Keeping It Real, Again

I might as well get this out there right away:  I have been working HARD this past week to resurrect and update this site and the motivation for that has a whole lot to do with Facebook.

Or, more specifically, my intense disdain for Facebook.

Kissy Is Pissy.

Hello, My Name Is IRKelle.

For the past couple of days I'd have to say that I've been annoyed by about 99% of everything.

I've been doing all kinds of things to shake this mood but I have not achieved even a modicum of success.

Part of what's been bringing this on is that I am currently in some kind of whacked out fibromyalgia flare-up. Do you know what that feels like? Well, let's see if I can describe a small portion of it for you:
Ever wake up with that run-over-by-a-bus feeling? Have you ever prayed for cloudy days because sunlight makes you want to scream?  How about feeling like you seriously want to beat the piss out of someone something because of the noise it emits?
And that's only a slice of the fibromyalgia pie!

The other night we went out to dinner with a new friend and wound up having an exceptionally good time that had practically nothing to do with the dining part and almost everything to do with the conversation part.
You see, our new friend is smart and funny and unique and famous and has opinions and preferences (and is a published author)...and omigod I thought my head would explode I was so delighted to have actually been in the presence of someone interesting!
Good conversation is like a drug for me. 
I thirst for it.  I hunger for it.  I lust after it.
You wanna know how much I covet good conversation?
Hmmmm, let's see....OK, remember back in the day when people went nuts in their quest for Cabbage Patch Kids dolls?

That's right; I'd trample Grandma in order to get me some good conversation.  (kidding!)

Which explains another part of my bad mood.  I got my 'fix' the other night and then I returned to my regularly scheduled life of working from home which means being isolated and relying on Facebook to interact with other human beings.
Yeah, Facebook.
And let's face it, there is no greater exercise in futility than looking to Facebook for intellectual stimulation.

Speaking of exercise in futility, I read this great interview with Gore Vidal yesterday.  I love Gore Vidal.  I've read everything he's written.  More than once.
Naturally, then, I would want to share this article and hope that that would lead to discussing it with other like-minded people.
So I decided to conduct a social experiment by posting a link to it on Facebook.
Where it's been sitting, ignored, for quite some time now.  Ha!
Shocking, right?

Instead, my Facebook friends are analyzing their names using the "Analysis Your Name" application.
For those of you unfamiliar with this fascinating, IQ- and life-enhancing tool, you type in your name and it supplies you with an in-depth analysis of your name which should then supply you with the answer(s) you need to solve your worldly problem(s).
Here is a screenshot of the analysis I got:

More fodder for my bad mood.

But I guess I'm just being a meanie.
Facebook = Escapism and I probably shouldn't begrudge anyone anything they might need to help them cope.
I just need to find friends who prefer to cope in a similar fashion to the way that I do.

Wow!
I am definitely feeling better after writing this rant. 
(Imagine that...using an online diary to write diary-ish things.)

What If You Suddenly Became Newsworthy?

Like any addict worth their addiction, I very much have a love/hate relationship with Facebook.

~I like being able to interact with old and new friends but, loner that I am, I do not like being too connected to anyone or anything.
~I also do not like oversharing/TMI at all. 
~I do like when I post something that I think is funny and it makes other people laugh, too.
~I have developed what I think is a permanent eye twitch caused by what is clearly an epidemic of grown up people who can't spell or don't know the difference between your/you're, their/there/they're, to/too, etc.
~I like being a fan of (or liking) the pages of people/places/things that deliver to me the kind of information that I crave.
~I do not like that I often feel as if I am back in an AOL chat room
~I will run screaming in the other direction rather than partake in small talk or anything 'surface-y' (i.e. superficial) and am instead very, very interested in the (intellectual) things that float other people's boats.  But on Facebook there seems to be a whole lot more of the former and not very much of the latter, which frustrates me.
~When I think too much about it, I can get seriously paranoid creeped out in a Facebook=Big Brother kind of way.
There's more, but I'll leave it alone for now.

