I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately on cliques. You’d think a person wouldn’t have to think about this beyond high school, but I suppose it’s the nature of people to form tight-knit groups. The thing is, what makes a clique different from a close group of friends? I think the answer boils down to inclusion and acceptance.

When I moved to the Midwest in 2006, it took me awhile to find friends. I had some bad experiences, failed attempts, and false starts but eventually ended up with a circle of close friends that I mesh with like nobody’s business. Oddly, many of the folks in this group have known one another for years, some since high school.

Despite that, they’ve warmly welcomed several new people, including me, into their circle. I’ve noticed that each new person is accepted as their unique and authentic self and valued for what they bring to the group. There’s not really a hierarchy or pecking order. (I realize this might be a rare thing, but it is certainly a beautiful one, and much appreciated by me.)

So what makes a clique different? I think cliques are all about exclusion. Or at the least, acceptance with strings attached. Uniqueness is not something that’s appreciated in a clique. To join, you must accept the identity and labels they impose upon you rather than be accepted as an individual.

Deviate from that strict, often unspoken, social contract, and you run the risk of being summarily kicked out of the group. This can happen directly by shunning or snubbing or by more insidious methods like gossip, backbiting and drama until the person just gets fed up and leaves.

In a clique, there’s a distinct sense of “group identity.” There are rules, spoken and unspoken, and generally a leader of some kind who wields the power of ultimate acceptance. There is often little room for partial participation. Either you’re in or you’re out. There is also often a sense of moral, physical or mental superiority; the group perceives they are better or more important than others.

But most importantly, there’s a social contract with a clique. To join, you must accept the identity and labels they impose upon you rather than be accepted for the uniqueness only you can bring. Whether that’s worth it probably depends on an individual’s personality. Not everyone is as anti-authority and libertarian as I am.

Part two of this essay will discuss the flip side. Are people wrongly accused of being a clique simply because of jealousy or insecurity? Are the rules of a clique necessarily wrong, or are they just a different social construct of friendship?

Unlike MO State Rep Cynthia Davis, Will Allen has a positive attitude and real-world solutions to the problem of urban food deserts. The world needs more people like this guy.

Rep. Davis would do well to read this article and remediate some of her ignorance. For example, Mr. Allen mentions that, for one housing project in Milwaukee, the nearest grocery store is *three miles* away. For someone making minimum wage without a car, that’s a trip of near wagon-train proportions. Yet there are numerous fast-food restaurants within easy walking distance of the project. There’s something deeply classist about that. Access to wholesome food should be a baseline human right for every person.

I realize I’ve been on a rip about Rep. Davis lately, but it’s because I think the problem of urban hunger is incredibly important. Rep. Davis is probably no more ignorant than most middle- and upper-class Americans about the problem of urban hunger. She just happened to speak up about what she thought she knew. I’m constitutionally incapable of allowing that kind of ignorance to propagate.

In a follow up to my post last week about Missouri state rep Cynthia Davis and her “interesting” attitudes about childhood hunger, I offer Steven Colbert’s commentary from last night.

I would like to issue a public challenge to Ms. Davis to live on the equivalent of a food stamp budget for a month. Get back to me afterwards, Ms. Davis, and let me know if your attitudes have changed. If you would like to contact Ms. Davis you can do so at:

Cynthia.Davis@house.mo.gov
Phone: 573-751-9768
Post Office Mail: 201 W. Capitol Ave., Room 112, Jefferson City, MO 65101

Came across this lovely example of shocking ignorance earlier today. Cynthia Davis is the Republican state representative from Missouri’s 19th District. Unsurprisingly, she represents a county where the median income is over $70,000 (1). Even so, her utter lack of understanding of poverty and hunger issues is nearly incomprehensible. It seems her answer to hunger is suggesting cutting back on Twinkies and getting jobs at McDonalds.

She’s apparently decided that attacking the highly successful summer nutrition program is a good idea. The program provides lunch for children during the summer who would normally receive free or reduced-price lunches during the school year.

She actually asks the question, “Is school the only place a child can get a nutritious meal?” Apparently, Ms. Davis didn’t bother to check her statistics. If she had, she’d have found that 12.4 million children live with the daily risk of going hungry(2). So yes, Ms. Davis. Sometimes, it is.

