Good Article: Quite Complaining- It may make you feel worse.

Quit complaining — it may make you feel worse
Venting to friends about problems is unhelpful and unhealthy, experts say
By Melissa Dahl
Health writer
MSNBC


When confronted with a problem, Ashley Merydith has a routine for dealing with it: She talks about it. Incessantly. To anyone who will listen.
“‘So he did this, and then I said this, and then he texted me this,’” says Merydith, 23, describing the intricacies of a venting session. “It’s basically rehashing every conversation.”
Her goal is to get it off her chest and feel better about the issue. But often, Merydith finds that venting about her problems has the exact opposite effect. “It makes you more amped up about the problem,” says Merydith, of Charlotte, N.C.
Voicing your frustrations is a natural way of dealing with them — but watch out for when a conversation dissolves into a bitch session. Talking your problems to death can make you feel even worse.
A recent study found that teenage girls who vented to each other about their problems, from boy trouble to social slights, were more likely to develop depression and anxiety — and the same is likely true for adult women, says Amanda Rose, the author of the study.
“There’s a definite belief in our culture that talking about our problems makes you feel better,” says Rose, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, Columbia, whose research was published in the July issue of Developmental Psychology. “That’s true in moderation. ... It only becomes risky when it becomes excessive.”
Be more like a boyRose also studied the venting habits of young men, but found that guys don’t tend to analyze their problems as deeply as women. That might be because relationship issues tend to spark the most obsessive discussions, and that’s a subject women are more likely to dwell on.
Sometimes a kvetching session can spiral out of control, admits 21-year-old Amanda Beattie. Instead of making her feel better about the problem, it reinforces the small fears she already had — or even introduces new ones.
“It goes from statements about how I’m feeling to, ‘OK, so-and-so must hate me,’ to ‘I bet they never liked me in their life,’” says Beattie, who lives in Kansas City, Mo. “The more you talk, it hypes up your emotions.”
Still, there’s an upside to all that complaining. Rose points out that in her findings, the girls who vented to each other also reported feeling closer to their friends. It can establish an instant bond because the listeners know the complainer trusts them enough to spill their emotions — and the complainer’s just grateful that someone is willing to listen.
For 24-year-old Elizabeth Spencer-Green, a good griping session has often been a way to connect with other women. When she first moved to Seattle as a teenager, she hated her new school — and she bonded with a group of girls who felt the same way.
“I guess I used that as a way to fit in,” says Spencer-Green, who now lives in New York City.
But she noticed that as she complained with her friends about how much she hated the school, she started to hate it even more.
Confirming worst fearsThat’s the danger of talking to friends who let you wallow in your sorrows. It can confirm your worst fears: Maybe you weren’t overreacting. He really did wrong you. She really was flirting with him.
And now you’re convinced: This is so a big deal.
“If I tell you my problem, and the way you listen to me is sort of agreeing with me, then it escalates the feeling, without having a practical solution for it,” says Matthew Anderson, a psychologist based in Boca Raton, Fla. Instead of spilling your problems to those friends who encourage your rants, turn to someone who’ll point you toward a solution.
In Beattie’s case, that was her mom. Beattie was stressed about the tension between herself and her co-workers at her new internship, and she called her mom to talk about it.
“She’d let me run out of steam, and then she’d remind me of what I needed to do to remedy the situation,” says Beattie.
Psychologists also warn against ranting over and over to the same audience. You don’t want to become known as the complainer of the group. That can take a toll on friendships; it’s draining to be around someone who’s always moaning about their troubles.
When faced with someone who’s intent on wallowing in their problems, give them some time to talk it out — maybe 15 minutes, suggests Annette Annechild, a marriage and family counselor in Del Ray Beach, Fla. After that, move away from complaining and on to problem solving.
Merydith, the conversation rehasher, says she’s trying to redirect her venting habit into healthier territory by seeking solutions instead of just complaining. “If you talk about it forever and ever, at some point, you have to be like, ‘OK, let’s move on.’”

I won spider solitair. Feels like I havent been a winner in a long time. Game over though.

Facebook vs Myspace

Man Im so ahead of the game.


Heres an article from MSN about Myspace Vs. Facebook. I kinda got the sense that Facebook would be just a little more affluent because its college related. But its all good if you ask me.


Class War: MySpace vs. Facebook
By Claire Cain Miller, Forbes.com

A flurry of recent articles have observed that young people are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves, setting off speculation that MySpace is becoming the latest victim of fickle teens following the hot new thing.Not so, says University of California, Berkeley, researcher Danah Boyd. Not all teens are leaving MySpace, she wrote in a recent essay--instead, they're splitting up along class lines.Boyd confirms what teens in any high school across the country already know: Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing MySpace for Facebook since it opened registration to the general public in September, while working-class kids still flock to MySpace.

That could have big implications for advertisers targeting the coveted teenaged population online, three-quarters of whom have a profile on a social network. Both sites have been powerhouses for advertisers because of their huge, wide-reaching audiences, says Robin Neifield, chief executive of interactive marketing agency NetPlus Marketing. That strategy could change if the sites become more like the niche social networks popping up across the Web for groups of like-minded people from similar backgrounds.

