Putting the "Anti" into Social Networking. . .

Mister Sloppy had left an urgent summons in my voicemail. Wise coyotes do not casually deny evil geniuses of his calibre. I hoofed it across Centretown.

When he buzzed me in, I followed the whooping to his secret subterranean lair, where his manic keyboarding – two computers at once – gave me pause. So did the plethora of vintage mega-sized Jolt Cola empties. He only cracks his stash when he's kickin' coding old-school. Which is never good for the state of world.

"Ummm, so, how long you been at this?" I asked.

"Since the Prime Minister got hisself posted on YouTube three days back" he said, keyclacks barely slowing. "If Jurassic politicos are pretending to use social media, it's finally jumped the megashark. They think they’ll go viral, I’ll give ‘em freakin’ viral! It's almost ready!"

"What is, Sloppy?" I asked.

Fevered blue eyes blazed.

"The Next Big Thing!" He purred, grinning, well, evilly. In capital letters. "AntiSocial Media! Facebook and Myspace are tossing net privacy under the bus, people are sick of tweeting, dorks who don't understand social media are trying to warp it back into old paradigms they do understand. So it comes to this! Is my new Antisocial Networking site not genius?"

He waved at his monitors. "Here! You can only set your relationship status to, "Alone", "It's complicated" or "None of your damned business"! It automatically rejects all friend requests! And the only reject options are, "No response"; "Ewwww"; an LMAO emoticon; or an autogenerated phrase saying, "I'd rather...." followed by a random act of self-mutilation!

His speed and pitch rose.

"You can’t control your own friends list, but all other users can remove anyone from it! When you comment on someone's status, or insult ‘em on a comment thread, it’s visible to anyone except them!

"And get this! There's no way to just follow anyone. It's only got a "stalk" option! A bot program pops up your photo on every website they browse. An automatic search for every web photo of them slams together a tribute album site that auto-links to every page that references them. The album background wallpaper can be either candles or hand-scrawled protestations of love.

"And only by paying for a premium license do users gain the power to file virtual restraining orders on their stalkers! But they only limit how many times your stalkers’s pictures pop up on websites you browse – you can never block ‘em entirely! Cool app, or what!!??"

"I love it!" I yelled, trying to match his fevered tone as I edged back up the stairs. "For masochists!"

He didn't notice. At the rate he was going, I figured he might safely pass out in a few hours. At least until I heard another Jolt fizz open. Ol' Slop was bellowing, somewhat musically, something like, "Yo ho ho, I'm gonna rule the w-o-o-oooorld!", as I let myself back out.

I hadda admit right then, that insanity other than my own can be kinda disconcerting...

RNDP 28: Using Facebook

No need for me to write anything this week. Ryan Dube at Makeuseof.com has written an excellent guide for men who want to use Facebook to find women.

3 Coolest Ways A Geek Can Get Girls To Notice Him On Facebook.

There's no indication on whether anyone at Makeuseof intends to write a companion piece for how girls can get geeks to notice them on Facebook, so I'll do it for them:

1. Get a Facebook account.
2. Put a picture of yourself in your profile.
3. Optional: List your relationship status as single.

This Week's Fun from Ottawa Blogs

Nik at Kill Everything had a fun Facebook chat with a woman, Sarah G, whose name showed up in some insulting graffiti. Sarah G didn't realize at first that Nik was actually doing her a good deed and lashed out at him. The way Nik turned it around is an example we can all learn from:

I was walking my dogs with my wife and we saw the graffiti. And I said, jokingly, "I wonder who Sarah G--- is? Maybe I should look her up in the phone book."

She laughed and said, "Look her up on Facebook."

So I punched in "Sarah G---" and your profile was obviously in Ottawa. So I sent you a message.

It struck me as vaguely funny. And your response ("fucking dick") made my wife and I laugh. So now everyone is happy.

Well, except maybe you. And maybe some other Sarah G.

Zoom over at Knitnut reported on Nov. 12th that XUP said she talks about her Gentleman Caller (GC) too much [ed: I disagree and would like to read more adventures of GC.] And so, Zoom announced that she will be mentioning XUP in every post until the end of the month.

P.S. A little birdie told me that XUP thinks I’m mentioning GC too often on my blog, so I’m going to mention XUP every day for the rest of November.

Do you see what is happening here ESIs? Zoom has already schooled us on Kitty blogging, Craft blogging, Local Politics Blogging and Photos of Dead People Blogging, but now she is coming after our main turf: Self-Referential Wanking (SRW)!

Hella Stella is going for a spa massage soon and tells us that this always brings to mind an experience she shared with her Better Half (BH) in India:

...actually, every time I get a spa massage I flash back to that time I was in India and decided to get a Aryuvedic massage with my BH. Then we got stripped down to nothing, oiled up, and spanked for over an hour. It was pretty much the worst massage EVER. The only thing my massage "therapist" could say in English was "ticklish?" and I had to laugh and nod because she wouldn't have understood "no, I'm bleeding internally." Then we limped back to the hotel.

Remember last week when Hella met Mae for the first time and told her that she loved the story about her vibrator [which was really a dildo] and the eight orgasms in one night?

Now Mae (or you) when you see Stella somewhere in public, can say "Stella, I love the story about you and your guy getting oiled up and spanked by women in India!"

Fourth Dwarf on Facebook

When I first heard about Facebook, I assumed it was the devil's tool. I still think it may be. 4th Dwarf announced last evening that he is a proud Facebook user and that he has lots of "friends", including an ex who solicited him to be her "friend" moments after his setting up the account.

I asked Dwarfie to explain what he does on Facebook and he said, "I talk to my friends." He seemed pleased with himself. He also talked about the "wall", and I never understood what this was all about. Writing on the wall? Everyone sees the writing on the wall? I don't get it.

Dwarfie was particularly proud of his Facebook photo which he said was very flattering. Congratulations to 4th Dwarf for being the most technologically advanced Irregular!