One Website to Rule Them All

Transferring money online is a pretty personal business. I’m not going to say, open up my online bank account page in front of anybody else, not even my nana, because money just isn’t something I talk about with people – and people who ask you about your funds are people I don’t talk to. Strange then, that when I recently transferred $20 to my housemate, that below the details there was the option ‘let blahblah know you’ve transferred money through Facebook.’

Back up. Hold on. Pull up your socks.
What? 

Why on Earth would I let a website like Facebook hook up to my netbank? Bigger question: how has Facebook become so powerful on the web that they are allowed to be connected to your bank account? Is this another marketing ploy? It feels like one. See how much money I have, check out my weekly income, and suddenly, advertising to me just became a whole lot easier.

“because I am the King, darling…. now pay your taxes and offer me your firstborn son.”

Websites already ask you if you would rather sign into them through Facebook than with a username / password combination, and this seems okay-ish for sites like Goodreads and Pinterest, but sites that involve money trading hands shouldn’t be anywhere near this social media giant purely because… why do they want to be?

I constantly try to clean up my account. In 2011 I had 570 friends (for some reason) but after a friend attempted to hack me so as to stalk an ex-boyfriend,  my old account was shut down, and so I had to make a new one. I began that new one with a different view. Going through the ‘people you may know’ section looking for my old friends got me thinking ‘do I really need to add so-and-so again? What do they actually mean to me? What impact do they have on my life?‘ Most of the time the answer was not much. Now, I have a lower friend count. I don’t feel the need to add everybody, I’m not perturbed by my number of friends, and I actually feel a strange sense of  anxiety, or pity, or something for those with 1000+ friends.

Though I am sure there are happy, actually popular people out there with 2000 friends.
With my new account also came the exclamation that I was only going to upload photos of some worth. Is it funny? Is it interesting? Is it of friends? Is it pretty? However I do tend to upload a selfie or two which cannot be described as any of these things except funny. People don’t need to see everything. I cut back on my ‘about me information’, too. No more school history, no more workplace. There’s really just no need for me to have them up. Friends know where I went to school, family knows where I work. Nobody else should care what I’m doing.

It was only a couple of weeks ago though that I took to hacking down my ‘liked pages’. I unliked all my music, books, films, television pages etc. Goodreads is where I get my book listing fix, and the rest don’t matter. Besides, pages clog up a newsfeed. Except that now that I’ve cut down my liked pages to 50 (I can only see and count 18, but apparently there’s still 50. Very shifty.) I’ve been getting advertised to twice as much. Pages I’ve never even heard of show up in my newsfeed as if they’re welcome friends. “Your friend People likes this page. Like this page?’ No. Fuck off. I don’t want to like no pages about clothes or shoes or whatever. Worst of all are those apps and pages you have to ‘allow’ access to your page to see. I never click those because I don’t know why they want to know my friends list, information and likes.

But nothing about Facebook, not even the fact that they store all your messages and know not just my phone number but also the phone company (displayed in your ‘about section’ if you use it on your mobile), disturbs me more than them asking to be connected to my bank account.
So, why do I still have one? Well, my family. It’s pretty much the only way I communicate with my father who is frequently out of the country and can’t answer a telephone. Facebook chat is the easiest way. Plus, I just do. You know? You just keep your facebook. You aren’t sure why you haven’t deleted it yet, you just know that you don’t really want to… yet.
Until of course they find this post and send assassins to kill me. It’s only a matter of time.

Cat-Shaming: MittensKitten’s Edition

Lately, my posts have been lacking in substance. I took a great enjoyment and thought in writing the Internal Author-log, but even I can’t deny that my other entries have been not up to a standard I used to keep.
Well, today’s post is… completely ridiculous and in the same vein as all the recent ones.
Sorry not sorry.

Cat-Shaming. The internet has given us a mock-worship of cats, and next, websites dedicated to shaming our pets when they do something wrong. I stayed on this website for much longer than necessary, and laughed out loud way too often to be someone living a healthy life. It inspire this post, a collection of pictures of my cat’s being arseholes.

“My name is Trio and I think I’m people.”

No, I really think I’m people.

Except that I hate people. Until I want something. It’s volatile.

“My name is Manuel, and fuck you, this is my bed now.”

And fuck kids, too. I’ll sleep where I want.

I also do not care that I have gotten a little husky. I will continue to head butt your door until you feed me.
(nowadays Manuel is an outdoor cat, he has slimmed down but will still hunt mice for snacks)

“My name is Tiger and fuck Christmas, I’m the only present you could want.”

