If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. That's what all the cool kids do. Thanks for visiting!
First of all, I want to thank all the scummy feedscraping sites. IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON ANY OTHER SITE BUT SECONDHANDKARL.COM you are reading STOLEN CONTENT. This shit pisses me off, but I know I’m showing up on a lot of other sites out there. They do NOT have my permission to use my words, so come over to Secondhandkarl.com and read it properly. Thanks.
Thanks to NYCWD for Snacking on me yesterday. I’m honored to be amongst such gloriously wacky folks.
It felt very strange on Sunday morning to wake up and not have to worry about a noon deadline for my column in today’s paper. Perhaps it seems like no big deal to have a newspaper column. I mean, I already write something every day for 2HT, what’s another 550 words? But it’s not always easy coming up with those 550 words, believe me. Plenty of times I was up against the looming deadline with no idea what I was going to write.
At any rate, until I get another writing gig, I’m going to stay in the habit of coming up with a column every Monday. Here we go.
Lately my love/hate relationship with social networking sites is taking a serious turn toward hatred. I’ve been using these things since they started, way back when I was still living in Dallas, even. Remember a site called Six Degrees? Yeah, I was in on the ground floor there and it really did nothing for me, except suck a lot of hours out of me racking my brains to think of every person I knew.
Then there was Friendster, which is still around (and yes, I still have an account that I never use). But really, let’s face it - the first one that really broke out of the gate was Myspace. And I signed up on Myspace, too. It’s been over four years I’ve been part of that site and I never have gotten around to customizing my profile page, design-wise. I think most of the designs there are absolutely awful, but my thoughts on design are fairly well-known already. I’ll stick with the plain-white version, thanks.
But the thing that appealed to me about Myspace in the beginning was the ability to really reconnect with people you hadn’t heard from in forever. Sure, I connected with a few people, but Myspace has since soured itself greatly. It’s not about connecting with people any more; it’s about getting as many friends as possible. And spam…lots and lots of spam.
I rarely visit that site full of terribly gaudy and flashy animated GIFs. What brings me there 99% of the time is an e-mail message that informs me I have someone new that wants to be my friend. So I go to the site, knowing darn well that I’m going to get there and mark whoever it is as spam. Sure enough, it’s some nubile 19 year-old shoving her butt into the camera. Her profile is sparse, though she may have many “friends” and she wishes to share her REAL web link with me, where she’s allowed to have nude photos. By this time, I’m almost suspicious. Does Candy REALLY want to be my friend? Is she really so turned on by me that she feels a compulsion to remove all her clothes and set up a profile on an adults-only dating site? Hmm, I don’t know.
OK, I marked it as spam. No girls my daughters’ age want to get naked with me. And quite honestly, I’d feel like some sort of pervert if I were dating anyone their age. I don’t know how the famous Hollywood studs do it. Jack Nicholson is, what, 98 years old now? He’s still hanging with women 50 years his junior.
My point is that I’ve lost all the joy from using Myspace. The same can nearly also be said for Facebook, which started out to be a grown-up version of Myspace. I thought that was appealing, being the anti-Myspace. But now? It’s an incessant series of requests from your friends to add applications to your Facebook profile page. People are constantly wanting to Kiss Me or Bite Me to make me a vampire, or play Scrabble, or Ask Me Questions. There are a billion applications on Facebook, and everyone wants me to add every one of them to my page.
My solution a few weeks ago was to remove nearly every Facebook application. Now I also IGNORE all requests for me to add a new one. Right now I bet I have at least 20 requests for these useless things. No more. The madness must end. I’m just waiting for the spam to show up on Facebook, too. I’m *this* close to deleting both Myspace and Facebook accounts.
And I’ll never feel sexually desired by 20-year-olds again. *sigh*
Getting Rid of Junk Offers and Finding Lost MoneyAm I Your 843rd Friend?So You Say You Like My Structure? Filed under Column, Web/Tech |41 Responses to “The End of an Affair”
Leave a Reply
You know, I think it’s like purging the house….spring cleaning, if you will. Good for the soul, no?
But don’t you want to accept this heather plant so we can fight global warning? I could throw a sheep at you instead.
I can throw around some dirty comments and ask you to be my friend, if you’d like.
