The Rules of Modern Day Attraction

Want a recipe for loneliness and jealousy, but in a good way? Booze not doing the trick anymore? In my current role as Associate Producer for Motherboard.tv I spend a lot of time on the internet, and when I say a lot I mean it—you’d think my ass would be permanently adhered to this miserable office chair by now. As such, my eyes sometimes glance upon a certain website that most of us simply cannot live without.

Facebook and Internet culture in general have drastically and lastingly changed the way we know, date, friend, poke and relate to each other. By the way, poking someone means you want to have sex with them right?

Wait. My crush isn’t listed on here. Poking me back. Poking me at all. Could this mean he/she/it doesn’t want me?

When you meet someone, what’s the first thing you do? Come on, you know you start stalking them on the Internet. Scoping out profile pictures, relationship status and if they have any of the Facebook red flags, which I’m wont to say are universal, but am willing to consider are not. Ubiquitous or otherwise, a glossary of relative principles seems essential to say the least. I’ve provided my own list as a guideline.

FACEBOOK TURN-OFFS

• Less then 10 profile pictures.
• Pictures with babies. Nobody wants to date a baby momma/daddy at this age.
• General stupidity with special regard to bad grammar.
• More than 5 status updates per day.
• Pictures of your ex(es). Are they hot Liz Lemon lookalikes or are they scary, obese ogre trolls that smile bleakly from behind their 10th red cup of generic beer? Either way, deal breaker central.
• Number of friends: -50 = bad, +2000 = just plain weird. Who knows that many people?
• An overwhelming number of pictures featuring cats or other animals (excluding weasels) in them.
• Music: Nickelback/Creed/Staind = bad. DJ Marcus, any dubstep (excluding Cragga or Nightspitter) and the killer of all potential relationships, Dave Matthews Band = horrible .
• I hate same-facers. Need I say more?
• Photos that belong on softcore or hardcore porn sites as your profile picture.
• If the book section is left blank or says something like, “I don’t read too good”. Umm, thanks. Try again. Wait, on second thought, please don’t.

Picture of a Facebook friend who moved to Florida to work in the adult film industry. Yes that is a giant needle poking through her face.

FACEBOOK TURN-ONS

• Professional photographs of yourself because you happen to be friends withHalston Bruce.
• Gummo, Pink Flamingoes, and/or Freaks in your favorite movies category.
• Your pictures and/or general content has something/anything to do with weasels.
• Music section includes Funk from the 60s and 70s and This American Life (check out the best ep.)
• Your interests include: “Masturbating Violently to Antiques Roadshow.” This is an actual group.
• Links to your blog so I can stalk you more

If you’re saying to yourself: “Jeez Erin, kind of judgmental, don’t you think?” Well, you can shut your hypocritical mouth. We all do this. It’s part of our depressing quest to find a mate. Facebook provides a reasonable platform from which we should all be screening potential partners. Welcome to the future or whatever. Where studies can prove how annoying you are to everyone; how jealous you are and how to rig your profile to attract people.

How has facebook helped my social communication? Well it hasn’t. Instead of calling or meeting face to face, we text or poke or some other such vapid form of “staying in touch.” I’ve wasted countless hours on this god forsaken website. But will I stop? Fuck no, my FB stalking skills are razor sharp, thank you.

One more thing: engagement photos. Jesus. I went to school at the University of Wisconsin and it looks like the goal for graduates is to get married as soon as humanly possible. These people were once smart, capable, and somewhat sane in my book. Now at 23 they’re throwing 40 large down the crapper and promising themselves to someone for eternity. Why? And don’t even get me started about the kissy pictures at sunset on a dock or whatever. Excuse me while I vomit all over my keyboard.

Advertisement

Growing a New Eye (With a Little Help From Technology and You) (Motherboard.tv)

Originally written for Motherboard.tv

When I grew up, I wanted to be like Sarah Connor in Terminator II: leather clad, ass-kicking, and mean as a snake. But my male compatriots yearned to be Arnold: part-man, part-machine. Our society has always nurtured a fascination with the melding of humanity and science. And its origins were often more based in fantasy—see sci-fi favorites such as Darth Vader, Robocop, or Tom Cruise—than reality.

But the melding of metal and flesh begs a few questions. If you put metal parts into an individual do they stop being a human? How much metal can you put into a person before he/she isn’t a person? At what point does the line between humanity and AI bleed into each other? Obviously, this amalgamation provokes a certain amount of conflict, anxiety, and identity crisis.

