Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

I think…therefore I’m dangerous.

Is Social Media Destroying Your Mind?

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Take a moment to question why you’re on social media, what you gain (or lose) from your involvement, and how you can make your life better with or without it.

I’ve been a very active user of social media since around 2006 or 2007. I might have started with MySpace — who can remember back then? — but I definitely jumped on the bandwagon at Twitter and Facebook, spending well over an hour almost every day scrolling through new content, clicking Like and Share and Retweet buttons, and posting content of my own.

Has your focus been stolen?

I cannot say enough good things about Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus. It talks about all kinds of things that are distracting us and preventing us from achieving what we want or need to. If, like me, you’ve begun to realize that you’re less productive at home or work or having trouble maintaining relationships with friends and family members, put down your phone and pick up this book.

I preferred Twitter because the people I interacted with there seemed smarter and more dialed into reality. Not that there weren’t good, smart people on Facebook and idiotic assholes on Twitter. There definitely were.

But the difference between Facebook and Twitter — at least in my world — is that most of the Facebook folks were real-world friends and the Twitter folks were strangers. It’s hard to see posts from friends and relatives that clearly indicate their racist, homophobic, white suprematist, or conspiracy theory views. It’s hard to see them lose their minds to manipulative memes that spur hate and anger. It’s hard to realize that they probably aren’t as smart as I’d hoped they were.

And that’s one of the reasons I dumped Facebook a few years ago — the other being the realization that the algorithm was feeding me crap and preventing my posts from being displayed to friends and followers — and haven’t looked back.

I’m on the verge of fully stepping away from Twitter now. It has become a hate-filled cesspool so full of paid-for misinformation and random advertising that I honestly don’t know how folks can still visit it regularly. Elon Musk has revealed to the world what an absolutely crappy businessman he is, first by overpaying for Twitter and then by instituting policies that, little by little, have been alienating long-time users to the point that they’re leaving in droves.

The writing on the wall for me was Musk’s changing of the verified checkmark, which always indicated that an account had been verified to be what it said it was, to be some sort of revenue generating badge. What I quickly came to learn when I was stripped of my blue check was that anyone who now had a blue check had paid to get it and obviously had some sort of revenue generating agenda that made all of their tweets questionable.

In the 15 years I’d been a Twitter user, it had changed dramatically. I stepped away in November 2022, shifting my focus on Mastodon and the Fediverse for my social networking needs. I’m now in the process of deleting my 147,000 (not a typo) tweets and may even permanently delete my Twitter account.

Avoiding the Mind-Rotting Crap on Social Media

But is Mastodon any better? I can argue that it is, mostly because there’s no algorithm to manipulate and no ads to distract.

But I think the main reason Mastodon has been a breath of fresh air for me is the simple fact that I absolutely refuse to be dragged into any discussions about topics that generate a negative emotional response. Those include (but are not limited to) politics, climate change, gender issues, and race issues. Of course, all of those fall under the broad umbrella of politics in the U.S. because everything in this country of idiots has been politicized.

How do I avoid these topics? By setting up filters that prevent toots with specific key words from appearing in my feed. By not following — or sometimes even muting or blocking — accounts that toot or boost about these topics.

Poll
I put this poll on Mastodon mostly to help people realize how dumb it was to post political stuff. I didn’t expect many votes and didn’t get many. I was just hoping it would get boosted and seen and thought about a lot more. People need to wake the hell up and realize how they’re being played.

And that’s the problem these days. People spend too much time spreading information that supports their opinions on these matters. They don’t care if the information is true or false or some mixture of the two. They don’t care if it generates hate or anger — in fact, I believe they want it to do just that. Make us angry, make us hate the “other side.” Make us want to share the same crap and perpetuate the same anger and hate.

People who share this don’t seem the care — or maybe even realize — that they’re pushing the Us vs. Them mentality that keeps Americans divided and easy to conquer by power-hungry politicians and the corporate lobbyists who feed them in return for subsidies and favors. They’re playing right into the hands of the people who are destroying us for their own benefit.

And I won’t be a part of it.

Social Media is Not My News Source

And no, I’m not living with my head in the sand. I am probably more aware of what’s going on in the world than the idiot who gets all of his or her information from social media.

I listen to two news brief podcasts every morning — First Up on NPR and The Seven from the Washington Post — that give me the headlines and a little more; I follow up when I want to by visiting reputable news sites. I follow news, not opinion — I don’t need someone to think for me. I can think for myself. I suspect that most Americans can’t anymore. Our education system no longer teaches us how.

Is Social Media Destroying Your Mind?

But do we really need social networking? Do we really need to communicate with strangers online?

