Thoughts on Twitterville by Shel Israel

Twitterville by Shel Israel

Good little book here. While there is much to learn, this is not a How-To book.

So I’ve only started using Twitter with abandon over the two weeks or so. Sure, I opened an account a few years ago, but was too busy working on my dissertation and then getting settled in at Mizzou to spend any time playing with it. At that point I saw no need to use it. After all, I was busy condensing my life. I closed my Yahoo account. I ended my relationship with MySpace. I figured Facebook and LinkedIn would be enough for me. I was wrong.

There’s something about Twitter that has captured my imagination. I cannot pinpoint it, but I like the ‘real-timeyness’ of it, as compared to FaceBook and LinkedIn. While all are communites of a sort, there’s a difference. LinkedIn I use for my professional persona, looking for places that might need my skills talents and abilities. It is business first. FaceBook no longer seems to be the small community it once was. It is akin to a megalopolis or megaregion: there’s a hugeness to it now. Twitter is somewhere in-between the two.

Perhaps that is why “Twitterville” as a name fits so well. It takes a village to raise a child and there are village idiots running around out looking for other village idiots. Twitter fits between the seriousness of the one endeavor and silliness of the second.  

Twitterville covers the history of Twitter. Yes. Ho-hum. More than that, it is a compilation loaded with stories, exemplars and parables. If narratives and stories are one of the most important ways we make sense of our world, than Israel does a great job of ‘making sense’ of Twitter, removing some of the ambiguity and equivocality. Karl E. Weick is just as applicable online as off.

He delves wonderfully into Twitter culture. That’s not an easy thing when looking at a village as broad and loosely connected as Twitter is. He shows clients or customers contacting businesses with complaints and bravos and how those businesses reacted. (Most of the time: FAST!)

He gives due warning about trolls and spammers and scammers and other undesirable PITAs you may come across and what to do about them.

There are tips for both organizational and personal branding scattered throughout the book. So, if you are someone longing to make yourself into a brand, there’s a lot here to discover and become motivated. And it's a heck of a good read too. That alone makes it a pleasure and makes it stand out amongst boring business books.


You could become the next Miss Destructo!

Indeed R2-D2 Is in Star Trek

It used to be that "seeing was believing." Given the millions of ways images can be manipulated, I find myself more skeptical about what I see all the time. Some things are just over the top.

However not all images are so blatant. Take this one for example.

The altered image on the left was part of George Bush’s political campaign in 2004. He is digitally taken out by copying and pasting existing soldiers over the podium. Later, campaign managers would admit to the altering of the image. 


In another famous disappearing act, you'll below note that Trotsky disappeared from this famous photo with Lenin.

Of course, it isn't always about making people disappear. Sometimes they pop up out of nowhere, like the black student did in this brochure for the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Diversity is so important, they had to make a black guy up!

Of course we all know that women can never be slender enough for some advertisers, so we end up with this disgusting image:

Some manipulation is more subtle. For example, the slimming down of Katie Couric:

Or how they fixed this woman's teeth:

(Foucault would have a lot to say about how these lead women to distorted images of the self and how they then attempt to discipline themselves. That, however, is best left up to others.)


However, after doing my own research and looking at the film over and over again in fast mo, slow mo, regular mo and pause mo, it is true. R2-D2 is indeed in Star Trek. I didn't believe the picture when I first saw it, but indeed, the folks at Lucas' Industrial Light and magic put that little robot in there.

R2-D2 RULES!

Nightmares and Dreamscapes*

Sometimes you have to break out Freud, Jung or Lacan to figure out what the heck your brain-body is trying to tell you about what is bothering you about your life.

(I make no distinction between the mind and the body during dream states. That doesn’t mean that I am a monist. I am most certainly not. I believe in I have a soul, am a spirit, believe in God, etc. I also believe that the body remembers things as well. It stores emotions, activities and such. What I mean is I believe the body and soul are more intimately connected in sleep than in waking life. There is not an überconsciousness to get in the way. )

Sometimes you can have a great dream about sharing a bed with someone special. Sometimes you dream you are flying or falling. Some dreams are absolutely bizarre and you have no idea what they are about at all. As the fragments hit your awakening brain all you can think is “What the hell was that?” Sometimes you have nightmares that scare the hell out of you, like waking up and all life suddenly was like this shit.

