Railing at Social Media and the Fools Therein!

What's really fun is that the fool in this instance would be me.  Everybody gets a bit tired and cranky sometimes, and boredom is a factor too.  So, when I spotted a picture my buddy on Google Plus posted mocking Republicans and mentioning pigeons crapping on a chessboard, I figured I'd have a bit of fun.  So I played the "I'm a republican, why are you picking on me card" and feigned some mock indignation.  Allen fell for it.  He's a nice guy, and sure we don't agree on some thing politically, but he's a straight shooter.  I was going to let him know I was just screwing around, but then he got his rant on.

Internet/social media propoganda 101
Reality check people: -- IF I (or anyone for that matter) posts a graphic attacking: Atheists, Christians, Democrats, Republicans, Nerds, Jocks, Redheads, Long Hair's, Blondes, Jazz Freaks, Music haters... etc....... there is a 99% chance the post is EITHER simply meant as humor and/or intended as propaganda against the extreme elements of whatever group is being mentioned..... If you see such a graphic and believe that it is specifically targeting you? --- Think twice, chances are, you're wrong (unless of course you ARE a backwards ignorant trolling bigot who deserves to be called out---- but really, assuming I have you in one of my circles--- you really think I would have left you there if I actually felt that way?--- jeebus, grow up people

Now this brings up a really excellent point.  We get bombarded by information on the internet.  Ideas are flying about.  If you're going to go on a social media site, you have to have a thick enough skin to be ready to deal with what other people post. They may say things you don't agree with.  They may post something they think is funny that offends you.  The main thing is: most likely they are not posting it to particularly offend you.


Now, there's another side of this coin.  When you're posting something about a group of people, you have to remember that you're posting about a group of people.  I'll make fun of our Pop Star-in-Chief or his walking gaffe machine VP, but I'm a bit hesitant to go after Democrats as a whole.  I have friends and family members who are Democrats.  My aunt is a Democrat, and I love my aunt to pieces.  So I don't want to post anything that'll upset her if she happens to see it.  So if you're posting something about a group of folks, you need to be prepared for possible fallout if someone you know and like doesn't like what you may have insinuated about them.


So, my bit of trolling of Allen yielded some pretty cool results.  Unfortunately, someone else decided to chime in.  We'll call him "Jay", mainly because that's his name.  On Google Plus is you scroll over someone's name you can see a little pop up giving you a couple of bullet points about them like location and occupation.  Jay's bullet point said he was a "thinker" and I should have backed away right there.


Unless you're one of the shambling dead craving brains, you are a thinker.  Don't put that in you occupation unless possibly you work in one of them there think tanks, which I always been curious about.  And don't put "free thinker" in there either.  That translated directly to "kook".


But I made the mistake of poking fun at the Thinker, and that always brings out a rant.  Its never a good rant either.  You're always kind of hoping for some Dennis Miller quality rant that just rails on with insightful, poignant things and is so amazingly clever that even though they're dumping all over you, you've got to give them props for freaking amazing their rant is.  Nope.  Its always them trying to show that their intellectual shlong is bigger than yours or anybody else who happens to read it, and even if its loaded with perfectly poignant facts as to the topic at hand, its so frakking boring that you have to fight the urge to just respond "tl;dr".


So, don't ever troll a "Thinker".  Its never worth it.  Just no fun at all.  I did try to get the guy to lighten up and make it obvious that I was indeed just screwing around, but Thinkers think serious think-stuffs, and have no time on this here intarwubs for shenanigans.  So I got blocked, which is a shame, because as everyone knows: I'm a complete delight to be around.  I dunno.  He might have just been having a bad day.


So, what did we learn today?


1: Allen Marshall makes an excellent point that needs consideration.


2: Forethought before posting probably needs to happen more.


3: Being a "Thinker" can be mistaken for being a knob, so we gotta be careful of that.

