#Bashtag

We are a species of complainers.

Growing up, my otherwise conservative and sensible mother unwittingly gave me a peek into the world of complaint-driven society. Two things stand out in my memory: when Mom wanted to get somewhere and another driver impeded her progress? Let's just say that if her car had an app for instantly revoking someones driver license, Mom would have worn that sucker out.

Coffee. Specifically hot coffee. I can't recall a time when we were in a restaurant and Mom did not send her after-dinner coffee back because it wasn't hot enough. Nowadays we have people suing restaurants for incidents involving too-hot coffee.

                         Did she think she was ordering frappucino?

Many of our complaints today inhabit the universe of goods and services. Who hasn't experienced an epic fail when attempting an online purchase, been on the receiving end of a totally mixed-up lunch order, or had Mr./Miss/Mrs. Customer Service make you feel like Eeyore on a bad day. JC Penney has captured the essence of this phenomena in their series of television ads featuring Ellen (last name not required if you live on Earth).

This commercial has complaint written all over it. Ellen starts off complaining about the smell; the cowboy outside the store obviously thinks Ellen is weird after the second series of horse-calling tongue clicks; the gossiping woman in the store is thinking to herself, 'How pushy!' when Ellen elbows in with, "Are you in line?" and then we get the crowning moment...the coupons. It's bad enough that I can't see or hear that word without having Ron White smirking inside my head, "Coo-puns." JC Penney obviously believes coupons are evil and, rightly so, we should be mad as heck about having to use them.

It used to be, back in the day, that you had to get in front of someone to complain. Then, we had the telephone, which allowed us to complain in local and long distance monaural freedom. I wonder if people complained via Morse code over the old wire? Can't you just hear it? Dit dit dah...dit dah dit dah...(Train coming...on time...my arthritis is acting up and them dang rustlers stole ten head of my prize-winning Holsteins).

But nowadays, we can complain on a whole new level - social networking. I am on Facebook and Twitter, although I still haven't figured out what the big deal is about tweeting. It seems like Facebook for people with short attention spans. Seriously, isn't text messaging sufficient for random, pointed thoughts? However this article on the BBC highlights how Twitter, especially, is being embraced as the new tool of modern complaint. And apparently, the corporate world listens when someone (or a hundred someones) tweets.

I'm not immune to the complaining bug; it's so easy to open that door just a crack and let out one little, 'Can you believe what Jimmy's dad did at the soccer game?' and then the next thing you know you're lighting up with your crew after church - still in the parking lot - taking shots at Jimmy, the rude checkout clerk at the grocery store, your boss, every driver in the world besides you...it's easy; there's a lot of low hanging fruit in the garden of complaint.

I don't know what the cure is. But I'm pretty sure Twitter isn't it.

I try to remember Philippians 2:14, Do all things without grumbling or questioning [ESV] (i.e. complaining).

Ephesians 4:29 [ESV] gets a little more specific: Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

It may not be as much fun as snickering about Bob as he walks by the water cooler, but we'll all be better off in the long run. I promise you, I'm trying as hard as I can!

What do you think?

X

I'm ignorant

I pitched in with my two cents last night; and now I'm ignorant. I'm well over 100 laps through my own little Daytona 500 of life. So it came as a bit of a shock that at this stage of the race I'm considered ignorant.

Let me provide some context.

A young friend of mine, a bright and thoughtful individual, posted something on Facebook about atheists. I wasn't creeping on Facebook so I didn't catch on until late in the evening, and by the time I arrived at the discussion, there were over 120 comments.

Footnote: It should come as no surprise that any thread to do with religion (or the lack thereof) will generate significant (strong) opinions.

                  I hear these guys got into it, too...

I wish I could give you direct quotes and provide the full context but, alas, the thread has been removed. Perhaps my young friend decided that enough mud-slinging had been accomplished; or maybe the sheer weight of comments was threatening to crash his Facebook page. Who knows?

The crux of my ignorance seems to stem from a comment I made in jest concerning the formation of the universe, the earth and everything. Proponents of the Big Bang theory believe that a long time ago, our universe was in an extremely hot and dense state. Then we had some rapid expansion causing rapid cooling which allowed energy to be converted into various subatomic particles. And so on and so forth until, voila!, here we are.

         I think this sums it up nicely

In my rush to be pithy, I commented that the last time I checked, 0 x 0 = 0.

