The end of the TMI era

It's here.  It probably passed us some time ago and we didn't notice.  Via Balloon Juice, this +1.

In the age of social media, when cell phones come with camera lenses optimized for selfies, that last question ("Is there such a thing as TMI on the Web?") gets asked regularly. So I am going to answer it, once and for all: No. There is no such thing as TMI on the Internet. We are living in a post-TMI age, and everyone needs to deal with it. Preferably by using the “unfollow” button.

There is such a thing as too much information for you. There is such a thing as information the speaker will later regret. But if an audience is willingly and pleasurably consuming the information, then by definition, that is the right amount of information for them. Assuming the information in question is yours to share — your life, your ideas, your stories, your pictures, your theories about elf genealogy in Lord of the Rings — you cannot share too much of it. There are no captive audiences on the Internet. Whereas discussing your sex life at the Thanksgiving dinner table may be TMI for Grandma, discussing your sex life online does not necessitate Grandma’s participation. If you follow someone on Twitter and you find that her tweets are too much for you, then you may unfollow her. If you continually recoil at TMI, it's because you lack the willpower to stop consuming (or foresight to avoid) the information in question. That’s your fault.

I spend far too much time reading the "letters to the editor" of the modern age, which include comments to stories in the digital newspaper, e-zine articles, blogs, and Facebook responses to the news of the day.  I want to know what people are thinking, and by 'people' I mean all walks of life and all persuasions.  I have a particular fascination with the conservative mindset, in a monkeys-flinging-their-poo kind of way.  And among the reasons I sample the vast public discourse -- particularly the discourse with which I disagree, not to mention the disagreeable -- is to perform a routine diagnostic on my own points of view.  Because too much agreeable opinion (as everyone who has dealt with someone who only watches Fox News clearly understands) tends to warp one's own beliefs.  That's how truth becomes truism, and in turns devolves into truthiness.  But back to what to do about stuff you see online if you don't like it.

Modern media consumption — particularly digital media consumption — is personalized. This is sometimes to our detriment; it is very easy to surround yourself with the voices of only those who agree with you. As consumers of social media, we are all the programmers of our own personal line-ups, featuring a hand-selected set of soap operas, news sources, and other amusements. If a particular soap opera becomes boring, you click “unfollow” — or maybe you hate it so much that you block it. You can download browser extensions that will turn words you do not want to see into a big black bars, or prevent you from loading web pages that contain material that offends. For instance, if I never want to see or think about Bill or Emma Keller, I could install a content filter like Blocksi and set it to block or limit the amount of time I spend on web pages where the term Keller appears. Or I could set it simply to warn me about incoming Kellers, so that I can summon a third party to preview the material for me.

You can take charge of that which offends you, if you are capable of managing the technology.  Or you can just scroll past it.

Rule 34 of the Internet states, “If something exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.” Embedded in this joking wisdom is a profound statement about taste. If one person likes something enough to imagine, desire, or create it, then somewhere in this wide world of ours, another person feels the same way. In the age of micro-audience — when everyone is famous not for fifteen minutes, but to fifteen people — there is a consumer for everything. No exceptions. Even if the audience is merely the creator himself, gazing at his own selfies for hours on end like Narcissus falling into a pool of glowing computer screen — if he is @MrPimpGoodGame — that is still an acceptable use of the Internet. Embarrassing, perhaps. Awkward, alienating, depressing, enlightening, inspiring, boring — any emotional reaction is possible. But no self-expression on the Internet can be categorically too much, because to someone, that artifact of human existence is just right.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when this would have been funny, all the way through to #36, but after a decade-and-a half or so of Web-soaked narcissim and exibitionist behavior, now it's just pathetic after about the fourth one.  But the only real problem is that you looked at all of them and then felt bad after doing so.  (Incest has always existed; incest and Instagram is the new wrinkle.)  Next time -- and especially if you think it might bother you -- just don't look.

Back in the day before there was an Internet, we used to have a saying: if you don't like what's on TV, then change the channel or turn it off.  I would extend that today to include: if you object to gay marriage or abortion, then don't have one.

But please stop asking, "why is this news?"  Because that just makes you look ignorant.

Kudos to the happy couple

Annise Parker and Kathy Hubbard are now wife and wife.

(O)n the 23rd anniversary of the start of their lives together, Mayor Annise Parker and Kathy Hubbard got married in Palm Springs, California.

The marriage had been anticipated for several days, but it wasn't known exactly when it would happen.

Wayne had it first.  And let's move on past this also.

The mayor's office also explained that: "Ms. Hubbard has other insurance options available to her and will, therefore, not participate in the new policy granting city health insurance benefits to the spouses of legally-married city employees," which means they've avoided an attack by anyone saying Parker pushed for the change just so she could benefit from it. 

