Tag Archives: Business

It is almost impossible to cancel a subscription if you used Paypal

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Don’t get me wrong. I love Paypal and use it all the time. But I’m starting to rethink my logic of using it, and to be honest, it drives me nuts when I think about it. And part of the problem is the business model that a number of companies use, and part of the problem is the easiness of using Paypal to pay for things. Sure, the money comes out of my bank account immediately, so the logic of using Paypal is lost on me. Yet, I still do it.

Recently, (meaning today) I was charged by a company called Wix (you can design web sites through it). I tried using Wix three years ago, signed up for a membership costing a little over $200. But to be honest again, I gave up trying to create a site through them. It was easier getting a desgree in physics and a Ph.d in political science. But for the last three years, they have charged me that $200 plus every year, and I caannot figure out how to cancel this damn thing short of canceling my Paypal account.

This is the problem with this whole subscription model of stuff. When you have a monthly account, there’s little problem. You’re reminded of it every month. But when they charge once a year, it sneaks up on you, and as I keep discovering, it’s easier to cancel a regular transaction than it is a yearly one. And that’s the trap they try to sneak you into.

I had the same problem with a gym membership that I bought for my friend not too long ago. When I paid that, I was promised that it was a one time charge, and I wouldn’t be charged again. Of course that asshole lied to me; I was charged again the next month. I had to issue a charge back from my bank, which was quite a bit of drama, but at least my bank honored it. When I tried a charge back through Paypal, they immediately denied it, and I was still charged for the transaction. When I went onto Wix’s site, it indicated that because I issued a charge back, they were immediately canceling my account (which is good). But part of me is convinced they’ll somehow screw up my credit, and I expect that next year they’re going to end up charging me for the subscription again.

So, I really don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m the old man yelling at clouds these days, and my ability to fight back is limited and impossible as well.

Anyway, just a Monday gripe (although it’s on a Tuesday). Sue me.

OnlyFans Backtracks on Its Plans to Ban Porn

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When I first found out that OnlyFans decided to allow pornographical material to continue, yet subscribers are still deciding to jump ship, my first thought was: It’s amazing what happens after everyone decides to jump ship after you make a stupid, horrible decision. This is a lot like that one time I told my billionaire, bikini supermodel astrophysicist girlfriend we should probably see other people. Didn’t go the way I planned.

The point is: OnlyFans has a spotted history as it is, and then once it revealed it was pursuing the dollar in hopes of becoming more mainstream, and then losing practically all of its subscriber base, they retracted, they did pretty much what ever critic of the site has believed was going to happen as a natural stage of evolution. At some point, they were going to stab themselves in the foot and then wonder why it hurts so much to keep on walking.

What’s interesting is that OnlyFans didn’t start out as a site geared around promoting sex workers. It was designed as one of those sites that hoped to attract celebrities who would use it to communicate with their fans. And then a guy who ran a cam girl site bought a controlling interest and then pimped it out to the cam girls who used his site. In a very short amount of time, it became known as a sex-friendly site, and then the pandemic hit. The rest is, well, history.

The site would probably continue to grow (and still might) on the backs of sex workers, but as often happens in this kind of situation, the owners ran afoul of payment processers who refuse to have anything to do with this industry. And thus, the situation that emerges today (after the backlash of starting to realize that its bread and butter was starting to jump ship and those that they wanted to attract still consider the site to be one that is cloaked in porn.

But this isn’t the first time this has happened in the Internet era. Pornhub went through this problem before (and survived) as did, and might even again, Patreon. Similarly, years back, during the early days of the Internet, I was a web designer for an adult bookstore, and the Internet service company they used had been sex positive, as was the manufacturer of the bookstore’s shopping cart. Well, one weekend in the middle of the night, the bookstore owner received an angry communication from the company that made the shopping cart, calling her all sorts of derogatory names and indicating that his company could no longer continue doing business with a purveyor of filth, immediately cutting off all access to the shopping cart. Shortly after that, the web site provider also contacted her and said something similar, stating that their company refused to do business with a porn business. Keep in mind, both of these companies had been profiting from an association with her company for over four years before these announcements and there had never been any concerns in the past. As a matter of fact, they had actually gone through lengths to get her business in the first place.

So, almost overnight, I had to find her a new Internet web site provider and then ran into a wall of companies that couldn’t promise not to take the same action one day concerning hosting her shopping cart. So, I sat down for two weekends and crafted a shopping cart for her from scratch, coding it in PHP.

