Tag Archives: Facebook

Coronavirus Hype Sucks: Social Media Devolves Even Further

But the flu kills more people!

First off, the virus is a serious problem so let’s start there. It’s been a popular saying around the social media sphere that the flu kills more people than the coronavirus does! Why, yes, it does in terms of raw numbers, but this itself doesn’t make the virus less dangerous. I ~~read somewhere~~ did the math from the CDC website that the flu, compared with those who actually catches it, kills only 0.01% of them. That’s really low. Out of 1,000,000 who catch the flu, it kills roughly 1,000 people. Consider the coronavirus that has a still ‘low’ death rate of 2%. This would wipe out 20,000 people out of a million. This makes it about 20 times as deadly as a flu. Yes, while the goddamn flu kills more based on raw number it’s not as lethal. It just pisses me off when raw numbers are used. Just because a gunshot to the head doesn’t kill as many people as the flu does in a year doesn’t make it safe.

Toilet paper, hand washing, and hand sanitizer memes

Not that anyone on social media has any sort of brain for this sort of thinking. All that’s there currently are fucking stupid fucking memes about toilet paper. While I love memes, I hate these stupid popular ones. Yes, it’s stupid that people are stocking up on toilet paper for some reason, but the memes making fun of it are even dumber than those stocking up, albeit in a different way.

I don’t even know why anyone is stocking up on toilet paper. It doesn’t make sense at all. Quarantined at home and can’t wipe your ass? Just go take a shower and clean up; it’d act like a really overkill bidet. It’s not that big of a deal. It only makes it worse for those people that aren’t batshit insane and just need to restock on toilet paper. What are these poor unpaniced souls supposed to do if you hoard all the wipes?

Bottled water is another hot commodity for some goddamn reason. Once again, given a mild pandemic I’m sure the tap water at your house will still work. And if the disease gets so out of hand that no one can man the city pumps in the first place, well, you have more issues to worry about than drinking water. If this worst-case scenario did happen, what are your five cases of water going to do in a collapsing society? When people are killing each other for food, are the bottles of water going to help?

Here, let me see how fast I can find a shitty meme from Facebook. That didn’t take too long:

They’re funny but not that funny. I don’t even know. Some of them are even worse by trying to prove a point about it, as if there is a point to prove. I’ve seen one smartass one saying something like “Maybe if y’all run out of toilet paper you’ll have to start washing your ass for once.” Haha. Good one…

Conspiracies Gone Wild

I saw one post today, well, let me find it.

As before, I don’t even want to fact check this garbage. I did look up the Zika Virus outbreak of 2015-2016 and that should tell you all the information you need to know. Apparently the virus was around much earlier, but for some reason only 2016 is mentioned here. I also don’t recall as much hype of Zika in 2016, especially not enough to interference in an election.

It screams of a US-centric mindset. As if the only thing these viruses (and the people supposedly manufacturing them/releasing them on the masses) only give a fuck about are US elections. Going a bit further into this logically, this implies it has something to do with politics. I don’t know what the point even is here. Is this a way for Republicans to steal the election? Is it a way for them to shut down voting even if it hadn’t happened in the past? Is it a Democratic conspiracy to undermine the Republicans? And the party in power each election year hasn’t even been the same. I simply don’t know what this is even trying to prove. I don’t know, maybe something about The Deep State.

One ‘possiblity’ is that someone outside the US created the disease; this sound really fucking unlikely. I don’t even know if we have the power to manufacture a disease, let alone release it wildly into the world for some reason. Considering this originated in China, what would they gain by infecting their own citizens? Sure, it’d be a great tool if it only fucked up the US or anyone they’re opposed to, but a virus doesn’t give a fuck what your nationality is. If someone did want to purpsefully fuck with the US, a virus seems like a really terrible way to do it.

I can’t believe I even gave that stupid picture as much time as I just did. I feel terrible.

Anxiety Skyrockets

There are rumors going around at work that we might be temporarily laid off over this ordeal. Well shit. With all the stuff I worry about and struggle with a global pandemic is not one of them. It simply isn’t in my mind as something that needs to be worried about. My anxiety is a personal thing. I’m worried about writing, struggling with depression, finding a career maybe, and trying to figure my own shit out — I do my own thing day-to-day — and tossing the slight possibility of losing my job was not part of the plan! In reality I haven’t really worried about anything yet, but still, there’s a tiny part of my mind worried about it now.

It was okay when news about quarantines came out, or the cancellation of the fucking NBA season (or whatever, I don’t know), or the cancellation of our St. Patrick’s Day parade, or hearing about concerts being cancelled, but I don’t give a damn about these things. About 98% of my time consists of me being holed up in the house or at work, no parades for me, thanks. This blog should be just fine even if I am laid-off and quarantined. I think everyone wants to be left alone to do their own thing and luckily doing my own thing doesn’t involve many other people in large groups. But losing my job sort of does directly affect me and that’s worrisome.

