canyonwalker | Entries tagged with social media

Several weeks ago a friend of mine used the phrase, "The enshittification of everything" in conversation. It rattled around in my head for a few days, definitely striking a chord. We'd been grousing to each other about the decline in various services, and the phrase was a deliciously colorful way to capture the growing frustration that we can't have nice things, anymore. Also, I thought I'd heard it somewhere else before, but I wasn't sure where. So after a few days I looked it up online to see where else I might have heard it.

It turns out "enshittification" is a relatively new term. It was coined in a November 2022 blog by writer Cory Doctorow. (Wikipedia article on enshittification.) As you might parse from the roots of the word itself:

en•shit•ti•fi•ca•tion, n: a process by which something becomes shitty, or shittier. {my own definition}

But there's more to it than just the simple linguistic parsing of the word. And it's just not a general frustration with things getting worse in recent years, like what's happened to almost everything between inflation and shrinkflation. Doctorow coined enshittification in a specific context talking about how online platforms, particularly social media but also commerce and search, deteriorate in quality. More specifically, Doctorow described 3 stages these platforms go through as a function of their business model. I summarize it like this:

First, the platform delivers great value to its users. This means running the business at a loss but it builds a strong user base and locks users in via the network effect.

Second, the platform abuses users as it shifts to delivering value to its business customers. This builds a base of paying customers who get locked in because that's where the audiences are, and gets the platform on track toward profitability.

Third, the platform abuses its business customers to take more profit for itself and its shareholders. After too much of this, users and advertisers will start to peel away because they feel the frustration just isn't worth the lock-in. The presence of a compelling competitor accelerates this and hastens the platform's demise; giant companies erecting legal barriers to competition slows it.

Doctorow's blog was republished in Locus in January 2023 and expanded and republished in Wired in January 2023. In February 2024 he published a further expansion in an op-ed in the Financial Times. The term enshittification itself was chosen by the American Dialect Society as its 2023 Word of the Year.

There's been a flurry of discussion in social media lately about how to set your AC. There's consternation that the US Department of Energy recommends you should set your thermostat no lower than 78° F. That already seems kind of hot. What's got people especially lit up is the recommendation the DOE couples with it that you should set your AC to 82° F at night "for comfort" "while sleeping". 🥵

First off, about that 82 F figure (28° C): I've lain in puddles of my own sweat at 82° F unable to fall asleep too many times to ever waste another hour trying to sleep in that if I can otherwise afford it.

So, what's a reasonable temperature? Well, even the DOE's lower figure of 78 seems absurdly high compared to the prevailing wisdom from when I was a kid. Back then all the talk was, "Normal room temperature is 68° F." A lot of people in my neighborhood growing up who were fortunate enough to have good AC in their homes would cool them to 68 in the summer. Even as a kid I recognized there was something wrong with that. My friends and I would walk in from 90+ temperatures outside and immediately be chilled.

In hindsight I believe what happened was that a recommendation of 68 as the minimum for comfortable room temperature in the winter was widely misunderstood as being a desirable year-round set point. Though it also didn't escape my young awareness that a lot of the same people who thought it fashionable to super-chill their houses to 68 in the summer also found it too cold in the winter, when they'd super-warmed their houses to 78. Even as a child, that seemed to me like dick-waving to prove theirs was bigger than Mother Nature's.

BTW, my family was not one of the affluent ones that could afford dick-size competitions with Mother Nature. Our threshold for using AC in the summer was an indoors temperature of 85°. 🥵

As I got older with more ability to control my own environment I found that 68 is actually a touch too cool and 78 is on the warm end. I found that "normal room temperature" is really best around 72-73. ...Or maybe I should say "normal office temperature" as that's where it's comfortable to be dressed in business attire and not worry about unsightly sweat stains on one's clothing. At home, where I can dress in shorts and light shirts and bare feet during the summer, I handle it being a bit warmer indoors.

That brings me to where I have my AC set right now: 74° F.

That's the temperature on the middle floor of our house, though. We have 3 floors and one thermostat. 74F is comfortable for that main floor, though it does mean the temperature upstairs, where we have our home office and our bedroom, climbs to 78 in the afternoon, occasionally even 80. At 78 it's just tolerable for desk work... in shorts and bare feet. Fortunately it's cooler in the evening, after the sun goes down and outdoors temperatures drop, as 78 is too hot for comfortable sleep. Even 74 is a bit warm for sleep. I prefer 72 and being able to use a light sheet for coverup.

The House of Representatives voted today to ban TikTok in the US— unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sells it to a company not based in China. After advancing on an unusually unanimous vote in committee the bill won wide bipartisan support from the full House. It was approved 352-65. To become law the bill needs approval by the Senate and then a signature from President Biden— who said today he will sign it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this "ban" on TikTok. (I quote "ban" because it does provide the alternative for ByteDance to sell it to a company not based in China... but that's essentially still a ban IMO.) As much as it's popular in some corners of the Internet to sneer at TikTok, the app does have 170 million users in the US. That's literally half the country. And it's actually more than 50% of the addressable market as the population figure of 340 million counts people of all ages. As much as the service is maligned for being popular with kids, including kids who arguably are too young to participate in social media, you've got to figure there really aren't that many kids under, say, age 6 on the app.

