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sincerelybillie · 6 years

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on liking yourself when others dislike you

do you think you could handle knowing, at the rate and visibility of social media “likes” and praise, how many people cannot stand you? i think about this often - how i myself do sometimes quantify and qualify my work and my worth based on the affirmation i receive, read and hear. and years of self-growth and self-love aside, to look at yourself through rose-coloured glasses isn’t any much healthier than picking at the scabs of your own insecurities. whether you’re healed or not, you’re not above self-examination. i’m really learning that these days.

there’s a lot to unpack here, so i hope you’re comfy. because i’m about to get uncomfy.

and again, the thoughts burst to the forefront of my brain and again i, in the paralysis and then dull pain of honest self-reflection, spat them down as bullet points. things that sting just as much removing an old and actual bullet from a body that’s gotten too accustomed to its own damage and romanticized being a warrior whose bones can no longer be broken w sticks, stones, or anything for that matter. but none of us are that untouchable. we wouldn’t be human.

in middle school, stephanie and sarah started a myspace comment thread about my eczema and how they didn’t want to be near me in the locker rooms during P.E. because they didn’t want to have “lizard skin” like me. i found out about their lifetime movie school bully behaviour after they’d been discussing me for weeks (which was honestly weirder than any skin condition i had? you’re preteen girls obsessively talking about my mostly naked prepubescent body that experiences dry skin sometimes? which isn’t contagious?) anyways, they both ended up having severe, cystic acne for much of their teenhood, and i always felt secure in knowing karma did a much better job than any revenge i could have employed at such a young age. i’d known stephanie since we were in first grade, and sarah was one of the “bad girls” who started wearing excessive eyeliner and push up bras before the rest of us. i guess stephanie felt like she needed to invest in something like that, for social currency. sarah got beat up a few times, i think, because other girls caught word of her trash talking. i think stephanie knew how to be strategic in her associations and never actually had to be held accountable for being shitty. i don’t know what happened to either of them, but i remember being really smug about my clear skin and the state of their faces when i found them on facebook in high school. this wasn’t productive. this didn’t make me a good person. and i guess i just always wanted to believe anyone who didn’t like me was in the wrong and would receive a cosmic consequence for being a dick to me.

let’s head to my early twenties where my first full time job with an organization i spent two years with showed me i was wrong. there were still coworkers who disliked me for really petty reasons, who still acted like spiteful and gossipy middle school bullies or were passive aggressive towards me for reasons that really didn’t make anymore sense than hating me for my allergies did. but i did have to hear and internalize and change the fact that i was too aggressive in my work ethic, isolated people who i felt didn’t work as hard as me, didn’t open up to people because i came across like nobody was worth knowing me or being trusted, was too opinionated, verbose, competitive, elitist. i couldn’t believe i could be considered these things, and anyone who called me that must have really misunderstood my commitment and my values. they were stupid and wrong. i was right. there was nothing for me to change here. but i was wrong because even if some of them had discussed me behind my back in separate group chats, behaved unprofessionally towards me, or stopped interacting w me entirely outside of mandated work environments, it didn’t automatically invalidate any and all other feedback they could have given me. it didn’t lose its legitimacy just because it was coming from someone i didn’t consider a friend with valuable insight. and because i placed so much value on the connections and thoughts of people i mutually respected, knew, and trusted, it was hard to swallow truths handed out by strangers, estranged friends, acquaintances or people i just thought sucked.

i stifled my own growth by not listening to them because i thought loving myself and hearing what people who aren’t cool with me had to say were mutually exclusive. i chose to only hear half the conversation because that’s what served me. because only hearing criticisms and insults was so poor for my mental health, that i had to swing the pendulum as hard as i could in the other direction. and that may have felt better most of the time, but it didn’t make me better long-term.

