Friday, February 10, 2012

Tangled Small Talk: Twitter-style

Twitter makes me uncomfortable, but I'm told it's a good way to "build my brand" (which makes me think of a towering monolith with ill-fitting jeans and mismatched socks and I shudder.) I also get a teeny bit defensive that there are things out there that I don't really "get", but teenagers adopt them with ease. So I must conquer them. It was that or Justin Bieber, and Twitter seemed the lesser of the two evils.

Twitter combines two of my nemeses: small talk and algebraic looking symbols. But I'm getting the hang of it, sort of. I waded into the stream of chitchat today and saw this Tweet from Kristen* at Four Hens and a Rooster, who has awesome hair and is very patient with my socially backward nonsense:

We're awesome! RT : Bloggers Launch a JCPenney Shop-In To Support Ellen DeGeneres, Tolerance

I have heard rumblings about this whole JCPenney debacle, but honestly haven't paid much attention. Apparently JCP took on Ellen as a spokesperson and a whole bunch of people protested and wanted to boycott the store. I'm all for being awesome and tolerance and Ellen and boycotting, but wait! Boycotting? This jangles some sort of socially conscious umbrage from a few months ago, so I Tweet:

 Weren't we supposed to be boycotting JCP over the whole Tshirt thing in the fall? I'm confused.

This is the jBird's last experience with JCPenney:
jBird - age 4 and lovin' it. Hooligan - 18 mos. and not
with the Texas cousins who obviously know how
to get their portraits taken at the mall.
We have discussed the T-shirt Thing at home. "What T-shirt?" the jBird wants to know. After hemming and hawing around I tell her outright "It says 'I'm too pretty to do homework, so I let my brother do it for me'." I am uncomfortable to even say the words out loud, even more uncomfortable than I am with Twitter. "Well, that's dumb," she says. "What does being pretty have to do with homework? And besides, that's unfair to your brother. What if he has his own homework to do? And anyway, my brother is in preschool. He would completely mess up my homework." These are all valid arguments. "Who thinks that's funny?" she wants to know. "Um, I don't know, really," I am relieved that she's indignant. "But a lot of people felt the same way you did and decided not to shop at JCPenney because they sold it. So many people that the store finally pulled the shirts." She thinks about this. "Well good. I don't like that store anyway." The conversation then devolves into how I'm such an activist and they totally noticed I was boycotting because I went from never shopping there to decidedly not shopping there. Except now, I'm supposed to shop there because:


 that's old news..;) Yay to JCP for telling one million moms to suck it re: Ellen spokesperson protest

I appreciate their right to protest and I will defend it, but I really think some people need to find better things to do with their time.

 I can't possibly keep up with such things. I'm all for telling 1m moms to suck it, though. Sadly, I only shop local & small

This makes me sound awesome to some people, but really it's another example of being an activist by accident. My neighborhood is populated with small, local businesses to which I can walk. I loathe the mall and I loathe the driving in traffic and hunting for parking spots. I am essentially lazy in this regard. But my laziness works for me in this case. Except for tomorrow, when I'm supposed to show my tolerance by buying things I don't need from a large, national chain store that I hate.

Because this is small talk and I think because Kristen realized that she doesn't actually know me, she followed up with this:

 unless you're pro OMM, then yes... Boycott away...

I'm down with OPP, but I have no idea what OMM is. Fortunately, this whole thing is taking place on Twitter, where my ignorance cannot be witnessed as a blank-blink-blink stare. I quickly Google OMM so as not to appear the sheltered idiot I am.

Osteopathic manipulative medicine? I've got no objections to this.
Orangetown Mighty Midgets? I'm pro-that, whatever that is, because it's fabulous.
Old Man Murray? Oh my, yes. I am utterly and completely pro-Old Man Murray.**

Somehow, I don't think any of these are what she means. I spend the next few hours trying to untangle this mess into which I've stepped. I like to be a responsible citizen. I like to take a stand for my beliefs. I like to denounce things like intolerance. I really do. But I'm confused about this whole thing. 


Was the hiring of Ellen Degeneres as a spokesperson a calculated measure by the giant store to draw former boycotters of bad taste back into the spending fold? Does the hiring of Ellen cancel out blatant sexism aimed at children? Does JCPenney really care? Either way, they're getting a ton of free advertising (like from me, right now.) How can it be the 21st century and this is what we're discussing? How can you not love Ellen? She's funny and she dances and wears suits with sneakers and shows pictures of cats on her show. What's wrong with that? Oh wait. Is it because she's gay? Are people afraid they might catch gay if they buy their commercially emblazoned children's wear there? They might catch bad taste. And as far as that goes, I wonder how many gay people work for the store (or any store), nationwide? Yet there was no need to boycott (or overshop) before. Why now? What could OMM possibly stand for? Offended Mad Moms? Openly Melodramatic Moms? Obviously Mental Moms? One Million Mothballs? 
I have no idea. I do have an idea about something else, though. 

24 comments:

  1. Oh My Mord. (Get it OMM? I give up. Honestly for the sake of human kind I should stop attempting being clever.)

    And I didn't know you had Twitter!

    Also, I think we should boycott the use of acronyms not familiar to us.