I'm not sure how I feel about this bill because I see arguments both pro and con. That said, I think there are way more cons than pros on this legislation.

The first con against the bill is that 170 million figure. It's frankly hard to believe that Congress would vote so overwhelming against something that's clearly so popular in the US.

The second con is the sense that there's a cultural, generational, and possibly even ethnic divide here. TikTok's most active users skew young. Congress skews old. This smacks very much of a "Darn kids these days!" argument from the dinosaurs stumbling around the edge of the tar pit in Congress. And it seems very much a reactionary, anti-modern culture thing that would come from Republicans... especially as TikTok's biggest users are also less white in addition to being less old than the general population. Yet Democrats also widely supported the bill— 50 Dems and 15 Republicans voted against it— and President Biden said he'll sign it. Also, Trump was for it until he was against it. Though his argument now is that a ban will benefit Facebook, which he's labeled an Enemy of the People... even more so than the free press, apparently.

The one argument on the pro side is that because ByteDance is a Chinese company the Chinese government can compel them to give it any of the very rich data it collects on its users and their browsing habits. That argument does kind of smack of Sinophobia— another con— except that it's literally true. And except that the degree of data they can collect is literally the same as every other social media platform can collect. (The EFF, for example, says Congress should ban every company from doing that much data collection, not just one company in China.) So even this one pro argument is a very weak one.

Finally there's the con argument that this law is unlikely to survive court challenge. A US court struck down a similar state law in Montana late last year. That case is still being appealed, but the ban seems unlikely to win given the higher courts have never let stand a sweeping ban on digital communications.

Recently it's become a hot topic on social media whether buying a "$7 coffee" daily/most days of the week is a reasonable treat or a financial failing. This is kind of a repeat of canards like "avocado toast" and "$5 lattes" from past years. Of course now it's a $7 coffee instead of a $5 latte because of inflation.

The basic canard is that young people— and it's almost almost a tongue clucking criticism of younger adults— are destroying their financial futures by wasting their money on frivolous treats such as coffee, lattes, avocado toast, or whatever modern treat old fogies don't understand, when instead they could, and should, be saving that money toward important things like a down payment on buying a house, or retirement.

Although the social media shaming is a modern phenomenon, the underlying question of, "How much should one sacrifice today to save for tomorrow?" is not new. It's a question I asked myself long ago when I was starting out as an adult, years before there was social media and things like maligning avocado toast became memes.

Back then a common way to frame the question was around what to eat for lunch. Do you bring a bag lunch of a cheap sandwich, or do you go out to eat for lunch? A PB&J sandwich was the proxy for wisely saving for later; eating lunch out, even fast food, was the proxy for wastefully spending money today.

I made my own decision long ago that both halves of the question were simultaneously right and wrong. Yes, saving money for the future is right. But enjoying the present is right, too. And reducing the two to a dilemma— where only one is possible— is wrong. I would save some of my money to have nice things in the future while not forcing myself to live an overly austere life in the present. I would eat fast food lunches instead of brown-bagging PB&J sandwiches, because that brought me satisfaction in the present, and I would save for my own future. It was like I would have my cake and eat it, too.

So far it's worked for me.

Last week I posted about The $500 Challenge, the report from a recent study that 63% of US workers can't afford a $500 emergency expense. That 63% figure wasn't the only thing the study said. It also found that more than one-third, 35%, of people earning $100,000 or more said they are still living paycheck to paycheck.

I am totally not surprised by the statistic about six-figure strugglers. It's basically the same thing as HENRYs (High Earners Not Rich Yet) from several years ago, but today more people are facing the conundrum. Here are three reasons why:

1) Traditional benchmarks of wealth don't mean what they used to. Once upon a time "millionaire" indicated a person who didn't need to work, owned a mansion, and led a life of wealth and leisure. That popular cultural notion is based on the economy of 70-100 years ago, though. Nowadays, after decades of inflation, almost 9% of US adults are millionaires, and where I live, a million bucks buys barely half a modest, 3-bedroom family home. Similarly, the notion of a "six figure salary" denoting an affluent person is about 25 years old and it, too, doesn't mean as much as it used to. In the most expensive US cities a salary of only $100,000 leaves you pretty skint if you're supporting a family on it.

2) A few years of high inflation has taken a bite. Real inflation the past few years has been serious. Overall inflation rates are not-bad seeming figures like 5% a year. The thing is some categories of goods and services have seen way higher inflation. And those are the things the working class spends a lot of their income on. Groceries are way up, for example. Just based on the things I regularly shop— and I shop Safeway, not places like Whole Foods, BTW— I've seen increases of 30%, 50%, even 100% over the past 3 years. Insurance has been rising more than 10% a year. Car insurance, home insurance, health insurance.

