Facebook: From Ghost Ask to De-Friending

I’ve been having this conversation for a while amongst my real life friends and after reading Schmidlap’s post today I figured there wasn’t a better time to finally get it out of my head and into the world.

I joined Facebook sometime in the Spring semester of my senior year of college as a way to keep in touch with the small handful of folks that I had met and had an actual, genuine interest in keeping in touch with. My friend list for the first 6 months probably never got higher than 15 and that was fine by me.

Fast forward to today. It hasn’t grown that much but I am up to 90 “close and personal” Facebook friends. That first group that I joined for? Yeah, barely even talk to them anymore, just a random comment here and there, but as each season passes even that gets less and less. And with this growing group and growing usage amongst a population not originally intended (a year or so back FB changed their rules that you could use any old email to start up an account, previously you had to have a high school or college email) has come the ghost ask.

The ghost ask is when you receive (or send) that friend request out to an old classmate, coworker, guy who rode the same bus as you 20 years ago. It comes with no personalized message, no reminder of who the hell they are. To make a ghost ask complete however is once accepted all conversation ceases. Not a word is said, not a comment made, not a hey how ya doin? Nothing.

Where does this come from? Is it our need to expand our superficial ranking in an imaginary world? Do we think that maybe we might actually want to talk with this person but when confronted with the option realize we have nothing to say? Do we want to show where we are, what we’ve done, accomplishments, hot new tattoos all without having to actually interact or attend some dreadful reunion where these things used to take place? I’ll admit, I’ve done it. I’ve sent out requests because I saw that we had 3…4…7 friends in common and that’s it. I hadn’t thought of this person in 15 years until my handy “People You May Know” sidebar suggested them. Some days I wonder how many of the 90 people listed are actually my friends.

On another Facebook related rant, and the actual reason I began writing this, another phenomenon has recently caught my attention. People are “de-friending” each other over status updates. Yup, that’s right, status updates. It’s the one line statement we update constantly to tell our imaginary online world what we are doing or thinking or throwing things at. Some are more witty than others, but it is a nice easy way to keep your fingers on the pulse of your network. I personally like to post music lyrics every once in awhile and see which of my friends make a comment or finish the line.

It’s also a quick and easy way to find out that many of your ghost ask friends have very, very different views from you. And in these heated and trying times, when lines are being drawn and fences built around political beliefs, we as a nation are standing up and silently de-friending those we don’t agree with. It’s almost comical. I’ve almost done it. It is only the grossly unattractive addiction of seeing what ridiculous thing they could possibly come up with that has kept me from hitting the “x” on our cyber friendship.

The only saving grace is that for the majority of these folks I will never actually interact with them (save for one unfortunate family member).

Apple Marketing team should get an award

I'm cheating with today's post. I started blogging again in MySpace figuring it would give me another space to express a different tone and today I'm just cutting and pasting the same damn thing over to JJ's World. I know it's lame and I'm sorry. I promise to be more original in the future. But for now, here it is...

So I have a confession to make. I am a sucker for an Apple commercial. Specifically the ones with music. These are usually the ones for one of the many i-pod like gadgets they keep trying to convince me I need. And while I haven't yet succumbed to their advertising and purchased a new player (though I really wanted the Touch for awhile) I have downloaded 5 of the damn songs. I've even created a playlist on my iPod so I can find them whenever I want.

So far it consists of One, Two, Three Four by Feist; Music is my Hot Hot Sex by CSS; New Soul by Yael Naim; and Shut up and Let Me Go by The Ting Tings. And last night the list became five when I downloaded Bruises by Chairlift.

Really the folks in their marketing department should get a medal.

What are you doing this weekend?

A few awesome looking things happening in Chicago that I wanted to share in case anyone is looking for something to do. First up on Saturday, dust off your inner geek and come check out the first annual Windy City Comicon, come on, you know you want to! Okay, maybe you don't want to, but I do and it would help if I had some company :)

If that's not your style then on Sunday how about clearing off some of those overburdened book shelves and dropping them off at the Great American Book Drive! (and on the 29th there seems to be a book swap...hmmm.....). It's a good cause, and you might get to run into one of my favorite bloggers who is the one that first shared the event with me.

Personally, I'm going to try and do both (since this week is a bye week for the Bears and all...oh dear god did I just say that!). Though I also have 2 a.m. plans possibly on Saturday night so we'll see how it all goes.

