A Journal of the Plague Year . . . Week 1

Given plenty of time while self quarantined, many of us are undoubtedly poring over and sharing lots of online news. Some of us are writing, as well.

The traffic from your Facebook friends, however many or few you have, has probably been too much to capture. I’ve collected a representative sample of my thoughts and comments on Facebook as a sort of “journal of the plague year” (with a tip of the hat to Defoe — no, I’ve never read it) which I’ll upload week by week.

Starting with Wednesday, March 11, the last relatively normal day of our lives in 2020. . . . 

Just Don’t Look at Him

It’s been a comparatively pleasant year of avoiding the news since the incumbent was installed in the Oval Office.

I had a good excuse to direct my attention and psychic energy elsewhere in 2017. But I also made a conscious decision to click away from headlines, and photos and memes about the president . . . and to switch channels on the remote whenever he came onscreen during those rare occasions when I watched the 11 o’clock news (typically for the next day’s weather or an occasional local breaking news story).

As I said ’way back in mid December 2016, I do not regard the occupant of the White House as a proper public official. Time and again throughout the campaign, he demonstrated utter ignorance about or disrespect for the U.S. Constitution and basic tenets of the law . . . not to mention the truth in general.

Every other president has undoubtedly lied to the public, but usually for a strategic reason: to get Congress and/or the American public to go along on a policy initiative sought by the administration, or to distract enemies and allies. During the campaign and in office, this president has appeared to lie effortlessly and repeatedly, for no strategic policy reason . . . but to entertain, to divert our attention, to grab headlines, to shock, to look great or effective when he is neither. And he has lied multiple times a week, even per day.

He’s an entertainer who has treated the highest office in the land as just another TV show or business. (And I have observed little skill or honor in his business practices, which too often employed the tactics of a playground bully.) Doing so was enough to put him in office, but it’s insufficient to govern.

7 Days, 7 Photos on Facebook

Earlier this month, a friend handed off a Facebook challenge to me. It read:

I’ve been challenged.
Day __ of __ -- seven days, seven photos of your everyday life. No people, no comments, and tag someone to join in each day.

I had mixed feelings about this. I had seen my buddy going through this exercise on his page: he’s a stage and voice actor based in the Seattle area I had “met” online in a Harlan Ellison fan group on Usenet ’way back in the mid 1990s when he lived in Albuquerque. We’ve met in person several times since, both in Seattle and Portland. It crossed my mind that he might tap me to do this too.

My suspicion was that, like so many other tag-a-friend activities on Facebook over the years, this one had originated as the bright idea of some faceless staffer at Facebook corporate HQ in Menlo Park, California. These pretend to be spontaneous, grassroots ideas that just plain folks came up with to do with their friends for fun, but that probably wasn’t the initial impetus.

The goal is to drive up clicks, shares, and activity in general, so Facebook’s gross traffic numbers continue to climb and the social media giant can charge advertisers more money because (in theory) more eyes are encountering their ads.

If you’ve been active on Facebook a while, you’ve seen a lot of these. Back in 2009 and 2010, it was lists:

15 Albums

The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you’ve heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what albums my friends choose. To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note.

It Was a Blizzard . . . of Postcards; You Didn't Hear?

It’s been a tough week for the White House.

Democrats and news sources are trumpeting the “failure” of the President and the Republican-led Congress to ram a replacement for what they call Obamacare through the House.

Characteristically, the Chief Executive laid the blame anywhere but at his own door, and in this case, far from where it belongs. He blamed the Democrats . . . when in fact it was primarily the most conservative Republicans who dug in their heels and said “repeal and replace” didn’t go far enough to suit them.

But the White House could potentially claim one victory this week . . . though nobody’s talking about it publicly -- not even the Oval Office, which would probably prefer to see absolutely no mention of it whatsoever, anywhere -- so that’s what I’m going to discuss.

A BIT OF PREHISTORY

On the day after the President’s inauguration, the Women’s March on Washington drew at least 500,000 people to a rally on the National Mall against him. A total of about 2 million took part in D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle alone, and all were peaceful; no arrests were reported.

Back and Swinging

I’m back!

Since the shocking election of the GOP nominee, I’ve gotten into a number of arguments on Facebook (not with my FB friends, but friends of those friends) on such topics as racism, immigration policy, and the anti-Trump protests in Portland the past two weeks.