3) Lifestyle inflation is what opinion makers usually blame for people spending too much. The old green-eyed monster, envy, has always been around. Previous generations called it "Keeping up with the Joneses". Now it's about keeping up with the seemingly better-off people on Facebook, Instagram, and other sites. I agree lifestyle inflation is a real thing, and that social media has turbo charged it compared to how much it impacted previous generations— but I'd put it as the #3 cause, not #1.

In the news this week, Elon Musk has announced that Twitter is rebranding. They're dropping their now-iconic blue bird logo. What's next? Well, even before Musk announced he would rebrand the company as X— yes, just, X, which is also a name he used for a company he sold years ago— I was thinking he should go with 💩. Yes, 💩.

Why 💩? For one, "💩" is how Musk instructed his PR team to start responding to media inquiries about the company after his hatchet-work firing huge swaths of the company, coupled with people choosing to leave his cracked, despotic rulership. Heck, maybe it was even Musk himself answering pr@twitter.com after so many abrupt departures.

More importantly, 💩 describes what Twitter has become— way better than any single letter does, even X. Twitter is now a shit-hole of haters, neo-Nazis, and disinformation propagandists. In fact along with taking the icon 💩 they should rebrand as Shitter. I can even offer them a logo:

Twitter? Shitter.

At the start of the month I posted some stats about my blogging. February had been a relatively slow month for me; I wrote 51 journal entries for an average of "only" 1.8 posts per day. That's slow-ish because over the past 15 months I've averaged a hair over 2.0 per day. Well, enough about February; what about March?

At the start of the month I predicted March would be another slow month, slower even than February. Wow, was I wrong! Across March I had 67 posts, for an average of almost 2.2 per day. That's not my bloggiest month ever. It's not even in the top 5. I believe it's #7. But it's above my recent average... and well above my goal of 1/5/day. And it's in a month when I didn't have any travel. Remember, travel drives a lot of my blogging.

If I didn't travel in March what did I blog abou? Well, I had a travel blog backlog from February. I finished it off only 18 days late. 😅 But even so, that was only 10 blogs in March out of the month's 67 total. What else was there? Well, I caught up on some TV/streaming blogs, too. Those were another 11. Ten and 11... that's still less than one-third of 67. The rest, a majority, were a smattering of journals about current events, both national and international; food and drink; and other things I thought about.

"So there's no focus to this blog," you may note. "What are we subscribing to?"

There's actually a mistaken assumption in that. When you subscribe to a person's blog, or to someone's Twitter feed, or Facebook, Insta, etc., you're not subscribing to a topic. You're subscribing to a person. Here you're subscribing to me.

Former President Donald Trump was indicted on criminal charges late yesterday. We don't know what the charges are yet, as the specifics are under seal from a grand jury in New York City. We do know, though, that that grand jury was looking at details related to hush money Trump paid to prostitutes, particularly whether the way he sourced the money and reported it constitutes business fraud or election fraud. Thus the charges are likely related to that. And we're told there are more than 30 charges in the indictment.

This is historic. It's the first time a former president in the US has been charged with a crime— let alone more than 30 crimes. That fact has been trumpeted in headlines of... practically every single fucking media source in the country. That's unfortunate because it carries with it a particular subtext— that because this has never happened before, it's likely inappropriate now. Like the laws of the US are suddenly being rewritten to "get" one guy. The other bit about history news orgs should mention to keep this in proper context is that there has never before been a president who allegedly committed so many crimes as Donald Trump. You don't want to be charged with crimes? Stop crime-ing!

Trump and his enablers in media propaganda and politics are predictably losing their minds over this. Of course, they started setting the groundwork for it weeks ago, knowing it was coming eventually. "What would he possibly be indicted for?" an ally in Congress demanded, expecting the answer to be "Nothing". Oh, people on Twitter had a field day answering that rhetorical question with facts. "I am the most innocent person ever," Trump boasted at a campaign rally several days ago.

Now that the indictment has landed.... "INDICATED," Trump fumed in one of his social media posts last night, continuing his pattern of accidentally (on purpose?) misspelling key words.

This is likely only the first of many indictments for Trump. This one comes from a prosecutor and grand jury in New York City. That's NY state law. There are also investigations in, among other places, Georgia for Trump's alleged election interference there, and the US Department of Justice for... well, basically years of financial and political corruption.

An interesting thing about the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank is that it's not due to bad investments. It's actually mostly psychological.

SVB didn't invest in fundamentally unsound investments. These weren't complex and dishonestly mis-rated mortgage backed securities, like what screwed up banks in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. These were treasury bonds, an investment that's considered safe and conservative. There's no "What's this really worth?" mystery as bonds are priced in transparent, highly liquid markets throughout the day. When the agency behind them makes a change it holds a press conference.