I can argue either way, but I will say this: face to face relationships with other people are far better for us than communicating with often anonymized strangers in the ether. Knowing this has pushed me into being more socially active after Covid and my crazy travel schedule pushed me into an ever more hermit-like existence.

I live alone and work mostly at home, so I don’t get the kind of interaction during the day that most folks have. I lean on social media for content by others to stimulate my mind and get me thinking about things I normally wouldn’t think about. I build relationships with some of these people. They are, for the most part, my only option when I’m home. And they’re a plausible option for anyone in a similar situation.

The danger is when we let these people think for us or sway our opinions or get into our heads to the point where they’re manipulating our emotions.

If you spend a lot of time on social media, why not take a few moments to think about its affect on you? Put aside your phone and other distractions, take out a sheet of paper and a pen, and honestly answer the following questions:

  • Why am I on social media? What does it do to benefit me?
  • Do I use social media as an escape from what’s going on around me?
  • Does my social media activity make me happy? What about it makes me happy?
  • Does my social media activity make me angry? What about it makes me angry?
  • Do I learn anything on social media? Am I certain that what I learned is true?
  • Why do people I follow share what they do? What are their intentions?
  • Why do I share what I do on social media? What are my intentions?
  • Am I building relationships with the people I meet on social media?
  • Am I seeing what I want to see on social media?
  • How much time do I spend, on average, every day on social media? Is it time well spent or would some or all of that time be better spent doing something else?
  • Am I neglecting responsibilities because social media is taking up too much of my time?
  • What can I do to make social media more fulfilling or useful?
  • What can I do to make social media take up less of my time?

I did say to answer those honestly, right? This isn’t something anyone else will ever see. Be honest with yourself. There are no right or wrong answers. Hopefully, the answers you come up with will help you understand how your use of social media affects you and how you can make it better.

Time Wasted

I wish that I could somehow get back all the time I spent doomscrolling on Twitter and Facebook — especially Facebook, since for about two years it really sucked me in hard. There was a time when every idle moment was spent with my phone in my hand trying to see what was going on in an online world that was prioritized by computers for the sheer purpose of keeping us coming back for more.

But I can’t.

These days, I see myself leaning on Mastodon the same way. I enjoy my experience there more because of the way I’ve fine-tuned it and because of the people I’ve met. But I’ve come to realize that it, like Twitter and Facebook, are sucking away my time, making me less productive. So I’m going to dial back a bit, limiting access to specific times of the morning and evening. Time is limited and I simply can’t afford to waste it on things that don’t matter.

Can you?

The Joys of Social Media

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My ever-changing take on social networking.

I’ve been thinking a lot about socialization these days and I thought I’d say a few things about how I stay in touch with friends (and strangers) while living a relatively solitary life.

Twitter and Mastodon (and Facebook)

I’ve been on Twitter since April 2007 and have tweeted more than 147,000 times. (I have a lot to say.) I’ve always liked Twitter since it filled a gap in my working life. In the years when I worked from home writing computer how-to books and articles and video training materials, I had no social interaction with co-workers. Twitter became my “water cooler” — the place I’d go when I needed a short break from work and some interaction with other people.


I don’t tolerate bullshit. I block all trolls and assholes and mute all advertisers.

Twitter changed over the years, of course. It was weaponized by political parties and states through the use of misinformation, bots, and trolls. I kept ahead of most of this by simply blocking the accounts I didn’t want to see. I’d also mute accounts that promoted their tweets. And I curated my timeline by being very careful who I followed and unfollowing people who tweeted or retweeted a lot of crap. Still, doomscrollling became a thing, even in my carefully curated timeline.

Of course, in recent days, after the takeover by Elon Musk, Space Karen, Twitter has pretty much gone to hell. It started with the new policy that allowed users to buy a Verified tag for their account and the rampant impersonation of real people and companies. Some are funny, some aren’t. One impersonation cost Eli Lilly (and Twitter) millions of dollars. Then there was the return of hate speech, in force, starting with rampant anti-semitism. That was only made worse with the reactivation of the previously suspended accounts for Donald Trump and Kanye West. Thanks to the loss of more than 75% of its staff, Twitter has become somewhat unreliable and there’s virtually no moderation of content.

Basically, Twitter is flushing itself down the toilet and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Like a few other folks I know on Twitter, I opened an account on Mastodon (@mlanger@mastodon.world), which is a Twitter-like service made possible by decentralized networked servers. It’s a lot like Twitter was in the early days, but because it’s a bit funky to set up, it’s naturally weeding out the social media idiots most of us don’t want to see anyway. I’ve decided to build my Mastodon experience to be a politics-free, hate-free, anger-free world and I’m doing that by simply not following accounts that toot (instead of tweet) politics, hate, or anger. I’m filtering out posts with topics that I don’t want to see or don’t interest me. I’m muting accounts that post primarily politics. I’m basically building a social networking bubble.

