Political inclinations can pretty much tell you everything you want to know about a person ahead of time. That's why when someone says something douchey conservative I call in for a chopper evac and ghost out of that dude's face real quick. I've been efficiently alerted we have nothing in common and that you're an aggressive, selfish baby who loves his lost tax money more than actual people, so let's just cancel this episode before the ratings go south, k? Talking brown about politics in someone's face is the verbal equivalent of walking down the street with a clipboard asking people questions about trees or whatever, or riding a bike on the sidewalk towing a cart full of recyclables and sleeping bags. All you can do when you see that shit is cross the street and hope you don't make eye contact. Get out of this dude's verbal blast zone stat.
More telling, political inclinations can be useful in predicting what people are actually scared of. That's why people who don't pay attention to politics and don't vote are so bad-ass: they aren't scared of shit. Being politically apathetic is like slapping a neon No Fear sticker on the back of your pick up truck in the nineties. Except the truck is your face. It's like getting a tattoo of Calvin and Hobbes pissing on some retarded city's sports logo, or more currently, like wearing one of those skin tight gothic tiger print in space t-shirts MMA fans are so fond of. It basically alerts everyone around you that you. just. don't. give. a. fuck.
But people who are into politics, they are specifically scared of certain things. For example, conservatives are scared of brown people, both of the terrorist and dish washing persuasion. Figuring out which is which, and the appropriate threat level response is hard for these dudes. Mostly because they don't actually know any brown people, but also because one group they want to banish from the face of the earth, and the other they just want to banish to the back of the kitchen. Conservatives are also scared that Obama wants to steal their guns and of the government getting too big. Paradoxically they want the biggest part of the government to be the ones with the missiles and the planes and the tanks. Conservatives aren't a very logical sort. Unless by logic you mean venal and spiteful and aggressive, which you don't because that would be sort of weird of you to mean that.
The big thing liberals (aka teenagers and people who still act like them online) are scared of these days is some corporation like Facebook stealing their privacy. Why? No one knows why, that's why. They're afraid that their computer habits are being collated into a dossier in some insidious computer terminal somewhere where evil advertisers twiddle their metaphoric mustaches. And they're right, this is obviously happening, but I don't understand why figuring out what advertisements to show me more efficiently constitutes some scary Orwellian future scenario. IN THE FUTURE BIG BROTHER KNOWS YOU LIKE "30 ROCK"!
How are these dudes even worthwhile villains? It's not like they're keeping a file on what type and how often I watch porn, right? Seriously they aren't doing that are they? Because yikes.
I can barely get worked up about stolen elections and illegal wars and the criminalization of vast swaths of our population through racial profiling laws what with all the celebrity gossip and hamburgers and illegal drugs I've got on my schedule for today and now I'm supposed to join some Apple fanboys in protest over more specifically targeted advertising?
How is a company knowing that I like to watch Lost and read books by Dennis Lehane and look for Indian restaurants or whatever an invasion of privacy? What can they do with that besides suggest other things that I like in a format (advertisements) that I ignore 95% of the time anyway?
If they were putting people who view left-leaning political blogs on a list and sharing that information with local law enforcement or something, then yes, yes that is very very bad. I don't think that is what this is. If they were putting people who write parodies of food bloggers on some sort of list somewhere and planning to send them to a concentration camp for reeducation into a perverted ice cream fetish cult, then sure, I'd protest that. Probably. Depends on, you know... nnhh.
But all they're actually trying to do is figure out how many times you pressed the like button on your buddy's Nickleback Facbeook group so they can let you know when the new album comes out. That's nothing to be scared of. Well, not until you hear the album anyway.
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11 comments:
My bit, but whatevs
Too slow fucker.
I like it when people comment on Facebook and everything, but when no one comments here it's like I'm throwing a party and no one shows up. Like the parties I throw in real life.
I resent that Facebook is now set up so that if I go "Woo, I like Fringe!" it somehow translates into money for News Corp. Just saying I like something now means I'm an advertisement for that thing, because they they auto-link your interests to pages now. And also it makes it so that Moby -- whom I like and all, because I bought Play back a hundred years ago or whatever, and he pops up on my iPod now and again and I'm like "Ah yes, good song," so I put him on my interests, what the hell -- Moby is now LINKED to me, and posts shit in my news feed. And I don't care. Moby's OK, but I don't want to hear his thoughts all the time or read that he's playing a gig in Lisbon or what have you. That's for people who are important to me, like Ryan Seacrest. I could block Moby, or take him out of my interests, but it's obnoxious that I have to do that.
So for me it's not really identity theft or whatever shadowy thing, it's that I don't want to automatically see targeted advertising for everything that I vaguely liked once. But Facebook is free so I should just shut up, I guess.
If only people didn't hate freedom so much, this wouldn't be an issue.
Fringe is probably on the list. Moby is definitely on the list. My bad. (Saying "My bad," also.)
See, it's not insidious, it's just annoying!
I do like Fringe though.
Facepage: On the List
I've commented on your parties. Does that count?
Yes, that counts.
insert comment here.
Moby in general vs. adding Moby to one’s Facebook interests (adding interests on Facebook) despite not liking the results. I’m a think on this one for a right while.
That's kind of a toss up there right?
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