In my opinion, social media can easily become this all-consuming obsession that drives you to other vices (such as countless bottles of white wine).
However, I’m not entirely sure if I subscribe to the idea of “twee-hab” (in which people seek professional help for social-media addictions). I can totally relate to those people who feel social media has taken over their lives, but cyber-rehab? Really? If you have the kind of money to check yourself into therapy because you can’t stop tweeting, go buy a fucking plane ticket to Maui and take a vacation instead.
For those people with preexisting dependencies and addictive personalities, it can be especially dangerous. And if that’s the case, seeking medical treatment to help conquer those demons is commendable. I just don’t believe that regular people need treatment just because they can’t stop refreshing their news feeds.
But if you’re like me, and you used social media as an emotional crutch to maintain some kind of self-destructive connection with someone that you should already have let go of, you don’t need cyber-rehab, you need to take your life back. But like all things, it’s easier discussed than done (except sex, which is easier done than discussed!).
I blame Eddie for breaking my heart, but I blame social media for keeping it broken for so long.
First of all, I’m completely technologically challenged. When I was growing up, my hippie-dippie family never had any fancy electronics—I don’t think we even owned an electric can opener. My dad was much more concerned with his pot garden than he was with investing in a cassette player, plus his eight-tracks were just fine by him. We were the absolute last family on the planet to have a VCR or even an answering machine. And call-waiting? Forget it. To this day, my parents have zero idea how to check voice mail and are just learning how to send a text, which is difficult for my dad, who has three fingers on his left hand and no thumb. Recently, my sister attempted to set my dad up with a Facebook account, but when he inadvertently started giving interviews to his new “friends” (read: reporters), he decided take a break from social media. It’s probably for the best.
Technology has never come easy for me (and things usually “come” very easy for me, haha). When my San Francisco modeling agent forced me to get a pager to contact me about casting alerts, I never figured out how to use the stupid thing. I missed a lot of castings. While I was overseas, cell phones weren’t mainstream yet, so we got phone cards to use at random pay phones. I never figured out how to use them, so I would go months at a time without talking to anyone back home. We would actually—gasp!—write postcards. #OldenDays.
Then I met Eddie. In the thirteen-plus years we were together, he never wanted me near a computer. (Hmm, I wonder why?) Most women would find that completely controlling and manipulative, but I was totally fine with it. I’ve said it before, but I had no problem being a kept woman, and at the time I liked having my man tell me what to do. It was hot. Plus, any sort of technology terrified me—and still sort of does. Even my remote control freaks me out. (I have to ask my nine-year-old to record things for me.)
I was perfectly content living in the dark ages when we were together. Everything I thought I ever wanted was right in front of me, so what did I need a computer for? If I wanted my gossip, I would buy a magazine. If I wanted to shop, I would drive into Beverly Hills and hit up Rodeo Drive. If I wanted to talk to my friends or family, I would call them. If my parents wanted photos of the boys, I would have to mail them anyway. So, what was the point of figuring out the Internet?
Not until after I found out about the affair did I actually get behind a computer. I knew that if I was going to keep tabs on my husband (at the time, we were still trying to work things out), I had to get cyber-savvy. I wasn’t going to be a sitting duck. If my husband was stepping out on me, I wanted to be able to go see the fucking photos on PerezHilton myself (instead of having a friend describe them to me over the phone) or watch the video of him kissing another woman on Us Weekly on a fucking loop.
When I finally grew the balls to try to “surf the Web,” it took a while for me to figure out how to even turn the damn computer on!
I didn’t have too much success at first, so I just focused on the basics: Google. I could “google” my husband’s name, or his new girlfriend’s name, and there was just such a crazy amount of information out there. I would scroll through all the past stories online, purposefully reliving painful memories—not necessarily a healthy activity for someone trying to forgive and forget. For hours at a time, I would click through pages and pages of stories about “LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian.” I would dissect every photo of this woman with my hypercritical eye, wondering what the hell my husband saw in this country singer. I was just so fucking baffled.
