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.

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…

Mean Comments: Click Approve?

Question: if you don’t allow a mean comment to be visible on your blog, are you hiding something or just looking out for yourself?

The thing about the internet, and having any sort of public platform on the internet, is that you’re going to attract a snarky remark at some point. It’s inevitable. There are too many people of differing viewpoints, experiences, feelings and knowledge for there to ever be perfect harmony. Which is a good thing, of course, I don’t need to rattle off the whole ‘because if we were all the same life would be boring” spiel again, do I?

It turns into a bad thing however, when people cast off all their humanity in order to just go to town on someone. Which is where our right to unapprove comments like that comes into affect. There’s a lot of talk about twitter trolls here in Australia at the moment, after an incident with a famous person attempting suicide after the abuse she received. But on twitter you have no choice in whether somebody sends you an insulting tweet or not, it’ll just show up in your ‘connect’ tab and be on their twitter page until they decide to remove it.
Whereas wordpress gives us a choice in how we tackle these little weasels.

“Your blog sucks. Your posts are too short. You spelt everything wrong. …Oh and remember your favourite aunt? She told me she hates you now.”

Evil weasel up there is more of a worst case scenario, I’m sure your trolls aren’t involved in starting family feuds with your great aunts, but we’ve all had that moment of sweaty palms, light headedness, hot blood pushing through constricted veins as we clumsily try to re-read that thing that just popped up in our notifications that surely can’t be right? Can it??

I’ve been lucky so far. Only three less-than-pleasant comments. Nobody mentioned any aunts, or anything personal. The first one of these comments was from a disgruntled reader, who’d never stopped by my blog before but who now felt the need to point out that I’d written my post wrong. She even got all passive aggressive on me, “I find it interesting that…” Oh! You find it interesting? Forgive me because I thought you found me stupid!
The thing was, though, she must have only read the top half, or else was just not very bright. She said that I had only tackled one half of my argument which was “No audience: freeing or disheartening?”, when I had actually dedicated the second half to it being freeing after writing about the disheartening side. Yeah. I ended up deleting the entire post. I wanted to make it private anyway, on second thought, but after I logged back in to see her comment, I felt really crappy about the entire thing: myself for even thinking up the post, and my blog entirely.

The next time I got a mean comment was just flat out rude. At first they’d been pleasant, then all of sudden they’d written “LOL!” (in capitals no less) before actually mocking me over something I did. Something which, mind you, wasn’t even anything embarrassing or mockable. Wasn’t like I was shacking up with a stuffed toy or anything.

So those 2 comments and the third, which I won’t mention, were never approved. They were irrelevant to the post itself. In fact, it seems most mean comments are irrelevant to the posts themselves. The only time you really need to point out to someone if they’re being a bit of a douche, is if they’re being a complete, insensitive bigot about something, or if they’ve stated something completely false. Even then, you don’t need to get into name calling. As much as it feels good to call insensitive bigots swear words.

I read on somebody else’s blog a comment saying “This wasn’t even funny”. I was surprised that they’d decided to keep it there, a little blip of hatred pulling your eyes towards it like a beacon, so it was the only comment you remembered. I also wondered why the person had felt the need to write it in the first place – guess what buddy, on the internet, there’s every kind of humour imaginable and you won’t find them all hilarious, deal.

“Ah ha ha ha! Bald jokes are hilarious! …..wait”
http://www.joroperphotography.co.uk/pages/photo-gallery/events.php?gall_id=45

I say don’t approve mean or pointless comments. They take away from the post, turning it negative, and you’ll always dwell on that one comment every time you see that post. If somebody tells you you’re wrong about something you’ve stated – check the facts, if it’s true, thank them for being kind enough to point it out (even if they weren’t being nice) and change the wrong fact. If someone is just commenting to be a piece of poop, don’t even look twice at it. If you want to permanently cement that time that person was an arsehole for no reason, then click approve. Don’t even work up a sweat over it. Like I said, it’s the internet – you cannot please everyone here, and by not choosing to approve a comment you’re not hiding something (unless… you are, you shifty eyed creeper) you’re keeping your blog friendly. Having a public profile on any site means you have to accept that one day someone will be mean to you, which is perhaps crappy, but unavoidable all the same.