I’ve noticed that Facebook has unhelpfully (but understandably, given the company’s interest in generating more traffic and clicks) unhooked the barriers between different parts of my page. Comments I’ve posted on one friend’s page get viewed by other friends of mine who are NOT friends of that person whose page I posted on.

This has increased the frequency of people with violently differing opinions encountering the comments of one another. Ideally, that might be a good thing; but not when we didn’t ask for or expect it, and especially not during this delicate period when people are in shock from the results of the election and fearful about what the new administration bodes for them, their colleagues, and their friends and loved ones.

I don’t mind the cross currents of debate personally, because I regularly seek out conflict, knowing from long experience that I can walk away from it any time with ease. But I don’t necessarily want my friends to get dragged in, because some are not accustomed that that level of battle (and the occasional vitriol).

Why Our Tale Struck Gold (When You Become the Lead Story, part 7)

As we rode a Portland Streetcar train home from the radio interview and video shoot at the PSU Urban Center late on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 21, I glanced idly over at the collision site and noticed several Trimet trucks gathered there. That was probably a signal that the story was about to break publicly, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

When Carole and I got home, there were messages on Facebook and in my emailer that my post to BikePortland.org four nights before had borne fruit. A commentary uploaded by Jonathan Maus on his blog that Wednesday morning was the first notice on public media that something had happened at the Tilikum Crossing bridge a week and a half before. Maus reprinted most of my nearly five-day-old email to him, as well as his comments, which opened with: “It has happened. And I hate to say that I’m not surprised.”

The Search for Official Evidence (When You Become the Lead Story, part 5)

I began to think about the long-term implications of the incident. Carole told me she had pressed the button for the pedestrian crossing signal and waited until the light was with her. That suggested the cyclist might have run a red light, assuming the month-old traffic signals were working and properly synchronized.

But what if the cyclist’s insurer refused to reimburse any portion of our medical bills? What did we have if it came down to their word against Carole’s? One of the first questions an insurance company would surely ask was “What is the police report number?” There wasn’t one, of course. Did that mean we had nothing?

On Wednesday morning I started to make phone inquiries into what sort of official record this incident had generated, if any. Portland Fire & Rescue had responded to the scene, obviously; when I called them, a representative told me that AMR Ambulance would have taken the lead in filing an incident report. I looked up the ambulance company’s website and found a form I had to print out and mail to request a copy of whatever they had recorded.

Processing . . . processing . . .

I recently made the acquaintance of a young man from Brazil.

In the course of our conversation, he talked about how oppressive he finds modern technology. If you send a text and the person doesn’t answer right away, you start to wonder: “Did I say something wrong? What did I write to him last time?”

Sometimes the stream of news over Facebook makes it seem as if everyone’s being productive and having a great time except yourself. Some of my friends, he told me, become depressed after checking their Facebook news feed half a dozen times a day. He was thinking of killing his Facebook page altogether.

I agreed that this can be the case, and told him I don’t own a smartphone, I’ve never sent or received a text, and my wife and I got rid of our car 12 years ago. These are all expenses that suck up resources -- both time and money -- that I would rather devote to other things (or not have to generate the income to pay for in the first place).

But it’s not simply technology’s fault. This phenomenon is mainly just an expansion of an effect that capitalist/consumer culture, especially its marketing wing, has always had -- indeed, actively seeks to impose on us.

Movies and television shows (and increasingly, newscasts), have one only purpose: to keep you watching. In order to do that, they throw the most startling, violent, thrilling, expensive spectacles and events at you. That’s how they keep the numbers of their audience high, and thereby secure funding from sponsors.

Fight Tactics for the Online Crusader

As I mentioned the other day, in the weeks since the Clackamas Town Center shooting and the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I’ve engaged in many debates with people on Facebook about gun control.

I’m not going to repeat those arguments . . . yet. What I wanted to examine today was the meta-issue of how to talk with people you violently disagree with, and probably more important, why. As a veteran of several decades of online firefights -- back in the days of Usenet, some of the most heated arguments I got into occurred on the Camille Paglia discussion list -- I’ve had a lot of experience with Internet battles.

I have a couple of Facebook friends -- people I probably linked up with as friends of friends, rather than people I know personally -- who are staunch gun rights advocates. I don’t go out of my way to antagonize these folks; I just calmly dispute some of their assertions to one another on an irregular basis. We go back and forth a while, and then I wander off.