When a few weeks later a story came out in In Touch magazine that my husband was having yet another affair (this time he was fucking a Hooters waitress), I was able to grab a glass of wine and head straight to the computer to see for myself. After a few simple mouse clicks—and a huge gulp of sauvignon blanc—I landed on a gossip blog only to discover that the lead story had photos of my husband and some fucking slut having a great fucking time on my motherfucking boat. (This was the catalyst for motorcycle-tire-slashing-gate.) As always, my immediate reaction was to get even. I wanted my husband to feel the same absolute rage that I felt after seeing him with another woman—twice! I wasn’t ready to go fuck someone else, so I took it out on the motorcycle tires.
Not long after, Eddie was out of the house and shacking up with his mistress—the country-music singer, not the cocktail waitress. (It’s hard to keep them straight!) I was still living relatively under the radar despite the occasional weekly magazine outburst, so I wanted to find some way to rub my “fabulous” life in both of their faces. Don’t get it twisted, my life was far from fabulous. But they didn’t need to know that. My options were limited, so I began toying with the idea of “accidentally on purpose” leaking half-naked photos of myself twirling around a stripper pole to a gossip website. I figured that nothing would drive Eddie crazier than the idea of other men ogling his soon-to-be ex-wife. During our marriage, Playboy magazine expressed interest in photographing me, and it interested me, but Eddie told me he would leave me if I ever did anything like that. I was for his eyes only. So I knew having naked photos of me floating around the Internet would drive him insane. Luckily, I had a great, levelheaded friend who talked me out of that monster mistake. I didn’t need those online so that one day my kids would stumble upon them. Instead, I discovered a different solution. Enter Facebook. My friend set me up on the social-media site and was exceptionally patient in teaching me how to navigate the system: “add friends,” “post to my wall,” “status updates,” etc. Of course I had heard of Facebook—I wasn’t completely dense—but I never had any interest in actually creating an account. I would constantly tease my friends about having accounts, referring to it as “Fuckbook,” since everyone was connecting with exes and hooking up. For me, everything I cared to know about was living under my roof; it felt like an unnecessary addition to my already crazy world. But my life was changing, so I had to change with it, and I dove headfirst into the social-media pool. (Take my advice, dip your toes in first. It’s a much better transition.)
Initially, my page was simply a platform for me to brag on. I wasn’t “friends” with Eddie or LeAnn, but I knew that any information I shared online would eventually make its way to them via “friend” crossover. So, like any levelheaded, scorned ex-wife, I started posting trampy, drunk photos of my gorgeous girlfriends and me dancing in Barbie-doll-size dresses at Las Vegas nightclubs or lounging on tropical beaches wearing barely-there bikinis. I was desperate to send my notoriously jealous ex-husband into a green-with-envy tailspin after seeing how much fun I was having being single. And I wanted that country-music-singer girlfriend of his, whose only friends were on her payroll, to see how many wonderful people I had in my life—all despite my shattered marriage. I have to admit, I put up a fantastic front. To anyone looking, I was ha
ving the time of my life and going completely hog wild. In reality, I was going off the fucking tracks and was sad as hell.
At first, Facebook served merely as an opportunity to piss Eddie off, but after a while, I realized the other benefits of posting slutty photos of myself online: boys. My message box began filling up with flirty notes from all kinds of gorgeous men (and some not-so-attractive ones, too): friends of friends, former flings, and other blasts from the past. Facebook became more than just a passive-aggressive attempt to piss off Eddie, it became a chance to cyber-flirt with hot-ass, semifamous actors—and perhaps one or two of Eddie’s former costars—to grab drinks with, go to dinner with, and, eventually, fuck the shit out of, to prove to myself that I was still desirable. For a while, I felt I had the upper hand. I could simultaneously piss off Eddie and find new guys to distract me. I was hooked. Facebook was my life.
Then, Twitter happened.