Anyway, I found myself reading a mostly scathing article this morning about Facebook and its privacy policy, or lack thereof, why/why not you should join (yes, there are people out there who still are not Facebook members) and if you did/do join, the kinds of things you should/should not share.

There were a ton of comments left for this article but the best one was the one in which the commenter suggested that you imagine yourself to suddenly become newsworthy.  What if you hit the giant lottery or Oprah mentioned you or you were discovered by a Hollywood agent who just happened to be in the 7-11 you were in and instantly knew you'd be perfect for that movie he was casting starring all those A-list actors?  In other words, what information are you putting out there, what groups are you joining, etc, that you wouldn't want to be made really public...like, public as in CNN or People magazine or The Soup? 

You're not really thinking that no one would be able to gain access to your Facebook account if they really, really wanted to, are you? 
Unless your friends list consists of your mother, father and grandmother, do you think that at least half of the people on your friends list wouldn't give you up in a heartbeat if the price was right?
(And if you have a family like mine, even some of those people can't be trusted!)

Silly you.

But seriously, in the age of rampant identity theft, computer viruses that steal your personal info, etc., how sure are you that what you're putting out there is 100% secure?
Common sense would dictate that nothing is 100% secure anymore...but you can up the percentage by taking some logical precautions, right?
For example, don't list any personal info you wouldn't want the world to know (duh).
If you don't want people to know where you live, then don't post where you live.
If you don't want people knowing your political affiliation, then don't post what it is.
Et cetera. 

Common sense, indeed.

You know, when I first started using this Kissy Lovestuff nom de plume I was a little put off.
I wanted to be out there; I wanted credit for the things I did/do attributed to my real name.
I didn't want to feel like I was being forced into hiding because my stalker has no life and sadly needs to infiltrate mine.
That's all changed.  I actually have come to love the schizophrenia anonymity being Kissy Lovestuff provides me. 
I'm even staring to think about how to migrate completely over to Kissy.
That would require giving myself up to some people so I'll have to consider that very carefully before I do it. 
I don't want anyone selling me off to the highest bidder and all when the things I do start earning me that six-figure salary and Oprah wants me on her show.

 In the meantime, here's some interesting advice from another commenter from the aforementioned Facebook article.

I strongly advise the following (when joining a social networking site):

1) If you create an account, just put your name in and very little else. I gave my city, occupation, high school and college, and a few music favorites. That’s it. No politics (I think I had to choose something so put down Macedonian Independence Party and for religion: Gadzooks). Basically NOTHING THAT COULD POORLY REFLECT IF AN EMPLOYER LOOKED AROUND.

2) I would stay away from putting pictures there. Email those to friends (or put on a blog and put links in emails).

3) If you strictly limit your Facebook activity to chat (and always be polite) you will get the advantage of establishing contacts and sharing light-weight personal information with each other. Sex topics are out. Take the view that you are at a high school reunion, and chat accordingly.

4) Whatever you do, set just about everything to share with Friends, or Friends of Friends. But nothing more (there’s a Internet/world default that’s truly insane and should be attended to ASAP).

5) Don’t feel you have to respond to ANY requests to be a friend. Just leave them on the queue. Ignore them if they come in to your email account. People will eventually forget they tried to Friend you. I’d rather leave a request unprocessed than proceed with an explicit Denial action.

6) Log in, log out. I’ve read that if you are logged in and then navigate away, the subsequent URL may be used/shared by Facebook.

As to Facebook’s future, I’m not sure. In the past we had AOL’s Hometown, then Tripod, then something else, then Myspace, and now Facebook. It seems that people use these things for a while but eventually they become too hard to manage, or get clogged up with too much junk, which causes people to move on to the Next Big Thing.

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How To Put Facebook On A Privacy Lockdown takes you step-by-step through the settings you should have to insure your privacy and the privacy of those on your friends list.