Category Archives: Social Networking

How Legacy Publishers Are Killing the Future of an E-reader Market

Books, Business, Economics, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , ,

When the Kindle first came out, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Actually, that’s not completely true. I was apprehensive because I was a believer in having a hard-copy of the book with me while reading it, but eventually I started to see that this could be a good thing. I went out and bought an Amazon Kindle, and shortly after that I gave up my newspaper subscription and subscribed to an online version of the newspaper (delivered over the Kindle). Then I ended up with an Ipad 2, and with the Amazon Kindle app, I have been able to read the Washington Post every morning by paying for it with that subscription.

But for books, it hasn’t been as wonderful an experience. As a matter of fact, the e-reader experience has gone from “hopeful” to “dismal” and the fault of this situation rest solely on the backs of the publishing industry itself. You see, in the very beginning, Amazon was offering books at the rate of $9.99, which was probably the perfect point for paying for a brand new book on an e-reader. The publisher wasn’t losing out because the manufacturing costs were practically nil, and their books were getting to their readers almost instantaeously. But publishers didn’t like not having complete control over their market, so they forced Amazon to allow the publishers to set the price for books. Now, an entry price is anywhere from $14.99 to $25.00 on an e-reader. As expected, owners of e-readers have practically discontinued buying books as e-books.

So, you’d get the impression that publishers won. Not really. What actually has happened is that two markets have opened up, and this was an occurrence that a smart publisher probably should have seen coming, but like the music industry before, this is an industry populated by egos who are convinced that they are infallible, and that their product is so great that it cannot be replaced or done without. Well, they were wrong.

It seems that Amazon now has two lists of bestsellers, and they are becoming completely exclusive of each other. In the old days, bookselling lists usually listed the highest selling books (physical copies) but because the legacy publishers refused to budge, Amazon has discovered that its bestsellers are actually e-books that have never been published as hard copy books. As a matter of fact, in 2011, only 3 of the top sellers actually were originally published as “normal” books. The rest were dedicated e-books only. What this means is that more and more books are being sold without ever crossing the desk of publishers at all.

Let’s unpack that. What that really means is that more and more publishers are losing out on their own marketplace because they decided they were too elite to participate in it. Instead of working with Amazon and other such e-book companies, they acted with hostility and marginalized their own market. Readers have gone out and started buying books that other readers recommend, and quite often those recommendations have no affiliations with legacy publishers whatsoever.

What this means, or could mean, is that the future for publishers is even worse than if they had participated with e-readers in the first place. Like the music industry, major publishing companies are being seen as in the way and as leeches rather than as particpants and designers of the industry. An example is the simple mathematics of a publishing contract that attempts to give a writer about 2% of the sales for a book, whereas a deal with Amazon gives the writer either 35% or 70% of the sales (depending upon which publishing deal the writer chooses for charging for books). The selling point of using an established publisher was that you got their name behind your book and their marketing team, but with most publishing contracts these days, a writer is usually left to fend for himself/herself after publication because a publisher will spend most of its resources on already established names rather than someone who is up and coming. So, essentially, you end up with a crappy contract, and you end up with a publisher that doesn’t actually do anything for you other than potentially get books into bookstores (which, in my experience, doesn’t always happen). A further example is the publishing company that handled one of my earlier books. It keeps “offering” to make my book into an e-book, and then offers me that same crappy publishing rate royalty as if it was a hard copy book. What they don’t want to reveal to me is that our contract with each other indicates that they don’t own the e-publishing rights, meaning they’re trying to get me to sign with them for e-publishing when in fact I can actually do that myself and get a 70% royalty without ever asking for their help in the first place. The dishonesty factor is the reason I’m mostly pissed at them, because they’re doing everything possible to make it seem like they’re on “my” side, even though they KNOW they can’t publish the book as an e-book without me signing over MORE of my rights that they don’t physically have right now. Again, another publisher doing everything possible to piss off a client in hopes of gaining short term gains in profit.

So, how can publishers regain the upper hand? Well, first they have to realize they lost it in the first place. If they don’t, we’re going to start to see more and more publishers go under in the next few years because they won’t have the money to keep operating. Right now, all they have is their reputations, but they’re being beaten badly by unknown writers who are making names for themselves without actual publishing companies. Once publishers become irrelevant, they’ll disappear.

But publishing companies are probably not going to go down without kicking and screaming. Realizing that they’re not going to do the smart thing, like announce that they’ll adopt the $9.99 model that Amazon first put forth (which would have probably ushered a new age in publishing), they’ll probably respond with legal action, using whatever clout they have left to hire attorneys who will submit confusing lawsuits that will bog down the system for years, further eroding their success in the industry. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a direct legal assault on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble by the publishing companies, as those are the two entities making the largest impact against them. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see it fall into some kind of patent war over technology, where some publishing company gets smart and buys up a patent that allows them to claim ownership over a certain “idea” of e-readers, even though patents were originally designed to NOT be used for that purpose. We’re seeing a lot of this kind of action on the behalf of software companies and the social networking sites, so it would not surprise me to see some enterprising legal maneuver like this.