I’m really conflicted by how I feel. Yes, it is a big problem but is probably being blown out of proportion. But goddamn are the memes annoying. And the social media posts are annoying. Everyone is trying to prove their own points about the virus (myself included thanks to this post) and damn is it grating on my nerves. Maybe it is a nice break from the other bullshit that is spammed on social media, but I’m really sick of hearing jokes about toilet paper. Isn’t there anything better to do?

Facebook Still Sucks, but Instagram is Strangely Satisfying

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Note: Appreciate the amount of links I have in this mess of a post. It was a ton of work. Oh, and the struggle to italicize company names.

I don’t know whether I should bitch about Facebook or praise Instagram, so I’ll probably do both. One social media perspective isn’t complete without another contrasting perspective. My hatred for Facebook translates into a love of Instagram, and my love of Instagram only makes me hate Facebook even more than usual.

One thing should be mentioned: they’re the same fucking thing, and I don’t mean that because they’re both social media. Facebook literally owns Instagram, not in any metaphorical sense either, they actually own Instagram. I don’t know if this is popular knowledge or not; I myself am only aware of this fact because I used to trade stocks and options. One of the main talking points of bullish Facebook investors (besides the company raking in buckets of advertising money) is the fact that they own Instagram. Apparently Instagram is really popular and the irony of people leaving Facebook for Instagram is hilarious. Those hip people who are fed up with the utter trash that is Facebook can happily migrate to Instagram totally unaware of the fact that they haven’t moved anywhere new. It’s like moving from a third story apartment to a second story one in the same building. Moving up in the world, right?!

But Facebook is shit, let’s make that abundantly clear. I love to shit all over the company/site and even published my first ebook by doing so. I had a ton of posts bitching about Facebook and social media in general, wrapped a big bow tie around them, and published them in a compilation. I thought my days of bitching about Facebook were over — move on to bigger and better writing projects — but apparently not. Let’s rip on Facebook again, but in a different way.

It’s taken over by old people.

I don’t think I mean old people in a strictly age way, just the site seems rather stale. While it isn’t overran by old-people and their posts, it is overran by old-people-eque posts. There seems to be nothing of value left. Instead of creating/sharing interesting pics and posts about life, you have people sharing the dumbest, stupidest memes, social justice signaling all over the place, while the literal old people share the “liberals find the flag offensive, let’s show them!” American flag posts along with any other fake news/dietary cancer cures that they come across. Sure there are young people on Facebook (thanks for all the signaling; it sure is interesting that you’re ~~posting~~ sharing deep, meaningful posts to make yourself appear deeper than you are) but the older community is killing the place. I really don’t give a shit about a police dog that is laying on a grave or whatever, and I don’t care to pray for some random person with cancer who probably died four years ago while everyone is unaware of the fact. It’s just a mess and the mess overrides any joy I get out of the place. Facebook for me is a place to mindlessly scroll at 2 a.m. when I want to feel a little more cynical about everything.

The only person to share shit like this is someone who has just went through a shitty relationship and is trying to tell themself that they’re really fine and all of that shit. Signaling. Denial. Etc.

It’s also complicated to use. Not really, but it isn’t simple either; there are options everywhere. Every little thing is a button that does something unique. Tagging, captioning, privacy settings, sharing, sharing to news feed, sharing to story, pic uploading, video uploading, galleries, notifications, email and text notifications, react emojis, .gifs, personal information (music, movies, work, sports teams, etc.), phone numbers, ‘like’ or ‘follow’?, featured photos, and the list surely goes on. That’s only involving personal pages too; the Facebook ecosystem goes deeper. Much deeper. There’s a messenger and all the social anxiety that comes with messaging a person on Facebook because you don’t have their actual number and is that, like, a weird thing to do socially or is it okay? Then there’s Messenger Stories: what are you supposed to use that for? There’s a marketplace, business pages, groups, games, and so on. Oh, and you can make your own Facebook pages too if you’re a big fat-cat entrepreneur like myself. (Gimme a ‘like’ and ‘follow’ guys!) These pages are their own can of worms to deal with as I’m sure you can imagine. Luckily I don’t know of many other things because fuck that, I’m not trying to do everything Facebook has to offer. For me it’s mostly a place to spam links to blogs/writings.

Which leads me in a roundabout way to Instagram; it’s another market to get my writings out there. I don’t even know how you market a blog/story/author on Instagram (it’s all pictures, right? How do you market writing with pictures?) but figured I’d give it a shot. Ya know, take a shitty and abstract picture and plop some deep, insightful text on it and, bam, done. Sounds easy enough to YOLO an Instagram account.

I also have a few friends who are on there. One guy is a big inspiration; he makes an artform out of Instagram and I’ve been blatantly copying his technique. He’s a master at taking these awful, shitty, low-quality pictures, filtering the shit out of them, and writing what is basically poetry for captions. And they’re great! It’s a raw, no-bullshit form of art that is genius even given the derivativeness that is inherently Instagram. Just for the hell of it, I’ll toss a link to him. I think it’d be hilarious if he ends up with a bunch of followers because of this stupid blog post. And I’m not going to say a word to him about it either. So please follow leftclickmicrocosm_ on Instagram. Please make this happen.

