Category: social networking

Bait

No, I’m not dredging up stories of child hood fishing trips or late night trolling for booty. I am referring to the out of control click-bait you see polluting most social media sites these days.

Headlines are written to provoke a click. It doesn’t matter if the headline isn’t true or so twisted to barely represent the story, as long as you ‘submit’. [1]Reference to a very funny Simpsons episode btw Most of the time said person sharing the click-bait hasn’t even read the link. It it is annoying to the point that I’ve started unfollowing people who do it a lot.

It is one thing if it is specifically related to you or your life. Beyond that, I don’t care what animal you are. I don’t care what cartoon character you are. I don’t care what your wanna be porn name is. I don’t care what character in any movie ever made is. I don’t care if you are a unicorn who burps glitter and shits rainbows. And here is a news flash, no one else does either!

And you people who share fake stories or scams “just to be safe” need to be punched in the dick!  Knock. It. Off!  No Bill Gates and Yahoo are not joining forces. No, the IRS is not sending the sheriffs to your house to arrest you unless you send them money. No, the quadrillionaire in [insert county here] did not die and leave all his money in limbo so his [insert relative or estated holder] can ask your help in getting the money. No, VI@gR@ will not help you ‘get the girl.’ No, “if you are a real ______, you will share this like I did.”  And for fuck’s sake, NO YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE A LOT OF MONEY BY MAGIC IF YOU POST THIS TO 10 OTHER PEOPLE’S PROFILES.

Now get off my lawn!

References

References
↑1 Reference to a very funny Simpsons episode btw

Domain

I recently recovered the .com version of my domain. I originally registered it, forgot about it and when it expired someone tried to squat on it for a paycheck. I guess they finally gave up. lol Bitches thought they could get blood out of a turnip! heehee

Anyway, I originally purchased it to use it as a photoblog. Now that I have it back I am doing just that. Let’s face it, I’m all over the web and it gets confusing at times to keep track of things. lol Not to mention, there are often a ton of pics I never post to social media. I either get distracted or am on the go and I just forget. How dare I deprive you of such things, right?

Of course, I also want to get cross posts of pics from the various social media sites in one location. Doing it manually of course isn’t an option. The goal is to automate the process as the tediousness quickly kills the desire. Most of my FB and twitter posts come from Google+. Getting them to WordPress from there isn’t overly difficult except most plugins support all or nothing methods. Well, I just want the pics to go.

The easiest method so far is to push from Google+, even it is rather convoluted at times. And as you can see, I still have some holes.

Pic > Google+ > FB, twitter, Tumblr (via friendsplus.me)

Pic > Tumblr > Photoblog (so indirectly I can push from Google+)

Pic > Instagram > Tumblr > Photobog

Pic > Foursquare (swarm) > ? > Photoblog

Pic > twitter only > ? > Photoblog

Pic > FB only ? > ? > Photoblog

The only drawback so far is posts that get created from social media show up with no-name. It’s not the end of the world for a photo blog but I’d like to change that at some point. I’m sure there are work arounds for twitter and FB only posts but I then I have to avoid infinity loops.

All that madness aside, and if you care, pop over to www.sfmoby.com and check it out. It is still on a basic template for now but it is up and running. I plan to merge more stuff in from my archives (if I can) as well as load a snazzier template. Some of the older pics might be a tad on the R-rated side but most are work safe. If you are a coworker reading this, you have been warned.

Stat

Sooooo, in all the domestic bliss, I forgot to mention I’m moving into year 11 of this here blog thingy. Eleven years. Other than masturbation, I don’t think I’ve kept up with anything in my life that long before. (You laugh, but I am not joking.) All these years later and I’m still at it. Granted, not as fast and steady as I used to be, but that is ok.

