Talkback Tuesday: ‘Big trouble in little China’

T A L K B A C K   T U E S D A Y

RECENTLY, I did some whistleblowing at a world-famous site. Not quite in the stature of Eddie the Nationally Insecure Snowman (geddit?), but I did reveal my part in the rise and fall of ethics in a certain ‘wordprocessing’ practice.

(via messiah.edu via outoppie)

Social sins to avoid for fun and profit (2/2)

FROM PART 1

CONTINUING our fact-filled, fun-loving overview of social absurdistanisms committed by turd-breathed aficionados of the bubble-living life:—

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JOBHUNT EYESORE WHORE-BORE

GAFFE: Asking for leads all the time, especially in public view and at the outset.

WHY: Go see an agency! Some of you are so naff that, the moment you become friends with us, you almost immediately ask for job or other leads. You’re desperate. You’re overwhelmed with the prospect of not being able to pay the rent or feed yourself or have a place to get laid. We know — we’re in the same boat too! This gaffe isn’t limited only to jobs.

MESSAGE: “This is a business relationship and you’re no good to me if my knowing you doesn’t lead to a job, house, etc.” We could say the same thing about you though. Get my drift?

RED FLAGS: 60% online, 40% real life:—

1. 5 minutes after friending, Whore-Bore sends a message about a jobhunt
2. 2 hours later, Whore-Bore sends another message to move in with you
3. 3 days later, Whore-Boar asks for a personal loan “to fly to this place for a job interview”
4. “I’m pretty sure you know someone who’s hiring, etc”
5. “What do you mean you don’t know, have nothing, etc?!”
6. “You mean to tell me I went through this for that?!”
7. “I know you can do it for me“
8. “Where can I find a job that pays well with a light workload?”
9. “I don’t want to do this unless I get payment or it’s not worth my while“
10. a jobhunt specification sheet that rivals NASA’s for astronauts

I’m not joking — these are f@cking real.

FIX YOURSELF: Offer some no-strings-attached advice or help first. Over time, you’ll land a job. Or a place to private enough to do your own handjobs in.

Read the dedicated on this behaviour

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CURSE OF THE SPACE INVADERS

GAFFE: Using other people’s space, time, etc, to market yourself.

WHY: Don’t market yourself on anybody’s space, time, website, etc. Don’t even appear to be doing that. You’re taking liberties. You’re taking people for a ride. You step on people’s toes. You insult people’s intelligence and good grace. You’re taking yourself out of the loop faster than a hairy transvestite whore in a latex corset going down on an undercover cop on his day off.

MESSAGE: “I’m a freeloader.” “Social networking is for me to share your space as my marketing billboard.” “You’re fair game, buddy.” Runtery, in a word.

RED FLAGS: 40% online, 60% real life:—

1. accept Darth AnalVader‘s friend request and within 2 seconds he writes self-promo crap on your Facebook wall: “My name is Adam Henry and I am a space invader to help people to invade Uranus” (geddit? Ur-anus?)
2. Darf Analraider butts in your conversation (especially without apologising): “I can help you with that”
3. instead of a 5-second pitch in a lift, Barf Analspacer won’t let go of your arm (or balls) and give a 10-minute lecture in the lift
4. “I am the best available resource you have before you”
5. Larf Analsayer puts in links in blog comments about other services or your own
6. “soloing techniques”
7. ‘knocking’ marketing techniques

FIX YOURSELF: Find a way to get invited to do your thing on their space, time or whatever first. If you are writing for somebody, then it’s okay to do a short bio in the footnote. Otherwise, don’t muscle in on other people’s action. Naff extraordinaire.

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BALANCE SHEET FREAK

GAFFE: Constantly talking about benefits vs. drawbacks, especially in monetary terms.

WHY: If there’s one thing more offensive than listening to a Wall Street guy talk, it is to hear a non-Wall Street person talk like a bloody walking balance sheet about non-monetary things. We can do cost-benefit analysis on you too, you know.

MESSAGE: “I use people.” You’re cunning. You’re calculating. You’re greedy. You’re riding people just for the money. You see nothing besides the lowest common denominator (which I dubbed “the lowest common daemonator“). Srsly, that’s just offensive. In a word, jealousy.