at the benefit of my sanity in this digital age, i don’t see who or how many people ignore my snapchat stories, screenshot my ig stories or discuss them when i’m not around, hate what i post, roll their eyes at my captions, or click thumbs down on my youtube videos, whether or not they watched the whole thing. but i know that people do it. i know some people choose to continue following me on social media or being friends w me because they want that mutual follow, despite never really interacting w me - positively or otherwise - on the particular platform. it’s a numbers game. they hate seeing their follower count drop more than they hate seeing me. i know i’ve been blocked, unfriended, and called names i can’t respond to before they press that button, a power move to get the last word in that i myself am guilty of using. my ex boyfriend made a hate account for me when we broke up. my numbers drop a little by a couple people on different platforms almost immediately after i share something that i guess people determine is enough of seeing me and my opinons on their timelines or feeds. my roommates talk about me and hide their ig stories from me. one of them reads my tweets, but doesn’t follow me, but she's given me a lot of valuable insight and feedback herself; the other throws temper tantrums, so i know where to put more relationship energy based on maturity and respect. i can’t explain human behaviour, my own or theirs when it comes to this. i could obsess over what possible reason anyone could have to decide to do these things. i could obsess over what possible reason anyone could have to think i’m not incredible. and that’s pathetic of me to do so, to assume so.

so many things could be a blow to the ego if i let it matter enough. but how do you know when something is insignificant and when something is a sign? my impatience w what i consider “poor performance” has made me seem pretentious, unapproachable, and aloof. so i built up my empathy muscle, i started sharing how things made me feel, what i needed from people, asking them what they needed from me, listening, giving - and that has made a monumental difference in my relationships. i have less of them now (relationships), because it is not a numbers game, but the ones i have i enjoy and i put the work in to grow and maintain, like any other garden, talent, muscle, bond. if i care enough and because i care.

apathy isn’t cool. we are not above being hurt or taking it personally, wondering what we did wrong instead of just as often deciding that person is trash anyways. so good riddance. ha ha, quality over quantity, yeah i’m never wavering from that perspective!

but i do waver because as (un)fortunate, (in)convenient, confusing, or exciting as it can be, these perceptions of “what makes me great”, “why does everyone hate me”, “i’m good enough”, “i’m untouchable”, and “i’m trash” are fluid. influenced by read receipts, break ups, little to no interaction w people you have shared laughs and important times with, technology, celebrities and pop culture, childhood flashbacks, adulthood anxieties, etc.

i’m still trying to make sense of this all. maybe you are where i am at on some or many days as well. i hope i, and you (but i can really only speak for myself, i have to remind myself on this blog) can understand what makes me a remarkable person doesn’t scream louder than the parts i should work on, doesn’t shine so much that i don’t need touch ups or entire renovations of how i act, think, and treat myself and others.

and adversely, people can dislike me because they dislike themselves or because they’re generally bad people w bad taste…or they can dislike me because there are things that i do, real behaviours that are mine, that are dislikable. bad. ugly. allowed to be criticized. allowed to be unwanted.

i can do something about them or i can let my precious, problematic ego inflate while my potential for growth and reconcilable, worthwhile relationships deteriorate. why do i preserve what i preserve? why do i overlook what i overlook? scoffs, tears, eye rolls, thank you’s, hugs.

i have all this self-awareness and all these options. i just don’t have the foresight to know what is the correct button to press. maybe part of growing up is just taking that journey, for all its guts and glory, because we’re not entitled to the ending we think we deserve. we experience the consequences of our actions, the actions of others, sometimes we get lucky, we get better, we get hurt. i have to be okay w all that, i have to learn and never stop learning from all that. even if, no matter what i become or do or say, people still decide they don’t like me.

after all, the end game isn’t likability, despite how sick these social media games can make us. my end game, my always game is just growth, goodness, the willingness to experience the refreshing pain of honest self-evaluation and re-calibration. as much as i can see greatness in myself, i’m not above being told there’s something ugly and bad that needs to be looked at too. removed.

maybe this isn’t enough for the people reading who don’t like me. is it insincere? irresponsible? i’m not here to please you or get you to like me; i need to be better, no matter what. this is the truth of how i feel and what i’ve been thinking.

yes, i like myself. enough to see past mindless hate and not change myself to accommodate others, but also enough to recognize when i need to make real change for everyone’s benefit of being/knowing a better me.

this is what needed to be said.