I was pleasantly suprised to see I still get a decent chuck of blog traffic, even with my lower postings as of late. Ironically, posts about Cooper often get the most hits. [1]Being upstaged by my own dog! The nerve. Google has updated their analytics engine and it is truly amazing the scope of data they capture now. Most of my traffic is still direct, meaning people load my feed or come directly to my site. This one stat was the most surprising and humbling. Thanks for reading my madness. Really, I’m tickled people still enjoy my rants. Sadly, brettcajun is STILL the best referral source within the blogosphere. How that dirty cajun manages it is beyond me. A big surprise was Joe.my.god’s blog. Apparently, I’ve been getting a ton of new referrals from his blog. I read him daily (and so should you). Towleroad made the top 10 for what I think is the first time ever. I attribute the later two gains to my increase in comments on their sites. My lack of interest on FB has to be captured somewhere.

Out of social media referrals I got another surprise. I get almost as many clicks from Google+ as I do FB. twitter is a very distant third. FB used to dominate this area. I’m glad to see a more even shift as I continue to use FB less and less. When I factor in the referrals between blogger and plus, Google dominates.

My keywords are always a hodge podge as my blog tends to jump all over. Let me just list the top 10 for the past 30 days …

Eye problems behind a computer
vision problems optometrist
SF Moby
Moby zipper
Sex with Moby
Grindr Rules
Gubbmint
adult archives
Ok porn
bloggers in SF

Yes, that is the top 10 ways new vistors have found me in the last 30 days. lol To be fair, the ratio drops significantly after Sex with Moby. The latter I assume relates to the other Moby btw.

Yeah, I continue to blog and yeah I know it’s probably considered passe now but I never did respond well to peer pressure. Le blog continues to enrich my life and is my chronicle in attempting a life well lived.

References

References
↑1 Being upstaged by my own dog! The nerve.

Duty

​I’ve gotten more than a few inquiries on my thoughts regarding the Missouri incident.  In a word, it’s a mess. You have a citizenry that is under-educated and have all but abandoned their civic duties. Granted, they can’t be blamed so much for that but looting your own community demonstrates a level of ignorance that is becoming more and mor prevelant in this country.

I come from very poor means. It is hard to care about community involvement when your sole existence is about survival. But, if we hope to stop problems like this we have to encourage said communities to be and do better. We need to shift our priorities away from the accumulation of wealth and to the betterment of people. Education is a huge component. An educated community is often more involved. Of course, the powers that be want you to be dumb because you are easier to control.

Then you have a police force in a small town that has all the authority and very little oversight. This is not unusual per se. Visit any small rural area and you’ll see similar stories. Does that mean all rural depts are bad? No, of course not. But as the facts unfold, it is glaringly obvious the agency is lacking in any sort of oversight or accountability from its citizens. The abundance of hard-core military grade gadgets is simply crazy.

At the end of the day a young man lost his life. His implied guilt or innocence is not a valid reason on its own for his death. And as the facts are told and clarified, there is a larger cloud over the agency vs the officer involved. The often inflammatory (and even sometimes inaccurate) reporting from many media outlets hasn’t helped the situation. And of course, the emergent mob-mentality of our social media commentary is just icing on the cake. If social media is your only source of news, you are part of the problem. If you don’t know the details of a story or incident, keep your mouth shut until you do. Don’t share links you haven’t read because of a link-baiting headline. And you f**kers who share every story with the idea “it can’t hurt“, need a serious ass-whooping. /rant

Are there bad officers? Of course there are. But for every bad cop, there are easily 100 more you never hear about. Why? Because cops doing their duty don’t generate sensational headlines or ad-clicks. [1]Poor comparison but I see the same mis-characterization in my volunteer work with animals regarding pitbulls.  A few bad cops do not make them all bad and isolated stories of abuse do not paint an accurate picture.  Yes, our law-enforcement should be held to a higher standard, but humans are fallible no matter their position in life. To avoid the corruption we as the citizenry must be involved.

And speaking of, our citizenry is becoming ill-educated every day it seems. Subjective validation is often more important than facts or reason. Religious fanatacism and personal greed have trumped our morals. We’ve gone from ‘what can I do for my society‘ to ‘what can society do for me?‘ The idea of civic duty or responsibility is a foreign idea to most folks these days. A citizenry that abandons it’s overseers is quickly overrun by their own indifference. Absolute power corrupts absolute as the old adage goes. You cannot give away your power thru inaction and then wonder why the abuses keep happening. Proclaming your outrage on social media and demanding change does nothing to help and only serves to feed the problem.

