I don't believe in boredom. I don't think it's possible to say that you're "bored". The reason I feel this way is because there are SOOO many things to do, so many experiences to have in this life. What I think boredom really is comes from being too lazy to do anything. In which case, you aren't bored, you're lazy.--There's nothing wrong with being a little lazy though, so sit back, relax, take a nap, and "be lazy" --you can't be bored if you're purposely being lazy.
I've been thinking about this a little bit lately. --I've spent a great deal of my life thinking I was "bored" when really it was that I was too unmotivated to try something ambitious. I would have saved myself a lot of "boredom" if I would have just settled on being lazy for a little while. The thing is, finding something to do to replace boredom is more exciting than being bored and not doing anything. Shoot, one involves resting and thinking, the other involves feeling sorry for yourself.
If you read my last full article on "Navigating a room" you'd recall that I said you need to have a purpose before you could navigate a room. --You have to have a desire for something more. If you're bored, I think you're just lacking purpose and direction. You don't know what you want though you know you want something different. I must admit that I have been very guilty of this before in my life. That is why I starting blogging, writing poetry, dating coaching...the list goes on. I picked up a whole bunch of hobbies that I never have time or money for, like painting, because I got so bored and wanted something to pass away time. Pass away time...That's really what you desire when you are bored. You don't want to change or you'd go DO something, like work out to become stronger, read to become smarter, or walk around town introducing yourself to become more social (or to run for mayor, you pick). It isn't improvement you are seeking when you are bored, you're seeking to stay the same.
What I didn't mention in my article on navigating a room was that staying the same is the equivalent of accepting what is given to you. You may want OTHERS to stay the same when you request that grandpa drive the boat (maybe...but you probably have alterior motives) , but you yourself don't want to stay the same.
Having a purpose driven life is very important. You can waste away your life being bored because you aren't working towards anything, or making any growth, or you can always have plenty of things to do and improve on and never be bored.
So...next time you're bored, don't think of it as "I have nothing to do" think of it as "I don't want to do anything" And then while you're thinking of how you don't want to do anything, you can sit back and relax a little. --It's okay to not do anything as long as that is what you are planning on doing. Think a little, nap a little, RELAX.
I have a few things I want to write about in my next few posts. One is on just that: thinking and doing nothing.
Another is on how people are addicted to fast paced lives, even when they think they aren't.
Until Next time!
Monday, June 27, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Networking Days
Every so often I have "networking days" where I splurge on comments and likes and posts on facebook and I go all out with marketing.
It is typically when I have a test to study for but don't feel like studying for it. That's okay though, I'll get around to it eventually.
It is typically when I have a test to study for but don't feel like studying for it. That's okay though, I'll get around to it eventually.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Navigating
I am trying to make a theme out of my titles in which I only use one word to title every article. This one's full title is "the politics of navigating a room" but I only wanted to use one word from it. It's a follow up from my facebook article in which I said I would have to write about this topic eventually.
As is common for every argument, I want to make a definition claim that what I am referring to is the politics (or dealing with people) of working your way around a room (or social climate) to accomplish a specific purpose. --You ALWAYS have to have a purpose.
Specifically, I'm going to touch on the politics of navigating a family setting.
Let us imagine a social setting in which your family is going to go boating right after lunch. You want to convince your grandfather that you are capable of driving his high priced boat and that you deserve to have a turn piloting the vessel.
Your ROOM is the lunch area, whether this is indoors or outdoors or a mixture of both.
Your PURPOSE is to convince your grandfather, and everyone else, that you should pilot the boat.
Secretly, you had a querrel with one of your siblings and want to get revenge by giving them an extra rough experience on the wakeboard. Plus you think it would be fun to drive the boat around, as you have never had that opportunity.
The POLITICS in which you enter this situation are as follows: Your parents, though they have no reason not to, don't want you to pilot the boat because you have never done it before. Your siblings too, don't want you to pilot the boat because they believe you are michieveous(sp?). Your grandfather, it turns out, isn't feeling well, and is about to call off the boating trip.
As you can see, people already have a grasp on the political situation, and you are an outlier--Should your grandfather decline the boating outing, your father has already proven himself a worthy seaman and could request to be the navigator, should he choose. He already has a position or standing among the powerful (your grandfather). You therefore need to compete with him (your dad) in order to take power (control of the boat). Plus, you need to fight off any other contenders (your siblings).
Wow. Lots of politics aren't there? --They say politics are Rhetoric at it's best.
You have a lot of options here.
If you weren't "politically navigating a room" you might sit back and accept anything that is given you. You might watch the situation unravel...your siblings take control and suddenly your younger brother is piloting the boat with grandpa's help, or your dad continues to reign supreme and you miss out on the opportunity you have been waiting for all summer, or your grandfather decides not to go forward with boating as his stomach aches now after lunch and he wants to take a nap.
But you aren't going to let that happen. You want something, you want changes, you want an outcome, you want power. [But let me break this up to talk about morals for a second: If everyone is happy at the end of the boating trip, and your family bond is tighter, and a lot of good comes from this, then it is morally fine. BUT if you are merely using the boating to get revenge, someone gets hurt, or you carelessly damage the boat, then the morals get put in question of whether or not you should have taken power. Or even if someone gets hurt or bad things happen while you are navigating the room, then you are going to be in trouble morally]
I hope this is all making sense up to this point. You might have to use a little bit of your own reasoning and assumptions to fill in the blank spots that I simply can't cover--or ask me a question in the comment box.
Ire, You need to solve several problems before you can reach your goal outcome. You need to gather information first, learn what the political climate is--their mood and temperment, what their objectives are at this gathering, etc. This is a continual process, so even though you start out gathering information, you will still need to gather information as you proceed. There is always a time limit to your situation, so you need to work quickly and make advances.
