Tag Archives: internet

Privacy? What’s That?

It’s amazing to me that people are all up in arms about the government gathering data on so many of us, so often, that they have to built a whole new big data center to store data about our phone calls.

Considering that most of our addresses, names, places of work and other intimate data are plastered all over privately owned sites online, I’d pretty much consider our government completely clueless if it wasn’t gathering data of its own.

Oh, you can cry all you want about invasion of privacy and tax dollars and boo hoo hoo (and it seems we’ve found an issue here for the far left and the far right to both agree on)…but for years now, most of you have been giving your personal data away online, willingly, to often be sold to companies. Facebook does it all the time, and that’s just the biggest offender.

But you do it because you like the convenience of things like online shopping and you like having social media outlets that you don’t have to pay for. You give away a bunch of really personal, valuable stuff for a pittance (allowing yourself to be screwed over) because it’s worth it to most of you to be screwed over.

Well, guess what? You get a lot of benefits from the federal government, like highways, some modicum of protection of our food supply, regulation of pharmaceuticals so that they’re less likely to kill us while treating the symptoms of a disease, disaster relief, military protection and so much more.

Does it feel good to know the government is spying on all of us all the time?

No.

But why feign surprise now? Why be outraged?

You’ve been giving it away for free for ages already.

Mind Yourself Online

So, class, what has this week taught us when it comes to politics and the Internet?

If you improperly frame and incorrectly relate a key part of early American history (Paul Revere’s famous “the British are coming” ride, for example), a good rule of thumb, when appearing on TV shortly thereafter following all the ridicule, would be to say, “I was on the spot, and I flubbed things up a bit and got a couple different elements of Paul Revere’s life mixed together and a little off the mark on a couple points.” The response is not to say, “I know my history” and then to remain silent as your supporters try to alter the Wikipedia entry on Paul Revere to match your fictitious view of things.

Why?

Because the message is everywhere, and no matter how many supporters you have, the truth is going to come out and more people are likely to shake their heads in disgust at you than to nod their heads in support.

Also, if you have been flirting on Twitter with some young lady, and sent her a picture of your penis and possibly other parts of your manly body, and that gets out, claiming to have been hacked, expressing uncertainty about whether that’s your junk on display, and dodging questions is not the way to go.

It’s the Internet Age. The truth will come out. If it’s your dick online, it’s going to be revealed as such. You cannot hide, and every day you duck and dodge makes it worse. Just come out and say, “I flirted online, as many people do, and it got a little out of hand. I apologize, and I’m embarrassed at myself. On the other hand, I’m far from alone in having done this, and I was not nearly as creepy as many folks who do.”

Own your mistake. Take the power of shaming you away from the media and the public and your political enemies, many of whom have worse sexual skeletons in the closet. Don’t undermine yourself with lies that you must have known couldn’t hold up, assuming you have even half the brains Jon Stewart gives you credit for having.

That’s our lesson on Internet reality for today.

Thank you.

Now go about the regular tweeting of your gonads and messing up of history that you should have paid more attention to in high school and college.

I know I will.

Internet: The New Golden Calf by Miz Pink

So knowing that Deke has been lacking in Internet connection the past few days I strongly considered the possibility of simply taking over the blog and making a few housekeeping changes. Ya know, a brighter cheerier main banner, a WordPress template thats heavy on the pinks and purples…But then I remembered that he knows where I live.

Instead I’ve used Deke’s internet woes as inspiration and got to wondering if the Internet is our modern day idol to worship. The latest false god to put before God himself.

No, I’m not planning on giving up my Web fixes. Not asking you to either. But I think alot of us if we looked really hard at our use of the Internet (blogs, discussion boards, online games, social networking sites, online publications, etc etc etc) I think we might find that we spend more time there than we used to in front of the boob tube. And alot of us still spend a lot of time sucking the glass teat too to get our fix of reality TV and whatever else.

I think alot of us feel lost and/or angry when we lose that Internet connection. We start fiending like addicts in some cases. And I think many of us are TOO connected now thanks to Blackberries and Twitter and stuff like that.

No I don’t think giving up the online action is the answer because being connected has many positives. But I think we need to watch ourselves, lest we put our online desires before our more pressing needs like actually working on important things, spending time with family and…oh yeah…God too.