People Are Surprisingly Nice On Occasion (The Claw Machine Edition)

Since the tine my kids became old enough to ask to play the claw machine, I have worked hard to tell them it's a scam and a waste of money. Sometimes you gotta be a killjoy parent. When the moon might be blue we'll give each of our kids a dollar and let them have at it. Today was one such day. Our kids ran across a restaurant and were back in thirty seconds flat after predictably not retrieving a stuffed animal that they would have forgot about thirty seconds later had they happened to grab one. I digress. The point of this is that a couple was sitting near the claw machine, and, apparently having observed our kids experience the agony of defeat, gave them two dollars to try again. This was two more dollars for the claw machine to enjoy for dessert but there was winning in the losing. You see, this was an act of kindness from strangers (albeit within the constraints of late capitalism) and though our kids were twice disappointed, my wife and I were happy to point out how nice it was for these kind folks to try to help them achieve the thrill of victory. Across the room we hollered thank you and thanked them one more time when they left the restaurant. The weekend is only half over but no matter what happens the rest of the way, it has already been a good weekend.

A Society of People Playing By Different Rules

I witnessed something at Target a few weeks ago that still bothers me. I was there with my wife and kids. Kids are ages 8 and 5. The store was busy and the lines were long. A worker signaled for someone to move to a different line. Suddenly a man started yelling. I don't know if he was mad at a customer because he thought the customer cut in front of him, or if he was mad at the worker for the way she handled the line. He then shouted at the worker. He called her a bitch. He demanded to see the manager. She said "I am the manager." Meanwhile we completed our transaction and scurried out of the way so the kids didn't have to watch this man in action. 

The commotion around the checkout lines is something to be expected in a busy store. I don't know why the man went from zero to angry so quickly and why he insulted the worker with a slur. Aside from thinking "What the hell is going on here?" and "What's wrong with this man?" I also wondered if this was a preview of more vulgar behavior to come. I've written about vulgarity before. I don't think I'm making selective observations. I think there's some truth to saying we live in a vulgar society. I also wonder if the era we're heading toward is one of "I can say whatever I want to say." Maybe this is backlash against political correctness. We've all heard people gripe about political correctness. While a portion of society will continue to be careful and deliberate with their language, it could be that others will go the route of saying anything they want at any volume they desire. 

Many times I have seen people disrespect workers. I didn't view this episode as merely a matter of a customer being mean (and sexist) to a worker. It looked like an angry man who cared not for societal norms that call for civil behavior and measured language. I don't know what's going on. Maybe we're increasingly a society of people playing by different rules. 

Kleenex Commercial Accurately Points Out That Boys Care About Feelings

This commercial caught my eye this morning. A boy gives a brief sociological speech about how boys aren't all about being loud and immature. In fact, he explains, boys care about feelings. He proves it by handing a tissue to a girl who is crying about the first day of school. Not bad. I might have written the commercial a different way. Imagine the boy handing a tissue to another boy--that would have been a welcome image. As the actual commercial plays out, it could be read as a young fella helping out a young damsel in distress. It's not a perfect commercial by any stretch, but what commercial is without its flaws and critics? This one isn't bad because it acknowledges the simple truth that boys care about feelings.

Nobody Has Sex (Thinking About Facebook Norms)

I don't have my own Facebook but I am aware of what happens in the network of Tina, my wife. She keeps me in the loop of things that friends and family post on her Facebook. So I see lots of pictures from people we know. Given our stage of life, it's mostly pictures of everyday family life. We see pictures of kids and pets and have a window into where people go out to eat and what they cook at home. There's also some political chatter and quite a bit of social commentary.

What is missing from these Facebook posts? Any talk about sex. It seems, unfortunately, that no one in my wife's social network is having sex. To be more precise, no one ever says anything about sex. One night my wife joked "I'm going to put on Facebook, 'Going to bed, but not going to sleep'" and we cracked up because even the slightest subtle reference to the possibility of engaging in sexual activity would breach Facebook norms (at least in her network).

I will go ahead and guess that talking about sex is not taboo in everybody's social network. Surely there are folks who air out their sexual laundry on Facebook. But for those who belong to a network where the norm is to avoid any reference to sexual activity, it would make for a good breaching experiment to post "I have the best sex life ever" or "Haven't had sex in forever" or really anything that has to do with having sex.