Boyd's essay came amid speculation about the future of the social network giants. Despite the fact that MySpace still gets more than twice as many unique visitors as Facebook, it's littered with postings announcing that users, often teens, are switching to its rival.The number of Facebook visitors ages 12 to 17 jumped 149% over the past year, while MySpace lost 27% of teens, according to ComScore Media Metrix. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp.owns MySpace, even lamented in an interview that he was losing readers to Facebook. News Corp. is rumored to be considering swapping MySpace for a 25% stake in Yahoo!.

Estimated ad revenue for 2007 calendar year for Facebook is $125 million, $525 million for MySpace, according to research firm eMarketer. Together, the two account for 72% of all online advertising on social networks.

There's a reason why the "goody-two-shoes, jocks, athletes or other 'good' kids" are going to Facebook, says Boyd, who studies social networks and youth culture and made her observations based on formal interviews with 90 teens, informal interviews with hundreds more, and the perusal of tens of thousands of teens' online profiles.

Facebook launched in 2004 as a site for Harvard students. Gradually, it opened up to other college students, then to high school kids if a college student invited them. "Facebook is what the college kids did. Not surprisingly, college-bound high schoolers desperately wanted in," Boyd writes.

MySpace, meanwhile, is the "cool working-class thing" for high school students getting a job after graduation rather than heading to the Ivy League, Boyd writes. Constant local news stories on predators targeting kids on MySpace further alienated the "good kids," she says. Both companies declined to comment on Boyd's essay.
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Her analysis could help marketers figure out which sites to target--help she says they desperately need. "Many of the advertisers that I have met are extremely savvy about offline marketing but complete fools when it comes to online marketing," ignorant of who visits Web sites and why, Boyd wrote in an e-mail interview with Forbes. Paying attention to demographics could help. Hot Topic should target MySpace, for example, while J. Crew should focus on Facebook.

"As an advertiser, in my opinion, Facebook users are more qualified to convert and more apt to buy a shirt, so I would go there before MySpace," says Josh Mohrer, director of retail for BustedTees, an online purveyor of hipster clothes and sometime Facebook advertiser.
Facebook can lure advertisers with its affluence, says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an online marketing analysis firm. His data backs up Boyd's conclusions that Facebook users are richer than those on MySpace. Still, MySpace attracts so many more viewers that "there's no way marketers are going to leave," he says.
NetPlus chief Neifield says she's not paying too much attention to Boyd's observations. Advertisers should look beyond demographics when placing ads and instead analyze online behavior like who visited other sites with similar content, who downloaded what or who clicked on which ads, she says. "It's not very often these days that we buy based on demographics alone."

Facebook/Myspace

So I took a second (OK, an hour) to browse around face book like I used to in college( OK I still do it) and I just had to laugh at some of the stuff I saw. The groups, the applications, the pictures, this Internet thing is getting outta hand a little. I decided to browse through some of the groups I'm in, just to see what they are really about. I do that about every couple of months or so because I know how much people(including myself) use these mechanisms to represent themselves. So I'm at the "Dark skin Girls are Gorgeous" group that I am defiantly a member of and I notice that there are a couple hundred pictures for this group. Now if you know me at all you know that being a dark skinned girl wont no crystal stair for me, and that it took me a long time, really long time, before I could really be happy with my complexion. I was told all sorts of things when I was little. One girl told me that if I drank white milk instead of chocolate milk I would get lighter, and that was why I was so dark, because I drank chocolate milk. The sadder part about that misinformation is that I actually started drinking white milk in hopes that it would make a difference, not even realizing that hey, I hate milk all together and you would never find a carton(you remember those little ones) on my tray because I hate milk. ( I don't eat cereal and if I do the excess milk goes down the sink....it makes me gag ) Anyway, I love to see a dark skinned girl anywhere, and if shes on point ( it is what it ) then that's all the more reason to lift my shoulders ( in that very Rho Mu way) and give her a compliment even if her life as a dark skinned girl was nothing like mine. I remember crying allllll the time to my sisters who have a little more cream in their complexion about it. My sister Sandy would break out the Essence and do her best to show me that I was beautiful, and that my complexion had everything and nothing to do with my beauty..... I didn't get it though. Definitely one of those lessons best taught by self.

Any way so, I'm looking at these self proclaimed dark skin girls and picture after picture came up brown. These girls were a far cry from dark skin. Some real honey, caramel, just down right brown skinned girls reppin this skin that just a few years ago they would have laughed at and theirs I would have longed for. I realized it was relative, complexions that is. Relative to your family, your friends, same with weight, class, financial status. I kinda cooled out.


My other interest became observing what some people chose to put on the Internet as their best shot. I know nowadays, there's more fun and folly in putting pictures on the Internet and the whole dynamic has totally changed, but some of the things that people where clearly trying to pull off as on the more so than not side of the attractive (meaning eye pleasing as opposed to pretty or cute) scale became far more interesting on both sides of the spectrum. I mean edges that had not recently been permed much less pressed( especially if the ends are trying to tell that story), sweat pouring down your face, outfits with the belt, earrings, shoes, bracelet, and beaded necklace in the contrasting color. I mused. We cant pretend it doesn't happen or that we are picture perfect everyday but the I didn't make up the term "picture perfect". It does mean something doesn't it? Beyond camera readiness, the most comical part was the persona that some gave off in their pictures. People want to display a side of themselves that they value the most. They want to express something about themselves that they may feel is understated. I get it.



And while I may not have pictures of my self in the club with my hair (mid its return to its natural state) sweeping across my face as I don my hottest, newest latest, or pictures of my latest adventure, I do write these post, so I guess I can call it even and turn in for the night.