#personal #self worth #self love #psychology #self esteem #digital age #social media #self hate #bullying #instagram #snapchat #facebook #relationships #friendships #advice #thoughts #feelings

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gravitascivics · 5 years

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UPDATING CIVILITY, PART IV

[Note: This posting, the previous several postings, and at least the one to follow are a restatement of what has been addressed previously in this blog. Some of the sentences to come have been provided before but the concern is that other information has been discovered and an update seems appropriate. The blog has not changed the overall message – that civics education is seriously deficient – but some of the evidence supporting that message needs updating.]

This blog will now venture into addressing civility less from a quantitative perspective – reporting on how many people are rude and how many people storm out of stores because they were treated disrespectfully – to describing the social forces that are producing this less than desired condition. It will use the language of personal responsibility and citizenship to describe what is happening in this aspect of the nation’s social life.

Many people in this nation are currently concerned with the economy; at least polls seem to indicate that since the financial crisis of 2008, economic issues top voter interest. Yes, this concern is usually upper most in voters’ minds but given how so many were negatively affected by the Great Recession and its aftereffects, one can hear the anxious stridency among the populous when it comes to jobs and income.

How are civic concerns intermixed with economic problems? One can intuitively sense that there is a connection but how exactly do they relate? To have one see the connection, one needs a workable understanding of the political construct this blog promotes, federation theory. Remember that a construct is the overall view, and accompanying emotions, about some element of reality. In terms of civics, that would be over the governmental/political institution of a society.

Not only does this account want to analyze how economic conditions dispose people to either being civil or not, or how civility affects the economy, but it wants to do it in a way that illustrates how conceived notions of fellow citizens affect how one deals with economic realities. And, as the last two postings indicate, a key civic concept this account employs and is central to federation theory is the concept of social capital.[1]

This concept hints at a level of meaningful inter-connectiveness among citizens. While this whole notion will be further developed in subsequent pages of this blog, to be clear, the call here is not about instituting a pie in the sky nirvana or extreme and unrealistic altruism. Robert D. Putnam's utilization of this idea, social capital, does refer to people looking at their society as something greater than their immediate interests and ambitions, but does not delegitimize those interests.

Below, this blog will report a great deal about what exactly is being promoted by using the notion of social capital. Here, the effort is to point out that good citizens are those who embrace social capital as a positive ideal and are willing to seek its qualities in themselves and in their associations and community.

Its opposite would be narcissism and selfishness. Of course, everyone is entitled to pursue his/her individual goals and interests. The question is how one balances the demands of one’s ambitions and those of the collectives to which one belongs.

Many political writings have been about this tension and there exists varied arguments as to what leads to a productive solution to the tension. Dysfunctional approaches to handling this tension is seen as a key element in determining the levels of incivility that exist within a society.

There are social philosophies that equate economic policy and healthy social arrangements. For example, promotors of pure market values tend to do that. Adam Smith, who to many was the father of capitalism, argued that the greater good is achieved by individuals pursuing their individual interests. The cooperation entailed in providing a wanted good or service within the context of a competitive market, through the “invisible hand,” produces the best results for society in its varied aspects.

But while capitalism has given nations untold wealth and prosperity, markets do fail and at times will, if unchecked, lead to social detriment. For example, Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell[2] present a convincing argument, backed by statistical evidence, that excessive narcissism and all of its manifestations were central in creating the conditions that led to the economic crisis initiated by the onset of the near collapse of our financial market back in '08.

An irrational degree of self-enhancement promoted the excessive materialism and resulting debt which accrued from buying houses beyond people's means to running up credit card charges which placed people in unsustainable positions. Of course, lending institutions, run by equally narcissistic or purely self-centered motives, fed this monumental irresponsibility.