The point is: She took care of her business regardless of the resistance she encountered because she was both patient and had perseverance. On a slightly amusing front, the two companies (the Internet web site provider and the company that made the shopping cart) both went out of business a few years later due to lack of clientele.

So, that’s kind of where OnlyFans is right now. I’ve been reading very interesting asides from those in the sex worker community who have vowed to move their content to other sites, while a few others seem willing to stick it out. This action by OnlyFans may prove to be a make or break incident, but either way, it should serve as an excellent wake up call for other companies in the future that dare to buck trends. The market corrects, but it doesn’t always correct in a favorable fashion.

OnlyFans to Block Adult Content

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the adult content site OnlyFans has made a decision to ban future content that is adult in nature. Taken on the surface, this seems like a logical step for a company that is trying to appear more mainstream, but after unpacking this story, it appears there’s a lot going on under the surface, and the results may vary and the owls may not be what they seem.

For those who deal with these types of subjects on the surface only, it seems very straight-forward, but if you listen to the responses from those in the industry, the rhetoric ranges from “the sky is falling” to “this doesn’t change anything from the status quo.” However, there are changes coming, and yes, they are going to affect some people more than others. So, exactly how?

Let’s just put it this way: If you’re already a sex worker content creator with a huge following, the change means very little. Most of the traffic for OnlyFans rarely came through the platform itself; people didn’t find content creators by searching the site (the site was never designed to cater to that process). Instead, sex workers who already had a strong following just advertised they were on OnlyFans and then the people who were already interested in their content went there for an easy process to access more of their material. For those types of creators, there are other services available that not only replace OnlyFans, but they were there long before OnlyFans emerged on the scene. So, those content creators will make do and continue to strive as before.

Where this change makes the largest impact is on the newest demographic: Young women who gravitated towards OnlyFans after the emergence of the pandemic. At first, the large swell of creators joining the platform were mostly adult workers who had very little (or no) Internet presence. As their physical, in person business model was drying up due to the fact that men were not as easy to translate into customers while people were dying from Covid-19, much of their “activity” they would normally charge for could now be converted to virtual interactivity that they could then share for monetary rewards. And what they quickly discovered was that because OnlyFans made it possible to build a lucrative following (as the customers weren’t just someone they met on the street who might never return), they now had repeat customers who could access their content at all times without them having to actually physically maintain proximity to their clients in order to provide services and then get paid.

Because this was both lucrative and quick income, it should not surprise anyone that young women who were probably never planning to become sex workers themselves realized that there could be a lot of money to be made if they, too, hung out their shingle in this marketplace. And almost overnight, starting with strippers and cam girls and then leading to moms and repressed librarians, women were actively engaged in selling promiscuous content to horny guys (well, to anyone, but mostly guys).

The one negative that always seemed to be in the background was the stigma of doing sex work, which for naive reasons young woman seemed to believe might never happen. But as their content was on the Internet, and there is no class amongst the people who subscribe to this type of content, they started to become very surprised when their content became widespread, and future aspirations (and that wasn’t sex work) because almost impossible because of the stigma attached to this occupation. Women, with occupations ranging from doctors to school teachers, lost their jobs when their employers found out they were previously sex workers, even though the women would often try to make the argument that selling pictures of themselves naked was not sex work and then disappointed when such protests fell on deaf ears.

There was a very interesting episode involving Kevin Samuels who confronted a group of OnlyFans girls about how they needed to start banking their money soon because the cash cow of OnlyFans was not going to last forever, and those girls treated him like a moron because this Internet celebrity obviously didn’t understand the business world as well as they did. Well, this announcement from OnlyFans just yesterday indicates that he knew exactly what was going to happen, and one can only imagine how panicked these girls must be right now due to such an announcement.

What makes this somewhat tragic is that such an announcement was inevitable. It happened with Paypal, it happened with Tumblr, and it has happened with so many types of business applications that started out by appealing to the sex worker industry just to get their foot in the door before abandoning that demographic and “going legit”. And as tends to happen with most of these companies, that act of going legit will end up being their downfall because they, too, are tainted by the stigma of being a platform for sex, which is why people will avoid it like the plague if they’re not actually attracting the element that made it famous in the first place. Imagine going to an exclusive club because it always had the hottest women and let those women in free (realizing that was going to bring in customers) and then decided “we’re big enough now that we don’t need to do that” and stopped letting attractive women in for free. So they stopped coming. So would their clientele because the reason they go to those clubs is because of the overabundance of attractive women in the first place. And then the business closes.