This post is not an awkward invitation to tell your Facebook friends about your sex life. Rather, this topic is a reminder that life is an information game, to paraphrase Erving Goffman from the introduction of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. We share information about ourselves but not all our information. This is part of the process of face-to-face interaction. It's also the case on Facebook--where we tell people our story but not our full story--a point effectively conveyed here by Nathan Jurgenson.

My Report Card as a Father and Man

Am I a good father? What kind of man am I? I imagined how someone might grade me on a variety of categories as a way of reflecting about the meanings of "man" and "father."

OUTDOOR WORK
Schoepflin is pretty much a circus when it comes to doing work outside. He's not totally terrible at mowing the lawn, but it's evident that he dislikes almost every minute of it. He's clumsy and ineffective at weed-wacking. The guy doesn't even own a snowblower. He lives in Buffalo, for Christ's sake. How does this guy not have a snowblower? He half-heartedly brushes snow off his car in the winter months, and clears about 70% of the snow from his wife's car. What a prince. In the spring he doesn't plant flowers. He once considered planting vegetables, but never followed through. Overall, he demonstrates an appalling lack of interest in the outdoor area of his home. Grade: D

GRILLING
Schoepflin appears terrified of his grill. He can't turn on a gas grill on a consistent basis. He doesn't ruin hot dogs, but overcooks hamburgers, wrecks steaks, and produces uninspiring chicken. At least he's smart enough to avoid trying to grill kabobs. He complains about how hot it is to stand over a grill. When asked if he wanted a new grill for Father's Day, he was so dumbfounded by the question that he couldn't muster a response. Let me be blunt: when it comes to grilling, he's an embarrassment. Grade: F

GROCERY SHOPPING
This guy is right at home at grocery stores. He likes grocery stores. He glides through the aisles with a smile, hums to whatever song is playing on the store soundtrack (he has a noticeable pep in his step when Stevie Wonder is playing), chats with workers, small talks with fellow customers, and patiently waits in line. He wisely races through the middle aisles of the store in order to limit his purchase of processed foods. He knows how to pick produce, knows a good meat bargain when he sees it, and is excellent at reading labels. I swear I've seen him counting the number of ingredients when he grabs canned goods or an item from the frozen foods section. This guy is a triple threat: he can meal plan, stay within the budget, and is a health-conscious shopper. Grade: A

CHILD CARE
OMG, have you seen Schoepflin change a diaper? It's a thing of beauty. This guy should enter a diaper-changing contest. Methodical yet efficient. Smooth understates the matter. Graceful gets close to it. This fella knows what's he doing with diapers. My only criticism is that he needs 6-8 wipes for a poopy diaper. This guy is killing the environment and that fact must be taken into account in terms of a grade. Ok, so he's great at changing diapers on his 2-year-old, but what about the rest of it? Well, he sings to him, tickles him, totes him around when needed, and loves him up. This guy is pretty steady with the kids. I like what he has to offer his 5-year-old: he makes his lunches for school, teaches him to play baseball, encourages reading, and is very affectionate with him. He does get frustrated easily and has trouble living in the moment, but overall I like what I see. It does seem like he'd often rather be blogging or tweeting, but nobody's perfect. He puts his kids in front of the TV too much. To be fair, he sometimes uses TV to buy time to empty the dishwasher, do laundry, or cook dinner. Also, in an interview with his wife, she noted that he did his fair share of overnight feedings when the kids were babies. He also created original songs to sing to the boys at bedtime. Grade: B+

FIXING THINGS AROUND THE HOUSE
He can change a light bulb. What can I say, I'm trying to be nice. I don't want to sound like a hater, but this guy is useless around the house. If something needs fixing, you better look elsewhere. He's is powerless with power tools. To him, everything looks like a screw, only he can't use a screw gun. I'd say he has two left hands, but that's an insult to people with two left hands. I'd say he tries, but that's only slightly true. I guess I'd say fixing things doesn't come naturally to him, and he clearly shows a lack of interest in improving his skills. It's like, dare I say, fixing things isn't important to him. This isn't to say he doesn't appreciate people who are good at fixing things. In fact, he's impressed by people who are handy. He admires people who can get jobs done. It's just not a personal ambition or something he values for himself. It appears as though he'd prefer to spend time doing things that are important to him, like reading and writing. Because he can do a little bit of painting without falling off a ladder, he avoids an F. Grade: D