But what about people who aren’t characters in movies, everyday people who want to fuse the concepts for the betterment of their bodies and minds? Enter Tanya Vlach, a women who lost her eye during a horrific car accident. Before the accident she was a well-known visual artist and performer. Afterwards, she had a frontal lobe minor brain injury and was missing an eye. Despite her subsequent depression, Tanya refused to be victim of her circumstances and sought a fix through technology. What if she could see again, but better? Couldn’t she just put a bionic eye in her socket and move on?

She pitched her idea to Wired founder Kevin Kelly; his curiosity was piqued. He put out a personal call to engineers to help build an implant of a miniature camera inside her prosthetic eye. Hundreds of scientists and engineers responded with their ideas. But such innovations don’t come cheaply; insurance wasn’t going to pay for this, and she didn’t have the money.

In June, Tanya started a Kickstarter campaign. It was quickly picked up by the Internet, and suddenly she was the newest poster child for transhumanism and body modification. Her project, Eye-Camera: an experiment in wearable technology, cybernetics, and perception. The project inspired frequent questions on her website ranging from the laughable (“Are you a Spy”) to the hopeful and suspicious (“are you starting a cyborg revolution?”). One can dream.

Tanya continues to travel and discuss her plight and subsequent plan of action across the United States; on Sunday July 31st she comes to Brooklyn for an eye fundraiser at Brooklyn Winery. Come prepared to discuss cyborgs, eyes, and the art that lies in between.

MUST//LIST – Taxidermia

1. Taxidermia (film)

“TAXIDERMIA contains three generational stories, about a grandfather, a father, and a son, linked together by recurring motifs. The dim grandfather, an orderly during World War Two, lives in his bizarre fantasies; he desires love. The huge father seeks success as a top athlete — a speed eater — in the post-war pro-Soviet era. The grandson, a meek, small-boned taxidermist, yearns for something greater: immortality. He wants to create the most perfect work of art of all time by stuffing his own torso.”

I can send it to you.

Gripping, dysfunctional, dark, and delightful for all perverts alike.

JUST KIDS- PATTI SMITH

The things I have gleaned from JUST KIDS, PATTI SMITH. 

“

I’m already free.

We ventured out like Maeterlinck’s children seeking the bluebird and were caught in the twisted briars of our new experiences.

Both of us had given ourselves to others. We vacillated and lost everyone, but we had found one another again. we wanted, it seemed what we already has, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal and yet free.

“Patti, no one sees like we do.”

Nureyev and Artaud.

Isadora Duncan.

forlorn souls who had fouled their lives.

Romanticization of excess …. and yet. 

My East of Eden outfit.

Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself.

Magical life-breathe.

Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were all…

The Moon had turned blood red.

Natural Gravitation // Gerard Malanga.

He was holding a carton on milk, as if he were about to pour it in the saucers of his eyes.

Memento Mori // Remember we are mortal.

It wasn’t easy for him to sever our physical ties, I knew that.

Extremely Caustic.

Robert felt a part of our equation.

Patti Smith to Janis Joplin

I was working real hard

To show the world what I could do

Oh I guess I never dreamed

I’d have to

World spins some photographs

How I love to laugh when the crowd laughs

While love slips through

A theatre that is full

But oh baby

When the crowd goes home

And I turn in and I realize I’m alone

I can’t believe

I had to sacrifice you

Investing the homosexual with grandeur, masculinity, and enviable nobility. Without affection, he created a presences that was wholly male without sacrificing feminine grace.

To imbue homosexuality with mysticism. As Cocteau said of a Genet poem, “His obscenity is never obscene.”

Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Amelia Earhart, Mary Magdalene.

Les Enfants Terrible.

Indefinable devotion.

Often contradiction is the clearest way to truth.

Others sacrificed themselves to drugs and misadventure.

Daguerreotype.

A Season in Hell. At one point I realized I was crying.

All around me the messages written in chalk were dissolving like tears in the rain.

“It’s intoxicating,” he would say. “The power that you can have. There’s a truck line of guys that all want you, and no matter how repulsive they are, feeling that collective desire for oneself is powerful.”

Unruly and impious performances. > The sounds of a scene emerging.

I dressed in a manner that I thought a boy from Delaware would understand: black ballet flats, pink shantung capris, my kelly green silk raincoat, and a violet parasol.

Catholic Medals torn from shaved throats.

I choose Earth.

“

______________________________________________________________________________

JUST KIDS, a love story about youth, rock and roll, what it mean to be an artist, and the trials and tribulations that come along for the ride. It was one of the best and most fulfilling reading experiences I have had in a good long time. The novel is a motivator to push me forward, to get off my television saturated brain and think, think about the present and most importantly my future as an artist and human being.