Twitter and I have a love-hate relationship. It’s like an abusive boyfriend I keep going back to. I call it Battered Social-Media Syndrome. Twitter makes me feel terrible; Twitter makes me feel wonderful. Twitter supports me when I’m feeling depressed and beats me down when I’m feeling happy. I get into fights with Twitter and try to break up with it, but then I get lonely or have a few too many glasses of wine and go crawling back to it, with my tail between my legs.
Okay, if I thought Facebook was difficult to understand, Twitter felt fucking impossible. Like, what the fuck is a “hashtag”? How the hell do I “retweet”? I still haven’t totally mastered the Twitter-verse, and it took me more than two years to get this far, but I did discover pretty quickly how to find LeAnn’s Twitter page. She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut and felt this incessant need to share every single moment of her life—with my family—with all of her Twitter followers. Checking her feed became my daily obsession. With Facebook, I had power. With Twitter, I was completely helpless.
Through her posts and photos, I was able to watch their adulterous love story unfold. Before long, she brought out the big guns: my kids. I could actually see these family photos of the woman who stole my husband sharing Christmas Eve dinner with my children, while I was home alone for my first Christmas without them.
I had this perverse window into their seemingly perfect little world: beach vacations, private jets, and family-photo shoots. These were my children. I gave birth to these two little boys and now have an insanely expensive vagina to prove it. Why did she get to be their mom, too? How was this fair? She got my husband. She took my kids. She stole my life. And she knew I was watching, and she was fucking ruthless. Everyone told me to stop looking, that I was self-sabotaging, but it became my addiction.
People who say that they don’t check their exes’ Face-book posts, Twitter pages, Instagram feeds, or Foursquare check-ins are completely full of shit. Every time that see-you-next-Tuesday would post some nurturing, cuddling photo with my children, I headed straight to the sauvignon blanc. #WineTherapy. I’m not even sure why I wasted a clean glass, because I knew I was downing that entire bottle. It was like cyber-cutting. I had to see what she was doing. I had to know where my boys were (since I still didn’t have a fucking cell phone number for either of them or a house line). It was my only glimpse into their world. To this day, if I can’t get ahold of my boys, I will check her Twitter, and nine times out of ten, I can figure out exactly where they are. Oh, no wonder my son isn’t answering our FaceTime call, he’s having a great time playing in the ocean . . . in fucking Mexico! I try to step away, but as the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat—or, in my case, the cougar.
There is a huge part of me that wishes I couldn’t check in on them. It never stops hurting. It gets easier, but it’s still a little painful. I can only imagine the strange sense of relief I would feel if I woke up tomorrow and I couldn’t google my husband’s name or cyber-stalk his wife’s Twitter page. But there’s no use living in Fantasyland. (I did that for thirteen years, and look how it turned out.)
My only regret now is that I didn’t hop on the technology bandwagon sooner. I would have forced my husband to get a smartphone so it would have been easier to keep tabs on his cheating ass. It would have been a little bit more difficult for him to lie about where he was sleeping, if I forced him to make a FaceTime call to me before bed. (But beware, no one looks good on FaceTime. For being so advanced, couldn’t Apple have cooked up a better camera solution?) And maybe if I could have tracked his whereabouts with some fucking iPhone app and known that he wasn’t playing golf, but having dinner with his married girlfriend in Laguna Beach . . . Knowing that I had this intelligence, he would have stayed on his best behavior—and perhaps I’d still be married today. The downside being that I’d still be married to Eddie Cibrian.
Not only has technology changed the way we break up, it’s transformed how we date altogether. Social media and the Internet have all but completely eliminated the concept of the blind date. If your friend sets you up with a fiftysomething real estate developer, all you have to do is google his name to find out almost anything about him—where he works, where he lives, what he looks like.