No, this is not an economic treatise – beyond the expertise of the writer – but here is a take on the relevant developments over the last several decades. There has been, since the 1980s, an enormous shift of wealth to the upper classes. Quoting experts Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of Berkeley: “Over the last generation more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind.”[3]

Economies that experience this type of imbalance see consequences detrimental to their overall health. One consequence tends to be that this inordinate level of income and wealth to the upper class needs to be invested. At the same time there is a demand gap; i.e., otherwise productive economic activity is hampered by a diminishing ability of the low and middle classes to consume. When this happens to any meaningful degree, two results can occur.

One, the excess money (capital) in the hands of the upper class becomes fodder for developing “bubbles;” i.e., ill-conceived investments that heighten asset prices like stocks and real estate when the fundamental economic conditions do not warrant their increases. And two, the lower classes engage in excessive borrowing to make up for the lost income (to maintain their standards of living).[4]

While these sorts of economic machinations occur, a certain animal spirit is introduced – or more accurately, encouraged – that lead to other irresponsible practices. In those pre ’08 years, for example, there were also leveraged investment schemes where borrowing was collateralized by assets attained with borrowed money. These developments progressed in the years leading up to the collapse.

In all of this, one has a lack of investment that generates long-term, needed assets that help develop such productivity enhancing projects (like infrastructure) that create sufficient middle-class employment in the economy. Hence, a diminishing middle-class occurs. And all of this is not new; the bubble effect and the excessive leveraging just described were conditions that preceded the Great Depression of the 1930s. Therefore, what was experienced more recently was a retake, but in a more complex world economy.[5]

While the ravages of the 2008 collapse did not approach those of the Great Depression, the pain associated with the Great Recession has been real and is still with the nation as segments of its people continue to struggle these many years later. Only more recently has the nation begun to get long-term unemployment under some level of control.

Whether this account is right or wrong, one did see in the pre-collapse period excessive narcissism based on assumptions created by faulty economic conditions. The nation spent way over what many of its people were earning (by borrowing on the artificially inflated equity in houses) for a long time. That time ran out in ’08 and one only hopes that the next folly – some new bubble – does not materialize.

Economically, there are still increasing levels of income and wealth disparity and this trend continues to grow, even after the ’08 collapse. The use of the concept, social capital, does lead one to see another consequence of this disparity. In Putnam’s more recent book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,[6] he writes about how the disparity has led to a high degree of economic and social segregation among the nation’s economic classes.

America is not only lacking in social capital, but it is also creating the social dynamics that will make it almost impossible to sustain any social infrastructure that would support it. Therefore, one can expect in the coming years and decades less public-spirited citizenry, less equality in terms of both economic factors – such as opportunity – and political factors, and less trust and cooperation. The nation will most likely experience weakening communal bonds and increased animosity among economic segments of the economy.

And this is not limited to how citizens interrelate. For example, Oliver Bullough describes how it has become the public policy of certain urban areas of this nation to proactively allure money investments by kleptocrats and thieves from around the world. He highlights the cities of New York and Miami in those pursuits.[7] What possibly can go wrong? At a minimum, the social qualities such policy engenders cannot be seen as promoting those values one associates with social capital.

Such policies and the economic activities described above lead to national politics becoming even more strange and antagonistic. One cannot be surprised if this antagonism adopts a more organized form. With social media as a resource, one can imagine an organized and militant response by disadvantaged groups. Seen through this prism, the current political environment with its bizarre undertakings one sees in the news, makes tragic sense.

The point is that the nation is reaping what it sowed; at least one is tempted to see it that way. And most telling is what Putnam points out: that most Americans are only semi-conscious of these causal developments. They are simply not being instructed as to these socioeconomic developments. They know that things are not as good as they used to be, but they have little understanding of what is taking place.

To illustrate his points, Putnam writes about two kids who live a few miles apart, one a product of an advantaged family, the other of a disadvantaged situation – one can’t even use the term “family” to describe his home life. Despite their proximity to each other, there is little to no chance they will ever have any contact with each other.