Sometimes the situation is easy. Depending on your political style as well as certain political factors, you might make a fallback plan should your initial advances fail. Some people do the easy things first: talk to your grandfather and ask for his permission to pilot the boat. If you work quick enough, your competition won't do it before you. If the situation is easy, he'll give you the key and you'll have succeeded in your objective and have to wait out the resolution. But if not, he might be a little uneasy about letting you use his boat, or someone else will overhear your conversation and throw in their own political advances to prevent you from getting what you want. Such as one of your rivals, or your dad (who is also a rival, but a more powerful one).
If you had a backup plan, it might be to talk to your dad first, set up an alliance with him, or in other words ask him if he will let you drive the boat (of course it isn't his boat, and he has no say over the matter, but by persuading him first, he will help you get what you want). --So he steps into the situation and informs your grandfather that he will watch over you so that his precious boat doesn't get banged up--or he informs your younger brother that you asked first and therefore should be entitled to the privilege.
If your backup works, but fails, then your father will tell your grandfather that both you and your younger brother will have a turn. You may have to settle on that...or find a way to oust the competition...
What are little brothers notorious for? Getting in trouble. [I am the youngest and have had several occasions where it felt like this was happening to me] So you set up a situation where your little brother gets in trouble, and viola, he loses his privileges. --[this might be unethical]. Or, you simply sit back and wait for his own ruin --[this is not unethical as long as you are not involved].
The nice thing to do, of course, is to not let your brother get ruined...Ally with him. Convince him that he doesn't want to pilot the boat, or get him to give you full ability to pilot the boat/let him bow out. (now that's a good pun!)
I could continue, but I think you understand what I mean by politics.
Now let's briefly touch on navigating.
The navigating aspect of this is simple, yet complex. It is simple in that "to navigate" means to merely move about the political sphere.--you're trying to shift power from other people, move it around--or move you around, and let it land on you. The complexity is that it takes a lot of moving. You have to talk to your grandfather, your dad, your younger brother, you might even have to talk to other people and convince them that you have their best interests in order when you intend to pilot the boat. you might have to quell your fight with the sibling that you intend to make payback with--or put another way, you need to make a truce with them.
Navigating can include where you sit (so you have access to people who you can persuade) [it does you no good to sit so far away from the people you need to talk to that you can't speak with them and you run out of time]. It also includes kairos (timing) of when to speak with people.
Navigating a room is politically dominating it to obtain what you want. The Greeks did it. The Romans did it. The French did it. Diplomats do it. Everyone does it. If you don't do it, you have to accept whatever life gives you. Even if you don't have such a lofty objective as to pilot the boat, you might want to have a say on if your little brother does, because he might make it less enjoyable for you (and you might need to be reassured that you will have an enjoyable trip if your little brother does pilot the boat).
The Romans were notorious for being a people that could accomplish things. The reason for this was that they were skilled at the politics of navigating a room, and they designed their culture around gathering into rooms to discuss important things. Those who could navigate the room became praetors and emperors--Great leaders. Everyone else got stuck with what they got. Those who couldn't navigate the room, didn't always get what they want, they got trampled over and left behind, and people took advantage of them without them knowing.
Apply these same "politics" to a massive scale and you get what happened in feudal Japan. The Daimyo (Lords) overtook the emperor (Shogun) and the Tokugawa clan rulled for a few generations.
As is common for every argument, I want to make a definition claim that what I am referring to is the politics (or dealing with people) of working your way around a room (or social climate) to accomplish a specific purpose. --You ALWAYS have to have a purpose.
Specifically, I'm going to touch on the politics of navigating a family setting.
Let us imagine a social setting in which your family is going to go boating right after lunch. You want to convince your grandfather that you are capable of driving his high priced boat and that you deserve to have a turn piloting the vessel.
Your ROOM is the lunch area, whether this is indoors or outdoors or a mixture of both.
Your PURPOSE is to convince your grandfather, and everyone else, that you should pilot the boat.
Secretly, you had a querrel with one of your siblings and want to get revenge by giving them an extra rough experience on the wakeboard. Plus you think it would be fun to drive the boat around, as you have never had that opportunity.
The POLITICS in which you enter this situation are as follows: Your parents, though they have no reason not to, don't want you to pilot the boat because you have never done it before. Your siblings too, don't want you to pilot the boat because they believe you are michieveous(sp?). Your grandfather, it turns out, isn't feeling well, and is about to call off the boating trip.
As you can see, people already have a grasp on the political situation, and you are an outlier--Should your grandfather decline the boating outing, your father has already proven himself a worthy seaman and could request to be the navigator, should he choose. He already has a position or standing among the powerful (your grandfather). You therefore need to compete with him (your dad) in order to take power (control of the boat). Plus, you need to fight off any other contenders (your siblings).
Wow. Lots of politics aren't there? --They say politics are Rhetoric at it's best.
You have a lot of options here.
If you weren't "politically navigating a room" you might sit back and accept anything that is given you. You might watch the situation unravel...your siblings take control and suddenly your younger brother is piloting the boat with grandpa's help, or your dad continues to reign supreme and you miss out on the opportunity you have been waiting for all summer, or your grandfather decides not to go forward with boating as his stomach aches now after lunch and he wants to take a nap.
But you aren't going to let that happen. You want something, you want changes, you want an outcome, you want power. [But let me break this up to talk about morals for a second: If everyone is happy at the end of the boating trip, and your family bond is tighter, and a lot of good comes from this, then it is morally fine. BUT if you are merely using the boating to get revenge, someone gets hurt, or you carelessly damage the boat, then the morals get put in question of whether or not you should have taken power. Or even if someone gets hurt or bad things happen while you are navigating the room, then you are going to be in trouble morally]
I hope this is all making sense up to this point. You might have to use a little bit of your own reasoning and assumptions to fill in the blank spots that I simply can't cover--or ask me a question in the comment box.