Because they’re not going to win by going after the hearts and minds of writers and readers. They’ve already demonstrated they don’t have our interets at heart. It’s all about profit and maintaining a dinosaur of a publishing model. Therefore, expect trench warfare and years of interesting battles that lead to an industry that collapses on itself.

The Alternative to the Run up to War with Iran

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A couple of years back, I remember posting on a number of message boards that I suspected we were being led towards a war with a Middle Eastern country. I pointed out that our intelligence was HORRIBLE in that area of the world, and that most of our evidence and analysis came from people who were hearing everything second hand from other people who had an actual stake in causing problems between our countries. And then there was a whole bunch of “evidence” presented that I indicated only proved that there were buildings that looked like they had stuff in them, but we didn’t know what was in them, although we were being told weapons of mass destruction were in them because trucks drove up to them. Even Colin Powell stood in front of the UN and told everyone that there were definitely weapons of mass destruction because he had a Powerpoint presentation, which obviously had to be true because Powerpoint has never resulted in incorrect information being relayed to viewers. Anyway, people told me I was full of crap, while the other half of the people told me to shut up. And then shortly after, we went to war. With Iraq. But saying, “I told you so” is so deflating after the country has gone to war, so let’s just say that I commiserated with everyone else, once they stopped celebrating that we were at war and realized that we were, in fact, at war.

Well, it’s kind of happening again. Although people will probably say that they don’t see it. And others will probably tell me to shut up. But I see the exact same signs happening again, in that we’re leading towards a war with Iran because they’re some evil axis of power that does, well, evil things. And they hate us. So, we really will eventually have no choice but to go to war against them and change their evil ways by killing lots of their people, occupying them, teaching them government corruption and then spending the next decade figuring out how to get out of there and leave their new regime to their newly found corrupt ways.

But I wanted to write this to say that we should be concerned because this doesn’t have to happen. Sure, Iran hates us, as they probably should. I mean, we’re all infadels that sleep with our goats, or whatever it is they think we do. Basically, I think it can be narrowed down to the idea that they hate us because we don’t worship out of the same book that they do. Meanwhile, we feel we should invade them and educate them because they don’t worship out of the same book that we do. Of course, our Constitution says we really shouldn’t be discussing that book any way, but we haven’t really read that document in awhile, so we’ve kind of forgotten that. But suffice to say, we’ll probably go to war with them because we don’t understand them any more than they understand us, and neither one of us is really patient enough to sit down and listen to the other long enough to realize that we’ve both really stupid and believe really ridiculous things, which if you think about it is something we actually share in common.

Which is really what we should be focused on: What do we have in common? I’ve been talking about this for years, from my original thesis, Friendship Over Time, which basically means that as cultures start to develop similar customs with each other, they build friendships. And as we create more shared customs, our friendship grows until we have an allied partnership. We’ve seen how this can happen over centuries with nations that once hated each other but are now comrades in arms (and without arms…weapons). People learn to get along because they realize they share too many things in common to want to risk those shared activities. It’s why playing Ping Pong with the Chinese during the Cold War probably kept us from firing missiles at the Chinese during the Cold War. Yeah, it’s a lot less simple than that, but you get the idea.

That’s what we need with Iran right now. Build friendships with the people around them. Find the things they like to do that we like to do and see how we can build off of those shared traits. Think about it. What do we share with the Iranians right now besides a desire to build nuclear weapons? Do we both like to fish? Play soccer? Baseball? Stone virgins for talking to men in public? Or what? Are there activities we COULD share with each other if we found some forum to do so? Granted, we’re probably not going to want to approach each other through religion because those are our failings at friendship. So, we’d look for things we both like to do. If we want to employ State Department people to actually pursue peace, THAT is what they should be looking at, not trying to find some way to negotiate for things that neither side wants to talk about. The ways of peace that existed in the 18th century shouldn’t be the way we pursue peace in the 21st century because somewhere back in the 20th century, we discovered that those methods actually led to nonpeaceful things, like war.

So, as you start to hear the run up for war, I’d like to share with you the basic idea that we do have another way. We just have to be active in trying to pursue it. And honestly, it’s never going to happen from our government because our government is populated by people who have all trained in the same Kool Aid for decades of Cold War failures. Peace can be achieved through the people who aren’t in government. And we already have the vehicle to do it.

It’s called the Internet. We’re already conversing with people in countries that used to hate us. The other day, played World of Warcraft with someone who lives in Vietnam. He speaks English, but he plays on a US server because he wants to know more about America. So, he and I went and beat up demons together. Look. We shared something in common. We both liked casting spells against demons in a game that both of us play. Look how hard that was.

The Internet completely makes this possible if we’re interested in actually using it to do just that. Sure, we can text each other about how outrageous Snookie and The Situation are, or we can start communicating with the people out there who are interested in actually talking.

Or we can let the responsible adults lead us to war and kill them instead. I mean, really. It’s your choice, although history hints at which one you’ll make. So as you suit up to go play soldier in some Middle Eastern country, I’ll be suiting up to go on a quest with my friend from Vietnam. There are demons to kill, and we’re just the guys to do it.

Has Dating Turned Into Some Kind of Weird Non-Televised Reality Show?

News, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

 

There’s a story that’s been making its way across the Inter-tubes published on Business Insider, where a young woman indicates that dating made it possible for her to save a whole lot of money on daily living expenses, like food because men she was dating would pay for her meals. Now, while this sort of story isn’t all that new (women have been using men as potential mates as free meals for a long time now, about as long as commerce and dating has been around), the story makes the point that she did most of this in Manhattan, and she and her roommates specifically used Match.com in order to do it.

Since then, I’ve been reading a whole bunch of different articles on different sites where readers have chimed in, and basically everyone pretty much admits that this is nothing new, and that using various men on dates to get free food and tickets to movies (or the theater) has been a commonality for quite some time. On some of the sites, the commentary gets so crass as to project that certain “benefits” are expected after a certain amount of money spent, or a certain number of dates have been attended. The woman in the article indicates that she only dated men 5 times before dumping them (or moving on), so I’m not exactly sure where that fits into the calculations, but something tells me that that number has a LOT to do with that specific calculation, so I’ll just leave it at that and let you fill in the rest without having to say more.

What I do find intriguing is that dating has gotten into this whole “who pays for what” situation while in 21st century gender politics there has been a huge move towards equality of the sexes. As a commentary example, let me just mention that recently I finished off my schooling in which I did a Ph.d and a couple of MAs, and when I was dating in that pool of individuals, I found it quite intriguing that the women were demanding of equality at all times (whenever discussing rights, politics and academic rigor) but when an actual date occurred, there was an expectation that regardless of education, current state of gender politics or anything else, the guy was still expected to pick up the check for dinner. That included movies, or any other shared experience as well.

Now, keep in mind, when it came to “between friends” that changes a lot as in most cases a guy rarely ever has to shell out any money for a “date” when the “date” is being shared between friends, not two people thinking they are on a romantic date. So that’s a whole different dichotomy completely.

Now, I should also point out that way too often I’ll pick up the check regardless of the mindset of the adventure (be it romantic or friendship), but that’s just me. But what really gets me thinking more than I should is how many women actually walk into such an experience “expecting” certain things paid for. That includes drinks at a bar. I was at a group outing one night not too long ago when a young woman I casually knew sauntered up to where I was sitting and joined me. Within a short bit of time, there was an expectation that I was going to pay for her next drink. And I started to think to myself: “I’m not dating this young woman, nor am I probably ever going to be dating her, yet she has every expectation that the next set of drinks will be paid for by me, just because our genders are different.” At that moment, I was amazed at the brazen expectations people have, based off of ancient customs that have carried over into dynamics where they generally don’t fit any longer.

The whole dating scheme has gotten so that it’s very difficult for someone who is tired of playing a lot of the games that get played in this atmosphere. As one who abhors bars and drunk people, I avoid those places or people who frequent those kinds of places. Therefore, that leaves me with very few choices to find someone, other than venues like Match.com or Okcupid.com. As this article has shown me, and a lot of conversations with others have revealed to me, a lot of the women a guy is likely to find on Match.com or Okcupid.com are going to be very much like the entrepreneur in the original article, who sees any date with me as a chance to save money on her dinner bills. Whenever I go through the rankings of people advertising in my area on Okcupid, I’m left thinking that they’re really not looking for me, but for some weird fantasy of a guy who only exists on episodes of Gossip Girl or as a creature of the night in the Twilight movies. Recently, I found one woman who looked exactly like the down-to-Earth girl I was looking for when I read the last line of her profile, indicating that if the reader of her ad was someone who has EVER played World of Warcraft, she wasn’t interested. As those who know me know I’d be lying to say otherwise, I hid her picture and continued searching for that elusive someone who I began to realize probably didn’t exist.

Which is probably why I don’t date any more. I’d like to say that as a writer, I spend a lot of time alone on purpose, but sometimes it goes a little further than that. Somewhere down the line, I really got tired of the dating atmosphere and probably should have married years ago, but I never found the right person, so I realized at some point that I would have to go through a lot of the wrong people in order to finally find the right person, and just writing that is tiring enough. So, I tend to find solace in writing, reading a newspaper, and maybe a bout of magecrafting in World of Warcraft.

Reality Disclosure: The Victoria Secret Fashion Show is Really Just a Televised Episode of Nearly Naked Women Trying to Sell Us Underwear

Business, Social Networking, Technology, Television, , , , , , , , ,
Attractive woman selling you stuff
Attractive woman selling you stuff

I read a lot of news. So, it came to me as a bit of a surprise that CNN has been doing nothing but trying to explain how “important” their story about the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is.  After “reading” through their article and numerous other articles that have attempted to “write” about this story, almost always with a HUGE picture of very attractive supermodels, I get the picture. There was a fashion show put out by Victoria’s Secret, a store that sells ladies lingerie to women who want to look attractive to their partners after things have already moved to the point where they really don’t have to do anything to make the mood get to the next point. I mean, honestly, if I’m in a situation where a woman is now in her underwear, chances are pretty good she doesn’t have to convince me that I should be moving to, well, for lack of better terms, the next “base”. If I read things wrong at that time, then something’s seriously wrong with me, with her, or with the human species and academic mating rituals.

But let’s break down what’s really going on with this “fashion” show. It’s a bunch of very attractive women, walking around in their under garments, trying to get people to think this would be a really good purchase in the future. That’s really it. They’re not developing a better solar panel to collect energy. They’re not helping us figure out which presidential candidate is going to lie to us more than the other. They’re not even helping us find a potential mate. They’re walking around in their underwear being gawked at by guys across the country.

