Quit Following Me, I'm Not Going Anywhere

My computer worries about me a little. So every now and then it will pop up and say "The website you are trying to infiltrate may contain third-party pansy pox. Do you want to continue anyway?" And I guess I say "Sure, why not" enough times that now it only offers bulletins sporadically.

Didn't have a thing to say, for instance, about the thing you click on to find out what your Medieval Warlord name is, which is obviously super cool and which you can get just by typing in your mother's maiden name, your first pet, and the last eight digits of your Social Security number. (It was dumb, though. I had to put in every pet I ever had plus my anniversary before it came up with something Nordic. All hail Canute the Credulous!)

I don't really go online much. Not much more than five or ten hours a day all told, and a lot of those hours I would probably have wasted digging for earwax. So I don't know all the stuff that's out there. I am comfortable enough with Facebook. Facebook is where all the baby boomers went to find out if the guy in high school was still really cute, and then stuck around when he wasn't, because it was sort of reassuring. Also, it's a place to go if you like to see complete sentences. But the rest of the social media thingies are a mystery. I did get a Twitter account because evidently nobody will read your books if you don't have a bunch of people following your every chirp, but it was incomprehensibly boring and I ignore it. I'm trying to pretend I never joined LinkedIn because I have no interest in finding a job. I don't know what Snapchat and Instagram are and have no curiosity about them at all.

But then my computer started with new warnings. Not popup ones, either--actual emails someone took the time to write, just for me. At first the emails suggested I might be interested in something called Quora. Then it kept coming up with names of friends of mine who like Quora, and started wheedling. Wouldn't I like to join them? Not really. It's probably some social medium where you can share smeary photos of the left-most portion of your dinner, fork-side, with ironic captions containing only the initial letters of a sentence, not to exceed twelve characters.

So I ignored all these obvious attempts to grab my attention. My attention deficits are working in my favor these days.

Still came the increasingly earnest messages about the desirability of Quora, and then they started in with the warnings. "Sally Spankmeister followed you on Quora," they said. "Frank Fuddleton followed you on Quora," they said. Day after day.

But I've never been anywhere near Quora. I don't even have the passport. And note the past tense. These people are not following me on Quora: there's no opportunity to whip around and catch them at it. No. They followed me. They stalked me. Without my knowledge. Or is being on Quora like being on methadone? Maybe I have to go to Quora with a big stick and start peeking behind the hedges. But I know what would happen then:

"Welcome to Quora. Gotcha!"

A Pack Of Algorithms

Everyone knows Facebook has an algorithm. An algorithm is one of those things--like a parameter, or a paradigm--that you can easily use in a sentence without knowing what it is, as in "Facebook has an algorithm."

"Algorithm" is named after 9th-century Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, in the sense of not being named before him. (Similarly, "G-string" is named after George Washington.) So algorithms have been around a long time. We just haven't much cared.

Unfortunately, ignorance causes us to be complacent about algorithms. We assume that Facebook is a big important company with smart people and they can be trusted with an algorithm or two. They might have started with just a cute little one but it never stops there. "No problem," we think, complacently, "surely they are free-range, grass-fed algorithms, and nothing hinky is going on."

But as soon as you turn the other way and let a nice company acquire algorithms, they're going to want more and more of them. At first they're going to be on display at the company headquarters campus, right near the artificial pond with the fake waterfall and the ducks. But soon enough they're part of a secret captive breeding program and there's no way for John Q. Public to keep track of what they're up to.

And what they're up to is figuring out every little thing about you so that you're more likely to part with some cash. Originally they were just set loose to herd data. It was a pretty good life for them, running free and nipping at heels and getting a lot of data all bunched up tidy so the fleecing could proceed more efficiently.  But then they were bred to be oh hey! Those are the very slippers I was looking for, right there in the sidebar! ever smarter.

One of the things some of Facebook's algorithms have been doing is deciding what goes into your personal news feed. You might think your friends have quit putting in stuff, but it's just that an algorithm has done some sniffing around and decided you weren't all that interested, and has run your friend's post right off the page. And since you don't see it, you don't miss it. And then they'll put in stuff from people you've never heard of that they think you'll like. But lately, they've gone even further. They've sniffed out the stuff people actually do click on, and thus might be expected to miss, and thought: well now! This must be valuable stuff. Maybe someone will pay us to prioritize this little item.