Now before you get all critical about that, try to see it my way. I don’t go on social media to get the news or to learn what’s going on in the world. I listen to NPR and have a subscription to the Washington Post. That’s where I get my news. I have no interest in the stories put out by MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, Mother Jones, or just about any other media outlet so why would I want to read social media tweets that link to them?

What am I on social media for? Well, I mentioned it right at the top of this post: social interaction with other people.

Here’s how I see it: I live alone and don’t go out to a job like most people. My daily social interaction is minimal. In addition to meeting up with friends and neighbors at occasional social gatherings, I’m pretty much limited to text and phone conversations with friends and brief messages on Twitter and Mastodon.

(Don’t talk to me about Facebook. That site will rot your mind — it’s a cesspool of hate and lies. And don’t give me the excuse that it’s the only way to keep up with family and friends. These people don’t have phones and email addresses? The only way you can communicate with them is in a toxic environment where you won’t even see their posts unless the algorithm shows you? The only thing Facebook is good for is finding out how stupid/bigoted/gullible your friends and family really are.)

Now that I’m on Mastodon and building a whole new social media world from scratch, I’m really enjoying meeting people with similar interests — especially those that aren’t trying to sell a product or idea. It really is just like the old days on Twitter. You’d meet someone and hit it off and interact, chatting about things going on in your lives. You’d build friendships. Heck, I’ve met in person at least a dozen of the people I’ve met on Twitter, including the first person I ever followed there, who lives in the UK.

Nebo and the Boating Forums

Now that I’m seriously into boating — as I once was seriously into aviation — I’m making friends in the boating world. There are two main tools I’m using to do that.

Nebo is a boating app that lets you share your boat’s location with others. The idea is that you can keep track of where your boating friends are, show them where you are, and possibly meet other boaters in your area. I used it on my other two boat trips to share each day’s cruise with friends and blog readers. But now that I’m cruising at my own pace and meeting folks along the way, I’m using it to keep track of where they are.

Nebo has a built-in chat feature to get in touch with boaters you find on the app. (There are privacy settings to keep your boat invisible or your information invisible to strangers, in case you’re wondering.) As I prepare to return to my boat very late in the season, I’m trying to connect with other boaters in my area. I’ve successfully chatted with a few, including one couple that has done the Great Loop 33 times.

Because I’m not using Nebo every day (since I’m not currently on the water), I’ve pretty much switched over to texting for my closest boating friends. But I still use Nebo to see where they are. (I can’t wait to get back to them.) And if you’re interested in seeing where my boat is, you can find it here.


I can see that this morning both Pony and Nine Lives are at the Columbus Marina with a bunch of other Loopers on Nebo. La Principessa is heading south on the Tennessee River a bit farther north. I’ll likely catch up with them before we hit the Gulf.

Other sources of social interaction with fellow boaters are the two boating forums I follow:

  • TugNuts is the Ranger Tug/Cutwater boats support forum. It’s a great place to share information about our boats. I scan the new messages every morning and participate in conversations where I have something to add. I also use it to get information when I have a question or problem. For example, I was having a heck of a time getting engine computer data to interface with my chart plotters. I posted about my problem and had two good answers within 24 hours.

  • MTOA is the Marine Trawler Owners Association. Like TugNuts, it’s a great source of information for boaters, but it’s not boat specific. I use it to get more general information about cruising, especially about places to cruise. A list of new posts comes to me in email every morning and I use that to pick out the discussions I might want to see and participate in.

Both of these forums require membership. MTOA requires an annual membership fee. Both forums have resulted in members contacting me directly via e-mail — I allow them to do so — about topics I’ve participated in. I’ve gotten a lot of excellent information and offers for meet ups with other boaters. It’s nice. (And yes, I know I did gripe about some of the old guys in these forums, but they are the exception and not the rule.)

My Point

I guess my point is this: Social networking doesn’t need to be an addictive anger- or hate -inducing doomscrolling mechanism. It can be pleasant and informative. It can be a way to meet people with similar interests and keep in touch with them.

It can be what you want it to be — if you focus on what you do and don’t want to see and take steps to get the content you really want.

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Featured image by Image by Freepik.

Message to Old Guys: Get a Grip and Grow Up

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Your old way of thinking is not welcome in today’s world.