Not me. Not lately, anyway. I know exactly what my dreams are about. I dreamt twice the other night. They are different dreams, but have the same theme. Here goes:

Dream #1:

I am sitting in an office. Across from me behind a large desk is am man. I think he was a black man, but I am not quite sure since the room is somewhat dark. He says to me, “Ok, so we are offering to pay you nineteen thousand dollars per year if you take this job.”

“Nineteen? You will have to make to twenty, if you really want me to take it.”

“Twenty it is then,”

We stand up and shake on it both of us getting exactly what we want. I leave the office and walk outside. It is a sunny day and I am smiling and whistling, pleased with myself. And I stop in my tracks…

…because I realize he didn’t say nineteen thousand dollars. He said forty-nine thousand dollars. And I just took it for twenty.

And I woke up in a cold sweat.

----

Dream #2:

I am in a café of some sort, behind the counter, wearing an apron. It is my first day on the job.  I am nervous.

“We are throwing you right up at the register on your first day. Its sink or swim Andrew,” says a guy in a black polo shirt, obviously the manager.

I walk over to the register. The keyboard on the register is about three feet by two feet, but all the buttons are half the size of a key on a regular keyboard. I cannot read what button is for what product.

Flash forward.

There’s an angry crowd around the register all yelling at me. Red faces. Yelling louder. The register makes no sense. I can’t figure it out. People are shaking their fists at me. Manager guy comes up next to me.

“You didn’t even last fifteen minutes. Get the fuck out of here.”

And I woke up again.

---

When I worked in IT I used to dream I was fixing computers and such. When I was working on my dissertation, I would dream I was researching or writing.  As an unemployed person I am not dreaming about unemployment. I am dreaming that I will screw up my future employment. Fear of failure. I don’t need Freud or Jung or Lacan for this.

*Thanks SK for letting me borrow this title

On Having the “Six Million Dollar Man Syndrome”

I’ll admit it. I feel like I am moving in slow motion, even when I am chugging along at a rapid pace. I call it the “Six Million Dollar Man Syndrome” (SMDMS). 

You remember the show “Six Million Dollar Man.” Astronaut Steve Austin (played by Lee Majors of Lee and Farrah fame) crashes and they replace his damaged parts with bionic appendages.  In the show whenever Steve Austin ran using those bionic limbs, he was usually presented in slow-motion, accompanied by an electronic grinding-like sound effect. Slow-mo to give the appearance of speed.

That’s how I feel. I feel like I am moving as fast as I can, but I am not getting anywhere. I am a half step behind. I am misplacing things, after I know where I put them. I am forgetting things. I am sleeping, but getting no rest.  When I am awake, I am half asleep.  When I am sleeping, I am half awake. I go to my blog, but with nothing to say.  I find myself standing in a room, with no idea what I am supposed to be doing in that room. I start to work on my book and am just blank. I start to read a magazine; I’ve lost interest a paragraph in.

I am not the only one feeling this at the moment.

This is not me.  And I am not sure where I went.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the two nightmares I had last night. Sometimes the mind hides things and you have to figure out what dreams mean. Sometimes dreams are just right up front and there’s no interpretation needed.

Where I'm Not Doctor H (A Letter to Christian Friends)

HI there my church people!

You know, once upon a time believers used to be THE most important intellectuals. Believers were the philosophers, the theologians, the scientists, and the sociologists. Here is a short list of fantastic Christians who used their brains to accomplish God’s work:

Soren Kierkegaard, the (grand) father of psychiatry and existentialism

Michael Faraday, physicist

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of The Brothers K, The Idiot, Crime & Punishment

Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace

Friedrich Schleiermacher, theologian and philosopher

Blaise Pascal, mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher

Gregor Mendel, founder of modern genetics

John Wallis, cryptographer who helped develop calculus

John Ray, botanist

C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia

Arthur Compton, Nobel Prize winning physicist.

T.S. Eliot, Poet

Of course this list does not include all brilliant religious writers: Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa, Luther, Calvin, John Knox, and Jacobus Arminius. The writers of the Bible were all literate. St. Paul was, in fact, an intellectual.

