Social Media and My/Your/Our Terrible Summer

The other day I did something I hadn't done in much too long: I read a daily newspaper, on paper. I was meeting friends at The Tombs for an early dinner, and for once in my life I got there before they did. I had a beer at the bar, and picked up a newspaper lying by the register.

Once upon a time, all bars used to have at least one newspaper on the bar, for patrons who were drinking alone. You see it less often now, because of the assumption that people at the bar are otherwise occupied, watching one of the many screens on the wall or looking at their phones.

Since the paper was there, I read it. And it felt like taking a long bath, or going for a walk, or having enough oxygen after a run. It felt like a luxury.

I haven't subscribed to a daily paper in about ten years, which embarrasses me. I pay for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Portland Press-Herald online. I get daily news summaries emailed to me from Bloomberg Business Week, The Boston Globe, The New York Post (for the horoscope) and something called Trove that I don't even remember signing up for. I follow Slate, Vox, Politico, FiveThirtyEight, The Wall Street Journal, The Texas Tribune, Romanesko, RTE and at least half a dozen publishing newsletter/blogs on Twitter.

I am a news junkie. And whether it's booze, pills or news, addiction kills.

Everybody agrees that this has been a terrible summer, terrible to the point of absurdity. War in Gaza, war in Syria, war in Ukraine, war in Iraq — and those are just the wars the global media are reporting. Ebola in West Africa. Refugee children at the U.S. border, being treated like criminals. Ferguson, God help us, exposing the ugly truth that some people sincerely believe we're not all equal citizens in this country. Robin Williams' death. The Hachette-Amazon dispute. I could keep adding things to this list all day, but let's move on.

The one constant through all of this has been my Twitter stream, which I made the mistake of downloading to my phone four months ago.

"Doesn't it seem to you like people are crazier than they used to be?" I've had that conversation with at least half a dozen friends in the last month, in almost exactly those words. People are losing their ever-loving minds. But why? Are things really so much worse than they've been? Are they worse than the summer of 2002, when we were (or at least, I was) looking at the sky for strange planes and jumping at unexpected noises? Are they worse than the summer of 1998, when Congress was getting ready to impeach the President of the United States? (And God, doesn't 1998 sound great right now?) Are they worse than 1968, which I barely remember except for the smell of smoke from downtown Norfolk, and my mother crying in front of the television?

I don't know. I only know that it feels worse, and I've decided that Twitter is why. Facebook too, but Twitter more so.

I love Twitter. For people who work alone at home, like me, Twitter is a constant online cocktail party. I keep the Twitter window open on my computer all day — it's open now, with a tab telling me there have been 62 new posts since I last checked it. I justify that by saying it's part of my work, because I do help some authors manage their Twitter feeds.

But I'm realizing that Twitter is a big part of the anxiety that's infected me this summer. Twitter is a constant emergency, and it's all too much.

Robin Dunbar, a British evolutionary psychologist, published a study several years ago that found that most people can maintain meaningful social connections with a maximum of 150 people. This is not a Western phenomenon; this is a global pattern, whether you live in Greenwich Village or a village in central Asia. Relatives, friends, co-workers, connections — 150 people is about the limit of how many names, faces and relationships we can take care of.

I follow just over 1,000 people on Twitter. I have 572 Facebook friends. How can I pay attention to 1,000 conversations at once? How can I be a friend to 572 people? I don't even know who some of my Facebook friends are; they're aspiring authors who sent me friend requests in my early Facebook days, I think, or friends of friends, but now they're in my news feed and it would feel unkind to drop them.

It has to stop, because it's making me crazy. This summer has not been bad for me personally. I've had a lot of work, I've seen family and friends and baseball and some great movies, I have a ridiculously good cable TV set-up and a view of the Washington Monument from my living room window. I have a rooftop pool, for God's sake! Which I've used exactly twice this summer, because the pool doesn't have wi-fi, and God forbid I detach myself from the electronic tether.

Let me be clear: this is my problem, and I've written this all out because I suspect I am not alone. I am not saying that social media or the Internet is bad — they're obviously not. I'm saying that I have been binging on social media and the Internet like a teenager on Boone's Farm, and it needs to stop.

The first step is taking both Twitter and Facebook off my phone, which I'm doing right now. The next step is to shut the Twitter window (41 new posts since I checked it!). I'm going to subscribe to the paper Post again, and make an effort to get more of my news from print and less from Twitter. I need that distance, that space. The step after that . . . I don't know. Ideas, suggestions?

Yes, I realize the irony of blogging to request help with my Internet self-discipline. Send me a letter. I'll email you the address.

Real Housewives of My Existential Crisis

On Saturday afternoon, through no deliberate choice of my own, I wound up watching several episodes of "The Real Housewives of Orange County." Although several smart friends and people I admire a lot love these shows, I'd never seen one. I remember when Bravo used to be a specialty cable channel for the performing arts; you could probably make the argument (and I'm sure someone has) that the Real Housewives shows are another type of performance art.

