We, The Internet

"A marketplace has emerged where shame is a commodity and public humiliation an industry" - Monica Lewinsky

*

As those who know me (and that one person who reads me here) will attest, I started this blog two years ago, in an effort to reclaim and restore the health of my name ...

Today, if you search me by name online -- Google or otherwise, the name "Jeff Glovsky" -- you may be confused, a little bit ...

but you won't be alarmed.

You won't be "advised" or "warned" about me.  It won't be opined that I'm a "fraud" or running a "scam" ... egregiously reported I've 'changed my name' or "disappeared" (?, ?! and ??).

Instead, you'll see what I do, where I am and who ... What I think about you, if you try to exploit the professional, then needlessly public, resultingly personal failure in my life five years ago;

if you try to cash in on that, as some have, without even knowing me, let alone knowing the full and accurate picture back in 2010, or the context of public accusations and their actual circumstances ... Instead, just piling on hysterically, flailing in response to the damaging, (thus far) permanent online "yelps" which remain -- those few that I haven't (yet) been able to remove from the internet -- you'll end up frustrated.  And/or legally thwarted.

As some have.

There is nothing that's worse than the fears, paranoias, mistrusts and mistakes that the internet, in its ease-of-use ubiquitousness and far-flung global reach, can breed.  The righteousness, the indignations, Schadenfreude and misplaced anger it creates ... the fanning of flames, the men and women it blames ...

The damages that YOU -- "the internet" -- can too easily cause.

In some cases (too many!), your harshing and judging and chiding and "owning" ... Your relentless attacking, name-calling, abusing if you feel aggrieved or inconvenienced, or because things can't be "instant" and you're impatient ... or just.because. ... can end in tragedy.

In my case, after several years of shell-shock subsided and I was finally able to rise from the dead and fight back -- in part, by calling out new aggressors while unequivocally identifying crimes of theft of reputation -- I find, in my favor, I'm not alone.

Online shaming by kangaroo court is increasingly recognized as the bullying and intimidation that it is ... and every website that provides a one-sided, unbalanced, often unmoderated public forum for such ranting and venting:  opinions, "reviews" or accusations without verification -- guilt before innocence -- should be taken down.

Just as we -- "the internet" -- are for some reason required to "opt out" of things, as opposed to being asked to opt in ...

We, The Internet, have got everything else wrong also.  Nobody should be required to "sign up" to view a website. Nobody should need to use Facebook for "verification".  Nobody should ever accept being charged -- sorry, "authorized" -- on a credit card before making a purchase ...

And nobody should ever be blindsided online ... harassed and insulted, and forced to "fight back".

The public displays can be embarrassing.

*

“Well Hung”, ©Jeff Glovsky

Message Service

Late to the party again ... as I was with the original Medium, a once excellent, now tired platform for written publication (and more importantly, reading / discovery) ...

Or, photographically speaking:  The shutter clicks, first impressions get made but reveal, develop themselves after processing ...

Anyway:

It was amazing to me, as I tuned in to take in the Bruce Jenner interview, how transparent the whole thing, and particularly, Bruce, was.  Not honest, mind you ... but transparent.

Bruce Jenner's a winner:  One of the most celebrated athletes of all time, he is also all business.  Like Sharon Osbourne, Paris Hilton ... his most recent (ex?)wife, Kardashian matriarch Kris (Jenner) ... this reads, and palpably emanates from him.

ate Wheaties

No matter what's up with his hair or face, or what he decides to step out in, Bruce Jenner is not a fool.  If YOU were Bruce Jenner -- accustomed to achieving, to getting things done, building empires, endorsing and, overall, WINNING -- and you were offered x amount to become the (perfect) spokesperson for an undersung, misunderstood and still maligned in 2015 minority ... a previously unrecognized third gender; by most accounts, one of the last communities vulnerable to being targeted by overt intolerance and societal hatred in our third millennium ...

You'd be foolish to lose the opportunity.

Bruce Jenner is not a loser.  More than up to the task, he accepted the gig and signed on to de-victimize, in fact, humanize, the struggle ... and his own (transparent, disingenuous, some might argue, alleged) "transformation", from man to woman, began.

I was put off by this.  Not by the cause:  I support freedom of expression and oppose subjugation ... and not by the undertaking:  Who better to speak out for subjugated societal "victims", then one of the world's most well-known victors?

No, I was put off by Diane Sawyer ... and especially, the orchestrated attempts at manipulation:  the "crying", the tissues, the ponytail coming down, why, exactly on cue!  The pretzel logic verging on imbecility ("Are you a lesbian?") ... The appearance appearing so TV-typical -- so tightly scripted -- that it became, in my mind, little more than a reality show episode, or an infomercial:  no longer to be taken seriously ... thereby harming the cause, I thought, more than it helped.

And Bruce Jenner's appearance, to me -- in my instant assessment as I tuned in to gawk at this reality show episode -- was not one of "confusion" ... nor was it of a brave or confident "woman".  Maybe I just tuned into the wrong channel, and was watching a different interview from everybody else ... Was I watching outtakes?  Some footage that wasn't supposed to have aired?

For what I caught when I tuned in, was a very much in charge of things, secure with himself and with being in charge, paid spokesperson:  an odd-looking guy playing up to the camera, declaratively stating that it's okay to feel, and to be, who you are.