RED FLAGS: 50% online, 50% real life, 101% trouble:—

1. advantages vs. disadvantages, especially about things that have no such clear-cut boundaries (e.g. divorce, adoptions, having kids)
2. advantages of own interests vs. disadvantages of the interests of others
3. rationalising own choices vs. knocking the choices of others
4. continually mentioning the prices of this or that
5. “I derive benefits from living at home” (oh god!)
6. continually comparing if one thing (say, one person’s language) is better or worse than another
7. continually comparing the relative ages of people getting into certain jobs
8. continually comparing the relative hierarchies of jobs
9. continually comparing the relative benefits and security of job positions
10. all of the above before even getting close to entering those sectors

FIX YOURSELF: Compare how well you will have done without comparing and how badly you are doing now with it. Stop comparing things. Whenever we see you compare intangibles, our first reaction is you’re also comparing us — very, very judgmental. Is this what you want us to do to you? Compare the alternatives.

REMARKS: You’re just green with jealousy about everything. Why else would you keep up this comparing? You compare because you don’t have the balls. If you have any, they’re probably shrunken and dried up anyway. So you do the next best thing available: shrivelled-up miscomparisons.

Making comparisons gives you no advantage because your comparisons are mostly circular and lead to nowhere. There’s no advantage to your economic, monetary or employment well-being because you’re not even ‘there’ yet.

The disadvantages to you are enormous:—

1. you lose us
   
2. you lose out
3. no feedback for you about whether your comparisons are ringing true or not
4. we secretly told your incestuous parents that you’re treating them like a meal ticket

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ASKHOLES

GAFFE: You ask questions all the time but won’t allow others to ask you back.

WHY: It’s not limited to asking for advice. It’s just asking questions all the time. What’s worse is the Askhole puts the query nearly always in the same format. This unlovely trait goes hand in hand with being stiff. The only mental agility shown by the Askhole is in coming up with endless permutations of the same stupid questions.

MESSAGE: “You’re nothing more than a walking dictionary, thesaurus, reference book, etc, to me. I use you at my convenience and whim.” Then your mewling quim of a face needs to be bashed in.

RED FLAGS: All the goddamn time everywhere and anywhere:—

1. no initiative to contact you
2. not 2 minutes into a conversation, you’re asked for advice
3. not 2 messages in, you’re facing some kind of query
4. the query is nearly always in the same format for the last 4 years
5. “I need some advice” — but you’re never told what the advice is for
6. the queries are always in the 35- to 50-word range, hardly ever longer
7. your responses to the Askhole are always nearly the length of a treatise
8. the moment you put a question to the Askhole, he clams up completely
9. give a constructive answer, it’s ignored completely or not read it at all
10. give a offhand answer, the Askhole complains “you don’t give a shit”
11. you get the nagging feeling the Askhole is farming you for midterm essay answers
12. the Askhole pretends his language skills aren’t up to par with your answer, so that forces you to explain and re-explain things

FIX YOURSELF: It’s a stretch, but try telling the Askhole to just stop the faggotry and behave like a normal person for at least 5 minutes a day. That might just make it possible for others to hire the Askhole as an overnight janitor in a cow-dung recycling plant.

REMARK: I can’t honestly see a fix for runts like them, mainly because it’s so much in their dirty inborn (and inbred) character to play mindgames.

PROTIP: Immediate Action: use the Enron comeback on these people:—

by Jeffrey Skilling, CEO and COO, Enron Corporation, ca. 1999–2000

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BE SOCIABLE.

IT’S YOUR LIFE. YOU ONLY GET ONE.

_____

ABOUT | TOP POSTS | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | MIRROR | SISTER BLOG

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012. (B12273)

Images: “Call me a slut” via Firstcovers.com | “You can’t sit with us” via The Goldin Chyld | Balance Sheet via Small Business Finance Tips | Askhole via Vintage Metal Art | “Enron: ask why, asshole” via Psychobabblepress.

Social sins to avoid for fun and profit (1/2)

RULES of social intercourse change constantly, not just for social networking sites but in real life too. Whatever the rules, they rest on one longstanding property.

In a word, sociability.

In two words, sociability wins.

In three words, sociability wins friends.

In four, sociability gets jobs now.

Go on, sabotage your money-earning, career-advancing capabilities.