E-tardation

Whiskey day again. Its Wednesday, January 20, 2011, I'm still not sure how I got this far in the week, and this is The Side. Pretty much everything is a blur at this point. I'm not sure when I acquired the mental capacity of a tazered deer, but here we are. I've been working out, because I'm old and trying not to look it. Work has been weird. So I've hit one of those times when my days start running together.

I need jarring out of this. That's where you people come in.

Next Wednesday will be "Ask Nozz Day" where I'll be answering any questions I receive this week. So leave me a comment with whatever you want me to weigh in on and I'll try my best to give you a coherent answer.

TEH UNTERNET!!

Computers just weird me out sometimes. Probably because I can't use them worth a damn. I changed the template on here because the old one kept cropping the videos I'd put up and I could make it stop. My pal Joe suggested I look at the coding to see if there was a conflict between the HTML of the Youtube videos and the CSS coding used by the templates, which sounded like it would work great, much better than my cunning ploy of yelling "STOP CROPPING THE VIDEOS" at the monitor. The sad thing is I know its not the monitor's fault, and I feel bad for yelling at the monitor, but that's what's right in front of me so something's got to get yelled at. That and I would know conflicting code if Mike from Alpha Geek came over, found the code, showed it to me and said "that's the conflicting code".

But really it is all about code on here. All the fancy interfacing in the world means nothing if you don't have have proper coding. My Playstation controller doesn't change, but different games handle differently even with the exact same controller.

And this brings me to the latest storyline in RED ROBIN. The concept of the Unternet is that its an internet for eeeeevil people. But we see that its more like the new DC Universe Online game but it makes you eeeeeeviler. At least that's the theory as we don't know if the new DC game will actually make you eeeeevil and if it does, does it make you eeeeeviler than the Unternet. But interfacing this thing in the comic is kooky. People using it seem to fall into some sort of trance while they are in there. This brings us back to the Tron frame of thought that people can somehow enter a computer based world physically and/or mentally. Kinda irks me that we've come so far with computers since the original Tron movie came out, but this notion persists.

I'm looking at how things are set up now with social media. Someone can post something on Tumblr, which automatically reposts on Twitter, which automatically reposts on Google Buzz. That's just the tip of things. One post can infect multiple social media outlets and all the followers on each individual one could see it. And these posts swirl around the e-ether until they finally land on someone's Facebook page with is the final resting spot ultimately for all such things. This is due to Darkseid being defeated by Batman and Superman and in FINAL CRISIS and falling backwards in time again to Harvard university in which he lands in Mark Zuckerberg, which you can actually see in the deleted scenes of that "The Social Network" movie, but only on the DVD/Blu-Ray 3D combo pack after you access the downloadable content from online. Don't worry, it only sounds like the Anti-Life Equation.

MUSIC!!

Something a bit different as the song isn't really my style. Its "Don't" by Jesse Rubin which is a nice enough song. However the video is Allison Holker and Jakob Karr, and they are improving this entire thing. Behold, I give you art.



Alright, that's a wrap for today. As you can also see I changed the template for the blog. Let know what you think as well as sound off on your questions for "Ask Nozz Day".

Target is Expendable in Mexico

Read, set, GO! It's Sunday, August 15, 2010. I'd beware the ides of August, but all it means is the month is half done and September is around the corner.

Here's hoping Summer leave quickly.

I do reserve the right to ask for it to come back when I'm freezing my butt off this winter.

MOVIE: THE EXPENDABLES

I, like many other action movie fans, have been looking forward to this since early trailers first hit the web and word spread. I grew up watching Arnie, and Sly and the rest on screen. I'm old enough to remember asking "The Guy from 'Moonlighting' is making an action flick?" My dad would take my brother and me to see a lot of these flicks, so it was pretty fitting that the three of us along with my uncle went.



The big question is: in the age of Avatar and Inception can a movie like this still hold its own and be entertaining? I've grown up a lot since the big action movie heyday. Story is important. I like cool twists to things. I enjoy particularly nuanced performances. I have a hard time switching my brain off to just go with things. So could I enjoy a movie that's a subtle as a fix to the jaw?