God didn’t give me George Clooney or Brad Pitt looks. He did not load me up with the athletic ability of a Michael Phelps or a Serena Williams. He did not don me with the skills of oratory like Barak Obama or Winston Churchill. He did not bestow upon me a voice like Bono or Sting. He didn’t hand me the musical ability of an Andy Summers, Jimmy Page, Kevin Max or either of the White siblings.

No God didn’t bless me with any of these things. What He blessed me with was a sharp mind and the ability to use it. He gave me the brains to get my Ph.D. And I did. Yet I feel so uncomfortable that I don’t want to tell anyone in church that I am Dr. Herrmann. We have a “Check Your Brain at the Door” policy. Smart people are somehow not to be trusted. I don’t know why this is. We shouldn’t be afraid. We should be up to the intellectual challenge.

All I know is that God gave me my mind and I intend to use it. In church. 


If you will let me that is.

“My soul…kinda stings”: Spike's Vampiric Redemption

(Please note: This is a work in progress...)

First, let me tell you a little bit about Spike. Before he became a vampire, his name was William Pratt. Interstingly, while many scholars have spoken about Spike’s name, none that I have seen specifically addresses his last name Pratt: which is a British euphemism for a jerk, to put it nicely. He was born in 1870s Britain. He was a struggling poet, often mocked by his peers who called him "William the Bloody" behind his back because his poetry was so "bloody awful." He was sired by his soon-to-be long time lover Drucilla. He got his nickname from his use of railroad spikes when torturing people. Fast forward through all the evil and nasty things he did as a vampire with fellow vamps Darla, Drucilla and Angelus.

In season four Spike is captured by a group called “The Initiative.” They embed a microchip in his brain, rendering him powerless to hurt humans. Obviously for a vampire, this is a horrifying experience. The dilemma is that Spike finds himself on the side of good (or at least unable to be pure vampiric evil) not because he wants to be, but because he has no other choice. Here is the first connection between what happens to Spike and Foucauldian power. The power is suggestive of Bentham’s ideal prison, The Panopticon. The Panopticon included a tower at the center that provided through a two-way mirror an unobstructed view of all the prisoners.

The power of the panopticon is external. Someone is watching you. Guards, wardens, etc., have power over prisoners, so prisoners behave. However, the panopticon was brilliant in another way. Since prisoners realized there was always the possibility they were being watched, they regulated themselves, rendering the exercise of power by others unnecessary. It was no longer necessary to use external power to discipline the prisoner, rather the prisoner now disciplined himself through self-surveillance, self-discipline, self-monitoring, exerting power of his own identity and actions. Foucault calls these activities “the technologies of the self.”

Foucault said his goal was “to create a history of the different modes by which in our culture human beings are made subjects.” Human beings are made subjects – or socially constructed – through various disciplinary discourses. For example, an individual may be constituted and see herself as a sinner or a saint through religious discourses. Through the discourses of science, and the means by which humans began to be studied – through surveillance, observation, measurement and documentation – the individual is constructed in a particular way, and in fact becomes a subject.

At this point, in Spike’s case panoptic power impacts his identity through the microchip that is put in his head, which renders him harmless as a vampire. Naturally enough there are many references to impotence here by Buffy and the rest of her “Scooby Gang.” His interaction with the Scoobies shows how the chip caused them to think of him differently. In response, he takes his first steps on the road to redemption. He is forced to find a new identity in order to gain attention and remain relevant. He is forced into the role of (ambiguous) good guy. Although he relishes that he can beat the hell out of demons and such, he hates what the chip has turned him into. He cannot be a monster. He cannot be a man either. He’s ambiguous, a shadow, liminal.

Late in Season four in the appropriately titled episode “The Yoko Factor” (4020), Spike rebels against the Scoobies, reverting to a more overtly antagonistic role in teaming with Adam: a part human, part machine, part demon Frankenstein. However, Spike's mischief is just that, an impotent churning in frustration at being neither demon nor human, neither fit for real villainy nor acceptable for heroism in the group. His siding with the Scoobies made him a permanent outcast in demon society. Now he is an outsider with the Scoobies. Spike is truly a vampire in no man's land, at home nowhere.