This is why nightclubs NEVER do that.

So, it will be interesting to see if OnlyFans goes the direction of Myspace as another company takes its place, or if it somehow morphs itself into something sustainable by hosting celebrities and cooking shows. As for the many women who made their future successes contingent on the platform, hopefully they prepared for this future, already were a sex worker to begin with and can compensate by finding incoming from other revenue streams, or bite the bullet and try to re-enter the workplace environment, hoping beyond all prayers that no one ever finds out about their steamy past. In this digital age, the integration of digital technology has become crucial for success in various industries.

All I know is that I won’t be their lifeline. I’m a lot smarter these days than when I was young and stupid.

Bob Jenkins, middle manager at a Wyoming Applebee’s, is being closely watched as last male executive not accused of sexual harassment

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Today, according to inside sources, Bob Jenkins, a tenured, two-year manager at an Applebee’s in Wyoming, is being closely monitored to make sure that no sexual harassment claims are made against him. As he is the last semi-senior executive of any corporation in America who has not yet been implicated on charges of lewd and inappropriate behavior towards any female member of his staff, Mr. Jenkins is being closely watched to make sure that he does not succumb to natural male tendencies.

Server Rebecca Dallison of the Applebee’s stated: “Not once has Bob attempted to fondle me, corner me in the back room alone, or stick his tongue down my throat while handling every day normal assignments. He hasn’t ever followed me to my car and made me feel completely uncomfortable in any way, shape or form.”

This newspaper was going to continue following this story, but our executives have all been implicated and fired for sexual harassment situations, leaving Dorothy, a junior reporter who has never covered a story on her own, left to man the store until appropriate personnel can be located in the future.

 

This Time, I’m Not So Upset By Netflix’s Price Increase

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This is Felicia Day. She’s not involved in this story but she deserves more attention in this day and age

The last couple of times Netflix decided to raise its prices, I was a vocal advocate against it and a denouncer of all things Netflix. The first time, Netflix decided to cut a line between its new streaming services and its CDs by mail programs, effectively charging you twice as much if you wanted to keep both, which originally were the same service. I quit Netflix then.

Then Netflix started to get better again, and its CEO stopped being an asshole to his customers. Yeah, an asshole. He treated his customers as cattle and sheep, and that’s why I quit that first time. Somewhere down the line, someone told him to shut his stupid face, and he started to act like his customers actually were people. So I was good. There is also great news on how much does Kyle Richards make per episode.

And then Netflix decided to raise prices again, and it did it in a way that eased the increases into being. I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t feel like I was being treated like livestock, so I generally went along with it.

Now, Netflix has decided it is going to raise its prices again. For me, it’s about a dollar more, and adding in taxes and the weird math that these companies do, it will probably end up being closer to $1.50 to $2.00 more. Yeah, that never makes me happy, but we live in a corporate economy that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about people, so I’ve come to accept it.

Netflix is struggling against a bunch of different companies that are trying really hard to muscle in on the streaming giant. However, I don’t really see the other companies as young upstarts or forces of good trying to bring quality and good prices to my door. Many of these are owned by huge corporate enterprises that are known for foot in the door strategies where they beat out the competition and then raise the prices once they’ve secured a beach head as the only game left in town.

Netflix has been a solid service for me. It pulses higher and lower sometimes based on its content, but it’s generally upfront about what it’s doing. I dumped Hulu last year after it kept losing one show after another and then tried to play it off as “we’re solidifying our offerings,” whatever that means. Amazon is cool, but I see it as an extra benefit to Prime membership because it doesn’t really offer a whole lot of content, and the majority of its content is stuff I would never watch anyway. I tried DirectTV Now, and let’s just say that I’m now in the “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and I’m a stupid moron that doesn’t deserve to continue making choices for himself” mode. My only other real choices are buying television shows directly from iTunes (which is massively expensive), cable (which I have but rarely offers me a selection of things to watch at a moment unless I was lucky enough to remember to dvr a specific show at a specific time), or staring longingly at my blank television screen (which after 1999 should no longer have been one’s only option).

So, I’m okay with Netflix having to charge a little extra. It’s still affordable to me, but if it rises another time after this, I’ll probably dump it and treat all streaming services as a failed experiment that couldn’t live up to its promises in the wake of the realization that media companies are really only into profiting rather than providing services.