What triggered this post — which I hope I can keep brief — is some interaction with members of a boating forum that I joined and actively participate in to get answers to my questions about boating.

I’m relatively new to “serious” boating — the kind of boating where you actually go someplace, sleep on the boat, and need to know how all (or at least most) systems work so you can troubleshoot problems as you travel. Day-tripping in a boat when you’re never more than an hour or two hour away from your marina slip or boat trailer isn’t quite the same — if you’ve done both, I’m sure you understand.


The MTOA Burgee flies on the bow of my boat. It will soon be joined by a custom burgee I had made for my Great Loop cruising.

As a newbie to this kind of boating, I have lots of questions and I look for answers from experienced “experts.” To that end, I joined MTOA, which stands for Marine Trawler Owners’ Association. My Ranger Tug R-29 CB is considered a “trawler” style boat, although it’s on the smaller end of the scale. Captain Paul, who I cruised the Hudson River, Erie Canal, and Great Lakes with back in 2021, was a member of MTOA and that’s how I learned about the organization. He flew the MTOA burgee and now I do, too.

MTOA’s primary feature is its forums where you can ask questions, post comments, and get answers and additional input from other boat owners. These guys fall into a few categories: relative newbies like me with questions, experienced good guys who provide answers without passing judgement, and experienced (maybe?) not-so-good guys who always seem to chip in their opinions, which may or may not be helpful.

You know: the same kind of mix you’d find in any forum. The big difference here is there there’s a moderator who does not tolerate insults or name-calling, so it stays, for the most part, relatively civil.

Old Guys

I don’t mean Old Guys as an ageist insult. It’s merely a category of men over a certain age. What that age is, I’ll leave up to you. Old Guys (or OGs, as an OG friend of mine calls himself) come in two flavors: OGs with modern thoughts, ideas, and opinions and OGs with old fashioned thoughts, ideas, and opinions. It’s this second flavor I have a problem with. It’s 2022, not 1952.

Now I haven’t taken any kind of survey, but based on the kinds of boats and the posts being shared by other members, I’m willing to bet good money that the vast majority of members — or at least those who participate in the forums — are men over 50 years old. I’ll go further to say that most members are probably retired — or at least old enough to be retired. They are, by definition, Old Guys. And no, there aren’t many women in the forums. In fact, I haven’t seen a post from a woman (other than me) in the forums in weeks.

Old Guys Being Jerks

I’ve been participating in the forums now for over a month and I tend to ask questions I think other members might be able to answer. I generally do get helpful answers. But every once in a while, I get an “answer” that isn’t an answer at all. Instead, it’s a thinly veiled criticism worded carefully enough to get past the moderator (who admittedly does not look at every single post).

For example, in early November, I posted this:

I spent much of October on the loop between Chicago and Alton near St. Louis. I’d been hoping to get as far as Paducah or Turtle Bay by now but a nervous crewmember and logistics slowed us down. I’m on a plane heading home for 3 weeks now and will return to continue the loop at the end of November.

I’m looking for anyone else heading south as late as me to possibly buddy boat as far as Turtle Bay. I’m not a member of the AGLCA so I can’t post there. I’m hoping to spread the word anyway. I can be reached at boating@marialanger.com.

(I should mention here that I don’t belong to AGLCA (American Great Loop Cruisers Association) because of the heavy-handed forum “moderation” by the organization’s owner. She didn’t like my post about the organization here on my blog and used her power to silence me on the forum when I shared information about my ill-fated crew member gig that summer (without using any names). In my opinion, I didn’t do anything wrong and several members came forward publicly and privately to back me up. When she had an opportunity to talk to me about this in person this past spring, she did not. Can I be expected to support her organization with my hard-earned money after that? I think not.)

I got a bunch of forum responses that offered advice about buddy boats, cruising that section of the loop, and even a few folks interested in joining me as a crewmember. For the most part, good, non-judgemental advice. But I also got this:

I can’t quite understand why you don’t just join AGLCA.
Cost?
A small price to pay for the potential benefits, especially as part of the cost of the trip, whether a partial or a complete loop. Amortized over 4000+ miles, it’s a pittance.
Content?
All sorts of stuff to be learned, benefiting from the collective knowledge and experience of a few thousand folks, with all sorts of various backgrounds.
You may even be fortunate enough to meet Herb!

First of all, I did not want to be drawn into a discussion about why I’m not a member of that organization. Second, I was offended by the insinuation that I was being cheap. I responded:

I belonged to AGLCA and didn’t like the attitude of the “organization” towards its “members.” I’d rather not get more specific here. So I did not renew. I am a principled person and refuse to give my hard earned money to companies I cannot, in good conscience, support.