SUMMARY
In the big picture of parenting, I judge him as above average. He gives his kids room to grow but is happy to nurture and comfort them. He works hard to be very involved in all phases of his kids' lives. He volunteers as an assistant coach for his 5-year-old's t-ball team. He puts a lot of emphasis on making his kids laugh, having fun with them, playing with them, meeting their immediate needs, and coordinates everything with his wife. This is a report card of him, but for context it must be said that all major decisions are shared with his wife. They are a team. They are good at many of the same things, and bad at many of the same things. As I write this summary, it occurs to me that "above average" is a strange way to rate a person as a father or man. Who gets to decide what constitutes a good parent or good person? Who sets the baseline? What is below average and what would it look like? What's with all the rhetorical questions? Maybe it's time to pull back on our assumptions about concepts like "father" and "man." Truth be told, I don't think there is one set of things a man should do and a different set of things that a woman should do. Honestly, I don't see it that way. I guess I want to say that people do the best they can in this life. We should pay more attention to the things people do well. The best gift we can give people is to cast aside our stereotypical expectations.

Breaking Up By Text Message

Here's a sociological question: is it socially acceptable to break up by a text message? Occasionally I hear students comment on a relationship ending with a text message. I'm far removed from breaking up in the first place. If I break up at this point in my life, it's called a divorce. But let's talk about how people end relationships. Is it something that is supposed to happen face-to-face? People break up by phone calls, right? Is there a difference between breaking up with a phone call and breaking up with a text message? A text message sure seems cold and impersonal, but it makes sense if we keep in mind that breaking up is hard to do. Well, with due respect to Neil Sedaka, breaking up is much easier if we do it by text message, isn't it?

What are the rules about using a text message to break up? Is there any follow up required? Does the break up "stick"? Or, like the old Stylistics song says, it is just another case of "break up to make up" (gotta love any song that has a Wikipedia page).

Breaking up can get ugly fast. Many a Lifetime movie has been made about a break up gone bad. Is there such a thing as a good break up? Let's cut to the chase, people. How do we break up these days, and what do the techniques for breaking up tell us about relationship norms? How do people react to a break up by text message? Finally, generally speaking, what insights about our culture can we make if it is acceptable practice to break up with a text message?

Ideas for Breaching Experiments

I can't stop thinking about breaching experiments. I don't know why. Well, maybe I just want to have fun. I won't go into a long description of breaching experiments--that's already been handled in a classic post on Everyday Sociology Blog. Basically, it boils down to intentionally breaking norms to see what kind of reaction you get.

I started obsessing about breaching experiments earlier this week at the grocery store. I felt like people were giving me weird looks. I'm not a paranoid type, but it really did seem that people were looking at me. Maybe it's my beard (Yesterday I ran into a colleague who said I look like Franco Harris. Highlight of my year). Anyway, feeling like people were looking at me for no good reason, a thought popped into my head: it would be fun to say "Got a problem, boss?" to the next person who looked at me. Keep in mind I am small, far away from physically imposing. The reactions would be so interesting. Of course I didn't do it, but it's an idea for a breaching experiment.

Since then, I came up with two more ideas for breaching experiments. The first is to sing a song at a public library and see what happens. A long and dramatic song might work well, like Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," or a song with adult content would garner interesting reactions, like Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me." I heard that one on satellite radio yesterday, brought me back to the mid-1990s!

My other idea is to reply to all texts with a rude text, like STOP TEXTING ME. Friends and family surely would be confused. You might burn a few bridges and have a lonely weekend, but sometimes you have to suffer for sociology!

Update 2/17/2013:

I just got home after a pleasant dinner with my family at a decent restaurant. Nicer than an Applebee's chain type restaurant, but not a fine dining establishment. A place where folks were quietly enjoying a pretty good meal in a pretty nice place. I felt the urge to yell "Welcomes to Moe's!" Sadly, I didn't follow through. But there you have it; another simple idea for a breaching experiment. Next time you're in a coffee shop, or a bar, or a house party, or really anywhere except Moe's, shout "Welcome to Moe's" whenever somebody enters.

As for the next time you visit Moe's, be sure to greet customers by hollering "Touch your toes!" or "Hug your foes!"

Update 7/8/2013:

Took my kids to the town pool today. While my 5-year-old was getting a swim lesson in the "big pool," I watched my 2-year-old play in the baby pool. There was a bunch of parents hanging around the pool, supervising their kids. I had the urge to knock out some push-ups on the concrete surrounding the pool. I'm not in great shape, but not in terrible shape either. I'm sure I could have impressed with a quick set of twenty. Can you imagine the reaction to a middle-aged guy doing push-ups for no apparent reason? But, as always, I resisted doing something out of the norm. Had I done those push-ups to intentionally generate a reaction from onlookers, it would have been a fine breaching experiment.