Ire, You need to solve several problems before you can reach your goal outcome. You need to gather information first, learn what the political climate is--their mood and temperment, what their objectives are at this gathering, etc. This is a continual process, so even though you start out gathering information, you will still need to gather information as you proceed. There is always a time limit to your situation, so you need to work quickly and make advances.
Sometimes the situation is easy. Depending on your political style as well as certain political factors, you might make a fallback plan should your initial advances fail. Some people do the easy things first: talk to your grandfather and ask for his permission to pilot the boat. If you work quick enough, your competition won't do it before you. If the situation is easy, he'll give you the key and you'll have succeeded in your objective and have to wait out the resolution. But if not, he might be a little uneasy about letting you use his boat, or someone else will overhear your conversation and throw in their own political advances to prevent you from getting what you want. Such as one of your rivals, or your dad (who is also a rival, but a more powerful one).
If you had a backup plan, it might be to talk to your dad first, set up an alliance with him, or in other words ask him if he will let you drive the boat (of course it isn't his boat, and he has no say over the matter, but by persuading him first, he will help you get what you want). --So he steps into the situation and informs your grandfather that he will watch over you so that his precious boat doesn't get banged up--or he informs your younger brother that you asked first and therefore should be entitled to the privilege.
If your backup works, but fails, then your father will tell your grandfather that both you and your younger brother will have a turn. You may have to settle on that...or find a way to oust the competition...
What are little brothers notorious for? Getting in trouble. [I am the youngest and have had several occasions where it felt like this was happening to me] So you set up a situation where your little brother gets in trouble, and viola, he loses his privileges. --[this might be unethical]. Or, you simply sit back and wait for his own ruin --[this is not unethical as long as you are not involved].
The nice thing to do, of course, is to not let your brother get ruined...Ally with him. Convince him that he doesn't want to pilot the boat, or get him to give you full ability to pilot the boat/let him bow out. (now that's a good pun!)
I could continue, but I think you understand what I mean by politics.
Now let's briefly touch on navigating.
The navigating aspect of this is simple, yet complex. It is simple in that "to navigate" means to merely move about the political sphere.--you're trying to shift power from other people, move it around--or move you around, and let it land on you. The complexity is that it takes a lot of moving. You have to talk to your grandfather, your dad, your younger brother, you might even have to talk to other people and convince them that you have their best interests in order when you intend to pilot the boat. you might have to quell your fight with the sibling that you intend to make payback with--or put another way, you need to make a truce with them.
Navigating can include where you sit (so you have access to people who you can persuade) [it does you no good to sit so far away from the people you need to talk to that you can't speak with them and you run out of time]. It also includes kairos (timing) of when to speak with people.
Navigating a room is politically dominating it to obtain what you want. The Greeks did it. The Romans did it. The French did it. Diplomats do it. Everyone does it. If you don't do it, you have to accept whatever life gives you. Even if you don't have such a lofty objective as to pilot the boat, you might want to have a say on if your little brother does, because he might make it less enjoyable for you (and you might need to be reassured that you will have an enjoyable trip if your little brother does pilot the boat).
The Romans were notorious for being a people that could accomplish things. The reason for this was that they were skilled at the politics of navigating a room, and they designed their culture around gathering into rooms to discuss important things. Those who could navigate the room became praetors and emperors--Great leaders. Everyone else got stuck with what they got. Those who couldn't navigate the room, didn't always get what they want, they got trampled over and left behind, and people took advantage of them without them knowing.
Apply these same "politics" to a massive scale and you get what happened in feudal Japan. The Daimyo (Lords) overtook the emperor (Shogun) and the Tokugawa clan rulled for a few generations.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Engage
A couple weeks ago I got engaged to a sweet young lady. I have been slow to write anything about the ordeal however, and want to write something about how I proposed to her.
My family has owned a piece of property in Marriot-Slatterville for around a decade. It is 20 acres of lush fields boardered on all sides with trees, particularly in the back. We have had several horses and cows living on there the entire time. It is a wonderful place.
A few weeks ago though, the floods came. This particular area of ground has been his with the worst floods in all of Utah this year--or so the news reporters say. The Governor even came out to visit with the 8 neighbors in houses bordering our property and promise them assistance. Of the 20 acres of lovely fields, approximately 16 acres are buried under between 1 foot and 6 feet of water. It got so bad at one point that I could be standing in water and touch our barn, but luckily the water has yet to touch the sandbags we set up to protect any of our buildings.
We have always had two ponds at our ranch and would use both for watering animals and spraying the pastures to keep growth up, but this year our two ponds, on opposite ends of the ranch, are one giant lake.
My fiance and I have been talking about getting married for quite some time. We went shopping for a ring, and we have been discussing things related to preparing for marriage. We both knew we wanted to get married and made it pretty evident that we would be getting engaged very soon. I told her that I was going to surprise her in how I asked her, and that I might throw out a few "false alarms" to get her hopes up and always keep her guessing.
The night of the 29th, she was engaged to come to my place and spend the evening with me. I told her that I wanted to make a bonfire out back and ride around on my canoe while the fields were flooded. Then the weather went sour.
It was raining the days before and the days after, the weather man said that it might be at the peak of its worst on the night of the 29th, and that got me really worried. I ran over a few back-up plans in my mind, but none of them seemed fitting. We would either be indoors watching it rain, bored out of our minds, or we would get soaked in the monsoon of water. --that's when it hit me:: we COULD get soaked in the water! My fun side found that appealing for some reason, but I knew it wouldn't be proper to get her drenched and then ask her to marry me, so I taped my creative side and came up with a solution.
I found a tent pole from one of our camp tents and fixed each end of the pole onto each end of the canoe. I then found three flexible plastic rods and attached them on the front of the canoe making a sturdy rib cage over the front half of the canoe. Using a fresh sheet of drop-cloth plastic like they use to protect houses and furniture from paint spills, I covered the front half of the canoe and protected it from the rain. It was also semi-opaque plastic, which made it convenient to see through though not everything could be seen.