SVB also didn't lose a ton of money on these investments. The loss was, like, 2% of SVB's total assets.

People argue whether SVB's mistake was having that 2% loss. Yes, they could have done better. But really their big mistake was communicating the loss. They were too loud about it!

You see, a run on the bank happens when there's a loss of confidence. A few depositors withdraw their money and announce they did it because they think the bank's in danger. This spooks other depositors, who withdraw their money, too. Soon the bank has to sell of assets to pay out these withdrawals— because, remember, banks don't just have everyone's money sitting in cash in a vault. That triggers further fears, triggering further withdrawals. It becomes a vicious downward cycle.

A fear cycle is exactly what killed SVB. They helped trigger it by being too transparent about suffering that 2% loss. The CEO basically went on social media about it. That alerted a few big-money depositors, who (a) withdrew their money and (b) also posted on social media about it.

The fact the run on the bank spread through social media is a huge part of how it happened in the space of a day. Years ago, like back in the Great Depression, a run on the bank happened when people lined up at brick-and-mortar bank offices to demand cash from tellers. In 2023 a run on the bank happens when people use an app to transfer $25,000,000 and then tweet it.

"Dry January" has become a meme. It's not even new this year. A quick web search reveals that it started 10 years ago with just a few thousand people. Now it's all over social media. Didn't we just do this a few months ago with Sober October?

Not that I'm trying or anything, but as the clock wound past 10pm this evening I thought to myself, "Hmm, I haven't alcohol today... and I don't need a drink now." Then I thought for a moment, "Hmm, how close am I to Dry January?" In a moment I remembered this is probably only the second day so far (out of 9) this month I haven't consumed beer, wine, or liquor. 🤣

See, my notion of Dry January is more like this:

Dry January Drink Specials

I don't mean to take anything away from people who've struggled with alcoholism and have gone totally dry. There are a few in my family and several among my friends. I also don't mean to take anything away from people for whom Dry January is an opportunity to recognize they have a problem and take strong steps to correct it. I roll my eyes, though, at the people spraining their shoulders to pat themselves on the back on social media for taking a brief break from drinking— before returning to their old habits, including bragging about drunken antics on social media.

When I wrote about Elon Musk's controversial plan to charge users $8/month for Twitter Verified accounts 11 days ago I was quietly thinking to myself, "I wonder if this is the start of a Twitter meltdown." Already Twitter users were up in arms about it, with many talking about leaving the platform. But users grumbling about any social media platforms is almost as old as said social media platform. "Twitter can easily pull out of this tailspin," I told myself. "They just need to make some reasonable decisions." Then the next 11 days of ridiculous decisions happened.

Twitter laid off half its (permanent) workforce, several thousand people

Twitter tried to hire back critical staff it "oops" fired in its haste

Twitter slowed or blocked access to accounts of people critical of Musk's actions, including US Representative Alexandria Occasio-Cortez

Twitter laid off most of its considerable contractor workforce, another several thousand people

Twitter's pay-for-checkmark implementation was so poor that it enabled a surge of fake accounts, some of which caused significant financial harm to other companies (expect lawsuits from this!)

Musk canceled the pay-for-checkmark program

Musk publicly fired at least one employee for publicly disagreeing with him on a factual matter

Dozens of other employees have been fired for criticizing Musk's actions, either on public Twitter or in internal Twitter forums.

Specifically with respect to the AOC situation and firings, Musk, who's prided himself a "Free speech absolutist", is proving what a transparent lie that is. He's a thin-skinned tyrant.

Taken altogether these missteps show an enormous breach of trust— with advertisers, who are the source of revenue; with users, whom those advertisers pay for; and with employees, who develop, operate, and maintain the platform. Twitter appears to be in full meltdown right now.

It has been disappointing watching the Democrats' lead in national polls erode over the past few weeks. They went from having a good chance of taking over the Senate while being close to even in the House, to being a bit behind in the race to control the Senate and most likely to lose the House. I blame inept messaging for their loss of ground.

Democrats have a number of good issues on their side. Abortion rights are supported by a majority of the voters nationwide. Republicans are trying to restrict voting rights based on falsehoods about the "stolen" 2020 election. And their policy platform is based on cruelty and hatred. To be sure, there's a segment electorate for whom these positives, but they're a minority.

So what have Republicans done right to turn the issues in their favor? They've gotten voters focused on inflation and crime. These "kitchen table" type issues are more immediately powerful than wonkier issues like whether ballot drop-boxes are open for 1 day or 7 days, or whether abortion is banned after 6 weeks, 14, or 20.

What have Democrats done? Frankly, they've screwed the pooch. They have done almost nothing to try to control the messaging, or even respond to it.

I blame Democrat leadership for this. Four years ago there was scuttlebutt about whether Nancy Pelosi was the right leader for the party. I was, and still am, on the side that Ms. Pelosi is the wrong leader. It's not because of her position on issues, BTW. I agree with her positions. It's because her understanding of campaigning is horribly outdated. She's leading the party's campaigning like it's still 1992. And she's not the only one. There are a lot of senior Democrats who need to go— not because they're old, per se, but because they've let their skills and leadership fall horribly behind.