Whatever you do I hope you do it well.

Just a quick green thought

I'm so busy at work I think my head might explode (though that might have something to do with the hangover I'm fighting through today) but I read an article by Thomas L. Friedman out of the Times that I wanted to share a section of. I thought this paragraph was great and would love to see it happen come next January. Read the whole article here.

Lastly, we need the next president to be an energy efficiency trendsetter,
starting by reinventing the inaugural parade. Get rid of the black stretch limos
and double-plated armored Chevy Tahoes inching down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Instead, let the next president announce that he will use no vehicles on
inauguration day that get less than 30 miles per gallon. He could invite all car
companies to participate in the historic drive with their best available
American-made, fuel-efficient, innovative vehicle.

Customer Service

Two posts in one day! This is what happens when you have a busy weekend I guess. This post revolves around the sometimes elusive concept of customer service. Is there such a thing as too much, and at what point do you say this place sucks? A friend and I have had similar experiences recently which prompted this writing and which I will share with you now.

Great customer service is usually pretty easy to recognize. It's the person that calls you back after an order to make sure it was installed/delivered/set up correctly. It's the person that goes the extra step to find your product (and maybe have it sent over) instead of saying that since it's not physically in their store there is nothing they can do. The cashiers that remember your name, the barista's that know my coffee order so at 7 a.m. I just have to nod. These are the folks that make the term customer service a reality.

Crappy customer service is equally easy to spot. The nameless, faceless voice on the other end of the phone who puts you on hold for 10 minutes only to say, sorry the office you need closed 5 minutes ago, please call them tomorrow. The cashier's who congregate together gossiping while lines form and then never makes eye contact and screws up your order because they are too busy texting/talking/finding lost braincells. The bar tender who ignores you all night long, before you have even had a chance to tip the first round or make any kind of contact.

We have all experienced the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to the customer service world. Where it all begins to get sticky however is in the middle zone. This is the place that you frequent because it's off the beaten path, or it's the non-corporate coffee shop in a sea of Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks. Maybe you like to support small businesses, or maybe they make the best philly cheese steak this side of the Schuylkill River. It's the place where you save your pennies each week so you can tip big when you're there. Whatever it is, whatever they sell, it's a place that you have marked as your own - so what do you do when the service starts to go downhill?

It starts small - you order a coffee and a bagel, chatting aimlessly with the guy behind the counter about the weekend and then step to the side to wait....and wait....and wait. Seems during the chatting the bagel order has slipped through some crack either physical or mental, lost either way. They see you still standing, realize their mistake and are really sorry. They quickly make it, offering many apologies and how about a cup of coffee to go with it? Well, the coffee was the one thing they already got you, so no that doesn't really do you any good. You wave off the apologies, insist it's no big deal, and move on with your day. Because it really is not a big deal in the scheme of life. It's a delayed bagel, not a lost job, not a missile aimed at your home, a bagel. And deep inside you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, you want to be one of the insiders that thinks "Hey I know these guys, they know me, it's all good", but is it?

What happens when your order starts to get forgotten on a semi regular basis? When you get it to go only to realize 45 minutes later (and already at your desk at work) that your cinnamon raisin bagel smells suspiciously like blueberries? Or when your bartender takes your presence for granted, because hell you're always there so you must not mind, and lets you sit for 15-20 minutes fiddling with an empty beer bottle while they chat away the evening with the cook, or another customer, or texting on their cell phone (Really? My cash is not better than a text message?).

The last thing you want to do is be "That Customer". The one they bitch about when they see you through the glass. You want to empathize and sympathize and all the other izes you can think of. You want to be a part of the working machine, part of the inner circle. Maybe you've worked this kind of job, or something similar, you know how much of a prick most folks can be, and hell you have even vowed to never be like that.

But at some point it happens. At some point the voice inside your head says "Yup, this job probably pays crap. And the hours undoubtedly are no fun. But in the end it is your job to give me coffee/beer/product of any kind and right now you suck at it". What do you do when you reach that point? When the "cool" factor of the institution is drowned out by the annoyingness of having your order messed up, your presence forgotten? Do you abandon your territory? Do you stand up and say something risking being moved into a new category of customer? Do you swallow it and wait and blog about it in the meantime?

When else do you get to be Judas?