So you’re in it for the moolah — yes, we can relate to that too. But no moolah for you if you’re unsociable. We spend our time and buck for the maximum bang. True fact, that.

Common social gaffes online and in real life to avoid, boys and girls:—

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INVISIBILITY

GAFFE:— Invisibility.

WHY:— Are you deliberately stupid or were you born this dumb? To remain invisible in social intercourse or networking is the greatest sin of all.

MESSAGE:— “I’m defensive and unsociable.” It’s nothing to do with privacy, no matter which way you explain it away. On a social-networking site, you’re saying you couldn’t make up your mind. Worse, you’re telling the world you’re just another nosey parker, prying into the affairs of others. That’s just not appealing to most people, man. Srsly.

RED FLAGS (online):— Not in any particular order:—

• no email address anywhere on the personal homepage
• no profile picture
• won’t put up one measly photo of a blank wall once in a while
• practically no updates ever since you’ve ‘friended’ them a couple of years ago
• practically all interactive functions disabled (i.e. everything set to ‘private’)
• online presence nearly always set to ‘invisible’
• the fusspot is regularly online despite the above
• almost every communication is through private messages
• dozens or even hundreds of friends but only a handful of mutual friends with you

RED FLAGS (real life):— Not in any particular order:—

• refusal to dress up or even just to wear anything appropriate for the occasion
• arguments with others on inconsequential matters
• not keeping things ‘light’
• “soloing techniques”
• listening in total silence (so there’s absolutely no visual or auditory feedback if you’re actually talking to a wall)

Listening to someone in total silence is stark raving reality to any of you who’ve had some dealing with Far Easterners, who don’t seem to realise they have this highly unlovely habit. They can excuse themselves, but it’s plain passive-aggressiveness any which way we look at it.

FIX YOURSELF:— It’s no big deal to just write a few words or put up a photo. It makes the whole process a little more human and warm. If someone’s going to discriminate against you because of what you say or show, you probably wouldn’t want to be with them anyway. Likewise, if you’re the type who thinks others will discriminate, they wouldn’t want to be with you, period. Lurk, and you’re just confirming to others what they suspect already — another nosey parker.

FACT:— Facebook monitors accounts with high privacy settings for contraband trading (drugs, etc), human trafficking, terrorism, paedophilia and other criminal activities. You don’t honestly think a website that can handle 600 million users and all their crap doesn’t have the capability to do that, do you?

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STIFFNESS

GAFFE:— Being stiff.

WHY:— This far too frequently goes hand in hand with invisibility. It automatically puts you in the category of an irrelephant: like someone turning up for a casual weekend ‘do’ in businesswear. Some people are naturally stiffer than others — we get that, truly. We want to protect our privacy (who doesn’t?) and don’t want all and sundry t0 hang out and spread over a wide area like it’s a plane crash. But no one wants to see your minimum info shut off or hear you rehash the same line after line parrot-fashion either.

MESSAGE:— Stiffness = unresourcefulness. Can you imagine a stiff person who’s resourceful? We live in changing times where change happens a million times a second. Can you dovetail to that? Stiffness really shows a person has a lethargic outlook to life in that the person can’t be bothered to keep up with things, preferring others to accede to his own preferences. Enough said.

RED FLAGS:— 100% online, 100% real life:—

1. not changing the subject and not changing your mind (fanaticism, inflexibility)
2. correcting other people’s grammar, even in social or casual settings (unadaptability)
3. turning up in businesswear for casual functions, and vice versa (lack of judgment)
4. using your own field’s lingo regardless of audience (inconsideration)
5. “soloing techniques” (stupidity)
6. “let’s define this” (haughtiness, subjectivity, refusal to accept alternatives)
7. not showing anything “until I get better at it first” (and that day might never come)
8. agreeing with someone and then disagreeing on the same thing with the next person (inability to learn from experience)
9. tendency to look for ‘correct’ answers (turgidity, timidness, lacking foresight)

FIX YOURSELF:— A few well-chosen morsels of information about your interests make it easier for other likeminded persons to appreciate you — such as prospective employers. If you’re looking for a job or trying to advance your career, being stiff kills your career dead in its tracks. The world is full of young people who didn’t grow up regarding being stiff as a virtue. True fact.

FACT:— Lots of recruitment companies surf Facebook, LinkedIn and other social-networking sites for interesting candidates to handle various types of projects that would be a good fit for their clients. They cold-call candidates to suss them out. If you’re stiff, you’re ignored and left behind.

If you’re still young but stiff, you cause people to stay clear of you because they think you have some sort of mental problem. Which you do, honestly speaking.

“Anti-stiff: strengthens the muscles.” Works on the social muscles.

REMARK:— “Stiff gets you stiffed.” Nobody’s asking you to hang loose like a rockstar. But you just can’t risk being compared to Frankenstein or a zombie either (and still lose out to them on the human-warmth scale). If you can’t (or won’t) meet us half way, you’re not the type we’re interested in.

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YOUR MUCK EVERYWHERE

GAFFE:— Driving in circles and mucking about.

WHY:— We get one life and one life is all we get. Get to the point! Don’t muck about in what you do or say. The professionals see you’re being unprofessional, and the unprofessionals think you’re taking the piss (making fun of them).

MESSAGE:— “You’re all here for my entertainment.” That’s what you’re ultimately saying. Muddling through (to improvise, basically) isn’t the same as mucking about. It’s even more entertaining for us to see YOU being left behind.

RED FLAGS:— 40% online, 60% in real life:—

1. sending goofy stuff to others (online and in real life) especially in business settings
2. ‘poking’ people on Facebook, etc (“go poke yourself somewhere else”)
3. re-explaining things back to people who explained it to you first
4. latching on to the other person’s words and reusing them back
   
5. ignoring advice (“counsel is to be taken, not congratulated”)
6. “soloing techniques”
7. using swollen language regardless of situation
8. “speaking the truth is bad because it’s blunt” (O rly? You think so, do you?)
9. you talk about things that everybody is concerned about but in a way as if nobody else does (“But privacy is a concern!”: yeah, right)

It’s one thing not to take advice after balancing it with other advice you’ve got, but ignoring advice is quite another.

FIX YOURSELF:— Get to the point. Stick to directness and everydayness.

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FROZEN NETWORK CONTACTS

GAFFE:— Not letting your online networks cross over into the real world.

WHY:— It’s amazing the numbers of individuals who rack up literally hundreds of online friends and then leaving them there to freeze and die. Out of your 3,875 Facebook friends, you’ve only met a grand total of three — and they’re from your schooldays who you’ve not seen for 15 years.

MESSAGE:— “I’m too good for you.” “You don’t measure up.” Enough said.

RED FLAGS:— 50% online, 50% in real life, 100% counterproductive:—

1. Iceman never calls
2. Iceman never return calls
3. Iceman leaves events midway because “it’s late,” “past your bedtime,” “work tomorrow,” etc
4. Iceman always break off the conversation midway
5. Iceman makes us wait for stupid responses for more than 2 minutes
6. Iceman gives one-line responses when we’ve given 20
7. Iceman keeps making excuses for everything
8. Iceman shows little or no interest in anyone’s interests
9. Iceman maintain his own interests are cheaper, stronger, faster, better, etc, than anyone else’s

FIX YOURSELF:— Quid pro quo. Help others and they’ll help you. Set up real-life get-togethers with your online friends or contacts. Bond with them (even if it’s pretence). Ring them up. Comment online on their interests. Congratulate them. You are in a relationship with these people — realise that, for pete’s sakes! Get involved.

PROTIP:— It depends on what each friend is like, but I ring them up whenever I’m in the neighbourhood, especially when I’ve not been in their area for some time. “Just ringing to say I’m in your area and to see how things are going with you.”

REMARK:— My Facebook gets roughly 10 to 15 friend requests a month, and many of those are from people I’ve actually met in real life. On Facebook, my friends there include one internationally famous dancer, one supermodel, one famous actress, one world-famous DJ, one Pulitzer-winning writer, one documentary filmmaker and one famous photographer — all of them ‘friended’ me first. And I’m not even a fan of Facebook! How’s that for snob appeal?

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Coming up in Part 2 tomorrow:

You bore, you won’t score

_____

ABOUT | TOP POSTS | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | MIRROR | SISTER BLOG

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2012. (B12273)

Images: Invisibility conversation from this blog post | Anti-Stiff via The Quack Doctor | Circular road via Awareness of the Heart | Han Solo in Carbonite via The Right Rant.