My MySpace looks nice. But I hardly go there. I only put one up to see if I could connect with some people from my past. Nope. I haven’t, other than the people from KNAC.COM. I think a lot of those places are a waste of time. Which is why I never got into Facebook I guess.
Eden - let’s compare movie likes/dislikes instead.
Amanda - that would be very helpful, thank you.
Winter - Yeah, they really are time wasters, for the most part.
I’ve given my email to most everybody on MySpace and I write them occasionally, but it seems like many of them won’t respond to anything buy MySpace messages. It’s many peoples only foray on to the internets. It’s so frustrating. I’m tired of MySpace too, but I want to keep in contact with these non-blogging friends that found me there, so I guess I’ll keep it up, for now.
I did the same thing on Facebook a while back. Gotta draw the line somewhere.
Wanna play Scrabble?
Not that my opinion matters all that much but I think you are right on target when it comes to your comments about MySpace. Clearly it is designed for those who have way too much time are their hands to “pimp it up” with all the animated gif images and autoplay music, most of which screams in your ear until you figure out where they’ve hidding the player on their page so you can turn it off. I also have a very vanilla, unused MySpace, not to be confused with Live Space, which I still think has very admirable features and functions. Let’s hope the folks at Live Spaces don’t get any bright ideas and start “pimping” their service.
I enjoy your column.
Right on! I recently purged myself from all social networking sites where my real identity was popping up in a search engine. That was alarming! It took a few weeks for me to get every site to erase me from their records but I was astonished at how I was linked to different sites.
Facebook was fun for two weeks. I’m almost afraid to log on and see 4,000 requests. Someone, hold my hand.
Funny how things evolve into total crap eh? I removed all the aps from Facebook, except for Scrabble. I love scrabble.
It has become for me, an ongoing game of scrabble with The Man. I hardly use it for anything else. Postiing the odd photo.
I’m 23. I’d do you.
I never did MySpace (too old-heh!) and I really thought Faceache was great to start with, I found heaps of old friends. I was a real FB evangelist, until all the crap started flying around and I kept getting hit on by married guys.
I use my pristine IMP faceache account more now as I’m too scared to check my *real* one!
Mr. Fabulous - You know, Scrabble is really the only one I’m tempted by at the moment.
Cal - Yeah, the autoplay music drives me mad. Thanks for visiting.
Lisa - At least I don’t get spam on Facebook. Yet.
Nat - Yeah, Facebook is okay without the tons of apps. I’ll delete Myspace before Facebook, for sure.
Maria - Excellent! I’ll be there shortly.
Penelope - Don’t blame you in the least. A pristine Facebook account has got to be very appealing.
I’m very bad at Crackbook–I barely go there.
How do you know if your words are being stolen–how do you check?
I’m still having fun with Facebook, but only because I decided I’d move *all* applications to that magical place below the “Show more Profile Boxes” line. And then proceed to just forget about them. I also stopped falling victim to the “invite 20 people to see your results” scam.
Sure, I’ll occasionally “poke” or send booze to folk, and I like having (re-)connected with alumnae from my high school… but really? I use Facebook for the word geek in me: Scramble, anyone? I’m up for scrabulous, and word twist too
My affair with mySpace was brief - the only reason I signed up was to be Robot Chicken’s friend
Finally decided I’d do my small bit in uncluttering the internet by canceling that account.
I have it set up so I don’t get email notification when people want me to do applications on Facebook, and I never approve them. I do enjoy the Scrabulous, though.
Every time I get ready to delete my facebook and myspace accounts something stops me. I can’t seem to pull the trigger. I’m sure something will break me eventually.
Lynne - yeah, I think I’ll be joining you in canceling the account really soon.
Avitable - Yeah, I don’t get notified when new app requests come in, either. Only when new people want to add me.
I only put up with myspace for… hmmm probably a week. Facebook, nada. Can’t stand those sites.
Are you going to put that message at the top of every post? I’m wondering how to handle it myself. I have started blocking IPs, but that is a never ending task since they number of scum sucking scrapers is endless. When I searched for ways to fight against them, all I could find were ways to be a scum sucking scraper. What the hell?! I installed a copyright plugin that would put a copyright sig at the bottom of each post, but what happened was that in IE (ugh) people couldn’t see the comment link. Of course, only Fab uses IE, but he is a big whiner so I had to accommodate him by deactivating the plugin. A real human person who I thought was a spammer commented on my blog and I told her to stop spamming. She emailed me back and said she was sorry. I emailed her back and said I was sorry and explained about the webscrapers. She gave me this link. I don’t know what to think of it.