Caught between his origin as a vampire, and his desired destination of humanity, yet welcome in neither place, Spike has become marginalized. The situation is most poignant for the vampire as having been bred of humanity, he can see himself dispossessed of the defiling traits he now bears and yet know he will not regain his full humanity. Spike is the poster-boy for vampire marginality. He has exhibited the full range of motivations and inner turmoil of an individual assaulted with a stigma, dealing with it and thriving, only to be stripped of that modicum of acceptability by the government installed chip, yet barred from return to his former life as a human by the stigma of soulessness.

This frustration can lead to self-hatred and self-derogation: a potent elixir for the brewing of hate and violence. Which is where Spike eventually goes. But first, it must be noted even with the chip in his head Spike is making progress toward humanity. While the chip keeps him from harming humans, it is NOT forcing him to do good deeds, or help the Slayer. Spike, meet the power of the “technologies of the self.”

Discipline is not simply imposed from the outside; nor is it always complete. If it were there would be no place for reflexivity. For Foucault, governmentality is not necessarily negative, but productive. It socially constructs subjects, reality, objects and rituals of truth (1978a). While individuals are constructed and they are subjugated through power relations, they are never powerless. Power relations run through every field, “because there is freedom everywhere” (Foucault, 1987b). Subjects are not deprived of "agency or the capacity to change; in fact, [being a subject] makes them all the more active by extending their reach to include what was assumed to be so obviously necessary, so natural, so taken-for-granted, that it was inaccessible: their subjectivity, their identity, their sexuality, their bodies" (Deacon, 2003, p. 280).

Individuals have the ability through these technologies of the self to reflect upon, shape, govern, and be responsible for their selves within these discourses and resources of power, to transfigure themselves to achieve a definite condition “of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (Foucault, 1994, p. 225). In other words, Spike reflect upon himself and ask, “What type of being do I want to be?” “What must I do to become the being I want to be?” This disciplining of the self is enterprising, a continual project of self-construction and creation that can be extrapolated to explain Spike is trying to become a man.

Rose (1998) observes the "enterprising self will make an enterprise of its life, seek to maximize its own human capital, project itself a future, and seek to shape itself in order to become that which it wishes to be. The enterprising self is thus both an active self and a calculating self, a self that calculates about itself and that acts upon itself in order to better itself" (p. 154).

Much like in Dostoevki’s character of Raskolnikov, Spike is coming to recognize within himself the potential for goodness and to set himself on the path to salvation. He has comassion for Joyce – Buffy’s mother – who has a terminal illness. Throughout season five he protects Dawn, Buffy’s little sister, who is the key that keeps the hell dimensions doors closed. If opened hell would literally invade our planet. A bad thing! He fights and is tortured by the nearly omnipotent demigod Glory to protect the secret. He does it because to do otherwise would "destroy her [Buffy]. I couldn’t live her being in that much pain" ("Intervention," 5018). When asked why he, a vampire without soul, is protecting Dawn, Spike’s answer is simply "I made a promise to a lady." He assists people who have been hurt by the troll Olaf. In season six when Buffy is brought back from the dead, it is Spike who realizes she clawed her way out of her coffin. He – being the only one who had to do that – shows utter empathy and sadness. And being ‘undead’ herself, Spike can now kill Buffy – but doesn’t. Spike feels deep remorse and compassion for Buffy and Dawn when their mother dies.

Oh yeah! He also fell in love with Buffy along the way and they’ve been having violent but consensual sex.

Buffy ends the relationship and Spike is heartbroken. He tells Buffy: “I know you’ll never love me; I know I’m a monster, but you treat me like a man,” and for that he is grateful. This is what is most important to Spike—not being treated like a vampire, which is what the undead should desire. Being a man—being human— is his goal, whether he has fully accepted that or not. Spike has expelled his vampire nature as the intruder, has sacrificed that self to save his soul and recreate the unity of the community, as evil becomes good. Spike’s ability to love gives him at least a piece of moral agency, and his ability to suffer makes us sympathize with him. The audience is on his side long before he gains a soul. Spike is desperate to win back Buffy.