The most laughable part of the press release is when Ms. Davis recommends teenagers address the problem of going hungry by getting a job at McDonalds where “they will feed you for free.” Um…yeah. Because with a youth unemployment rate of 14% (3) (in 2008…it’s probably even higher now) that is just going to be so easy. Not to mention she harps all through the newsletter on nutrition. McDonald’s, Ms. Davis? Seriously?

I am embarassed to live in a state where the residents elect such a rampantly uninformed, uncaring individual.

(1) St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association
(2) Share Our Strength, Facts on Childhood Hunger
(3) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Unemployment Among Youth, 2008

Apparently it’s not just public figures who have their online boundaries violated. The other night, guy comes into a chat…sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? It was anything but. Let me set the scene by saying I’ve had a few very minor run-ins with this person before. Months ago. Just me being snarky, like I do.

He came into the chat and there was, again, minor snarkage. He blew his fucking top and started cursing and insulting me in front of about 40 people. He singled me out of the group of snarkers, for some reason. The chat mod appropriately commanded us to take it to IM. I was reluctant to give out my IM info, but I really respect the mod, so I did.

I’m still shaken by what followed. He demanded that we “work things out” and wanted to know why I have a “vendetta” against him. Buh? Dude, I’ve talked to you all of 4-5 times, the last time being more than two months ago. I said as much and added that I felt no obligation to work things out as I *don’t know him*. He pushed for a reason why I “don’t like him.”

You do not ask me questions like that unless you’re willing to hear an honest answer. Which I gave, in detail, including the fact that he’s an annoying little assclown with no sense of appropriate boundaries. Sorry, but he pushed me.

What followed was a string of profanity, sexual insults and threats the likes of which I have never experienced. Insults that were so graphic and personal that I thought I was going to vomit. I banned his ass from my IM and told him if I heard even one more word, I was reporting him to the authorities.

Not *five minutes later* in the public chat, he slimed in trying to make it seem like we’d just had a misunderstanding and I was blowing it out of proportion. No, dude. We did not have a misunderstanding. You singled me out, violated my boundaries, violated *me* and as far as I can tell you did it for no other reason than being in a bad mood.

What’s the problem here? This is someone that I may have to share actual, physical space with at some point. To say I feel uncomfortable about that is a vast understatement.  What I don’t understand is apparently this isn’t the first time this guy has pulled a stunt like this. Apparently he shows up every couple of months, pitches a psycho fit, attempts to ameliorate his behavior by sliming on people and then leaves again. Yet, his presence is still tolerated in the virtual and physical community. W…T…F…?

And yeah…didn’t save the chat log. *sigh*

“P” for polyamory. For the unfamiliar, that means being open to loving relationships with more than one person at a time. At least that’s my definition. Here’s a list of things it does not mean.

• It does not mean I am indiscriminate or slutty. See *loving* relationships above. I’m sex-positive and enjoy the act, but I’m not going to do you just because you’re breathing and willing.
• It does not mean I will automatically sleep with you and your partner. Because romantic chemistry is just so easy to establish between two people, let alone three…*eyeroll*
• It does not mean my husband is not meeting my needs. We get on just fine, thanks. He never leaves the toilet seat up and has great taste in women.
• It does not mean cheating, adultery or infidelity. “You’re POLY?? Does your *husband* know??” Yes. Thanks for asking.
• It does not mean I will sleep with you behind anyone’s back. Got a partner? Expect me to ask for their phone number before you get any.

Sometimes I get tired of explaining these things. But then I realize that when you live a lifestyle practiced by less than 1% of the people in the country, you kind of have to if you’re going to get what you want. The awkwardness of it just weighs on me sometimes.

You meet someone you’re interested in and you have to figure out when to have “the conversation.” Too early and it looks like you’re desperate. Too late and it’s a shock, “By the way…I’ve been married for six years.” That’s a great way to shrivel up the parts, if you know what I’m saying.

Got questions? I’m more than happy to answer.

If you’re a NIN fan at all, I’m sure you’re aware of this controversy. I’m not going to weigh in on the actual controversy itself, other than to say it’s a bit rich for Trent to attack other people based on age and physical appearance considering the man himself looks like more like an aging soccer dad than a rock star. Hate to tell ya, guy, but all of us who started listening to your music 20 years ago are middle aged now and *gasp* so are you!