Cause let’s face it. This show might be watched by women thinking, “that outfit looks nice and maybe if I buy it, I might look like that multimillion dollar an hour supermodel” but it’s mostly being watched by guys who are thinking, “man, I really should have majored in something other than sociology in college cause a girl like that is never going to talk to me and my sorry ass bank account.” And, of course, there’s a huge segment of guys who are probably watching that show alone, in the dark. If you’re one of those guys, you might have even set up your own drive in cinema screen hire to make it a more immersive experience.

But great television it’s not. It’s like watching the Miss America Pageant and saying you watch it because you support programs that provide college scholarships to enterprising young women. No one buys that. No one even buys it when the pageant tries to pretend that’s why the pageant exists. It’s a vehicle to sell stuff in the way we always sell it. With sex.

So, I’m glad the show was the number one watched show in the country, just as much as I’m glad that Twilight is the number one movie, and every top seller on the New York Times bestseller list is a young adult book because Americans have become too stupid to read books for adults.

But that doesn’t mean I’m really happy about it. So leave me alone as I turn off the lights and watch the second half of this underwear advertisement show I taped so I could watch it alone. Check back with me in about a half hour. We’ll talk about literature then.

Being a Single Guy is Pretty Damn Tough These Days

Movies, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , ,

It seems there’s a new Muppet Movie about to open up. For those who know me, it’s not a surprise that I’m actually looking forward to watching it when it does come out. But there’s a problem. That’s kind of what this whole post is about.

You see, I’m one of those grown up kids who probably will never grow up. And I’m okay with that. That means that unlike guys who seem to think watching football, Victoria Secret lingerie specials on TV and endless porn is the definition of being an adult, that’s really not me. I’m a lot more comfortable watching Elmo, Scooby Doo, playing World of Warcraft or watching any and all kinds of science fiction on TV. Those are the kinds of things that men are supposed to kind of put behind them when they hit adulthood, right about the time they start thinking about marriage.

Me, however, not so much. I’ve never really given much thought to getting married. Never gave that much thought to actually dating, to be honest. I’m the kind of person who is comfortable living in my own little world, and up until now, this has been okay, as long as this lifestyle doesn’t seem to intrude on anyone else.

Unfortunately, the real world has kind of changed in a way that makes such a lifestyle almost impossible. There is no end to the amount of literature written about how people like me need to “grow up” or “man up”, or whatever stupid slogan they need to use to somehow diminish the fact that I still think legos are cool. And that brings me to the whole idea of what started off this article: The Muppets.

Years ago, I went to watch one of the Shrek movies. I was alone in the theater, because it was the middle of the day, and I chose a time when most of the kids wouldn’t be there (because they’d be at school, or their parents would be at work). Well, at one point, this woman and her kid show up to the movie, and as I’m practically the only other person in the theater (there were actually about four other people in various spots in the theater at the time), her kid wandered to a seat close to where I was, and that woman took one look at me, and immediately ushered her kid as far away from me as possible. It’s not like I’m some serial killer looking kind of guy or anything, but I immediately started to get self-conscious because I could quickly see what was going through her mind: Why is there some strange guy alone at a kid’s movie? It didn’t matter what my real reason for it was, somehow I kept thinking that she was constantly checking up on me to see if I was scouting out other children.

And that’s the mindset of a lot of people whenever a single guy shows up alone to a movie theater, specifically to see a movie that others deem as a “kiddie” movie. In our society, we have people so paranoid about children that they start to perceive that every other person out there has some secret intention to harm them if they can just get away with it. You see this same mentality whenever a porn star goes to read to children at a library, an adult venue comes anywhere near a school, or anything that involves “sex” ends up being in the earshot of someone who might think there are children around. There is such a fear of practically everyone else that otherwise normal people are no longer normal, but they are now suspected child molesters and abductors, and all sorts of other evil entities that I have not yet heard about.

When I told a female friend I was thinking of seeing the new Muppet movie, she said, “you can take my kid to see it”, which would then give me an adequate reason to go to a movie theater (because I would have a child with me). Other than the fact that the offer wasn’t serious, I kept imagining how bad things are when a single male has to “find” kid to drag to a movie just so he can go see a kiddie movie that he’d rather not see with anyone else.

I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine a few years back about this because we surmized that even if two single guys went to a children’s movie, there would still be people looking at them strangely, wondering why two older adults were at a movie theater where kids were present. The idea that people might be there for something innocent, like watching a movie, seems to get in the way of irrational fear, however.

A couple of years back, I used to have a couple of close female friends with whom I would always go to these types of movies, because a single guy was always “okay” at a children’s movie, as long as you were there with a “date”, even if you weren’t dating the woman you were with. I used to drag my friend Kat to movies all the time (or she dragged me…not sure how it really worked out), and if it wasn’t for her, I never would have seen Wall-E, because I probably never would have gone to a movie theater to see it alone. It’s just not worth the stares.