I told myself that now that I build that canvas cover, we would go out onto the lake no matter what, unless there were lightning. I informed my fiance of this and persuaded her that it would be very fun. When the evening came on the 29th, we had diner with my family and the weather had calmed down. As usual the weather man was significantly off, because the height of the storm was a few days earlier and there was only a minor shower in the afternoon of the 29th.
After diner we set off to my beloved ranch to play. When we started, there wasn't any rain and it made it perfect to push off into the water. Our canoe was loaded with a small amount of firewood, newspaper, my backpack full of treasure, and a sack with plastic bowls and candles. Whatever explanation I provided for her about why we were bringing the bowls and candles sufficed because she didn't seem to make anything of it.
We set out on a tour around the lake. It was a very lovely night, the sun hadn't quite gone down and I wanted to stall, so having plenty of interesting things to see helped with that. Right now there are hundreds of varieties of birds hanging out at our lake, plus a few fish have swam up stream and into our lake, making a splended ecology. I have even seen dragonflies hovering around, which is a good sign of a healthy environment.
When the sun was just about to duck beyond the mountains, I pulled out the bowls and candles and asked for her assistance. "My mother wants me to see if these candles will float in these bowls, do you want to help me?" of which she agreed to assist me in lighting and putting them out into the water. I made a circle of floating candles around the canoe and then let out the anchor in the center of them. With a few of the remaining candles, I asked if she wanted to see if we could heat up a few marshmellows. By that point there was a slight mist hovering in the air and I wasn't certain that it wouldn't start pouring.
Since everything was loaded into the front of the boat, I had to ask her to send my backpack up, where the lighter and marshmellows were, and using our hands, we held the marshmellows over the tiny candles to great effect in melting them. After a couple marshmellos the sun was finally down and the candles were glowing orbs floating in the darkness. If there weren't clouds I am sure the stars were just as majestic.
I asked if she wanted another mashmellow and reached inside the backpack full of treasure. Instead of a marshmellow, I pulled out the real treasure, opened the lid and showed it to her. Upon looking at it, I asked her if she would marry me.
She was speechless. This entire time she didn't recognize that she was assisting me in setting up for the climax of the evening. She told me yes and hugged me as best as we could, floating in a rocky canoe with a brace in the center separating one half of the boat from the other.
It began to rain shortly after and thanks to the pre-described canvas I built, we did not get wet. We pulled up the anchor and waited until we drifted to shore, along with a few of the candles. Most of the candles however, sank to the bottom of the lake where they will need to be retrieved once the water abates. When we made it to shore, we rushed into the building where there is an upstairs room and window to gaze out and watch the rain for a while, examining the ring in the dry and in the light.
It was a wonderful evening. I am glad that it happened.
My family has owned a piece of property in Marriot-Slatterville for around a decade. It is 20 acres of lush fields boardered on all sides with trees, particularly in the back. We have had several horses and cows living on there the entire time. It is a wonderful place.
A few weeks ago though, the floods came. This particular area of ground has been his with the worst floods in all of Utah this year--or so the news reporters say. The Governor even came out to visit with the 8 neighbors in houses bordering our property and promise them assistance. Of the 20 acres of lovely fields, approximately 16 acres are buried under between 1 foot and 6 feet of water. It got so bad at one point that I could be standing in water and touch our barn, but luckily the water has yet to touch the sandbags we set up to protect any of our buildings.
We have always had two ponds at our ranch and would use both for watering animals and spraying the pastures to keep growth up, but this year our two ponds, on opposite ends of the ranch, are one giant lake.
My fiance and I have been talking about getting married for quite some time. We went shopping for a ring, and we have been discussing things related to preparing for marriage. We both knew we wanted to get married and made it pretty evident that we would be getting engaged very soon. I told her that I was going to surprise her in how I asked her, and that I might throw out a few "false alarms" to get her hopes up and always keep her guessing.
The night of the 29th, she was engaged to come to my place and spend the evening with me. I told her that I wanted to make a bonfire out back and ride around on my canoe while the fields were flooded. Then the weather went sour.
It was raining the days before and the days after, the weather man said that it might be at the peak of its worst on the night of the 29th, and that got me really worried. I ran over a few back-up plans in my mind, but none of them seemed fitting. We would either be indoors watching it rain, bored out of our minds, or we would get soaked in the monsoon of water. --that's when it hit me:: we COULD get soaked in the water! My fun side found that appealing for some reason, but I knew it wouldn't be proper to get her drenched and then ask her to marry me, so I taped my creative side and came up with a solution.
I found a tent pole from one of our camp tents and fixed each end of the pole onto each end of the canoe. I then found three flexible plastic rods and attached them on the front of the canoe making a sturdy rib cage over the front half of the canoe. Using a fresh sheet of drop-cloth plastic like they use to protect houses and furniture from paint spills, I covered the front half of the canoe and protected it from the rain. It was also semi-opaque plastic, which made it convenient to see through though not everything could be seen.
I told myself that now that I build that canvas cover, we would go out onto the lake no matter what, unless there were lightning. I informed my fiance of this and persuaded her that it would be very fun. When the evening came on the 29th, we had diner with my family and the weather had calmed down. As usual the weather man was significantly off, because the height of the storm was a few days earlier and there was only a minor shower in the afternoon of the 29th.
After diner we set off to my beloved ranch to play. When we started, there wasn't any rain and it made it perfect to push off into the water. Our canoe was loaded with a small amount of firewood, newspaper, my backpack full of treasure, and a sack with plastic bowls and candles. Whatever explanation I provided for her about why we were bringing the bowls and candles sufficed because she didn't seem to make anything of it.
We set out on a tour around the lake. It was a very lovely night, the sun hadn't quite gone down and I wanted to stall, so having plenty of interesting things to see helped with that. Right now there are hundreds of varieties of birds hanging out at our lake, plus a few fish have swam up stream and into our lake, making a splended ecology. I have even seen dragonflies hovering around, which is a good sign of a healthy environment.
