Some thoughts on social media, bullying, and how it has disconnected us from what is [ supposedly] real in society

Moving to lovely, bucolic Newtown, Connecticut as a teen, I son learned how to,in the words of Marilyn Manson, how to " Hate every mother fucker that gets in your way". if only social media was available in those days! Newtown High School would have been a fuck of a lot more tolerable. That and maybe, just maybe, I would have come out as a queer teen; rather than suffer the lonely, essentially friendless existence I endured during the 10-1/2 years I spent in Newtown as the lonely piece of shit teenager. Hearing those old songs from Journey [ My first concert at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY at age 18; I was fucking DRUNK after driving around Baldwin and sitting in Baldwin Harbor Park smoking herb and getting fucked on peppermint schnapps!!!], for one night , I escaped the emotional pain of life in Newtown. 

Newtown was a place where the jocks were " god", most of the women were preppie bitches, or prep-jocks [ like the guys]. As for the guys, if you weren't a jockstrap, you were one of the " firemanly-man fuckfaces"; one of those community-loving redneck types whose dad was either a farmer, or an auto mechanic. In other words, you were a fucking Connecticut Yankee redneck HICK! Someone who drove a pick-em-up truck and got all the fucking pussy the jocks did not. [ That or a " dick-chick" who loved to fuck these hick-bag " Town hero" assholes!] For me,Newtown was a miserable,lonely place. I had my few friends, all troublemakers,burglars and the like; all of whom basically drank like fish out of water would! However, living as the pre-transgender transition "Monkey-bastard" , love for me was something that would go no further than my bag of marijuana. Alone in my car atop Castle Hill Road's overlook, many nights had I sat; smoking weed and listening to WRKI-FM 95.1. That or usually WPLR 99.1 from New Haven or, when the signal came in, WBAB 102.3 from my " alma mater" , [Babylon] Long Island, New York.

Newtown, Connecticut was the place I learned to essentially hate people in general. That and hate the whole idea surrounding the theory of human social interaction and the sense of community.Not that Newtown wasn't a nice place; it was. It had lots of woods, trails to both hike, ride your horse, and/or the quads and dirt bike motorcycles. Yes, a redneck thing. Gods did I try so hard to fit in with those Jack Daniels' swilling redneck mother fuckers! Those who loved to deer hunt and shoot varmint of all sorts, then come into their shithole cottages they lived in down in Sandy Hook, stoke the wood stove and yes,clean their guns while drinking Jack and Coke and smoking buds. They, I thought, were my friends; yet in reality I simply did not empathize with their whole Ku Klux Klan gun culture.One where white was king and Black meant you were "One of those niggers over in Danbury and down in Bridgeport." A welfare mamma who kept on having babies; or welfare daddy who was too lazy to work and wanted to sell weed all day on the corner of Gregory and Renell [ Bridgeport's South End near Famous Apizza]. Come junior year at Newtown High, I was essentially a waste case. Teen women saw me as an unkempt scumbag; the guys who I was supposed to one of BULLIED ME to no end. They saw me as a fucking faggot, gay fairy, and femme. 

When I got my first car, a moped, and job at the Newtown Bee, I loved the newly found freedom I had! No longer did I have to stay in Newtown and suffer! I often rode to Southbury, a town which had even more redneck assholes than Newtown ever did! Also,back in the summer of 1979 when I first got my Connecticut Driver's license, I took the fuck off on a long moped trip. Bag of weed in pocket and biker wallet, I headed to the Berkshire Hills; landing at Mount Everett near Mount Washington, Massachusetts. Mass. was a far cooler place back then! More weed,more acid, and far cooler people than we had down in Connecticut!!! Women were awesome up in Massachusetts. Definitely not the [ mostly] stuck up, jock and fireman-fucking CUNTS that Newtown was well-known for!