I finally made an account and started my own version of posting low-quality bullshit with deep captions. A pic of a vape cloud along with a caption about two souls dancing. A blurry 757 flying at night. Corporate artwork with a cold and cruel caption. I’ll link a few below.

View this post on Instagram

Our souls danced as vapor twirling together for a fleeting moment, only to dissipate forever.

A post shared by Jeremy Jordan (@jjwritestuff) on Feb 4, 2020 at 9:06am PST

Wow, Instagram pics look amazing on a blog!

What’s strange is how weary I was to getting into another social media sphere to market my writings. It’s exhausting. Was I really going to write a shitty blog post in 50 minutes and then spend just as long marketing it on social media? Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Wattpad, and Instagram? That’s a lot of work. And I was terrified that I’d be sucked in by Instagram the same way Facebook and heroin are known to do. The constant chase of social popularity and approval, farming for ‘likes’ and whatnot. I didn’t want any part of it.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jeremy Jordan (@jjwritestuff) on Feb 6, 2020 at 8:58am PST

There is something refreshing about starting anew and Instagram is no different. You get a blank slate. You get to learn. You get to experiment. Since you’re starting from nothing, you also have nothing to prove. It’s been great! I’ve been posting these shitty, heavily filtered and ‘artistic’ images just for the fun of it. I don’t care if something doesn’t get as much feedback as other more popular pics; it’s enjoyable enough just to spam total bullshit without catering to some overarching goal. In this aspect I’ve failed; I haven’t marketed my writings at all on Instagram, totally missing the point of what I was intending to do in the first place. But it’s okay.

I also love how Insta‘s UI seems ‘simpler’ than Facebook‘s. The menu (if you can call it a menu) isn’t littered with total trash. The app is very minimalistic with only a few buttons to actually click. The filter/editing part is simply clicking buttons and moving sliders until you find the look you want. You slide things around until your picture looks delightfully artistic with a quality similar to an indie, low-fi garage album. Feedback and static in visual form. Slap on a flowery caption and you’re good to go.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jeremy Jordan (@jjwritestuff) on Feb 7, 2020 at 8:11am PST

Contrived deepness!

I know the site is kinda trash with influencers and people taking selfie after selfie in exotic locations, totally gaming the system trying to make their lives look idyllic. In some ways I think this is the surface-level Instagram sort of how bullshit news stories and stupid memes are the surface-level of Facebook. But there is potential for artistic expression if you allow it; if you stop trying to play the game that everyone else is playing. Because it’s Instagram and it’s what you do. Throughout my Instagram ‘career’ I’m going to attempt to hold onto this mindset and only do whatever random shit I want to do (while lovingly stealing others’ good ideas obviously) and not worrying too much about playing the social media game. But a week into it? I love it. It stomps the fuck out of Facebook. It’s easy, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and I find myself not taking it — or myself — too seriously either.

In case all that shit above wasn’t enough, here’s a proper link. Follow me for my silly art pictures!

The “Woman Yelling at Cat” Meme Sucks

A Case Study of Meme Overuse and Eventual Death

We can’t have good things. We can never have good things. Because once something becomes popular enough the masses will get a hold of it and ruin it. Usually this doesn’t happen with most art forms because most art requires little to no participation from the audience. There are the creators of the art and the viewers of the art and the audience is relegated to be mere spectators of the art form. The read the book. They watch the movie. They look at the painting. They play no role in the creation of the art itself. The barrier of entry is usually fairly high to most standard forms of art; some jackass can’t make shitty music, plop it up on soundcloud, and become instantly famous. Some dickhead with canvas and acrylics from Walmart probably won’t paint a masterpiece that will end up in a museum. There’s a quality filter so to speak. But I think the most important attribute of most “normal” art is that it is static: once art is created it is finished and in its final form. There is no further input from anyone, especially the audience.

Memes are totally different and while I do consider them an artform they’re also a form of communication. This works because the barrier to entry with memes is terribly low; any dingbat can make memes and nothing requires you to actually be witty or good at making them to do so. And there is an audience for these poorly-crafted memes. Consider the horribly dumb populace that infests social media sites like Facebook and Twitter like roaches, you have dumbfucks creating stupid and unfunny memes who “don’t get it” and somehow their abominations are shared and propagated to the masses. It’s the equivalent of the soundcloud artist and amateur painter from above except they can somehow get notoriety with their shitty and terrible work. YouTube is a good example of this where anyone with a phone can plop videos up that everyone in the world can see. There is no filter to prevent bad content from spreading.

You can really notice this as a trend if you know where to look. The meme progression is usually something like this: some random person makes a meme with a narrow context or something. The meme is funny because it’s new and unique and sometimes hilariously confusing because it doesn’t seem to make sense. Think of advice animals: why would animals give advice? It’s entertaining in its absurdity. Or spiderman giving a presentation, etc. I call this initial phase the “proto-meme” phase because it sounds cool enough.