And this is a good and powerful, on-point message, which should be imparted and widely absorbed ... I just think a better actor could have been hired to put it across.

B.M. and P.M.

"My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain." - Charlie Chaplin

I have nothing but respect for Monica Lewinsky.

As the World Wide Web's "Patient Zero", she has suffered... felt pain... Cried, and died inside daily.  She has waited for exactly the right time and place...

She has taken up arms against haters and hatred, and perfectly played now the cards she got dealt.

The standing ovation Monica Lewinsky received at the Forbes' 30 Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia... some empathy, finally... The (finally) respectful hearing of things from her perspective -- the listening, versus insulting of her -- was fifteen years or so overdue.

I remember a disturbingly blunt and offensively direct hit on the Lewinsky debacle's whistleblower, that pot-calling-the-kettle-black backstabber, Linda Tripp...

Perhaps not a beauty queen, Miss Tripp wound up on the cover of one of New York's beloved rags, either the News or the Post, under the coffee-spitting headline, "It's Getting Ugly!"

To me, it's always been those three words, coupled with the unflattering head shot of Linda Tripp chosen to be plastered there on that front page beneath them, which was responsible for birthing, nay, shitting out, the "internet era", and foreshadowing our Rudest Generation to come.

The gum-smacking wisecrack of that tabloid headline -- the bestial boyish New Yorkese, at the public expense of a then unmarried, middle aged, childless woman, though somebody's daughter -- I will never forget;

the cheap, easy laugh I admittedly shared (hot coffee snorting out of both nostrils) with millions on that New York City, '90s morning never did sit well... and now, fifteen years later, looking back over the world's "timeline" since then -- of cruelty and inane and desperate cries for attention, feeding (or fed by?) a nation's cracked psyche -- the Before and After demarcation has not been more clear to me.

Never mind September 11th.  Simply (perhaps simplistically) put, the breakpoint in recent history, in my recent memory, is Before Monica (B.M.), when there were discretion, decorum and manners still; and Post Monica (P.M.), when name-calling, trash-talking, hating (and/or Yelping) anonymously, buffoon inappropriateness and lazy discrediting became society's norms - and somehow, OKAY.

The world turns, though.  What goes around...

Today, more than fifteen years P.M., I'm no longer the only one publicly decrying an epidemic of Asshole.  Nor am I alone anymore in my appreciation of Monica Lewinsky, and tacit acknowledgment of our P.M. world's penchant for piling on and bullying, wolf pack overkill.

* * *

* *

the Tyler Clementi Foundation to stop online bullying.

the Amanda Todd Legacy Society Ryan's Story

*

think

Not Very '90s

“If you’re really a mean person you’re going to come back as a fly and eat poop.”
- Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)

I have been asked -- my follower sent me an email -- why I never got around here, or anywhere online, to mentioning Kurt Cobain to mark the 20th "anniversary" of his stupid death.  When jazz guitarist Jim Hall passed, I put up a couple of his tracks on SoundCloud.  I nod in respect to dead writers often ... To "celebrate" the 34th year of a world without love, I posted a piece about Lennon here.

But April 5th came and went with barely a pause ... for remembrance ... stage diving ... a global moment of angst or moshing.  No one seemed to light candles, or say much.  The kids in alterna-clothes, spirited teens once, kept creeping up in age, towards forty ... and Courtney Love keeps being dissed or ignored - in short, regarded like she's batshit and kept in the attic.

While a cursory google, if you will, of the phrase, "Courtney Love found the jet", may induce a giggle or two, the fact that EVERY snarky twenty-something with a phone or keyboard picked up on that "meme" to insult the woman, is wholly sad.

That's the soul difference between us and them ... the gaping divide between our Generation X -- Kurt's, Courtney's, mine -- and our Gen Y, Z and Millennial offspring ... younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, eventually grandkids:

Any self-effacement or actual humor is vanished.  Our kids today -- unoriginal, uninspired (except to "share") and largely untalented -- get off on maligning and effacing others ... with no hint of playfulness -- no irony -- and whether or not it's truly deserved, or they have any clue who they're talking about when they're cutting, and pasting ... and narcissistically, or derisively, "sharing".

Apparently, Courtney Love was on the Tomnod website, participating in the online challenge they've got there.  She (now infamously) tweeted,

"Prayers go out to the families #MH370 and it’s like a mile away Pulau Perak, where they 'last' tracked it 5°39'08.5“N 98°50'38.0”E but what do I know?"

According to their website, "(t)he Tomnod mission is to utilize the power of crowdsourcing to identify objects and places in satellite images."  The Search for MH370 would seem to be the perfect measure of that platform, which has previously mapped search campaigns for Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the ruinous Oklahoma tornado of May 2013.

As far as I can tell ('but what do I know?'), Courtney Love was participating.

How is that batshit (or "deranged", as it's actually been nastily written in some places)?  And why are there literally pages on Google, serving up dozens of this obnoxiously mocking "story" about her participating?

I can't help thinking Kurt Cobain would have loathed what the internet has become for most people:  less an information superhighway, and much more a clogged high school corridor of cliques, desperation for acceptance, intolerance, peer pressure and bullying ... from which even the strongest among us prefer to escape.

The damaged and fragile do not stand a chance.

RIP (GenX) KC

"Fade to Memory (Old School)", ©Jeff Glovsky