Digital Photos, Social Media

Hiding in Plain Sight

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I’ve personally never tried Instagram, but I have a number of friends who use it.  They all love it.  Instagram provides a platform for people to communicate with each other in a visual way through sharing photos.  The uses for it vary widely from advertising, creating a photo journal, sharing with loved ones, or even posting images of symmetrical breakfast plates.  (Check it out here, pretty neat.)

A few months ago my brother sent me an article on a growing trend, predominantly with female teenagers, with Instagram to create a “Rinsta” account and a “Finsta” account.  Rinsta is the real instagram account, the public facing one with carefully filtered images and witty captions.  Typically these postings will have already gone through an internal friend review process, after checking that nobody else in the friend group was planning on posting it.  Then it will be posted at the most strategic time of day to acquire the greatest amount of “likes”.  Rinsta accounts come with “rules” about how to maintain them.  Life should always be portrayed as fun and idyllic, always a representation of only the best moments.

The Finsta account, ironically enough, is a combination of fake with instagram (according to the Urban DIctionary) and contains unedited images and spontaneous captions.  No internal approvals necessary.  The Finsta account is where a person can feel free to express herself as she likes, without any pressure or worry because the access is tightly controlled.  Typically these accounts are only shared with close friends, so parents or peers won’t be able to see anything.  Whereas Rinsta accounts are available for anyone to see.

So the fake account, Finsta, is used for the real stuff, and the Rinsta account is used for only a select portion of the “real” stuff which is then modified before posting.  Public appearance counts for a lot, but the person can feel true to herself through the illusion of “privacy” created by using an alias and controlled access.  I would assume this is mostly so teenagers can share things with their friends that they wouldn’t want their parents to see.

Digital Dilemma, Digital Photos

Safe Selfies

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Over the last few months I’ve read articles and listened to news stories about people getting injured, dying, or even damaging things while taking selfies.  A number of museums, amusement parks (e.g. DisneyLand), and national monuments have all started banning selfie taking and using selfie sticks to help reduce injury, death, and damage.  Sometimes it’s a matter of public safety since bystanders are often poked or hit with selfie sticks.  Russia recently announced a “Safe Selfie” campaign and created a guide to instruct people on how to take selfies without harming yourself or others.

Once again, I just have to shake my head and wonder why taking selfies is so popular?  Is it for the attention?  Or maybe to “memorialize” a moment by snapping a pic of yourself doing something?  To be competitive? Personally, I think if somebody dies taking a selfie because they’re on a train track or in the middle of a bull run, that’s just natural selection in action.  It’s really not necessary to post ads cautioning these poor, dumb souls.

Recently I saw an advertisement for a selfie spoon from Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.  The selfie spoon is a selfie stick with a spoon at on one end.  This is to solve the dilemma of either taking a selfie or eating your breakfast.  Whether this is a gag or reality, I feel sad thinking about the time and energy invested into memorializing somebody shoving a spoonful of sugary, bad quality cereal into his/her maw.  Gross.  One guy even crafted his own selfie spoon so we could see him chowing down his grandmother’s gumbo.

The most interesting part of the selfie spoon is it’s a way to get ordinary people to advertise Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or any food, for free.  Lots of companies already harvest data from millions of readily available selfies.  Then they analyze the data to learn about customers and how their brand is used.

This raises concerns for me about the prevalence and availability of selfies on social media and the internet in general.  Publicly posted selfies may end up being used in ways that were never anticipated or expected. I’m not sure what those ways are yet, but I’m sure we’ll find out in the near future.

Digital Dilemma, Social Media

Communication Sprawl

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A few weeks ago I finished a book by Charles Montgomery called Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design.  A self-professed cosmopolite, I found the book enlightening and started thinking about my surroundings a bit differently.  One idea that stuck with me is the impact of urban sprawl on fostering communities or maintaining close connections with other people.  If I understood the concept correctly, city expansion can create urban sprawl, requiring people to commute further, generating more traffic, resulting in more time spent in transit rather than in community building.  Urban sprawl also makes it more difficult to make and maintain physical connections with people. Everybody has to travel further, which takes more time.  A lack of support in transportation options makes this connection even harder.

For some reason this idea stuck with me and I started thinking about the impact of urban sprawl in my world, records and information.  It occurred to me that urban sprawl is manifested in what I started thinking about as communication sprawl.  In the same way that habitation is spread out, we also also spread ourselves out with our communication methods.  As our digital world and presence expands, our physical one shrinks and diminishes. Physical face-to-face interaction is being replaced by an incessant stream of tweets, posts, likes, updates, images, video, etc., much of which I would consider low-quality or transient.

The advent of social media, and other types of messaging/sharing apps, has made it very difficult to keep communications consolidated and centralized instead of employing multiple options to maintain contact.  For example, I connect with my bookclub through Facebook, except for one member who’s not on it that has to be emailed separately.  I usually coordinate through email and text with varying degrees of success, mostly because everybody can be reached. Some people prefer to message through LinkedIn.  Another group I’m in has it’s own separate messaging functions.

It’s supposed to be “easier”, but I actually find it more challenging to remember who’s on which channel and to keep up with the quantity.  As a result, my communication efforts become dispersed resulting in poor connections.  I imagine this is similar to the challenges presented by urban sprawl around building solid communities.

The digital world offers great opportunities to build up communities, but sometimes it’s hard to take advantage of them in a way that results in quality and meaningful interactions.

Ecuador, Galapagos

Urbina Bay & Dolphin Wrangling

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We disembarked early in the morning. Another wet landing, this time onto a black sand beach. Black sand is sticky and gets everywhere. Just a few meters into the trail we spotted our first tortoise, a juvenile. We took our pictures from a respectful distance and then walked by, causing the tortoise to hide.