A few days ago, one of that crowd typed in a comment whose like I’ve seen many times in the course of Internet debates on any number of subjects. “Give it up,” he told the ally who was arguing with me; “Not going to change a liberal mindset … Can’t be won.”

Occupy Portland, part 8 - Aftermath . . . and Prelude

It is almost exactly a week since zero hour for the Occupy Portland camp -- the Sunday morning, 12:01 a.m. “eviction” deadline set by Mayor Sam Adams.

The camp didn’t really get “swept” until the following afternoon, in a masterful display of tactical strategy and mostly smooth execution by Portland Police, with a lot of assistance from outside law enforcement agencies. Part of me felt, and continues to feel, that the camp had run its course, and it was just as well that it ended when and as it did.

Things have gotten uglier, unfortunately … though not half as bad as the local media and police have tried to make them appear. Marches and small localized protests have continued daily. Thursday, November 17, was the two-month anniversary of the launch of Occupy Wall Street, and Portland avidly joined in the demonstrations that occurred all across the country to commemorate and celebrate it.

Occupy Portland, part 5 - What Am I Doing Here?

When I got home from my first morning of volunteering at the Occupy Portland site, back on Friday, Oct. 21, I posted the following status update on my Facebook wall:

“Occupy Portland has become my church.”

It was an amorphous, gut-level notion that somehow accurately described my feelings coming out of (or maybe that should be “starting into”) the experience. The next day, a friend I hadn’t seen in many months asked me what I meant by it. I didn’t have a ready answer for her. I’ve thought about it ever since.

You should know that my real church history has been uneven and spotty to effectively nonexistent. When I was a kid, my folks took me to Sunday School at First Unitarian in Eugene. They themselves were probably agnostics at that point, but they liked the social conscience and activism of that congregation, especially its pastor, the Rev. Carl Nelson, who preached early and hard against the Vietnam War.

Occupy Portland, part 1 - First Impressions

I knew that if I volunteered at the Information desk I’d be learning a lot more than I’d be helping anyone. But that was part of the point: I figured this would be the fastest way to get a handle on what’s been happening on Chapman and Lownsdale Squares, downtown Portland, over the past two weeks.

You probably won't be able to read it in the above photo, but posted at the entrance to Lownsdale Square, and elsewhere around the parks, are the camp's extensive "Collective Agreement on Guidelines for Community Safety and Well-Being." They dub the Occupy site weapon-free and nonviolent; prohibit any recreational alcohol or drug use; sequester cigarette smoking to the corner of SW 4th and Main; and call for respectful treatment among everyone, among other things. The panel on the right lists the steps to take in response to any threats to safety and well-being on the site. 

I had participated in the initial protest march on Oct. 6 that involved at least 4,000 people and might have drawn in as much as 6,000 or 10,000 -- various numbers have gotten batted around in the media -- but I hadn’t had a chance to get a good look at the site where the long-haul protesters had chosen to camp ever since.

The Great American Circus - David Loftus

I don’t watch much television news anymore (never mind television in general), but searching for election coverage earlier this week I happened to catch a disturbing local story.

Four adults (I use the term advisedly) were arraigned in McMinnville, a town of 32,000 about 35 miles southwest of Portland, on a variety of criminal charges that stem from an incident in which they apparently urged a pair of 9-year-old boys into a violent fight in front of a video camera.

They uploaded the result onto Facebook. Someone in Pennsylvania saw the clip and phoned the McMinnville Police Department, which resulted in arrests on charges of criminal mistreatment, assault, reckless endangering, endangering the welfare of a child, and strangulation. Some of these charges resulted from a search of the two apartments where the children lived, which authorities described as “extremely filthy,” with rotten and insufficient food, and drug paraphernalia. The accused, two men and two women, were not teenagers; three are in their 30s and the last is 22.

I saw a brief clip on the TV report of two little boys punching and kicking each other while adult voices could be heard egging them on. Though taken into protective custody by social workers, the children were said not to be seriously hurt. But this incident appears symptomatic of larger, unhealthy changes in how many Americans see themselves and the world around them. These grownups (again, a relative term) regarded their kids as tools for entertaining themselves and others (much the way Michael Vick treated pit bull dogs before his conviction) -- for gaining attention from the great wide world out there. And they sought to reproduce the sort of violent thrills they probably derive from television, movies, and video games. The problem is that they were using vulnerable, dependent, and growing human beings entrusted by law to their care and training as tools.

