kyburg | What I've learned from Twitter -

I can talk to my neighbors. As many of them as I can find, matter of fact. Now, this might not be a big deal to most of you - I mean, why is talking to people whose only descriptor is that they live near you such a big deal?

Well, think a minute. Do you really know who lives near you? (Even next door?) Unless you're someone who spends a lot of time at home (and your neighbors do as well), it's not likely. There's no time to just keep running into each other.

But you recognize who they are, you might have a name - even a profession - to go with the face.

Okay. Now. I'm going to ask you to rethink this again.

Who else falls into this category?

You've got a name, a face and a profession. Go.

Here, let me sweeten the deal - I live in the greater Los Angeles basin, reinvention capital of the country and about the only place real estate values haven't tanked because everyone always wants a piece of it. (Softens a bit, sure. Goes down much? Dude, we're talking Malibu here. Place about falls into the ocean or burns to the ground regularly. Think that does anything? *laughs* Okay - no it doesn't.)

A lot of my neighbors work in professions grouped under the description of 'celebrity.' Does that change the way I approach them, compared to anyone else walking around?

Actually - not so much. No, really. One standard for everyone. Considering I believe there is only one mode of behavior that works everywhere (your best Emily Post, Miss Manners and failing that, please thank you and assume nothing more), there is something else at work when confronted with someone face to face that you recognize, but that you haven't met before in your life.

Would you like a hint on what NOT to do?

I cannot believe I have to write this, but this has happened enough times to make this an obvious necessity. Though know better than to write online while I am upset, I am writing this now and without revision because I am just THAT MAD.

Do not show up at my house. If you are traveling through the West and would like to meet, EMAIL ME FIRST. I have always made my email accessible and public; it is on the About Us page, see link above. I have received a number of queries from travelers who are passing through the area. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. But if a stranger shows up unannounced, they do not make it up my driveway. They do not see Charlie. They do not have coffee with me. I do not sign their book. It is a DISGUSTING INVASION OF PRIVACY. This should be obvious, but apparently it is not.

People in town are privy to the situation and if you show up and ask for directions to my home, you will be sent on a wild goose chase out into the badlands 40 miles from the nearest gas station.

If you have, are, or would ever consider showing up unannounced at the house of someone you’ve never met, please take a moment to take yourself beyond your own selfish desires and consider what that experience would be like from the other side. If a random stranger knocked on your door with the brash assumption that you should drop everything and invite them into your personal space, I doubt you’d be thrilled.

I share my life and my experiences here on this site and in my book, gladly, freely, and I am honored that my work touches so many. But my sharing within these parameters does not make me OR Charlie a public commodity.

Now this is quoted from a site that does very little more than share pictures of a handsome coyote on a daily basis (and I'm bemused that anyone would make this error in judgment knowing this is one person with a handful of animals authoring the site - want company? I wouldn't think so much, would you?) but where did the mind skip over that crucial element?

I'm being kind - perhaps. But I also tend to wonder - because my first experience with breathing the same air with a celebrity?

Total freakout. I saw him, he saw me - the mind went 'BING' and then went to color bars. I simply did not know what to do next. It was kind of like pulling up a record from a database with only header information, needing the whole record and the program went BSOD. Total panic. I literally ran into the first open door I could find to hide and catch my breath. (This was on Melrose Blvd., BTW. Back when there were still bathhouses - yup, early days of the AIDS epidemic. Just about ran straight into one that was later closed - oh dear, my gentle sensibilities. I ended up in the deli next door. I can still see the cookies stacked floor to ceiling.)

They'll tell you - face recognition is a basic neurologic indicator. You can't do it, you have a pathology - most often, you'll hear prosopagnosia mentioned. I've been told it comes along as a package with autism, Williams Syndrome, Turner's Syndrome...it's big stuff.

So the fact that you recognize someone shouldn't be a reason to lose your mind. Matter of fact, it's a good indicator everything is working the way it should.

Unless a celebrity is involved, and all bets are off.

I'm also of the mind this is something pretty new in the human experience - photography is only so old, right? Before that, you had paintings and miniatures to introduce a face before actually breathing room air with the person, but nothing so lifelike as WAH BAM THERE IT IS. (And consider what's come after those first daguerreotypes, right? Think of what the whole HD thing has done to your ability to confuse that which you know and that which you don't know....) So the wetware is again behind the technology curve - and in the absence of conventionality, things get put into the vaccum.

I think blithering is very acceptable. The behavior that gets put under the 'I'm a fan and that makes it okay' excuse is not.

Name. Face. Profession. Period.

You might not even get the chance to get on the same footing. Remember - you have that much information. Guy across the quad you just did the double-take on? DOESN'T. But did he see that double-take and wonder what the eff you're going to do now? YUP.

Please. Remember your Emily Post, okay? This isn't hard. If you make eye contact and you see terror - DROP IT. I mean - COME ON. Not today, and probably not ever. You are not entitled.

(

silverkun and I have a running game we play with total strangers. It's called 'Make Their Day' and has a lot more to do with being Absolutely Nice to people who get beat on making a living. Like toll booth operators. People behind cash registers. People nobody sees as human beings and remain largely invisible because of it. NAH. Most of the time it only requires eye contact and a genuine 'thank you' to get the desired result. You want to do that to someone you admire, practice on people who could really use it. People NOBODY is nice to, for no really good reason other than they aren't famous or considered valuable by the CW.)

Dude. Smile and drop it. These are your neighbors and they're probably on their way somewhere else - so are you. You've been recognized as well - they just don't know your name or what you do for a living.

