The Internet is for Assholes. Thank God.

There is this NYT article, The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion.
[By JOHN TIERNEY, January 11, 2010]

It contains this quote:

"[Jaron Lanier] blames the Web’s tradition of 'drive-by anonymity' for fostering vicious pack behavior on blogs, forums and social networks."

And one of his points is that anonymity allows us to be assholes.

I don't think this is a new concept. I think every activity which allows one to extend the self farther and farther away from the body enables the Asshole to grow and develop. Think about simple graffiti: for how many centuries have we been able to leave anonymous messages for others on public spaces? Are these deep or noble lessons, or just creative ways to make fart and dick jokes? The idea of being an asshole through words or art is as old as language itself.

I'll admit I am an asshole. When I ran for high school president, my cheer for myself was,

"A-S-S-H-O-L-E. Asshole, Asshole, yeah, that's me!"

And this leads me to some of the recent blog posts about the Annoyed Librarian.

The Annoyed Librarian is an anonymous blogger. Or pseudonymous, if you need accuracy. Like Elvis Costello or Madonna, she doesn't put her fake name on her income tax forms (until it's fiscally prudent to do so).

To say she doesn't like a lot of stuff in the library world is to put it mildly. Pretty much everything Annoys her. She used to write for free, but now she gets a paycheck.

I don't have the patience to comment on these latest anti-AL posts, point by point, and since I don't know AL personally, I don't know if she feels any injury from the attacks, but I'm pretty sure she can handle herself. If she needs someone to have her back, she can email me and I'll be there. But here are links to the most recent anti-AL stuff: 1, 2, 3.

There is the one constant criticism I hear about the Annoyed Librarian:
I don't like what she doesn't like, either. But I don't think she's as qualified to disapprove as I am. Because she's anonymous.

I hear so much about how she is too critical, how her criticism is more of an attack against good librarians everywhere. But so many of her critics actually agree with many of her points. She just has her Annoyed shtick that she wraps around the issues. That, and the anonymity.

Privacy is precious on the Internet. I value my privacy. Sure, I've screwed up and had too much information get linked to me, but I don't just post every detail about my life up for everyone to know. I wonder if in the future, "reverse ego searches" will be cool, where you search for yourself but find nothing. Like now, when you find some twenty-something without tattoos or unhygienic body piercings and think, "How the hell did you manage to keep your skin so pristine?"

My rage would be so much more effective if I could find this person's boss.

Why would you need to know my name or where I work? To have me fired? To have me lose my income and put me out on the street? Don't you think that's a hostile act? In this economy? That's like sticking a loaded gun in my face? How do you think I should react to that?

Well, you know AL's boss: it's Library Journal. But they hired her knowing in advance that she was not going to use her real name and that she would attack what deems "silly librarianship." So you can't get her fired because that's her job. And she's doing it.

I don't know what it will take to remove anonymity form the Internet. But it will happen eventually. If we don't forfeit all our own secrets on some social networking site, every electronic device we own will broadcast everything else. Someday we will have no secrets. And that's too bad. Because a little mystery is sexy.

wendy's commercial: fail

Are these aholes eating in a library??? WTF, Wendy's?



Yes, I've seen this commercial many, many times, but I never really paid attention to it. It just made me want to punch those two guys in the face, then go to Taco Bell.

So, thanks, Wendy's, for reinforcing positive public behavior. Why don't you shoot your next commercial with some guy enjoying a delicious Frosty near the periodicals while sodomizing a macaw. (You know, because of all the noise.)

Good news: our suffering brings library success

Here's a photo from the NYT ("Are Economic Woes Pushing Up Library Circulation?" by Sewell Chan; Photo: Daniel Barry).

The story has an almost gleeful tone when it describes how bad times increase library use:
"Queens Library saw a 16 percent jump in circulation and attendance immediately following Sept. 11, for instance."

Woo-hoo! Terrorist mayhem increases library use!

But that's not what interests me about this story. Look at the picture of the old guy reading with his busted single lens glasses. Look at that; he has one lens from a pair of glasses in part of a frame without a temple arm or any other parts of a complete pair of glasses. It's the most depressing picture I've seen all week. This poor old guy with less than a half-pair of glasses.

I guess there are worse signs of a poor economy than a guy with a half-pair of glasses, but I'm struggling to think of some. Like maybe if he had only one shoe or if he was wearing the jacket from a 1977 prom tuxedo, one of those green ones with the white piping on the lapels. Really, I don't know. We get lots of crazy or odd people in the library, but I rarely see someone who just looks so damn destitute. It makes me sad to look at it. So I'll just look away. Ooh, look! Brangelina baby pictures!

it's a George Carlin world

A while back, the fire alarm in the library went rogue and summoned the fire dudes.
While I watched the front door, a woman arrived with her son and tried to enter the building. When I told her that she couldn't come in, she asked, "Why?"
"The fire alarm went off and they're checking the building."
"But I'll just be a minute."
"No. There's nobody allowed inside the building."
"Why?"
"Because they're still checking the building."
"Why?"
"Because the building is ON FIRE!"

Ok, the building probably wasn't on fire. But I wasn't allowed inside, so nobody else is allowed inside. Especially a woman and her kid. Was what she had to do so important that she would wander around an empty building with nobody there to help her and possibly be surrounded by flames??? And with her kid. These days nothing is dangerous. Nothing is forbidden. And that will be our downfall. Even Frankenstein's monster (yes, the movie version), an undead creature composed of decomposing flesh and with an abby normal brain, knew that fire was bad.

I don't think I've ever been comfortable with my place in the world. I've often been comfortable with my place in bed, on the barstool, and sometimes at work, but never in the world.

I worry that the Assholes have found me. To be honest, they found me a long time ago, and I did my best to keep from their view. But they seem to be back with new vigor. I don't know if people have gotten stupider or if I've become like a Dean Koontz character who inherited some hypersensitive sight that spots all the Asshole people.

A few days ago, a guy gets his bike stolen from in front of the library because he didn't lock it. While I was outside looking for clues of the crime (don't ask why; he called after the theft and asked me to look), another guy parked his bike and did not lock it. "Hey, hey, hey," I said. "Somebody might take your bike if you don't lock it to something." And I told him about the bike that was just stolen. But he assured me that he was more clever than a thief and he wrapped his cable lock around his bike to make it look like it was locked.

Don't ask me to explain this. By this time, my brain had ceased talking to me, with me looking for stolen bike clues and watching a guy wrap a cable around his bike to make it appear to be locked. My brain doesn't think I'm doing a very good job of protecting it from witnessing stupid shit. It helped me get through library school and look at the thanks I've shown it; I work at the public library where my job continually forces me to throw out all logic and submit to the whims of some of the, ummm, nicest, taxpaying good-hearted library patrons (I think my boss is reading this). So, no, my brain doesn't talk to me very much anymore.

You know, on second thought, what if this behavior is the best that the Assholes have to offer? Maybe they're doing the best that they can, and I'm just missing the message. In an Asshole World, behaving like a total asshole would be the highest compliment.

So what's my role in this? If I find myself in the presence of an Asshole, how should I behave? Is being polite to them the same as rudeness to us? How much of an asshole do I need to be back to them to show my appreciation? Because I can do it. I can be a Total Asshole. If that's what it takes. I think I'll start right now.