“My name is Minty and when I’m not smooshing my nose into your arm, I’m saying fuck laundry, this is my sink.” (not actually my cat, but hey, I’ve had more of its saliva down my arms than my own cats).

“DON’T LOOK AT ME”

“Like I would kiss this thing.”

I like to annoy my brother while he eats so that he eventually gives up and gives me his meal.

I played in the storm, then came in and cried, (his meow is a pitiful squeak) then I went on your bed and washed myself clean. You’re welcome.

“What? New toy?”
“Jesus what is this… this magical…. errmagherd… catnip….”

Okay, I promise there will be some better posts next week. Forgive me for this, I am guilty of loving cats. There were also many more pictures involving Trio behind the television, Tiger in my wardrobe, Tiger begging for food, Trio and Tiger sleeping on top of one another because they’re too stubborn and lazy to move for the other…. But I thought maybe you’d seen enough pictures? Haha, until next week,
J
…and these guys.

Does My Picture Change Your Opinion?

Often the appeal of the blogger comes from their anonymity.
We, as readers, are free to imagine the writer to be anybody we please. A young girl? An older woman? A boy who keeps his blog secret from his football mates? Envisioned as always smarter, funnier, wiser, prettier than us – why else would we be spending time reading their thoughts, after all?

Depending on the formality of the posts we can generally ascertain the gender, sometimes the age. Teenage girls are often easy to pick out, and older men are visible in particular to us younger ladies – sorry, guys! The modes of language, the vernacular used – determining not only age but place within the world – the level of openness in the memories provided, the topics chosen. From these we can establish who is behind the computer screen typing what we read, almost like psychic ability, or innate instinct at times.

Those pages that lead instincts astray, making us picture somebody else, give quite the surprise when the reader gives themselves away one day. I could have sworn I was following a girl in her early twenties only to discover she was in her early forties. Twenty years older in a simple admittance of age! Her topics, speech, and lifestyle were similar to mine, (an actual woman in my early twenties) so I assumed we were the same age and at the same stages because I was in fact, further in life in terms of relationships. This became a completely absurd truth to absorb once I knew her age. Really? You’re sure you’re older? And yes, I feel a right peanut for admitting I thought I was more advanced in the relationship area.

I used to provide a photo of myself in the top banner of my page until I realised I’m not famous and don’t need one. In fact I looked kind of cocky and self-centred – look at me! Look at my face right here at the top! It’s mine! The ‘success’ of my blog hasn’t changed much from when I had the photo up; same sorts of views and comments, I put down the increasing traffic to an increase in followers which is a natural progression over time, and has nothing to do with my header photo.
….It doesn’t, does it? My face wasn’t actually repelling people, was it? Please say no. I’ll be polite and pretend to believe you.

Often the shock reveal can turn readers or followers away. Kind of like when you’re in love with a musician’s voice only to see the musician singing it for the first time and suddenly, the song no longer means the same thing. The same applies to authors, especially if they use a pseudonym: my step-sister insisted that she was going to marry J.K. Rowling no matter what, ‘he’s the best. I don’t care. I’m marrying him.’ I asked, ‘What if it’s a woman?’ The thought had never crossed her mind until then, and suddenly, that mysterious man J.K. lost a little of his magic.

When we don’t know the person’s details, we create them. So, what about me, then? What do you, reader, garner from these glimpses into my thoughts and opinions? This blog, even if I get a little personal, can still never replace actually knowing me. Hearing me speak, joke, watching me move, looking back into my eyes as we converse in a real, human moment and knowing for certain who I am, or at the very least, what I am on surface level. I often look at the bloggers I follow and wonder who they really are. I look at the blogs of people I know and pick out the parts that differ on screen from their real lives.

Our mind’s eye creates a character for the blogger we read, just like how we imagine characters from books as we read. It’s always startling to hear somebodies voice for the first time, and whether or not we admit it, it’s startling to match a face to a post. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it completely discredits the person we previously declared blogging love for, i.e. ‘Wow… you have a Swastika tattoo? Never woulda thunk it… Unfollow.” All we can do is remember that spirit that breathed through the posts before we saw the face – remember how they made us feel with words rather than with their aesthetics.

This is me. The most recent picture of me, showing my facebook friends my glittery dress for the ‘sparkle’ party I attended. This is me taking a selfie.
A selfie.
Still have any respect for me? Can you separate my blog posts from this one point in time where I photographed myself, like every other girl my age? I imagine I look a little different to each of you, in whatever way.
Do I appear as you imagined me? Too many questions? I’d say ‘then just enjoy the pic’, but… well…