And that is why I can put out bits of cheer and delightful life observations and all manner of fun on Facebook, but if I put in a link to my latest Murrmurrs post, all of a sudden it's all arf arf arf and I Don't Think So, Missy. You don't get to just promote your stuff. Not even if you're not making any money off it. You want your Murrmurrs post to show up in everyone's newsfeed, you need to grease a little Facebook palm.

I was puzzled about this at first. I'd put in my link, and then Ditty the Dancin' Fool (frequent commenter, Friend Of Pootie, and loyal sharer) would put in the same link on her page, and all my friends' comments showed up on her link. They didn't even know her, but she'd tagged me and that was enough to get it to show up for my friends. And then I heard from people who wondered why I had quit linking to Murrmurrs, even though I always do.  And some who (gad) even wondered if I'd quit writing the blog.

NO! FOR SOME REASON I NEVER QUIT WRITING THE BLOG! I AM THE POSTER CHILD OF CONSISTENCY! Sorry. Didn't mean to go all peevy.

There are ways you can fix your own Facebook news feed. You can go to the top right corner and click on News Feed Preferences and click on Prioritize Who To See First.

Or you can click on my name and click on Following and check the box that says hell yes, I want to see links from this lady. Or maybe it says "see first"--could be.

Or, like good ol' Ditty, you can link to Murrmurrs yourself and tag me. Then even God will see it. Good luck, and don't slip in the algorithm poop.

Seven Things You Wish You Didn't Know About Me

Wednesday 8:57am. Hey peeps! Love all your lists of Things You Don't Know About Me! This is fun! How's this work? I'm supposed to *like* them and then someone tags me and gives me a number right? So here's the thing. I've liked all of them and no one's given me a number yet! Or maybe it's just that you all think you already know everything about me! LOLZ!

Wednesday 10:32am. I hate hate hate when Facebook keeps changing things. So now it looks like I can see my likes but you all can't? I looked in account settings but I can't figure it out. Why can't they leave things the way they were! I wouldn't pay five bucks for Facebook even if they asked me!!! Just leave everything alone, Facebook! Am I right???? I don't know why things always have to change.

Wednesday 8:15pm. Woo Hoo! Heather gave me a Seven! Tks Heather! Seven is great. Seven is easy to get along with, fun-loving and smells like cheese. Okay here goes. Seven things you don't know about me! Don't say I didn't warn you! Okay here goes.

1. My mom and dad never praised my artwork even though everyone says I'm a highly creative person.They said it gives kids a false sense of competency that won't serve them well when they get out on their own. I never knew people put artwork on the fridge until I went on my first sleepover at Harold's.

2. I was the best at hide-and-go-seek of anybody I know. No one could ever find me.

3. One time I hid in the wardrobe in the hall and got way way back into the winter coats. I was so far back it started snowing. I never told anyone what I saw. I still haven't! You'll have to wait for that! He he!

4. I was twelve when I started doing experiments in reanimation on squirrels and toads and stuff. I got pretty close. I never quite achieved my goal but I think I know where I went wrong.

5. Like a lot of other highly creative people, I have synesthesia, where letters and numbers have colors and even personalities.

6. I'm a really easy going person but one thing that really bugs me is when people write OMG but don't put it in all caps. The G always has to be in caps. There's nothing anyone needs to do that's so important they can't take the time to put the G in caps. Am I right? No srlsy. Make an effort people.

7. My favorite number is seventeen. Seventeen is sort of barrel-chested and has a wheezy voice. Sort of like a cigarette voice. He seems kind of gruff but that's just the way he is, he's really a marshmallow inside. He he!

Thursday 8:34am. Okay everyone I put in my seven things--did you see them?

Thursday 11:53pm. Okay peeps, Facebook is making it so I can read my friends' updates but no one can see mine. I know because I put stuff in right before I go to bed and that's when they're getting in there, at night, and moving things around because they know I'm asleep and I can't defend it. Heather? Can you see this? Heather put in a comment if you can see this.

Thursday 11:55pm. How do you make someone's name light up? Like for example if I wanted to make Heather's name light up on this thing how would I do it?

Friday 8:22am. Thanks Heather you're the best! Oh hey! Now that I wrote down those Seven Things You Don't Know About Me, you all know them! I can start over! Okay here goes.