Side note: have you ever stopped to think that the person writing the blog you’re reading might actually be a shitty person in real life? It would make sense that at least some of them are, especially if you know a shitty person who blogs. Look at me, I could be a clown murderer for all you know. I think I’m getting off topic. You probably don’t need to know that I wonder if I’m reading the blog of a serial killer, or a wife beater, or a real life bully when perusing wordpress. Let’s all go back to pretending every blogger here is lovely.

Facebook Baby Parade

A few of my Facebook friends have children, and simply by being their Facebook friend I can see their kids grow up, digitally. Even though I have only met one specific child once, I have since then seen their first foot steps, their first dress ups, their first sickness, their first hair cut etc because there are photos of it in my newsfeed. Moments that were previously only for parents and maybe grandparents to share are now bait for likes and comments. Another child who I’ve never met I feel stupidly attached to because I see their face every day and I know everything that they’re up to. Everything.

And it’s fucking weird.

Think about it for a minute. I know almost everything about these children and I haven’t even met most of them in the flesh! It occurred to me that I shouldn’t be this privy to each of these kid’s whims, triumphs and activities. They don’t know who I am and probably never will, but I will forever more remember their first years of life. I am now oddly attached to these other humans by simply seeing photos of them smiling and crying every day, and I’m also – in a detached sort of way – sharing in their milestones by liking the statuses about them.

I understand that when you have a child you want to share every great thing about them, or every concern you have for them (Dr. Facebook) because they’re the little life that makes you proudest, happiest and gives you purpose. Ergo, your Facebook page – which has become so important in our lives over recent years – becomes a platform for those feelings.

Check it out, thanks to Google images I’m nailing my point. This baby has no idea I’m using it’s image to do that or giving it a silly caption. Mwuahaha

People site reasons for having so many baby photos in their albums as being ‘family’ and to keep the photos safe in case a computer or camera is broken or lost. Legitimate reasons, but you can make albums for your child’s photos set only to family members viewership, and you can set entire albums to private – ‘only me’ – if you’re just trying to keep the pictures safe. Yet, how often do you see that happening?
[Well I er, guess you wouldn't see it happen if they were set to private, Jess.
Shut up brain!]

It’s become so ingrained in our culture to just post post post that people rarely stop to think about what they’re actually posting, only coming up with those sorts of excuses afterwards; post-justification. Which is totally an awesome play on words.
Besides, half the fun of uploading a picture is to see how many likes and comments it gets, just like how half the fun of making a blog post is seeing if people read it. Also, if you throw your child a party and your Facebook friend’s were there, they’ll expect you to upload the photos and tag them!

Having watched people share pictures of their children doing anything from taking a bath, blowing out their first birthday candles, holiday happy snaps, the children crying from illness or injury (baffles me that they photograph this and post it while trying to comfort their baby, but maybe I’ll understand when I give birth, huh?) and even ultrasound photos(!) is that if I have a child of my own one day I won’t be posting pictures of them on my social networking sites – I won’t be cementing them in the technological world before they even reach the real one.
I’ve already decided – one announcement photo and then maybe a couple with strict privacy settings on them after that (my family live at the other end of the country, so I can actually use that excuse, oh yeah.)

I don’t want to fear monger or further any paranoia about paedophilia or kidnap, but that is a factor as well. You have no clue what goes on in the heads of the people flicking through your albums. No clue. You have no idea who on your friends list chooses to look at your photos. I mean I am, for one thing, and while I am mentally sound (I er, hope) I bet a lot of the parents had no clue I was looking and thinking to myself ‘man it’s weird that I know what your baby wears to bed… Am I the only one thinking this?’ which is kinda fine because I’m not about to go out and steal your child (which is a complete worst case scenario example) but did you ever wonder who else is peeking at your pics but thinking something much more sinister?

