anagram 10.28.99

something i sent off 2 my list today:

well, i tried to get the fox news guy not to get all the damning pop psychologists out once again hopping on the "webcam as sick phenomenon" bandwagon.
but it didn't work out very well.
my quotes were good, but i feel they hardly balanced off all the negativity. :(
"narcissism" such an overused and misunderstood word.
that word doesn't mean you love yourself a whole bunch, it means actually the opposite in psychiatric terms. i wish i had this book about narcissism that i used to have so i could quote from it.
this quote really makes me mad:
"You start thinking you really are important, and that you're someone special," said Dr. Robert Butterworth, a Los Angeles-based clinical psychologist.

god forbid anyone should consider themselves important or special!

what a sad world. such mixed messages we give our children and ourselves. no wonder the world is crazy.
not to mention i'll bet that doctor, or any of those doctors who comment on these "media things", even knows or has closely studied personally ANYONE who has been in front of a camera 24/7.

anyway, if u want to read the article, go to:
www.foxnews.com
and click on "health" in the menu
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and i've been working for days on a new design for anacam
here it is in it's very unfinished form and none of the buttons work
but i wanted to show it to u anyway, 'cause i'm hyper :)

( actualyy now i'm done with it, u can see it at: http://www.anacam.com/anaframesn.html )

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i still have my cold, if u can believe that, but i think it's almost done. but now i have my period and i have a headache so blah blah :/
but it's not so bad. i'm just laying low and working on design and stuff. so that's why my cam is boring lately. 'cause whenever i'm working on improviong the site, ironically my cam gets boring cause i get really focused and lost in thought
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i'll write more later but now i think it's time for a nap :)
god, i've been having the weirdest dreams lately..i don't think i could even explain them they are so surreal.
they stick in my mind and body all day leaving me feeling strange and sideways!

here is the article from foxnews.com:

Living on Camera: Narcissism or the New Wave?
1.54 p.m. ET (1754 GMT) October 28, 1999 By Adam Pasick

NEW YORK — You have a private life, and probably like to keep it that way. So what would inspire you to place yourself in the vigilant, unblinking public eye?
You already have unprecedented access to others' private lives, especially if you have cable or Internet access. You can watch "ordinary" people with a video camera wired to the Internet — called a Webcam — or you can see shows like MTV's The Real World, which packs a conflict-prone group of young people together in a house with the cameras rolling.

You might also wonder what psychological consequences this kind of exposure has on the people who open their lives to the world.

"You start thinking you really are important, and that you're someone special," said Dr. Robert Butterworth, a Los Angeles-based clinical psychologist. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall — and when you fall, you're not famous anymore, and that can cause a lot of anger and depression."

The people who actually choose to make their private lives public argue critics just don't understand. They say they're on the cutting edge of a new form of communication.

"After 20 minutes on the first day, we all totally forgot about it. ... It's a lifestyle constraint, but it's not the psychologically intense experience you'd think it would be," said Erik Vidal, 23, a former Oberlin College student who launched www.hereandnow.net when he was a senior. The site documents the lives of Vidal and a group of his roomates.

"These doctors don't personally know anybody who is on camera," added Ana Voog, 33, owner and star of anacam.com. "They give this pop psychology guess, and it irks me when somebody doesn't even know anyone on camera. ... I wish I could say something that's shocking for all the psychologists out there," she said wryly. "Like, 'I feel damaged somehow, and I'm a perverted extrovert!'"

Praying to Narcissus?

If you have the urge to be famous and broadcast the most inimate details of your life, it often means you have a narcissistic personality, experts say. And that can translate into a callous disregard for the welfare of others.

"You remember Leona Helmsley, talking about the 'little people,'" he said. "They're also hypersensitive to slights."

"We all have some degree of it," said Dr. Armond Aserinsky, a psychologist from North Wales, Penn., who specializes in media issues. He explained that you, like most people, probably have the personality trait, but that sometimes narcissism can cross the line into a pathological personality disorder (see quiz).

Having cameras follow your life "used to be just a common fantasy adolescents would have that their own life was being taken down by a biographer," he said. "That what they were doing was so important, that every burp was being recorded. What's happened is that for various reasons — including the technology — is that an adolescent center-of-the-universe fantasy has been turned into a reality."

But Webcam proponents say their mode of self-exposure is more about building online communities than tooting their own horns.

"Friendships have gone south because of the project," Vidal said. "Me and the girl I was dating for a year broke up, not because of Here and Now but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. We'd hang out on camera, and I'd get e-mails from all these [people in our chat room] saying, 'Look, dude, I know you really like this girl, but she's treating you like s**t.' I thought, 'This is really something if they can see it on their computers and I can't.'"

So why would you put your life on display? For Vidal, nephew of the author Gore Vidal, the answer is simple: He can be the first in a new wave of communication. With Web sites like Here and Now, people can actually take the first steps towards living their lives online, he said.

"It was the sort of phenomena I assumed was going to happen eventually. ... It was only going to be a matter of time, and I wanted to be the first to do it," he said.

"I do have housemates that are very into playing to the camera," Vidal conceded. "On occasion, we treat the camera like a person in the room. We talk to it and play with it. And mode number two is when the camera's like the sullen guest in the corner we don't feel like talking to it."

For every person who treads the line of exhibitionism by providing unfettered access to their private life, there is also somebody watching, Butterworth noted.

"We've been feeding and nurturing the voyeur in the past 10 years, with all the tabloids and everything. There wasn't much left," he said. "We've uncovered every little rock and cranny of the famous. We all have an obsession to peek. And I think when that's combined to technology that's available and cheap, we kind of take it to this extreme."

But for Voog, Webcams and the thousands of people who tune in are one of the best things that's ever happened, allowing her to disseminate her art and writing to an eager and friendly audience.

"You're speaking with people from different backgrounds and different countries," she said. "I talk to them every day. It's kind of like Cheers, a little community where we all hang out."

"I never was nervous; I like doing it. If anyone was meant to do this, it was me," she said. "I've found my niche, my little medium of communication."

"When people are watching me sleeping and stuff, from all the nice e-mails I get, I feel that everyone's sort of an angel, watching over me and protecting me."
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Posted by ANA on October 28, 1999
at 13:20:46: In Reply to: article mentioning anacam at foxnews.com
posted by ANA on October 28, 1999 at 12:51:03:
oh, you can see what a narcissist is by taking their lame little narcissist exam. i scored a "one" just because i clicked that i do have a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love! heck, if you're gonna daydream, why not daydream BIG? :) i mean, i know there is no such thing as perfection, but i like to think about it anyway 'cause it's fun :)

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i talked 2 erik vidal tonight on the phone. he was pissec about the foxnews article. he told me he talked to the guy for an hour and a half and erik said he told him a lot of good things and that he thought the article would be a lot better. erik said that the took the stupidest quotes from him. typical of the media in my experience so far. :/
hereandnow.net might be up and running any day now, i'm really excited 2 see how it will be! and erik even asked me if i'd like 2 do some sort of alliance with him and i said probably yes! so we are going to hash out some thoughts about different ideas and see what we can come up with! i am excited because i really love the direction erik wants to take hereandnow. i think we could both benefit from each other :)
at the very least erik is going to try to set up an "anabot" at hereandnow, where i can have a video conference thing showing my head and put the monitor of that on a mannequin's body and they people at hereandnow can talk back and forth with me! cool, eh?