Having a deeper sense of social media put yous in direct touch with proto-memes. I’m not saying Reddit is deep social media exactly but it’s deeper than Facebook, which is about as shallow as a puddle in a driveway. I’ve seen countless memes in more or less original proto-form on Reddit before they mature and make the jump to more popular sites like Facebook. As an example, this is something I think is representative of the proto-meme style that may or may not become popular in the future. I’m especially fond of r/THE_PACK because of how absurd and ironic everything posted there is. It’s like the shit your skeleton-, gun-, flag-, and motorcycle-image sharing uncle shares on Facebook but turned up 1000 times in intensity. Here:

AROOO MFER! Credit: u/IronicMerman. (The style of THE_PACK is even more interesting when you consider the fact that they’re a bastardization of things shared on Facebook. They’re like a reverse of what usually happens to memes: instead of going to Facebook to die, the style is removed from Facebook and memeified.)

Reddit itself is probably more descriptive of the second phase of memes where their popularity grows and people improvise on the formula. I want to call this something like the “classic phase” or something. This is where memes gain enough social critical mass where you can use them in wider conversations and situations. The meme is adapted by many interest groups and cultures even if they have their origins in niche communities. Spongebob memes can make the jump from being unique to TV and movie communities into the wider public. Or a video game meme jumps ship and is adopted by countless other groups unrelated to video games. Creativity flourishes and each community puts their own spin on the meme and interprets it in their own way, creating a cornucopia of memes based off the same initial idea. And most importantly they hold true to the form and humor of the original proto-meme.

After the proto- and classical meme phases is what I’d call the popular phase of the meme. This is what happens when a meme grows up and is adopted by the masses for use. And by masses I mean everyone. Usually you know this phase is upon a meme when your hopelessly out-of-touch and mildly racist aunt Karen starts sharing them on Facebook. Think about Minions. Facebook is the prime example here because it’s where popular memes go to die. It’s where clueless and usually older people get their grubby Boomer hands on our beloved memes, misunderstanding and corrupting them into something that misses the entire point of the meme in the first place. Case in point: the woman and cat meme, the topic of this post. I’m sure you’ve seen it in your travels through Social Media Land recently.

I loved this meme originally. It had all the hallmarks of a good meme: originality, absurdity with a woman yelling at a cat sitting at a dinner table, and a versatility that was impressive. You could adapt the meme or variations of it to nearly anything you needed. I found this on reddit a half year ago, the meme altered and depicting a certain scenario from the video game Apex Legends:

Part of the appeal of a meme is its “inside joke” quality, and this is prime example of such. You won’t understand this at all unless you’ve played Apex.

And my sister sent me this gem where the meme is tweaked to be about video game choices. It highlights the absurdity of the semi-popular and mocked belief that video games cause violence: humor, absurdity, and social commentary all wrapped into a picture of a woman yelling at a cat. It’s also an example of how damn versatile the meme is/was.

And I can’t forget this gem I found which doesn’t depict the meme as usual but pays homage to The Shining. I love it.

Anyways, as stated above the natural progression of a meme that becomes too popular, a meme that has such critical mass that it transcends sub-pop and pop culture, is that it enters mainstream culture. When your parents, aunts, uncles, and even grandparents get a hold of it. It’s when people use the meme as it wasn’t intended, a bastardization where one realizes the creator doesn’t understand the meme’s appeal and humor in the first place. And the saddest thing of all is when the meme is fucking politicized and used unironically. When the humor is stripped out of it and it becomes a way to say something seriously. To prove a point. To make a stance. To yell your viewpoint bluntly at people. To disguise this as humor. This isn’t how memes are meant to be used.

This one depicts the meme as a conversation-frame type meme, a misuse of its original intentions. I mean it’s now a lady having a conversation with a cat. Okay. It’s also kinda dumb.

I was originally going to only post the image, but realized that including the poster/uploader — the eloquently titled page “Cornbread & Cooter” — might say something about the type of people that fuck the memes up in the first place. Think of someone you personally know that would actually follow a page called “Cornbread & Cooter:” they’re probably a fucking moron. Sadly, my dad shared this.

This one depicts the cat looking at Greta Thunberg. Once again, Okay…

As above, I included the poster, “Country Folks & Patriot’s.” I don’t know why there’s an apostrophe there, but hey, I’m not surprised. Without looking you know it’s a page followed by a bunch of old out-of-touch people that live off a steady diet of Fox News and they took a popular meme and fucked it up and politicized it. And once again it isn’t even funny because it’s trying too hard to prove a point. There’s no humor because it has been replaced by a subtle hatred for Greta only disguised as humor, not that these people give a shit about the trees cut down in the first place.

And countless others that I don’t even want to think about. Naturally I don’t save these when I come across them and only upon writing a blog post do I have to hunt them down. And searching through a handful of Cornbread & Cooter’s images leaves you feeling exhausted with society and people in general. Sometimes I want to go hang myself.