This is desperately different from the social world Putnam grew up in back in the 1950s. In that earlier world, his high school had kids from differing social and economic classes. The level of interaction among the different segments of the student body was healthy and often. This is not so true today and the level of such interaction is becoming more and more infrequent.

For one thing, poorer kids are stuck in dysfunctional schools while wealthier kids are more apt to attend private schools. The “indivisibility” of our nation is becoming a memory. It needs to address this development by, in part, having its economic metrics account for the cost factors that result from such segregation. One way it can begin to address this growing dysfunction is by changing what is taught in civics classes: they can include lessons that describe and explain the sources of such realities.

Civics education has not been responsible for either the economic collapse of 2008 or the class segregation one presently sees growing, but it was, along with many other factors, complicit. Its content has been devoid of information reflecting what was or is happening. It has obviously not successfully promoted social capital.

Such instruction, to the degree it could have been effective, would have promoted a whole array of values that would have questioned many of the assumptions that were being made and that proved or are proving false. With excessive self-absorption and little to no concern for the general welfare, people were easily led to cast a blind eye on the irresponsible behavior in which many had been and still are engaged.

For one, those who were/are responsible for this civics content just didn't or don’t want to see what today should seem very clear: the nation engages in self-defeating courses of action when the general view is limited to self-interest. What is worse, the average American still doesn’t recognize this deficiency to any meaningful degree.

Is the claim here that most Americans don’t care for the common good? No, it is not. But the claim here is that there are not enough people who are concerned for the common good; who share enough social capital. And in that, civics education shares a meaningful amount of the blame for this deficiency.

[1] As used and defined by the political scientist, Robert Putnam, who defines social capital as a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation; it speaks to communal bonds and cooperative interactions. See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[2] Jean M. Twenge and W. K. Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York, NY: Free Press, 2009).

[3] Bog Herbert, “Fast Track to Inequality,” The New York Times, November 1, 2010, accessed May 1, 2019, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02herbert.html? r=1&src=me&ref=homepage.

[4] At the time of this posting, there is current concern over a debt bubble being accrued by large corporations. Two reports on this development acknowledge the high levels of debt but see it from different perspectives over its potential to result in meaningful damage to the economy. They are as follows: Peter Tchir, “Corporate Debt Keeps Piling Up,” Forbes, January 27, 2019, accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/petertchir/2019/01/27/corporate-debt-keeps-piling-up/#2b1ef1c57910 AND “Should the World Worry about America’s Corporate-/Debt Mountain?” The Economist, March 14, 2019, accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/03/14/should-the-world-worry-about-americas-corporate-debt-mountain.

[5] See Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

[6] Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2015).

[7] Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back (London, England: Profile Publishers, 2019).

#civility #civics #civics education #social studies

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oselatra · 6 years

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Little Rock, cut low

The capital city lands on a ranking of the worst cities in the country.

Did you hear that Little Rock is one of the "50 worst cities to live in"? That's what a list USA Today published last month said. The capital city is "the worst city to live in in the state and one of the worst in the country," said the report, which was compiled by the website 24/7 Wall Street. The article placed Little Rock at No. 19, between Compton, Calif. (No. 20), and Gary, Ind. (No. 18). Detroit was atop the list — or on the bottom, from the city's perspective — and Fort Smith was ranked 50th worst, but only because Las Vegas, the previous No. 50, pointed out a data error that got it removed from the list.

The technical term for these rankings in the world of statistical analysis is "bullshit." Those who make the rankings use imprecise data, or data imprecisely, to cynically manipulate people's insecurities about the places they live. And the ploy often works. These meaningless numerical concoctions grab the attention of the public and, sometimes, elected leaders.

So it went in Little Rock, where news of our city's ignominy didn't make it here until last week, when the Arkansas Times published an online squib on the rankings. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette followed with an online article that included a humdrum defense from Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola: "I invite 24/7 Wall Street to come down and experience for themselves our downtown renaissance, generous and welcoming people, natural beauty and comfortable way of life. In the meantime, we'll continue working tirelessly to build an even better Little Rock."