1. My mom and dad say I need to go get a job if I'm going to stay here. Even though I stay in the basement all the time so I don't have to hear the drones and I'm not in anyone's way. I'm neat and clean so it's not that.

2. I'm probably the cleanest person you know. I wash myself all the time. There's this, like, dark spot. It never quite goes away completely but I don't even want to think about what it would be like if I didn't keep scrubbing at it. That's how they get in.

3. Mom and dad moved the wardrobe in the basement and I still spend a lot of time in there. I talk with

Seventeen in the back where the winter coats are and now Nine and Twenty-Three are showing up too. Mom HATES when I talk to them but she doesn't understand they're just my friends. They're on my side.

4. My best friend when I was in eighth grade was Harold. We called ourselves the Pinky Brothers. Then one day he said his folks didn't want him coming over any more, and then he went away. They looked for him for a long time but they never found him. You probably read about it. That was my friend Harold.

5. There's something that's going to go down that's really big and a whole lot of people are going to be really sorry but I can't talk about it.

6. I'm a really easy going person but what really bothers me is when someone calls something an abstract painting when it's perfectly obvious it's a picture of a squirrel. Or a toad, or whatever.

7. I'm not going to tell you the last one yet. Watch the news tonight! He he!

Murrketing

tweet

The dickens of it is that if there were any social medium I was likely to cotton to, it would be Twitter. True, I do like to write in complete sentences, but 140 characters are about all I can manage before I lose track of my idea anyway. Quips and gags that will never accrete into a blog post trickle through my head all day long, and I can tell because they leave little stains on my brainstem. Twitter could be a good spot to unload some.

I don't even do blogging right, according to the experts. If you want to have a successful blog, meaning one that complete strangers will read without being threatened, you should put content in it once a day. Three times a week is an absolute minimum. Less than that and no one will bother to check in.

I realized right away that there were not going to be three posts a week. Two was my limit. If I put in three, two of them were likely to be half-assed, and I wanted fully-assed posts. My theory was that if I did my best job every time, people would come back and maybe tell their friends. They wouldn't say "there's nothing but crap in Murrmurrs, but at least there's a fresh load of it! Let's go take a look." At least, that wouldn't appeal to me.

I don't do Facebook right either. In order to network on Facebook, you should be friending promiscuously and herding the droves to your special page. There is a huge worldwide community of writers who are casting enormous nets to entice other writers, who are trying to sell their own books, to buy their books. "F. Scott Futzwad is friends with Marlene Snarpwit and 2,087 other people," it says on your home page. Shocked, you go to F. Scott's wall and find messages from all his new friends. "Thank you for being my friend. Please like my book," they say. It is not necessary, fortunately, to read their books in order to like them. Liking is just a matter of indicating a lack of hostility that can be accomplished in one keystroke. It's a nanobyte of good will, is all it is.

And on all of these sites, you're supposed to engage with your friends, followers, and commenters. There's supposed to be a lot of back-and-forth. And that makes sense to me. Trouble is, I've never been a very avid correspondent. I'm good for a nice solid typed letter once a year at Christmastime and my friends could go decades without hearing from me by phone. I don't have a cell phone at all and I won't get one until I've perfected the ability to vocally simulate losing a signal in a tunnel. Sometimes I get a plaintive note from a friend who hasn't heard from me in a while, and I'm genuinely surprised. Why, I smiled hard thinking of her just the other day--couldn't she feel that?

Right here in Murrmurrs, it would be easier to respond to each comment in turn if I had one of those fancy systems where you can insert yourself into the conversation at any point you want. I tried to jam one of those systems into my blog once, but my template  is old and has questionable digestion, and it ralphed the system right back up along with everything else it had eaten in the last year. The site looked barfy and it still smells a little. The alternative, as many have discovered, is to put in a comment whenever you get around to it and address the previous ten commenters by name, but who has that kind of time?

You do, dipshit. You're retired.

But that's not true. The people who can respond appropriately to all these people on the internet are those who are not yet retired. They're working for a living in front of a computer screen, and they have a legitimate company spreadsheet laid out right underneath their Facebook page which they can summon up with one click, at the squeak of a boss's shoe. I'm retired. There are entire mountains that need tromping on, and they don't have so much as cell phone coverage. That's what makes them extra beautiful.