I soon learned to hate every place I would ever live. That and, confused from the only advice I received from my douche-bag guidance counselor, Mrs. Donna Fox at Newtown High School; add to that the moron who enrolled me in the Henry Abbott Technical High School Shared-time program, Mrs. Eva Roman; after being told how I'd make a great auto mechanic and/or firefighter, I did not know what to think!!! Outside, there was this [ supposedly] " male" shell and an extremely hateful attitude toward women I saw as "Bitches, cunts, and cheerleaders". Inside, nothing at all made any sense. I saw going to the prom as something which was stupid, made no fucking sense at all. Why the fuck would anyone want to look like business executive, translation " yuppie asshole" to go to some dance? And yes, from the perspective of that role associated with that shell I lived in; why would I want to get dressed up in some monkey suit tuxedo and take some bitch from Newtown, Connecticut to the damn prom? To have to hold the door for this " helpless waif" who obviously could not do it for her own goddamn self [ or at least wanted me to think she could could in the name of stupid "chivalry" ] and look like those firemanly son of a bitches. Those who fit the definition of "Pink carnation and a pickup truck" in Don McLean's Song: American Pie. FORGET IT!!! 

And so, soon dropping out of Newtown High [ yet going on home-bound education at the insistence of my father and mother who worried that I'd become an even bigger schmuck without that diploma!],I worked as a custodian at Bethel, Connecticut's FINAST Supermarkets; this as part time janitor. Taking into consideration the gender role prescribed at birth for me to live in, I was a " shoe shine boy". Feel free to interpret this literally,mind you, as one day when a pregnant Black Woman walked into our store, Buddy and several of the other Danbury Firefighters moonlighting at Finast of Bethel literally began calling me " RASMUS" [short for Erasmus, and yes, a common African-American name]. At first it seemed funny. However, after listening to this shit for over one year, it got old. The joke was this. taking into consideration that I constantly complained about NOT being admitted into their store union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 19 of Western Connecticut, then compounding that with the fact that "janitor" is also called PORTER and most of my co-workers and the two managers were RACIST WHITE and blue-collar Connecticut Yankees; RASMUS was me! I was the store's "white nigger". 

Looking back now,I see how things have changed! White kids now try and act " Black" even if they live in prissy-ass white neighborhoods like Newtown and Southbury, Connecticut. Many want to be like "The gang-bangers seen on MTV". Meanwhile their parents, all of whom are from my generation [ one I never matured with], are trying hard to deal with the same shit our parents dealt with when it came to raising children and teens. For the most part, kids today are OVER-MEDICATED and OVER-SCHEDULED. Both parents and schools push them harder than we were ever pushed! Many are trying hard to be the disciplinarians we hated in our own parents, and yes, everything to these over-medicated brats is social media and material bullshit! The MTV generation who are now, in the more conservative, Republican Families, listening to some fucking parent yell at them for texting during family dinner hour when we're all supposed to "Pretend that we are the Walton's on TV" and "Love thy sister and brother". IT IS FUCKING BULLSHIT! I AM SO GLAD THAT I BECAME A "LOSER", RATHER THAN ONE OF THESE PATHETIC, MODERN PARENTS TRYING SO HARD TO KEEP THE WALTON'S DREAM ALIVE!

That said, here I am today, the one who never really grew up and achieved the key milestones set forth by Erikson in his " Generativity vs. Stagnation" Social Theory. Here I am interacting with 19 to 22 year-olds at college,clueless as to what life is like for the typical, career and family-focused adult; many who have know become grandparents as well. In her book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle elaborated upon how we've become a society that needs to constantly be stimulated. How we've become less turned to what is occurring in the outside world; and more in tune with me, myself, I and those who seem to be like us online. How community values, and yes, FAMILY VALUES, have become less and less important and almost nonexistent in today's society. How we believe we're " connected" to the political process online; yet are NOT really connected to others and active in our communities. 

Which brings me to this. WHAT IS THIS OUTSIDE COMMUNITY? Driving around Las Cruces, all I see is a world I've been long excluded from! A world of hard-working adults, many who work at shit jobs just to pay their fucking bills; Walmart Las Cruces - S Valley Dr. for example. having been on Social Security Disability for more than 24 years and not having worked [ except off the books a little] for over 16 of those years, I cannot even relate to the concept of being employed. The only jobs I qualify for are those shit jobs, jobs in retail where one's expected to work like a Black Slave or sharecropper like many at Walmart or McDonald's seem to do. So what the fuck? I may as well be in college and working on my future book; at which time I shall expose this bullshit sense of "community" as never really having existed for those who, like me [according to my often critical, Republican-Voting sister, Linda], never knew how to show empathy toward others, NEVER REALLY EXISTED! 