Although Spike is making these decisions, though he is learning to discipline himself – he is still at heart a vampire – not a man. He still has that chip in his head, so he is not completely free to choose his path. Until…the facticity that he is not a man nor a real vampire, leads to his tortuous self-loathing…he tries to rape Buffy in a terrifying scene. Spike’s relationship with Buffy up to this point was based on consent and trust, which is why so many fans found this scene of attempted rape jarring and out of context. We forgot he was evil. We have been rooting for him. Still, we must recognize his evil by having him respond to his rejection by Buffy as a demon would, by trying to rape her. This is his turning point.

Spike’s action results in feelings of tremendous remorse, which spur him on to repentance and taking a definite step towards redemption. He realizes the immorality of his actions, in spite of his lacking the guidance which could be provided by a soul. Spike ultimately concludes that in order to live with himself after what he has done to Buffy he must accept that he is a monster, because only a monster could do what he tried to. (2002: 59). Of note, all the evil that Spike has done, he feels no regret for his any of his previous actions, except his attempted rape of Buffy.

After the attempted rape, Spike laments that the chip has confused the natural order of things when he complains:

Everything always used to be so clear. Slayer. Vampire. Vampire kills Slayer. Sucks her dry. Picks his teeth with her bones. It’s always been like that. I’ve tasted the life of two Slayers. But with Buffy . . . It isn’t supposed to be this way. It’s the chip. Steel and wires and silicone. It won’t let me be a monster and I can’t be a man. I’m nothing. (‘Seeing Red’, 6:19)

Now here’s where things get ambiguous. Spike leaves Sunnydale for a remote location in Africa, where we - the audience - are led to believe that he intends to get his chip removed and become his old evil self. However, (as we find out later) Spike undergoes “Demon Trials,” a series of brutal mental, emotional and physical tests, to prove his worthiness to the demon shaman.

“Bitch thinks she’s better than me. Ever since I got this bleeding chip in my head, things ain’t been right. Everything’s gone to hell.”

“Do your worst. When I win, I want what I came here for. Bitch is going to see a change.”

“Make me what I was so Buffy can get what she deserves.”

But this is ambiguous and has been read in different ways by scholars and by audiences. One reading has Spike going to the shaman to get the chip removed so he can kill Buffy. Plausible. Another has Spike going to the shaman to get the chip removed to he can again be a full-fledged monster. These readings are all based on the idea that Spike hates Buffy and hates his situation.

Yet there is a third reading that is overlooked. “Bitch,” “bastard,” “I’ll show you!” are not all phrases of hate, but those also of the angry and disillusioned spurned lover. Most scholars read Spike’s statement “Make me what I was so Buffy can get what she deserves” a testimony that he wants to be a straight up vampire again. But couldn’t it also be that he wants to be not just Spike, or William the Bloody, but William Pratt, the romantic soulful poet he once was? Spike loves Buffy as deeply as an evil vampire can. He wants Buffy. He desires Buffy. He wants to earn Buffy’s love. He wants to show Buffy that he is worthy. It isn’t Spike’s hate that drives him to the shaman. It is his love. It his love that wants to drive out the monster, the one that wants not only to be treated like a man, but to be a man, to be the kind of man Buffy deserves. My reading is that Spike loves Buffy, but hates his situation.

Although Spike has been disciplining himself through seasons 4-6, here is the ultimate switch from the external power over, to the power within. He wants redemption on his own terms. He wants to be good for its own sake not because of the chip. Hence the trip to Africa and the demon trials. Spike wants his redemption, wants his soul back, wants to be a vampire with a soul and undergoes the most horrific ordeals to get it back, including all the guilt, shame and horror – all the emotional despair – at the things he has done as a soulless vampire. (This makes him different than Angel, who got his soul back via a gypsy curse…Spike EARNED his soul back.)

This sea change in Spike’s moral orientation altered his agency to the extent that he was as likely to approach choices from a perspective that was basically good as from one that was basically evil. In light of this transformation it only seems to follow that Spike would be rewarded with a soul since he had practically begot one through sheer force of will. And, of course, at the moment he finally passes across the threshold completely, he becomes ensouled in the final episode of BtVS’ sixth season.


..to be continued.

Based upon:
Herrmann, A. F. (2010). “My soul…kind of stings”: Spike’s discourses of vampiric redemption. Paper presented at the Central States Communication Association Convention, Cincinnati, OH.