Humans have always had a problem distinguishing between fiction and truth … art and reality … entertainment and news. Over the years I’ve enjoyed collecting stories about such confusion. A woman who visited Modigliani’s studio roughly a century ago noticed a work in progress on an easel and commented, “But surely this woman’s arm is too long?” The artist replied: “Excuse me, madame; that is not a woman, that is a painting.” Magritte made the same point with his painting “The Treachery of Images” -- you know, the one that pictures a smoking pipe with the legend below: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Similarly, a man verbally attacked Picasso because, like too many other artists of the time, he did not paint things “the way they really are.” The complainer took a photo of his daughter out of his wallet and showed it to the artist, saying, see -- this looks just like her; why can’t you do that? Picasso gazed at the photo for a moment and remarked, “Small, isn’t she?”

More recently, in the late 1980s, I heard a story on National Public Radio about a man who went stomping into a sheriff’s office in Pennsylvania to complain that an Amish farmer had refused to pose for the tourist’s camera with his wife and kids. The deputy on duty patiently explained that the farmer was a member of a spiritual community that chooses to live their lives in a certain simple way, free of modern technologies, and he was under no obligation to do as a passerby demanded. The tourist was flabbergasted; he said: “You mean, they aren’t PAID to do this?”

It is as if he, like many other Americans, regarded anything outside the cocoon of his home as one big Disneyland. And why shouldn’t he? That’s the message from the news (which shamelessly conflates stories about local shootings and fires with “reports” about the latest developments among the network’s hit shows and stars), to advertising (“These burgers/coffee drinks/vacations/homes/furniture/babes, etc., etc. are ALL MADE OR EXIST JUST FOR YOU!!!”), to movies (“there are millions of threats out there just itching to GET you, from vampires and terrorists and aliens and evil politicians to global warming, but our handsome leading guy and gal will deal with them in less 2 hours, so you don’t have to worry or do a thing -- just enjoy your fears!”). Through all these avenues, corporate America is teaching Americans to be passive slug consumers who are responsible for nothing and entitled to everything.

How does this relate to our losers in McMinnville? They couldn’t let entertainment stay where it was: a product manufactured by experts. They wanted in on the action. And as long as a video of their kids hurting each other got attention from thousands, possibly even millions, of fellow American viewers, that made the bruises and blood no more real or hurtful than the vivid violence on their computer and plasma screens. Converting real life into entertainment both validates and objectifies it into something more -- and less -- than real.

Because real just isn’t good enough. Or magic enough. Or interesting enough.

Writing Creative Facebook Status Updates: a style guide - David Loftus

Friends and colleagues who keep tabs on my Facebook page often remark,“you’re keeping busy,” by which I gather they mean I'm doing a lot of work. I respond that I’m staying active, which is not exactly the same thing.

I see my job on Facebook as not just marketing and networking, but entertaining my friends and family. Updates don’t have to be just “hard news”: you can also post about odd things you saw on the street or thoughts that crossed your mind. A stream of status updates that mention only what or where you’re eating, or who you’re hanging out with, gets tiresome. Anything that provokes thought or a smile will do, but wit, wryness, and the offbeat get extra points.

For example, odd things you observed or experienced can be entertaining:

• David Loftus checked out his very first Cormac McCarthy novel from the library this afternoon and found a playing card -- a Joker -- tucked into the pages. I take that as a good omen.
  
• … got to hear two young women alternate between hysterical, barking giggles and chanted rap lyrics festooned with f-bombs ... followed by two men discussing third-degree burns from a motorcycle exhaust pipe and a campfire. Yep, the 33 is an interesting bus line.
  
• … was waiting at the outdoor library book return box and watched a guy drop a book, open, face-down, in the rain ... and tried very hard not to wince.
  
• … picked up a portobello mushroom vegetarian sub at noon to carry around until dinner time, and five hours later discovered he had a salami and ham. Had to wonder how the other guy felt about his sandwich.
  
• … just passed a homeless man without giving him any money, and the man said he would hold my children for ransom and not ask for anything less than $10 million. Boy was he wrong on so many counts. . . .
  

