As a sequel to my “Love in the Time of Terrorism” post I wanted to offer up this new one based upon a Wall Street Journal article published today titled, “‘Til Tech Do Us Part.” Although it does not specifically cite any South Asian peeps in the article, I am sure you can all agree that it is quite relevant to a great many of us (and probably tech-savvy SM readers more so than most). Here is the oh-so-juicy synopsis of the article:
Joint bank account? Check. Merging the MP3 collection? Hold on a minute. Couples are struggling with just how much to combine the digital aspects of their lives. Why spouses are bickering over shared email accounts and his-and-hers blogs. [Link]
It’s true, it’s sooo true. This is why our parents generation just cannot understand why we sometimes (well some of us) wait so long to get married. It is no longer a question of simply making sure that your prospective wife comes from a good family and that at least one of her siblings is a doctor if she failed to become one herself. No. There is the MP3 collection-compatibility-issue that is a constant cloud which hangs over many of our serial dating lives. God forbid she leaves behind an Ipod in my car and I accidentally play Akon or Fergie when there are people around who might judge me. “I listen to Kings of Leon. I swear.” What if she bookmarks the NYPost whereas I bookmark the NYTimes? Does she pay attention to RottenTomatoes.com like I do or does she just go to the movies and blindly hope for the best like some crazy free spirit? Getting to know someone and fall in love just takes a lot more research these days.
To stay on pace during his five-mile jogging workouts, Olav Junttila keeps his iPod stocked with fast, thumping electronic music. But an unwelcome sound has been intruding on his daily runs: Britney Spears singing her bubble-gum hit “Oops, I Did It Again.”
The culprit is Mr. Junttila’s wife, Katie. Her musical taste differs, but instead of setting up a separate music library in iTunes, she mixes her Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake purchases in with his picks. “I’m going, ‘Where’d this song come from? I don’t even like this song,’ ” says Mr. Junttila, a 34-year-old New York investment banker. [Link]
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Then, of course, the article moves on to an issue even more troubling than music and one that I lie awake at nights stressing about. Yep. Blogs.
The growth of blogging is responsible for many marital flare-ups. James Griffioen and his wife, Sara Woodward, decided to start a blog together after they had their first child. They were inspired by other couples who were blogging about their newborns.
They agreed to give each other veto power over posts, which he exercised when she wanted to shout out into the blogosphere about his failure to do the dishes. “That’s a real sensitive issue,” says Mr. Griffioen, 30, who cares for the couple’s 2-year-old daughter at their home in Detroit. Readers of the site, sweetjuniper.blogspot.com, would have blown it out of proportion, he says: “They’re going to turn it into this whole thing of how I don’t keep up my end of the relationship…” [Link]
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Sweet Jezzus. Abhi’s first rule of Blog Club is: NEVER mix blogging with pleasure (unless you have a weak will and it just happens). You would be freaking nuts to blog with your husband/wife.
“Honey, what did you think of my post on our blog? It was the bomb, right?”
“Ummmm.”
I wonder, just how common is this sort of digital angst among our readers? Here are some anecdotes. I know that SM contributing writer Cicatrix and Mr. Cicatrix have left comments on the same thread using different computers in different rooms at the same time. I also know that on a couple of occasions a commenter has emailed us because we banned their significant other/roomate who they share a computer with and they wanted us to lift the ban so as not to punish the innocent one (who still wanted to comment) too.
The bottom line is that I think it is okay to take your time and really understand if your blogs and your mp3 collections (we didn’t even talk about TiVO) are compatible before committing. Forever.
Note: For those interested there is a podcast of this story at WSJ.
Then you must leave her. Sorry.
Also, I thought joint bank accounts were, like, a totally common married couple thing. Is this not the case?
I have seen so many people cheat that it is not even a big concern of mine as long as it is out of sight out of mind and no kids or diseases are brought into the relationship from outside. I am not the jealous type as long as it does not involve someone i know, lives in the same zip code and is kept so discretely that I would have to hire a PI to find out. Now if she is flaunting it in front of my friends or relatives or colleagues, sure i will get pissed and she will have to go. I think marriage has enough complications without one digging for secrets. I am not that concerned. If everything else is near perfect in the marriage and she or I occasionally get some on a trip far away, I see it as preferable to so many other marriages where couples put up wth a lot more shit. In the absense of a storybook marriage, I see serial monogomy as no ideal. Being in your 30s does that to some of our outlooks. I just want to live and let live. Make the most of the rest of my life.
So, Pravin, you have NO problem with your wife or girlfriend cheating outside of your relationship? My examples from the above mentioned all included married couples. After the break up, most men echoed your thoughts, not surprisingly. But, why would it matter if it is ok with someone you knew? What difference would that make?
technology has escalated attraction to repulsion and diversion.
Oh GOSH, Abhi. Given your love of blogging I have a feeling you could end up like one of those parents blogging about their newborns. “Today the baby pooped at 7:30am and cried for 1 hour straight…but it’s all good because I played NPR to put her back to sleep.”
