Earlier today, a "friend suggestion" that I absolutely did not do was attributed to my Facebook account, so I deactivated it. I sincerely hope that this was the only bogus communication that went out under the auspices of my account. Finding out that messages I never wrote had been sent from my Facebook account was not exactly the experience I sought in the social networking world.
So, again, for now, Sayonara Facebook!
(And, yes, I know, I'll be back in a couple of weeks. . . and certainly back by July 1)
Showing posts with label social networking websites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social networking websites. Show all posts
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Facebook Has Been Hacked Yet Again
I had an absolutely head-scratchingly bizarre experience on Facebook this morning.
While writing an e-mail message about arcane historical minutiae regarding the 1921 Roscoe Arbuckle scandal, of interest to perhaps two dozen film geeks worldwide, I kid you not, the words "Death To America" showed up on my screen. I did a Jimmie Finlayson-style "double take", said WTF and totally dismissed it as the product of my ever-overactive imagination. Then, a couple of minutes later, there those words were again, clearly, not too big, but in bold type. WTF?
This is too weird even for me.
And it happened as the news of the day was. . . shameless election fraud by Iran's hard-line powers that be (by any definition, a regime that has demonstrated repeatedly that they don't give a rat's ass about the wishes of their own people), led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, A.K.A. "The Godfather". With the understanding that Khamenei is the big cheese there - somewhat analagous to Al Davis' Supreme Leader relationship to the Oakland Raiders - and calls the shots, gees, Louise, could you be just a tad more clever about stealing an election than that?
Us pampered and apathethic Americans can only have admiration for the Iranian people, no doubt appalled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's gross mismanagement of the country's economy (not to mention his general ineptitiude and penchant for embarrassing his nation in public), who have the guts to stand up against the repression of the ruling right-wing cabal.
It is no accident that outside observers are not allowed to even view Iran's election process. Hmmmm - do you think we need a more unsubtle reminder that the necessity to accurately monitor presidential elections in other parts of the world, including right here in the U.S.A, persists?
That tangent aside, Facebook has been hacked, continues to be hacked and will be hacked again. It would certainly be interesting to learn the source of this hack. I'm guessing a young hacker with no girlfriend/boyfriend and lots of time to burn.
And perhaps this also means no more "Welsh Rarebit" for me anytime soon as well. To illustrate:
Maybe I have indeed lost me bloomin' mind (after decades of threatening to do so) and it's time for a lengthy stretch of, in the immortal words of Elmer Fudd, "west and wewaxation at wast."
While writing an e-mail message about arcane historical minutiae regarding the 1921 Roscoe Arbuckle scandal, of interest to perhaps two dozen film geeks worldwide, I kid you not, the words "Death To America" showed up on my screen. I did a Jimmie Finlayson-style "double take", said WTF and totally dismissed it as the product of my ever-overactive imagination. Then, a couple of minutes later, there those words were again, clearly, not too big, but in bold type. WTF?
This is too weird even for me.
And it happened as the news of the day was. . . shameless election fraud by Iran's hard-line powers that be (by any definition, a regime that has demonstrated repeatedly that they don't give a rat's ass about the wishes of their own people), led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, A.K.A. "The Godfather". With the understanding that Khamenei is the big cheese there - somewhat analagous to Al Davis' Supreme Leader relationship to the Oakland Raiders - and calls the shots, gees, Louise, could you be just a tad more clever about stealing an election than that?
Us pampered and apathethic Americans can only have admiration for the Iranian people, no doubt appalled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's gross mismanagement of the country's economy (not to mention his general ineptitiude and penchant for embarrassing his nation in public), who have the guts to stand up against the repression of the ruling right-wing cabal.
It is no accident that outside observers are not allowed to even view Iran's election process. Hmmmm - do you think we need a more unsubtle reminder that the necessity to accurately monitor presidential elections in other parts of the world, including right here in the U.S.A, persists?
That tangent aside, Facebook has been hacked, continues to be hacked and will be hacked again. It would certainly be interesting to learn the source of this hack. I'm guessing a young hacker with no girlfriend/boyfriend and lots of time to burn.
And perhaps this also means no more "Welsh Rarebit" for me anytime soon as well. To illustrate:
Maybe I have indeed lost me bloomin' mind (after decades of threatening to do so) and it's time for a lengthy stretch of, in the immortal words of Elmer Fudd, "west and wewaxation at wast."
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Anti-Social Networking
I have mixed emotions about social networking. No doubt I'll have to wear orange jumpsuits at the re-education facility for the untrendy by having no desire to Tweet/Twitter (besides watching Tweety Bird in A Gruesome Twosome). An onslaught of crass advertising plus a most user-unfriendly interface drove me away from MySpace. While I like Facebook, I discontinued my account for awhile.
There's a lot to like about Facebook - it's fun to think up bon (or not-so-bon) mots for the news feed, watch video clips chosen by movie buff friends, swap quips with far-flung contacts and receive all kinds of virtual stuff (movie posters, Parliament/Funkadelic albums, knishes from Brooklyn, Django Reinhardt references) - but the sense of lost privacy and potential for social subterfuge trouble me. It's remarkably easy to broadcast personal information publicly on Facebook . . . and that makes me remarkably uneasy! Although social networking websites are not meant to substitute for direct communication (A.K.A. in-person conversation) with our loved ones, dang it, we homosapiens are fallible, flawed creatures and do this anyway.
Christine Hassler said it aptly in her April 29, 2009 Huffington Post column:
"The internet makes it conveniently possible to avoid uncomfortable face to face interactions or phone calls. But that doesn't make it right. We're all still human beings and owe each other the dignity of not taking the easy or lazy way out when it comes to a conversation that may be difficult. All of us are becoming far too reliant on our gadgets and starved for real human connection."
Illustrating the last point is the following very funny piece about antisocial networking behaviors, as well as a clever spoof of that 1950's classroom staple, the Coronet Instructional Film.
And I can't in good conscience end this blog entry without serving up the real deal, a genuine 1953 Coronet Instructional Film, just the sort of thing that those readers who have attended the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival have sat through more than once.
There's a lot to like about Facebook - it's fun to think up bon (or not-so-bon) mots for the news feed, watch video clips chosen by movie buff friends, swap quips with far-flung contacts and receive all kinds of virtual stuff (movie posters, Parliament/Funkadelic albums, knishes from Brooklyn, Django Reinhardt references) - but the sense of lost privacy and potential for social subterfuge trouble me. It's remarkably easy to broadcast personal information publicly on Facebook . . . and that makes me remarkably uneasy! Although social networking websites are not meant to substitute for direct communication (A.K.A. in-person conversation) with our loved ones, dang it, we homosapiens are fallible, flawed creatures and do this anyway.
Christine Hassler said it aptly in her April 29, 2009 Huffington Post column:
"The internet makes it conveniently possible to avoid uncomfortable face to face interactions or phone calls. But that doesn't make it right. We're all still human beings and owe each other the dignity of not taking the easy or lazy way out when it comes to a conversation that may be difficult. All of us are becoming far too reliant on our gadgets and starved for real human connection."
Illustrating the last point is the following very funny piece about antisocial networking behaviors, as well as a clever spoof of that 1950's classroom staple, the Coronet Instructional Film.
And I can't in good conscience end this blog entry without serving up the real deal, a genuine 1953 Coronet Instructional Film, just the sort of thing that those readers who have attended the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival have sat through more than once.
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