Things that made you mad or disgusted are always good for discussion, although it’s better to express your passion with elegance and indirection than with an all-out rant:

• David Loftus watched a man toss his cigarette butt on the sidewalk and wished he was large enough to tell him to pick it up and dispose of it properly.

• … walked out of the Safeway to be greeted by the sight of a street kid popping the zits on the upper back of his female companion. I try to be open-minded and tolerant, but . . . .

On the other hand, the right kind of sledgehammer blow can be entertaining, too:

• David Loftus says, “could I spare a dollar for a pack of cigarettes” ? Of course not! . . . that wouldn’t kill you fast enough to make it worth it for me.

If you can take something you observed and come up with a thought, interpretation, or extension beyond the observation, that’s a plus:

• David Loftus realized, while watching people texting on their hand-held mobile devices this morning on the bus, that to say someone is “all thumbs” may mean something entirely different from what it once did.
  
• … wonders why street kids are never accompanied by a stray Dandy Dinmont, Bichon Frise, or Chinese Crested? Even a Great Pyrenees would be a change from the usual pit bulls.
  
• … was wondering what the girls who were sitting next to him and texting all through the movie are going to do when it comes time to raise a family.
  
• … was reading a pamphlet on STDs among elders and read “Have you ever had unprotected sex with a prostitute?” and thought: “Of course not! Her pimp ALWAYS stands guard over us.”

Of course if you make unusual choices, that can be worth reporting:

• David Loftus thought “Mary Poppins” followed by “Shutter Island” was a fine DIY Sunday double feature.
  
• … downloaded a Mozart harpsichord concerto and Bob Seger. I believe in a balanced diet.

• … hadn’t realized that dumpster diving goes a lot more smoothly after a couple of bourbons. Of course, he started scrounging seriously when he was vastly underaged.
  
• … doesn’t imagine anyone else is reading Richard Matheson’s The Incredible Shrinking Man and Jane Austen’s Emma at the same time.

Wordplay, if it’s sufficiently sophisticated, may charm your Facebook friends:

• David Loftus wonders whether a situation in which two strangers establish a rapport by picking on a third might be termed a “dis connect.”
  
• … knows there’s more than one way to skritch a cat.

• [with reference to a certain Jewish holiday meal:] … says, What? NOT a path-over satyr?
  
• … has no particular objection to any religious sects . . . as long as it’s between consenting adults.

Philosophical notions and intellectual speculation offer a nice change of pace, especially if there’s a humorous or shock element to them:

• David Loftus wonders if he can interest some deep-pocket investors in an air-guitar manufacturing plant.
  
• … is designing a very strict licensing program for prospective parents which will be enacted the minute he becomes dictator of the world. Don’t presume YOU would pass it.
  

Even a pointed quotation, if it’s not well-known or widely distributed on the Web already (something from your own current pleasure reading is the best bet here), can also please:

·      “We are all of us obliged, if we are to make reality endurable, to nurse a few little follies in ourselves.” - M. Proust

·      “Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It’s too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don’t buy it.” - Haruki Murakami

Every once in a great while, there’s a rare and moving flash of beauty in your life. It’s important to share those:

• David Loftus was walking the dog when he saw a tiny green hummingbird flitting about the South Park Blocks in the spitting rain. Dang, those things are so tiny and delicate, you fear a single drop of water would bring them down. . . .

How Can They Hack You? Let Me Count the Ways. . . - Nikki Lorenzini

Recently, a researcher was able to pull up information for 170 million Facebook users. Ron Bowes, who compiled the information, was quoted as saying: “I realized that this is a scary privacy issue, I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook.” He was able to pull the names and Web addresses of people’s profiles that were not listed as “private.” From what I have read, people are pretty upset, seeming that their privacy is now being invaded.

My opinion: Your privacy is fine! Yes, people have a right to feel threatened when they think their personal space has been invaded. When it comes to sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., though, people willingly put their lives out there. I always saw these sites as a place to reconnect with people from high school/grade school, post pictures for family I cannot see regularly, write silly status updates, etc. However, I choose to play it smart when it comes to the Internet. I keep the personal information I post limited. I only have my email address and the city I live. In fact, I think I actually have my email on private as well.  I refuse to put any of my phone numbers or my address. I do not vent about work or other people on my Facebook. If I do not want my mom to see or read it, it’s not going up. It’s not worth risking my job or reputation or privacy to put things that might be questionable or cause for fears about getting into the wrong hands.

