Blog – Page 26 – Sonya Ellen Mann

This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Being Mentored by the Longform Podcast

Posted on July 5, 2015June 19, 2016 by Sonya Mann

I am a young writer by every definition, twenty-one and relatively inexperienced. My ideas for my career are half-formed. Accordingly, this is an education-heavy portion of my life, which is good. I’m not going to college like many of my peers, but I am actively learning and developing myself as an editorial professional (broadly speaking).

the Longform podcast

Part of that is working, part of it is reading, and an increasingly large part is listening — not only to people in my “real” life, but also listening to wise strangers who aren’t addressing me specifically. For instance, I pay close attention to the journalists interviewed by Max Linsky, Aaron Lammer, and Evan Ratliff on the Longform podcast. (Only a few months ago, I didn’t like podcasts, but that opinion changed quickly after I acquired a commute.)

I don’t have access to many professional writers in my “real” life. Sure, occasionally I hang out with Adam Brinklow and I got to meet Yael Grauer the other day, but mostly I encounter regular people with a bunch of different types of jobs. Which is fine — variety is the spice of life, right? Only interacting with one type of person would be like having salt on your food and eschewing all over flavors.

But I dearly want to feel connected to people who do the work I aspire to. The Longform podcast gives me a window into the circumstances and habits of journalists I admire, and it feels… nourishing. It makes me believe the career I’m in love with is possible.

It’s awesome that the internet enables this. I know it was technically possible back when people mainly read words on paper, but not in the same way, at the same scale, or on demand. In 1985 I couldn’t have Twitter-followed everyone who wrote an article I liked, to keep up with their future posts and maybe talk to them personally. Being able to do that is so cool — and it helps me stay motivated.

the internet is a ship — *The Flying Dutchman* by Dean Meyers.

Reflections on My Low Friendship Bandwidth

Posted on July 4, 2015June 3, 2016 by Sonya Mann

I have X amount of energy. A “normal” level of friendship — talking and hanging out often — requires Y energy, and Y is more than I want to use. I’m happy to spend a lot of time with my immediate family and my partner, but beyond those four people I usually find social contact more taxing than fun.

I don’t know if this is an introvert thing or more specific than that, but I’m sure there are other people who don’t “get” friendship or want to participate in it. Alternately, I may have an unrealistic perception of other people’s social activity.

If we’re nominally friends, I probably like you and would enjoy hanging out every couple of months. My capacity for this has definitely increased; maybe it’ll keep going up. But mostly, I don’t want to talk beyond occasional texts or Facebook comments, and I don’t want to see you frequently. I just don’t want to. However, I can tell that I’m supposed to want to, and it’s frustrating both for me and my acquaintances.

The worst situation is when someone wants more from me than I want to give. This has happened in every single close, non-immediate-family, non-romantic relationship I’ve had. It’s been painful for people on the other side and puzzling/upsetting for me too. The mutual trauma probably could have been prevented if I had the chutzpah, vocabulary, or cultural training to be up-front with people about what I can and cannot give.

Occasionally the desired commitment is about emotional intimacy rather than time/energy allotment. This can be even harder. With rare exceptions, I don’t want to confide in you. I can commiserate and share jokes and disclose things that I disclose to most people, but I don’t want to tell secrets or “open up” to you. I almost never discuss my deepest hopes/fears/dreams/shames with my mom or my boyfriend or my goddam therapist! I hate discussing that stuff with friends.

I’m not sure how to handle this whole problem appropriately. The easiest way is to always stay distant, which doesn’t help anyone and isn’t feasible anyway. I do like people, after all. I could have an awkward “reality of Sonya” chat with every new person I get along with. That option doesn’t appeal to me either.

What do you think? What’s your experience of friendship? Hit me up on Facebook or Twitter or wherever. I genuinely want perspectives and suggestions on this.