Note 3/4/2014:

If you are going to do any kind of breaching experiment, please give serious consideration to the effect it might have on people. In this post I am only imagining experiments; I have never done any of these and I have never assigned breaching experiments in my Sociology courses. But I realize that students in other courses find their way to my blog when they search for breaching experiment ideas. This post actually gets a lot of page views. Common search terms include "ideas for breaching experiments" and "fun breaching experiments." The spirit of this post is to have fun thinking about breaching experiments that could be done. It's important for me to recognize that students actually carry out breaching experiments. We need to consider the possible effects on innocent bystanders who have not asked to be involved in an experiment. Those who enact a breaching experiment should proceed with caution. There are ethical issues to consider. Do the ends of breaching experiments justify the means? Is it ethical to treat strangers in a discourteous way? Is it ethical to inconvenience them or make them uncomfortable? Upon reflection, I don't think my example of singing a song in a public library is a good idea. I admit that thinking about it remains humorous to me. But to actually do it would be discourteous to library patrons. I'm reflecting on breaching experiments after reading a well-written article in Teaching Sociology by Matthew Braswell. As he writes, “The subjects of a breaching experiment, it must be remembered, have places to go, schedules to meet, and no knowledge of the fact that they have just walked into a sociological exercise. They deserve a modicum of care and consideration.” He poses an important question: “does the breaching experiment truly hold the potential to reveal otherwise unattainable insights?” If I think about my idea to sing a song in a public library, I think the answer is no. Honestly, I don't think that is an experiment worth doing. Fun to think about, yes, but sociologically valuable, probably not. He thinks that breaching experiments should be designed in a thoughtful and ethical manner. I agree with him. I think the only breaching experiment I might ever do is my idea about doing push-ups at the public pool where I live. It wouldn't put myself or others in harm's way. It wouldn't inconvenience anyone, I don't think. It seems harmless, silly, and has a bit of sociological value. 

Update 11/24/19:
Yet another example of a breaching experiment....

Breaching experiment pic.twitter.com/hBqiYoi0Gh

— @ToddSociology (@ToddSociology) November 23, 2019

Athletes and Religion: The Case of Tim Tebow

I don't know much about Tim Tebow. I do know that he's a Christian. To use 21st century terminology, that's his brand. My impression is that he is serious and sincere in his religious convictions. And my impression is that media outlets have largely approved his displays of religious beliefs both on and off the football field.

I would love to hear a discussion about this. Maybe the subject has already been discussed at length, but I haven't heard it. If ESPN has covered it, I wouldn't know, because I find it painful to watch ESPN. And national sports talk radio shows strike me as boring and distasteful; for example, Jim Rome. But this does seem like a topic that Rome would delve into during his show.

What interests me about the general topic of athletes and religion is the question of appropriate (or inappropriate) displays of religious beliefs on the football field. Of course, what's considered appropriate or inappropriate is a subjective call. That's what makes it interesting. Over the years, I've listened to media figures talk about athletes who point to the sky after scoring a touchdown in negative ways. I've heard many a media personality condemn teammates who circle in the end zone to join in prayer. Overall, I would say that athletes who demonstrate their religious beliefs on the field of play have encountered disapproval. But with Tim Tebow, I'm not sure that's the case. But I defer to people who watch sports and cover sports for a living. They would know more about the tone and content of coverage with regard to Tebow.

If Tebow has generally received positive (or even neutral) coverage about his on-field displays of religious beliefs, that begs the question Why? If he has in fact been treated with respect for his religious convictions, I'm curious to know why this might be. I emphasize that I'm not exactly sure of how he's been treated, so that's why I'd love to hear more about the matter. I came across one story that describes mixed reactions to Tebow. The story includes a link to the website tebowing.com, which has pictures of people apparently imitating Tebow. Some of it's for laughs, some of it seems staged, so it's hard to tell if it's "all in good fun," or mockery, or something else.

I do want to mention race as a possible factor here. Over the years, athletes who faced criticism for on-field displays of religious beliefs have generally been black players. Is Tebow getting a positive response, in part, because he's a white player? Or because he's a white quarterback? I am posing these questions for discussion, I am not posing them as facts or as my opinion. As I've said, I don't know enough about how Tebow's been handled by media so far. I just wonder if race is part of the issue in this case. So I put all of this out there for contemplation and consideration.