Sure, Bowes was able to get people’s names and pictures. However, we store so much more information out there that we should actually fear people getting a hold of. How many of us do online banking? How many of do online shopping? How easy is it to whip out a credit card and pay for something on EBay or Amazon and keep the card number stored? I am sure people are able to hack into those companies’ systems. I know people’s Facebook and MySpace accounts have been hacked, and I’ve heard stories of credit card numbers being stolen from stores.

So how easy do you think it would be for the two groups to join forces and hack into one of those systems? If that happens, I believe there is a legitimate reason to fear for Internet privacy. Until then, please be smart when you are putting your life on the Internet line.

Is Obama the Worst President Ever? - Shaun Hautly

Read this piece carefully, because it’s not what you think.

While one could argue that Bush suffered more criticism and judgments, in the past four years we’ve seen the rise of Twitter, Facebook, and the instantly reactive Internet. This means that every move and mistake that Obama makes is captured, documented, shared, and spread within minutes. There’s no more “controlling the press” or hiding things. This is the transparency he wanted and got. Tenfold.

The oil spill: Already the worst environmental disaster of its kind in history and getting worse by the day. Obama has already gained media attention for using some profanity, making some pretty hefty “no rest until” promises, and had a fair share of media friendly face time with the victims. However, oil continues to spread. Obama continues to meet with NCAA champions, foreign countries, and novelty organizations for vanity’s sake. Sounds like he’s doing plenty of resting.

Healthcare: We heard the same “no rest” promises over a year ago, and I think there was a bit of rest in those nine months from idea to bill.

Unemployment: Continues to plague this country. My Honda still sucks, even with Cash for Clunkers. CEOs are still going on million dollar vacations with the government’s bailout money. Yet there’s Obama, smiling on TV.

Is he the first President to be so fickle on his promises, or are we the first society who demands real-time updates of the President’s whereabouts? And do we get our news objectively or from skewed sources that give more opinion than fact?

Upload Girl, She's Been Living in an Upload World - Nikki Lorenzini

As I write this, I am logged onto Facebook. I check it in the morning before I go to work. I log on during my lunch break. I log on after work at least once. Depending if I am doing Facebook chat, I can be online anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. I found my best friend from grade school and ended up deleting her. I had people who found me from grade school but I dont’t even remember them, and had mutual friends who tried to add me when I never met them. I immediately add people when I have just met them. It seems like everyone’s lives revolve around our Facebook accounts.

I remember when I first signed up for my account. That was approximately 6 years ago. (Yes, that long ago!) When I first logged on, I did it kind of hesitantly. I didn’t want to have one because I thought “everyone” had one. That makes me giggle now. At the time, it was only for college students, Facebook only allowed you to upload photos, and there was no chat and no applications. Facebook was the safe alternative to MySpace (remember MySpace?), which seemed always to be on the news for something along the lines of children being kidnapped.  

Now it seems that Facebook has taken over our lives. It’s on the news for its privacy settings (and when we have an oil leak that could take months to clean up). 7-11 is teaming up with Farmville, one of the more popular applications on Facebook, to promote a line of Slurpees. I heard a story about a person actually receiving a kidney transplant contact via their Facebook status update, another of people getting married after meeting on Facebook, and a father and son reconnecting on Facebook. I’ve heard of people getting fired over pictures and statuses that were posted. Companies have their fan pages to help spread word of store openings, and charitable organizations have pages to show where your money is going.  

I look back to a time before Facebook. Granted, I am only 27 years old, but I can still remember when the Internet was just starting to come into people’s homes. I remember my first AOL screen name. That was dial-up, now we have Verizon Fios. MySpace never existed, we just had creepy chat rooms where you talked to a 50-year-old pedophile without even realizing it. Sure, MySpace and Facebook are probably a step up. I just do not think that our Internet profiles really need all this attention. Are we really so bored that our lives revolve around Facebook? To get to it via on our phones, our TVs, and, oh yeah, our computers? I guess I’m not any better since I’m blogging about Facebook.

I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg thought that Facebook would be such a huge hit, that even the news would have report about privacy settings. I mean, is anything really private on the Internet?