Author: Rocco

Note to Family: the title above applies to you. The fact is, I am driving around with two antique rapiers in the trunk of my car because I have nowhere to put them in my apartment. I also have a brand-new toaster oven in my shed; I received it as a wedding gift three years ago, and it will remain in its package on the shelf in my shed until I can find the counter space to use it. As for my wife Lisa, she is renting a studio space in Kensington Market so that she can have her own room to create her crafts and a place to put some of her extra rolls and spools of fabric which until now have been part of an unsteady mountain of material dominating the south eastern corner of our computer room. In other words, we are fine for stuff: we don’t need anything. And I can safely assume that you, dear family members, are in a similar situation. And rather than go through the usual Christmas ritual of waiting in endless line-ups to buy things we don’t need and exchanging them for things you don’t need, what about get something for someone who is actually, honestly, in need?

This is where the chickens come in. Through Plan Canada, a mere $40 will buy farming tools and seed for a family in Sudan. $40.00 will buy a pig, $35 will buy six rabbits, and $25 will buy someone a home birthing kit. Now, when your life situation makes things like live pigs and rabbits and hygienic pregnancy kits incredibly useful and possibly life-saving, I would say that you are definitely in need. The choice between spending $30 on yet another Gap tee-shirt and medical kits which could help potentially 10 women deliver healthy babies should be pretty apparent; as obvious of giving a Big Mac either to a man with a tableful of food behind him or a man who is completely emaciated. But year after year, most of us are making the wrong choice. Not only that, we make ourselves believe that the act of giving to people who aren’t in need is actually a genuine “act of giving” – something to feel good about – and not simply a complete, fraudulent waste. The question is why do we do this, year after year?

The answer, I believe, lies in my Note to Everyone Else: please don’t get me anything, because I am not going to return the gesture. Firstly, my savings rate is under the current 4.8 % percent national average. So the small amount of money I do have – I’m sorry to say – is not going towards buying you “The Dark Knight” DVD. Before you write me off as a cheap prick, I’m only halfway through the argument. Now, since the national personal savings rate is only 3 percent, I can safety assume that you also don’t have much money either, and I don’t want a copy of “District Nine” badly enough to put you in debt. I think now is a good time to remind you and myself what the banks are trying to make us forget: when you have to charge something to your credit card, or run an overdraft to make a purchase, you are putting yourself in debt and you should not be spending that money.

But we do spend. And why? I believe it’s all about social pressure and about keeping up appearances. I often catch myself thinking: c’mon, someone my age should be able to afford that. And often enough I make the purchase against my better judgment. During Christmastime this mantra of keeping up with the Joneses becomes the marketing-fed zeitgeist for most of the Western world. Last Christmas, hundreds of Christmas shoppers rushed the doors and stampeded into a Walmart in Valley Stream, Long Island, New York. The calamity has since been labelled as a Black Friday incident. Chances are, everyone involved in that stampede are dealing with enormous credit card bills, including a pregnant mother who miscarried and the Walmart attendant who was trampled to death. In an environment of mass job loss and housing foreclosures, people are literally dying to keep up an outward appearance of success and to reassure themselves they are in control of their lives. How? By buying stuff.

This is an extreme example of what Christmas has become: a blatant, obviously fraudulent way of making ourselves feel good. I don’t know about you, but I no longer care about my appearance, and I am actually taking control. This year I refuse to surrender to guilt-ridden social pressures and the self destructive zeitgeist of consumption. I’m sure, the first time, it will hurt, but I know I can get through it. Label me a poor cheap prick if you want. And if you really insist on spending the money on me, make sure it goes on chickens. To do so, please visit www.plancanada.ca.

About a month ago I ‘Friended’ someone who I hadn’t heard from in years. Out of habit, I put them on one of my Facebook lists, which I use to keep people posted about the goings on in my life. As a poetry reading event approached a couple of weeks later, I sent out a mass message via my Friends lists. Within couple of a days, I received a message from my new amigo informing me that he was disappointed I’d sent him a mass message, and not a personal one. He was, in fact, offended.

Offended? Really?

Irritated, sure. Annoyed? Hey, I feel the same way looking through the fliers in my post box.

But offended?

Besides the fact that just about everyone is offended these days – from religious leaders to politicians to environmental and special interest groups to even five-year-old kids – I have to ask, should Facebook Friends demand so much?

Now, I am assuming that my alleged offense was that I slighted this person. But to be slighted by someone, you have to have some kind of social precedent, at least a distant history of a genuine friendship in the first place. What expectation can arise from simply clicking the ‘Confirm’ tab?

Dear Facebook Friends, I’m going to be straight with you here. I have about 240 of you, and I consider a tiny percentage of that to be actual, real friends. To be considered a real friend, I have a list of requirements. If you can say yes to any one of these things, I most likely consider you my friend:

1. I’ve visited you in hospital (or vice-versa).
2. I’ve given you a late night ride to the airport, train station or bus depot (or vice-versa).
3. I’ve slept on your couch, kitchen floor, futon, or living room carpet (or vice-versa).
4. We’ve had at least five face-to-face coffee seasons.
5. Lisa has given you ‘the nod.’

Of course there is a statute of limitations on these requirements, but other than that, it’s pretty simple. If you can say yes to any of these things then you’re probably a friend, and if not then you are quite possibly an acquaintance, colleague, artistic peer, or mostly likely you are a detractor, and I will be coming for you soon. (Also: Husbands, friends of your wives aren’t your friends, but your in-laws. Remember that).

I might be wrong. There could very well be an array of obligations that one takes on when Friending someone on this social network, and I have been completely unaware of it all this time. Then again, I have never had high expectations from someone solely on their status of a Facebook Friend. I’ve always seen for what I believe it really is: a convenient way for a bunch of people to communicate and exchange ideas with each other.

If anyone thinks there is any more depth to it than that, they are taking far too seriously a social network that flourishes upon people’s innate need for attention. Let’s face it, if there is a slogan for Facebook, it would be “LOOK AT ME!” Disagree? Then why all the personal pics and info? In this day and age of identity theft, wouldn’t it be wiser to use a pseudonym? Or is it just too tempting to attach your genuine moniker to the latest profile update you think so very clever?

Now, someone I know – I can’t say who, but let’s just say she her name sounds a lot like Kisa Leophila, and that she is my wife – has been planning to prune her Facebook Friends. Why should they be on my friends list? This unnamed person demands, hammering her drunken fist onto the living room coffee table. I never hear from them anyway, except for their stupid mass messages! My response to this is, and has always been: who cares? As an artist, it’s always good to have more contacts and to keep abreast of what’s going on in the local community and beyond (heck, I get mass announcements from Jamaica). But aside from that, is it really worth the half – hour to go through this library of thumbnails to judge yea or nay on a group of mostly conceptual friendships?

Perhaps we are experiencing the problem that the cyber punk science fiction writers of yesterday warned us about: due to exposure, the conceptual is become reality, and these imagined friendships, based on nothing but a series of forty-character exchanges have begun to take on the trappings of something genuine, with all its responsibilities and expectations. In other words, the longer we spend with are Facebook Friends, the more we demand of them, and the less we need of our real friends.

My advice, if you are feeling slighted by one of your Friends, log off, pick up the phone and go out for coffee with a real one.