On arkansasonline.com, the Democrat-Gazette's website, many commenters appeared to confuse the capital city with the bleakest version of Gotham City. From a commenter named Slak: "Napalm followed by bulldozers would clear out most of the violence and property crime. There's nothing of value; burn out the filth, clean up the debris, get a fresh start." Perhaps in response to Stodola's statement, CartoonDude said, "It is terribly irresponsible to suggest people come visit your downtown without warning them to always travel in a group, avoid alleys, and NEVER be downtown after dark." Hawk1945 wrote, "We will not even go to Little Rock if at all possible, because of violent crime."

Did you know Wally Hall, the Democrat-Gazette's longtime sports editor and columnist, occasionally offers trenchant social commentary, too? In a brief note last week, he said it was hard to argue with Little Rock's selection based on the "crime number and jobs" the article quoted (it didn't quote anything about jobs), but that USA Today obviously didn't take into account the Arkansas River Trail, Dickey-Stephens Park or restaurants like Corky's or Doe's.

"Little Rock tends to live better, for a lot of us, than its data indicates," John Brummett, the daily paper's centrist political columnist, wrote in another column. But he also said, "The city and others like it — where significant minority populations have been abandoned, isolated and neglected — deserve to be judged with appropriate harshness."

Others pointed out that Little Rock has often scored high in other similar rankings. After all, Movehub.com put it at No. 86 in its global ranking of "hipster cities," which it determined by counting the number of vegan eateries, coffee shops, tattoo studios, vintage boutiques and record stores per 100,000 residents. Meanwhile, one publication you may have actually heard of, U.S. News and World Report, had Little Rock as the 38th best city in the country last year.

After the recent media flurry around the USA Today article, Resonance, a consulting company that owns the website bestcities.org, tweeted at the Little Rock Convention and Visitor's Bureau that its best "small" cities ranking — "citing many more data points than many 'other' studies" — found Little Rock to be a great place to live. And, oh, by the way, Resonance would love to provide consulting services to the LRCVB, like it has for Visit Fayetteville, Destination Cleveland and Travel Portland. On the Resonance list, Little Rock was No. 23, between Wichita, Kan. (No. 22), and Greenville, S.C. (24). Honolulu was No. 1.

Leading with Honolulu, a large city with all the requisite cultural amenities and known for its beaches, at least passes the eye test. The No. 1 city in which to reside in the "best" city rankings from 24/7 Wall Street? Carmel, Ind., a well-to-do suburb where my sister-in-law and her family live in a lovely house in a lovely neighborhood that looks remarkably similar to many other lovely houses and lovely neighborhoods nearby. It has nice parks and a new downtown with all sorts of New Urbanist flourishes, but its proximity to Indianapolis is the main thing it has going for it.

University of Delaware Professor Joel Best, the author of "Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists," said the first time he became aware of city rankings was when he was living in Fresno, Calif., in 1984, and a geographer ranked Fresno last among 277 cities considered in a "Places Rated Almanac."

Best remembers that The Fresno Bee newspaper "got very excited" over the low ranking, in part because Bakersfield, Calif., near Fresno and widely seen, according to Best, as "a terrible place," was ranked higher.

"There was a powerful feeling something was amiss," he said, laughing.

The trend of ranking cities coincided with the rise of the personal computer and spreadsheet software. Anyone with those tools could assemble an index aimed at ranking various criteria. "It became a game of figuring out what statistics were available and cobbling them in some sort of ranking ... and predictably you get a lot of [media] coverage from cities that do well," Best said.

The internet made such lists ubiquitous. Turns out readers can't get enough of rankings coated in a veneer of math. Legacy media organizations, like U.S. News and World Report and Time's Money magazine, seem to promote their best cities and colleges lists ahead of everything else they publish — surely because that's what generates the most traffic and, in turn, advertising revenue. That appears to be the same business model for 24/7 Wall Street, the Delaware-based website behind the worst cities list in which Little Rock figured. It churns out more than two dozen stories a day, including many that rank things, and has syndication arrangements with Yahoo! Finance, The Huffington Post, USA Today and more. Everything the website publishes is transparently designed to generate maximum traffic to sell advertising against.