The meme is then basically dead. When people who are out of touch with the original intent and humor get ahold of a meme and defile it, no one who properly knows how to use the meme will do so. It then becomes “uncool” to use (unless you’re being ironic) and the real meme-proficient people, creators, and wizards will stop using it. The funny thing is after the meme falls out of favor with its initial fans and adopters it will still find heavy use in the out-of-touch community because they have no idea that it’s not funny anymore. Once again think Minion memes. The only time these dead memes will finally disappear is when the out-of-touch crowd finds newer, fresher, and unmurded memes to leech onto and then kill. It’s a vicious cycle. The popularity of a meme is what will kill it.

Luckily, some memes seem to transcend this fate by being popular but not popular enough to be adapted by the demographics that will kill them. A few examples I can think of is Elon Musk smoking pot and the goddamn “Here we go again” screenshot from Grand Theft Auto 3: San Andreas. It’s pretty easy to see why they haven’t been widely adopted. Elon smoking pot is just too vague for popular adaptation because you need to know the backstory to see the humor in it. And CJ from GTA is hopelessly (and luckily) stuck within video game cultures and can’t transcend out of it.

A fresh cross adapting a GTA meme into something Stardew Valley related.

I suppose the real death knell of memes is when they end up on t-shirts or whatever. This kills the meme. When you start seeing memes on shirts the humor and the inside joke quality of it are just wiped out, murdered, with zero hope of return. And, oh, would you look at this…

HE’S DEAD, JIM. And no I’m not giving credit for this image because things like this can just go fuck right off into hell.

Sorry lady-yelling-at-cat meme. You were one of the better ones, but all good things must come to an end. A victim of your own success you were and while you’ve followed countless other memes into oblivion and while you’re surely not the last to do so, we will fondly remember the times when your were young, new, and full of promise to all of us. Farewell and Godspeed.

Note: I bitched a little bit about Facebook here, as I’ve done in many past posts, and if you’re curious for an entire book bitching about the negative things about Facebook, I wrote an ebook on it. Please check it out if you’re interested!

The Decade Challenge Sucks

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The hottest and latest trend to be hitting social media (at least Facebook as I can’t speak for other social media websites) seems to be something called “the decade challenge” or whatever. The “challenge” involves finding and posting a picture of yourself from ten years ago, way back in 2009. The only “challenge” to it seems to be finding a decent picture of yourself from a literal decade ago and then maybe having the courage to post it. I don’t really know what the actual point of doing this is because all it seems to accomplish is either 1. showing how you haven’t aged at all making everyone else feel like shit or 2.showing how terribly you’ve aged in the past ten years and making everyone else feel better about themselves. You now look like a decrepit catchers mitt and how the hell did ten laps around the sun affect you that badly? The decade challenge doesn’t seem to have any positives to it at all except perhaps to get some well-needed schadenfreude in on your “friends.”

As you can tell I hate it. I always hate social media trends but this one is even worse. I think it’s because I’m strongly in denial about the fact that I’m getting older. I’ve been tossing around the idea of a “getting older sucks” blog post, but have been deliberately and purposefully in denial about the fact. “I would write a post about getting older sucking,” I think to myself, “but I’m not actually old yet! Who am I to write about that topic at the fresh young age of 33!” I’m constantly lying to myself and knowing that I’m lying to myself feels especially awful.

Denial until this “challenge” that is. With everyone around my age spamming pics of themselves ten years ago I can’t be in denial about it. While I myself don’t feel old, and when I look in the mirror I don’t think I look old, everyone around my age group has seemingly aged terribly in the past ten years. Who am I to deny this fact? I’ve certainly aged terribly as well and just aren’t aware of it or am just in denial about it.

As stated I’m 33 and I’ve always viewed this as the start of getting old, at least that’s how I thought about it as a kid. The thirties are when you’re literally and undeniably an adult. Your life is set. Your dreams have either been accomplished or you’ll never accomplish them. The thirties is when you’re past the point of turning back. You’re well on the road to middle age, old age, and death. You can’t turn back or change anything about your life when you’re past thirty. It was a bleak outlook.

Obviously I don’t feel that way now that I’m in the thick of the shit that is The Thirties. I tell myself —— who still feels like an ignorant teenager — that, no, the thirties aren’t old! Maybe you’re “old” when you’re in your forties or even fifties! Or maybe there is no such thing as being old! But then I think of my grandma who can barely walk, whose hands look like those of a skeleton with just a thin layer of skin draped over the bones. She is frail and her mind isn’t what it used to be. Being old is undeniably a thing, but it doesn’t have a clear beginning. It just slowly creeps up on you so you have a hard time considering when you “start” being old. Since I’m in my thirties, I still feel this point is a long way away even though my beard is irreversibly grey and the bags under my eyes are becoming more pronounced.

Most of my friends are the same age as I am, give or take a few years. Seeing their decade pictures on Facebook is like a mirror held directly up to me. People that are the same age as me look old. Even the ones that don’t exactly look old look changed; they don’t look the same as they did ten years ago, even if they still appear young.