Oh hell yes.

Stuff blowing up. Insane fight scenes. Car chases. Bad jokes. Guns that can level buildings. Gimme gimme gimme! I've scene action movies degernerate. I've seen actors with velcro'd on muscles. I've scene fight scenes in live action flicks that were done entirely in CGI. I think its about damn time someone came out of the old school and showed folks how to do it up again.

Onto the movie itself. Its very straight forward. A team of mercenaries get a job to take down a nasty dictatorship. After learning more about the mission they realize the entire job stinks to high heaven. However, the team's leader can't walk away from it after meeting their contact in the island country would is fighting for her people. They're heading back in to kick serious ass. They've also got to deal with one of their own team having gone over to the other side. You can pretty much pick all that up from the trailers, which I like because its keeping things simple and not trying to dress this movie up as something it is not.

As for the cast, when the least intimidating looking guy in the movie is Jet Li you know something insane is going to happen. The movie stays centered around Stallone and Statham, which is fine. Stallone may only be a year away from getting a Social Security check but he can still deliver. He sells the punches just like he always has. Statham is one of the younger guys in the cast. For those who just know him as Turkish from SNATCH you may not know that this guy is a physical beast with a ton of martial arts training. You don't really get a chance to know the rest of the cast that well, but that doesn't really matter as their actions speak for them. An interesting turn was Randy Couture as Toll Road. He was funny for his character not intending to be funny. He had some of the weirdest lines as a mercenary who regularly visits a shrink. Mickey Rourke turned in the only dramatic role in the film with a monologue about the death of his soul which was pretty much the only slow part in the film. It wasn't a bad bit, but it was kind of the cue to the audience to refill their popcorn and/or go empty their bladders.

This movie was all about action, and that's what it delivered. Stallone threw big punches. Li and Statham took guys apart. Couture threw grown men around like it was nothing. All of them unloaded a ridiculous amount of ammunition. We got to see Couture take on Steve Austin in a pro-wrestle versus MMA guy fight. Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren beat the snot out of each other. The only CGI that was worked in was the blood splatters, which has taken the places of the old squibs the FX guys used to use, but it worked just fine. The quick cut method of editing fight scenes to give the feeling of the chaos that goes on in a fight (see the Jason Borne movies) was dropped. We wanted to see the moves and we got to see the moves.

The only thing I wanted to see and didn't was an extended fight scene between Li and Gary Daniels. Daniels is a guy who is not a huge name to the mainstream movie watcher, but those of us who watched a lot a "B" martial arts flicks, we know him well. This guy has some serious moves and seeing him and Li going for it would have been a real treat. They did mix it up a bit, but that was the only thing that left me wanting more.



Stallone delivered as an actor, a director, and a writer on this. He won't be getting any Oscar nominations for it, but no one is going to care. This flick was a treat.

BATTLEGROUND: TARGET!!

Liberal groups are boycotting Target due to the company giving a campaign contribution to a candidate that opposes gay marriage. Because this obviously means that Target hates the gays. This couldn't have anything at all to do with the candidates positions on taxes or his attitudes about business. Nope, it must mean that Target hates gays, so its time to protest.

I'm all for people voting with their wallets. If they don't like certain businesses then they shouldn't patronize them. So, if people are upset with Target for backing a particular candidate for public office to the point that they feel they cannot support Target with their business any longer then that's fine. I fully understand.

But this is a really stupid reason.

Let's be sane for a second. Target does not hate gays. They are a very large company. If they donated money to a candidate then the reasons were obviously business related. The protesters are demanding that target make a contribution to an opposing candidate who support gay marriage. That's idiotic. Target absolutely should not make a campaign contribution to any candidate they they don't want to. Especially over an issue that has nothing to do with their business.

Unfortunately the groups involved in the protest are also extremely self involved. Despite there efforts at social justice they fail to realize that not everything in the world is affected by their pet cause du jour. They can't grasp that Target's donation could possibly have nothing to do with the issue of gay marriage. They're not stupid, but they have their blinders on.

