How I Became a Technobear
(and Overcame Technophobia
to Create the First Interview Book
Compiled Primarily from Online Chats)
by Ron Suresha
No way in hell had I any intention of becoming the least bit technosavvy when I began conducting magazine interviews for the gay press in 1998. Fact is, I had dumped the relatively lucrative trade of high-end ad typography a long decade prior, faced with the ultimatum: assign my efforts to the type shop’s PostScript service bureau, or start shopping for a new boss. I thumbed my nose at the prospects of becoming a Mac-head and quit, migrating to a below-poverty-line life of freelance calligraphy, signmaking, book proofreading, gardening, and occasional stints as a plumber’s helper. I was a poor shmuck, true, but at least I hadn’t sold my soul, staring into a demon monitor ten hours a day.
Ah, but fate is fickle-fingered. After returning to gainful employment at a midsized book publisher in Boston for several years, I yearned to follow my dream of becoming a writer. The Mac Plus came out of my closet and onto my desk, where I pecked with abandoned but felt I still could maintain my emotional detachment from technology. Using a computer was what I did, not who I was.
I followed my interest in Bears — not the four-legged kind, but the subculture of gay/bi men characterized by their affinity for facial and body hair, less than svelte body shapes, and generally masculine attitude. Bears represent an antithesis of what most person’s concept of gay men is like. Think John Goodman in “Normal, Ohio.” Never saw it? Okay, think Grizzly Addams, but gay: now that’s a Bear.
I watched Bear subculture burst from its boyhood britches in mid-1980s San Francisco to a mature informal brotherhood with large Bearclubs and huge weekend vacation group gatherings around the U.S., and the world. One of my contacts with a men’s magazine, American Bear, showed interest in running interviews with (hairy) gay men of note. I held the first interview with two bearish (but not necessarily Bear-identified) friends, David Bergman and Michael Bronski, both prominent writers, editors, and cultural critics.
Still determined to resist geekishness, I upgraded my Mac Plus to a Performa. Somehow, even though I was modemless then, I got the wild-assed idea in my head to conduct this first interview employing online chat technology. Not that I’d ever chatted online myself. Really. Sure, I’d watched pals jabber and cruise in chatrooms, but I had loftier aims. Heck, if they could bullshit online, why couldn’t I pursue intellectual lines of thought? Not only that, this innovative journalistic method seems uniquely appropriate for a subculture that grew up alongside the Internet in the last generation of the twentieth century.
I relied heavily on a friend’s computer expertise and equipment to set up and execute the online chat in an AOL chatroom. Somehow, I managed clumsily to posit the questions I’d prepared and to keep the discussion on-topic. Nearly three hours later, after David, Michael, and I all signed off, I collapsed, overwhelmed by the effort of chatcom. Further, I dreaded the work remaining — reformatting and reworking the piecemeal text into a flowing, readable piece of journalism.
The process of editing the text, however, turned out far smoother than expected. Reformatting chat text was a dream compared to the normally mind-numbing tedium of transcribing a taped interview. Not only that, I saw the opportunity to parlay different parts of the vast amount of material for different publications. In fact, eventually the first piece, “You Can Lead a Bear to Culture But . . .,” was excerpted not only in American Bear but also in four other national lgbt magazines, an anthology, and the premier Bear Website www.ResourcesForBears.com.
Jazzed by the initial success, I began to sniff out other interview subjects. Some folks preferred to conduct the interviews the old-fashioned way, in-person or via telephony. (Said one reluctant bear, “AOL is Evil! Evil! Evil!”) But if the interviewee was even remotely technocapable, I usually insisted on conducting the chat online. Sure, it meant more work for the participant. But, I countered convincingly, the expense of setting up online discussions (basically, zip) beat by a longshot the cost of a three- or four-way long-distance conference call. Not to mention the time saved over transcribing!
