The Reasoner

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Many non-teaser trailers are the same as advertisements for books where the entire plot and ending has been laid down in the back cover. Movies offer a story telling, letting you know about an imagination that you want to engulf yourself into for different reasons. If you already know the entire details of something, then your imagination is sort of limited and you know what to expect. There is usually no fun in such a trend.

That is what happened to many people around the country who were waiting to get the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6), when some other people, who had already gotten their hands on the book earlier in the day and had already read it, spoiled the ending for others. Following is an example of someone who recorded his adventure of spoiling the fun for Harry Potter fans by telling them what happened in that book, and how even the small kid at the end yells “&^% YOU BI#@$!” in terror and shock:

Non-teaser trailers destroy the fun! Finding details in other ways is fun!

I know that many people, if not the majority, love watching trailers which have all the story explained briefly. Many of those people do not like teaser trailers, because to them a teaser trailer simply wastes time by not telling the viewer anything specific. I would personally like to watch only teaser trailers, and only good and well made trailers if they are not teasers. Of course, there are bad teaser trailers too. They deserve their own ignoring or review. Such trailers are one of the reasons most movies do not impress you.

If you fall into the category of wanting to find out about some movies, the way I do for many movies too, there are either the stereotypical trailers out there or there are some popular websites like MoviePooper and The Movie Spoiler, which tell you the general plot of a movie and the specific details of the entire movie respectively. Wikipedia has become another resource where the entire plot, from beginning to the end, is usually listed for a growing number of movies. These are, of course, options for people who would like to know everything about a movie. I personally like finding out the details of many movies before I watch them. The teaser trailer preference, thus, comes down to the concept of a trailer: it is supposed to be a seducing trailer, and not a CliffsNotes summary of the movie.

Do you prefer teaser trailers? Or do you prefer knowing everything about the movie in a trailer?

What do you think? What kind of movie trailers do you like or dislike? Do you prefer watching the trailer of a movie because watching that movie? Do you like knowing the entire story through a movie trailer?

Please share your comments or stories in the comments below. Thanks for reading! I really appreciate it. :)

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Many people think these two questions should decide the fate of advertisements on your site:

1. Do you want to make money through advertisements?
2. Can you technically put ads on your site?

When the answer to both of these questions is yes, many people immediately focus on putting up ads and setting up a PaypPal account to start accepting payments for ads. Because of immense importance given to those two questions, majority of the blogs online will never make any amount of money.

If you have a site and have been thinking of whether you can benefit from advertising, ask yourself the following questions first to start your planning process:

• Is the content that you’re going to be writing in demand?
• Who may be the target for your content?
• Does that target group have access to the same information [as your site] elsewhere?
• If the target group, or market, has an alternate access to the same information, are those alternate resources charging for their content, or are they providing it for free?
• Can you dedicate some amount of time or passion to this for both the short and the long run?
• How likely are you able to, with the help of available tools, make people become loyal to your new site which will have ads?
• How will your new ads affect your existing readers?
• How will your target readers respond to your new ads?

In asking these and other similar questions, you have to remember my concept of advertisements: advertisements of any kind are a form of subscription fees for content. You see an ad, and thus spend a second or two looking at it. That act of looking or spending time on an ad is a form of payment, with you taking action on such ad becoming a premium form of payment to the website which displays the ad. In contrast, a site with no advertisements can appear to be providing something that resembles a premium service; no ads of any kind, and quality content. Sites without any ads and with a money-based subscription plan appear better in the eyes of many people who avoid looking at ads on websites.

Planning to advertise requires some planning

You should find out your own target market and then decide if they’re willing to pay, either through money or through their time, to support your site. If you have a personal blog and expect people to pay money to read your posts, you should either be a known-writer or should have content that people are looking for and willing to pay you for it. If you have a corporate website with ads, then the image and brand of your site name goes down, as people assume that your company or service is not doing good and depending on external advertisements to support its finances. Some websites have focused on ads so much for revenue and stability that their brand names have become associated with the idea of advertisements. About.com is one such example.

Another thing you have to keep in mind is the quality of loyalty of your users. If you get a lot of random users, you have to build a loyal following to your site. Having your site bombarded with ads, or even having a few ads on your site that might distract your readers from your content, may scare away a few users who would have otherwise stayed longer. Thus, you have to make sure you have some kind of control over the number of ads on your site, even if some people seem to be enjoying them. Users might not visit a site again if they feel annoyed by ads, but someone who likes a site may not mind having a few ads around. In fact, people who enjoy your site would be willing to actually pay attention to the ads to see how they’re related to them solely because the ads are appearing on your site.

In the end, you can always start with something that gives everything to the reader. Slowly, and later on, you can ask the user for something in return and test their response to see if they’re willing to spend time, or actual money, for your content.

What is your view of sites having ads on them?