Perform your civic duties. Vote, serve on jury duty and most of all, be involved in your community. Go to community meetings. Know your local policy makers and pay attention to their actions. Only then will your actions carry weight and effect change. Otherwise, you end up just being another sheep being guided by those in power, often to your detriment.

References

References
↑1 Poor comparison but I see the same mis-characterization in my volunteer work with animals regarding pitbulls.

Less

I find that I spend less time on social-media sites these days. One, I’ve been super busy so less time and two, it just seems to be more and more tedious and boring. There is so much crap and filler meant to generate ad-clicks, it just gets to a point where the purpose is lost. It is no secret I loathe FB but it does allow a connection of sorts to friends. I’ve threatened to dump FB in the past and still might but it is more likely I’ll just end up posting less and less until it becomes a place-holder.

Part of my frustration is witnessing the dumbing down of America. And it is getting worse. Our indifference to anything outside our immediate environment is contributing to the decay of our society. Integrity, honor, respect, honesty, truth, it’s all becoming buzz-words. Social media was meant to unite and bring us together and it seems to be doing just the opposite. I can’t say I wanna be a part of that. Don’t even get me started on the whole anti-intellectualism movement again. OMFG! 

Then you have the “stories” that often catch on like wild-fire that turn out to be hoaxes or flat out lies. Almost every day now I encounter stories that are fake or have just enough of the truth to seem plausible. And of course, no one can be bothered to check around or fact find, they just read a story and assume it is true and then continue to spread the ignorance. Even credible news outlets have been falling prey to this. [1]One has to look at the recent Turing Test story going around about a supercomputer finally crossing a threshold of believability as a human. Total fabricated story but it spread to even many of the … Continue reading  As my maw-maw always used to say, “…believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.”

Unlike previous moods, I’m not saying I’m leaving vs just expressing a growing dislike for said sites. They have some use but I’m finding the cons are out-weighing the pros more and more.

References

References
↑1 One has to look at the recent Turing Test story going around about a supercomputer finally crossing a threshold of believability as a human. Total fabricated story but it spread to even many of the tech sites

Share

First off, if you visit the blog via the web, you’ll  notice a theme change. I’m moving to themes that are built as mobile compliant vs having to have a plugin convert if for me. Of course, you should notice a new mobile version if you access let blog on a mobile device.

*

I hate having to share stuff between my myriad social media accounts. It is a constant pain to share in one place and then fret because I haven’t shared in others. I know, big #FirstWorldProblem. Who cares right? Well, if you subscribe to said blog, you might get a few updates from me today via email. I tried disabling by post but it seems to be ignoring that tiny but important setting. hehe. Apologies if you are getting several emails today about trivial stuff. I’m trying to make it less painful by including pretty pictures.

I’m moving things around. As many of you know, I prefer to manage everything via my blog then share it out to social media. It’s now an easy task when plugins never support all the varied platforms all in one. My biggest thorn has been google+. Because they have a closed API, there are no plugins to accomplish this task so I have to manually share a post. Clearly, that doesn’t always happen. haha  But…

I switched to a Jetpack plugin today on my self-hosted WordPress and it supports posting to google. Yay!  It used to only support WordPress hosted blogs. Now it supports self-hosted.  I’m turning off some of the old plugins and testing the Jetpack one as it posts out to FB and twitter as well. If this works as hoped, I can finally switch back to posting pics, etc to my blog FIRST and have it filter out to my social sites from there.