But the show upset me, and two days later, I'm still trying to figure out why. I can't figure out what the shows or their participants want from their audience. Are we supposed to mock them, or judge them? I don't want to do either of those things. Are we supposed to plunge ourselves vicariously into their artificial drama? I don't want to do that, either. I felt as if just watching the show, and trying in the process to understand or relate to or sympathize with those women, corrupted my soul and made me a worse person. That’s not an exaggeration.

I can’t stand back and mock them; they’re creatures in such pain that they need to act out their lives for television cameras, and create artificial drama with strangers the producers have thrown them together with. What is their use on the planet, what is their value? How do they think that being on TV will improve their lives, and why would they have sought out that experience? How are we supposed to know which of the emotions they show on screen are real, and which are only for the benefit of the cameras?

I’ve worked very hard to make my own life as drama-free as possible. I got a lifetime’s worth of drama before the age of 25, and I don’t need any more, thank you very much. Where are these women’s children, and what is their life’s work, except to be immortalized on these TV shows? It makes me feel horrible and scribbly inside, and I don’t know what to do with it. I was already feeling horrible and scribbly.

My friends who love these shows might say, “Don’t take it so seriously,” but these are women who want to be taken seriously — aren't they? — who yearn for connection and meaning and psychic weight. Which is tragic. It’s all tragic, and the tragedy overwhelms me. If I want to be overwhelmed by tragedy I can watch “Intervention,” which at least is not asking me to laugh at it.

Do you watch "The Real Housewives"? If so, why, and what do you get out of it? Am I over-thinking this, or do I need to watch more to understand its true cultural significance?

Thoughts for a Rainy Tuesday

The most-visited post on this blog, by a huge margin, is this list of Five Practical Reasons Not to Kill Yourself. I closed it to comments a long time ago because I got tired of depressed people trying to convince me to give them permission. The whole point of the blog post was that I don't give myself permission.

I didn't know Robin Williams, and I'm not sure I even know anyone who worked with him (which is a little surprising, because he worked with a lot of people, and I know a lot of people, so those groups might have overlapped). His brand of humor was one I had to take in small doses, because it was so transparently manic, and mania scares me (I feel the same way about Jim Carrey). But he was an extraordinary actor, with an almost unmatched gift for disappearing into a role the way few movie stars can. And the most casual observer could see that he noticed everything, and felt it all deeply.

Last night on social media I had a brief exchange with someone who was trying to argue that depression (or, presumably, bipolar disorder, which was Robin Williams' ailment) had to be seen as an existential disorder, not a medical one. He said you couldn't see depression in an autopsy, therefore it's not an illness, and we do harm by framing it that way.

I don't have enough formal education to be able to dispute that, and I wasn't interested in arguing with a stranger in 140-character chunks. But I will say here what I know to be true about depression, from my own experience and from my observations of friends and family members who struggle with it.

It's not reality-based. That is, depression is not a rational reaction to a chaotic world, as this guy was implying. Sorrow, grief, anxiety, yes — all those things are reasonable reactions to a world in which governments bomb children, police terrorize people in their own American neighborhoods, and people win arguments just by shouting loudest and longest. Depression's something else. Depression is shades of gray and the absence of joy. It's irrational fear, magical thinking, compulsive behavior and the need to punish oneself for daring to exist, much less trouble anybody with some stupid request for help.

It's not really emotional, except when it is. This is the hardest thing to explain to people who haven't been depressed. Depression is not "the blues." Everybody gets sad sometimes, and some people feel really sad, with reason, for a really long time. Depression isn't grief. In the worst bouts of depression, simple sadness would feel like a breakthrough, because then at least I'd be feeling something. Anger is welcome, because anger (at least for me) is a sign that I'm coming out of it, that I care enough about anything to get pissed off. Sometimes I try to make myself angry so I don't get depressed. If you know a rageaholic, that might be their issue, too.

It is not something you can reason your way out of. Pep talks don't help. Everybody who suffers from depression and lives eventually figures out tricks to manage it (and this is why I recommend cognitive behavioral therapy — they teach you this stuff). I make lists and agree to external deadlines: when everything is terrible (when I am terrible), being able to complete even the most basic task is something that helps. The anxiety of knowing that a client is waiting for me to complete a task is usually enough to get me out of bed in the morning, to move me to the computer, to make me leave the apartment and get on a train or a plane. But not always. And that's the last point I want to make:

Depression is not something you can fix on your own. Last week I went to my doctor to ask for help, for the first time in years. I've been treated for depression, on and off, for most of my adult life — but I thought I was better, I thought I could handle it, I didn't have decent insurance, and for all those reasons and more I stopped the treatment. I told my doctor this and she, in the kindest possible way, got a little exasperated. "If someone had told you, when you were 21, that you had Type One diabetes," she said, "you wouldn't stop taking your insulin just because your blood sugar was under control."

Some day, when medical science knows a lot more about the brain, they'll be able to sample brain tissue and say, "See, this person had too much [fill in the blank] and not enough [this other stuff], and that's why —" But until then, the science of brain chemistry is still very much a trial-and-error process. I'm about to start that process again, and I admit it scares me. I've also learned that doing things that scare me is another tool that helps manage my depression.

If you hear I've gone bungee jumping, you'll know why, and I hope you'll come along if you want. In the meantime, I recommend this and this if you want further reading.