So I'm going to Target, and I'm planning on having an abtholutely thuper time.

LAST OF THE OUTLAW JOURNALISTS

There's a guy down in Mexico with a blog covering the narcotics trade and the cartel fights. He's got a ton of cover on him so no one knows who he really is, but people send him information and he posts it. A lot of it is disturbing, but its the truth. Mexico is so messed up right now. Its no wonder so many people are running across the border to America illegally. Word doesn't get out about this from Mexico's media because if its reported on them there's a damn good chance the the reporter could end up dead.

But one guy on the internet is getting the word out. He takes every bit of info he can find or people send him and he posts it. Some of it comes from citizens. Some even comes from the cartels. Some of it is very disturbing stuff, so I'm not recommending going on over there to have a look around. But what's important is that he's getting the truth out.

People have used the blog to find out what streets to not go down. Its provided some tips to law enforcement. Its doing its job as media to inform. Still, it has its critics. Some clown from the Committee to Protect Journalists out of New York said he's not doing the blog from a "journalistic perspective" and without "ethical considerations". Obviously that douchebag is interested in protecting journalists from people doing their job for them. New York isn't Mexico City. They typically don't kidnap you for writing articles in New York.

One guy with a blog getting the truth out from under a media blackout. If that's not an argument for net neutrality I don't know what it.

Viva el Blog del Narco.

MUSIC!!

Back in the day, the X would broadcast out of Mexico without having to deal with federal restrictions. Wolfman Jack in Mexico with a gun because it was rough down there back then too, and his voice on a signal that on a clear day would make it all the way to Virginia.



That's a wrap people. See y'all Wednesday.

When audiences attack!

Bouncing around YouTube I came across this. What that is is an effort to burst into the scene riding an e-wave of popularity. A band makes a song which they want to have included in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim versus The World movie. They uploaded the video with the song to YouTube in march at which point the movie was pretty much done by then, so they haven't got a prayer. I'm not going to say much about the song. Its about Scott Pilgrim. I don't care about Scott Pilgrim. The song isn't good enough to make me care about it despite being about Scott Pilgrim. So, onward.

There's two sides to entertainment: producers and audience. The people who make the things that are for our entertainment create content (music, movies, television, video games, etc.) for money or art or whatever and throw it to the masses. The masses being of course, the audience. So the audience will either ignore it, not like it, or like it. In the cases of the first two, the people making the content usually go back to the drawing board. Or they quit and go home crying. Or they keep doing what they are doing thinking that they are right and everyone else in the world is stupid and will eventually realize the brilliance of the work. Hello Joplin. But if its the latter then the work continues, word spreads and its a success. Success can be in the form of money, fame, or even just mass approval.

So, something comes out, like say a comic about a guy with no super powers in a world where everyone has a super power (;D), and this thing begins to build an audience because it manages not to suck. People tell their friends. They'll mention it online. Sales continue. Popularity grows. And it hits a certain level where it masses out in coolness. It trumps COUNTDOWN but doesn't quite hit that coolness rating of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER. No problem. Said project is followed up, and maybe it does as well. Maybe it does better. Maybe it tanks.

But what happens when word spreads that there will be a follow up? What happens when fans of the first story get up the gumption to start one of those internet petitions? What if thousand of people on Twitter demand that some character is killed off? What happens if a Facebook group with thousands of people demands that the character gets brought back from the dead? What if some nut blogger writes that the character that died and came back should TOTALLY hook up with this other character to help her deal with her cheese fixation? WHAT IF THAT BLOG GETS FEATURED ON YAHOO AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE COMMENT DEMANDING A THREESOME WITH THE NOW NOT DEAD PERSON, THE GIRL, AND A WEDGE OF CHEESE?!

You see the problem?

Its totally the cheese.

And this phenomenon is popping up more and more. Black Spidey anyone? And we've seen what happens when an audience starts grabbing for creative control of a movie. You get SNAKES ON A PLANE.