When the sun was just about to duck beyond the mountains, I pulled out the bowls and candles and asked for her assistance. "My mother wants me to see if these candles will float in these bowls, do you want to help me?" of which she agreed to assist me in lighting and putting them out into the water. I made a circle of floating candles around the canoe and then let out the anchor in the center of them. With a few of the remaining candles, I asked if she wanted to see if we could heat up a few marshmellows. By that point there was a slight mist hovering in the air and I wasn't certain that it wouldn't start pouring.
Since everything was loaded into the front of the boat, I had to ask her to send my backpack up, where the lighter and marshmellows were, and using our hands, we held the marshmellows over the tiny candles to great effect in melting them. After a couple marshmellos the sun was finally down and the candles were glowing orbs floating in the darkness. If there weren't clouds I am sure the stars were just as majestic.
I asked if she wanted another mashmellow and reached inside the backpack full of treasure. Instead of a marshmellow, I pulled out the real treasure, opened the lid and showed it to her. Upon looking at it, I asked her if she would marry me.
She was speechless. This entire time she didn't recognize that she was assisting me in setting up for the climax of the evening. She told me yes and hugged me as best as we could, floating in a rocky canoe with a brace in the center separating one half of the boat from the other.
It began to rain shortly after and thanks to the pre-described canvas I built, we did not get wet. We pulled up the anchor and waited until we drifted to shore, along with a few of the candles. Most of the candles however, sank to the bottom of the lake where they will need to be retrieved once the water abates. When we made it to shore, we rushed into the building where there is an upstairs room and window to gaze out and watch the rain for a while, examining the ring in the dry and in the light.
It was a wonderful evening. I am glad that it happened.
Monday, June 6, 2011
I've finally worked up the courage to take on Facebook. Where should I begin?
Facebook is to people as Wikipedia is to knowledge. You can learn a lot about a topic by looking it up on wikipedia, or you can learn a lot about people by looking them up on facebook. In fact, if you look up a person on wikipedia :: Akira Kurosawa you get just about the same amount of information as if you look up a person on facebook :: Kyle Oakeson. I suppose you get different information by looking a person up on facebook as opposed to wikipedia, but you can learn quite a bit about a person from what you read, and on both sites you are reading about them. It is a powerful tool, one that I would say benefits the living more than the dead, because it is capable of always changing whereas information in an encyclopedia is meant to be general enough that it doesn't change too frequently.
I think there are different aspects of facebook that I should address here: the culture of facebook in particular I think is key to understanding it. --I HATE the culture of facebook. When I was younger and social networking was new, and I had a myspace account instead of a facebook account, I think the culture appealed to me. You could meet friends online, check them out to determine if they would be cool in person, and then you could meet in person. When facebook came along the complexity of social networking enhanced because of the privacy. --Myspace had it's own culture that prevented it from being 'private'. And just about hte time when the myspace servers were getting overcrowded, I switched over to the baby giant FB. I didn't realize the potential of it (the founders probably didnt' either) until I got older, I thought it was just another myspace with better servers.
When I used it for a couple months I realized that it was a more posh version of myspace that allowed me to have some privacy by simply refusing to add people and blocking certain information from them. That meant that all of those annoying creepers that kept visiting my page to pull up dirt on me could be prevented from reading what I was writing. --I started blogging in my myspace days--real blogging, not the blogging I do on here or my other sites, but an actual weekly record of my life and the interpretation of it. I stopped when I realized people were actually reading it and I started writing in ms notepad (why I didn't use ms word I do not know, probably because I like the typewriter font).
In any case, as facebook began to grow and more and more people got online I still used it somewhat to meet new people, or at least to make penpals, but I reserved facebook more for my own gleaming of information and to give people a simple bio of myself. I suppose when I was 16 I was starving for attention just like everybody else, but I was too lazy to explain the complexities of my life so it was almost easier to not say them and let them look them up on facebook (I figured they would anyway). Having the ability to block certain people from reading about me was really just a gatekey to let me know who was loooking and who wasn't.
--I still didn't fully understand facebook though, and maybe that is because it hadn't evolved into the being that it is now, or maybe I was just too caught up in the culture of it.
I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't LOVE to have an online slideshow/storybook of their life with fun captions and photos. It was basically the digital version of those slideshow reels that people make after vacations...but just like those slideshow reels that people make after vacations, facebook became the dull boring cartoon man that refuses to let you leave his home until he shows you everything about his last family reunion. You know the one I'm referring to...the one where the other cartoon characters pretend to listen in boredom as they watch picture after picture of the same thing.--What I am getting at is that not everyone likes to look at those things.
Still, I maintained an active presence on facebook up until I left for my mission and was very much involved in the culture of it and keeping up with my friends the jones and trying to top some of their gags or lines or awesome photos. When I got back from my mission everything was different on facebook. Not just with the site itself but with my friends who were still on there and with facebook using society in general. The culture had changed society. More and more people were trying to keep up with the jones' in a facebook sense. More young kids were bragging about how awesome they are and had photos to prove it--literally people buy things just to post pictures of them using them on facebook, or they go on vacations just to show their friends that they go on vacations and have somethign to talk about. More and more people became obsessed with fitting into the culture of facebook rather than the real world.
In the real world, people don't repeat funny quotes or take pictures of mundane things.--or at least, they didn't. But somehow the facebook culture shaped society to feel as though they needed to do these stupid things in order to be 'included'. (to fulfill their needs for inclusion).
I think David Fincher got a lot of things correct when he directed his film. Infamously, Zuckerberg is portrayed in that film as the kid who was so desperate to have friends and although he did something outstanding, he still had no friends in real life. --I think that's a representation of the fb culture and not so much zuckerberg in real life (at least zuckerberg himself claims otherwise).
The point is that there is a distinct culture of facebook and that culture has shaped American society over the last 5-10 years.