You would have thought I'd called Einstein a crackpot.

By my cleverly accurate but totally irellavent mathematical formula, I apparently set off the scientific equivalent of the Atheist alarm and one of the participants got all huffy about it and called me ignorant. Or at least posited that my inference was ignorant; assuming that my inference meant that it was impossible for the Big Bang theory to adequately account for the development of life as we know it.

We got off into all sorts of finger-pointing and counter-inferring and all that; well, he did because I didn't even check the thread again until I was getting ready for bed and by that time it was way too late for me to rustle up enough motivation to worry about it. So I issued a quick apology for my ignorance and went to sleep, figuring I'd visit the thread this morning and explain my position in more detail. But alas, the thread has disappeared faster than a gamma ray burst.

The thing I find most ironic about this entire series of events is that it was the participant on the science side of the aisle - whom I assume is an atheist - who resorted to name calling. Normally the Christians will get all defensive about people attacking the idea that God created the universe and everything in it. To paraphrase, name-calling is the last recourse of the weak minded.

So who is really ignorant here?

I don't know; what do you think?

X

Whatever Happened to MySpace?

Not too long ago, you couldn't navigate the wide waters of the Internet without seeing a reference to MySpace or hearing about one of your friends' latest posts, someone else's latest post or something. Heck, not too long ago, I was OCD about Mobsters and a couple of other MySpace games.

My name is X and I was a Mobsters addict...

I needed an intervention.

The appeal of MySpace - at least for me - was that you could customize your profile with cool wallpaper, section it off to let your friends know your deep, dark secrets - at least what movies you liked and what books you read; you could even embed some cool music and take advantage of a few other neat features. It was the Internet equivalent of getting a tattoo. Deeply personal, in that, "Hey, look at me; I'm cool," sort of way. You've noticed by now that although I've highlighted MySpace, I haven't linked to it. Sorry, no can do...

After a couple of months, I started noticing something: although there were older people like me on MySpace, a lot of the people I played against or happened to chat with were young - a lot younger than me. And while it's cool to hang out with young people and vicariously relive that time in your life, conversations that begin with, "How old are you?" don't typically go very high on the intellect scale. I'm not an intellectual; I don't even play one on television. It's just that, for the most part, tastes in music, movies, life, and discussions about socially relevant topics don't come off very well on MySpace, especially when one of the conversants complains, "This is like arguing with my dad!"

Me leaving MySpace is probably the Internet equivalent of pulling your finger out of the ocean. The water quickly closes over the hole and there is no sign that your finger was ever in the water. I doubt anyone is sitting around, these several years later saying, "Gee, whatever happened to X; that guy was cool."

No; I'm not really cool. But this train of thought got me wondering. If I eventually found MySpace to be a bit of a bore, packing up and taking my social media presence to FaceBook (and Blogger), I wonder if anyone else did? In fact, I wondered if MySpace was still out there, chugging away on the Internet, signing up indie musicians, rebel teens and old folks looking to be hip just one more time.

The answer appears to be yes, and no.

According to a list I found on Wikipedia highlighting social networking sites with more than 100 million users, MySpace isn't cutting the mustard; it's not on the list at all. Unsurprisingly, FaceBook is king with a reported number of active users exceeding 800 million. That's pep. 800 million-plus active users. Not just people that signed up to see what all the fuss was about - people signing in and doing business.

The remainder of the list - which contains only thirteen sites - is made up of a few I've heard of like Windows Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the new kid on the block, Google+. The remainder are a complete blank to me. Has anyone checked their Vkontakte account lately? Apparently more than 140 million users have; at least as of October 2011.

Vkontakte - In contact is the loose translation - is considered to be a FaceBook clone popular in Russia and a few of the ex-Soviet republics.

                            From Russia, with like...

Take that, MySpace.

But don't be sad, according to one social networking survey I stumbled on, MySpace is still ranked a respectable number 2, behind FaceBook and ahead of several others that appear to have a more active subscriber base. So, at least according to TopTen Reviews, MySpace is still relevant for a segment of the population. It just appears that it's an ever-decreasing segment.

And if you link to the survey page, you'll even notice that, across the top of the page is the prompt:

LIKE OUR REVIEWS? SUPPORT OUR SITE BY LIKING US ON FACEBOOK OR GOOGLE PLUS...

I think that's a more telling statistic than the entire survey report ever will be...

What do you think about social networking? Where are you hanging out?

X