Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Zuckerberg, You Ignorant Slut



 It's time to get the old blogging gang back together.

Like, well, practically everyone, I have fallen for the tempting grift of "less friction."


Going into blogger, writing and editing a worthwhile post, formatting it, monitoring and moderating comments (because oh my Dog, the spam, the spam, and also the weirdos, the weirdos), visiting other blogs of interest, maybe needing yet another account to comment there if I am so moved, signing in, remembering passwords -- all of them are points of friction and annoyance. Yahoo Groups took over the listserv game a couple decades ago, got everyone in one place, and then, a few years back, just POOFED away years and years of conversations and files and whole online communities. Just gone.

And The Zuck made it ever eeeeasier to interact. Schedule events. Conduct business. Sell your shit. 

Until Zuckworld had sucked all the air out of the rest of God's internet while, you know, also sucking the tit of Putin's fascist trolls, that sweet sweet Kremlin troll money.

It's all great until you find that your now-predominant means of communication and commerce is capriciously cut off by a bloody-minded literalist imbecile algorithm that cannot detect irony or hyperbolic metaphor, and flags a pleasant conversation among consenting friends about interesting science, or a real pretty vintage kitchen set, as "inciting violence."

That literally confuses a straightforward statement that hunting Mike Pence with a noose is a, you know, bad thing, with advocating Pence-hunting.

Meanwhile, same day, classic Holocaust denial on a news story public comment thread -- eh, it's fine. Didn't hit any of the secret no-no words.

The automation is about as competent at grokking the hoo-mans as the Zuck itself.

Story time.

It's junior high speech class. The teacher is Mr. Stanton. Mr. Stanton is kinda a dick, but by no means the worst asshole teaching at Roehm Junior High, mainly only because of the stiff competition. The thing to know is that in 1979, the dicks and assholes babysitting the hormonal adolescents at Roehm Junior High school were empowered to beat the students who annoyed them. Literally take them into the hallway and hit them in the ass with a wooden paddle. "Swats." Some liked to brandish their beating paddles as threats, and the legendary ones had paddles with holes drilled into them for, allegedly, extra pain. The good teachers did not employ beatings or threats of beatings .But any of them were allowed to. Good times! The students who regularly received beatings for being little shits considered it a badge of honor, so the deterrence power of beatings was pretty openly understood to be zilch.

So we kids learning public speaking had to choose a topic, some political or social issue, take a side, and research, prepare, and deliver a "speech to convince." Nobody could take the same side of the same topic as anyone else, but we could take different sides. Mr. Stanton polled us alphabetically for our topics, with students lower in the alphabet getting dibs.

I announced my topic and position. Topic doesn't matter, I'm not entirely sure I remember what it was.

A few students later, one of the boys calls dibs on the opposing side of the issue. 

I remember who it was, but won't embarrass him here. A popular kid who wasn't particularly my buddy, but definitely not one of the legions of junior high shithead bullies.

When he called dibs for a speech opposing my position, the kids started invoking a favorite Saturday Night Live sketch. We gonna have a Point/Counterpoint!

My classmate snapped out in a fair Dan Akroyd twang Heather, you ignorant slut. And we all roared.

You know, the way people do, when bantering, and invoking in-group memes, references that show that we all get the joke.

Stanton, that dick, did not get the joke.

We tried to explain the joke.

He did not want to get the joke.

I especially was anxious that he understand that this was a good joke that did not offend me and that my classmate was not bullying me. Plenty of nasty little shits doing that and never, ever being punished for it, but this was not that. And I particularly did not want my classmate to sustain a beating in the hallway because of me

Nope.

Random hallway beating it was.

Seriously, fuck that guy.

Aaaanyway.

That's Zuckerworld, and also The House That Jack Built.

Hallway assault? Didn't see it. Vile, obscene provocation from the back row? Better not respond, you're gonna be the one that gets it. The useless little shits don't fear the random punishment, because they aren't doing anything worthwhile in the space, the beating just raised their status among the other useless little shits, and punishment isn't linked to conduct or its harm anyway, so they can just watch the kid who made an innocent SNL reference get whaled on for giggles.

So I am diversifying my communication channels. More blog entries, either here on blogger or possibly moved to a different platform at some point. Back to a stand-alone website for the training and farm businesses.

And I encourage everyone else who has got sumthin' to say to do the same. Unzuck yourself, despite the friction and some expense.


14 comments:

  1. Always happy to see a posting from you. That same reference is the only time I got in trouble, also Junior High. A friend was playing coy with showing his creative project with the group, and in frustration I said the same thing. Some snooty teacher overheard me in the hallway. Ooops!

    I'll watch if you link us to some yonder site, and follow you there.

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  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9RtVg-Wbr4

    :)

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  3. Offered fwiw...I've used Wordpress for my website for many, many years. It's there, it works, it's, imo, pretty easy to learn, support has been great the couple of times I've needed it. Basic sites are free so it's easy to take the platform for a spin and set up a site to mess with. There are a number of what they call "hosting plans" depending on what you want and need.

    The part of Wordpress that offers websites for users to build, wordpress.org is a non-profit that gets its revenue through donations and is for individuals, small businesses, organizations, etc.

    Wordpress.com is the for-profit business-oriented part that big companies and organizations use.

    Essentially, it just works, stays out of the way and will be here.

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  4. I love your writing. Glad to have you back.

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  5. A friend of mine is perpetually in FB jail for doing pretty much anything at all at this point. Seems as if once you've been suspended a time or two, chances are that anything and everything you say is run through a fine filter until a potential no-no word is detected. I'm used to her being missing at this point, she's usually in the gulag. Social media just teaches people to self-censor for the bosses.

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  6. Well cool! I'll remember to watch for posts then. I've so far avoided FB, no clue how though…..

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    1. Thats supposed to say I've so far avoided FB jail. OOops. I am on FB.

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  7. I have apparently been punished for the crime of creating a Gmail account for email only that is not the same as my Google account by being forced to re-log-in before I can comment here. The mechanics of the old Web are definitely clunkier than Zuckerworld, but the expanded freedom to say what you mean without a ticky censor putting you in timeout for saying "bitch" is worth it.

    Echoing what everyone else here said, glad to see you writing again.

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  8. I have been on a year long FB break because no fucks left, and I recently pulled everything off my blogspot because it counts as publishing and I had some submittables there. My plan is to migrate over to wordpress and do their website things so my amazingly random interests can be kept in one place. Glad to see you back here.

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  9. This makes me really stoked. I read through your whole blog archive some 5-6 years ago as I loved your writing, your perspective on dog behavior and training and storytelling. I love the idea of de-aggregating from FB - the less time I spend there, the happier I am.

    - Haley

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  10. I'm so glad you're back to blogging! I gave up Facebook several years ago for similar reasons.

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  11. Popping back here to celebrate and encourage the re-use of blogs now that I've cut the Zuckerbilical cord. Although I'm missing neither the platform nor the time wasted on mindless drama hell-bent on creating a profit for someone ELSE based on the perception of modern human interaction, it's a bit of a jolt realizing just how deep those connections run when they are no longer there.

    I yearn to return to the days of when I could scroll through a blogroll to read quality writing of a select topic that was educational, engaging and allowed a glimpse into someone's life adventures as they allowed.

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