Then there are sites, like WalletHub, that compile endless "studies" on cities they distribute to media in a marketing-as-content strategy in hopes that people will read a story about the fattest cities in America (this year: Little Rock/North Little Rock) and remember the name "WalletHub" when they're looking for a site to help with personal finance.

The connective tissue among the endless city rankings? "They're absolutely meaningless," according to Best, who's spent much of his career writing about innumeracy — the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy — and how statistics are misused and misunderstood. Like U.S. News' and other groups' best colleges lists, the city rankings fit into a category Best calls "magical numbers."

"[W]e often turn to statistics for their magical ability to clarify, to turn uncertainty into confidence, to transform fuzziness into facts," Best writes in his book "More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues." "These statistics don't even need to be particularly good numbers. We seem to believe that any number is better than no number, and we sometimes seize upon whatever figures are available to reduce our confusion."

24/7 Wall Street explains that its methodology includes statistics that measure crime, demography, economy, education, environment, health, housing, infrastructure and leisure. It's impossible to truly dissect how the website arrives at its rankings because, unlike its peers, it doesn't explain how it weights individual categories. (After responding quickly to a question about methodology, 24/7 Wall Street Editor-In-Chief Douglas McIntyre didn't respond to a follow-up about how categories weighted.) But even if we could see how the website determines its scores, it wouldn't lend any authority to its conclusion because there aren't datasets that comprehensively track any of its chosen categories. The data 24/7 Wall Street and all other list makers are using is a proxy for what they claim to measure, and it's often a bad proxy.

Take the "leisure" category in the 24/7 Wall Street list. Part of the scoring claims to quantify the number of leisure activities nearby, but outside, a city. To account for that it adds up the number of zoos, nature parks, ski resorts and golf courses in the counties surrounding a city. That conception of how leisure time works might make sense for large cities that constitute most if not all of a county, but in a mid-size city like Little Rock, few of us would travel outside Pulaski County to do any of those things (because, sadly, the I.Q. Zoo in Hot Springs is closed and Garland County is not immediately adjacent to Pulaski County). And why the seemingly arbitrary choice to track ski resorts and not beaches or lakes? Probably because the data on recreational bodies of water is messy or not readily available.

Even harder numbers like crime rates aren't that great for determining how safe a city is. Crime isn't uniformly distributed. In Little Rock, what most of us would think of as violent crime is concentrated in the south and southwest parts of the city. In an interview, Mayor Stodola told the Times that about 60 percent of the violent crimes Little Rock reports are for misdemeanor theft of items valued at less than $1,000. For instance, in Stifft Station, where I live, it's highly likely that, if I leave something valuable in my car and don't lock it, someone is going to steal it. But it's highly unlikely I'm going to be robbed or hit by stray gunfire.

"We're like any urban city in the country; we have our challenges," Stodola told me. "But we also have our wonderful things we're very, very proud of and we continue to work on all of them."

The mayor has said he won't seek re-election. So far, four candidates have filed to run to replace him: former Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus, state Rep. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock), Little Rock banker Frank Scott and LRSD employee Vincent Tolliver.

Only Scott publically weighed in on the rankings, tweeting that as a Little Rock native it hurt him to see Little Rock place on the worst cities list. But, he said, a change was going to come: "I wouldn't be running for Mayor of #LittleRock if I didn't believe in what's possible for our city, and the path we can take to unite each corner, strengthen our infrastructure, create safer communities, and make basic quality of life essential for families and neighbors."

And maybe that's the ultimate takeaway from these endless rankings: They may not add up to anything, but, especially in an election year, there's nothing wrong with getting provoked to debate all the ways in which Little Rock could be better.

Little Rock, cut low

#Little Rock #cut low

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