No…what I’m going to write about are the deeper implications of social networking for people with a fan base. My favorite band, Enter the Haggis, has been delving deeper and deeper into social networking the last few months and I’ve been able to observe first-hand some of the results. It’s raised a lot of questions in my mind.

Having strong social networking ties with someone creates this weird grey area even before you add in the musican/fan thing. You friend someone on Facebook, read their Twitter stream, visit their MySpace page. Maybe you exchange a few random emails, Twitter DMs, or FB messages. You might even chat directly via video as Enter the Haggis frequently does. You do all this and you come to know things about people that you don’t know about random strangers. You probably know their relationship status, where they live, their views on certain topics, what they’re doing on a daily basis. You start feeling like you’re friends…sort of.

But when the person in question is a public figure (regardless of the size of their fan base), things get complicated. Trent found that out the hard way. When you put yourself out there and reveal your ‘off-stage’ personality, you chip away at the natural wall that exists between fan and friend, creating a weird headspace I’m starting to call fanship.

It’s a weird headspace because, if I know you well enough online to know your birthday, that you colored your hair last week, your political views, where you ate lunch yesterday. etc. I know you as well as I know a lot of my real-life friends. I would, then, when I saw you, probably treat you the same way as I would any friend I hadn’t seen in awhile.

But, and this is a huge but, my real life friends know those things about me as well. They’re as tuned in to my life as I am to theirs. This is where I think the fanship construct breaks down. When you’re a public figure and you open up via social networking, you’re offering a level of intimacy you can’t possibly reciprocate. How could you, even with a smallish following, keep up with the hundreds (or in Trent’s case thousands) of people who follow you via social media? So what happens is you create a set of expectations you can’t possibly fulfill.

Most people are going to get that. I get it. But a subset of your following is *not* going to get it and they’re going to presume a bond that doesn’t exisit. Then when you do something that doesn’t meet their expectations, they’re going to go off the rails as Trent unfortunately found out.

So what’s an indie musician to do? Take your toys and go home as Trent has, apparently, done? Continue and develop a thicker skin than you might have to otherwise? I suspect the answer lies in finding the balance in the information you reveal. Not too much, so as not to encourage the weirdos, not too little or that would defeat the purpose. Thankfully, it’s not a question I have to answer.

It’s definitely something that I’ve been thinking about, though. What do you think?

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The NIN/JA tour is in KC on Wednesday. I’m feeling a road trip coming on…

It will be all I can do to get up there and get in. But I wish I could afford one of these packages. Trent’s using his formidable marketing skills to help out a fan in need. It’s an interesting contrast to the Britney Spears promo I posted about a while back.

So yeah, not only a great musician and marketing genius, also a class guy.

I haven’t been posting much the last couple weeks because this has been sucking up all my free time. UStream is a site that lets people stream live video and audio from their webcams. There are all kinds of applications (I’m planning on using it to deliver real-time lectures to my online students this summer). Enter the Haggis has been using it to stream the majority of their shows live for the last couple weeks. What makes this different from taping a show to play on YouTube or something similar is the interactive aspect. There’s an associated chat room where fans (or students) can interact with each other or with the person on the live stream. There are all kinds of features I haven’t explored yet, too. If an indie band is lucky enough to have a tech geek for a member, this is a great promo tool.

In other news, I have a huge list of bands that I’m slowly checking out. I started with an old band that’s new to me, The Tragically Hip. I vaguely knew they were Canadian and folk-rock esque, but that was about it. I mentioned to my husband that I’d heard a Hip song that I liked and his answer was to produce everything the band had done up to the year 2000 from his CD collection! He was a big fan growing up, apparently. The things you learn about your spouse… So I’ve been working my way through their older catalog and have plans to get the seven (!) CDs we need to complete our collection.

One thing I love about the Haggis Head community is the widely varying musical tastes of the folks who hang out there. Here’s my list so far of bands to check out: Tegan and Sara, Metric, Eisley, Missy Higgins, Jump Little Children, Dar Williams, the Abrams Brothers, the Decemberists and I have a whole other list somewhere that I can’t lay my hands on at the moment. I’m going to be a busy girl…

So what’s in your MP3 player today?