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    1. I think that is a splendid idea! So is Oh My Mord. Definitely clever, you.

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  2. Love it! And I really on Kristen to tell me what to do in regards to social media* all the time. *or SM, as she would say. Not to be confused with S & M, which is way way different. At first I thought I had stumbled onto some sex freakshow on Twitter, turns out they were just networking. Very awkward.

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    1. Nuts. You ruined my witty comeback. I was going to say: "I'm glad I'm not the only one who's really on Kristen for the S&M all the time." She would definitely be the master and I would sport a ball-gag.

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    2. Ladies... even the Rooster isn't really on me for S&M.. we got 3 hens.. no time for that stuff - I got tweets to get out and all.

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  3. Y'all are fricking hilarious. In the above tweet, OMM = One Million Moms. Or any of those other phrases you found. Twitter can be hard to convey meaning because you're limited, but it's so good for people like me with ADD.

    For the record, I was BOO with JCP for that redunkulous shirt last summer. Stupid, bonehead move. Who the hell is their buyer? That had to be some angry or sadistic buyer.

    And speaking of Justin Bieber, Twitter is WAY cooler than Bieber and I just took his Mama DOWN in the Shorty Awards for Mom in Social Media. No. Seriously, I did... Check it out.. it's my "claim to fame" this week - http://shortyawards.com/category/mom
    Feel free to vote for me while you're there... next up is Britney!Bitch.

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    1. I will absolutely do that. I would vote for you for president if I had the chance. I hope I didn't offend. I was mostly poking fun at myself.
      Were there really One Million Moms? I mean, that's a lot of hate.

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    2. Oh yes... they're very real - http://onemillionmoms.com/ But, even better is the 1 Million Moms Against One Million Moms - https://www.facebook.com/1MillionMomsAgainstOMM

      And no, you didn't offend me in any way!! I am honored that our exchange prompted such a great post. Twitter can be tricky... acronyms are a "necessity" because you only have 140 characters to try and get a complete thought across. A lot can get lost in that little bit of space. Worse than email.

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  4. I'm with you on Twitter. It still frightens me. Like Facebook did a few years ago.

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    1. Yes, FB terrified me for a while, too. That whole weird "What if nobody likes me?!" "What if I say something stupid?" thing. Well, I say really stupid things all the time, and some folks still like me (I think). I'm mostly too verbose for Twitter.

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  5. I do not know too much about twitter. I do know about the power of right versus wrong, so it reminds me of all the commotion that Anita Bryant caused back in the day. Fortunately, there was such a backlash, that it turned out to be a good thing. Now about this catching gay… I have always reveled in the fact that California is the most accepting place on the planet, recent local events, notwithstanding.

    And who knows? With posts like this one, I may end up twittering away like a nightingale.

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    1. Ha! It would be interesting, to say the least, to see your use of Twitter.
      I live in a refreshingly accepting little pocket of the country, myself, so sometimes I forget that these kinds of things aren't all settled elsewhere. People are just people anywhere, though, and I honestly believe that most people are decent folks.

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  6. I kind of get the twitter thing, I guess. My question is, though, why are you limited to 140 characters? Isn't it counter productive when your have to resort to using ASH (I just made that one up and I already forgot what I wanted it to stand for) and then the person reading the tweet has to look up the meaning of the ASH word in his/her ASH dictionary to find out what the tweeter was trying to say in just 140 characters.
    Oh yea now I remember ASH=AcronymShortHand.
    You made me laugh out loud with this post today. And the comments were just as entertaining.
    Find me @lyndagrace where I will be sharing this post with my 5's of followers.

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    1. My theory is that it's a test. A proving grounds for future government operatives and it's a way to see what up and coming folks have a solid grasp of acronyms on the fly. I think I failed.
      I'm glad my silliness prompted a good, out-loud laugh. Mission accomplished. Thank you for Tweeting it!

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  7. I agree! Do or don't, but you won't find me at the mall on Saturday! I'm hesitant to even walk down the hill to our local hardware store: Super Saturday makes it a mad house. I'm weighing my need for duct tape against the crowd....although, their free cone of popcorn is tipping the scale in the stores favor!

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    1. That's some clever marketing. I would go almost anywhere for free popcorn.

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  8. Very funny post. Twitter is its own little universe - and a peculiar one at that - I'm still trying to get a handle on it and am glad to see I'm not the only one struggling.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by! It is comforting to know that I'm not alone in this. ha!

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  9. Thinking a more in depth post about Twitter might be in order this week.. I did one a couple of weeks ago that touched on it, but you've made me realize it could be helpful. And I aim to help. And please. ;)

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    1. That would be lovely. Perhaps I can learn something and refrain from being ex-Twittercated or something.

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    2. Here you go... I'll do more "in depth" ones, too... didn't want to fry anyone's brains..
      http://fourhensandarooster.com/things-i-love-day-4-twitter/

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  10. This could so be me--Twitter is way over my head and there are all kinds of things I feel pretty passionately about, but all my "activism" could easily look like INactivism when viewed from another angle. ;)

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  11. PS--Word verification: eigorofe. Something tells me that is the perfect word for inactive activism.

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