Jasonisms

That's All, Folks!

All day long, every single day, I come up with ideas to blog about. Maybe the ideas are sparked by an errant comment, an interaction or something I read throughout the day and yet, I never seem to remember these ideas when I sit down and try to type. I once tried keeping a notebook (that didn't last long), sending an email to myself (that didn't last long either) and keeping a document in the cloud with snippets of what I wanted to say. Yeah, you guessed it, that didn't last long either. Today, though, we're going to talk about social media. For two very real reasons: Social media pervades each and every aspect of our lives, and I just submitted a proposal to be a Social Media Manager for a local business A lot of people have written about social media over the years. From the first days of websites such as Friendster and Classmates.com, to the revolution that was MySpace and then the behemoth that is Facebook, social media outlets have taken over our culture c...

Everytime there is an article about Facebook that article describes how nefarious - yes, nefarious - and unethical Facebook is acting. In this particular case, Facebook is now using what it sold as a security feature as an identity feature with no way to remove or disable it. And people wonder why I don't use Facebook. Twitter user Jeremy Burge pointed out, in a thread, that phone numbers could be searched, with "no way to disable" the feature. He added that, perhaps unsurprisingly, this data is also shared with WhatsApp and Instagram, which means your phone number becomes a unique ID for you. And it's impossible to disable the feature if you added your number -- only limit it to your immediate friend circle. https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/04/facebook-2fa-phone-number/

So many little bits and pieces of the last day or so that I wanted to discuss, but the epiphanies never seem to come all at once and they most assuredly never stick around long enough for me to jot them down. In fact, like many things in this modern world, they don't stick around past looking at anything electronic. I'm starting to believe modern electronics are thought-thieves. So, let's see if I can remember all of them - or at least enough to make this post interesting. The morning started off as many mornings do: I woke, showered, got dressed and then checked social media and the news just to make sure the #GlobalIdiot, Donald Trump, didn't inadvertently, or purposefully, bring us to war. A woman I'm connected to on Google+ had made a post about something idiotic the current American president had done recently and some guy comes in and comments, that's not how the Right Wing will interpret the findings. They thing everything the FBI does is a witch hu...

One of my largest complaints about social media is content created. More specifically, a lack of content creation. I can't remember who it was, but years ago a social media powerhouse once claimed that there are two kinds of social media users: (1) content creators and (2) content distributors. Now, most of us generally distribute content in one form or another, whether it's our own or someone else's, or whether it's just something we found on the interwebz and thought it was interesting enough to share to our collective streams.  However, I've noticed in the past few months that a vast majority of social media users aren't content creators, they're not even proper content distributors. What do I mean by that? Simply put, when you share something with a friend or colleague you usually preface it with comment or some other sort of introduction: Hey, check out this cool band. Awesome beats. I saw this on the internet and think it's hilarious, what do...

I was perusing Google+ today and saw this great resource for those who might be new to the platform. This is especially formulated for people and businesses looking for a competitive edge with Google+ over other social media outlets.

I haven't deleted my Facebook profile, but I have stopped using it. Their app has never been on my phone and I don't log into FB from my computer without using Incognito. What really annoys me, though, is when someone creates a Page or an event on Facebook and then shares the bit.ly or ow.ly link re-directing me to Facebook instead of a webpage about the event. Then, without my knowledge, those people are circumventing my personal rules about visiting Facebook and the cookies FB places on my machine that can follow me across the internet whether I want it to or not. I've also noticed a lot of spam coming to my Gmail account from Facebook's domain. It seems I'm being spammed at my [username]@facebook.com email address they forced on us all years ago and since I have email forwarding set up (since I never use FB), it's being forwarded to my Gmail. When Facebook acquired Instagram I deleted my account and never signed on for WhatsApp. If someone is going to g...

Okay, this one has to top them all. I've ranted about social media etiquette in the past, talked about people who comment then block, preventing dissenting opinions from being heard; talked about people who limit comments to only their trusty sycophants and talked about people who play the victim i an effort to garner wide appeal. I mean, who doesn't want to feel sorry for a victim, right? Today's conversation takes the bacon. Yesterday -- yes, today's conversation started yesterday --  +Gail Grimm  posted a Public (this will be important later) post calling out a self described intolerant christian. She didn't tag him into the post she created about him, merely created the post and waited for all the people who have her circled to come in and agree. I was one of those people. I mean, let's face it, the guy's an ass. Then I went on to state pretty clearly, I might add, that even though the guy's an ass his premise isn't entirely wrong...

The truth of the matter is, atheism isn't anything more than being an atheist, and an atheist isn't anything more than someone who does not believe in any sort of gods . It really is that simple. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, people began trying to attach more significance to atheism. Not only are we supposed to be not believe in any sort of god/s, but we're supposed to be anti-religion, hyper-scientific, super-intellectual and even dismissive of all other forms of the supernatural that have nothing to do with gods. I've noticed a growing trend on social networks to mock religions with invalid and fallacious arguments. For example, the post linked to above: Day 1: God created light Day 4: God created the Sun If you click through to this post you'll see I'm getting a lot of flack for tearing this argument apart. The premise of the anti-religious statement is that it's illogical that an all-knowing all-powerful god would create light be...