Ms. Turkle has a point about how learning in the classroom is far better than it is online, though she also claims that more and more professors in colleges and universities expect students to LEARN ONLINE; something which often excludes us less technical-savvy non-traditional students growing up in a time when we didn't have the internet. That and yes, long before credit checks became a requirement for renting an apartment [ discrimination and the cause of homelessness for many] and one could not drive down the freeway without constantly worrying about whether or not some "pig" [police officer] was going to discover that we had a hidden warrant out for our arrest over some bullshit nothing so-called " crime". She does have a point about how life has become more lonely, in the local sense of community, because the internet's made it far easier to simply ignore the people surrounding where one lives. However, for those of us who never could find pleasure in interacting with our families, who saw family dinnertime and all its useless fucking rules as just one big frustration. For those of us who were the pathetic "loser", the geek, freak, queer, faggot, nerd, dweeb, not a fucking jockstrap and NOT inclined to perform as civil servant for the Newtown Hook and Ladder or Southbury Volunteer Firemen's Association; nor one to be the Boy or Girl Scout, churchgoer or what have you? Maybe social media has been more of a blessing than the curse of society, the destroyer of all that supposedly "loving and caring" one only can get by physically interacting with other humans in their often fucked-up family or community! 

Thinking back to those miserable, lonely days at Newtown High School, a time when, to put it in the words of Lisa Nacinovich [ now married and Lisa Serogi], I was " Really cool but angry all the time" ; SOCIAL MEDIA WOULD HAVE PROVIDED ME WITH PLENTY OF SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES THAT MY STUPID FUCKING COMMUNITY SIMPLY LACKED! Hell, I may have even had a girlfriend via social media,maybe.Then again, I may have emerged from that huge, dark closet of fear, fear of being my own QUEER SELF, if the internet were around back then. All I had back then was that moped to ride off to Danbury, or maybe to Brewster, New York or to Massachusetts' Mount Everett and out to almost the Rhode Island State Line; landing at Camp Niantic by the Atlantic. A campground along Eastern Connecticut's beautiful Route 156 near the hamlet of same name. What I'm bringing out here is this. That 12 year young woman down in Florida would have still killed herself, even if social media were not available. That or, rather than be psychologically tormented and bullied online or on Facebook; she would have been BULLIED IN HER FUCKING " WONDERFUL,WARM AND LOVING" COMMUNITY! Physically bullied, and if she were a transgender woman still in " male" shell? Well yes, at top-rated for the number of teens who go onto college Newtown High School in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, as " It" , she would have lived in fear of having her BRAINS BASHED OUT every fucking day she was at school! The highly respected jockstrap mother fuckers would have grabbed her by her long hair [or maybe undies] after gym class in that locker room, then used that long hair to "mop out" the shit-filled toilet bowl! At which time Coach Norman Westlake would have come strolling in, nonchalantly, and yelled " OROPEL! WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON IN HERE? NEXT TIME YOU START TROUBLE [ with my cannot do any wrong whatsoever Newtown Indians' Football Stars] I' LL DRAG YOU BY THE EAR TO EARL J. SMITH'S OFFICE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" That said, if it weren't for Lady Cannabis, I would have committed suicide ten times over as a teenager! 

The moral of the story being that yes, maybe those days of us Americans feeling as if we belonged to our PHYSICAL COMMUNITY have been replaced, " Sadly" in the worldview of author Sherry Turkle, by social media. Maybe kids and teens no longer hold any regard for quiet times with family at that dinner table. However, for those who,like me, never truly felt that sense of closeness with our families; often seeing that proverbial question of " How did you do on that test?" [ or maybe " Why are your eyes always so red?" ] as MAJORLY ANNOYING! I mean to constantly hear your so-called loving father rip into you at holiday dinners with extended family, constantly reminding you of what an " Abnormal bastard you [ were]" and how you never knew how to " Act like a human being around company"; looking back I only WISH THAT FACEBOOK WERE AROUND AT THE TIME! However, it was not. That said, for the duration of those three fucking years I spent at Newtown High School, the " Award-winning school" it always was [ Ratings of Newtown Schools compared to other CT. towns. ]; every day when I got off that bus at Blakeslee Drive and Hanover Rd. and walked back to our splanch home with the red, used-brick siding and faux- redwood on top, I'd briefly run inside. As soon as Dad started his usual questioning of " Why are your eyes always red all the time?" I'd say " LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" At which time I'd run into my room, grab that bag of pot and the mini-bong, then quickly walk down that hill past the unfinished guest house and off into the woods. 