One of my friends still looks pretty young, and his picture from a decade ago is framed in the exact same way making a comparison very easy. His hair is longer now and he hasn’t gotten fat, but around his eyes are unmistakable wrinkles that weren’t around in the photo from ten years ago. He is one of the people that don’t look old, but where something is definitely happening with time. He’s on the verge of looking old even if he isn’t quite there yet.

Another girl I know looks nearly the same as ten years ago, but with the same telltale wrinkles around her eyes. Her cheeks are a little fuller and saggier than from 2009, but she is still youthful and pretty. Once again time is working slowly and even if she doesn’t look old yet, you know her 2029 pictures will be terrible.

One guy who I totally describe as “a hipster” used to be very tall, thin, and wore glasses: the classic hipster. He only listens to music on vinyl. He only listens to music you’ve never heard of. His picture is now of a kinda chubby, “dad-looking” person even though he has no kids. He now has a slight double chin. His hair looks to be thinning. He wears sweaters that are of the classic “dad-style”. He tucks his shirts in. His picture is that of a classic old person who seems oblivious to the fact that he’s old. He’s my age. And he is unmistakably old.

I don’t think other age groups have this issue with the decade challenge. If you’re in your twenties your past pictures will be of a teenager. You’re now an adult, congrats! And if you’re in your forties or fifties I’m assuming you look about the same as you did ten years prior. But the thirties? Now we’re comparing pictures of an old thirty-year-old to a fresh and young twenty-year-old. This decade seems to take the most toll on both body and mind and people outside of this age group can’t appreciate the pure hell of it.

As for myself, how am I different from ten years ago? I don’t know. I think I look the same. Luckily I’m not the type of person to have tons of pictures of myself, and those that do exist are buried and forgotten somewhere I’m not aware of. Perhaps they’re on hard-drives, forgotten/lost SD cards, or in family picture albums somewhere. This is nice because I can have plausible deniability as to how much I’ve aged in the past decade. I can’t see myself from 2009 so I don’t know. And I’m fine with that. But it’s hard to ignore the slew of people on social media posting pictures from a decade ago that you’re the same age as. Some look old, and if they don’t look old, you can still see time making it’s slight and permanent cuts in their faces, slowly but surely carving them with the same patience that carved the Grand Canyon. Even if you’re spared this decade, the next one will get you. And if not that one, surely the one after that. Or the one after that. The decade challenge fucking sucks.

Facebook Sucks: Stupid Things People Share

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Note: I wrote an entire ebook about Facebook and why it sucks. Check it out if you’re interested.

Let me be totally honest here: I’ve started writing this post over and over about five times now and nothing seems to work. Nothing flows right. My intention, upon scrolling Facebook and being totally pissed at all of the low-quality shit that people share, was to make a blog post about it. Usually I try to write an introduction that eases into the topic while sometimes asking interesting questions about it. With this post I might ask why people share so much stuff in the first place. Why don’t people make their own posts as much as they share? And so on. But hell if this post isn’t just a collection of shitty memes from Facebook. I don’t even want to attempt to be “deep” about why people share this shit: I just want to bitch about how shitty these things are. This list is also not exhaustive and there very well could be a part 2 or a part 3 to this someday.

And let me be honest one more time: these shitty images were filling up my phone’s download folder and made it a miserable place to be. Once this was posted I could delete the damn things leaving the folder filled only with amazingly funny and clever memes, because I have the utmost refined comedic tastes obviously.

Mildly Amusing Sexist Jokes

These are really stupid to see and they upset me greatly. I’m not even upset much over the sexism (and this goes both ways depending on the actual image, sometimes it’s women being sexist towards men) because a joke is a joke. I’m willing to laugh at almost anything because as long as you know it’s just a stupid joke and there’s no I’ll will behind it, who cares? What bothers me most about these is how goddamn cheap they are: they’re lazy jokes. Take this one for example:

Haha right? Women wash dishes! That’s their job! You thought the meme was talking about an actual dish washing machine when you read it, right? Gotcha! No. No you didn’t. The joke is so obvious that it isn’t even funny. Part of the humor in jokes is not seeing any immediate connection between the setup and punchline and then figuring it out. There’s an “a-ha!” moment that makes the joke funny. These lack that cleverness.

They’re also shared almost exclusively by older people who apparently have a fondness for this type of humor. It makes me wonder if in 30 years I’ll be sharing jokes that aren’t funny on whatever social media is around then. I fucking hope not. But a few younger people share them too, usually males (obviously). They’re typically the people you’d expect to share them too. They’re the ones constantly posting sexual memes and jokes (almost like trying trying to end up on r/ihavesex on purpose) and have a general sense of vulgarity about them. Luckily I’m not friends with many of these people so that’s good for me at least.

Sports

Take a look at this:

Okay. I don’t even know what to say about it. You don’t like the Packers. You watch football. It’s a Packers’ logo on toilet paper. You know, what you wipe your ass with. Ha.

Shit like this is usually shared by the demographics from above, but you could find any diehard sports fan sharing it as well.