If I were to describe that culture, I would probably use the following words and terms: fake, on the surface, desire to fit in, share, opinions, boredom, excessive, unnecessary, not real, irrelevant, pointless, wasteful, obsessive. . . I could go on forever.
Another point I would like to make as I attempt to explain away facebook is that it is just a more posh version of a forum or chat room. People used to (and still do) go to chat rooms to talk to people about their lives without having to do it in person. Forums too accomplished the same purpose. In fact, I used to go to forums and chat rooms all the time to B.s. with people who I didn't know and didn't care to know. All that facebook has done is add more personalization, more openness, and combined different internet tools into one location.
That leads to the second BIG point I want to make. Facebook is all about money anymore. In the beginning, Zuckerberg didn't want to use facebook to make money, but as it slowly grew and got bought out, it became an advertising center. Facebook is now the ultra place for Targeted Ads. If you ever thought it was annoying to see pillow pets while watching saturday morning cartoons and thought how irrelevant those ads are to you, you're going to LVE facebook because unless you write something about pillow pets or view a picture of a pillow pet, you don't get ads for it. What you do get are ads for things that you have expressed some sort of interest in. So you know those "kinky ru girls" ads you keep getting? It's because you looked at some picture of a russian girl and you fit a certain criteria that would look at porn or be lonely and wish you had a mail order russian bride. Try making a comment about how you wish you had a mail order russian bride and facebook will update itself to show you 5 different ads related to russian brides.
If you mention how you're on a diet but can't stop going to mcdonalds, who comes up? Mcdonalds. Why? because you used their name.
I'm not saying targeted ads are bad, I'm saying that from now until the future everything facebook designs and does will be related to making them more money by having you click on ads. The social aspect of it is a front to get you to use their system. If you use their system, you give them information which they in turn essentially "sell" to companies. It's a round about way, so it's not like they are GIVING the information away, they're selling the chance to target htat information. Plus, it's free information...facebook is owned by ...facebook. and everything you write on facebook can be used by facebook.
I have mixed feelings about that because I do appreciate learning about new products that might interest me, but I don't like to be flooded with ads when I'm trying to concentrate.
Not to mention that employers and other important people use facebook to gather information about you. Written all over business magazines and recruiting magazines are articles on how to make your facebook page (or any page that morphed from it, such as linkln or twitter) look professional. Do I want employers to know EVERYTHING about me? No. It's not that I have anyhting to hide, it's that people look at my life and try to analyze it and make interpretations of it and are often wrong. People judge books by their covers because they expect the maker of those covers to understand that that is the purpose of a cover: to give you a rundown of the book and make it catchy enough to make me want to read it. Employers use facebook because they expect people to be using their facebook in a professional manner that will tell them exactly what they want to know. --but most people don't use facebook in that manner, so it doesn't serve it's purpose. The point here can be summed up in a question: what is the purpose of facebook? --I don't think there is just ONE purpose to facebook, everyone uses it in a different way, and so when someone uses it for spying and another for keeping in contact with friends, the spy suddenly knows everything about you and your friends. Or if someone uses their page to list their work experience and someone else uses facebook to make fun of people, then someone's work experience suddenly becomes target to the joker.
If facebook was founded on private viewing of social networking, why is to public?
Let me just dive into the last MAJOR point I want to make about facebook, it might be the biggest:
Due to the culture that has morphed from facebook, people aren't people anymore. They are what they are on facebook more than they are in person. SOOOOooo many people think they are social and active, but really they mean they are social on facebook, have lots of friends, know lots of people, talk to people daily, people talk to them daily, etc. But you take those same people and put them in a social situation and they don't know the politics of navigating a room. (oh boy, that's a future topic I'll have to write about). They claim they are active when really they go jogging in the morning--does that make them active? I thought everyone was supposed to go jogging or something on that level of activity 3 times a week in order to be healthy...
I think what I am getting at is that facebook isn't reality. People lie on facebook to sound better than they are, they brag on facebook when they really have nothing to brag about, they harrass on facebook because they are small and insignificant in real life, and they look down and judge people based on what they see on facebook. One of my favorite things to observe when people don't know I'm watching them (say, at a library or in class for instance) is Guys who go around adding girls as friends who show some skin (cleavage, shoulders, thighs, tattoos, etc), or they make comments to girls like that every day. I like it because it is explainable: they do it because they're trying to find a new girl-toy, it shows they are a little on the horny/sexist side, and that they resort to online hunting because it's easier than IRL (in real life).
Facebook is kind of a creepy place when you look at it that way.
Then to top it all off, when you talk to people IRL (to reuse the term) they really have nothing going for them. They sit around on facebook all day making comments, expressing their opinions, and never DOING Anything. What kind of ethos does that give you? === you're all talk and no action. Or rather, you ARE action, but the only reason why you do the things you do is to brag about them and get publicity. How about trying to really BE an allstar rather than fake it?
Plus, IRL, people are jerks. They're flakes, they're negative, and winey, they're lazy and dull. Something in the culture has emphasized in real life that: online, people love to read negative, rude, sad, depressing things. "juicy" is the correct term. But what is juicy online is really gossip on the streets. It's a lot of drama and it's annoying.
Maybe this is just my opinion, but I prefer people who act civil, are honest and real, and who avoid causing tension. People who are real don't get on facebook, they're too busy DOING things with their life. People who are real don't get (or pretend) excited by common everyday occurrences just so that people know they fit in. (that's called being fake, and people who have a real life outside of facebook are so busy doing really exciting things that they can't take photos or pause and make comments about them). People who are civil don't pretend to be civil, I'm talking about civility at the core. A civil person can admit that they don't appreciate a situation rather than pretend to go along with it. And Honest people are too busy enjoying life the way it is and are willing to accept the consequences of everything.
So what makes me have a good ethos when I write this? --I obviously get on facebook throughout the day, so what makes me different?
Well, I guess it's time to change a little bit.