Packing bowl after bowl, I'd go into my fantasy town called "Deerfield Valley, Connecticut". One which I built using shovel, pick, and wood saw;plus my Christian Neighbor Mr. Crouch's "come-a-long" [as he called the rock/log puller or winch] and literally had a miniature working " city sewer system". In that metal chair I would sit for hours,often well into the evening hours and past dark; smoking bowl after bowl full of pot and enjoying the company of myself and my imaginary family. As usual, it was "Chris and Cheryl Keyes" of Baldwin, New York. Like back in childhood but now supposedly developing into an adult, I played my usual fantasy games; the real world was never going to be a place I would be a welcome part of and that I knew!Newtown, Connecticut had other stuff to do besides being a firefighter or Girl/Boy Scout. I cannot say that Mr. Crouch did not try. Assuming I needed " Jesus Christ" in my life, he convinced me to come into the AWANA Youth Fellowship at the Newtown First Baptist Church on Sugar Street [ Route 302]. However, after I refused to " Get saved", that was the end of that! Newtown also had the Little Theatre on Route 25 and Orchard Hill Road, a classical music youth ensemble, the fucking Four-H Club, and much more. However, I never felt a compassionate desire to help others, essentially seeing other human beings as my arch enemies or just empty, happy faces in the crowd. Rule out the Four-H Club and the Scouts here; as well as any goddamn church group for that matter! Life in Newtown left me with so little self-esteem that, even if I had talents of any kind [ like that imagination that literally saved me from the ever depressing realities of life!], I NEVER USED THEM TO DO ANYTHING GOOD WITH MY LIFE. 

To this day, I am STILL NOT ONE TO WANT TO BELONG TO ANY GREATER COMMUNITY! Rather I see volunteerism as little more than a pathetic excuse by the " Christian" types to keep delaying what could be the real solution to America's Problems; Marxism or Socialism in some form or other and the regulation of unbridled excessive CAPITALISM! If the goddamn welfare agencies provided for those in need, by appropriately taxing the most wealthy instead of offering them loopholes as long as they " gave to charitable organizations", there'd be no need for food banks and soup kitchens! Anyway, that said, I must say that, for anti-family and anti-community types such as myself, social media has been wonderful. Now I can get into vicious arguments, and yes, do a little cyber-bullying of my own, toward those I hate the most in America. Those who are too goddamn stupid to accept a handout like SNAP Benefits and believe that everyone's out to harm them; including the government, and so will defend their Second Amendment Rights to the finish line! Those who are trying, through the use of political lobbying under guise of their church organizations, to destroy everything liberals and queers have worked so hard for. And those whose political position I simply disagree with. I AM GETTING BACK AT EVERYONE I HATED WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER IN NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT! That and, now that I've come out of the closet and become what I always was inside, I now use the internet to bully those very same people that I, for the longest time in both Newtown and especially at jobs I held [ never for long], only agreed with so as to not get beaten up or shot! If Ms. Turkle really thinks social media has taken us away from that big dinner table full of family values depicted on television's 1970's Series called The Walton's; well I have another perspective on that to tell everyone!

Some thoughts on social media, bullying, and how it has disconnected us from what is [ supposedly] real in society

From Bill Moyers Show on PBS' KRWG 22 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. From the book by Sherry Turkle: Alone Together; available on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Together-Expect-Technology-Other/dp/0465031463 . Some thoughts from somebody who was truly a socially inept "loser" and thought Dale Carnegie's Book should have been titled How to Kiss Ass in order to Win Friends and Influence People. 

On his show, he's interviewing a woman writer and professor named Sherry Turkle. One who just published a book titled Alone Together. In her book, she states that social media has made people believe that they need to put down the social media and spend more time actually interacting with others in person. However, the way I'm interpreting it, some of the shit she is saying makes sense; while much of it, in particular how kids/teens now turn to social media on their smartphones as a way to connect to those they are interested in during some boring as shit holiday dinner with family, goes against what I believe.