UPDATE: Google flagged this post because it has a link to the now defunct Streamzoo photosharing service. Absolutely ridiculous that this should trigger a flag, but here we are in the every-annoying Google's sandbox . - 18JAN2023 It's been a while since I made a post. Sorry. I wish I could say it wasn't my fault, but it was and there's no one to blame but myself. You see, my niece was in town for nearly two weeks and from wake-up until bed-time I remained busy, busy, busy. Also, I spent a lot of time in the mountains and various areas that received little to no internet connection. Huh ?  What? That means it was nearly impossible for me to upload photos or anything else via mobile connection. But let's move on. I was recently perusing Streamzoo on my Note II and noticed a lot of people, especially younger people, claiming they will follow back if you start following them. Great! Reciprocating is fun and respectful, right? Well, maybe. There's no rule that says w...

Google recently announced it's plans to cut it's RSS reader service:  Google Reader . People have been all over the internet claiming to know  why  Google shut down their RSS reader service: RSS is dead, complaints from website owners who want people to click through to their content,  social media killed RSS , people are consuming information from other sources (ie: mobile). But RSS serves another function: it's not news that's brought to us by our friends or connections; it's not curated for us by the news publishers and it's not now being served under social media. Instead, RSS is a feed of information from sources we curate ourselves. Sources that might not be on social media, sources our family or friends might not read and share, sources that we don't want popping up in a social atmosphere. What do I mean? Look at the  Smithsonian Institute's RSS options . Twenty-seven individual feeds to choose from instead of the all-in general feed or waitin...

I've been thinking about rage-quitting Google+. As much as I enjoy communication, sharing ideas and thoughts and interacting with people who share some sort of interest, I'm getting really tired of all the narcissistic ego-centrism I'm seeing. This isn't the first time I've post thoughts of this subject and after restricting my Google+ usage, I'm finding (after a semi-full time return) that I'm just as annoyed as before my partial hiatus. I was blocked twice today. Both by long time connections who were both Buzzers of days gone by. One guy -- a guy who alienated many people with his strict outlook on life -- a guy who once told me to stop posting current event articles and to stick to photos of my dog because he disliked my choice of source articles or my opinions, finally blocked me today (or was it yesterday?) after I questioned why he created a post of nothing but a link about a murder suicide. He left no comment on why he shared the link, what his o...

If you consider YouTube  as a social network, it's the most popular social network on the planet. With billions of minutes uploaded all the time and billions more being watched on a daily basis (note: I'm guessing here, I looked at absolutely no statistics for my opinion) YouTube is a force du jour   for anyone needing to get their content in front of people. Compiled by +Denis Labelle , here is a list of YouTube tools (did you know YT had tools?) for those of us not burdened with enough extra cash to hire a professional multimedia consultant and studio: Playbook  =>  youtube.com/yt/playbook/index.html . Getting started  =>  youtube.com/yt/playbook/getting-started.html . Programming  => youtube.com/yt/playbook/programming.html . Optimization => youtube.com/yt/playbook/optimization.html . Community  =>   youtube.com/yt/playbook/community.html . Resources   youtube.com/yt/playbook/resources.html Creator Hub...

For the first time ever I told someone to block me. The more I get to know people in Google+ the more I'm ever more grateful for the *I* in *INTP*. I understand over the years, especially during this last election cycle and with the advent of the Tea Party and 8 years of Bush era policies, somehow somewhere along the way I've been labeled liberal.  As much as I've rebelled against that label, I am still saddled with it for my support of social issues, equal rights, immigration reform, social justice, civil rights, and many many more causes. However, that doesn't mean the Right isn't correct once in a while. I saw a fairly large backlash when I defended (then-candidate) Romney for misspeaking at a public event. He said "apples" when he meant to say "oranges" and while every liberal on the internet jumped on him for being an idiot I preached a more understanding viewpoint: the man is campaigning. He is probably getting between 4 and 6 hours o...

I find it ironic that MySpace became so popular and ushered in the age of social networking when sites like Blogger were already out there for people to write about their day, share their music and show friends their images. Before "social networking" bloggers could follow other bloggers by clicking "follow" and leave comments without a wall or a page. Actually, the more I play around with Blogger, with customization, HTML, embedding videos and slideshows, the more I realize MySpace held no features Blogger didn't already have, they just hit a target market (musicians, bands and entertainers) and made getting your stuff out there much easier than the idea of blogging. After all, blogging is something internet-nerds do, not something hip young people do, right? Unless, of course, you consider Facebook status updates as blogs (which they are), Twitter's 140 character "What I'm doing now" as blogs (which they are and is why Twitter is calle...