What do you think? Do you have ads on your site? What do you think of the idea of seeing ads on your favorite sites? Are you planning on having ads on your site? Do you think ads harm the surfing experience?

Please share your comments or experiences below. Thank you for reading! :)

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1. You leave dumb comments.

   “lol” and “haha!” are not dumb comments. Posting something not related to a status message or advertising something as a comment to someone are examples of dumb comments.

2. You leave angry, rude comments.

   Everyone in the world has probably gotten angry at one time or another. You may get angry at someone or at their status message, though it will make people hate you if you start posting angry and rude comments to their status messages.

3. You tag people in spammy or unrelated photos and videos.

   I get tagged so much in photos and videos that have nothing to do with me that I have started saving such photos and videos in order to study them and find a connection among them. I usually get tagged by stereotypically freaky “Democratic Iran” and “Make >$2000 in less than 24 hours” videos. Avoid tagging people in things that have nothing to do with those people. In the end, you are simply spamming people with a link that makes people visit your photo or video.

4. You spam the same people with different Facebook App invites.
   

   Zoosk Facebook App spam - do you Zoosk others?

   Mafia, Farmville, Fishville, Causes, Quiz Planet, Texas HoldEm Poker, Zoosk and others. All of these and other apps promote the idea of having you suggest your installed Facebook application to all of your friends repeatedly. This allows people to spam other people with application invites on an almost daily basis. This is probably the most powerful way to make people hate you.
5. You spam the same people with repeated Facebook Page invites.

   A Facebook Page allows people to have Facebook profiles for companies, groups and related things. Every Facebook Page allows you to invite all of your personal Facebook friends. One of the more powerful ways to make people hate you is to constantly send them invitations to your Facebook Page on an almost daily basis.

6. You spam the same people with promotional messages and comments.

   Facebook messages allow you to send private messages, like emails, within Facebook itself. Many people, however, send you daily newsletters of promotional materials via Facebook messages. Just like emails, Facebook messages are personal and private, and unless someone gives you direct consent to send them commercial mail, avoid doing so unless you want them to hate you.

7. You start Facebook chats with everyone repeatedly, only to promote your services in the end.

   This is a new trend I am noticing. A lot of people will start Facebook chats with me using the Facebook Chat toolbar button on the bottom of all Facebook page display and ask a personal question or two before pitching their business to me. Back in 1745, people were new to the idea of being marketed to, resulting in anyone being asked a personal question first becoming less resistant to the idea of being pitched an offer afterward within the same conversation. Today, because of our entire world being full of advertisement and sales pitches, it is easy to spot your real money-making intentions when you ask me “How are you doing today?“

8. You are a pervert.

   MySpace is full of them. Twitter is full of them hiding. And Facebook is full of them wanting to come out into the open. Avoid making perverted comments or messaging people on Facebook just because you find them beautiful. All of your comments are visible to others, and the general rule for many people is to stay away from perverts.

9. You keep re-adding people as friends, after deleting them repeatedly.

   Many Facebook people delete their friends because of getting mad or upset over something. Sometimes, you may have the tendency to overreact or lose temper a lot, resulting in you deleting many people repeatedly and then re-adding them afterward. Avoid such a trend if you do not want the people to hate you because of you making them go through the drama of having to add you more than once.

10. Post private information about others as your Facebook status.
    

    How Kevin & Shannon posted too much info on Facebook - are you like them?

    Publicly complaining about someone for private reasons shows that you mean business when it comes to wanting to ruin the reputation or feelings of someone in public. Avoid dishing out details about private information, accusations or situations about other people that they may not want to be public. Posting bad things about your ex while publicly telling everyone which ex you are talking about, talking about an ex-client solely because they left you, and publicly pointing out people who do not reply to you immediately on Facebook are some examples of how you can get hated on Facebook by anyone who comes across your hate-inducing behavior.

Do you do any of the things listed above? Do you know someone on Facebook who does these things?

The above 10 methods will most probably, or even surely, allow at least one of your Facebook friends to hate you, and to maybe even defriend you. In the end, people still get by on Facebook while being hated by hundreds of other people. Do you know such people? Do you think you may be hated by others because of what you do on Facebook? Which of the above 10 reasons are acceptable to you while being on Facebook? Which one do you like or dislike the most?

Please share your thoughts about this in the comments below. Thank you! Now I have to go and look at the 608 combined notifications and requests I have on Facebook.

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For a few years now I have sometimes thought of not eating any meat and becoming what the society calls a “vegetarian.” Every time, the simple idea of not having a juicy Burger King burger, any steak or some yummy sushi made me simply laugh at the idea of vegetarianism. I also always laughed at the idea of ridiculing meat eaters and ridiculing veggie eaters. Well, another thing I always thought of was that the vegetarians, who eat no meat, and vegans, who eat no meat and no meat derivatives, should realize that eating any kind of plant is also killing the plant life, which have been scientifically proven to have life, breathe air and feel pain.

