Little Walls Against the Technium (as of 2011)

Re: Swiss Miss's lament about "too many channels," what with texting, Skyping, e-mailing, FBing, and hence, the general, guilt-laden feeling of o-ver-whelm. I hear ya, sister. The walls aren't high enough to keep out all the waters, but there are some walls. It occurs to me to note what mine are as of March 2011. (Note: This is not an exercise in self-congratulation; the walls definitely need to be higher-- and not to keep communication out per se. My goal, in all this Niagara of craziness, is respond in a more timely and respectful way to communications from family, friends, colleagues, students, and readers.)

No to LinkedIn
Yes, I have an account but I haven't logged in in oh, I guess it's been about a year. Almost every day someone sends me an invitation to join them, and--- nothing personal--- I ignore it. I have to ignore something! (If you really do know me, "friend" me on FB and/ or send me an e-mail.)

A Wet Towel Upon Twitter, Sort Of
Ay, is anyone really reading my tweets anyway?!? It's a ridiculously inefficient way to have a conversation. Yes, I do see some traffic to my blog because of Twitter, but not enough to justify the bother of logging in and (sigh) having my visual field cluttered up with other peoples' tweets. But I admit, I have changed my mind about Twitter about four times now. Follow me @madammayo (P.S. Here's what I had to say about Twitter in 2009.)

UPDATE 2016: My active Twitter accounts are @cmmayo1 and @marfamondays

Nope to MySpace
Never bothered.

Scroogy with Skype
Only four people have my skype address, and one of them has died. The others will die, too; the question is when. (If you are one of those four, please don't die, OK?)

Texting is a Truly Terrible Idea
OMG, no. I used it once, for one day in Istanbul, where my Mexican cell phone did not work. That was enough. My thumbs thank me. The Goddess of Punctuation thanks me. Any and all hotdogging (don't ask) thumbsters who feel the need to text me can use FB or email.

UPDATE 2016: For reals, I do not text. For me as a writer, texting is poison, and email, which is necessary, is already more than enough of a channel of communication.

To Avoid Receiving Phone Calls, Live in Mexico City
As I do... People just can't figure out the area codes, which have how many 5's? It might be easier to call Afghanistan! Yes, I do get telemarketers, but I hang up with such infinite smoothness, I forget they just called.

In the US, check voice mail twice a week
At most. If I can remember. (If it were really important, they would have e-mailed.)

I Would Hammer In My Television For Fun!

My ongoing fantasy is to take a hammer to the screen, but my husband, who occasionally watches the news or baseball, would not appreciate that. Anyway, there are so many channels on the cable service he's subscribed to, I can't figure out where to start watching, and whenever I do start watching, I get a headache. Seriously, I don't watch television.

UPDATE 2016: No Netflix either.

Silly Cell Phone, Almost Never with a Battery
I just continually forget to charge it! And then, a lot of times, even if it is charged, and stashed in my purse, I forget to turn it on! It has this very cool xylophone ringtone and I have never figured out how to get it to work! It vibrates silently, ayyy!

Yea, Verily with Reluctance, to Facebook
It's become a broadcasting platform of sorts, yes, it actually does help sell books and fill reading venues, so I'm there, and every twice in a blue moon, I'll update my status. This blog's feed is integrated into FB's "friend feed," so it no doubt appears I am on-line at FB more often than I really am. P.S. I am sorry, I am not interested in sharing what I am eating, and I don't really care about what you are eating, either, even if you really are my real (not just FB) friend, unless we are actually, like, in meat space, eating together at, like, a table in like, a restaurant. It makes me sad to see social interaction having descended to the level of "like" and "poke." Oh well!

UPDATE 2015: Adios Facebook! The Six Reasons Why I Deactivated My Account

With Red Room, booktour.com, goodreads.com, SheWrites, FB Fan Pages, etc, Bring on the VA
All the social networking sites for books and writers-- that's what I have a virtual assistant for! And she bills me via PayPal on the 15th of each month! And I love her!

UPDATE 2015: Not anymore! I don't bother with any of that anymore and Red Room went dark.

Blog
On a schedule. This blog is updated on Mondays, and sometimes in between; my other blog, Maximilian ~ Carlota, is updated on Tuesdays (unless I'm traveling).  once in a while. I used to blog whenever I felt like it. That, I learned, was not a good idea, if I wanted to continue to publish books.

When It Comes to E-mail...Viva, file folders in Outlook Express! More about that anon. Way anon. Ayyy. Back to the Niagara.

UPDATE 2016: Email Ninjerie in the Theater of Space-Time or, This Writer's 10 Point Protocol for Inbox 10 (ish)

Twittering Ionesco

In his most recent and always thought-provoking newsletter, writer and creativity coach-of-coaches Eric Maisel opines,

I think that this social networking chatter is the new absurdity. It is absurd because it is at once effective and horrible, seductive and mind-numbing, professional and infantile.

Madam Mayo is scratching her head over that one. Yes. No. Not exactly-sort-of. What constitute "professional" and "infantile" in our culture are undergoing a seachange. Just for example, I had thought facebook was childish--- until I had a look at who's on it and what they're using it for. Herewith a few of our finest poets and writers whom you'll find on facebook: Grace Cavalieri, Chris Offutt, Naomi Ayala, Mark Doty, Martin Espada, Richard McCann, and Sandra Gulland.

Furthermore, says Maisel:

What is the state of absurdity today? It is clear to me that I am supposed to be cross-blogging and twittering all day long in order to increase my audience. If you do not know what cross-blogging and twittering mean, you are lucky. It is indeed the case that folks who spend all day doing things of this sort really do sell more of whatever it is they are selling than do people who don’t. I don’t doubt that and I don’t dispute that. But I would rather have a root canal than send out little messages all day about this and that.

But what Great White-Bearded Committee in the Sky says it has to be "all day"? Why not post only on Mondays? Or, once a month?

A couple of weeks ago, I got started with Twitter, a social-networking thingamajig I'd thought beyond absurd until I read Seth Godin on the subject. If you want to follow me on Twitter, or "get the tweets," as they say, I promise not to barage you with news of my weekend plans, what I am eating, the state of my digestion, or the view out my office window. I don't use any of these social networking things (blog, facebook, twitter) to share my life per se, rather, I share books and links, in the spirit of what-goes-around-comes-around. In the past two years, my own life and writing have been immeasurably enriched by the information I've gleaned from the Internet. The challenge is to learn how to discern and dispatch quickly and effectively. And it is no small challenge.

Speaking of which, since I really don't have time for Twitter, I integrated it into the status bar of my facebook page-- two birds with one haiku, as it were.

Two quick links on the challenge:
-->To my blog post about Naomi S. Baron's book, Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World
-->To poet, editor and web 2.0 diva Deborah Ager's blog post on Time Management for Poets

Maisel shares this link to a delightfully languid --- oh so antique--- interview with the King of the Absurd, (voici le wiki), Eugene Ionesco:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGOFBLHiVXU<