Face Time

Posted on February 9th, 2009

So, I’m on Facebook now.

And after a few weeks I still don’t comprehend the appeal of any of these social network sites. Why would anyone want to “friend” someone they lost touch with 20 years ago? Seriously, if you lost touch with someone long ago don’t you think there was a reason? Maybe you’ve forgotten how much you hated their egotistical, self-centered view of the world. Perhaps they did something horrible to a friend of yours and you stopped taking their calls. Hell, maybe they just have bad body odor. Whatever the reason was, you stopped keeping in touch and now, after all this time has passed and your lives have been going fine without each other, you’re suddenly interested in them again?

I call bull.

I think I’ve got a valid working hypothesis for why these sites are so popular, and it goes a little something like this… every person is the star of the movie in their own head and believes that all the people they once knew MUST be missing them something fierce. Face it, if you’re on Facebook you probably have 50+ “friends” half of which you don’t really know or care about knowing but still want to be “friends” with because… well, why exactly? Why do people feel the need to “know” all these people online that they would only speak to once in their lives in real life? There are people I know who think it’s awesome that they’ve been able to get back in touch with their first love, who’s now twice divorced and living in a trailer park, even though they haven’t thought about them in 25 years. I also have some friends who are actively searching for people just to compare their lives and make themselves feel better about the choices they’ve made since losing touch with that old flame or professor who told them they’d never amount to anything.

What’s the point in that?

Honestly, I can’t understand the draw of reestablishing contact with the very same people you actively, or passively, lost touch with in the past. Are there a few people I’d like to “catch up with” from my past? Of course. But I’m man enough to admit that the ONLY reason I’d want to know what they were doing would be to compare my life to theirs and make sure that I was in a better place than they so I could go to sleep at night with a smile on my face knowing that I made the right choice in leaving them behind. And if they were doing better than I? I’d cut them off and lose touch again in a heartbeat. I mean, who needs a constant reminder that you made a mistake? Shallow? Yep. Sad? Uh-huh.

The deep down honest truth? You betcha.

I’ve been told that even though I don’t “get” it now, I would if I were willing to use my real name on Facebook and started reaching out to my current friends. That way I could finally start using Facebook the way it was meant to be used, to keep in touch with the people I care about and to see what they’re doing every minute of every day via their status updates/news feed/wall. Of course, once you have more than 20 or so friends you begin to get news overload and have to start filtering out some people which kind of defeats the whole purpose. Then there’s all the little “pokes”, “tags”, “polls” and other junk people send you. It just seems to me that after a very short while it would all become more and more like noise rather than anything useful. Maybe I’m just jaded, or perhaps I’m too much of a paranoid individual, but I really don’t understand the appeal of divulging my REAL personal information in the hopes of being virtually popular with people I already know in real life, and/or with people I’ve purposefully forgotten in real life.

But hey, maybe it’s just me.

Maybe I’m just too old, or boring, or stupid to understand the obvious appeal of these social networking websites. These close-walled gardens of friendly stalkers and ego-mirrors. They’ve certainly been around long enough to have died if they were going to die, but here they are still going strong. I blame it on all the lonely people with nothing better to do than constantly check their “walls” and update the world about how their last Starbucks coffee wasn’t nearly as good as the one from yesterday even though the girl behind the counter is still the cutest coffee barrister in a 50-mile radius. Of course, all this might come off a little silly seeing as how I’m a Blogger and all. But the truth is that a blogger can be anonymous to strangers but known to friends which allows a certain kind of freedom to express yourself. The social networking sites however, don’t really work unless you are using your real name which is great if you’re only interested in finding “friends” or if you don’t care about your privacy, but really sucks for those of us who don’t want all the people we no longer care to know to find us. Honestly, do you want your 8th grade Spanish teacher to contact you again and remind you how much you sucked at Spanish? Which reminds me, my Jr. high school Spanish teacher flunked me 5 semesters in a row.

Mr. Brown, you suck!

Filed under Experiments, Rants | 3 Comments »

Product Of The Century

Posted on September 7th, 2006

You never know when inspiration will strike.

Last weekend, while sitting in a restaurant eating brunch, I overheard two young ladies discussing the sorry state of their dating lives. Now, by the way these two ladies were describing their sex lives, you’ll forgive me for first assuming they were auditioning for a new “Sex & The City” spinoff or something because between the two of them they appeared to be dating about 20 men at the same time. And yet, no matter how many men they dated in a month, they couldn’t seem to find Mr. Right. Even when they slept with their date’s roommate or brother.

Awwww… pity.

At some point the loud and increasingly annoying conversation suddenly turned into a discussion of the possible gayness of the men these ladies wanted to date, but as of yet had not. One lady would throw out a name to the other who would then voice her opinion on that mans possible gayness factor and then she would throw another name back at the first lady and etc., etc., etc.

Which got me thinking.

There are plenty of guys out there who seem very effeminate but who aren’t homosexual at all, and then there are the guys who are homosexuals but seem very heterosexual in their demeanor. I’m sure that right this very second, each and every one of you reading this are thinking of someone you know who has this problem, someone who seems to be sending out signals that don’t match with their claimed sexual orientation. And now you’re wondering how anyone will ever be able to tell unless someone is rude enough to simply walk up to the guy and ask him if he’s gay.

Luckily, I have developed a better way.

Through the miracle of science and CafePress, I have invented a method that will now and forever answer the age old question of a mans sexual orientation without the embarrassment one would face by actually asking. Quite simply, by using what I have been so clever to invent no one will ever question a man’s sexual orientation ever again. So, without further ado, I introduce to you The Wearable Gaydar Validators!

The Flaming Tee and the Manly-Man Tee!

So, if you or someone you know is a very effeminate but heterosexual man, they should buy (or you should purchase for them) the Manly-Man Tee. If they are a very masculine seeming gay man, they should buy (or, again, you should purchase for them) The Flaming Tee. Buy as many as you can afford, because it is up to you to help end the plight of all the mis-categorized men the world over. These poor, unfortunate guys are unable to fend for themselves and need your help to survive in the cutthroat world of the modern dating scene. Without these shirts, men the world over might spend the rest of their lives in their clean, minimalist and impeccably furnished apartments, or sitting in front of a TV on a stained black leather couch while eating pizza out of the cardboard box, wondering why they just can’t find their soulmate.

And that would be sad.

Filed under Breaking News, Experiments | 3 Comments »

Easy Days

Posted on August 23rd, 2006

I’m being lazy today.

I’m just sitting around the house, playing Halo, surfing the web and napping. All in all, a completely lazy in a good way day. So, instead of writing another long, convoluted story here today I thought I might just ask you a question instead. And you can answer in the comments if you want. Or just ignore me and click over to something you find more entertaining. So, since I want to get back to playing Halo ASAP, here is the Mighty Question of the Day.

What is the dumbest lie you ever tried to get away with telling?

Filed under Experiments | 5 Comments »

A Question Of Self-Pity

Posted on August 14th, 2006

I’ve often wondered what would happen if I were to stop posting.

Not that I plan on giving up this website, mind you. Nor am I considering disappearing and never writing anything on the web ever again. Far from it, actually. Truth be told, I really enjoy bearing my soul for laughs to an uncaring, unseen mass of people who have nothing better to do with their lives but judge me based on my words. And all the writing I do is in the hopes that someone out there will find it in their heart to like me enough to acknowledge my existence, if only for the short moment it takes for them to type “U R fun-E” in the comments.

Which, I’m dismayed to say, no one ever has.

So don’t worry about me quitting, because that’s not going to happen. I’m no quitter. Nope. Not me. Hey, if I were a quitter I would have quit long ago. Back when quitting was the fashionable thing to do. As was sudden reappearances under different names on different websites just so the quitters could get their daily fix of adulation. Nosireebob, I’m no mindless trend follower like some people I could mention but won’t because they’re no longer on the web so mentioning them would serve no purpose except to fill my site with dead links and thus piss you off.

And yet I still wonder.

I wonder if anyone out there would actually miss me if I were gone. Would someone who reads my words on a semi-daily basis, you for example, actually shed a tear if one day TMG was nothing more than a “Page Not Found – 404 Error?” Would you send out a search party to find out what had happened to me? Would you even furrow your brow in a questioning way? Or would you simply shrug, click over to your favorite pr0n site and say, “What a loser” as you unscrew the top of your favorite lotion?

What would you do minion? What. Would. You. Do?

Filed under Experiments | 11 Comments »

What I Do During A Heat Wave

Posted on August 3rd, 2006

Whew, it’s hot.

It’s so hot that I saw people on the street make the conscious choice to spontaneously combust, not to commit suicide, but simply as a method of cooling off. Seriously, when it’s as hot and humid as it is outside right now (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit with 40% humidity in NYC) and you have to walk over 20 city blocks while carrying a heavy package, you cannot help but contemplate death as a serious alternative to being outside.

But there is an upside.

You see, when it’s this hot outside I like to grab some cold drinks and plop myself down on a bench, in the shade of course, and people watch. I just love to watch the sweet, hottie ladies wandering around in their summer outfits glistening with sexy sweat. On a day like today the girls are out in force in their tight, wife-beater t-shirts and short, shorts.

And sweet lord, most of them even forgo their bras.

Now, you might be thinking that I’m nothing more than a dirty old man… and you’re probably right. But the truth is that when it’s so fricking hot outside that the pigeon population is expected to dwindle because most of their eggs are frying in the nest, you’ll take any bit of pleasure you possibly can wherever you can find it. And since I also expect that sooner or later this month there will be a blackout in my neighborhood and I’ll have to suffer in this crazy heat without air conditioning or refrigeration to save me, I think that it’s my right… no, it’s my moral obligation, to watch the hot & sweaty hotties walk by as I sip a cold beverage and pretend not to see their rock-hard nipples through their almost sheer shirts.

Oh yeah. God bless those air-conditioned shoe stores.

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