2deep4u Posts

Here ya go:

These things are exhausting because they’re everywhere. I’ve always liked to bitch amount images that are just images of text, because, why? For fucks sake put some background on it or something. Even worse are the 2deep posts that are pictures from someone else’s Facebook post. Like this one:

“The thing is, Bob. It’s not that I’m lazy: It’s that I just don’t care. It’s a problem of motivation, right?“

Making things even worse is the fact that many of these actually have decent advice to them. The first image is a perfect example of this: the actual words make sense really. Sometimes it is wasting your time to talk to a headstrong dumbass. The problem arises because the person sharing the image is likely to be one of these people, ironically. If you really felt this image resonated with you you probably wouldn’t be sharing it on social media. Also, with the multitude of these on social media they lose their meaning an effectiveness. After seeing 30 of these every time you look at Facebook, you simply find yourself not caring about them anymore.

A friend pointed out that there is a brown version as well!

Remember when I ~~mentioned that social media should be a conversation~~ deleted and rewrote the introduction? A two-way conversation? These fail miserably on that goal. Even if the outward appearance is one of information — what if the poster just wanted for other people to see it? — they’re usually posted to say something about the sharer and aren’t directed to an audience at all. The poster is saying something about themselves — that they can understand different perspectives and aren’t a dumbass — and how deep and complex they are. It’s egotistical as fuck. They’re not trying to prompt others to keep an open mind, they’re only circle jerking themselves.

2deep4u Fake News?

This one is a subset of the 2deep4u posts but with the added benefit of having a questionable factual basis:

I don’t know anything about wolves really, so maybe the image is true, but my bullshit radar goes off anytime I look at it. The worst part? Posts like these you’re not bothered enough by to actually fact-check them. While I suspect it’s bullshit ~~I don’t want to make an effort to find out~~ it actually is bullshit.

Informative Fake News

A few posts might actually be helpful or make some sense at first. Like you can tell the sharer isn’t being self-centered or looking for attention and is actually trying to help their friends and family have some useful information. Once again many of these set my bullshit alarm into high gear. Here:

Floor polish and pumpkins? Once again I don’t know enough about the ingredients of floor polish and how pumpkins decay so I can’t outright say that it’s bullshit, but come on. This one I’m not even going to research either. I don’t want part of my internet search history to be about floor cleaner and pumpkins. The next time I’m on Amazon I don’t want endless ads for Brite floor polish.

Or this one:

News just means, ya know, “new stuff” and if it’s printed on paper you might be tempted to call it a “news-paper.” It’s no surprised that a newspaper would be called what is is. Come on people.

Its not really informative like the pumpkin one but it still purports to have an interesting fact that, once again, screams of bullshit. In fact I’m like 95% sure it’s bullshit. Even worse is the woah reacts to it that I’m assuming are from people who gobbled up the bullshit like a swarm of hungry flies would.

And this:

There’s a general theme here of my ignorance on a topic giving claims something to work with even if I suspect there’s bullshit around. Once again there are claims that seem factual; charcoal can affect medicine uptake, but is charcoal used to color food that much? It seems like it would affect the texture or something. Who knows. After some quick Googling apparently charcoal is used to color foods, among with other possible ingredients. Basically known what your medicine shouldn’t be taken with and figure out if charcoal is in your food. Which you should’be been doing even if you didn’t see this shit on Facebook!

I think the same will be true for my conclusion paragraph as the introduction paragraph. I don’t have shit to say and am just going to stop. If anything, check the shit you share for factual basis before sharing it. I can’t believe I even have to mention that.

Publishing (and Selling!) ebooks Sucks

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Last week I was on vacation and as an attempt to save myself the self-hatred and directionlessness that I feel while on vacation I made it a goal to finally finish and publish an ebook. I’m proud to say I’ve accomplished this but at the same time any actual “victory” seems to not be much of a victory at all. While I’ve finally published a book, it really doesn’t mean much in the long run and surely isn’t an instant ticket to success even though I wasn’t really expecting it to be.

What did I write about? I wrote about Facebook. I elaborated in a few recent blog posts about how I was thinking of collecting my Facebook Sucks posts into an ebook: it would be easy to do and I wouldn’t have to feel any pressure for it to be perfect. Perfection is always a hurdle when doing anything for the first time. For my first ebook why would I want to spend months or years making it perfect when it would surely end up as trash and not sell? By gluing blog posts into a book I wouldn’t be making a masterpiece but I could take the first step needed to actually be a writer.

I want to cover two things here: how it was actually writing an ebook and how it was publishing that ebook. Luckily (for this blog at least) each aspect sucked giving me plenty of content to write about!

You’d think that gluing individual blog posts into a book would be really easy but it wasn’t. Each blog post was written as its own stand-alone format; when you try to smash them together as “chapters” in a book you’re left with a really disjointed book. It sounds like what it is: a bunch of shit just tossed together. While most of the content was already written I still had to reread and edit all the posts to be “chapters” instead of “blog posts.” This wasn’t really difficult but wasn’t exactly as easy as I thought it would be. I also had to give some thought as to the general flow of the book, how the chapters would fit into the entire project, and edit them accordingly.

