When people think of socialites, they generally think of ladies of style whose purpose is to get their pictures taken a lot; girls who love social activities and being on the society 'circuit.'
I don't think they're more temperamental people now. With social media we hear a lot more about it. The nastiness you get online, there were always mean girls - always - they didn't have such a big forum as they do now. Mean girls ought to get a life, I think.
No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn't create that - society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that's good.
I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'
The primary conflict, I think, is between people whose interests are with already well-established economic activities, and those whose interests are with the emergence of new economic activities.
I don't think that all girls seek the influence of older men, but I think girls whose fathers are absent or recessed from their lives often do. And honestly, when I was growing up, fathers were generally pretty absent from their children's lives. We didn't see a lot of them. That may be something that has genuinely changed for the better in our culture: men are more present for their children now that more women are working.
I think, for a lot of people, the point is to get high engagement and likes on their photos, so I think it's just good marketing. But at the same time, if you're posting pictures and you look nothing like your pictures, then it's false advertising.
Nobody can deny that we have a lot of wars going on; brothers killing brothers; we have a lot of diseases and catastrophes. But on the other hand, we have a majority of individuals, both men and women, who are struggling on a daily basis in a heroic way and the outcome of whose struggle leaves no doubt. This is a struggle whose purpose is not to seize power, and I think the strength of our entire society rests on that struggle.
I think of myself as a social scientist. In order to get hired and to get promoted, we're forced to declare a disciplinary and sub-disciplinary specialty, so I am a psychologist and I am a social psychologist within that. But I think the exciting thing is to think about the social sciences in general and the nature of society. It's one of the hardest things to think about, because our brains aren't designed to think about these emergent entities. We're not good at it.
The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.
I met eight great members. I really don't think that anyone else could get along like how our nine girls get along so well. Because we're girls, there can be a lot of jealousy going on. Thinking back on it now, I think I'm a kid who received a lot of good fortune.
When I think of high school, stills are so important: it's all about the wallet with the kids - they define themselves with pictures, who they know, whose pictures they have. Yearbook pictures.
I think that, in America, even though race is a social construct, I mean, we say this in theory, but I think a lot of people don't believe that it really is. And so it's still a very racialized society.
I think that social media is a really good way to stay in touch with the people who are following you, and I think it's nice to have that very direct relationship with them - you don't necessarily need a middleman or woman. A lot of people, when I meet them, I recognize them by their profile pictures.
I get a lot of girls who say, 'I just want to be a model so badly.' And I think: 'You can do better than that.' I mean, look, I do love it, I'm not saying anything bad about it, I just think you can do a lot more.
The internet has taken away a lot of personalization. A lot of people are writing articles and talking about being able to social network and making these connections but I don't think anything will replace the human connection making an actual conversation to somebody face to face.
I think a lot of people get lost. They start following iconic figures and get drowned in the pool of celebrity. Our society, as we know it, is definitely changing. With social media and cell phones, you freak out when you don't know what's going on.