But today, I don’t have a female friend I hang out with like I used to. Back then, while I was doing grad school, it was a lot easier finding a female friend who liked to hang out, who didn’t think you were trying to date her. Nowadays, in the real world, that just hasn’t happened for me. The last woman I asked to a movie wanted dinner to go along with that movie, meaning she expected it to be a “date”, not just two friends hanging out at a movie. And that’s okay, but that’s not the kind of person I want to see the Muppets with.

So, I’ll probably have to wait until it comes to dvd, which usually diminishes the experience of seeing a movie like that in an audience of people who are laughing as Kermit and gang do the kinds of things that only Kermit and the gang would ever do.

Stupid Passwords

Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , ,

Years ago, when I was first learning a programming language (BASIC for back when it was practically the only language you could learn on the first personal computer, the TRS 80), I created a program and established a password system, because I thought this would be the wave of the future, where everyone would need passwords to get into programs. Turns out I was right, even though that doesn’t mean I was really all that forward-thinking, as it did seem kind of obvious at the time. Well, my first program I designed was a computer game called U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command, and part of the beginning of the game required you to enter a password (yes, really exciting gaming I was making back then). I chose something I figured no one else would ever guess.

Well, another one of the kids learning computer programming with me tried out my program, spent a few seconds thinking about me, looked at the blinking interface asking for a password and then typed OMEGA. He guessed my password on the first try. Yeah, I felt really stupid, and to this day I still haven’t figured out how he did it, other than the possibility he was actually watching me when I coded it in back when I wasn’t really paying attention to who was stranding behind me while I was typing.

The point is: It was a stupid password.

Fast-forward to today, and Mashable has printed an article telling us just that: People still use stupid passwords. Their list (from Mashable) of the top overused passwords is:

  • 1. password
  • 2. 123456
  • 3.12345678
  • 4. qwerty
  • 5. abc123
  • 6. monkey
  • 7. 1234567
  • 8. letmein
  • 9. trustno1
  • 10. dragon
  • 11. baseball
  • 12. 111111
  • 13. iloveyou
  • 14. master
  • 15. sunshine
  • 16. ashley
  • 17. bailey
  • 18. passw0rd
  • 19. shadow
  • 20. 123123
  • 21. 654321
  • 22. superman
  • 23. qazwsx
  • 24. michael
  • 25. football

Yep, believe it or not, people are still using PASSWORD as the number one stupid password. The others are equally obvious, which basically make the point for us that people generally use things they can remember to be their passwords, which means that quite often the average user, being a nimrod, is going to use something that is going to be massively easy to crack.

For years, my own password process has really evolved, then devolved and then re-evolved after one of my overused passwords got broken into, and my email sent to everyone as spam mail. It’s amazing what people choose for their reasoning behind passwords, which is why for the longest time I was using the name of a password used in a movie about computers a long time ago. I even named one of my stuffed animals after that password, and for years, I kept using that, or variations of that name, as a password. Stupid idea, and let’s just say that my eventual evolution didn’t come soon enough.

Some of the other names on that list are ridiculous, and I’m embarrassed that people would actually make such mistakes. “123456”? Really? Or “abc123”? I can see “Superman” just for the nostalgia factor alone, but “qwerty” and “654321”?

Okay, part of me also has to look at this from another angle. Sometimes, I think companies we do business with create password situations for us that really don’t make any sense. I’m a lot more careful about my email and my banking information than I am with my Netflix queue or a password I’m required to make up for a job search service I’m only ever going to use once in my entire lifetime. The other day, I was required to fill in additional information AFTER my password that was completely irrelevant to me, meaning that if I ever had to challenge my information (to get my password back), I’m never going to remember the answers to those other questions they wanted me to come up with. I’m talking about stuff like “What is your wife/significant other’s favorite color?” As I don’t have a wife or a significant other, I’m mainly making shit up there when I have to come up with an answer. In one the other day, it gave me six different questions to choose from, and to be honest, anyone who had to answer one of those questions has a much different kind of life than I do because I don’t have a favorite sports team, a significant other (which was the subject of three of the six choices I could use), a maiden name, or even the middle name of my best friend (haven’t had a best friend in quite a few years now). What would make those kinds of challenge questions better is to let me make up my own question and then present my own answer. Otherwise, chances are pretty good that I’m going to be clueless whenever it comes to trying to figure out a one-time password that I am not going to remember, and no, I don’t write them down somewhere because that’s the one thing you SHOULDN’T do with passwords.

I think I’ve said about enough on that subject. Please enter your password, writing it in iambic pentameter, to continue to my next irrelevant point.

Why Social Networking Never Really Worked For Me

Social Networking, Writing, , , , ,

I know this is going to sound a bit strange, considering the amount of time I put into social networking sites, and the amount of energy that I expend actually working with them, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I’ve never been a fan of social networking sites. And it’s not because of reasons you might suspect.

You see, part of the appeal of a social networking site is that you can revisit the past by contacting people you used to know and get reacquainted with them. And that’s great. I’ve run across a lot of people I’ve known over the years, hooked back up with them on social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, and it’s been great. However, there’s been a sinister underbelly to this whole thing as well. And I suspect it’s one of those things that really only affects me more than anyone else. Let me explain.

For years, I have had great relationships with a lot of people, relationships that I have valued greatly. But it’s only through the use of social networking that I began to suspect that quite a few of those relationships were quite one-sided, in that I think I may have been the only one to actually have thought them to be as significant as they really were.