But audiences should be listened to. Feedback is important. Otherwise you'll just be doing your thing and beating your head against the wall wondering why you're not selling. Criticism is a good thing, and people not caring about your work is indeed a form of criticism. However, an audience caring a little too much and trying to change your work is going a bit too far. That's why there's things like fan-fiction. You can't have too many chefs in one kitchen. If you're the one making the content, you are the head chef. And if people aren't coming to your restaurant, you call Gordon Ramsey. You call that person you'll look at what you are doing and knows enough about thing to get you on the right path. But you can't go and do everything every last customer thinks of.

That'll leave you with no business.

And that'll leave the audience with a big ol' wedge of cheese.

Driving is so last millennium

I'm hearing more and more about teenagers being urged by their parents to go get their drivers license. No this is not going to turn into yet another of Uncle Nozz's "when I was there age blah blah blah". I got my license when I was 17. Little late, but my father wasn't the most enjoyable driving teacher to have so I waited until he was out of the country with his reserve unit and handled it. The reasoning behind teenagers now not wanting to go get their driver's license is that they aren't seeing the need for it.

And really they do have a bit of a point. Gas prices are more then triple what they were when I was teenager. $8 would have me set for a week. So, it is a lot more expensive. But lets look at why a teenager would want their drivers license: independence, getting a job, and going to hang out with their friends.

The independence issue pretty much a mainstay. Either you get your license, depend of others to get you where you need to go, or hope your area has an excellent mass transit system. This used to baffle me about some people in big cities like new York who never learned to drive. Once I considered how traffic can be in those cities and you can get nearly everything you need in walking distance or by taking mass transit you don't really need it. Besides which, after driving in Montreal I don't even want to think about learning to drive there. That's just scary. I wouldn't want my kids driving there. You want to know why Georges St. Pierre has such fast kicks? From dodging traffic, that's how.

As for the kids working and needing to be able to drive to get to work. Well, again if you're in a big city its not much of an issue. If you're not you're probably going to need that license to get a job, because you can only sponge off the folks for so long.

The hanging with the friends thing is interesting to me. I've noticed a marked decrease in mallrats nowadays. If teenagers are there its to buy what they need. I did notice that teenagers in malls are troublesome where my dad lives in West Virginia. Mall security has problems with kids hanging out there and causing trouble, kinda like I'd hear about kids doing here when I was a teenager. Why that area of West Virginia? Hard to say, but I do know that my Dad can't get decent internet up there.

Teenagers don't need their licenses to see their friends because there's their picture right there on Facebook or Twitter. Texting has replaced long phone calls and it seems the internet has replaced actually hanging out. Why set up a place to meet and spend the money on gas when you can just log in? It really is a lot more practical.

Practical sometimes doesn't equal healthy. I'm not going to knock a kid for not wanting to spend money on gas when they can use tech to contact people and chat with them. Still, driving is a good skill to have. That and getting out from in front of the computer, after you read my blog of course because its important that you read everything I type, and getting some face time with people is a good thing.

So it seems driving isn't as much of a necessity to teenagers now. Probably a good thing because the roads are a little safer.

Yes I had to get a jab at teen drivers in there somewhere.

Mister Popularity

Geez, another YouTube subscriber. I HAVE NO VIDEOS! This is obviously an attempt for the goof in question to boost his subscriber count. And for extra irony the video I saw when I looked at his profile curious to see what kind of dope would do this was all "Did you know that Google makes money every time you search for something...."

Hey, Mister Smart-butt, did you know that subscribing to me on YouTube when I have no videos and a message on my profile stating my intention not to post any videos will prompt me to mock you in places where I actually post?

Still feeling clever?

Social media is not a numbers game, its a content game. If I have 1000 friends/followers/disciples/whatever yet I'm not producing any worthwhile content then I'm wasting people's time. And the people who fall for it are just as bad as the perpetrators. What good is having 500 Facebook "friends" if you don't care about what they say? Now, if you're promoting something, like a company or product, that's a different story. Its straight up advertising. For me what I advertise is the content I generate, and the way I network is slower, but more fulfilling to me. I generate content and people either stumble upon it, or i stumble upon them and comment about their content. If they like what I have to say about their work then they may check out mine. Now, I haven't looked through a lot of people's work lately and the amount of people I do follow is modest, but my time online, despite some people's opinions, is limited.

