How To Improve Each Others' Facebook Experience

There are many ways to see more of what you want to on Facebook and less of what you don't. You can also help others do the same by being mindful of what you post and where and how you set your settings. I'm looking at ways to automate some of these changes. I'll let you know what I find.

You'll have to decide your own criteria of who to friend, who's friend request to accept, who to unfriend or unfollow and what pages to like or unlike or unfollow. I think a good starting point is thinking about what you want out of Facebook and whether it's giving you a good return on your investment of time, especially relative to what else you could be doing with your time. Also consider the kind of people you want to connect with, how and why.

Perhaps more important is what and who you don't want, in your Facebook feed or in your life. Consider the effect that certain posts and comments have on you. Sometimes, when we lean in to our reaction to a post or comment that we find disturbing or upsetting and examine our feelings, thoughts, and assumptions about it, we come away with more insight, empathy, compassion, hope and empowerment. Other times, a post just fuels toxic anger or hopelessness. People can be dismissive, cruel and less than careful or thorough in their thinking and typing. I could write a whole other post on what does and doesn't constitute respectful, constructive dialogue on the internet and how we can achieve it. I'm still figuring it out for myself. I think we'd likely have better luck communicating with each other in-person, or at least have better online discussions if we work to like and trust each other in real life.

Likewise, it's important to consider the effects of our posts and comments and our reasons for sharing them. At its best, social media is a conversation. Ask yourself, "Why am I talking?". Does what you are saying assume something that you don't or can't really know? Perhaps we'd do well to ask at least as many questions as we make statements.

See Less of What You Don't Want In Your Own Feed

• Submit and accept friend requests selectively. You can set your privacy preferences such that only friends of friends or no one at all can send you friend requests. Everyone will still be able to follow your public posts if you allow them to here.
• Click on the top right of a post for a drop down menu of actions, including unfollowing that person and hiding all posts from a page they were sharing from or liked a post from. You can also say that you don't like a post and even take a survey to make your news feed better.
• Unfriend people. You can unfriend people or move them to a different list on your friends page (https://www.facebook.com/[your.name]/friends). Just click their friend status to the right of their name and picture and select your desired option.
• Unlike pages. Just go to that page and click "unlike." 
• Unfollow people and pages. Unfollowing someone doesn't mean that they can't see your posts. You're still friends. They have no way of knowing that you've unfollowed them. You can still view friends and pages in the feeds of lists that you create. Friends and pages can be on multiple lists. You can unfollow a person by scrolling over their name in your friend list and click "Following" to change it to "Follow." You can unfollow a page by going to the page and clicking where it says "Following."
• Unsubscribe from groups, or adjust notification settings for your groups. You can do this here when logged in to Facebook.
• Adjust your news feed preferences. There is a link to do this in the drop down menu that appears when you click the icon on the top right of your Facebook page.
• Adjust your notifications settings. 

See More of What You Do Want In Your Feed

• Find groups to join where people post the kind of posts you want to see. You can browse suggested groups, your friends' groups, local groups and new groups here. You can also find groups doing a general keyword search on Facebook. They will be identified as the kind of group they are below their title.
• Find pages or lists of pages to like that share the kind of posts you want to see.  Learn more about interest lists here. You can choose update types and notification settings for lists. You can find lists to follow here.
• Click on Trending Topics. You can also hide trending topics that appear at the top of the right sidebar by clicking on the little x that appears when you scroll over it.
• Find people you may know on Facebook.