Saturating the Market

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According to MacRumors, two facts seem to be driving positives and negatives concerning Apple’s Ipad. First, the Ipad seems to be beating all of its competition in this market. And second, the tablet market is drying up quickly. This is one of those revelations that have been predicted for some time to come, but now that it’s upon us, one wonders where we go from here.

You see, back when the Ipad was introduced, the common statement from the complainers was that there was no tablet market, and that Apple was just making a high tech entry into a market that’s never going to come. Well, all of those people were proven wrong as Apple sold a ton of those tablets, and the market opened up for them. Fast forward to about today, and we’re starting to notice that the tablet market has kind of dried itself out.

Most of the people who were ever going to buy one bought one. Apple attempted to do with Ipads what it does with Iphones and get people to upgrade every year, but honestly that hasn’t happened. I know that my very first Ipad, which was the Ipad 2, is still capable of doing anything a current generation of Ipad can do. I did upgrade, however, buying the Ipad Mini, but even that hasn’t evolved into anything all that great. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: I got rid of both Ipads about a year ago, realizing that I wasn’t really using them. Now, I have no need for one, or desire. And I’m one of those Apple fans who buys an Apple product almost as soon as they make them.

Apple’s newest product is the iWatch, or whatever it’s called, and I see zero reason for wanting one of those. Let’s be honest here. Watches are so 1980. I haven’t worn one in over a decade. Putting Apple’s name on one doesn’t lead me to wanting one. So, I’m sitting this one out.

As I’ve done with a lot of recent Apple products. Maybe it’s the whole Steve Jobs thing, where I would buy something he hyped. He’s not around any more, and Tim Cook doesn’t really do anything for me tech-wise, so I’m not really updating anything. I have an Iphone 4, and it does everything I need. They’re currently on iPhone 6. Don’t see anything about it that causes me to jump for joy.

My question is whether or not others feel the same way. In order for Apple to be as powerful as Apple always has been is to make sure that people like me are still buying their stuff. Granted, I still own Apple TV, and I’m watching HBO Now on it, but is that enough? This is a company that made its bread and butter off of overpriced laptops that run an operating system that I can’t stand, so do they have what it takes to keep the company going strong?

Has Apple planned anything for when they have saturated the market, meeting the needs of its usual corps of customers? Is there a 3.0 strategy, or are they going to wither as they did back before Jobs came back to run the company again?

Inquiring minds wanna know.

Getting pulled in by Amway’s Pyramid Scheme Crap

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wealth povertyRecently, there’s been a lot of talk about Amway (headquartered in Ada, Michigan) because it was ridiculed on the very popular Netflix show House of Cards. As a result, Amway has responded, as well as Dick DeVos (the son of one of the co-founders of Amway). Basically, what it boils down to is that the company claims it is being misrepresented and everyone who has ever dealt with the company (judging from the comments on each one of these stories) feels the representation is more than deserved and probably overdue as well.

So, obviously, you’re probably wondering what Duane thinks about this whole thing. And fortunately, I have not only an opinion, but a story that sounds a lot like many of the stories that people have been telling in the comments section of each of those stories. You see, Amway has become a really powerful company that basically sets the tone for most of the discussions over this issue. The little people, like us, rarely get a word in because we don’t have the money to pay for media access like the people who run the pyramid schemes in the first place.

So, let’s go back some years ago when I was working as a low level executive for a major hotel chain. I was in their security department and out of the blue I received a phone call from someone who acted on the phone like he was a really good friend of mine. At the time, I had a lot of business associates who I kind of knew, so I was polite, and he then talked about a business opportunity that might benefit me in the future. As I was somewhat looking for a new job at this time (and most likely that was how the guy found me), I responded positively and ended up meeting this guy and his wife at another hotel in the city where some meeting was taking place. As I’m sure you suspect, that meeting was one of those Amway meetings. Little did I know at the time that it was just a part of their elaborate scheme. However, it did provide me with some insights into their financial toolkit.

What was interesting was that this was during the time when Amway’s name was dirt to most people. So the company being hailed was some other named company that claimed to have no connection with Amway. As a matter of fact, when this symposium started, and I heard the sales pitch, I turned to my “friends” and asked them if this was “Amway” and they said no, that there was definitely no connection. When they gave me a ride back home, all of the crap in their car (tissues and everything else, and I mean a ton of crap) all had the name “Amway” on them. In other words, the company was still recruiting people, but it was using another name to do it.