Once you actually start dating someone new, there’s an entirely new set of cyber rules by which to play. Before, you knew you were in a committed relationship after a conversation and a piece of jewelry or, for our parents, a letterman jacket. Today, it’s changing your Facebook status to “in a relationship” and your profile picture to some Instagram-filtered shot of the two of you. If you’re really seeking some attention (which, let’s face it, we all are or else we would delete these stupid accounts), you change your status to “it’s complicated” whenever you’re having a fight—or when you’re separated but still legally married. Nothing perks up someone’s interest more than coming across an “it’s complicated” status. When you break up, as most people do these days, it becomes a story for all of your “friends” to see on the Facebook news feed.
I still pretty much hate all technology and the entire concept of social media (except when I’m loving it); however, I’m pretty sure it’s here to stay. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a total #TwitterWhore and I google just about everything and everyone, but I also recognize how, at times, it has taken over my life. Just ask yourself how many times you have interrupted a wonderful night with friends and family to post on Facebook or Twitter that you’re having a wonderful night. How many times have you stopped midsentence to ask a waiter to take a photo and then spent the next five minutes fucking with filters to post it on Instagram? It’s as if we have this strange obsession with proving to the world that we are, in fact, cool. Look, I’m totally guilty of this, and I’m not sure I ever intend to stop. It’s just the culture we live in now, but it’s important to keep things in perspective.
With any new advancement comes its pitfalls. For every positive, there must be a negative. Good doesn’t exist without evil. You know, like yin and yang and all that Zen crap?
To me, one of the biggest downfalls of this new age of technology is the emergence of cyber-bullying. Let me say first and foremost that cyber-bullying does exist. Take the twelve-year-old girl in Chicago, Illinois, whose classmates created a Facebook page dedicated solely to making nasty comments about her weight and was forced to face her victimizers every day. Or the gay college student whose roommate posted an explicit personal video of him on YouTube and who decided to take his own life rather than tell his family and friends that he was a homosexual. Those are real, serious, and tragic accounts of cyber-bullying.
However, I do think this culture is way too liberal with its definition of cyber-bullying. If, hypothetically, you’re a country-music singer and public figure who decides to engage with one of the millions of “haters” online—whom you never have to actually see—that is not cyber-bullying. If you can close your computer or turn off an app without the repercussions of actually having to deal with these people in your real life and not your cyber life, it’s not fucking bullying. If you decided, hypothetically, to contact a mutual T
witter follower to get this hater’s phone number and call him or her, that person is not cyber-bullying you. I’ve experienced my fair share of actual bullying in my life, but I have not been cyber-bullied. Sure, I’ve had people who, let’s say, work for a certain blond former Nashville resident send nasty, mean, and cruel messages to me on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve had people call me ugly names and make horrible accusations about my life, but that is not bullying. I don’t have to go to work every day and be harassed by these people. I’m not forced to interact with them on the playground. At any time, I can close the fucking window and walk away.
When you choose to open up your life via social media and allow random people to interact with you, you can’t get upset if someone in Middle America wants to call you fat, ugly, or, perhaps, a homewrecker.
I’ve learned firsthand that when you’re a public figure (even someone as minor as a reality personality), everybody has an opinion. It’s easy to spit insults from an anonymous account while sitting in your basement in Anywhere, USA, so I never take what people say to heart. Miserable people love to make other people miserable. I don’t hate those people, I just feel sorry for them.
My philosophy is that if you have the balls to post a negative comment online, you better be prepared to say it to that person’s face—and if you’re a big enough pussy to create a fake account to publicly criticize someone, you really should find a hobby. I’ve never been one to mince words, so if I decide to post something negative online, I would have no problem saying it to that person’s face. If I post that someone was being a bitch today, odds are I’ve already told that person that she was being a fucking bitch today. Occasionally, I have been known to have a few too many glasses of wine and start reacting to the more negative tweets. It’s like today’s equivalent of drunk dialing. Sometimes the wine starts flowing, and you just can’t help telling the shitheads to go fuck themselves. I know, it’s not a good idea, but you know what? #SueMe.
Drinking and Tweeting Page 9