Avoid Cluttering Others' Feeds

• Follow, don't friend. You'll only see their public feed. They won't see yours unless they follow it or visit your page.
• Post to a relevant group instead or create your own group. If no group exists, create one and invite or add your friends.
• Restrict your post visibility to only those it relates to. You can change the visibility of past posts too. Wherever you see the visibility status, like "Public" or "Friends," just click on that to change it. Create a new friend list or customize visibility to be hidden from individual people if need be. You can also limit it to a geographic area. Remember that the visibility of your last post becomes the default for your next one.
• Consider creating a page for your business, project, hobby, or interest and inviting friends to like it. Odds are good that some of your friends are not interested in posts about it. If you are even a minor and/or local celebrity, you can create a page for yourself as a "public figure" and keep your posts related to your public persona there. Already have a page? You don't have to share your page update on your personal Facebook account every time, just occasionally invite new friends that you think might actually like your page to do so.
• Review your timeline and tagging settings. You can limit what people see on your timeline here.
• Consider messaging instead of posting to a friends' wall. When a friend posts to another friend's wall, I see it in my feed. They could hide it in their timeline settings, but they don't. Sometimes it's a good use of the wall, like a happy birthday wish. Other times, it's something better suited to a private conversation, like saying they should get together sometime.
• Manage the Sections that appear on your profile and your timeline (I think). You'll find the link to do this at the bottom of the "More" drop down menu below your cover photo on your profile (https://www.facebook.com/[your.name]. Why am I confused? Because the only explanation Facebook gives for this feature is, "Uncheck to hide sections. Individual stories in hidden sections can still appear on your Timeline, in News Feed and elsewhere on Facebook." I'm guessing that means that because you hid it there doesn't mean that it won't show up when someone else posts it, but it's not clear.
• Review your timeline occasionally. Click on the little padlock icon in the top right of your screen to do a "Privacy Checkup" or see who can see your stuff.

Get and Keep Your Friends' and Followers' Attention

• Limit your posts so they don't unfollow or unfriend you.
• Message or call them instead.
• Add your friend to a group you belong to that you really think they would want to be in.  They can remove themselves if they don't want to be in it. They can also opt to disallow anyone else from adding them to it again. Review Facebook's privacy options for groups to understand how they work.
• Create a secret Facebook group and add friends to it to start a private discussion.
• Create an event and invite them.
• Tag them in your posts, photos and comments, and your friends' photos. Don't tag people in photos they're not in though. If you were with them when and where the photo was taken, you can tag them in the post.
• Create an interest list of public pages and/or people and share it in a post. You can manage update types and notification settings and choose who can see a list.
• Use hashtags. This only works if they're looking for that hashtag though and might see many other posts before yours. You can create a secret, uncommon hashtag for you and your friends.

Engage!

• Make a date to message, call, Skype, do a Google Hangout or actually meet in person with one or several of your friends or family. You can use a Doodle poll to find a date and time that works.
• For more than 10 people, you can stream video live on YouTube if your channel is verified and in good standing. You'll also be able to see and respond to viewer comments live. Try it and leave a comment saying how it went.
• Get off the computer to meet people face-to-face and in-person more and do things you enjoy. Join a group on Meetup.com or find local events on Eventbrite.com and, yes, Facebook. You might want to consider online dating on sites like OKCupid.com, but, well that's another post.
• Find a volunteer opportunity on a site like volunteermatch.org, createthegood.org or a local listing of opportunities.
• Get involved in local activism. Maybe you have an ActivateHub in your city or could start one, or just google causes you care about and the name of your city in Google to find organizations working on those causes near you.
• Get involved in local politics. Your local government website should have links to information about your neighborhood board or association and city council. There may be meetings or hearings or elections that need candidates. You can also contact your elected officials with concerns you have.
• Start a part-time business doing something you enjoy.
• Go back to school or take online courses on sites like teamtreehouse.com. Online courses won't get you off the computer, but they could lead to something that would and are probably a more productive use of your time than arguing with trolls online.

My Badass Titanium Wrist

Today I had my last appointment with Dr. Gary Blum, the Orthopedic Surgeon who put a titanium plate in my once-broken wrist. Here are x-rays taken of it January 11, 2011, 2 of the 7 taken over 4 visits since November 22, 2010, which I borrowed and scanned.

Dr. Blum said that the bones in my wrist were all healed after looking at this x-ray. I had weeks of physical therapy and now have most of my flexibility and strength back in my wrist and will try to keep improving it.

