#ReconciliationDay (A tweet package)

Today was the Day of Reconciliation in South Africa. It's my favourite public holiday. It's symbolic of so many of the things that I love about this country. I couldn't let it pass without blogging about it.

Ok. But my blog is about the web and life in the information age so how could I? One word... Twitter. Only the biggest micro-blogging site on the web! I've taken the liberty of selecting some of my tweets on #ReconciliationDay and packaged them here in honour of the holiday.

About 16 December - The Day of Reconciliation
Afrikaners traditionally celebrated 16 Dec as the Day of the Vow, remembering the day in 1838 when a group of Voortrekkers defeated a Zulu army at the Battle of Blood River, while ANC activists commemorated it as the day in 1961 when the ANC started to arm its soldiers to overthrow Apartheid. In the new South Africa, it's a day of reconciliation, a day to focus on overcoming the conflicts of the past and building a new nation.

Tip: I tried to keep it all logically ordered. So you don't get lost, read the grouped tweets from bottom to top that's how we do it on Twitter. lol.

... What is really REAL?

This is a great piece posted on Facebook by my friend, LAW. After reading this, I was left wide open. 


LAW spares no one. There are moments when I was like, "Yeah, tell 'em. That's what I'M talking about!" and other times when I felt like slamming my laptop shut in shame-induced indignation. Let me know how it made you feel...


Consumerism,Commercialism and our distorted Culture...What is really REAL?
I watched in awe an episode of Willie's chocolate revolution and his passion for making the best chocolate in the world. I figured, what an absurdly overambitious man! However the more I watched I realized that this silly man was driven by one thing and one thing only..passion. Willie traveled to countries in Europe sharing his ideas on chocolate, He went deep in the Venezuelan jungles searching for perfect cacao..wow I was absorbed into this..Besides my passion for real chocolate,I was pleasantly surprised that in some European countries, your Cadburys and Nestles are not ALLOWED to use the word chocolate on their products as this is not considered to have the attributes of a real chocolate. 

That is my inspiration for this note, I always shake my head in disbelief when people are eating Debonairs and actually believe its the best pizza there is...sh!t doesn't even taste like pizza..reaally..but its been branded and marketed as the next best thing and we simply feed into it..real southern fried chicken beats the commercial alternative KFC any day..BUT we line up for an hour just to get that wise 2...

For years now it has been nearly impossible to control industrial pollution on many levels, noise pollution, air pollution,water pollution, etc.. all have been justified by the end product and economic gains, so we chose to be ignorant. In came commercialism,as I have heard before that small amounts of waste can be absorbed and recycled naturally by nature, so can small amounts of commercialism.. but today that is not the case. We are polluted by excessive amounts of commercialism that have turned what was once "human" beings, "neighbours" "family" etc. into simple consumers whose lives are events dictated by the media

Our mere existence is turned into an event, our culture is distorted to a point were everything is an event, a reason to consume... we celebrate Christmas as a red fat dude who gives presents...you must now fork out a truckload of cash just for the family to enjoy the"event". what happened to the death of Christ?

We buy insurance for everything...yes even things you damn right know nothing will happen, we have insurance for that.. why cos they tell us "IT MIGHT HAPPEN"

You got that comedian guy Dube selling you "hospital cover" from clientele life ON TOP of your existing medical aid cover..and yes I bet most of yall fell for it cos he "justifies" it quite well.

All this commercialism is perpetuating stereotypes of our people and rather than move away from such blatant forms of slavery we gravitate towards it like a herd of antelopes leaping into a lake full of crocodiles.. All of a Sunday the new "elite" black is called a black diamond and ALREADY a criteria of goods and services have been selected for him/her, you know the hennesy drinker, the BMW driver, the polo shirt and armani suit wearer etc. oh I know a bunch of them..living above affordability standards, deep in debt.

There is a saying

"You work in a job you hate, to buy stuff that you don't need, to impress people that you don't like."

Unfortunately we are sucked into this like moths to a flame and never sit back for a second to actually discover what we really need.. Often people think I'm weird or "bourgeois" in the South African context adopting idle customs of the "newly rich". this unfortunately arises from the distorted imposed commercial class that we must all fit into this or that...

I question it all.. what if people had a choice to make up their own minds about everything? Would we listen to the same music? would we eat the same food? conform to the same standards that increasingly make the corporate filthy rich while polluting the environment and leaving the poor poorer?

Would we wear the same clothes? Would brands be of such significance?