Moby will be a happy camper if it all works as planned! Anyway, if you could care less about all this, feel free to enjoy this lovely pic of one of my original blogger meetings so so many years ago. It does include brettcajun and homer.

image

101

DMV 101 that is. After a few random yet repeated issues with people not knowing basic traffic laws I’d thought I’d offer up a PSA. hehehe

No, you do not get to block an intersection because you couldn’t bear the idea of waiting on a light. You can’t legally pull into an intersection unless you can pull all the way thru it, including the crosswalks. The reasons why you got ‘trapped’ are irrelevant. If you get tagged by a red-light camera, it is a non-moving violation. If you get tagged by a cop, it is a moving violation and goes on your license. [1]or it can

No, you can’t pull into the opposite lane of traffic to go around a double parked vehicle while other cars are coming. You do not have the ‘right-of-way’ simply because you pulled into the opposite lane before the other car got close enough. If anything were to happen you are at fault.

No, you can’t text and drive no matter how slowly your car is moving.

No, you shouldn’t bicycle and text either. When you fly over your handlebars after hitting the MUNI tracks, you have no one to blame but yourself.

And lastly, No you can’t legally park in the MUNI bus stop and then be surprised you got a $250 ticket.

Now you know.

🙂

References

References
↑1 or it can

Facts

Following up on my cognitive dissonance rant, I’ve been really disappointed lately with the disturbing trend we have toward ignoring facts. It seems that once again we are following in the foot-steps of the crazies by now also ignoring facts in favor of bias.

I use the most recent episode of Fitness SF’s [1]Formerly Gold’s Gym domain scandal. One of the web contractors for the gym took their domain down and posted a rather long diatribe about “freelance developers” and “independent businesses” not being respected or paid. The contractor went on to accuse the franchise [2]Which is not a big business by any means, they run 4 gyms of failing to pay past due bills.

First, I agree a business should pay its bills. That was never in dispute. However, reading the posted story, it didn’t take much to recognize there was more to it. First, the contractor focused too hard on trying to play the victim and FSF was the big bad guy. Second, it reeked of revenge. The contractor requested everyone reading his rant cancel their memberships in protest. And here’s the kicker, some people did! With no more information than that given by a disgruntled party in a civil dispute, people not only canceled memberships but went on personal tirades about freelancers, the gym, uppity gays, blah, blah, blah.

FSF released a statement a couple days later detailing more of what was going on. And as suspected, it was much more than them just refusing to pay a bill. The contractor missed not only content but also deadline delivery. It goes one step further. His contract had been canceled and he no longer had legal access to the domain! So not only did the contractor act unethically, he also broke the law. And yet FSF was the bad guy. I don’t know who is ultimately “right” in this whole ordeal, but what is clear is it was a civil dispute between two parties that should never have been made public in this manner. I will add, having seen the mess that was their website during their grand-opening, it certainly adds up.

Here is where my rant really comes in today. Even after more of the real story came out, many still bashed FSF and went on to claim “support for freelance developers.” [3]Completely forgetting how far the local franchise has gone out of their way to support our community lately.  Truth no longer mattered, only the person’s personal bias. On a tangent, having done freelance web-design for many years, I can speak from experience. If I didn’t deliver a product as promised, I didn’t expect to get paid. And if I did get paid, it wasn’t the original price. I certainly would never stoop to taking down a companies’ domain over a dispute. One, said practice is a very grey area legally and two, it certainly doesn’t encourage more business knowing you resort to such tactics. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The moment the contractor stooped this low, he lost any moral high-ground, if he ever had it to begin with.

Facts matter people and so should the truth. This is but one example of many I could cite lately. We all have personal biases, no secret there. But we also have reason. When you allow your personal bias to trump reason and then go on to compound the issue thru denial, you marginalize yourself (and your argument). Life rarely deals in absolutes and trying to have an absolute ideal is often a recipe for failure. Don’t get caught up in the sensationalism and/or mob mentality. And just because a “friend” shared it with you on Facebook, take the time to understand an issue before going all holier-than-thou.

We are better than this. We do not need to stoop to such tactics to be taken seriously. You can support a cause, group, or ideal w/o blindly ignoring facts, reason, or simple logic.