I will say that they use a really hard sale approach and those two that recruited me really used a guilt concept approach to try to rope me into their scheme. All I remember was how uncomfortable I was being in their car for the ride back (also remembering how they had thought it was a better idea to drive me, rather than me meeting them by driving my own car). They took an extra long way back to my work place (as it was literally down the street), and I remember them trying to sell me on the whole approach over and over again.

The next few days, I couldn’t get them to stop calling me. I told them I wasn’t interested, and that seemed to make no difference to them at all. They tried every foot in the door approach they could, and it got to the point where I found myself yelling at the phone, telling them to stop calling me. This was before the age of caller ID being prevalent on phones, so you’d pretty much have to answer the phone for anyone who called, and call blocking was still a decade or so away.

What I can say is that their products were mediocre at best, yet their markup was huge. When they explained the “business model” the first thing I thought was “pyramid scheme” because you had to be higher up on the pyramid in order to actually make any serious money, which meant so few people would actually be making money in this business.

The sad thing is: Amway is not the only company doing this sort of thing. Years later, I was back in school and someone contacted me about a job opportunity (I had been trying to find a job during this time, so obviously my name was found through some job site). I showed up and it was identical to the Amway meeting from before EXCEPT there were a bunch of “group leaders” who were escorting all of the marks. What I noticed was that for each male mark there, there was a hot female “group leader” who was that person’s contact. For the women (and there weren’t a whole lot of them), there was an attractive guy “group leader” assigned. I think I was the only one not assigned this way because the person who targeted me had gotten me through a business connection. But all I remember thinking was “wow, this is a freaking cult”. And its business model was identical to Amway except it felt more like it was spur of the moment, where the designer had attended an Amway meeting and thought, “hey, I can do this, too and do it so I’m on top of the pyramid when it starts”. What I specifically remember about this meeting was a computer printed sign as the markee on the main building and then driving by a week later to see that all of the signs for this “business” were gone and the place and a”for lease” sign was now on the front lawn.

I guess the point is that no matter how much these places try to pretend they’re legit, they’re basically bottom feeding and out to screw you. I remember talking to a lot of people who were at both meetings and they were almost always paycheck to paycheck or “get rich quick” thinkers. I also remember at the second meeting that one of the “group leaders” spotted me talking to other people and she quickly put a stop to it, apparently not wanting any of their marks to actually compare notes.

Now, I can’t say that these places don’t work for some people. But I’d feel a lot better if I read a lot more literature on these business models to hear successes, instead of what I do see. An example is the comments section of both articles I linked in this article on MLive’s site. Every now and then, one guy named David starts talking about how great his experiences were with these organizations. and then you realize he’s the one positive response out of 113 responders, which makes you wonder whether or not he’s not part of the organization’s PR rather than someone honestly responding to these stories.

All I can say is that had I taken the bait back then, my life would be so much worse than it is now because when people are after you only for your money, they don’t care what happens to you when you’re destitute and without options. Just look at the leaders of these businesses and their political choices. If you’re poor and without lots of money, they are certainly not the people to whom you’d turn, which is ironic because for the most part, they got rich off of people with very little.

Dealing with companies with horrible (or lack of) customer service

Business, Computer Games, Technology, , , , , , ,

star wars satele

Recently, I’ve been dealing with one of those companies known for horrible customer service. You know, one of those corporate entities that everyone loves to hate, yet they keep doing their thing, somehow convinced that people will just forget about horrible customer service in the past, forgive them completely and even though they haven’t done anything to fix anything, their belief is everything will somehow improve.

The company we’re talking about is Electronic Arts, the monopolistic entity of the computer gaming world. Disclosure: Years ago, I worked for them when Maxis was bought by them (and I worked at Maxis Software). That doesn’t mean I have become their biggest fan (or worst enemy either). When I left them, I was lukewarm about the company. My complaint today is coming strictly from a customer, or at least a former customer if you want to be completely honest.

My problem stems from one of those game properties they have that I hate to love, but tend to return to as most gamers seem to have one or two of those kinds of titles in their back list. My title was Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I’ll be honest: It’s one of those games you can enjoy for great segments of time before you grow bored with it and put it on hold for months (or years) before picking it back up again.