What do I mean by "Like it's still 1992"? Three big things. ...Not all of which are specifically 1992, though the first is.

First, 1992 with Bill Clinton's election was when the power of "the 24 hours news cycle" was proven. Clinton's messaging team worked hard to stay ahead of news stories and thus control the messaging. People made jokes at their expense about how an unfavorable story on CNN wasn't really a national emergency that required multiple senior advisors staying up half the night in the White House's Situation Room. But it worked. Clinton and his team stayed ahead of new stories, exerting ability to shape them by fast response. They ran circles around Republicans who were accustomed to waiting for news media to come to them, or appear on Sunday talk shows. Today Republicans have learned that lesson while Democrats have forgotten it.

Second, Democrat leadership has remained in denial about the reality that Fox News, and other smaller players in its ecosystem, are basically propaganda machines for conservative politics. Fox and allies don't report news, they make it up. And they repeat their points, with distorted or false stories, morning, day, and night. In a context like this, Democrats can't simply wait for reporters to come to them and help get their message out— especially when traditional news media have been hollowed out. Even the traditional media today tend to "report the controversy" rather than dig to report the facts, because reporting "He said/she said" is easier and cheaper.

Third, Democrat leadership has completely missed the importance of social media. To me, this is what complaints that people like Nancy Pelosi (and Chuck Schumer, etc.) are "too old" means. It's not that, say, 68 is okay and 82 is not okay; it's that failing to understand the single most important shift in communication of the past 15 years is not okay. Republican leadership is killing it on social media. Younger Democrats are active on social media, but the party's leaders have totally missed the boat.

Continued in next blog entry....

Billionaire Elon Musk, the world's richest man, completed his purchase of Twitter this week for $44 billion. It's widely believed that he paid way too much. Even Musk believed that his offer was too high— as he tried for months to get out of it after making a formal offer. He only went through with the purchase when Delaware Chancery Court turned aside his requests to halt a lawsuit filed by Twitter for non-performance of contract. Obviously he thought he would lose... worse than lose, actually. He would have been forced to purchase the company for $44 billion and been embarrassed by public release of various documents about his behavior. So he paid his $44 billion to stay in control of the narrative.

As "Chief Twit" one of his first narrative choices was announcing that Twitter verified accounts, those marked by the blue check mark, would cost $20/month to keep.

Lucille Bluth, stereotypical out-of-touch wealthy person (Arrested Development)

Lucille Bluth, stereotypical out-of-touch wealthy person (Arrested Development)

Musk was stung by criticism that he was out of touch. Memes flew, including variations on this classic quip from character Lucille Bluth in the TV series Arrested Development, poster woman for unempathetic rich people.

Musk lowered the proposal to $8 and fired back with a meme of his own, as seen in this tweet:

Elon Musk, honorary Lucille Bluth family member (Nov 2022)

In case you can't see the picture, Musk compared people whining about $8/month for Twitter Verified to those thinking $8/cup for a Starbucks coffee product is a bargain.

Aside from whatever sneering disdain one may have for $8 Starbucks drinks and/or people who spend $8/drink at Starbucks, there's a fundamental mismatch in this comparison. When you spend $8 at Starbucks, or even $1.95 at Dunkin' Donuts, you're the customer and you're buying a product. That's it.

With Twitter, everyone who tweets is giving Twitter the product, i.e., their content, for free. Twitter then uses that free content to attract audiences that it sells to advertisers. Verified users with those blue check marks are generally those most frequent ~~contributors~~ vendors giving Twitter stuff for free. Now Musk wants to charge these vendors without whose unpaid work the company literally would be nothing.

The other day I saw a Buzzfeed listicle¹ in my newsfeed entitled "21 Surprising Confessions From Women Who Earn "Significantly More" Money Than Their Partners" (Buzzfeed, 31 Oct 2022). It's about the relationship dynamics of couples where the woman partner earns more than the male. Women earning more than men in some families is not a new phenomenon, though once virtually unheard of it has been growing more common. Yet it still surprises me how common old-fashioned, narrow-minded attitudes about it are. Too many men feel ashamed of it, are shamed by friends and relatives for it, and try to deny it or manipulate it.

I've always looked at those stories of shame and denial and shaken my head. If my partner were earning more than me, I've long said, I'd support her and celebrate her success! Now I get a chance to put my mouth where my money is. Hawk is earning more than me this year.

This is a reversal of... basically forever in our relationship. I've long had more earning power than her as I earned a STEM degree, and a masters degree, and have worked in technical jobs since my second year of college. Often my salary was 2x hers, or higher.