I felt conflicted about posting the above paragraph because I’m a believer in not having to censor naturalness for a minority (in the same way I don’t think that short skirts translate to “I want to be raped”) but after Facebook made a new policy where recently uploaded profile pictures become public without you choosing for them to be, and mine were shared and stolen, eugh, I thought I’d keep it in. The Facebook fiasco allowed my little sister’s picture to become public as well, and while I don’t agree with children even having a Facebook at all, that somebody could have stolen her pics as easily as they did mine just seemed an eerie push to not scrap it.
No website is safe no matter how many of your friends and family members use it. You shouldn’t have to censor your babies, and you definitely shouldn’t have to take down all your photos just because people like me find it weird (hence why I didn’t be an ass and go and pm mother’s with “please take this down I found it offensive, be more considerate” but wrote this spiel instead) I’m just saying be careful; stop for a moment and ask yourself if you want to share every detail of your child’s life with everyone on your friend’s list.

I’m not having a dig at any parents who do put up their children’s photos (unless you put up naked photos of your kids in which case there’s something wrong with you) because it really is our culture now to post that I’m sure many have never thought twice about it, nor have any posted a photo with malicious intent. I am just saying that I realised how bloody weird it is for me to see tiny humans grow on my screen when I won’t see them do it in real life.

I don’t want that for my own future children. My future baby will probably grow up to be like, “Tech…nol..ogy? Is that like, a tor..toise?”

Stupidity: the social network edition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDsnCrSfzCQ&feature=player_embedded#!

The above is an hour long documentary on the stupidity of people, and how when it comes down to it, people are going to choose to watch stupid movies and television shows, read stupid books (case in point, 50 Shades of Grey) and look at the profiles of stupid people on facebook, tumblr, twitter, etc. Why? 1. It makes us feel better about ourselves, 2. It’s entertaining, 3. Stupid people often say and do the things that we either can’t, won’t or realise are too stupid to actually do / say and we want to see the fallout. And I’m sure there are more reasons I could tell you if I were say, a psychiatrist.

The video was a sort of validation I needed for my belief that on social media sites you’re going to get a lot of attention if you’re an idiot. Kind of like how hot girls are always going to get a lot of traffic on their pictures, the same goes for certain blogs getting a heavy traffic flow due to the silliness of the content. Think of how on youtube, boys doing silly stunts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4t9jz03c04&feature=related) is likely to get more views than something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY, where you can learn something interesting and new that could possibly shake everything you thought you knew.

This isn’t to say that the first video is of less value than the second (though, well…) it just goes to show that most of the time when a person sits down at their computer, or to watch tv, they’re looking for entertainment – not education.

This realisation struck me when I spent more time on my tumblr account than I ever had before.
14 year old girls who post mostly pictures of One Direction, talk openly about their sex lives (or lack of, one would hope for 14 year olds) and who have weird arguments with anonymous people usually have thousands more followers than the account of someone with broad interests, who blogs well, talks nicely to their followers and can hold a decent conversation. I’ve met some really cool people on tumblr, all different, but all smart, and they all had under 300 followers. While on other hand, I’ve met some vain, boring people with over 25,000 followers. And I couldn’t tell you the real reason why.
Remember the hipster blog phenomena of tumblr? That goes into what I’m talking about.

Remember even further back when Shoko Asahara made the followers of his cult believe he could levitate and had them all practising for hours even though he never actually let them see him do it in person? Yeah. That’s probably one of the stories that really drives the point home. It’s not a social networking example, but I thought it was neat all the same.

Which brings me to wordpress. So far I’ve only been here two weeks and I really like it. For the most part, people here just love writing, expressing themselves and connecting with people and they’re all able to do so without coming across as an idiot. I have come across one or two however where the blogger has written something nonsensical, or not truthful, or plain awful and they’re the ones with comments saying “Great stuff!” and “Very true, love your blog.” and lots of likes, while meanwhile I’ve found posts with no comments and no likes that are actually awesome.

What is this attraction to stupid we have? As the video said, “attraction”. Why do we value the opinions from a silly post more than a serious one? Is it because we think the serious blogger thinks they’re superior and we don’t want to give them the satisfaction of validating their intelligence? Do we prefer to have the attention from sillier people?

People are strange creatures. In high school, no one liked the know-it-all and instead wanted to chat with the loud-mouthed gossiper. I’m not claiming to be a smarter person than anyone, in case you’ve gotten all hot under the collar with indignation that I dare say anything of the sort – I am just genuinely baffled.

If I find out the reason. I’ll let you all know. In the meantime, anybody have any examples of this in action?
Also, if you find that nobody ever likes your posts, don’t worry, you’re probably too smart or awesome for them anyway.