I use facebook for marketing purposes. I know less than 25% of the friends on my friends list and have met less than 10% in person. I have seen less than 20 of them in the past week in person, and talked to probably 5 in real life during that time. Facebook is my social wikipedia. I use it as a tool to broadcast about my dating blog and occasionally use it to look up information about people. (usually for rumor checking and hiring purposes). Others use it to market to me and inform me of things I don't know about and am interested in (though 90% of what I get isn't pertinent to me).
I think I'm going to tighten my privacy, cut a few things out of profile and make it less informative. --If people want to know what's going on they'll call me. if they ask for my number I'll probably give it to them. mleh.
We'll see.
Facebook is to people as Wikipedia is to knowledge. You can learn a lot about a topic by looking it up on wikipedia, or you can learn a lot about people by looking them up on facebook. In fact, if you look up a person on wikipedia :: Akira Kurosawa you get just about the same amount of information as if you look up a person on facebook :: Kyle Oakeson. I suppose you get different information by looking a person up on facebook as opposed to wikipedia, but you can learn quite a bit about a person from what you read, and on both sites you are reading about them. It is a powerful tool, one that I would say benefits the living more than the dead, because it is capable of always changing whereas information in an encyclopedia is meant to be general enough that it doesn't change too frequently.
I think there are different aspects of facebook that I should address here: the culture of facebook in particular I think is key to understanding it. --I HATE the culture of facebook. When I was younger and social networking was new, and I had a myspace account instead of a facebook account, I think the culture appealed to me. You could meet friends online, check them out to determine if they would be cool in person, and then you could meet in person. When facebook came along the complexity of social networking enhanced because of the privacy. --Myspace had it's own culture that prevented it from being 'private'. And just about hte time when the myspace servers were getting overcrowded, I switched over to the baby giant FB. I didn't realize the potential of it (the founders probably didnt' either) until I got older, I thought it was just another myspace with better servers.
When I used it for a couple months I realized that it was a more posh version of myspace that allowed me to have some privacy by simply refusing to add people and blocking certain information from them. That meant that all of those annoying creepers that kept visiting my page to pull up dirt on me could be prevented from reading what I was writing. --I started blogging in my myspace days--real blogging, not the blogging I do on here or my other sites, but an actual weekly record of my life and the interpretation of it. I stopped when I realized people were actually reading it and I started writing in ms notepad (why I didn't use ms word I do not know, probably because I like the typewriter font).
In any case, as facebook began to grow and more and more people got online I still used it somewhat to meet new people, or at least to make penpals, but I reserved facebook more for my own gleaming of information and to give people a simple bio of myself. I suppose when I was 16 I was starving for attention just like everybody else, but I was too lazy to explain the complexities of my life so it was almost easier to not say them and let them look them up on facebook (I figured they would anyway). Having the ability to block certain people from reading about me was really just a gatekey to let me know who was loooking and who wasn't.
--I still didn't fully understand facebook though, and maybe that is because it hadn't evolved into the being that it is now, or maybe I was just too caught up in the culture of it.
I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't LOVE to have an online slideshow/storybook of their life with fun captions and photos. It was basically the digital version of those slideshow reels that people make after vacations...but just like those slideshow reels that people make after vacations, facebook became the dull boring cartoon man that refuses to let you leave his home until he shows you everything about his last family reunion. You know the one I'm referring to...the one where the other cartoon characters pretend to listen in boredom as they watch picture after picture of the same thing.--What I am getting at is that not everyone likes to look at those things.
Still, I maintained an active presence on facebook up until I left for my mission and was very much involved in the culture of it and keeping up with my friends the jones and trying to top some of their gags or lines or awesome photos. When I got back from my mission everything was different on facebook. Not just with the site itself but with my friends who were still on there and with facebook using society in general. The culture had changed society. More and more people were trying to keep up with the jones' in a facebook sense. More young kids were bragging about how awesome they are and had photos to prove it--literally people buy things just to post pictures of them using them on facebook, or they go on vacations just to show their friends that they go on vacations and have somethign to talk about. More and more people became obsessed with fitting into the culture of facebook rather than the real world.
In the real world, people don't repeat funny quotes or take pictures of mundane things.--or at least, they didn't. But somehow the facebook culture shaped society to feel as though they needed to do these stupid things in order to be 'included'. (to fulfill their needs for inclusion).
I think David Fincher got a lot of things correct when he directed his film. Infamously, Zuckerberg is portrayed in that film as the kid who was so desperate to have friends and although he did something outstanding, he still had no friends in real life. --I think that's a representation of the fb culture and not so much zuckerberg in real life (at least zuckerberg himself claims otherwise).
The point is that there is a distinct culture of facebook and that culture has shaped American society over the last 5-10 years.
If I were to describe that culture, I would probably use the following words and terms: fake, on the surface, desire to fit in, share, opinions, boredom, excessive, unnecessary, not real, irrelevant, pointless, wasteful, obsessive. . . I could go on forever.
Another point I would like to make as I attempt to explain away facebook is that it is just a more posh version of a forum or chat room. People used to (and still do) go to chat rooms to talk to people about their lives without having to do it in person. Forums too accomplished the same purpose. In fact, I used to go to forums and chat rooms all the time to B.s. with people who I didn't know and didn't care to know. All that facebook has done is add more personalization, more openness, and combined different internet tools into one location.
That leads to the second BIG point I want to make. Facebook is all about money anymore. In the beginning, Zuckerberg didn't want to use facebook to make money, but as it slowly grew and got bought out, it became an advertising center. Facebook is now the ultra place for Targeted Ads. If you ever thought it was annoying to see pillow pets while watching saturday morning cartoons and thought how irrelevant those ads are to you, you're going to LVE facebook because unless you write something about pillow pets or view a picture of a pillow pet, you don't get ads for it. What you do get are ads for things that you have expressed some sort of interest in. So you know those "kinky ru girls" ads you keep getting? It's because you looked at some picture of a russian girl and you fit a certain criteria that would look at porn or be lonely and wish you had a mail order russian bride. Try making a comment about how you wish you had a mail order russian bride and facebook will update itself to show you 5 different ads related to russian brides.