As Josh Marshall observes: when even Utah, Oklahoma, and the Supreme Court have ceded the moral high ground their legal objections... you know that Texas will make every effort to be dead last.  That's right; behind Alabama and Mississippi, despite what the immortal Nate Silver predicted last spring.

So say good night to Phil Robertson and Mike Huckabee and Greg Abbott and all of the losers who commented negatively here with their real names and their fake names, and everybody who lines up with them, and all the rest of the best of the worst conservatives in the world.  Congratulations to you all as well: you're as finished as is this latest chapter in American bigotry.

The proud Texans among your number might inquire of your elected representatives whether they will vote to decriminalize marijuana or pass casino gambling before they legalize marriage in the Great State.  You know, those sins you actually commit that aren't as high up your list.

And please let us know if they give you a straight answer.

Update: Houston Press' Hair Balls, with the six most pathetic objections to Mayor Parker's marriage (and gay marriage generally).

Davis "on her own two feet", Scherr hits at Alameel

-- This is going to rile up the compassionate conservatives.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Did you catch that?  Why, it's almost as offensive as that "Greg Abbott walks into a bar" joke.  The fauxtrage generated by the ilk of the fellow who coined the phrase 'AB' is your Belly Laugh O'Day.

(Special to Greg: Clean up your own house.  And start with that pig Erickson.)

-- After Wendy Davis endorsed the wealthy dentist running for US Senate to begin this week, it was inevitable that this attack would present itself.  This e-mail is signed by Victor Reyes, Scherr's deputy campaign manager, and arrived in my inbox yesterday.

David Alameel, the alleged Democrat running for the US Senate, has bankrolled the anti-choice Republican agenda for years.  I'm not talking about a couple thousand dollars here.  He has given $1.6 million dollars to the Republicans who oppose Roe v. Wade and vote to erode a woman's right to choose at every turn.

Here are a few specifics on Alameel's record on supporting the Republican agenda:

• Alameel gave $150,000 to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst who led the charge to pass anti choice legislation and called women who went to protest in the Capitol an “unruly mob”;
• Alameel gave $4,200 to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who voted to allow any employer to refuse to cover contraception or any health service required under the health reform law for virtually any reason;
• Alameel gave $8,400.00 to Senator Orin Hatch who sponsored an amendment that “would ban any organizations that provide abortions, including hospitals, from receiving Medicaid family planning funds -- even if those abortions are to save a woman's life”;
• Alameel gave $25,000.00 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee who defended the comment that abortions should not be legal even in the case of rape;

So I have a big question that we Democrats need to resolve before the March 4th primary:

If Texas Democrats care about women’s rights and protecting choice, then how can we possibly nominate a candidate who has a long track record of funding the Republicans who are anti-choice?

An excellent point.  I won't be helping nominate the good doctor in any way, shape, or form.  I'm putting him in the same folder as Kesha Rogers.

Update: Texpate has a more nuanced and critical view of Scherr's broadside, but also thinks there is more to be learned -- perhaps by some enterprising corporate journalist -- about Alameel's stances on reproductive rights.

It's all about the money.

You can find all the reports you want about fundraising everywhere you look -- on the blogs, on your Facebook wall, in your Twitter feed, and even on your teevee and in the newspaper.

Bu that's really not the news.

Marianne Williamson is a motivational speaker and author running as an independent against one of California's most entrenched Democratic Congressmen.  I'll be checking in with her campaign a lot, because she represents everything I look for in a potential elected official.

In other words, she is the polar opposite of someone like David Alameel.

So while the bloggers and political consultants rave and the media laps it all up -- and then vomits it out for you to lick up -- try to keep in mind that what we are experiencing at the moment is what eventually results in the wonderful set of circumstances our politics has become, in Austin and in Washington DC.  And even at the county courthouse and at city hall.

Somebody ask Ben Hall or or Bill White or David Dewhurst or even Meg Whitman -- she of the $144 million dollar personal campaign budget -- how all that money they spent on their efforts for elective office worked out for them.  And then ask yourself: how much better would things be if the richest man (or woman) had won?

That's how the 'experts' handicap races.  They do it with baseball teams, too.  And the Yankees don't win every year.  How about that.

Wendy Davis is on pace (no matter how one counts it) to amass the fifty million dollars the talking heads said she had to raise in order to have a chance to beat "Wheelchair Ken".  In other words, if she loses then she won't be able to say she couldn't raise enough money as an excuse.

I have contributed to her campaign, and I sincerely hope she doesn't lose.  But I also don't see any deviation from a path we have trod for decades now, which shows not even the smallest sign of changing the kind of government we have.  The one that gets bought and paid for every two years.