Having gone through the pain of breaking my wrist; the challenge of managing without the use of my wrist and my dominant hand and the pain, discomfort and exhaustion of what felt like a long recovery from surgery, I'm amazed and relieved that I survived it all as well as I have. The ability of our bodies to heal themselves, sometimes with help from or in spite of modern medicine, is awe-inspiring. Psychologists have discovered that our brains have similar capacities and speak of "neuroplasticity," the ability of our brains to change as a result of our experiences well beyond infancy. All this makes me optimistic about my potential for physical and mental health and inspires me to try harder to realize it. Also, I'm going to be much more careful not to injure myself again!

Here's my arm just before my surgery, all swollen it my splint. I had just removed the elastic wrapping from it.

Here's my badass scar now.

Take care of yourselves, people and be careful!

I Am Officially No Longer Catholic!

A few weeks ago, I sent a letter to the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of the Parish where I was baptized asking them to indicate in their records that I am no longer Catholic, so as not to be counted among the flock. Here's the text of the letter I sent.

Dear Sir,

I am writing to request that your records be amended to reflect that I am no longer a member of the Catholic Church. I understand that this means I will not be able to receive the sacraments of the Church. Please confirm that this has been done in writing to me. I have made this decision of sound mind and body and made it known to my next of kin.

I was... baptized sometime in May or June [1976] at Holy Redeemer Church in Kensington, MD. I know that my parent's reasons for having me baptized extended beyond any divine protection they thought it would give me. It was a ritual affirming me as part of our family. I am grateful for that. My rejection of Catholicism is not a rejection of that affirmation.

I have not attended a Catholic church since I was young, sometime after my first communion. I didn't understand Catholic doctrine then. What I did know I found convoluted and contrived and still do. I was probably around 8 or 9 years old when I decided that there was no evidence for the existence of an interventionist god or a hell or heaven and no reason to try to suspend my disbelief in them.

This has not led me to hopelessness however. I have found many sources of hope in people and ideas that I have encountered since then. I became vegan around 1996 and have been inspired by ideas from Positive Psychology, Experiential Dynamic Therapy, Metaphysical Naturalism and the Jedi Philosophy, and I'm always learning more. I strive to live my life engaged with reality, as objectively as I can experience it, and to experience my emotions, relate deeply to the experiences of other sentient beings, seek out joy and be a force of good in the world.

I do not find the Catholic Church at all useful in these regards. Rather, I find it in conflict with these aims and harmful to people in many ways: its intolerance of homosexuals, lesser treatment of divorced Catholics, protection of pedophile priests and efforts against accurate sex education, reproductive freedom and death with dignity. I know that there is much good to be found in the Catholic Church as well, such as concern for the poor and the sick, but I find that the bad far outweighs the good, and I can find all of that good, without so much of the bad, elsewhere.

May the force be with you,
Maura McCormick

Here is the letter I received today:

Yay!

So my next step is to celebrate with a de-baptism ritual, complete with a blow dryer to dry away those baptismal waters. I'm thinking about what words I want on my blow dryer. I like Tom Clark of the Center for Naturalism's summary of Naturalism in the words "connection", "compassion" and "control".

Vegans Aren't All Who You Think They Are!

Some non-vegans seem to assume that vegans are a rather homogeneous demographic that is composed of mostly a few stereotypes such as hippies, health-freaks and anarchist punks who are all politically liberal and live in very densely populated areas. If this is what you think, listen up! Vegans are a very diverse group of people! There are vegans of every age, ethnicity, income, education level, political affiliation, many different religions and no religion at all. They live around the world in big cities and little towns. They range from strict raw foodists to deep-fried vegans and from tree-hugging hippies to SUV-driving consumerists.

Note that veganism is a lifestyle that strives to avoid supporting any abuse, exploitation or killing of animals when choosing what to purchase or consume, so all vegans are concerned about animals. Even here though vegans vary widely on exactly what our obligations to animals should be and how they have arrived at those positions. Some see veganism as a way to be "merciful" to animals (to quote Dominion author Matthew Scully), but don't think that animals have natural rights. Others do think animals have natural rights that should become legal rights.