I do not have 1000s of followers, but the ones I do have mostly sought me out and have stayed around hopefully because they like my work. And most of them have interesting content of their own.

Hm. A place where interesting things are said and new, fresh ideas are shared to people from varying backgrounds?

Nah. That'll never work. This is the internet after all.

Bring on the lolcats and pr0n.

"r u a raper?"

We hear a lot that the kids nowadays are a lot more computer savvy and more equipped to handle life in the internet age. I actually just saw an AT&T ad saying that people who have the internet are somehow made smarter. This makes me wonder if the people who have made these claims have spent any time at all online.

Having information accessible to you does not make you smarter. If you sit in a library all day long and play Rock Band on your cell phone, you will not become smarter. If anything the internet just makes it easier to appear smarted. Nothing like a little cut and paste from Wikipedia onto a forum to make you seem intelligent, right?

Which brings us right to what's got me annoyed. Kids on social networking platforms. There are forums that are designed specifically for kids. Facebook is not one of them. In fact its quite amusing to see kids trying to be cool online only to have their parents "friend" them thus utterly destroying their reason for being on that site.

But I've been away from Facebook for a quite while, so what has me annoyed? Google Buzz it seems has had growth in the number of kids using it. Buzz is handy because to can feed in things like this blog, twitter or other sites into one easy to follow bundle. People can follow you for your content and of course you can follow other people. You can also post things independently on there, like Twitter, but without the character limit. So with people able to feed in things like articles, artwork and the like into Buzz its a handy tool for growing a fanbase and getting your work out there.

Now, there's two ways of going about this. First is leaving comments on people's posts that are interesting and maybe they'll decide to follow you. That's my method and I'm just shy of 100 followers. The other method is to follow as many people as you can. When someone new follows you, you get a message and the option to follow them back. So, if you follow 2000 people and half of them follow you back... well, you get the idea.

Well, the problem with mass following people is that you don't really know what you're in for. So when someone who was networking out her movie reviews site over Buzz started following me and I followed her I stumbled upon something truly stupid: kids freaking out, wondering who this person is following them. "Who r u? Y r u following me? Stop following me? R u a raper?"

Now, here's why it's stupid:

First: if you are followed on Buzz, you can follow them back, meaning you can see each others posts, not follow them so they can see your posts but you don't have to see theirs, or you can just block them and they can't see your stuff. Its not hard the stop someone from following you.

Second: Odds are these kids actually followed the person back to leave the comments.

Third: Google profiles are easily accessible through Buzz, so wondering who a person is is pretty pointless when the answer is a click away.

For a demographic that's supposed to be internet savvy, they aren't showing it. In fact, I'm really starting to give credit to the people lobbying for better means of protection for kids online. Ultimately, its about being smart, which these kids aren't. If someone follows you and or friends you that you don't know and can find information about, or just seems sketchy, almost every social networking site has easy means to block those people. The first thing I do when I get a new follower on Buzz is check their Buzz Roll, and then probably they're profiles. I have not had an instance yet where I felt I needed to block someone on there, but I've done it on other sites. So far on Buzz my only decision was whether or not to follow them back.

For parents, if your kid is on a social networking site, then you need to be on there as well. Yeah, giving children their own space is all well and good, but that's why they have a bedroom. If parents don't start monitoring what their children are doing, then Big brother will eventually do it for them, and that's just one big load of bad. "We're doing it for the children." will be the battle cry and then the internet gets boiled and homogenized.

And if that happens I'm blaming every parent who was too busy and/or stupid to know that their 10 year old was sending dirty pictures out on the internet.

Sometime you get that reminder that kids are still kids. And most kids ain't that bright.