This Facebook analysis is as bullshit as Facebook

I recently came across some Facebook analysis that a buddy of mine had posted to his Facebook wall.  Basically, it’s a site that’ll examine your Facebook page to analyze and spit back out some trends on how you use Facebook.  Being an idiot (and having my usual ill-regard for my online security) I granted the site access to my Facebook account, and let it do a bit of a tarot card reading of my Facebook content.  “Sure, rummage around, see what can you find.”

And it spit back a whole report about my Facebook.  Here’s what it said:

Posting in the afternoon is no surprise.  Studies repeatedly show that mid-afternoon is when Facebook is most active.  Now, let’s look at the topics about which I post.  “Cars,” sure I agree.  “Your community”?  What the fuck does that even mean?  That could mean anything.  Or nothing at all.  “Fashion”?  How dare you, sir, I say, how dare you.

The chart at the bottom is likely the most comical so far.  Much like this blog, “Loving” and “happy” are obvious and consistent qualities I overindex in my posts.  Of course they are.  I appear to have maxed out on “loving”.

Apparently, I’m only averaging 70 statuses a month.  Two-and-a-third posts per day average.  Fucking slacker.  But nowhere as much as of a slacker as the rest of you, apparently.  Others have 12.8 posts per month?  Why even fucking bother, you guys – just shut down your Facebook accounts and move the fuck on.  Just pack it in, you guys.

Now let’s look at these so-called “personality qualities.”  “Extroverted”?  And I thought I was a shy person who kept to myself.  “Cautious”?  What about?  What the fuck am I cagey about?  How the fuck is “strong willed” not off the charts on this one.  And “spiritual”?  Must be because I react to everything with “holy fucking shit”.  And apparently the fact that I fucking hate everything ranks as marginally optimistic in Facebook world.  I’m clearly out of my league in the call-bullshit-on-everything arena.  Facebook is apparently a seething cauldron of hateness, and I’m fucking bush league.

At this point, I’m reassessing this analysis – it’s not whether or not this analysis is fucked-up; it how fucked it really is.

Suck it, C.S. Lewis.  Or something.  What a retarded benchmark that is.  And apparently, the most liked updates I posted are also the least intelligent.  Gee, thanks a million, you guys.

Thank God the girls outnumber the guys.  Still got it.  But holy shit, I clearly to do run with people my age.  Why the fuck is everyone older than me?!  Oh yeah, because as a rule I pretty much hate anyone under the age of 25.

So what has this analysis taught me?  Pretty much one thing – it’s full of shit and almost entirely useless.  Pretty charts are nice, but squiggly lines and fancy bar charts are only impressive to nitwits if they don’t tell you anything substantive.

Maybe it’s garbage in, garbage out.  This site is crunching numbers from Facebook, and because Facebook is full of shit, the report is comprised largely of digital excrement as well.  Between all the missing updates from your friends, and everyone’s exploited accounts in which Facebook takes your name to “like” bullshit brands without your knowing, Facebook is such an anus.  And in spite of that, I continue to use it daily and frequently.  Because I’m an idiot.

 

I’m sick of looking at your kids on my Facebook feed

When I joined Facebook at the rise of the whole social media thing, I was massively skeptical about how it worked, how I was going to use it, and what the hell it’d actually do for me.  Truth is, if it wasn’t for work purposes, I might still not be a user.  Thanks to work, I had to dive right into the deep end of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Path, the list goes on.

Over the years, my usage has gone from wary and skittish to full-on voracious consumption.  I use almost all the channels now, and I use them a lot.  I use them for work, and I use them to keep informed, and more importantly, I use them to help pick out the shithead imbeciles out there so that I can make sure I stay the fuck away from them in real life.  Oh, I actively use it to push out these stupid blog posts that I write – shit that entirely no one cares about.

But there is one thing I’ve done from day 1 across my social channels that I haven’t changed ‘til today: I don’t post pictures of my kids.  At least, if I do, their faces are usually obscured.