In the past few years Hawk has climbed the corporate ladder more successfully than I have, increasing her salary greatly. That combined with working at a company beating its financial targets (both of us have a bonus or commission tied to company revenue) has vaulted her past me in earnings for this year. She'll finish 2022 earning 20% more than me.

So, now that the earnings reversal is real as opposed to merely hypothetical, how do I feel? I feel the same as I've always said I would. I'm happy for her. She's worked hard. She's earned it. And we both benefit.

[1] A listicle is a form of lazy modern journalism where a reporter writes a feature article that's really just a list of best-of responses in a thread on social media like Twitter or Reddit. List + article = listicle.

There's a Reddit sub I like to read, r/AITA. In it people post stories about situations where someone's gotten upset and them they're not sure if they're in the right or wrong. They ask "AITA?" — Am I The Asshole?

One type of AITA post involves someone getting fired from their job. Employee X does something on the job that Person Y, who could be a customer or a coworker, doesn't like. Person Y tells X's manager, and X gets fired. X and/or their friends rage at Y for "getting" X fired. Y worries, "AITA?"

My response is that Y in these stories is rarely the asshole. I point out that notion of "getting" someone fired is generally a misstatement of responsibility. If you report an employee's misbehavior accurately and in context, and they get fired for it, it's on them. It's the consequence of their actions. They've gotten themselves fired.

Sedona Travelog #11
Mescal Mountain, Sedona, AZ - Mon, 30 May 2022, 9:15am

Once again today we got an early start. Alarm was set for 6am, we left the hotel at 7, and we were at the trailhead on the far side of Sedona at 8. Morning traffic wasn't that bad (it's a miles-long traffic jam midday) so we even had time for a stop at a local bakery for cinnamon rolls and danish to supplement our otherwise sensible breakfast of meat, cheese, and fruit.

Today we're not sure how much hiking we're up for. Yesterday's epic 9 mile, 1600'+ ascent hike really wore us out. I'm only walking straight this morning because I gobbled Ibuprofen. But at least a dose of pills works. It's not like when we hiked the Koko Head Tramline in Hawaii. After that I was wrecked for several days. Today I'm out hiking again, not hanging around the resort, wincing and limping. But we've selected an easier trail to start with, the Birthing Cave.

The Birthing Cave is another Instagram famous hike in Sedona. It's good for today because it's easy— a roundtrip of about 2 miles with an ascent of only a few hundred feet. Plus, as our experience with the Subway Cave yesterday showed us, the Instagram hiking noobs are not out first thing in the morning.

The Birthing Cave is in a wing of Mescal Mountain (May 2022)

The Birthing Cave is in a wing of Mescal Mountain (May 2022)

The Birthing Cave is on a flank of Mescal Mountain. We started by hiking the Long Canyon trail to an unmarked trail junction 0.6 miles. The funny thing was that though the junction was unmarked, the side trail to the cave was obviously way more heavily used than the continuation of the main trail. That's Instagram-famous for you.

The spur trail took us in toward Mescal Mountain. Then another spur led up to the cave halfway up the side of the mountain.

The climb up to the Birthing Cave (May 2022)

The climb up to the Birthing Cave (May 2022)

The last few hundred feet to Birthing Cave was a bit of a scramble. It was no trouble for us, with good hiking boots and skill navigating rough terrain, but all the Instagram-following hiking noobs cautioned us about how slippery it was.

And yes, there were a bunch of noobs there. The trail was peaceful but once we got within 100' of the cave we could hear the clatter. It sounded like a cocktail party up in there.

View from the Birthing Cave, Mescal Mountain AZ (May 2022)

View from the Birthing Cave, Mescal Mountain AZ (May 2022)

The idea of the Birthing Cave is that it looks like a womb from the inside, I've read. My memory doesn't go back as far as the one time my head was inside a womb looking out so I have to use my imagination here, but yeah, I can see that.

View from the Birthing Cave, Mescal Mountain AZ (May 2022)

We found perches on the steeply slanted rock walls inside the cave— yay, hiking boots again— and waited for the noisier folks to leave. Thankfully they did. We never had the cave alone, even being out here relatively early in the morning, but at least we were able to enjoy it without people sporting fashion-accessory matched dogs nattering on about vortexes and crystals.

Soon it was time even for us to leave. Both of us were feeling pretty good despite yesterday's taxing hike. We decided to extend this one and see how far the spur trail goes.

Stay tuned to see what we found next!

Sedona Travelog #9
Sedona, AZ - Sun, 29 May 2022, 12:30pm

We found the Subway Cave!

It turned out it wasn't hard to find.... We just had to wait until around midday when the trail was really crowded with noob hikers who saw it on Instagram (noobs don't know to get an early start like we did) then look for where the scads of people were going. At an unsigned trail junction a bit farther out from our butterfly spotting side trip there were, like, twenty people standing around in a gaggle talking about the Subway Cave.