As for blindly going to the moves without doing research and hoping for the best? That’s just madness, I tell you 🙂
You all do realize that the solipsism and cloistering produced by the iPod is a harbinger of the end of society, right?
Pravin, Anais Nin called and wants her husband back.
You are wrong about poop but so right about the NPR.
Abhi wrote:
Ah Abhi, that’s coz I am not married, yet. If I ever get married, I’ll anonymously rant about my husband and go home to be all zen and peaceful with him. The marriage will work, no? Technology will actually help my marriage not ruin it. 🙂
Ahhh… Abhi. a post even the admins can appreciate. hehehehehe.
SFGirl @ 30
I know….stupid Feedemon guys have not yet integrated firefox in their reader. I’m using dumb IE with no spell check. Did I just loose “cool” points because I use IE-enabled reader? man 🙁
pingpong @ 32
Of course, Yes….what is the use of having disconnected gadgets? You get the best entertainment by hooking 52″ HDTV, with surround sound, to Xbox/PS2/Wii, stream audio/video into it from Windows Media server/Mac Pro/Ubuntu and Tivo….oh, you can stream all your video downloads via Windows Media server to the bigass TV too….
they are totally in sync with each other inspite of all their digital divide..
BadIndianGirl @ 34
No..they do all that together : game-playing, blogging, music-listening, TiVoing and NetFlixing. I know ….they are made for each other
hmmm…I’ll ask him and get back to you 😉
Rahul, she didnt know how to be discrete. Wouldn’t work. Heh.
Well, Edwina Mountbatten had left a message too.
Pravin, that’s a little depressing. Or maybe I am too confined in my conceptualization of “serial monogamy” 🙂
Rahul, do you ever sleep!?
Better yet, install (secret) surveillance cameras at home and tap all the phones. I find employing a stenographer can also be helpful for transcript-production of aforementioned phone-tapping.
t, I thought this was common also? But I’ve also heard that folks pool joint accounts and keep separate ones, as well.
Babu, this doesn’t make you “uncool,” it just makes me sad for you 🙁
I have found that, thanks to the newfangled intarnets, I can outsource this function to some people in Bangalore. They do it better than we in America can, and for less, thereby providing the most cost-efficient solution for my 24/7 coverage of SM.
Abhi: I hope you are joking. Why in the world anybody would lick an ice sculpture? A peacock? – for God’s sake!! Even in hot India they would not do this. Now if it was a mermaid or a nymph – well that is another thing. Seriously, get a room, get a girl: good, bad, ugly, tall, short, skinny, healthy, white, black, brown, and so on and on. Tell you what? On second thought……..Nah. I won’t tell your Mom what you may have done. May be I will send her a text message – or e-mail her detailing your adventures last weekend. You figure out what needs to be done here young man – Houston we have a problem.
Manju: Boo !
but how fast can they provide youtube links
This fast.
Camille, we Computer folks already have a fancy theory/concept for it. Or is it this? 😉 🙂
I think Pravin thinks like the French when it comes to marriage and dalliances, and I can appreciate that. It hasn’t caught on yet in America.
My wife and I have so many digital differences we just decided to buy separate laptops.
Of course I am guilty too, with my obsessive sports-page refreshes and numerous in-your-face RSS alerts.
PS: I wonder if there is a way to partition the home bandwidth exactly 50-50, because I suspect she is using far more than her fair share for video downloads.
you can be a phone nazi like my dad, make your wife sign up for a joint account with verizon, and then call each other using only your verizon phones I(calls to the home landline – not allowed), so the call is free always. yes, he is a paragon of marital bonding.
on another note, i didn’t realise there was such discrimination against IE users (ok, maybe i did, but it came from a 70-year old professor, so i didn’t take it seriously). but now you tell me there is spell check on mozilla? and here i was just impressed with rahul’s failure to make typos. see how easy it is to fool girls into thinking you’re attractive on the internet?
Not on Linux. I cannot believe your floccinaucinihilipilification.
Piece of cake, woman. Piece. Of. Cake. Which reminds me, I need to wash off all the icing stuck to my face from all the cake I’ve been stuffing myself with all night, and wipe the crumbs off my belly.
Please refer to myriad other comments citing the appropriate New Yorker cartoon that I am dog-tired of linking here.
Yup, although funnily enough “mozilla” always has a little red squiggle under it. Also, bah humbug to your wife LOT 🙂
I bet, if you have a router/network, that you could do this by IP address. I’m not sure if what I’m saying is actually true, but I feel like it’s true in my gut.
Amit, I am not so clever. I was thinking as basic as this, but perhaps I am confined by my bit capacity?
Saira, I have no hard and fast rules for this kind of thing. It has not happened to me. So this is all strictly hypothetical on how I would behave. Like I said, I would have a problem if I knew about it. But it would not be a deal breaker as far as the marriage is concerned as long as certain things are met and the rest of the marriage is going great. First of all, we are jealous creatures which explains the conditions I specified where I may be OK with it. But I am a realist too. So a compromise would be something where I won’t go digging in her business and we try not to seek out new people. I am not a swinger type though I will not judge swingers. I do have my limits. If I am with some lady, and she is flirting with some other guy too much in front of me, I will definitely not like it. And I wouldn’t do the same for anyone I am with.