The only Galapagos tortoise we saw in the wild. This one was a juvenile and pulled into its shell as soon as we came near.

The only Galapagos tortoise we saw in the wild. This one was a juvenile and pulled into its shell as soon as we came near.

The terrain on this part of Isabela Island was definitely the lushest place we had visited so far. All the greenery, flowers, and humidity brought the insects along. Some of them were annoying, like the wasps, an invasive species. But I quietly cheered every time I saw Carpenter Bees buzzing around the flowers.

The varied landscape at Urbina Bay.

The varied landscape at Urbina Bay.

Birds flitted everywhere, including a Vermillion Flycatcher, a gleaming flash of yellow among the branches.

A land iguana, cousin of the marine iguanas, posed motionless under a tree. The two species share some similarities such as they are both vegetarian and evoke an image of something prehistoric and dinosaur like.   But the land iguana is covered in soft, muted hues to match the earth and foliage. The tail is shorter and more rounded, as this one is not used for swimming. This was our only opportunity on the trip to see the land iguanas. We were lucky to see three of them.

Land iguana, cousin of the marine iguana, in its native habitat blending in almost perfectly with the dead leaves.

Land iguana, cousin of the marine iguana, in its native habitat blending in almost perfectly with the dead leaves.

Back on the boat we headed to a different part of the island for the afternoon.   At mid-morning we lucked out and managed to see a pod of dolphins swimming through the channel.  We boarded the pangas and raced out to greet them. They were intent on feeding and not that interested in us.   We rode beside them for a while before they raced off again. At one point a sea lion inserted herself into the pod and leaped about in a graceful imitation of the dolphins. She even made sure to look at us in the panga so we that we would also notice her.

It was pretty incredible. I decided to relish the moments and not take my dorky iPad so the image is courtesy of my mother. Besides, I needed both hands to hang on!

My mom took this pic. I was too busy hanging on!

Mom took this pic.  My hands were busy holding onto the rope!

True Confessions

Getting Back on Track

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It’s official.  I have dish gremlins.  It’s the only rational explanation left!  *sigh*  Despite my best efforts at reconditioning, I do still come home, or wake up, to this:

The gremlins latest visit left me with a new load of dishes.

The gremlins latest visit left me with a new load of dishes.

 

I deal with the full sink, full dish drainer scenario several times a day in my house.  Even though both always seem to be full, it’s almost never to capacity.  In that respect, part of my strategy has been to do small amounts frequently rather than waiting for pile ups.  However, when the strategy starts to fall apart and the pile up begins, I have to devise new ways to trick myself into staying on top of my chores, and other mundane tasks.  *sigh*  They can feel awfully tedious.

Over the years I have developed a number of techniques to trick myself and get back on track.  Whenever I notice myself slipping back into my old ways, I try to correct the behavior as soon as possible.  My first corrective action is to accept that I’m human and remind myself that the changes are not permanent.  I’m kind to myself.  After all, it’s an ongoing process.

Then I re-assess why I think it isn’t working. The flow of the new habit may need to be adjusted.  There could also be emotional or psychological reasons causing resistance. Getting to the root of deeply ingrained habits to re-route them takes time.  Or maybe it’s just because my schedule was super crazy and a few less critical things were neglected.

After the first two steps, being nice to myself and re-assessing, I get back on track by going through the same steps I originally used to modify the habit.  Usually I start by setting the timer for 5 minutes, or by making compromises with myself.  For example, the other night I was super tired and once again facing a full sink, full dish drainer scenario.  This was because I hadn’t washed the dishes in the morning, starting the whole cycle over.  As a compromise, I forced myself to empty the dish drainer so at least I could wash the dishes straight away in the morning.

If these tactics, and the ones from last week’s post aren’t working, then I start bribing myself and using a reward system.  Feel free to share your best strategies in the comments section.

True Confessions

Modifying Bad Habits

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Last year I read a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  One of the many things I learned is habits save us time and energy.  Doing something habitually spares our brains from constantly making decisions.  For example, when getting dressed in the morning, I don’t decide which leg goes in the pants first.  It’s automatic.  When I get home I automatically put my keys in the same place. I don’t have to think about where to put them, or where to find them, later.

If I wanted to wake up to a clean kitchen, I was going to have to make emptying the dish drainer a habit.  As I mentioned previously, several things were working against me:

  • Bad stacker
  • Prolific creator of dirty dishes
  • Extreme annoyance and dislike for the task

How was I going to recondition myself?

I started small by working on the emotional aspect.  I stopped expending energy on chastising myself for not doing the dreaded task, which only succeeded in decreasing what little motivation I had.  Instead, I focused my energies on thinking of ways to trick myself into the emptying habit.  Here are a few of my more successful tactics:

  • 5-minute sprints – In the beginning when I felt tired and annoyed, I would challenge myself to empty dishes for 5 minutes and then quit.  I quickly noticed it only took 2 minutes.  I found this oddly motivating, even though it did make me feel a bit silly for being sooo resistant.
  • 2-minute rule – The Getting Things Done method by David Allen has a simple rule, if you can do something in 2 minutes or less, do it right away.  It was harder to make excuses now that I knew it only took 2 minutes, max!
  • Positive reinforcement – I liked the results.  Sink and dishes remained clean. Doing small amounts frequently made it easy to maintain.  This gave me encouragement.
  • Finding time – I found ways to reallocate my time.  For example when waiting for bread to toast, I trained myself to empty the dish drainer before checking my phone.

It’s slowly becoming a habit to empty the dish drainer asap and keep it that way.  Despite my best efforts, old habits are hard to change.  Stay tuned for the final part in the series when I share strategies for getting back on track.