An example: When I was a young kid, I had a friend in fourth or fifth grade who gave me a stuffed animal who has been with me practically my entire life. At the time, that stuffed animal was pretty significant to her, and a friend of mine and I used to play catch with him in class. And at one point, I guess he became even more significant to me because she gave him to me, and I thought that was such a thoughtful gesture. Over the years, I remembered her name, mainly because she gave me that stuffed animal. And that little guy and I have been through a lot together. I went into the Army, and he went in with me. Other soldiers used to call him Lieutenant Elmer, and there was a time when I tossed him out to little kids to play with, as a sort of “get to know us as good people, not just occupiers in green uniforms” and they played with Elmer, throwing him around kind of like my friend and I had done in fourth and fifth grade. Like I said, that little stuffed animal has been with me for nearly forty years, and he’s seen more of the world than most other people ever will. And he may have had a serious impact on the lives of people who experienced his friendly stuffed ways.

But years later, when I made contact with the person who gave me that stuffed animal, her response when I mentioned I still had him nearly floored me. I got the impression she didn’t even remember him. And those memories of the connection that we had back then, shared over that little green frog who has touched so many lives, were forever tainted.

This same phenomenon has radiated also through other relationships I have had as well. There are a number of people I have known through the years who don’t seem to remember our relationships as fondly as I have. So when I went to contact them, after finding them through some search algorithm that Facebook or whatever site I was using used, I realized that they had almost completely different memories of our special times together. In some cases, they didn’t even accept friend requests, which gave me the impression that not only did they think back fondly on our wonderful times together, but they may not have remembered them at all.

Memories are like that, in that not always do both people remember an event the same way. I have a former best friend of mine who I actually went through a lot of work to find again through a social networking site. When I finally found him, it was a ho hum connection, which meant that no matter how fondly I remember our great adventures together, time destroyed the real bonds of friendship. Like Wolfe’s book warns us, sometimes you can’t go home again, no matter how much you long for how great home was at one point in time.

That’s what social networking has shown me, and it hasn’t been the experience I hoped to have. Sometimes, I think it might have been better to keep some of those past relationships in memory where that shared fondness still existed, never to be replaced by the reality that that person I would have done anything to be with a few more seconds longer in that relationship we once shared hasn’t spent one instant thinking about us since we parted ways.

They’re Trying Really Hard to Discredit the Anti-Wall Street Movement

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I’m really not all that surprised that the people who have the most to fear are doing everything possible to target anyone who has anything to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement. At first, it was an attempt to paint the movement as extreme, something that no one is interested in. Then it became popular, so they had to try other tactics, like attempting to fool listeners into believing OWS was filled with hypocrisy (“OMG! They have Ipads and they’re complaining about big businesses that might make technology stuff!”). That didn’t work because unlike previous movements of the past, the people attracted to the movement aren’t generally stupid. The movement has been appealing to a pretty educated crowd. It’s hard to derail that when those derailing it aren’t that much smarter than the people they hope to discredit.

So, the anti-protest movement, which I define as “people who have an incentive to keep things as the status quo”, is now targeting specific individuals as an attempt to destroy the entire movement. One obvious target has been Michael Moore, who likes to see himself as the everyman complainer, but according to Fox News (not exactly the most objective source, as it was the voice of the Republican Party during the entire Bush Administration), because Michael Moore has an expensive house, he’s really one of the one percenters, rather than one of the many included in the 99%. Here’s where that math doesn’t add up: Yeah, he’s rich, but just because someone is rich does not make them automatically a part of the problem.

Much of Michael Moore’s success has come on the coattails of debunking the myths of the rich, and empowering those without any power. As a result, he has become very wealthy for his actions. That should be seen as a good thing, not something to somehow force his followers to throw him to the wolves. Just because he made a success at pulling the veil back from the hidden excesses doesn’t somehow make him part of the hidden excesses.

The movement is about the fact that there are some really greedy, bad people out there who are trying to pull shell games on the rest of us. For way too long now, corporate entities have cloaked themselves in the shadows while doing all sorts of crappy things to the rest of us, like poison our water supplies, sell us damaged goods, sell wars for profit (not our profit, but theirs only), and allowed the changing of money that served to devalue the work of those who handle the actual work but benefit those who control how the money gets spent. When you have businesses built up with the sole purpose of generating more money from money, there’s seriously something wrong. When scientists are pulled off the assembly line of science and told its a lot more profit to be a businessman instead, there’s seriously something wrong.

There are a lot of pissed off people right now mainly because our education system has been teaching us that the American Way is the best course for the future. But we’re now starting to realize that those who make it rich in this country aren’t the ones who bought into the American Way (work hard and build a great country) but profited off of those who did. The ranks of the 1% should be filled with educators, scientists and innovators, not speculators, bankers, politicians and lawyers. THAT is why so many people are upset.

A lot of those people out on the streets right now are the ones who stood behind Obama when he was running for office in 2008, because his campaign promised a bright, brilliant future. Instead, we got a term of exactly what we had before, No more, no less. Hope and change yielded absolutely nothing but false promises. And the people who put Obama into power are smart enough to realize that no matter who they put into office next (Obama again, or a generic Republican), the promises are still going to be made with the reality that the next four years are going to be exactly what came before.