You probably know more brands than you do the the veges and weeds growing in your backyard.. what happened to the power of choice? the only true power we have as human beings is the power to choose, but it seems that has been stripped from us as well.. Half of what we think is...really isn't. We are gladly living in a society here our culture has become one sided,where intercultural understanding and cooperation cannot flourish.. and we consume what we are fed instead of listening to US..

what would we really choose if all this miseducation was erased from our heads and we had a choice of starting afresh?

For one I think most pop music sucks period.

Debonairs is not pizza

Cadbury chocolate is not chocolate

I pay over 2grand a month for medical cover I have only used for my flu

The Value of a person is not defined by how much money and material things they have.

OMO,SURF,SUNLIGHT..all the same thing..you lying if you can "see" the difference in you washing

Colgate,Aquafresh..same thing and NO it cannot whiten your teeth..lies..

Yes breakfast is the most important meal,cos you are breaking a fast from sleep and none activity, but 3 meals a day at those prescribed times?? who came up with that?

Formal education is great but overrated

NO you dont "NEED" a plasma

Who really came up with the dumb notion that we all have to own a car? (you should see the traffic in Lesotho with the influx of imports,are they really getting anywhere faster?)

YES the finer things in life come with the actualization of self to a higher being or level and we must always strive for the best in everything, so brotherman a bottle of expensive whiskey with coca cola? you are just a consumer boss..and dont defend mediocrity with saying "its my choice"

70% of all the herbs you buy are free in the streets..but you dont know that cos you trust your "Robertsons" so much and the adverts NEVER say..by the way thyme,mint,rosemary are WIDELY freely available if you DONT want to buyour "processed" "packaged" alternative!

NO you are in no way better in you pringle shirt than us "markhams and jet" shirt wearing brothers

YES Commercialism has clear parallels with industrial pollution..think about it..

The more consumerism spreads, the weaker is the incentive to manufacture long-lasting, quality products, and the greater the likelihood that cheaply made products will instead be imported from the lowest-wage, environmentally unregulated overseas manufacturer that mobile capital, ever seeking the highest return, can find. (Remember your parents old HI FI? its still working...20something odd years after your conception and you have changed your stereo several times, your cellphone is probably new...aint it)

NO you are not a black diamond, you are still Thabo or Lerato or Mandla or whoever

There is no BEE.. There are people smart enough to outsmart the rest of us and muddle it all in politics so they can swindle as much of our tax money as possible

THERE ARE NO SOCIALIST MOVEMENTS IN SOUTH AFRICA.if there are what are their leaders driving?

NO you wont "DIE" without your favorite accessory..be it a cellphone or gucci bag.

How many sources of natural spring water are there? where were they all this time when all of a Sunday every bottled water is "BOTTLED AT SOURCE" b!tch please thats purified tap water

Ricoffy,frisco etc. are not coffee

After all is said and done, Ill probably go home in my brand car,buy brand beer,avoid spilling on my brand shirt and watch my brand "plasma" tv and think what sick sick world we live in...

Lawrence.. aka LAW (a brand name LOL)

The mote in your public eye

This post was meant to be up 16 days ago. I never finished it and haven't until now because I didn't think it was "current" enough. To hell with "current"! This is real talk.

As a youngster, I dreamed constantly of being rich, famous and adored. It was an alluring and exciting fantasy, but still just a fantasy. Had I known back then what being in the public eye would mean in 2009, I would never have even dared to dream it. In this, the internet age, it would seem that the cost of being in the public eye is wholly disproportionate to the benefits.

Today, the web was abuzz with news of Rihanna's 'tell all' interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Chris Brown. There was a flurry of tweets flying back and forth across Twitter as people threw out their own opinions on the matter. Some claimed to have no sympathy for the 21-year-old starlet because she chose only to speak out months after the fact and (coincidentally - or not) on the eve of the release of her new album.

At virtually the same time, MTV was announcing an its own news special featuring Chris Brown speaking on the very same subject. Again, speculation abounded about whether this was a stab at pushing up his sales.

Now, as far as I know, only Rihanna and Chris know the full details of what happened in that car and in the few months that have passed since that night. Yet, the whole world and its cousin feels perfectly entitled to not only comment but pass judgement on the motives and intentions for every move these two kids have made ever since. The marvel that is the web has made it possible for anyone with an internet connection to have a voice on the matter and potentially influence the voices of others, negative or otherwise.

That's fantastic for us, but what about them?