From that point, it nearly evolved into an AGLCA bashing thread — I’m not the only one who has problems with that organization — but the moderator stepped in and stopped it.

Later, on the same forum topic, someone posted this:

I am just puzzled why AGLCA boats have to post their vessel movements and plans on the MTOA forum. The AGLCA forum is for that. I am a member of both forums but prefer to keep the topics and and discussions separate to the individual forums

Safe Cruising.

How’s that for a direct poke at me? I wasn’t going to let it pass. I replied:

As I mentioned in my original message, I am not a member of AGLCA so it is not possible for me to post there. I know that other loopers are members of this organization so I reached out here — and I’ve been successful making contact with a few helpful MTOA members.

I don’t recall any rules saying that cruising the great loop was off-topic for MTOA. I also do not recall it being a requirement to join AGCLA in order to complete or cruise on the great loop.

I hope this clears things up for you. Safe cruising to you, too.

Neither of these clowns has come back for more.

Then there was the stern anchor debacle. Anchoring is a highly controversial subject with experienced boaters and I should have known better than to ask this question:

With apologies to the folks who also read TugNuts, this is a repost here:

My boat is on the Great Loop right now and I’ll be returning to join it at month end. I plan to do a lot of anchoring over the winter. Notes on more than a few anchorages have suggested using a stern anchor to prevent the boat from possibly drifting into a channel or shore in tight anchorages. Most of the anchorages are in mud, gravelly mud, or sand with good holding and a light current. What I’ve experienced in the past is movement due to wind more than current.

I want to get the smallest, lightest stern anchor that’ll do the job so it’s easy to stow and easy to handle. Looking for recommendations. Bonus points for a complete “kit” I can buy on Amazon or West Marine and have it shipped right to the boat.

I should add here that I don’t need the BEST solution. I just need a solution that will work. This might be something I use just once or twice a month.


This is the anchor I wound up buying: a Fortress FX-11. Most folks recommended the next larger size (or even larger) but some friends of mine with an R-31 (2-3 feet larger than my boat) use this as their stern anchor. It’s 7 pounds of aluminum in a very well-regarded design from a well-regarded manufacturer. Anchor, chain, and rode cost about $300 on Amazon; I had it shipped right to the marina where the boat is waiting for me.

(TugNuts is another forum I participate in. It’s a support forum for owners of Ranger Tugs and Cutwater boats so I use it for boat-specific questions. I recently got an answer to a vexing chartplotter issue there.)

Although most answers were genuinely helpful and I wound up buying an anchor that would have satisfied most respondents, I did get this after I already reported on what I had bought:

Is this your second anchor or third?

Why don’t you want the best?

IMHO, Good seamanship would dictate that you always prepare for the worst. Otherwise you are making a recipe for failure.

When you use this anchor, the situation probably warrants it, therefore you do want the best. Get the biggest best anchor you can handle.

While his final paragraph does offer good advice, the rest of his message indicates that he did not fully read my original post. I replied:

This is a stern anchor for a 32 foot boat with a 2 1/2 foot draft. I may use it once or twice a month.

Why don’t I want the best? Of course I want the best. But I don’t have the money or the storage space for the best.

To his credit, he replied with some good and useful information. I’d been ready to write him off as a jerk but I don’t think I have to. Yet.

The Problem with Some Old Guys

You don’t have to be a genius to know what’s going on here. These are guys who grew up in an era when women were “helpmates” who raised their kids, cleaned their homes, did their laundry, and cooked their meals. On board their boats, the wives do pretty much the same thing, minus the kids and plus handling dock lines and socializing with the other “first mates” they meet along the way.

These guys are bothered — whether they realize it or not — by the mere idea of a woman owning and operating her own boat, often by herself. I rock their world view and they don’t like it. So they need to keep me in my place by pointing out what they see as my errors.

When I post a question to expand my knowledge, they see it as proof that I don’t know what I’m doing and they have to set me straight with their highly opinionated feedback. It’s almost as if I’m walking into a trap by simply asking a question.

(Or maybe they’re just assholes to everyone.)

What I don’t think they expect is that I won’t run away with my tail between my legs. I will respond to their passive-aggressive comments with my own and expose them as the opinionated assholes they are. I have no patience for bullshit.

As a paying MTOA member, I have every right to participate in the forums and extract the information I need that so many members are willing and able to provide. Likewise, I hope to eventually be able to answer the questions posted by other newbies. That’s what forums are for; that’s what makes them valuable to members. I’m not going to be bullied by anyone in my quest to learn.

Especially not some old guys with old ideas.