That’s why people are complaining. And discrediting Michael Moore isn’t going to change that.

Politicians paying lip service to the OWS movement

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I was pretty excited when I saw that President Obama was announcing changes to the federal student loan program that would benefit those of us with outstanding student loans. And then I started examining the details before I realized that for the most part, they help practically no one who currently has any student loans. In other words, if you are currently in school and racking up student loans, you might get a bit of a nudge in the way of help, but if you’re one of those saddled with $150,000 worth of student loan debt, well, the government isn’t really interested in helping you. As a matter of fact, every action the government has taken over the last few years concerning student loans has worked completely against helping anyone discharge (or pay) their student loans. The last piece of “help” we received was when the government sided with the credit card and bank lobbyists and made it impossible to use bankruptcy to discharge your student loan debt. You can discharge your debt for killing someone, losing your business, or throwing all of your money into the ocean, but if you took out student loans, you are stuck with them for life.

Students who have been part of the OWS movement have been screaming for some kind of help from the government since the protests began. As a result the Democrats have realized that a huge segment of their voting population are now tying themselves to this movement. So, obviously, they had to do something to look like they’re on the same side. What better way than to pretend to be doing something, which is exactly what President Obama’s action the other day did? As usual, the government response to a popular protest has been to pretend to be doing something and then hope the movement goes away long enough for people in power to get reelected. In other words, let’s continue to ignore the man behind the curtain.

I don’t think our current crop of politicians seems to understand what’s going on in the country right now. People are pissed off that their chances of a good future have been squandered away by corporations, banks and government officials who kept kicking the cans down the road. Sure, you can blame students for taking out loans, but you really can’t do that until you analyze why they took out the loans in the first place. The corporations, banks and government told them that the only way they would ever have a sustainable future was to take out these loans because the corporations, banks and government weren’t going to be picking up the bills for education. Throughout most of our lives, we realized that our economic future was going to be somewhat of a disaster if we tried to go it alone without education (sure, you can argue that a few people managed to make it without college, but they’re really a statistical outlier rather than anywhere near the norm), so we really had no choice. But now we’re finding out that the promise of a future was really a lie, created by people who realized they had to sell us this lie in order to continue making insane profits.

And look at some of the companies who have profited off of our stupidity. Look at the Fortune 500, and you’ll see nothing but lists of corporations that have played the game all the way to the top. And they did it in some pretty shitty ways, too. I look at the misinformation campaigns, and I”m shocked that we continue to allow it to happen. We have fake colleges selling fake degrees to students who think they are providing a future for themselves, yet are really only getting themselves further into debt and will have absolutely no future. Sure, you can point your fingers at the profit colleges, but what no one wants you to recognize is that legitimate, innocent looking companies are also the ones behind them. While we can all point at Haliburton and the Fox Corporation and claim all sorts of evil, there are so many companies like the Washington Post, which really doesn’t want you to know that it’s practically running one of those profit colleges that the government has been “claiming” to want to curtail, but when lobbyists got involved, suddenly the government didn’t want to “hurt students”. This happens in so many different avenues of business that we don’t even pay attention to it any more. And no one reports it because the major news agencies are all part of the same problem that caused our dilemma, and who wants to report on themselves? Certainly not NBC, which is owned by General Electric. And the lists just go on and on.

But right now, there are people out there making themselves heard, and they’re probably not going to last very long. Just yesterday, Oakland Police were tear gassing protesters and then shooting projectiles at Iraqi veterans who have joined the protest. But no one pays attention long enough to really care. And like the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, we’re probably going to condemn the protesters because it’s become really easy to ridicule the protesters instead of actually give them the coverage they really need.

You see, the protesters are out there for more than just themselves. They are out there advocating for everyone who doesn’t have a voice. And for the most part, they’ll be ignored, beaten and ridiculed by everyone else, even though everyone else is part of the 99% they’re there to represent. In the end, they’ll probably give up because we didn’t care long enough to help them make a difference.

And the fault will be ours. But we’ll never know, because we didn’t even take the time to care.

What Political Issues Should Be Focused On?

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Every time we come close to a major national election, I’m left scratching my head at the innane subjects that end up becoming “important” politically. You know the things I’m talking about. Stuff like abortion, stem cell research, soccer moms and legalizing marijuana. Sure, some people find them important, but for the most part, they’re fringe topics that tend to get people galvanized around unimportant issues that end up costing votes for elections. And we fall for it every time. So, I decided to look into a couple of topics I thought SHOULD be issues, and then ask if you have any thoughts or ideas of your own.

1. While the economy is an important subject, just focusing on “the economy” or “jobs” are useless endeavors because they really don’t get down to the point of actually doing anything. Sure, I could run for office and say “Duane is FOR a good economy and believes we SHOULD put people to work! So vote me for me!” Sadly enough, a bunch of politicians are probably already preparing their campaigns to say almost that. In rhetoric, it works great. In substance, well, not so much. Mainly because it doesn’t mean anything. Killing puppies is bad, but no one is actually advocating killing puppies, so getting on the side of the pro-puppy crowd doesn’t lead anywhere but to banal arguments that don’t lead anywhere. That’s the economy problem.