Hopefully everyone out there got to have a good, relaxing weekend. As Fall draws its cloak tighter around the neck of the Midwest we have fewer and fewer opportunities to get out and enjoy even the hint of sunshine before snow covers us all. Myself, I got in a little Target and some amazing football watching (please tell me someone else out there saw that Bears game?!). I also got to go to a dinner party for a friend. Now this was more than just an average, hey let's eat good food with good company kind of party. This was a Last Supper kind of thing for a friend who is leaving the country in the next month. The best part? Since it was a Last Supper, I got to be Judas.

Yes you read that correctly. Judas. I even went so far as to wear a "Hello my name is" name tag with the betrayer's name scrawled in the nice white box. It was awesome. The whole thing started when the evite went out. Themed as a Last Supper, I said I would only go if I got to be Judas (my knowledge of religion is not so hot but I had just finished Lamb so the name was at the top of my brain). Not thinking I would go through with it my friend said sure....little did she know I have a desk drawer full of blank name labels just waiting for these types of things.

So I showed up, dressed pretty fancy if I do say so myself, with my name tag slapped across the front of my shirt. Half the group got it and thought it was hysterical (for they had read the evite and my reply). A few people might have been offended, though they didn't say anything. Probably the best part however was the other half of the group that had no idea why I was wearing it and they didn't say a thing! They were all very nice, but they still were walking around like I was the weird crazy person in the corner. It was pretty freaking hilarious. And I got to spend the whole evening letting the hostess know that now was not quite the right time for betrayal, but she should expect it at any moment! The evening devolved into alcohol induced laughing fits (and learning to speak Mexican) until the very end when I tried to leave.

By this point I had been joined by Jesus (the hostess) and Moses (she said he was an apostle, I said sure). Moses's boyfriend decided that we needed to take a picture of the Last Supper - problem being was we only had 9 people left. So he went down the hall and dragged back a previous party guest (some poor guy trying to do homework at 12:30) and we googled up an image and went to work. The fact that we dragged this poor kid back and we still didn't have 12 didn't seem to bother the budding photographer and after about 15 minutes we finally got some semblance of an image staged. Our last supper however included 10 apostles, pouring a bottle of water into a wine glass half filled with red wine (over and over and over), an eggplant (apparently to represent the bread) and me behind Jesus with a red plastic butter knife. All that plus I'm pretty sure we are all in various stages of laughing hysterically in every shot. I have no idea how they turned out, but if I get a copy I'll make sure to post it.

To wash or not to wash

So imagine you find yourself in a community space, say like a work kitchen, that everyone is supposed to take responsibility for. But like many, many volumes of sociological texts that have been written on the subject, you find yourself in a Tragedy of the Commons situation. Particularly when it comes to the dishes.

Let's say you have a system that contains community dishes but every person is responsible for washing the dishes that they use. The office space contains a nice drying rack to aid you in this task. The problem arises when it comes to the responsibility of emptying said drying rack. No one is specifically assigned to it, so no one really does it.

As an individual who has dishes to wash, finding a full drying rack is often annoying. But being the good, community minded individual you are, you take it upon yourself to empty it so you can a) wash your own dishes and b) make room for others.

Enter dilemma. As you are emptying the rack you come across a dish that is not what you would deem clean. This isn't one of those subjective kinds of clean either, it's still got food stuck to it. Granted it's kind of clear, but it is food none the less. And, since you have eaten out for lunch everyday this week, you know that it wasn't yours to begin with.

Do you
A) Rewash said dish
B) Leave in drying rack for someone else to deal with
C) Put away in cupboard, pretending you never saw it

When you look at it from more than one angle....

Reading some more Kristoph and I came across this article/blog post. Well of course I wanted to know how rich I was so I went on over to this site. I entered a US salary of $32,000 (which is really just a guess but I'm sure before taxes that's about where I'm at) and I was shocked. Which is why I added the widget to the top of the page and why I think you should go ahead and try it.

One word at a time

I recently was having a conversation with a friend, about what I no longer remember, when I said the term "pro-life" and he absently inserted "anti-choice". I paused, looking at him oddly, and the conversation deterred into the titles society uses to describe these often warring factions.

I have labeled myself pro-choice for as long as I can remember. Whenever the conversation comes up amongst friends, or enemies, my standard statement has been "I don't know what decision I would make for myself as I have never been in the position to think of abortion in a personal sense, but I would never want anyone else to make the decision for me or anyone else (especially a roomful of old, white men!)".