21 feels almost like a lifetime ago for me, but not long enough to forget that I did a lot of stupid shit! A lot. I didn't know very much about life so I didn't always make the very best decisions for my life. I don't know about you, but if tens of thousands of people all had something to say about my every choice of hairstyle, boyfriend or fast food meal back then, I'd find it a little difficult to stand. And if I'd been through or done something really bad, I wouldn't appreciate being judged on how I handled the matter at that emotionally immature age, either.

And it's not just them. Barack Obama was nominated for and won the Nobel Peace Prize and people were mad as hell. He came into the White House with the brightest and most progressive and positive idealism that that country had seen in a long while and was applauded for it; then 9 months later, a panel of dudes somewhere (for their own reasons) deem it fit to bestow this honour on him and all the rest of us can do is point out every possible reason why he's unworthy.

Thankfully, Obama is a grown-ass man. But I don't care how old you are - that's gotta sting! He's on Twitter. He knows what folks were saying.

Yes. Criticise. Don't take anything at face value. Question everything. Of course, these things we must do. Let's just not forget that just because the information comes to us virtually, doesn't mean there isn't a real, living, breathing, feeling human being in there somewhere.

Rihanna, Chris and the would-be hypocrite

16 days ago. I started a post about Rihanna and Chris Brown. The two had just made and were just about to make (respectively), very public reveals on the details of the 'incident' and what has transpired since. The web was abuzz with the news and everybody was chiming in, expressing their varying views on the matter. I intended to do the same.

Somehow - just as I was about to drive my point home - about 5 paragraphs into it, I got side-tracked. I left the post there and didn't come back to it until just now. On many occassions when it suddenly struck me how I hadn't posted anything in a while, I considered finishing it up but realised it was no longer "current" and wouldn't help my blog stay "relevant".

It is a shameful irony, and I'll tell you why... That very same post was about the throw-away manner in which we all brazenly help ourselves to the juiciest titbits of people's personal lives, gorge ourselves on every detail and then go on to leave a long trail of judgement and ridicule in our wake. We treat the actual everyday lives of the people we consider to be in the public eye as much part of our daily entertainment as Monday night sitcoms or the boxoffice opening weekend of This Is It. The hype builds up just as fiercely, the buzz takes over just as combustively and the whole thing is forgotten just as quickly.

I tried to paint a human face on these two rockstars and maybe get us all to start questioning how much of them we were actually entitled to own. I was outraged by what I'd seen on blogs, websites, Twitter steams and Facebook feeds about these two kids. I felt they mattered more than that, they deserved better...

But apparently not from me. A mere 16 days later and I don't feel so strongly. It's not top of mind anymore. In fact, I had to re-read my 5 paragraphs to remind myself what my point was exactly!

Hypocrisy? Could it be?

Admitting there is a problem is the first step to fixing it, so I am finishing that post and I am putting it up. Why? Because I was 21 once and if the web was as big then as it is now, somebody could just as easily have ended up blogging, tweeting or facebooking about me!

[Update - 16:38 It's up! http://thewebandi.blogspot.com/2009/11/mote-in-your-public-eye.html]

Class of 2009

Today, I happened to refresh my Twitter page about 5 seconds after someone I am following asked a question. I knew the answer. I mean, I read it in a browser tab that I had just closed, mere moments before. It would have cost me nothing, and yet - as I put my fingers to the keyboard - I immediately stopped myself.

I suddenly flashed back to my high school years. You see, in the 'tworld' - as in any society - the members naturally tend to rank themselves and those around them. My decision not to reply to this particular tweet was simply because this person and I were not ranked equally. They were out of my league and I knew I would have to choose my tweets to them very carefully, lest I embarrass myself.

[Ironically - as a side-effect of high school - I have also been known to slip into bouts of severe social ineptitude, and sometimes present myself as a quivering mass of hand-wringing, guilt and deprecation in public. So, it could have just been me.]

What the experience really prompted me to ask myself was "how similar to high school is Twitter, really?" Now, I can speak only of my own immediate Twitter 'circle', but I'm willing to venture that the principals are universal.

First impressions last
The new kid in school has only a limited amount of time to ingratiate himself with the social powers-that-be. As I remember it, there were only three levels of acceptance at high school: liked, tolerated, or rejected. Everybody was one of these things to somebody.

I'm not sure of the exact figures, but don't you only have something like three weeks to make an impression, before you irreparably assume what will become your official position for the rest of the school year? Ok, I admit I just made that up - but I bet if ever there was a study into it, I wouldn't be too far off.