Chalk this up to leftover leeriness of the interweb.  Or rather, the creepiness of the interweb.  I’m not suggesting that I have people in my circles of friends who are creepy (maybe I do).  It’s just that I know that there are a crazy, creepy assholes out there, and some of these fuckers will go to great lengths to do crazy, creepy shit.  Shit, if Facebook can openly admit that “hackers” (coughbullshitcough!) are hacking into the system to register fake “likes”, then what the fuck is stopping other assholes from trying shit that’s more malicious?

Here’s my underlying fear: I don’t need creeps scouring the interweb to find pictures of my kids to fap to.  Fuck.  That.  So, my twisted retarded logic is, if I don’t put pictures of my kids online, there’s no way that can happen.

Besides… no one needs to see pictures of my kids.  I mean, who gives a shit about looking at my kids.  I barely give a shit, and that’s only because I have to (I kid, I kid, no not really, yes I’m kidding, whatever).

But I’m firmly in the minority here.  People will post every fucking stupid picture of their kids on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, you name it.  Pictures of the kids at the beach, eating pizza, taking a shit, sometimes taking a shit on the beach while holding a slice of pizza.  (Actually, that last one sounds pretty cool, but that’s not the point.)

I’m not saying that I’ve NEVER posted a picture of my kids.  But like I said, when I do, they’re not recognizable.  That’s because when I post a picture of my kids, I’m often using them as a tool to amplify a point I’m making (maybe).  When you post a picture of your kids, it serves no purpose other than putting them on a virtual pedestal so that everyone out there can oooh and aaah at how cute they are, and laud wonderfully saccharine, vacuous YET COMPLETELY EXPECTED compliments, which does absolutely NOTHING for the kids, and does EVERYTHING for your little fragile ego.

“Hey you guys, look at the marvel of the universe that is my cute, adorable kid.  The kid that sprang from my glorious loins.  She is SO AMAZING!!!  Am I Is my kid not spectacular?  Go on, tell me how brilliant I am he is!!”

Ergo, posting pictures your fucking kids is self-absorbed narcissistic behavior.  Stop your desperate and poorly-cloaked attempts at fishing for compliments.  Stop trying to find assurance, admiration, and adoration online.  And for fuck’s sake, stop using your goddamn kids to do it.

And don’t let me get started on pictures of your fucking cats and dogs.

 

Three for Thursday

People who think they’re too cool to capitalize.  Typically these  “faux-eccentric types” are the ones who feel like they have license to do this.  You know, the sort who think that crowdsourcing isn’t just asking the unwashed masses to do your shitty work for you (it is).  Good job on dive bombing your bar of creativity by thinking that simply not using your shift key qualifies you as being “inventive”.  Or simply exploiting your sheer, unbridled laziness by cloaking yourself in some pretentious veil of cool, that you’re above the rudiments of punctuation. Here’s a clue: none of it’s working, and you’re coming across loud and clear as some illiterate dickhead.  Not one person is impressed.  So knock it off, doucheface.  Using proper punctuation is as basic as brushing your teeth.  It’s not that hard.

Tedious, self-aggrandizing Facebook updates asking you to spread a “cause”.  It typically involves some long-winded, self-validating bullshit paragraph about some bullshit that you, as the reader, couldn’t give a shit about, and then it ends with some pathetic plea to have you repost that stupid update.  “If you agree, please post this in your update.”  Oh, for fuck’s sake – WHY!?!  Who gives a shit if I agree with that stupid shitty paragraph you cut-and-pasted in your update.  Do you really give a shit if I agree with that stupid statement which you were too lazy to even come up with your own so you just cut-and-pasted it from some other retarded lemming’s Facebook update?  If I were shallow-minded enough to repost that shit you posted on your update, would it make one lick of difference to anyone?  That’s right, it fucking wouldn’t.  So, WTF, you mindless lemming.  “Post this on your update if you agree that cancer is shitty.”  Well, of course cancer is shitty.  What’s that request supposed to do – guilt me into the belief that if I don’t post that retarded paragraph on my Facebook status, I actually believe that cancer rocks?  Fuck.  Off.  I have half a mind to post this who paragraph in my Facebook update.  “If you think your friends are retarded for posting stupid shit on their Facebook updates, please repost this load of bollocks.”  Go on, I fucking dare you.