Which means days can go by when I don't even have the ability to check on my wonderful commenters. I'm a limp networker at best, and I'm sorry for that. But, although it may not be strictly logical, I like to think I've satisfied my blogging karma by being willing to be photographed making my ass look as big as it possibly can. "No, no, bend over and really stick it out there," my neighbor Beth says, holding my camera, and I do it. I do it all for you.

I'm Networking, Baby

A year and a half ago, my neighbor Beth helped me set up my Facebook page late at night. "I'll friend you in the morning," she said, and I gratituded her for her help. The next morning, I had a message from someone I'd known since I was two, and hadn't heard from in forty years. It was extraordinary, delightful, and thoroughly spooky. I was trolling the ocean floor with a freshly wormed hook and I'd snagged a nice shiny fish, but what else was lurking in the depths?

Fortunately, due to an acute erosion of memory, I don't worry about anything for long. I reviewed my life and found it exemplary, my every human interaction at every age marked with virtue, and I rested easy. I was ready to embrace Facebook, social networking site and the world's foremost cat-video delivery system.

I wasn't alone. In late 2008 and early 2009 all the baby boomers in the world jumped onto Facebook at the same time, causing real news sources to leap off the web in order to keep everything spinning. They stormed the site like it was a free glucosamine dispensary. Saggy gray boomer mamas dreamed of old boyfriends whose last memories of them featured bandanna halter-tops in invitingly spacious overalls; they brushed up their photo-editing skills and took the leap. I did too.

Friends showed up. Real ones, ones I had missed. You lose track of friends over the years, and it was remarkable to be able to catch up all at once. For instance, it turned out a third of my old friends were now in the Mafia, which didn't surprise me, and another third were farmers, which did. By the time I had reached sixty friends, I had already traveled cross-country to meet long-lost high school pals. I was delighted with my collection.

Then new friend-requests started popping up. Who is this person? Why does he want to be my friend? My friend collection grew in accretions, certain key components barnacling up. I had an island of show-business people, an outcrop of writer types, and a whole reef of birders. The birder reef developed side protrusions of insect experts and one dinosaur guy. Eventually I met some of my virtual friends, and then my Facebook page settled out into people I actually know, people who know people I actually know, people who don't actually know people I don't actually know, and people who I don't know who the hell they are. And one French guy who probably mistook me for a cheese.

Sometimes I see a clever comment on my page, and I'll think: how do I not know this person? Is this one an actor, a writer, or a birder? One day I got an email from someone I knew I'd never heard of. She was sorry to inform me that a mutual friend had passed away, and that there would be a celebration of life I was welcome to attend. I looked him up, found him indeed among my friends, and mourned. He was so young, so handsome in his profile pic. What a loss it was, and I had only not known him for such a short time.

Baby boomers are particularly fond of Facebook because it helps us keep our focus. Now, instead of the scattered thoughts like "I should send money to Haiti" or "where did I put my coffee cup" or "when did that crap replace real music," we are focused like a laser on "I wonder if anyone put anything interesting on Facebook in the last fifteen minutes." It settles the mind.

That's one benefit. But I also now have ready access to people who can answer all my most vexing questions. What can their skeletal morphology tell us about the relationship of velociraptors to ostriches? Or, What is that thing crawling up my leg? You'd be surprised how often those questions come up.

How Do You Like Them Apples? Part Two

You will recall from a previous post that my Dell computer with Windows Vista has been hit by a comet and all my data are either cowering inside or have become glassified. Only a professional will be able to tell. Meanwhile, I have some decisions to make.

I posed the Mac vs. PC dilemma on my Facebook page and was soon mobbed by Mac evangelists. They were so effusive and seductive that I felt I could fling myself onto them and crowd-surf all the way to the Apple store. Then a few of my most trusted friends dared to challenge the dogma. "It's your antivirus software that causes most of the problems," one said. "I haven't used it on my PC for years." This may be true, but this is from a man who can see trouble coming and whack it off at the knees. Some of the sites we've been known to visit could give us a virus, never mind the computer. Glory hole? Sounds uplifting. Camel toes? Cute! Must see!