So, if I was going to talk about fixing the economy, I could probably focus on taxes, even though those often fall into banal areas as well, because then we end up in a pro-left “more taxes” or pro-right “taxes are bad”. Instead, I say that we k now that taxes are inevitable, so why don’t we focus on what exactly we’re taxing in the first place. And I don’t mean whom, such as rich versus poor. Yeah, I think the rich could probably afford to pay more taxes, but let’s be honest and think about the possibility that perhaps that’s not exactly right either. While they CAN afford more taxes, is it really right to say they SHOULD be paying more taxes? While I could argue that they’ve probably benefited more from capitalism than someone who is poor (which WOULD be a good argument), I’m going to take a different tact and focus on what should be taxed, because I think there are avenues where we are completely missing the boat.

Here me out here. What I propose is that we legalize prostitution and then tax anything and everything that has any ties to sexual barter exchanges. Right now, there is a HUGE blackmarket industry that is nothing but this type of behavior, and the only reason we don’t tax it is because the people who would pay those taxes are afraid to report it because they’d probably then get arrested for all sorts of blue laws we have instituted in our scared of sex morality that exists in our society. Face it. There are people paying other people for sexual behavior, some of it pretty innocent and some of it pretty damn bizarre involving all sorts of devices, machines, trapeze-apparatus mechanisms and some involving things that still shock the crap out of me. But I know it takes place because there are people out there doing it and enjoying it. None of them are evil, bad, dishonest or any other letter-wearing designation either. They’re normal people who have decided that that is how they interact with each other. And some people throw a fit because it doesn’t fit into their sense of morality.

Get over it. If you don’t like it, don’t participate in it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be acknowledging it and taxing it. Believe me, there’s a LOT of money that changes hands here in this area, and once it becomes legal, you start to clean it up as well. Sure, people are still going to do their naughty things, but legalizing it gets organized crime, gangs and predators out of the business. It also allows women to have an easier avenue to protect themselves from some of the problematic people out there who prey on them because they figure the illegal nature of the business keeps them from every having to face justice.

Now, we could also legalize drugs, but at the same time I realize there’s a more health-related problem involved here that needs to be dealt with. Perhaps if we went into it with all eyes open, we might see drug behavior as a problem that needs to be dealt with through therapy and positive actions, rather than having someone try to get off drugs while in lockdown, waiting for his court case for possessing illegal substances.

2. International Diplomacy. We haven’t gotten this right in over a hundred years now. We’re still dealing with foreign entities as if we’re still part of the Napoleonic era. Governments aren’t that way any more. Major powers don’t really deal with each other on the international stage as they used to with detente and brinkmanship. What is needed is a different perspective, involving a more game theoretic foundation of tit for tat and compliance understanding than “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” nonsense. If you look at the problems the US is having with Middle Eastern countries, almost all of them stem from brinkmanship and religious intolerance (from both sides) than it does from actually attempting to engage with people as part of a give and take relationship. Right now, our foreign policy has more to do with where we might get our next barrel of oil than it does with how we get along with people who like types of music you can find on iTunes, yet much of our actual engagement comes from those avenues through social networking sites than they ever will through economic business ties being handled by corporate entities trying to corner the market on petroleum.

Years ago, I used to have disagreements with a young man who was fresh from Iran (shortly after the Shah was deposed). He was a strongly ideological Persian who believed in east versus west superiority (for whatever reasons, which surprisingly were not religious), but we actually became friends and arguments and conflicts practically ended overnight when I discovered he was a fan of Madonna, and I managed to get him a copy of Madonna’s “Sex” book that he so wanted but couldn’t bring it to himself to buy for himself. To be honest, I never heard an anti-western comment from him after the day he received that book. While I can’t verify he still didn’t feel that way, it was amazing what a sea change was made over such a simplistic gesture.

That our government has NEVER figured this out shocks me more and more as the world becomes a much more dangerous place while still moving towards some bizarre sense of a global economy.

3. Education. This, to me, is probably the most important issue that our country should be dealing with on a daily basis, almost with the same sense we gave to putting men on the Moon. Our whole country should be rallied around the idea of improving our educational system not so that we somehow obtain minimal standards, but that we start to surpass the very dreams we had back in the 1960s about the great civilization we hoped to one day become. Children should be taught calculus by sixth grade as a standardization and expectation because it should be almost second nature. Parents should be irrate that their children don’t know more than they did at their age and do everything possible to make sure that we don’t continue to churn out stupid people. Reality show programming should be seen as the embarrassment to America that it really is, instead of some kind of ideal that people look up to. My god, there are people who want to be Snooki and the Situation, and somehow seem proud of that. College should be an expectation for all, not because it’s an enlightened goal of the few, but because it’s necessary to build a society of free thinkers who should be challenging everyone about practically everything. I would like to see a presidential debate that is moderated by the audience who shows up to the event wanting to know the answers to real questions, not just packaged answers to questions pre-screened by candidate panels beforehand.

That’s all I’ll go with for now, because now I’ve depressed myself as I realize we’re never going to achieve any of this, and we’re doomed to go another century with people striving for the lowest standards possible, mainly because they never learned to challenge themselves.