The video I saw was a trailer for EARTHLINGS simply showed different kinds of animals being killed, tortured, dissected and other similar things in the name of food, experimentation, pets, clothing and entertainment. I only saw part of the trailer. I did not see anything else, nor did I see the main 2 hour video itself. However, the trailer itself is so strong for me, that I actually saw in visualizations many of the things I have been thinking, tweeting and writing about over the years about the way we live life and how we can simply justify almost anything as long as it serves our needs.

Following is the exact video trailer for the documentary EARTHLINGS that I saw which shows animals being killed, tortured and butchered slowly while alive. You can decide whether or not you want to view this video.

The cruelty we see happening to animals, also reflected lately in my several tweets of how we treat certain animals with kindness, like cats, and other animals with no emotions, like chickens, is something that bothers me a lot when I start thinking of ways to be human, or to be myself in a manner that I want to be. That “bothering” is probably the focus of many of my efforts. I feel very sad to think of the harm that comes to animals, whether it is through torture by humans or by the “ethical killing” of animals like chickens and pigs. Death is death, and pain is pain. How can it be all right to kill certain animals while loving others when none of them have ever harmed us intentionally or for pleasure? Does killing something for food or other purpose, whether through pain and torture or without supposed pain and instantly, justify the killing itself? I have wondered about such things all my life, and the above trailer made me realize I will simply stop eating meat in order to satisfy my emotions.

And one animal in particular that I saw in the trailer, who was still alive and blinking after being skinned alive, made me cry and still makes me cry whenever I think of him/her. Whenever I think of that animal, I realize I have probably made the best and purest decision in my life.

One of the most important things I had to ask myself from the moment I made my decision: Is this just an impulse decision? So many decisions are made simply based on emotional outbursts that later one more harm is done than we can actually realize. It is now day 4 today, and I have not even thought back as to whether or not my decision was made in haste.

Things for me to avoid eating when not eating meat

It is actually very complex and interesting to start eating things that do not contain any dead meat. I say “dead meat” because for me things like eggs and things made from milk are perfectly fine. And labeling something as dead meat sounds more logical to me, at least for my cause, than meat at the time being. Meat, or Dead Meat as I call it for this article and for my view of all of this, the very simple beginning for me is the following:

1. No animal of any kind. Mammals, fish and birds can now feel 100% safe hanging around me now.
2. No products which may contain gelato or similar things that are derived from animal fats. Jello is probably an example of this.

No more burgers. No more steaks. No more sushi. No more chicken nuggets. And almost no more fast food drive-thrus and food adventures that I had before, at least in the meat department probably.

Things to think about when not eating meat

1. I love eating meat. I like the idea of eating meat. It is simply some images and ideas that go through my head now when I think of eating meat or the food industry which involves dead animals. Thus, I think I will not criticize the idea of eating meat itself. I made a personal choice based on what I think I should do in my life to be able to feel associated with the animals, realize how they should be treated, and be able to do something whcih gives another main purpose to my life.
2. I will not criticize meat eaters. The most annoying thing the “vegetarian” class does is to start an all-out assault on meat eaters. As you may have learnt from my articles before, I avoid things which criticize the existence of something else solely based on personal preference. So meat eaters, eat away and be proud like the veggie eaters! I will continue to point out any illogical reasoning in either meat eaters or vegetarians when it comes to criticizing their opponents.
3. Die veggies die! Vegetables suck! Or most of them do! There must be a fast food category for non-meat eaters. I must find it!
4. I do not want to be in the Vegetarian class. No new cult to own and no new labels to label myself with. I had rather be called a “No meat eater” than a “Vegetarian.” I am not entirely sure why: it could be because of all the bad and negative images I have about the concept of labeling and the idea of many, if not most, vegetarians criticizing all meat eaters. It may also be because I just stopped eating meat and I still feel associated with it more than other kinds of food. I will figure it out soon or eventually, hopefully in an organized time frame.
5. Plants and all vegetables have been scientifically proven to have life, breathe, have emotions, and feel pain. So at this time, even though I am not eating meat, I am still eating some things which were once alive. Is there something I can eat that was never alive?
6. How it affects my views about other people and things. My best friend Katie is the only person I think about when I am thinking of situations where my thinking or actions may have a resounding affect on my life. And since I live with her, how do my decisions or actions affect her? I actually told Katie about my decision to not eat meat about 10 minutes after I stopped watching the video. And the resulting impact has been greater than I ever expect. My entire blogging about Vegetarianism and not eating meat will include highly coveted topics of how eating or not eating certain foods can affect not only your own life style but the life style of people you know.

Has not eating meat impacted my life?