Disadvantages were small, by comparison, but peculiar. The chat technology, still in prepubescence, constrained participants to type only a few lines at a time, yet allowed several people to write at once, which led to sometimes confusing, sometimes hilarious sequences of dialogue. Here’s a slice of unedited conversation with three journalists:
Ron: Ok, gentlemen, everyone ready to begin?
Rex: How do I make a bigger font like ron’s?
Wayne: ready and willing
Chris: your font is perfect rex, more than a mouthful goes to waste
Wayne: not if you swallow fast enough
Ron: Go to the Format pulldown menu
Chris: lol
Rex: I installed it on a computer I hate with a bad video card.
Ron: I like your font fine too, Rex
Ron: Shall we? any Qs before we begin?
Wayne: Ron, I’m assuming that since this is cyber that all rules of punctuation and capitalization have been suspended?
Chris: oh look there’s a wwf chat, gotta go
Wayne: I’m heading to Britney Spears
Chris: aren’t we all?
Wayne: !
Ron: Ah yes, Wayne
Wayne: ok i c kewl
Ron: get back here!!!
Rex: kewl, dewd; this is sandy eggo [San Diego]
Ron: Well, you don’t have to TRY to misspell!
At times such as this, journalistic anarchy reigned — it’s harder to redirect conversation with a mouse than with voice. But for most of the (well-behaved) interviewees, conversational nuance, inflection, and spontaneity suffered at the expense of having to use pat typewritten conventions, such as (grin) and the ubiquitous infernal emoticons.
The first few interviews to hit print went swimmingly, and grabbed some hot response. Encouraged and ballsy, I pitched an idea to a major glbt publisher for a collection of these Bear-themed interviews. Some of the pieces, I proposed, would be personality-focused, such as one-on-one interviews with comedian Bruce Vilanch, “Survivor” Rich Hatch, and a bearish NH state senator. Some would investigate overarching aspects of the Bear subculture, such as “Bear Masculinity and Maturity,” “Bears as Subversives,” and “Evolving Bear Community.” And some would arrange panels around a sub-subcultural theme, such as “Gen-X Bears and Bear Youth,” “Bears of Color,” and “Bear Beauty Contests.” Much to my shock, delight, and dismay, the proposal was accepted.
Once I caught the online chat interview bug, my fever for the entire project escalated exponentially. It became a crash course in online chat technologies as I scrambled to learn the ins and outs of AIM, ICQ, and IRC, the dominant free chat operations available. (Yahoo! IM was not available at the time.) I joined way too many listservs and then broadcast appeals for variously qualified participants on them, especially the Bears Mailing List (“Any ex-bears or post-bears wanna rant?”), which boasts about 3,000 members worldwide, and whose founder and moderator I both enlisted for a panel on “Technobears and Cybearspace.”
I was in deep. I ditched the Performa for a sleek new G3 Blue.
Some interviewees had strong preferences for one chat program or another, and all had pluses and minuses. AIM, though popular, too tightly limited the amount of text one could write at once, displayed adbuttons above and below the buddy list, and the AOL people were always getting bounced offline. IRC was technically most difficult but had a feature that logged the text without having to constantly save it to a Word doc. I found ICQ to meet my needs best: its ease of downloading, text format, features, and low profile fit the bill.
IM programs also helped to track down elusive prospects. After I had sent messages through several common acquaintances to celebrity Bruce Vilanch without response, I discovered his AOL eddress, buddylisted him and then, at a choice moment, IMed with my interview request. Bruce called me a pain in the ass, but I got the gig. Virtually the same scenario for Rich Hatch. As always with these requests, patience, politeness, and persistence were assets, but the technology got me in the door when regular methods had failed. I was impressed with the power of chat-tech.
I learned that conducting an online interview or discussion is somewhat different from that of the in-person or telephonic interview. Most people can’t convey great nuances of meaning on their keyboards, at least not as subtly as in the flesh. Hell, most people can’t seem to bear (ha ha) the extra work it takes to spell out “for you.” The trick was to gently ask clarification, to help the interviewee find some way of expressing their thoughts without banging in a freaking emoticon after every sentence.