Trust a desi blog to devolve into tech support. Most routers support this, probably by MAC address/port combination. Show your wife her place in the patriarchy by keeping her bandwidth share lower than yours.
I protest. Your messages on many threads here prove otherwise. 🙂
Get webcams, you two!
“Her wallpaper is a picture of her baby nephew (social suicide for me, not to mention the time when my parents were in town…”
LOL wow that’s exactly how my husband feels. He changed my nephews pic for a different wallpaper as he’d get everyone asking if that was our kid (he used the laptop for classes)and then when he said ‘no’ …the inevitable when will we have kids
For those asking about joint bank accounts , well they are great for paying bills, vacations etc but separate accounts are also a must and separate emails. Joint emails is just going too far unless it’s maybe a business account or something like that?
Pravin, something along the lines of this?
There should be, against Mac IE users. The stupidity of dead browser + smugness of a Mac user. Grrr.
Rahul, don’t be jealous just because this conversation has not included a e-panty-dropping overture in your general direction. 🙂
I also forgot to state, for the record, that I really do judge people by their “home” pages. Petty, I know. The kid-as-background is less creepy to me, but maybe also because my closest colleagues are too young(and single) to be asked if it’s her/his kid? [oooo, self-citation. I have reached a new comment-low]
Ooo, totally agreed. As a smug Mac user, I am especially hateful of those who use IE on Mac. 🙂
If I had a penny for every time e-panties were mentioned in reference to me, I’d have 2 cents. Which is exactly how much my thoughts are worth.
How about those that use safari on a pc.
I’m less judgmental, but if you’re going to use Safari on a PC, why not just use (the far superior) Firefox? If you want to get old school, though, might as well use Lynx.
Rahul, such self-deprecation. Your thoughts are at least just under $0.50 (I’ve adjusted the $0.02 for inflation using 1913 dollars).
Peeps are just jealous because mac users have that big endian* thing going on. And Endians are like the Jesus, something that noone f’s with.
*Of course, this is prior to switch to the intel core duo.
@82 Rahul:
May be they are just waiting for your ‘Come-Hither’ blog to be linked to your screen name here, so that they can show you their affection. 😉 After all, you can’t expect desi (or even other) Rahul-groupies to show PDA in such crowded comment spaces. You need your own personal blog space!
The secret to closeness is to be separate.
We keep separate browsers (he’s IE, I’m Firefox), separate Outlooks (he’s got the regular, I’m Outlook Express). My Documents has multiple folders.
My daughter logs in as Guest user!
We all share computer bugs though 🙁
Sigh. The Rahulapalooza is getting to be too much.
tamasha, you just lost yourself a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be cast as an extra in Cameron Crowe’s next movie, Never Famous.
And for other folks who still believe, in lieu of money and flowers, please drop your e-panties at comehither.blogspot.com.
Rahul, if you had a problem with that, why didn’t you say so before? see by sorting all our problems on a blog, i’m going all meta on you. and to clarify, i’m actually a rahul gropie 😛 yeah, self-referential “jokes.”
With all the self “referencing” you are doing, I am surprised you even have time to be a good gropie.
I can’t believe we missed this. Joint bank account? Pshaw. Joint Netflix? DEATHMATCH TIME!
Rahul, I will spare you a graphic self-love joke in reference to your last comment to port 🙂
Rahul, why were you (allegedly) trying to cheer me up, why do you go by “Richard,” and why can’t you spell my name!?
just evil!
this would be a required clause in the pre-nup…although, if joint accounts are prompted by such vast difference in movie prefernce, perhaps it’s a sign?
i meant separate accounts….
Hmmm, maybe not. I watch a lot of bad movies, not because I like them, but because I like to watch movies to “decompress.” When it comes to the films I really like, perhaps taste would factor, but probably not. But seriously, if my SO woke up just to change the Netflix queue I would demand a separate account, no matter how cost inefficient.
Agreed. Also, I’m assuming these people they are interviewing probably have a decent amount of disposable income, so I’m sure they could afford the second NetFlix account.
I mean come on people, another $20 a month is nothing!(which now includes 17 hours of online viewing I might add and which is very cool because I just used it the other day to watch a movie and no streaming issues at all – I digress).
It was May 2002, a very difficult period in my life. Thankfully, I have since found Jesus and an ability to spell. No checkers, though.
Thanks! I don’t do graphic, remember? Although self-love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Although, BadOne, you can do 2 DVDs for a discount monthly fee of $13.98 + tax right now (with a minimum of 5 streaming viewing hours). Oooooooo.
Rahul, I thought you were in the process of going graphic? It’s true that self-love won’t give you cancer, but it might make you go blind.
Camille, I guess it really comes down to if you are willing to give up your 2nd daily venti half-caf soy chai latte of the day for a few days of the month in order to get your fill of Footballers’ Wives and your spouse can get his fill of Steven Segal action flicks.