The side trail of about half a mile, maybe three-quarters, led back to a rock formation in a side canyon. I knew from seeing an Instagram picture that the Subway Cave is not really a cave, per se, but a layer in the sandstone rock that's eroded out from the layers above and below it, forming a C shape is cross-section. And I could see from where everyone was going... or trying to go... that it would take a scramble to get up there.

It's a scramble up to the Subway Cave (May 2022)

It's a scramble up to the Subway Cave (May 2022)

There were actually two routes up to the ledge level. The safer one was a scramble up dirt and rocks with some trees to hang onto. The more fun one was this scramble up bare rock through a slot. People who've never rock-scrambled before and/or had footwear without good grip (Instagram hiking noobs were just as likely to be here in walking shoes as anything else) were slipping, sliding, and giving up. So once a bunch of them cleared out I scrambled up.

The Subway Cave in Boynton Canyon (May 2022)

The Subway Cave in Boynton Canyon (May 2022)

Like I said, the Subway Cave is not a cave, per se. The part with a solid roof over it doesn't go that deep into the rock. But it's called subway because it does look a bit like the curvature of a subway tunnel on the side. Well, some subway tunnels have curved sides.

The Subway Cave in Boynton Canyon (May 2022)

With the Subway Cave being so popular it was difficult to get pictures without other people in them. I succeeded in getting a few, but I also figured if I've got to have other people in my pictures, I'll encourage them to do nice things. 😂

Stay tuned... more to come!

Update: Keep reading in Cliff Dwellings & Subway Cave

Sedona Travelog #8
Sedona, AZ - Sun, 29 May 2022, 11:30am

In reading trail guide-blogs for Sedona we learned that a recently famous destination in Boynton Canyon in the Subway Cave. It's not marked on forest service maps or included in official trail descriptions. Google Maps shows the location but not the trail to it. Yet, "Many people hike this trail solely to visit it," one guide advised. Basically it's Instagram famous.

On our hike into the canyon this morning we kept our eyes peeled for side trails branching off around 2 miles in from the trailhead. We didn't really see any. Various people on the trail asked us where it was. We told them we don't know. At the end of the trail a few people we were chatting with told us they'd heard from other people that it's where there's a side trail next to a big, fallen tree.

Well, guess what we saw about 1 mile back on the route out....

Boynton Canyon trail, Sedona AZ (May 2022)

Boynton Canyon trail, Sedona AZ (May 2022)

A big, fallen log. And there was an unmarked foot trail next to it! It was even almost in the location where there'd be a trail to get to the location marked in Google Maps. Almost.

Hint: almost means not quite. Not quite means no. So no, we didn't find the Subway Cave. But it was a worthwhile side trek anyway because we saw butterflies and nice vistas.

A butterfly - Boynton Canyon (May 2022)

On one shrub we saw a pair of butterflies going at it. ...Going at the flowers, I mean. This butterfly (above) had wings about 2" across when opened. Such butterflies are relatively common. But we also saw a butterfly with wings about 5" across.

A big butterfly - Boynton Canyon (May 2022)

A big butterfly - Boynton Canyon (May 2022)

In beauty I walk. Even if it's a false trail to the Subway Cave.

Update: Minutes later we found the real trail to the Subway Cave, and it's amazing!

As I wrote about my youngest sister turning 40 recently I thought about how the 10 year age difference between us made a difference in how we grew up... and how it didn't. At age 40 my sister is technically a Millennial, while I'm squarely in the middle of Gen X. But she's at the cusp of the Millennial generation; people born just 1 year earlier are Gen X. I see in her (and her age peers) a blend of characteristics from both age cohorts.

That got me wondering, as an aside, what do you call people who are part Millennial and part Gen X? "Xillennial", I figured. I tried searching on that term to see if anyone else is using it. I discovered that the shorter Xennial has already become somewhat common to describe this age group!

Xennials, people born in the late 70s to early 80s, really do straddle some of the cultural divides between generations. My sister matches most of the traits of this subgroup. For example:

— Xennials, like we Gen Xers, grew up using landline phones. They're familiar with hand-written lists of phone numbers on the wall and sharing a phone number with everyone in the household. They may never have "dialed" a phone, though, except at grandma's house. Mobile phones became common around the time they were in college.

— Xennials knew what life was like pre-Internet. Yet the home Internet revolution (which I peg at "later 1990s") happened while they were in high school, so it was also something they grew up with. By the time they were in college digital literacy was considered normal... at least among students. A few writers call Xennials "the AOL generation".

— Xennials, like Gen X, got through school before social media became a dominant force, along with the stresses it puts on adolescents. But social media emerged while they were still generally young enough to embrace it as new technology. One upshot is that Xennials parents, like Millennials, generally are not befuddled by their kids' devices, apps, social media, etc. Even though these things didn't exist when they were kids, Xennials started using social media for themselves before they had kids or while their kids were very young.

Are you a Xennial, or do you have close friends/relatives who are? What do you think about these comparisons?