Well, I was on my third or so time of going back to picking it up again when all of this happened. I grew bored with World of Warcraft, was looking for something to scratch my gaming itch, and decided to come back to Star Wars: The Old Republic. A few times in returning back, the game is a lot different from when I first played it. You see, back in the older days it was one of those $15/month games, like World of Warcraft. But it kind of failed at that type of game and became one of those free to play (or purchase to play free, or whatever acronym you need to use). The monthly fee was now waived, although if you wanted the full experience of the game (all your characters and not feeling like you’re a toddler in an adult game), you basically had to pay the full price ($15 a month). So, I went to update my billing information and was immediately denied. For some reason, it wouldn’t take my credit card information. So I went to the Paypal option, and it denied that as well.

What I discovered, after some time on the phone with their customer support (this is SWTOR customer support at this time) is that EA has disabled my pay options because during the time I was away from the game someone tried to access my account and buy a copy of FIFA (some soccer game, or something like that). The person was denied (only because my credit card information had lapsed; not through any great action on the part of EA). But because of this, my account has been frozen.

So, I had to then call EA (not SWTOR) customer support where I went through a maze of customer support people who all promised they could take care of it, but each needed the information told to them from the ground up and then hung up and proceeded to do absolutely nothing. A few days after EACH call, I got an email from someone who said he or she was the one who could fix this if I provided more information but that person couldn’t ask me the information by email, so I would have to call back to relay the correct information. Each time I called back, I was given yet another clueless customer service person who couldn’t acknowledge the person who left the message, so they had to start the process from the beginning again. I should add that he email address of the person who wrote me each time basically went back to someone who would state that he couldn’t help me unless I contacted customer service directly.

So, this went on for weeks. All I kept asking for was someone to unblock my account so I can put my paypal information onto my account and be able to play the game again. There has been absolutely no resolution to this issue whatsoever. Fun fun.

So, as it is, I will probably never buy another game from any entity involved with EA, including, of course, EA.

This is customer service at is very worst.

Why Has the World Gone Downhill? An Analysis of Violence

News, Politics, Religion, Technology, Writing, , , , ,

 

One of the common tropes in storylines, especially for fantastical fiction, is the idea of returning to a period of time when things were “the old ways”, kind of like a time travel journey to the 1950s, or even a trip to the ancient past. The main character is seen as a fish out of water as he or she tries to use his or her knowledge of that time (and his or her future time) to get through such an experience. Now, part of me was thinking of focusing this post just on the writing aspects of this sort of speculation, but while I was thinking this through, I started to wonder something, and specifically I was wondering why we became what we are today rather than having continued the way things were “back in the day.”

This was prompted by an article covering a shooting that took place in Denmark and how that community (and that country) is now having to do things to make sure that such a tragedy doesn’t happen again. In other words, they are going to become a lot like other places around the world where violence is somewhat expected. I mean, no one wants to be caught off guard, right?

And that got me to thinking about that infamous line that used to happen in the United States whenever something tragic occurred. If this was the 1950s, the response would be something along the lines of “I can’t believe such a thing like that could happen here.” Or my other favorite: “I can’t believe Bob did that because he always seemed like such a nice guy. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen here.” I think you might be getting the picture.

In the 1970s, that message, while still happening in areas where you wouldn’t expect to hear it (part of the response to gun shootings that were happening in rural areas rather than urban settings) slowly changed to “I can’t believe that happened here. I mean, it’s not like we live in Chicago/New York/Detroit.” In other words, it was starting to happen in urban environments, so we were starting to expect stories like that, but it shouldn’t happen in a place like Wheatfield, Wyoming (if that was a real place). But now, it’s happening all over the United States, so that every new story that happens is treated as a one-off case of an almost expectant event, even if where that event took place might have been speculation before it happened. It’s happened so much in the United States that we’re now starting to be surprised by these stories happening in other countries, rather than by ones that happen in the United States.

So, because of the way these trends work, we’re going to be seeing more and more of this violence happening around the world in places where we’d last expect to see it. And then we’ll have to be surprised by something worse, like the level of violence, the perpetrators of the violence, or some other factor we haven’t considered yet.

Which leaves one important question:

Why?

Why are we seeing this sort of thing becoming a norm for our communities? Are we desensitized to violence so we now accept it as a part of our natural order? Is the human species evolving into a much more violent, chaotic creature that holds little regard for fellow humans? Is that creature devolving into the types of people we used to be before we took the Hobbesian path and developed government around us to protect us from each other? Is it because our means of hurting each other have become much more convenient and useable? Or are there other factors that cause us to do the sorts of things we do to each other these days?