This friend loves to tinker about with this and that on a computer, and I'm happy for him. But everything I try to do in the way of maintenance or trouble-shooting feels like a battery of IQ tests, each one presenting new evidence of personal dunderheadedness. I don't need this aggravation. I held onto my SAT scores for decades to defend myself against those who would cast nasturtiums on my intelligence, until I finally realized that anyone looking at those scores today would invariably blurt out, "Good lord, woman, what happened to you?" And I would reply, as I often must: I have no idea.

Same man enjoys manually updating his PC, but I emphatically do not. My PC is a total bitch about updates. I slap the reminders off the screen ("Poo," I say) until they begin forming a posse on my taskbar, and then, resigned, I go to the site for my update. That's when the trouble begins. There is no "update." There is an entire menu of updates, and service packs, and patches, and it wants me to choose which ones to download. And that is what I'll do, just as soon as I get off the phone with NASA about their Hubble parameters.

It's worse than Jiffy Lube. You pull in there, and there's just a whirlwind of activity, with scrubbed mechanics barking efficiently at each other from all around and underneath your car. Ultimately someone comes forth with a list of things he thinks you should do. "Your drabnitz lining is getting a little worn [here he's holding out a damp carcass of some kind for my examination], and we can replace that for $19.95. We've tightened up your splagnuts but you could use a new furtle filter, $24.95. It's about time to top up your humours and rotate your radio buttons, and we're showing you're overdue for your ten-point farkling system inspection." This goes on for a while.

I always bend over the list, furrow my brow and tilt my head in an imitation of intelligence, and then pick out two or three of the suggestions completely at random. Just on principle, I'm not going for the full boat. If my furtle filter strands me on a dark country road, so be it. I do not have a clue.

Same scenario at the Microsoft site. Confronted with a plague of packs, patches and updates, I hurl mental darts at the screen and elect to download this or that. But we're not done. It wants to know where I want my download to go. I know where I'd like it to go--wherethesundontshine.exe--but that's never an option. So I click on their default setting, and that's the last I'll see of that download. If I ever stumble upon its location, it will be sitting back with its feet up smoking cigars with Dick Cheney.

I admire people like my friends who navigate serenely about the innards of their computers. And some day, assuming there is such a thing as reincarnation, I will be that person. For now, though, I am cleaning off my desk for the arrival of a new iMac. It's sleek, it's slim, it's fully automatic, it doesn't need the protective undercoating, and it comes with everything but heated seats. And Windows.

Update.

It's here. It's got a screen the size of a pillowcase, and the Mac boys dug into my old PC with a forceps and vise grips and pried out all my files. It's fast, it's quiet, it's limber, it took a picture of me and my cat Tater just for fun, and I'm thinking about letting it do my laundry. Also, my seat is heating up.

Sarah Palin Thinks A Think

I'm thrilled to report that, for once, I am in complete agreement with something Sarah Palin has to say. The statement in question is located on her Facebook page. Scroll down past "What Children's Book Are You?" (Dr. Seuss: Oh, The Thinks You Can Think!) and the status report "...requests help with the Move Stolen Furniture job in Mafia Wars." And there it is:

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

Right on, sister mama! That doesn't happen in the America I know and love, either. But let's not stop there. Contrary to what you may have heard, or may yet hear:

The America I know and love is not one in which elderly Pomeranians are sent away to be recycled into insulation batting for poor households.

The America I know and love does not levy taxes on houses of worship until they agree to open up a needle-exchange program in the basement.

The America I know and love does not submit overweight toddlers to be diced into nuggets and sent to aid groups in Somalia.

The America I know and love does not require that debutantes that are not immediately snapped up be taken directly from Cotillion and funneled into arranged marriages with large, unattractive members of the same sex.

The America I know and love does not force its citizens to drive their babysitters to the abortion clinic in tiny, underpowered cars.

The America I know and love does not confiscate its citizens' leaf blowers and insist that they eat their yard debris with a side of sprouts and a dollop of Newman's Own.

The America I know and love does not require that its public servants pass any tests of general education, civics or integrity.

The America I know and love is not engaged in research into the grafting of wings onto monkeys, although it may have secretly delivered monkeys to wing-graft studies in Jordan or Syria. Political figures in the America I know and love do not associate closely with flying butt-monkeys. Monkeys cannot fly and fling poo at the same time.

The America I know and love is a serious place with serious business to accomplish, and its public figures do not waste time leaping out of doors at the American public and yelling "boogity boogity boogity."

Oh wait a minute, scratch that last one.