Vegans whose efforts to advance animal welfare and/or animal rights extend beyond their own veganism vary widely between those who believe in prioritizing improvements to the welfare of animals as a means of incrementally abolishing the commercial exploitation of animals and those who see such improvements as unnecessary compromises at best or helping animal exploiters to deceive the public that they are "humane" at worst. Whether illegal activities, property damage, violence against animal abusers or sexy or shocking media campaigns are acceptable tactics in activism for animals is also a matter of fierce debate among such activists.

So the next time you start thinking of "those vegans" as some kind of stereotype, stop and remember how diverse I've told you we are. One of "those vegans" could be a lot like you!

How To Not Eat Animal Flesh, Eggs or Milk Products...For One Friggin' Meal!

Over the years, I've heard a lot of people say that they are sympathetic to the suffering of animals raised for food and maybe even see the injustice of killing them, but they could never give up eating meat, dairy or eggs because they just like the taste of them too much, they're accustomed to them, being vegan is just too hard or because they think that what they, as one person, eat doesn't matter anyway. It's an admission that there is some cognitive dissonance involved in their continued consumption of these products. Many vegans, including myself, used to dismiss the possibility of going vegan for one or all of these reasons. Once I allowed myself to truly relate to the suffering of animals and their desire to live, those foods started to lose their appeal. (Imagine if someone told you that your favorite foods were made from puppies or kittens.) My excuses fell away and I found that I didn't know how much cognitive dissonance I had until I felt the relief of its absence. I also came to realize that what I eat does make a difference. By myself, I am reducing the demand for thousands of animals to be killed in my lifetime, and, together with hundreds of thousands of other vegans and others who often choose to eat vegan, I am increasing the demand for vegan food. I know that many people who see the raising and killing of animals for food as something less than ideal prefer to maintain that cognitive dissonance than go vegan. However, anyone can choose to boycott the products of animal suffering and death at some meals even if they don't at every meal. Each meal that one eats vegan makes a difference. For those for whom eating vegan meals or eating them more often seems difficult, I present options and instructions on how to accept this challenge one meal at a time.

Step 1. Determine your criteria for the food you eat. You can try something quick to make or convenient to buy or have fun creating something in the kitchen. This is a great opportunity to try something healthier, more "exotic" or "weird" than you usually eat, or to treat yourself to something special.

Step 2. Choose a method of procurement for said meal. You can get a ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat vegan meal at a restaurant or grocery store (see VegGuide.org), whip something up quickly from vegan convenience foods or prepare a meal from a recipe or recipes. There are many vegan recipes online and in books at your library (if you're not ready to buy one yet) or you can modify an existing recipe to be vegan by replacing non-vegan ingredients with vegan ones. You don't have to make a lot of food, spend much money or get more of any ingredient than you think that you'll use. There are recipes that make smaller quantities and/or use ingredients that you probably already have on hand or already use and only a package or can of something else, if anything. Consider buying or making enough food to share with another adventurous eater or a vegan you know. Better yet, enjoy a vegan meal at a vegan meetup near you!

Step 3. Eat said meal. Take pleasure in knowing that (almost) no animals were exploited or killed to produce it. New and different foods can take getting used to. Don't expect vegan imitations of nonvegan foods to have the taste or texture of the originals (though some of them do) or measure them by that standard. They can taste good in their own way. Don't judge a food by your first reaction to it. Try to experience the taste and texture of it and then decide if you like it. It really is possible to acquire a taste for something, not just learn to tolerate it. I know a vegan who told me that when he first tried a dish with nutritional yeast (a dried, non-active yeast with a cheddary/nutty flavor) in it he hated it, but now he loves it.

Step 4. Consider what you liked about the meal, and how, if at all, you would prefer it be different. If you didn't like what you ate or what you prepared didn't turn out like you expected it to, don't assume that the next vegan food you eat or prepare won't be better. There is as much variety in the taste, texture and ease of preparation of vegan foods as there is in nonvegan foods. Try something else!

Step 5. Repeat often!