Hoboken’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  I don’t give a shit if this comes more than a month after the event.  It’s retarded.  St Patrick’s Day is only meaningful on St. Patrick’s Day.  March 17.  Two days after the Ides Of March.  That’s it, no other time.  There’s no St. Patrick’s Day season, like you do the Easter season or Christmas season (which apparently starts right on Labor Day these days).  The day before St. Patrick’s Day is completely meaningless.  As is the day before that (fuck the Ides Of March, just ask Julius Caesar).  There’s no festivity after St. Patrick’s Day – the way Boxing Day only exists because Christmas Day does.  So St. Patrick’s Day is one day and one day only.  The fact that the city of Hoboken are retarded enough to think that it’s perfectly fine for them to throw some stupid St. Patrick’s Day parade some two weeks before the actual event – especially being a mere five miles from the actual site of a good and proper St. Patrick’s Day Parade – on the actual fucking day! – shows just what a bunch of retarded douchebags have been wandering Hoboken all these years.  The only redeeming thing about this stupid annual tradition of celebrating an event well in advance of the day of the event is that the drinking and debauchery is completely fucking out of control.  The fact that this stupid parade made the news this year because of the city’s efforts to curb the drinking and debauchery, only to lead to record-levels of drunken madness, may be the only reason to validate this otherwise completely retarded event.  Next year, I want a car fire and someone driving a fire truck into the Hudson, Hoboken.  Otherwise, no more stupid St. Patrick’s Day events.

Do I really need another sodding email?

[Originally posted March 2011]

I seem to be collecting email addresses like bad habits.  Not talking about other people’s email addresses, mind you.  I’m talking about mine.  And it’s starting to get slightly out of hand.

Quite simply, I have too many email addresses.  When I first got around to getting my own email address, I signed up to Hotmail and got one.  And it wasn’t even a regular .com one.  This one was a .co.uk.  (Because I was living in the UK)  But it was simple yet comprehensive.  First name dot last name at hotmail dot co dot uk.  The sort of email address most of us aspire for.  Straightforward, no need for all sorts of crazy stupid numbers at the end of your email because some other jerkoff took your name and is probably not even using it anymore.  Douche.  But I’ll get to that in a bit.

By the time I got back to NY, I didn’t want to carry around a .co.uk email address anymore.  It didn’t make any sense for me to keep using that – there was something slightly pretentious about carrying that around, I thought.  So I signed up for the .com equivalent.  First name dot last name.  Gone.  Some other jerkoff with my stupid name had taken it.  Practically every articulation or abbreviation of my name had been taken.  And my name’s about as far from something as common as John Smith as can be!  How the hell could all these names be taken?!  Bastard(s).

So like a schmuck, I had to resort to numbers.  And I tried spelling my name with numbers.  How leet.  I know: I suxx0r!!!  Anyhow, that’s what I tried, that’s what was available, and that’s what I went with.  I now had an email address with fucking numbers in it.  And my God, do I loathe it.

I ran with that email for a while.  I got over the numbers, probably because the email did exactly what I needed to do.  You know, work like some electronic message transmission service.  And I was probably a lot less needy than I am these days.  But then more email services started to pop up.  Gmail was suddenly all the rage.  And the whole phenomenon of jumping on the next big thing to lock in your “identity” was as alien to me as seeing Katharine Hepburn on a skateboard.  I still can’t remember what prodded me to sign up for a Gmail account, but when I did, of course my first name dot last name was long gone.  As was every other iteration of my name.  Same goddamn story.  So I resorted to the same leet address.  Fucking loser.

Now for reasons I can’t explain, I’ve got both accounts fairly active.  Different people contact me on each address, and I have no idea why.  So I’ve now got to balance two personal email addresses. To what fucking end?!!  And as if that wasn’t enough, wifey and I have a household email address, one of those useless email addresses your household internet provider gives you like it’s some glorious door prize for signing up for their shitty service.  But because I was wholly dissatisfied with the interface, I signed us up with family Gmail account.  Except wifey continues to use that other shitty provider email!