Anyway,my first reaction was this. From a Facebook Post, by the way. "Like what the fuck, I'm sure? ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GO BACK TO PRETENDING TO BE THE FUCKING WALTON'S ON TV? Speaking for myself, that NEVER EXISTED for me! Then again, maybe this was what my sister meant when she said that, as a child and teen, I never learned how to show EMPATHY toward others? Truthfully, I found family dinners to be lame, especially after my overly-critical father started his bullshit about how I "Didn't know how to act right when we were with company". LIKE I SAID, THERE WAS NO WALTON'S MOUNTAIN SENSE OF " SHANGRI-LA" IN MY FAMILY! Just Dad being an asshole as usual , and Grandma Gebbia making things more tolerable when she " treated" us kids/teens to as much red Italian Wine as we wanted!!! 

I went on to describe those " happy" memories of holidays with the family, in the days before social media made the bullshit far easier to swallow for kids and teenagers. 

• The minute Dad started his shit, when we all were at my family's house, I'd 

  
  

  walk the fuck out into the garage,hit the damn garage door opener; at 

  
  

  which time I'd take out my bicycle [now stewed on that wine!] and ride up 

  
  

  and down Tulip Ave. Playing a game I called " Drunk driver" as I ran over 

  
  

  Big Wheels and rammed doll carriages belonging to every bully living on my 

  
  

  street in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York!!  Great way to make 

  
  

  Thanksfucking and Shitsmas more tolerable with family!!
• 

  
  

Well I haven't posted in here in a while, not since June. Between working on my novel, revising and editing and all that, and driving around after that car accident, I haven't had the chance. Truthfully, I've been doing most of my ranting on Facebook. having applied to three different SUNY schools back in New York State, after [ the parent of Dona Ana Community College] New Mexico State University placed a hold over an unpaid summer housing bill, I was unable to get the needed transcripts. That and was threatened with the cancellation of all my fall classes if the bill was not paid to below $1,000 by Sept. 3. Nevertheless, having taken out another loan, an Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, I was able to get it down to $486 and, after paying another $350, I managed to stay in classes.The manager at accounts receivable, at our new Dona Ana Branch on the East Mesa, she removed the hold, but just temporarily.

No matter, because that's all I needed to get those transcripts I had requested back in early July and get them sent to the three State University of New York Schools who needed them to continue processing my admissions applications. Guess what, I WAS ACCEPTED TO SUNY POTSDAM!!! Yes, to their creative writing BA program for spring semester. Now all that's left is to figure out how I'll pay for what's left after what the Stafford Subsidized, and Unsubsidized Loans, plus SEOG and Pell Grants had paid for. Being an out of state student, the costs are going to be around $15-16,000 a year; for the first year until I can establish New York State Residency.

So going back " home", I hope. back to those cold winters with the snow and all. To be honest, outside of Santa Fe, I do not really care for New Mexico. Sure the weather in Las Cruces is better, if you don't mind the dust-storms carrying huge plumes of dust which gets into everything. I never got sick as much as I did since coming here; my right lung's had dry pneumonia since I moved to this fucking barrio/redneck pile of depressing shit. That said, I'm hoping there will be a way to do this. I'm ready for  Potsdam.Now, to get through the math course I am taking. Some of the stuff I learned years ago at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Mr. Brunelli's Beginning Algebra Class I remembered, other stuff like compound interest I'm having trouble with. 

The fucking professor, Dr. Ulloa, seems to have an attitude toward me because of my transgender status alone; never mind anything else. His syllabus' rubrics are vague at best, and, when I asked him for advice as to how to get help doing this; all  he could say was " You have the book.There's examples in it." This after, just a week and a half prior when I questioned as to why we've not been going by the book, he told me that the book was optional! That said, I returned it; needing the money for food the mother fucking shit amount of $137 [ now $138 whoopie!!!] in SNAP Benefits does not buy! That's another story altogether. Susana " Chaucha" Martinez, our fucking Mexican-American Chicana Republican piece of shit governor [ chaucha=cunt] doesn't give a flying fuck about those who are struggling. 

Anyway, so Potsdam, I got in. Looking forward to mountains with actual TREES UPON THEM, even if those trees go bare for the winter from November through late April.