Am I a pain in the ass? Sorry for taking up a huge part of your comment section whining about these Internet irritants. I wish I could write plugins. We need to come up with a way to get rid of these assholes.
BTW, I hate MySpace, but I have one so that I can keep track of my kids who both have one and I don’t want the predators to get too much info from their pages.
The Internet is just one big lawless place, isn’t it? It’s sorta like the Wild West. There just aren’t rules that can be enforced. *sigh*
Sorry again.
I’m an eejit apparently.
I’m on blogger mind you–where do I check for ‘pingbacks’ and incoming links?
RE: “…Is she really so turned on by me that she feels a compulsion to remove all her clothes and set up a profile on an adults-only dating site?
After your Saturday post, I would say “yes.” ; )
Well I feel so ‘honored’ that you granted my friend request on myspace. Maybe it’s because I’m pimping Hilly’s peace sign as my picture?? I’m just bummed that if I showed you my ass you would have denied me. After all it’s not just anybody I’d show my ass to!!
I think the “not desired by 20 year old girls” can be ea.sil.ly solved by putting up the Phallus add picture on your profile
Yes Karl, life is thát simple… sigh…
Turnbaby - Sorry, I have no idea how Blogger operates. Never used it. Look at your statistics, particularly your incoming links if you can.
John - That’s a very good point.
Rachel - You can show me your ass, that’s fine. It really helped that you jotted a quick personal note to go with the Friend request.
DutchBitch - hmm, interesting. Maybe I’ll do that.
Seriously? I don’t even remember my MySpace login. Everything on there drove me fucktard crazy with the blinking animations, poorly chosen music and young woman ass looking to be my “friend”. I think the only person I ever approved was Tom from MySPace, and hell he is buddies with everyone (that slut ;)).
As far as facebook goes, the applications drive me nuts. Fucking BINGO? WTF? I ignore them all and use facebook to check on people from high school…..
I joined Facebook because for awhile it was the only way I seemed to be able to communicate with my brother and sister. Now they don’t talk to me there either.
I ignore any request that’s going to add some stupid over-stimulating shit to my page. I like keeping it boring.
Wow, I just met you (virtually) and already you are getting pissy. Are you sure that you aren’t one of my 7th grade students?
I didn’t *get* Facebook from the day I signed up for it. I’m sure there are plenty of people enjoying it but I think it’s totally lame. I’ve never even considered a Myspace account.
I started using it primarily to stay connected with my daughters, who are in college now and update their photo albums all the time. Since I’ve been adding friends left and right, I have to make sure I only give them access to my limited profile, so they can’t see my girls’ pages.
I quit out of FaceSpace and MyBook a LONG time ago. Too much junk, and no real purpose served. Total pain in the ass.
I’m on my third go-round with Twitter, and already getting fed up again. People I don’t even know following me, then when I check their profile, they’re marketing shit. Plus, it hasn’t worked right since I re-upped this last time. And all the fun stuff happens while I’m at work, anyway.
Let’s all move over to Skype’s IMing, and see how long before it turns into Skam.
SJ - Staying with Skype.com is a pretty safe bet because they have a very strong global following and Google is very likely to buy them from eBay. This could be good.
Personally I hedge my bets and keep most of my friends on either Live Messenger http://get.live.com/messenger/features or http://www.Skype.com (both have free text chat, voice, video and phone).
So far of all the social networking sites I’ve found Live Spaces, http://get.live.com/spaces/overview to the the safest, least invasive and socially useful of all the sites I’ve reviewed and tried. Just my two cent opinion of course!
So how’d you find out you were scraped?
Kapgar - I saw some spam come in, then some incoming links. When I followed them, my posts were on their site.
You hit the nail right on the head! Myspace really has ’soured’ over the course of the years. Only reason I’m on it is because, like you’d said, the reconnecting part of it. It’s pretty neat to write to someone you haven’t seen in ages and find out how their lives turned out.