The same goes for Twitter. You have a limited number of interactions with a specific tweeter before they decide whether they like, tolerate or reject you. I haven't ever blocked a user (other than the autobots - 'robot' users that spam me with marketing messages and repeated follows). But I do know quite a few tweeters who block and unfollow without a moment's hesitation and will tweet about it afterwards too. Brutal. But then, again, so was high school and we all made it through that, right?

One of the cool kids
Remember how complex the high school social structure was? It's the stuff of nature documentaries. There were divisions by grade, by gender, by academic performance, by background, by race. There were overlaps and conflicts. It was dynamic and ever-changing. The beauty of Twitter is that it's just as cliquey and almost as complex - but you get to CHOOSE which clique you wanna be (or at least try to be) a part of! And, best of all, it can literally be any clique in the world. Whatever is cool to you.

It's like a smorgasbord of aspirational and vicarious experiences. I follow poets, writers, bloggers, musicians, other parents, motivational speakers, newsmakers. Witty and intelligent people, successful people, funny people, and some plain-old nice people. Everything I want to be and sometimes think I am.

And the best part? Some of them follow me back. That's another great contrast with high school. Social interaction is the whole point of Twitter - people don't go on there to do something else and incidentally end up having to interact with others. That means that you actually can be one of the cool kids. Why? Because all the cool kids are looking for other kids that are just as cool as they are (or want to be - as the case may be) and that could very well be you.

Of course you get your fair share of loser hangers-on, sometimes you come across a bully or two, people will laugh at your embarrassing moments from time to time, and once in a while you'll get mixed up with the wrong crowd. But, unlike high school, you can live down any of your twitter experiences with a simple click of the right button. And, much like high school, if you're really lucky you might just get out of it actually having learned a thing or two.

Image: Mark Striver (c) 2001

Can information cause stupidity?

As we learn how easy it is to access information through modern technology and the web, and we incorporate it further into our lives, how much are we un-learning about good, old-fashioned thinking? Is all our intelligence becoming artificial?

Getting on the bus

The web is the information superhighway - a constant stream of facts, figures, reports, opinions. You can find out anything you want to know at the click of a mouse. With estimates, at June 2009, of almost 1.7 billion web users worldwide  (a 362% increase from 2000), a quarter of the world's population is already riding in the fastlane and more are on-ramping as we speak.

In the USA, the majority of web users are under the age of 18. They are kids. The same either already applies or will very soon in the rest of the world, I'm sure. These are young people who will probably never spend hours randomly paging through the Oxford Dictionary just for the hell of it. They will seldom, if ever, sit surrounded by a sea of Encyclopaedia Britannica's as they research the next school project. Need to write a book report? Google it. Forget actually reading the silly thing and forming your own opinions.

Getting worse

As if it's not bad enough that, already, most first-year University students in South Africa cannot adequately read, write or comprehend - I predict it will get worse. Don't get me wrong, I would never dream of taking anything away from the stellar achievements of apartheid and its legacy in dumbing down our people by the restriction of access to proper information. That is a real concern, and a big part of our current situation. But, my concern here is for the future.

As more and more of our kids are born deeper into this information age, we will breed whole generations of non-thinkers. Soon the incompetence bred by our not-so-distant past will converge with the incompetence encouraged by our fast-approaching future. Ironically, access to information (and lots of it), will produce virtually the same results as restriction of access to information did.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know that in South Africa only 10% of our population even use the web. I know that we have much bigger fish to fry in sorting out our education system in general, before it is even conceivable to raise a fuss about the possible negative impacts of technology. However, I do request that you humour me here.

Convenience at all costs

Have you been on Facebook lately? Now you tell me that you haven't once wondered whether that one 'friend of a friend' can actually write proper English. You know, the one that can post a whole two-sentence comment exclusively in sms-lingo? When last did you do a three-figure calculation in your head, with out reaching for your cellphone calculator? Quick! What's 65 + 17 + 11? (Almost grabbed that cellphone, didn't you?)

We just don't have the time anymore. It's all about convenience and speed - the less effort it takes from me to get it done, the better. We don't even window-shop anymore. Why spend all that time on little things like speaking to sales people, making comparisons and forming opinions when there's a thousand blogs that will review any product you can think of and provide an online purchase link to boot? It's a copy and paste society we're moving into here. We now compare other people's opinions to figure out our own. We are slowly departing from the practise of interrogating the facts - all the facts.