Who Is Me Dot Com

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Sonya Mann

On Sunday I’m going to meet a new friend from Twitter. That’s not bizarre — I have IRL Tumblr friends; I met my boyfriend via OkCupid; recently I landed an internship with a blogger I respect. However, this will be my first prospective friendship that feels adult, like it emerged from my professional life. I’m a little nervous.

My internet self is not particularly different from my “real” self — after all, people are multifaceted. And, to stretch the metaphor, we’re constantly rotating. Various circumstances lead me to present one side of my personality versus another.

Jamie Lauren Keiles wrote on Vice, “We need not fully become our online personas in the future, but surely we can make space for them as something real and integral to the project of building a tangible life and an authentic self.” Keiles’ quote implies that separation is the dominant state of affairs, which doesn’t jive with my own experience of online discourse or my personal digital presence.

Internet me is just me. Physical me is also me. The separation between those two self-entities, although they are perceived as culturally distinct, is obviously artificial.

I think I’m trying to convince myself that meeting this new friend won’t be weird. I want to believe that I shouldn’t be worried because me = me = me, regardless of venue. Honestly, nothing else is realistic.

Tech Is Only Awful Like People Are Awful

Posted on June 24, 2015May 20, 2016 by Sonya Mann

News-media analyst Ken Doctor wrote, “The web may have opened unbelievable frontiers of human thought and interaction, but it’s driven by the same business principles as all other enterprise.” Basically, the market is always the market. Self-interest is a perpetual motivator and supply-demand dynamics continue to exist.

The internet changes a lot, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals of economics. It changes the cost (or lack thereof) of some specific things, like distributing information, but it doesn’t change basic human behavior. It’s kind of ludicrous that anyone might expect it to.

DARPA's Warrior Web project may provide super-human enhancements — Photo via US Army RDECOM.

So here’s the point, which has been made before: Everything we don’t like about the implications of technology boils down to something we don’t like about the way humans organize ourselves. Because — to risk repetition — technology doesn’t change humanity; it simply enables us to express our persistent nature in new/different/tweaked ways.

For example, as Adam Elkus wrote on Slate, “Algorithms are impersonal, biased, emotionless, and opaque because bureaucracy and power are impersonal, emotionless, and opaque and often characterized by bias, groupthink, and automatic obedience to procedure.” An algorithm like the one that defines Facebook’s Newsfeed didn’t spring into being independent of people’s choices; it was constructed and enacted based on such choices.

Most consumers don’t know, think, or care about the value judgments being made by the engineers and programmers who design the functionality of apps, phones, thermostats, cars, etc. As long as a product gives us something pleasurable or useful, we brush aside collateral concerns. (Apathy toward data collection is a great example of this.)

Industries respond to what people — and aggregates of people — actually care about, which is expressed via money. As Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, “Markets are designed to make their own rationality. Where people put their cash reflects what they think and desire.”

Society is unjust because people are unjust, individually and collectively. We often don’t truly care about the things we claim are crucial, or the principles we tout as cherished values. (God save reporters’ salaries.) This is reflected in how humans make and use technology, just as it’s reflected in every other human endeavour. Susie Cagle’s series “The Crooked Valley” illustrates this (literally) very well.

Frustration & Resolution & More Frustration

Posted on June 22, 2015June 23, 2015 by Sonya Mann

I am victorious! I right-clicked on stuff and selected “Inspect element” and edited some CSS that I understand only in the most rudimentary way. At the end I had successfully reformatted the header/title of this website. I am more pleased with myself than is reasonable.

happy jumping basset hound — Me = perky basset hound. Photo by patchattack.

In other news, full-time work is exhausting. There are definite upsides, like being on a team, learning about a cool business — and let’s not forget making money. The downside is lacking adequate energy or time for my own creative projects. I’m definitely still figuring that out.

For instance, I’ve been tweaking an essay for Small Answers since… April? I just don’t have the wherewithal to follow through with substantive revisions. That’s not a good feeling. Similarly, I half-wrote something about labor for this blog that has not progressed the way I want it to. Blah. Hashtag grownup problems?

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on an Amazon link from this site and subsequently buy something, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you).