Desensitization

There’s a lot of theory that addresses this possibility, mainly making the point that as people are exposed to more and more sensations of a certain type, they no longer find themselves affected by it and either no longer seek such sensations or have to increase the type of exposure to reach that level of influence again. We see this all of the time with the drugs we take, from cigarettes to alcohol to both legal and illegal substances. Most of the time, the first exposure to the item causes an initial positive reaction which is then transferred into a loss that needs that input again. Continuous exposure acts as a certain punctuated equilibrium, which means we get used to a higher level of usage and continue to have to increase the dosage to provide the same “high” that we had before.

For violence, there’s no reason this wouldn’t work the same way as well. We become comfortable with the amount of violence we’re exposed to and then seek out higher levels of violence. As exposure theory goes, it makes sense.

Or does it? The problem with exposure theory is that the influence might increase for an individual, and it would take more and more violence to affect that person, but why would this somehow translate to people in other areas now experiencing violence where they didn’t have it before? The theory doesn’t explain that, unless the idea of violence is that it’s more of a virus that spreads rather than something that occurs in pockets and then spreads out, affecting those previously exposed to it.

Another possibility involving that theory is the types of violence inherent in the system. An argument is often made about video games, television and movies that might be desensitizing people, and unlike the virus affects of spreading violence, these would feed on subsequent communities just by the appearance to where people would consume these types of media. Again, that’s assuming these activities to be a causal factor rather than as a recognition of the violence (meaning no causal effect at all, or very little at least).

But I don’t want to just ignore the possibility because from first hand experience, I remember being a fan of horror movies when I was growing up. I remember watching the very first Nightmare on Elm Street with a bunch of military coworkers, and I was shocked at the violence in that movie, and it was extremely scary (at that time). Having watched many horror movies during that period of time, I remember watching that original movie again years later and thinking how tame it was in comparison to “real” horror movies. I certainly didn’t feel that way the first time I watched it. So, there’s a bit of desensitization going on there, or it may just be a stimuli adjustment. Or it may have no connection at all to violence because if one sees it as “reaction to being scared” rather than “reaction to violence” there may be absolutely no ties whatsoever. Again, something to keep in mind when analyzing such phenomena.

Evolution of the Species

This is one of those possibilities that truly scares me because with evolution, you have the whole survival of the fittest thing going on, and if the fittest is the most violent, then we’re in for some really bad problems. But what if our dilemma is that the human condition is now one that is favored through violence rather than through cooperation? There’s a strong believe that through our evolution, we have reached a point where social communities are what propel us forward beyond the previous adaptations and around other species that didn’t achieve this level of evolutionary maturity. Okay, if that’s the case, why is violence becoming more and more a response to how we handle these social encounters instead of community and broad cooperation? If our evolutionary process made sense, there would be a strong possibility that people would find ways to get along in diverse circumstances (instead of taking a gun to work and killing the boss during an altercation) and on an even higher level, we should probably see fewer wars and regional conflicts.

But we don’t. Instead, after several wars to end all wars, we’re still as violent towards each other as we’ve ever been. Right now, our Congress is meeting to figure out how to give our president more authority to attack people we don’t get along with. For some reason, no money is being discussed for allocation that will be spent to foster peace with the people we don’t get along with. The response to this criticism is “it would be a waste of money because they don’t want peace”. And we know this why? Because we’re currently trying to kill them while they’re trying to kill us (or at least allies of us). In our present sense, we see what we’re doing as justified, yet we’re still doing the same violent things we were doing in the past, and now we just have more efficient ways of doing it.

So, the question is asked, are continuing to become a more violent people? And I don’t mean just the United States, or the west, or anything like that. I mean humans as a whole. Are we just becoming more violent?

Or were we always this violent? Except we had governments that were capable of keeping us from killing each other (except during national campaigns where they got to send people out to kill in their names)? If you’ve ever been to war, it’s a pretty brutal experience. Oh, we like to fluff it up with 21st century technology and act like we’re doing something much different than how our forefathers fought, but when it comes down to it, you still have people out in the middle of some place they don’t want to be trying to kill a bunch of other people who don’t really want to be out there doing that either. And we pin medals on the ones that come back alive (and sometimes those who didn’t), and then create celebrations for the sacrifices they made. But in the end, we’re rewarding a bunch of people who are doing things that civilized people probably shouldn’t be doing any way.