And obviously you can’t just slap a handful of blog posts into a book and call it day either! You need to make it, well, like a fucking book so I had to write an introduction and a few more “body” chapters to ease into where the blog post chapters were taking me. As before this wasn’t exactly hard (mostly as bitching about Facebook comes as naturally to me as breathing or eating does) but it was something I didn’t expect to be as laborious as it was. In fact I think previously written blog posts made up less than half the book; I tired to write an “easy” “blog-based” book and ended up writing a book that had a few blog posts for chapters. Most of the book was totally new content so that was more work than intended.

Then there’s editing the damn thing! You have to pour over the entire document proofreading for proper spelling, punctuation, grammar, as well as making sure you don’t sound totally fucking stupid in your writing. This part could’ve been avoided by finding a “proper” editor instead of doing it myself; that entails its own list of bullshit like being social and actually talking to people. While I wanted to finally write an ebook I wasn’t trying to be social or anything and wanted to rely on others as little as possible.

Along with everything else, actually publishing wasn’t too difficult but still tossed up its own unexpected troubles here and there. My book was ready to go but was there anything else I had to worry about? Yes. Consider a book cover: this is the first and usually only thing people see about your book. If you fuck it up the cover one will think about reading it. It could be the next Great Gatsby but no one will read it because the cover is shit. I felt immense pressure trying to make a decent cover and while I think I did a decent job it still looks unprofessional. If you totally forgot the fact that your book needed a cover you’d be in a difficult spot trying to publish a book.

My book cover. Kinda cool but kinda amateurish at the same time.

Kindle Direct Publishing throws a few more immensely important tasks at you beyond the book cover. What is your book’s keywords going to be? This is how Amazon relates search terms to actual products so these have to be dead on accurate. Even worse is you only get seven terms to use. Each one has to be near perfect. The same is true for your book’s category: it has to reflect what the book is about. Plopping a fantasy fiction book in the “technical writing” section of Amazon simply won’t do you any favors and I ran into trouble at this point. Was my incessant ranting about Facebook a “social science” book on the effects of social media, or was it a commentary on internet and computer culture? I still feel bad about the categories I selected because they don’t seem to reflect the book at all. Hell, I don’t even remember what categories I slapped my book in.

You also have to write a “summary” of your book which, after the cover, is the second most important thing people use to decide when purchasing a book. After going through the exhausting process of writing and editing and making a cover you probably don’t want to write more in a desperate last-minute effort to summarize your book. If you’re thinking of publishing write a fucking summary ASAP. At the very least have an idea for one in your mind.

After dealing with all of that intense decision making you upload your book (in a .doc file or whatever) and check out how it’s formatted. I didn’t have any issues here. The rest is pretty simple: pick a price for your book and all of that shit. After a 24 hour(ish) period your book appears and, well, you’re now a published author. Congratulations! But you probably don’t have long to feel accomplished because you probably won’t actually sell anything…

I shared my book to the Everything Sucks Facebook page as well as my own personal page. I figured at least a few of my friends would check out my cheaply-priced $2.99 ebook because they were curious or felt some sympathy for me. Even a week later my sales stand, pathetically, at zero. Check this out:

If this picture looks bland it’s because I didn’t sell any fucking books.

It’s hard not to feel like shit over this, especially after doing all the work to actually write a book. I recall when one of my Facebook friends made an ebook (it was a single short story too, not even a real fucking book); I paid the 99 cents to support him because I’m a nice guy like that. Of course a bunch of other people also supported him and he was just amazed at the positive feedback his book received! I figured I could count on selling at least a few copies out of “support sympathy” or whatever you want to call it, but nope. The goddamn book only got two likes on my personal page. Fuckers.

I guess I don’t want to bitch about my friends not buying my book because you can’t be a successful author limping along with your only reliable readers being your friends/family. But I do want to bitch about the fact that doing anything is fucking hard. And, once again, doing something for the first time is the hardest. Doing anything for the first time usually involves the greatest amount of effort because you don’t know what you’re doing at a time when you have zero self-confidence keeping you motivated and focused. When you do persevere and accomplish your “first” the reception is usually either luke-warm (or nonexistent) and this can totally crush any self-confidence you’ve accomplished at achieving your goal. This is a really risky and dangerous time because if you’ve busted your ass to make progress and have had no success afterward, why would you want to continue?

Luckily I don’t think I’m dumb enough to fall for that trap again and am already working on a second ebook because who gives a fuck? Sometimes I think the real measure of success is just chipping away at something because you don’t actually care if it’s received well. I could stress out constantly over the fact that no one will probably read anything I publish and hate myself for it, or I can say “Fuck it. I’ll publish another one.” and shrug it off. What else is there really to do except make progress? So while I’ve accomplished actually publishing, had it be recieved anticlimactically, and feel kinda shitty about it I know that I need to keep moving forward because the first of anything is usually shit. So, yeah, publishing (and selling) an ebook kinda sucked.

If you want to actually check the book out here’s the link. It’s only $2.99 so it shouldn’t break your bank account.