To help interviewees prepare, I sent out an outline of suggested questions and topics before the actual discussion. This gave them the chance to type out some of their ideas beforehand, then cut and paste as appropriate. This helped keep the conversations relatively focussed while allowing for spontaneity at any time. Overall, most chats turned out to be an informative, entertaining mixture of critical analysis and personal experience.
Technical difficulties abounded, but somehow everyone took it in stride. Once for a panel chat on Bear “circuit” weekend events, the four interviewees managed to assemble in an AOL chatroom — without me. My AIM was running but wouldn’t let me into the chatroom. After 15 minutes of frustrated attempts, one inspired participant phoned to have me sign up on AOL for their free trial. (“I can’t find that trial CD for AOL!” “You’re probably using it as a coaster.” “Oh, there it is, under my saguaro.”) Sure enough, within minutes I was on AOL and in the appropriate chatroom.
The situation was rife with comic missteps and unfortunate, maddening impasses. Once, for the panel on “Technobears and Cybearspace,” one professional Webmaster couldn’t get online at all — due to Pac Bell having dug up his house phone line at the crucial moment. He called to notify us from his cell phone, and we rescheduled.
For the “Bearsex and Bearotica” panel, the assistant publisher of one Bear-themed magazine cancelled at the last minute ñ three times. On the third time he volunteered an inexperienced editor to join in the panel without asking me first. Needless to say, that publication was not represented.
On the other hand, some panels and interviews came together as silky as a bearcub’s fur.
Without much resistance on my part, the scope of the book ballooned from 12 to 15 pieces to 25 articles. I knew I was in way over my head, but one must-do topic or interviewee suggested another. Finally, just as I thought I was reining in the scope of the book, one ambitious, gigantic, gonzo-ultimate topic popped into my chat-hyped overheated brain: International Bears.
The very minute I committed to bringing together self-identified Bears from around the world, I began a mantra that still echoes in my soul: “What was I thinking?” It was so far beyond any form of journalism I’d ever heard of: bringing together nine men — all leaders in the Bear movement in their respective countries — spanning 14 time zones: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
The challenge was to find English-speaking (or rather, English-typing) guys at the forefront of their Bear communities, who also knew something of their continent’s Bear scene and of U.S. Bear culture, who were reasonably articulate, and who were online-chat friendly — a daunting task.
When finally I had commitments from an outstanding group of men, scheduling became the predominant headache. Ultimately, I had to schedule the chat in several groups, and two men individually. I asked virtually all the same questions of each panelist, so although there was limited interaction between some of the Bears, from more than 100 pages of raw chat transcript I cobbled together a largely coherent conversation.
It wasn’t until after I completed the first full draft of the manuscript that I realized I accomplished something brand spankin’ new in journalism. To the best of my knowledge, Bears on Bears is the first interview book (gay or nongay) compiled primarily or even substantially from online discussions. It’s also the most widely excerpted gay book of the year.
Cyberjournalism is a relatively new frontier. Chat-tech has improved greatly even in the four years since I began conducting online interviews. There’s a special feeling to this sort of veritÈ reporting: bringing together people with common interests from far-flung places in the comfort of their own homes. At home, most folks are relaxed and candid and droll – a perfect informant attitude for cultural studies such as Bears on Bears. As the technology becomes more user-friendly and widespread, more of this interviewing form in the mainstream press is likely to pop up.
Are e-interviews as effective as verbal ones? Readers will have to judge that themselves. But in the process of putting the book together, I overcame my doubts about the practical value of computer and Internet technology for my journalistic work. Here you are perusing my personal Website, with two sites established expressly to promote Bears on Bears and the anthology I edited, Bearotica. I have relied heavily on my wonderful Web-bear, Jeff Shaumeyer, to set up the Website’s architecture and design, but I’m learning HTML a little at a time. In fact, I created this whole Web page by myself! Better or worse, I’ve now become a technobear.
See you in the Bears Den chatroom!