But of course, someone will say that the others guys MADE us do it, that they were out there doing atrocities. And I’m sure the other guys will say that those of us attacking them were doing all sorts of affronts to humankind, like sleeping with each other on the wrong days of religious texts, eating something that someone’s interpretation of God says people shouldn’t be eating for arbitrary reasons that someone else will defend to the death, and all such other reasons (some good, some ridiculous, and some just straight out confusing, even to the people following them).

Which kind of pushes the whole Hobbesian argument that maybe we’ve been comfortable and safe from the mannerisms of our fellow humans by a simple agreement to follow some arbitrarily chosen noble whose real purpose is to make sure that people don’t go around killing each other all in return for a promise to make sure that those who DO kill each other will be held responsible for such actions (so that might keep them from doing so). If our only reason for avoiding violent tendencies is because of some agreement our ancestors made with each other, then it might not be surprising why a civilization that tends to teeter closer to anarchy might not feel the need to follow preordained orders of a monarchical society that leads for the simple reason that those in charge just feel they should be in charge.

Think of it this way. If you’re a citizen of an order that you don’t believe in any more, because few in that society do, and lump that in with a belief that there’s no reason to live the life that your ancestors did because that’s only going to provide a lifetime of hardship and destitution, there are people in your life (or on the edge of it) you don’t like, and you see violence as an option rather than something to avoid, I wonder if that would explain why a lot of these events are becoming a norm rather than the anomaly they used to be.

I mean, let’s be honest. I don’t have the answers. But I do have a lot of questions, and I’m starting to suspect that people aren’t really asking questions any more but are just pontificating about what they think are the answers to a whole lot of questions that people stopped asking.

Solving the School “Costs” Problem

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star-wars-darth-vader-senseRecently, President Obama push forward the idea of making community colleges “free” to students. This, supposedly, will give downtrodden students an opportunity to get an education and improve their lot in life.

A nice thought. A nice idea. But again, it does too little and in the wrong place.

First off, I think it’s great that our president is talking about cutting the costs of education and in a roundabout way, talking about cutting down on student loans. But this is another one of those attempts to create savings in an area that is actually not the problem. Community colleges are generally pretty cheap, and if you’re living a normal life, there’s no way that you really can’t pay your way through a community college program. Where the real problem exists is in higher level institutions and in the student loan fiasco that exists in that realm. But as I’m sure you realize, no one is doing anything about the fact that so many people who have student loans are basically screwed for the rest of their lives.

And that’s really the problem they need to address and never will. Instead, what seems to happen is you mention the student debt problems, and you get a sort of Mitt Romney response of “you shouldn’t have taken out the debt if you weren’t planning to pay it back.” Yeah, that’s true, but people took out so much debt to pay for college based on this fantasy that jobs would be prevalent after graduation. And that hasn’t been the case.

So, what should government do?

Well, for one, forgive student loan debt AND then work on making colleges affordable so that people don’t need to take out so much debt. But we’re not doing either one of these. Focusing on community colleges for savings in tuition is like going to a random soda machine and making everything half priced in one place at one time where few people are going to even know it’s happening. If you wanted to make a difference, you go to the original distributor, put all the sodas on an inexpensive rate and then notice as everyone pays less money for soda. Discounting a discounted tuition (which is what community colleges basically are) doesn’t solve anything as no new people are going to be able to pursue education because they’ve already scraped the bottom of the barrel by making those school affordable to anyone who actually has time. If someone can’t afford a community college now, their problems are probably much worse off, meaning they’re focusing on whether or not they should pay the heat bill or the electricity rather than whether or not college is affordable.

What caused the problems of today was that bankers decided that college debt should not be forgiveable, and they made Congress back that up with law. Meanwhile, they allowed themselves to declare bankruptcy if they make stupid financial decisions and had Congress back that up as well. In other words, if you make a stupid mistake like try to get an education, you will never be forgiven for that mistake. If you take billions of dollars of money that you don’t actually own and invest it in blow and hookers, you can declare bankruptcy and five years later you can do it all again. As long as that mindset is part of our dynamic, we’re NEVER going to solve the problems inherent in our system. Mainly because the people who can solve it are benefiting from the problem in the first place. In the end, it all gets paid for by the people who can’t afford to get a good job because their educational goals have stifled any future economic advancement.

So, when I hear a president say he’s REALLY going to solve the student college problem, I need to hear a lot more than “we’re going to trim a few leaves off a tree in hopes of growing a forest.”

And this is coming from someone who actually likes our president. That doesn’t mean he gets a free pass every time he does something like this.