The Ohioans for Humane Farms Ballot Initiative Campaign: What I'd Do Differently

At the Vegetarian Summerfest and Animal Rights Conferences which I attended there was a lot of discussion of the question of whether animal rights activists like myself should be working for improvements in how animals raised for food are treated rather than encouraging people to reduce or eliminate their consumption of animal foods. I discussed this question with other vegans at both conferences and came to think differently about my participation in the recent effort lead by the Humane Society of the US and others as the coalition "Ohioans for Humane Farms" to get an initiative on the ballot in Ohio to give animals enough space to stand up, turn around and spread their wings and be euthanized humanely and to prevent animals too sick or injured to walk from entering the food supply. Enough signatures were collected to get the initiative on the ballot and a deal has been struck to get legislation passed that would do most of what the ballot initiative would have done if it passed as well as much more for other animals.

I do believe that it is preferable that an animal raised for food suffer less rather than more. Having thought about this campaign more, I think I still would have collected some signatures, but would have just emailed people that I know in the Dayton area to let them know that I had a petition that they could sign, and maybe I would have sent a letter to the editor about it. The message in that email and letter would have extended far beyond any that Ohioans for Humane Farms would recommend however.

I don't believe that my participation in this campaign or that of any vegan was necessary for it's success. There were many volunteers who were not even vegetarian. HSUS also had the means to pay people to gather signatures and could have paid many more. This seems to be a much better use of their money than the exorbitant salaries and wasteful direct mail fund raising campaigns that they spend it on now. It's also money raised largely from people who are not vegetarian or vegan. This is the most "radical" campaign that those people are likely to support. As a vegan, if I had the opportunity to work on such a campaign again, I would let those donors pay for signature gatherers while I worked on promoting veganism and debunking the myth that an animal can be humanely raised and slaughtered for food. While there are some organizations like VegFund that will pay you to hand out vegan food and literature and even reimburse you for paying people to watch short movies that show the cruelty of raising and slaughtering animals for food and advocate veganism, they don't have anywhere near the resources that HSUS does.

I regret wearing a button that said I was a volunteer for "Ohioans for Humane Farms" because I think the only humane farms are those that don't send their animals to slaughter or otherwise kill them when they are "spent" from laying so many eggs or producing so much milk. I also regret not using the petition as a starting point for a conversation with my non-vegan friends here in Ohio about why I thought signing the petition was important, but literally the least they could do and why they shouldn't feel too good about it. In such a conversation (or email) I would have talked about how these changes won't go into effect for a long time and about the practices this initiative wouldn't stop, such as mutilations (i.e. searing beaks of chicks, "docking" piglets' tails) of farmed animals to keep them from hurting each other in crowded conditions that are likely to continue after the cages and gestation crates are gone. I'd have explained how animals are bred to grow so large, so quickly that they live in constant pain and often die prematurely. I'd have pointed out that cows grieve when they're babies are taken away from them, that all animals raised for food are killed when they are very young and they all protest being slaughtered violently when they are not ambushed. I'd have pointed out that the industry could invent other, possibly even crueler practices to circumvent whatever law is passed to because their sole concern is profit and the animals they exploit for this are merely units of production to them. I'd add that the increased space requirements for animals would mean more wild habitats would be destroyed to make room for them. Finally, I would have reminded them that vegan meals can be mighty tasty and taste a lot like the foods they enjoy and that they have the opportunity to eat vegan food at least three times a day and save lives, the environment and possibly their health in the process.

I would have been discouraged from saying any of these things by HSUS staff though.

New Vegans Are The Best Therapy!

I'm really excited about the Vegan Challenge here in Dayton for the month of May, for which I've volunteered to be support staff. Sharing the joy of veganism and the deliciousness of good vegan food will be wonderful. Apparently, several participants in last years' challenge stayed vegan. I know from meeting new vegans through the Dayton Vegan Meetup that being around them and hearing about their passion and enthusiasm for veganism and love of animals is truly inspiring and gives me hope for the vegan movement and the future of humanity, so I'm looking forward to more of that. Vegans are my peeps, yo!