I have also found that for some reason some* of those who find themselves on the "pro-life" side of the fence seem to think that since I am not with them I must be against them, and that means I am anti-life. Where does that assumption come from? It fills the literature and scare tactics of the more violent sects of pro-life fighters. There is a mentality that since the language used to mark sides includes "Pro" the opposite camp must be "Anti" (and the other side must be composed of all that is evil and corrupt but that is another rant all together).

I am not anti-life. And I do not like the assumption that because I believe in a woman's right to choose that I am somehow the secret heir of Hitler. So I'm taking the friend's advice and changing the world one word at a time. I am now going to try and use Anti-Choice instead of Pro-Life, and if you agree with me, maybe you can too. And if you don't, well then we can always sit down over coffee and discuss that too some day.

On a side note - though it is the reason this post was prompted out of my brain and into my computer - I recently was told that I might enjoy the writings of Nicholas Kristof from the NYTimes. So I went to check him out and this was the first article I read. I'll have to read more, but I do like it so far.




*I could link here to some crazy anti-choice website that shows disturbing gut wrenching images but you've all seen them (and if you haven't just drive through any small Midwestern farming area like mid north Wisconsin or anywhere outside of Indianapolis, IN) and I refuse to drive up web statistics for them.

Is it considered failure?

I was telling a story to a friend today and had it pointed out that my dating habits are much like her shopping habits which I found highly entertaining and quite close to the mark. Let me explain. Two weeks ago a different friend sent me an email with one of those "friends and family" discounts to an upcoming cultural event. Basically I could get $50 tickets for half price. I often think that I should make some attempt at least every two weeks to push my boundaries so I went ahead and bought two tickets, thinking that maybe in between then and now (the show is tonight) I could use it as the incentive to find a date.

And in fact I actually met someone in that time span that I thought might be nice to go on a date with. However, when the opportunity presented itself, for a depressingly shorter time span than I was hoping, on Tuesday I froze. I mean I didn't freeze all the way, there was some lame attempt at conversation, but in the end I was left with no invitation extended (or even mentioned!) and two empty seats in my pocket.

Which all brings me to today's conversation - my friend's shopping habits. She equated my life to when you buy that pair of pants just a hair too small, convinced you'll lose the weight and they will fit and be fantastic! and then they sit in the corner for months, or years at a time, till finally you toss them in the give away pile. Which makes me wonder, when do personally bought incentives work? Is it just me (and the people I associate with) who fail to utilize these promises to ourselves to push ahead? If someone else had bought the tickets and said I could take anyone I wanted would I have been more forceful or thoughtful in my hunt for a date? Is it the price of the incentive? Is $50 too low? And in the end, is the experience considered a failure?

For today those questions will remain unanswered. I am lucky in my life that I have a friend at work that said she would go with on my last minute invite this morning so the ticket is not going to waste. And I know I will probably try again. In fact, there is a roller derby show coming up (I've never been, and really kind of want to go!) that I might buy a group of seats for if they are cheap enough and just figure out the invites later. Hopefully next time I will follow my own ideas through.

My new home

I want to go here. Even more than that, I want to work there, live there, spend all my time there. For more pictures you can go the architects site here.

Looking for music cataloguing ideas

Okay fine readers, I need your help. I am a cataloguing machine. I love it. I know this is dorky, and I'm okay with that. You can find my books online here. You can find my movie collection online here, but apparently for not more than a week - when I went to get the link I got a message that they are shutting down...Damn. Anyway, what I now need is a good online place to catalogue music. A friend has a ton of cds, tapes, LPs, all of it. And he wants it listed somehow so he can see what he owns. I offered to look into it, do some research and possible help out with this project. Like I already said, I'm a dork. I'm having a cuecat shipped sometime this week and am looking into how that works with scanning barcodes, all I know is that if I can avoid using excel it will make me happy. Unless of course it's just loading it into excel and than uploading it too a much cooler system. So here's where you come in. Got any ideas? I got DVDspot from this guy so hopefully someone out there reading this knows something equally cool for music collections. I'm looking into Libra, and if anyone has any feedback, I'd love to hear it.
Thanks!

Everyone loves a flowchart

I'm too irate after last night to come up with my own witty statements so I'm leaving it to this handy flowchart I'm stealing from Daily Kos. Enjoy.