Time to think

How convenient it is to just sit down and have a good think? Not very much if you've already got 9 emails in your inbox, 15 new posts on your twitstream, 3 Facebook notifications and an incoming sms. Not to mention that podcast that you still haven't listened to yet. You have no time to question things because there are so many things coming at you - all at once. You've got multiple tabs open in your web browser at any point in time, new chat messages are constantly flying in, your boss is hollering on Skype. It's never-ending.

Now, developments like Google Wave are determined to make sure that we just about live our entire lives virtually. And that is merely a taste of things to come. Technology will ensure that more and more of the things that, those of us born pre-1990 were lucky enough to not have taken for granted, are done for us... and that may well include thinking too.

Infa-tw-uation

Let the records reflect that this post marks my first proper attempt at becoming a bonafide 'blogger'. I have yet to discover what that means, exactly - but it is my destination, nonetheless. I know only that I have a few experiences and thoughts I want to share, and a good number of them involve modern technology and life in the information age.

For instance, at the moment, social media (SM) is all the rage. I've dabbled with a few SM platforms but my current infatuation is with Twitter [Read this great introduction to social media by someone I follow on Twitter myself, @khayadlanga]. I was really big on Facebook too until fairly recently. With an embarassingly inordinate amount of time on my hands - owing to my flexible working conditions - I sort of got kinda, slightly hooked on Facebook. Now I hardly go on (when compared to my daily Twitter-time). I need to be on Twitter now. I never want to skip a beat and when I do have to bear down and slog away for the man, I am forced to shut my browser down just so I can focus. So, it follows that I'd have a lot to say on the subject.

I joined Twitter in April - 6 months ago. I'm now at +-850 'tweets' yet, a mere 2 months ago - August 12th to be exact - I had just posted my 50th 'tweet'. Which, coincidentally (or significantly, depending on how you look at it), was also my first real foray into the 'tworld' (Twitter world). You see, from what I've gathered, the whole point of Twitter is not only to be out there but to put yourself out there.

By this, I mean, you have to be willing to interact with total strangers from all corners of the world, to be ready to have them read all of your less-than-informed and ill-thought-out opinions, and your embarrassing moments of overshare. You must be okay with the idea that someone might start a mischievous lie that you could end up sms'ing to your nearest and dearest or (even worse) posting on your Facebook page!

It's exhilarating - like the proverbial bad boy that all we good girls just love (you know you do)! As an intelligent woman, you know that this has the potential to get you into trouble, but it is the danger and sense of exposure that keeps you coming back for more. It's the fast, devil-may-care freedom of it all that sets you alight. Erm, and before this turns into a whole OTHER kind of blog, we'll leave the metaphor there. Thank you.

The point is, this space moves at blistering speeds and, more often than not, there is no time to think through - let alone edit - your tweets. You have information coming at you a mile a minute (well, depending on your 'stats': how many 'tweeps'/'tweople' you follow and who follows you), and the deeper you dive in, the deeper it all pulls you in. Almost like a powerful Atlantic Ocean current - complete with under-tow and stormy seas.

Apt then, that my landmark 50th tweet was a tentative cry for attention (thinly veiled as a plea for help). Attention being the operative word here. Because, of course, that's what Twitter's all about: attention. The people who enjoy Twitter the most are those who receive attention - of any kind. The rest of us splash around in varying proximities from our individual strips of shoreline trying to let the people we 'follow' know that they've got our attention, all the while, trying to create something for our 'followers' to hopefully pay attention to.

Twitter fascinates me. Being a big old softie and a complete sucker for pop-pshychology, I see the metaphor in every moment of my Twitter-time. It's a microcosm of our global society itself and - more importantly - in my opinion, it's advent and growth are significant milestones on the journey that we are travelling as a global society.

I shan't pontificate too much on that point. There's plenty of time, ne pas? Suffice it to say, this isn't the last you'll hear from me on the subject of Twitter. In fact Twitter itself was, in a way, the inspiration for this particular blog. As I was growing as a tweeter, I was growing as a web-user in general. It's basically opened up a new world for me. I am taking in more information than I ever have before and it is all perfectly instantaneous. I'm discovering new places on the net and new uses for it, new thoughts and interactions with it. Twitter has indeed taken my breath away.

Facebook, of course, remains my first social media love. I still appreciate it and it has an (as yet) irreplaceable spot in my heart. It's just that... well, Twitter is simply the new hotness. I cannot get enough. It's just too early to tell yet whether it's true love or simply infatwuation.