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/1032526.html

The debut on Amazon Prime of a Wheel of Time streaming series got me thinking again about how my own story interweaves with the series of books. Or rather, the story of the series of books. As I noted in another blog a week ago, I started reading WoT 30 years ago. I was a big fan at first and for several years after. I made many friends through our shared fandom. Then I lost interest in the series well before its completion, but kept some of the friends. Here's part of that story. It's not the whole story, as that would imply a beginning and an ending— and all WoT fans know that there are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. Also, it's a long story. So here's part of it.

New Newsgroup Appears!

Back in 1993 I was active on a few Usenet News discussion groups. Usenet News was a form of social media that predated the world wide web and all the tools that evolved atop it that you might be familiar with today. Usenet was a text based system, vaguely similar to BBSes in an earlier era, but with messages transmitted between servers on the Internet in peer-to-peer fashion.

Usenet News was divided into channels called groups. Historically, it had started about 10 years earlier with just a handful of groups. It grew fast, though, being the form of social media on the Internet. In 1993 there were anywhere between 2,000 and about 10,000 groups depending on how you counted them.

With even 2,000 groups at the conservative end of the range— and I saw about 3,500 on my server— I couldn't be on top of them all. But I did notice new groups as they were created; there were a few a week. One of those weeks I saw alt.fan.robert-jordan appear. "Great!" I thought. "I love Robert Jordan's books, and here's a new group that's discussing them."

Discussions Online; Hatred Online

It turned out the alt.fan group was a bit of a bum steer— but one that led me quickly to the right place.

The alt.fan group was a bum steer because it was created by someone who actually disliked Robert Jordan and wanted to use it to get rid of WoT fans. I learned that quickly from a person who posted on the alt.fan group that the real action was on rec.arts.sf.written (rasfw), a group for discussion of all authors/books within the category of fantasy & science fiction.

WoT discussions on rasfw were vibrant. We discussed plot points, character development, new bits of the world and its cultures and history revealed, what we liked overall about the series and how those opinions evolved with new info added, etc.

With the release of the 5th book, The Fires of Heaven in Oct 1993, WoT discussions became especially vibrant. The series had become a major bestseller so the publisher coordinated its on-sale date to hit the top spot. That meant lots of us bought it on the same day, or within the range of a day or two. Then we binge-read it, staying up late at night for a few days to finish a 600+ page hardback novel. The upshot of all this was that WoT discussions became a huge portion of the overall discussion volume on rasfw.

A Group of our Own: rasfwrj

The struggle on rasfw, between WoT fans and everyone else, was real. We WoT fans were a lively bunch and had a lot to talk about. People who chose not to read WoT were resentful— yes, resentful— that "we" were generating so much traffic on "their" newsgroup. There wasn't a way to convince the haters they were wrong and should tolerate discussions that were clearly within the charter of the group. Haters were just going to hate. So we left. But we did it right.

The reason the alt.fan group didn't work, aside from it being created in scorn, was that it was created in a section of the Usenet News hierarchy that didn't have rules and thus didn't have broad distribution. Remember what I wrote above about there being between 2,000 and 10,000 groups depending on how you counted? It was in the portion that not everybody counted.

It's often said, "Academic politics are so bitter precisely because the stakes are so small." Welcome to Usenet, the next level down.

Being a computer-savvy and Internet-savvy person I learned the ins and outs of Usenet News. That meant learning both the technical protocols that drove it as well as the governance protocols that its volunteer caretakers held sacrosanct. And yes, they were very sacrosanct. Are you familiar with the observation— attributed to a variety of people including Henry Kissinger— "Academic politics are so bitter precisely because the stakes are so small"? Usenet was, in that sense, the next level down.

So I followed the rules. I wrote a proposal. I posted in it in the correct place. I conducted a straw poll. I invited discussion and incorporated the best feedback into a formal request, which I also posted in the correct place. Then there was a one-week voting period. Because I'd crossed my Is and dotted my Ts, and built a base of support, the motion passed. Our new newsgroup was approved & created! rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan was born.

"Rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan," you might be thinking, "What a mouthful!" Or, less politely, what a ridiculous name. I thought it was a ridiculous name, too. But it was the one I could build enough support behind. You take what you get. 🤷‍♂️ Then you make it yours.

Update: Think this is old? How about a web page from 1994! Keep reading in this series.

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/1020213.html

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Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with social media

Enshittification

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House Votes to Ban TikTok

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Earning Six Figures and Living Paycheck to Paycheck

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Trump Indicted

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Twitter Meltdown. Free-Speech Phony.

Democrats Screwed Up The Messaging

Elon Musk to Charge $8 for Twitter... or $20?

She Earns More than Him -- Now that's Us!

"Getting" Someone Fired

Hiking to the Birthing Cave

The Subway Cave! (Boynton Canyon, part 3)

Seeking the Subway Cave, Finding Butterflies (Hiking Boynton Canyon, part 2)

Part Gen X, part Millennial... Xennial?

The Wheel of Time Turns: Usenet News Groups in 1993