinions about gay marriage, abortion, and whether anyone else agrees with me that Ben Folds Five’s hit song “Brick” is about an abortion. And when I finish, I will feel not only better informed, but friendlier, more in touch with the life and thoughts of people I care about. As well, I feel the exhiliration of being done! Like I’ve accomplished something! Naah. Turns out the real action is on the separate Epinions message boards, and in the blogs of all my Epinions friends, only one of whose blogs (SpeedMike’s) I had even known existed. It turns out that plenty of my various Epinions friends have been flirting with, arguing with, telling jokes with, and training army ants to hunt and kill various of my other Epinions friends. Huh. Speaking of which, on one of those blogs, (4) A good e-friend of mine wrote, of another good e-friend of mine, that “I’m tired of hearing her talk about maybe killing herself. Why doesn’t she go ahead and do it?”. (Paraphrased.) Now, the writer – call him Boy – was already unpopular with the chatters at Lori’s group, and his target – call her Girl – was well-loved. So naturally, Boy’s comments have made him that much more of a pariah. On Girl’s behalf, presumably, I should reject him too: I very much prefer her alive. I can’t bring myself to take sides, however, because I can’t help seeing the story as more complicated. Was Boy being tactless? Oh yeah. Was his approach the opposite of helpful? Sure. But he wasn’t writing for Girl’s benefit. Personal blogs are just that, personal; he was thinking aloud, and he was in a bad mood, as smart teenagers isolated in tiny towns so often can be. And when we adjust for that, I think I see what he was talking about. As one of Girl’s friends, I’ve played it safe by going after her depressed thoughts directly. I point out that she’s smart enough to get really fun revenge one day on everyone who disliked her; that she’s cute enough to prettify the city streets, thus boosting tourism, thus keeping the local music stores alive; that if she dies, she will never be able to listen to any CD’s ever again. Maybe it helps. But Boy is treating her the way we might treat a friend who always talks about one day being a rock star, but is too lazy to practice his singing or his instrument. He’s saying, put up or shut up. His preference, I’m sure, was shut-up: don’t talk lifeless miserable crap when you’re better than that. If Girl gets a good cognitive therapist, she’ll get the exact same advice, albeit in a nicer package. On a lighter and unrelated note, (5) Although 75% of pierced penises become infected at some point, it’s a small price to pay for feeling constant stimalation there. At least according to Tom, a marvelous writer best known for movie reviews that tell readers, before any distractions like plot or theme, how many naked chicks will appear for how long. He’s not a hypocrite: he showed us his penis, too. Then he sang the Divinyls’ one American hit song and adjusted the chorus to “when I think about me, I touch myself”. (6) Islamic men make ideal dates because they haven’t been circumcised, so their penises feel better. Not only would I never have learned it except by hearsay; it also teaches me about modern American Islam. And about dating. I forgot to ask if the difference could be felt through a condom, though. (7) Penis penis penis penis penis. (8) Andrew probably has a penis too, but I can't mention his name or his presence, because he was actually only in D.C. to lurk behind bushes, sneak into gated areas, and strangle innocent dogs. When we caught him making an origami ficus tree out of an ex-doberman's intestines, we reached a gentlemen's agreement to say he'd stayed home in Dallas, making paper airplanes. It's a shame, cuz otherwise he was seemed nice, albeit quiet: a good neighbor, who kept to himself a lot. His wife Amy, whom I otherwise might have mentioned here as amusing, smart, and not at all hypersensitive about being called a "Texan" (she's from the good, northern part of California, thank you much), would probably rather remain anonymous now. She writes excellent, practical reviews that would improve your garden, kitchen, and bookshelves, but leave the poor woman in peace. (9) Parts of Washington, D.C. look like Greenwich Village, although I only say this knowing SpeedMike (a Bronx native who prefers Greenwich to his native borough by a safe margin) agrees. Mainly, this means cute architecture, lots of music stores, lots of book stores, and about ten blocks consisting of nothing but restaurants from every ethnic group in the world. Very very good restaurants, I'm betting, based on the Indian and Turkish ones we tried. As far as I can tell, if anyone in the 3rd world isn't getting enough to eat, it's because all their food got moved here ... and unfortunately for them, I don't seem to mind. (10) In a karaoke bar with 20,000 song selections, in the course of a few hours, you are guaranteed to hear “Let’s Get it On” and “I Will Survive” several times each. This guarantee does not, however, apply to “the Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”. (11) Overpopulation makes it hard to be unique – even uniquely bad. See, I’d never been to a karaoke bar before. And with David putting on a wonderful show to a pageant of disco hits; with SpeedMike showing off an okay regular voice but an excellent falsetto (no wonder he likes Michael Jackson!); with Jenny proving to be both a lovely country singer, and then a better and more raucous Led Zeppelin singer than Robert Plant ever was, there was no way I was going to chicken out of singing. But the generic plan, of trying to sing well … that was doomed. I’m a bad singer normally, and much worse, I’m bad in ordinary, boring ways: my voice is a little thin, a little wavery, and a little imprecise about where the notes are. That would be no fun. So I looked through the song catalog – a remarkably varied one, with J.S. Bach, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and the Backstreet Boys in alphabetical order – and tried to find a song I loved well enough, and knew deeply enough, to totally destroy. Perhaps to your surprise, it wasn’t easy; I know too many songs, most of them obscure, to have the easy mastery that let a team of talented strangers fill in every single one of Fred’s and the Pierson sisters’ tics in “Love Shack”. But Jesus Jones’s “Right Here, Right Now” beckoned: Jesus Jones are, to me, one of the great pop bands of our time, and I knew I could demolish their sole hit with precision. Putting on a bad German accent so I wouldn’t mistake me for myself, I asked the audience leave to sing “a song for mein beautiful cawntry”, and proceeded to bellow, screech, and talk my way through the song, syllable for syllable. My least-bad voice being my deep one, I used the “and there’s your SIIIIIIGN, of the times” moment – Mike Edwards’s breath-takingly perfect falsetto moment – to drop into clown-school drill instructor mode. And when I wasn’t waving my hands messianically to the words, I gave the fiercest air-guitar solo ever played by someone who doesn’t have a fuucking clue how to play guitar. It was, I assumed, a stunning triumph: the worst performance anyone would hear all night. I hoped it would give courage to everyone who feared to perform. It didn’t: several of my Epinions-mates never did sing. (I was most hoping to persuade the excellent movie reviewer Marcello, who I think is as shy as I used to be, though for far less reason.) Worse, strangers arrived and took the mike. Somewhere between a thudding “Living on a Prayer” that made me realize how much I’ve underestimated Jon Bon, and a stumbling, inarticulate, clueless “Big Butts” that made me realize it was actually possible to underestimate Sir Mix-A-Lot … I just realized the world’s too big, and my achievements, even the horridest, are small. And you know what? It felt pretty good. But then, so did the whole weekend, so I’m biased.  |
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