If you mention how you're on a diet but can't stop going to mcdonalds, who comes up? Mcdonalds. Why? because you used their name.
I'm not saying targeted ads are bad, I'm saying that from now until the future everything facebook designs and does will be related to making them more money by having you click on ads. The social aspect of it is a front to get you to use their system. If you use their system, you give them information which they in turn essentially "sell" to companies. It's a round about way, so it's not like they are GIVING the information away, they're selling the chance to target htat information. Plus, it's free information...facebook is owned by ...facebook. and everything you write on facebook can be used by facebook.
I have mixed feelings about that because I do appreciate learning about new products that might interest me, but I don't like to be flooded with ads when I'm trying to concentrate.
Not to mention that employers and other important people use facebook to gather information about you. Written all over business magazines and recruiting magazines are articles on how to make your facebook page (or any page that morphed from it, such as linkln or twitter) look professional. Do I want employers to know EVERYTHING about me? No. It's not that I have anyhting to hide, it's that people look at my life and try to analyze it and make interpretations of it and are often wrong. People judge books by their covers because they expect the maker of those covers to understand that that is the purpose of a cover: to give you a rundown of the book and make it catchy enough to make me want to read it. Employers use facebook because they expect people to be using their facebook in a professional manner that will tell them exactly what they want to know. --but most people don't use facebook in that manner, so it doesn't serve it's purpose. The point here can be summed up in a question: what is the purpose of facebook? --I don't think there is just ONE purpose to facebook, everyone uses it in a different way, and so when someone uses it for spying and another for keeping in contact with friends, the spy suddenly knows everything about you and your friends. Or if someone uses their page to list their work experience and someone else uses facebook to make fun of people, then someone's work experience suddenly becomes target to the joker.
If facebook was founded on private viewing of social networking, why is to public?
Let me just dive into the last MAJOR point I want to make about facebook, it might be the biggest:
Due to the culture that has morphed from facebook, people aren't people anymore. They are what they are on facebook more than they are in person. SOOOOooo many people think they are social and active, but really they mean they are social on facebook, have lots of friends, know lots of people, talk to people daily, people talk to them daily, etc. But you take those same people and put them in a social situation and they don't know the politics of navigating a room. (oh boy, that's a future topic I'll have to write about). They claim they are active when really they go jogging in the morning--does that make them active? I thought everyone was supposed to go jogging or something on that level of activity 3 times a week in order to be healthy...
I think what I am getting at is that facebook isn't reality. People lie on facebook to sound better than they are, they brag on facebook when they really have nothing to brag about, they harrass on facebook because they are small and insignificant in real life, and they look down and judge people based on what they see on facebook. One of my favorite things to observe when people don't know I'm watching them (say, at a library or in class for instance) is Guys who go around adding girls as friends who show some skin (cleavage, shoulders, thighs, tattoos, etc), or they make comments to girls like that every day. I like it because it is explainable: they do it because they're trying to find a new girl-toy, it shows they are a little on the horny/sexist side, and that they resort to online hunting because it's easier than IRL (in real life).
Facebook is kind of a creepy place when you look at it that way.
Then to top it all off, when you talk to people IRL (to reuse the term) they really have nothing going for them. They sit around on facebook all day making comments, expressing their opinions, and never DOING Anything. What kind of ethos does that give you? === you're all talk and no action. Or rather, you ARE action, but the only reason why you do the things you do is to brag about them and get publicity. How about trying to really BE an allstar rather than fake it?
Plus, IRL, people are jerks. They're flakes, they're negative, and winey, they're lazy and dull. Something in the culture has emphasized in real life that: online, people love to read negative, rude, sad, depressing things. "juicy" is the correct term. But what is juicy online is really gossip on the streets. It's a lot of drama and it's annoying.
Maybe this is just my opinion, but I prefer people who act civil, are honest and real, and who avoid causing tension. People who are real don't get on facebook, they're too busy DOING things with their life. People who are real don't get (or pretend) excited by common everyday occurrences just so that people know they fit in. (that's called being fake, and people who have a real life outside of facebook are so busy doing really exciting things that they can't take photos or pause and make comments about them). People who are civil don't pretend to be civil, I'm talking about civility at the core. A civil person can admit that they don't appreciate a situation rather than pretend to go along with it. And Honest people are too busy enjoying life the way it is and are willing to accept the consequences of everything.
So what makes me have a good ethos when I write this? --I obviously get on facebook throughout the day, so what makes me different?
Well, I guess it's time to change a little bit.
I use facebook for marketing purposes. I know less than 25% of the friends on my friends list and have met less than 10% in person. I have seen less than 20 of them in the past week in person, and talked to probably 5 in real life during that time. Facebook is my social wikipedia. I use it as a tool to broadcast about my dating blog and occasionally use it to look up information about people. (usually for rumor checking and hiring purposes). Others use it to market to me and inform me of things I don't know about and am interested in (though 90% of what I get isn't pertinent to me).
I think I'm going to tighten my privacy, cut a few things out of profile and make it less informative. --If people want to know what's going on they'll call me. if they ask for my number I'll probably give it to them. mleh.
We'll see.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Prices
I always love that computer prices go down as time goes on... that means if I plan on a specific dream computer, the price ofr it will go down when they start making more of the parts for it. And if I save up the money for it then I end up getting a better computer as technology improves.
Unfortunately, I'm strapped for cash right now and won't be having my dream computer any time soon...even with my birthday coming up I don't think I'll get anything spectacular, but who knows?
Unfortunately, I'm strapped for cash right now and won't be having my dream computer any time soon...even with my birthday coming up I don't think I'll get anything spectacular, but who knows?
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