Neighbor. Not friend...not even acquaintance. Total stranger, except you have three pieces of information - and they don't. And unless you get something pretty clear that your interest is welcome?

Be aware of your impact on others. And just be a mensch. Come on, have a heart.

Now, Twitter? 140 characters, leave a message. Wave across the room and say your piece without worrying about it - they can ignore it, read it, respond to it at leisure. It's all good. Kind of like tossing paper airplanes at each other.

(Best part is you can actually act like neighbors - Wil Wheaton twigged me that Trader Joe's has a FAB recipe on their site today, for example. OM NOM NOM thanks neighbor!)

It's an amazing place when you see Elizabeth Taylor has a Twitter and her granddaughter is sending her tweets. (Her profile is amazing - a wealth of AIDS organizations with Twitter access - you need to find one? Go there first.) She's just someone's grandma here.

Jamie Oliver can't spell to save his life. Barry Manilow follows Larry King's Tweets.

Perspective. What a concept.

All wrapped up with people who come over and eat food with me, call me on the phone and know my favorite television shows/books/what have you.

Twitter. How much fun is that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm looking forward to seeing what friends and acquaintances say from SDCC this weekend.

And I get a chuckle out of "why doesn't anyone get to know their neighbors anymore?" Dude, our neighbors chuck beer cans into our yard, play oompah music loud enough to make walls vibrate, and used to train fighting dogs. No thank you.

Hmm, I wonder if they moved in next to us.
But I get the fannish fried-brain thing, I used to see it happen at conventions. People literally would faint if they saw one of their idols walk in the room and just start shaking hands. And a lot of the celebrities were just kind about it, they saw it happen a lot.

If a random stranger knocked on your door with the brash assumption that you should drop everything and invite them into your personal space, I doubt you’d be thrilled.

That would just be weird & creepy.

Oddly enough - when I was in the process of moving in, the neighbor across the street came over and introduced herself, and later that week the neighbor next door did the same, also volunteering that she was home all day, and to feel free to come over if I ever needed anything. And the neighbor one house over (I'm on a corner) used to be the VP at the school I teach at (in fact, she was responsible for my being selected the AVID elective teacher).

(silverkun and I have a running game we play with total strangers. It's called 'Make Their Day' and has a lot more to do with being Absolutely Nice to people who get beat on making a living. Like toll booth operators. People behind cash registers. People nobody sees as human beings and remain largely invisible because of it. NAH. Most of the time it only requires eye contact and a genuine 'thank you' to get the desired result. You want to do that to someone you admire, practice on people who could really use it. People NOBODY is nice to, for no really good reason other than they aren't famous or considered valuable by the CW.)

I make a point, at large events and festivals, of thanking the trash colletors and porta-john crews. I have lost track of the times the response has been a gobsmacked 'No one ever says thank you to us!'. Seriously? There's 10,000 people on this site and no one has thought about what life would be like if no one took care of the porta-johns? That's a lot more useful to me than the latest pop song.

*nodnod* If I wind up at a bank of blue-rooms on-playa at the same time as the JOTS crew (I don't care that United Site Services bought them out, they will always be Johnny-On-The-Spot to anyone who has ever gone to the Burn), I make a point of thanking them and giving them goodies if I have any on me. 'cause yeah, the people who (literally!) deal with all of our shit deserve recognition.

Maybe because I grew up around politicians, I already get this. Then again, "media" celebs don't tend to make me go blank and squee - but I have had to leave the room for air when a potential chance to meet Gorbachev occurred.

Back when I drove more regularly: hand puppet for the toll booth people. Usually a Folkmanis giant bee, referred to as the "money bee". (It's mostly a glove with a bug on the back of the hand, easy to drive in.) If carpooling, we all shouted "thank you" in unison.

Mild face-blindness is probably more common than that, actually. A severe enough case - where you cannot recognize the shape of a smiley face - is uncommon and often packaged, but the inability to recognize a familiar face in unfamiliar surroundings, new haircut, and so on? Not that unusual. My other half does poorly on prospagnosia tests and has failed to recognize our friends of many years if seen without their signature hat or after a change of hair color or cut. And it takes him longer to learn a face to recognize it than other people do.

Of course, get me on a day where I've misplaced my glasses, and you all look pretty much alike too.

It's called 'Make Their Day' and has a lot more to do with being Absolutely Nice to people who get beat on making a living.

My wife loves to do this when we go out to eat. Call over the manager as we leave. He comes over, expecting a complaint about the service or the food. Instead, we highly complement the server. He walks away, smiling.

This reminds me, I've yet to meet my neighbors. We moved a year ago.

I do still wonder how much Twitter actually aggravates the problem you're talking about that much more, though.

The reason many people's general manners go out the window with celebrities isn't just that they recognize them and that they're important, it's because for lots of people, they see them so frequently, doing so many things, that they begin to feel like they do know them, like they're friends that they hang out with on a regular basis, and they completely lose touch with the fact that that feeling is entirely one-way and the other person doesn't have a clue who they are (or likely care).

This is bad enough with stars that people see on TV every day, or read about all the time in magazines, but now, for lots of people, their favorite celebrities are actually going to the trouble to let them know what's going on in their daily lives, in exactly the same way all their other friends do (heck, even mashed up on the same web page with all their friends' tweets). I mean, why would somebody be telling me that sort of stuff if we weren't friends?

As far as I can see, this will only continue to end more and more badly...

What I've learned from Twitter -

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