References

References
↑1 Formerly Gold’s Gym
↑2 Which is not a big business by any means, they run 4 gyms
↑3 Completely forgetting how far the local franchise has gone out of their way to support our community lately.

Message

So I got a snotty message from someone on growlr the other day. Apparently, because I didn’t answer his first reply buried in about 100 other messages I’ve yet to open that made me a stuck up asshole. Who knew? I used to try to be polite to folks like this and explain things but I honestly don’t have time to help validate your insecurities online. Seriously, I can understand disappointment. We all go thru it. But if you get that worked up over someone not replying to your message, grunt, poke, jingle, woof, or whatever, then I highly recommend you log off the internet.

I’ve rambled before about our technology outpacing our ethical ability to keep up so no need to beat that horse again. Unfortunately, I did send back a bit of a snotty message. I shouldn’t have as it should be beneath me.

Dear random person.
I’m so very sorry that you are upset that I didn’t immediately drop everything I was doing to instantly see and respond to your 12 messages. You see, your message got buried in my queue filled with 100 or so other very important growls [1]Growls are like smiles or woofs, it’s basically an automated notification someone is saying hi. that I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ve been meaning to quit my job so I’d have more free time to respond to every single request , no matter how vague or how far away.  ~ Moby

Yes, it was a shitty reply. I own that. I was cranky and it hit me at just the wrong moment. After a recent rant about my politeness, I sort of have egg on my face.  I could have just deleted it and moved on. No need to chastise me, I’m doing that well enough on my own. Two wrongs don’t make a right and I need to strive to not be so snotty, even if it was deserved.

I would humbly ask, if you are an online user (lord knows we all are), recognize that you are projecting an expectation onto others who may not have the same expectation.

References

References
↑1 Growls are like smiles or woofs, it’s basically an automated notification someone is saying hi.

Ban v.20

So looks like the nudity ban held up in court. I would have been surprised if it hadn’t. It was carefully worded. It is a shame we ended up with this law on the books but now maybe we can all move past it. [1]I’m sure some won’t and will lament even louder about how fascist SF has become. Seriously, just think about that for a moment.  I never supported the ban on it’s surface but I also never supported the so called nudists. Legislating personal behavior is a tricky and dangerous slope. However, I can tolerate it because it strives to strike what I believe to be a fair balance. 

It is truly unfortunate a selfish few had to ruin it for all. And yes, I say selfish because that is exactly what it was. Regardless of my theories on nudity, it is selfish anytime you decide your wants are more important than everyone else’s. The cognitive dissonance regarding the whole ordeal has sparked a post of it’s very own. (forthcoming)  But I do truly hope we can all move past it now. For something so silly, it sparked a lot of debate within the community. I wish we put half the energies invested in all this towards dealing with the homeless, skyrocketing rents, MUNI, etc. The Castro, as a gay neighborhood, is dying a slow death. It’s being strangled by greed, selfishness, and gentrification. The latter being totally unavoidable but as a whole I think the “Castro” as a gay hood will be gone in 10 years. Local businesses cannot afford rents and the neighborhood seems dead set on preventing anyone who might be a chain from opening. So spaces sit empty collecting yet more homeless encampments.

Anyway, if you really think about it, the ban pretty much maintains the status quo before all this started. You can still expose your buttocks pretty much anywhere. You can still go nude at beaches, fairs, events, parks (to a degree), etc. You just can’t park your butt in the hub of the neighborhood naked anymore. This is where we were before these guys decided to push the boundaries. I do not believe, as some have stated, that SF is becoming conservative or fascist. That is all lip service for “I didn’t get my way so I’m gonna call you names.”  SF is still a wonderfully progressive city in so many ways.

On a side rant, unfortunately, SF is facing an identity crisis. It has moved beyond a “small town” to a thriving city and the attitudes and approach to managing it are still stuck in the days of old. If SF is going to truly thrive and remain diverse, it needs to move away from viewing itself a small city and start managing itself as the city that it is.

References

References
↑1 I’m sure some won’t and will lament even louder about how fascist SF has become. Seriously, just think about that for a moment.