Sunday, March 27, 2011

Quirks (that Facebook aggressively forces upon me)

I have always been a fan of social networking, since way back when Myspace was actually relevant and not just a way to get yourself email spammed.  And I'm not a fan simply because suck sites cater to my sometimes ridiculously introverted personality, and not because it's probably the only way I could possible keep up with friends these days, but rather because it allows me a voyeuristic (yet totally legal and completely un-creepy) peek into some of the quirks my friends have.  Which is also a reason I don't tend to post much at all on Facebook; I'm aware enough of my many, many ridiculous quirks and odd habits that I don't want to call attention to them, let alone make them forever available on the internet to a plethora of individuals.

I find that I never really pay much attention to the news feed on Facebook these days.  If I'm wondering about a specific friend, I'll just check on them directly so I don't have to wade through all the people trying to trade me cabbage or salted pork on Farmville or whatever is popular these days. And I tend to block a lot of people.  In fact, I likely have 90% of people on there where their posts don't show up in my feed. I've left my best friend unblocked, who never uses Facebook anyway, a few other close friends, and perhaps a girl I'm pining over so I can be heartbroken when "such and such is in a relationship" pops up on my screen.

The odd thing I find is, a lot of the people I tend to block I specifically will go to their page to see if they are doing any of the strange stuff I blocked them for in the first place.  It's one of those train wreck situations, except instead of not being able to look away, I was able to look away, drive down the road where I discovered a better route to take so I never had to go the original way again, but then I not only take this new way but keep circling back to check the site of the wreck again to see if another, possibly even worse wreck has taken place. And there always is.

It's not even that I mind their behavior/posting habits, it's just sort of that I want to keep certain things organized in a given way. It's almost like I'm trying to organize information that gets pushed into my brain like I would with bookmarks. Do I want to see a person constantly complaining about their spouse?  I have 3 friends I can check out for that. How about if I want to see some funny videos that everyone has already seen about 4 years ago? I know who posts that stuff in present day. And maybe I want to see all the posts that scream "mid-life crisis"?  I know where to go for that too.

What made me actually start this post before I got extremely side-tracked was a friend's photo post that got me laughing.  It was as if this person was trying to fit ever possible manly stereotype into a single photograph. Let your imagination paint this for you.

The photograph is a self-taken photograph.  Even if later evidence didn't make this obvious, it just had that look to it.  The distance from the subject and the angle. If it had been a teenage girl in the photo, she'd have been making the duck face.

In the photo, the guy: 

- has sunglasses on.
- has headphones from his iPod in.
- is actively drinking from a beer bottle.
- has a giant cigar (picture Baby in Roger Rabbit) between his fingers in the same hand that is sipping the beer.
- has a newly purchased sports car in the background.
- ALSO has a grill in the background, on which steaks are cooking.
-
and has on a sleeve-less shirt but I'm not sure if that adds or distracts from the overall image.

The only thing missing is a hot girl in a bikini and the big game playing on a giant TV.

Honestly I have to say I'm pretty impressed he was able to fit all of this in a single shot by taking an arm's length self-shot cell phone photo. That takes skill. Or a lot of proper placement and practice.

Oh and as far as HOW I know it was self-shot.  You could see him holding his phone in the reflection of his sunglasses, which I found oddly hilarious. The best part is you could also see several people sitting at a table watching him take this photo, which makes me wonder why they didn't do it for him. Maybe they didn't want to be involved in something so ridiculous. 

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