By my count, I’m up to four email addresses now.  And that’s not counting work email.  That’s five.  Five email addresses I’ve gotta keep up with now.

Today, I got a message from Facebook saying that my Facebook email is ready to use now!  FACEBOOK!?!?!!!  Really, assholes?  Now I gotta deal with facebook dot com email address?  Was anyone really banging down Facebook’s doors for an email address from them?  Yes, I watched The Social Network, so I do appreciate the irony of a facebook.com email address.  But still, WTF.

That’s right, I’ve got a six-pack of email addresses now.  If only they’d be half as useful as so much PBR I could throw down my gullet.  One person having this many email addresses makes about as much sense as… well, this.  I wish I knew how to consolidate this bullshit, but like so many Gilbert Gottfried tweets, it’s all gotten bit out of hand now.  Thing is, I recently read thisarticle about how email addresses stereotype you.  And I was further advised by a friend of mine about how HR people are now weeding out candidates based on their email addresses!  Regardless of qualification!  Something about how they instantly toss out anyone with an AOL email address because they’re clearly too old.  Fucked up?  Fucked up.  Problem is, I think there is some truth to both the article and the alleged HR stereotyping.  I mean, when was the last time you saw anyone under 30 with an AOL email address.  See?

The last thing I needed was someone actually dumping another email address on me the way Facebook have.  I didn’t ask for it, but it looks like Facebook are gonna make me use it anyway.  But maybe the @facebook.com address will be the next big thing.  The email address that everyone’s clamoring for.  I guess one way of looking at this is that I don’t need to fight over finding my place in this “next big thing”, if it does turn out to be one – Facebook have already tossed me right in the middle of it.

They think they’re so clever.  Smug bastards.

 

SUP in the Bronx

[Originally posted September 2010]

Have a look at this picture.  I think it’s a pretty cool picture.  Risked soaking my iPhone in efforts to try and capture a cool photo while aboard my new stand-up paddleboard.  This stand-up paddleboard is kind of a big deal for me these days.  It’s my newest toy.  I go through these phases – find something new and I sink every waking second of attention to it.  It happened with bicycles, it happened with guitars, and now it’s my stand-up paddleboard.

Why?  Probably because as of right now, I’m the only game in town when it comes to stand-up paddleboarding.  I go out each weekend and I have all the water to myself.  Me, and a dozen other douchebags in their boats.  That’s not fair – they’re not all douchebags.  That’s just my jealousy from lacking the means to possess some motored fiberglass husk that’ll keep me from drowning in the middle of the Long Island Sound.  Plus I can’t be arsed to learn about boats.

The paddleboard is just fine for me.

It’s the closest I’ll ever get to surf culture, which was something that was highly aspirational to me as a kid growing up in a non-surfing country (stupid non-surfing, dream-killing country).  And I don’t have any serious risks on the paddleboard.  I stand on this this, I stand-up and paddle like a lunatic and get all sorts of strange glares and curious questions about what the hell I’m doing out there on the water.

But I digress.  That picture up there annoys me.

Why?  Because I took it, and I was massively impressed with it.  It’s me (kinda), paddleboarding in the Long Island Sound, and it’s a view of the Bronx.  The Bronx, motherfucker.  You ever see the Bronx looking like that?  Law & Order ever show you a sight of the Bronx like that, with trees and water… and a 12-foot surfboard thing?  Like fuck.

So, to me that’s an pretty interesting picture.  I like it.  I send it to friends (yay, I’m doing my part in the social media scene!).  I post it on my Facebook.  And I send it to the SUP ATX page – the board I own is an SUP ATX.  I sent it in hopes of getting some props for taking a cool, unexpected picture.  But no, these dicks just ignore it.  Instead, they’re posting up and lauding pictures of other douchebags on their paddleboards that aren’t even that interesting.  It’s shit I’ve seen over and over and over again.  Hey assholes, I just sent you a picture of your stupid ass paddleboard in the middle of the Bronx, with nice waters and big green trees.  How about some props for the effort!

Assholes.