Yes. So many years of eating steaks, burgers, sushi and other yummy things does have a big influence on how things are viewed or how things can be viewed. Even last month I bought a brand new domain name to start an all new website dedicated to reviewing the awesome food I taste every day, for I almost eat out daily. Or maybe “ate out daily” may be a better word now. It is actually very strange, or mind boggling, to realize that I will have to give up my dream of start a new website dedicated to reviewing good food. At this moment, I cannot think of any major replacements for the elements that prompted me to love food the way I did before and to review all different kinds of meat.

There have been so many changes from myself, people around me and the way I deal with life itself because of having to eat food everyday that I have now started a whole new category on this site called “Vegetarian.” I would like to call it “No Meat” instead, though Vegetarian, in terms of actually reading about the topic, serves a better purpose here. How long will this continue? Will I always remain a non-meat eater? Only time will tell, I suppose? So The Reasoner will now also showcase the life of a vegetarian. Hmmm.

What do you think? What did you eat today?

What do you think about this? Do you eat meat? Do you eat vegetables and non-meats? What do you think of people who eat meat? What do you think of people who do not eat any meat? Have you seen EARTHLINGS?

This article has indeed been very enlightening for me, as I had to think a lot in order to realize what I was feeling and how I was feeling it. It seems like I have started a new journey, and it may very well be a year or two, or even more, before a single day goes by where I do not have to think what to eat or realize the difference that not eating meat 4 or 5 times a day is bringing into my life and into the people and elements around me, including you.

Thanks for reading. I now have to stop here and go eat my vegetable pizza. :D :O

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The homeless on TV are the only real homeless?

As of February 16th, 2010, the only big word I kept seeing on TV was “Haiti.” A major earthquake in Haiti resulted in devastation that tore apart the lives of thousands of people in that region, the same way the lives of thousands of people around other parts of the world are taken away due to starvation and homelessness on a daily basis. I kept and still keep seeing Michelle Obama on TV talking about Haiti and how “we” can all donate to the “American Red Cross” to help them:

And now, as of March 6th, 2010, the new big word I keep seeing on TV is “Chile.” A major earthquake hit Chile on February 27th, once again sending the lives of thousands of people into disaster, just like the people in Haiti, and just like all of the homeless people in your city, state and country. And now we see Barack Obama talking about the disaster in Chile:

Why are we not seeing Mr. and Mrs. Obama talk about the homeless and starving people in America? Why do we not see Bush & Clinton, sitting next to each other, talk about the homeless in China or the homeless in Washington, instead of the homeless in Haiti? What about the homeless people in Haiti and Chile before these earthquakes? Did those people not deserve any help or attention?

Why are we not seeing the “American“Red Cross, the TV, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Green Party, the Independents, the Confederates, the KGB, the Batman Party, news and others focus on the devastation in the lives of people who are dying in other countries, and in California and other states? Are the Haiti Homeless are better than the American Homeless? Are the Chile Homeless are better than the Mexican Homeless? What about the homeless in Iraq, Russia, China, India, Japan, Nepal, and other places? Why are not all homeless people, if their homelessness came around because of things not under their control, treated equally? Does a homeless person have to go through an earthquake or a flood in order to get help or attention?

The Homeless Victims In Media VS The Homeless Victims Who Are Not Spotlighted In Media

What is it about Haiti and Chile that is getting them more attention than other people who are devastated? In the case of Haiti, it is not the earthquake that should be under sole observation. The observation should also include the displaced and affected people. Does that mean that a person who becomes homeless because of an earthquake deserves more attention than a person who becomes homeless because of growing up in a poor neighborhood or losing their jobs? Do Presidents & their enforcers talk openly about helping some specific people because doing so shows that they are supporting what is popular on the media at that moment? What about you?

What do you think? Please let me and others know in the comments below. If you can talk or think on your own for at least 31 seconds about the homeless people around anywhere in the world without needing a teleprompter, you may be a better speaker than the people you saw in the videos above. You may also then be better suited to answer the questions listed here.

Thank you for reading.

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Here are ten simple ways to keep in mind when texting anyone. These tips can help you become effective at both sending texts and communicating effectively through text messages.

1. Keep any greetings in the beginning of a text, if your message is short. That way, a person can quickly know what you want to say, while also realizing that you are being polite.
2. If your message is long and ends up getting divided into multiple texts, try to include the actual message in the beginning and the greeting at the end. This way, the actual part of the main message you want to convey will have fewer chances of being cut off and separated.
3. Keep your text within 140 characters for new people and co-workers. With new people and co-workers, you may want to keep your communication length short in the beginning when conveying a message before you realize what their comfort zone is.
4. Always include your name in texts to new people. The same way you may want to let new people, who may basically be strangers in different part of your life and vice versa, realize who you are when you call or e-mail them, you may also want to let them know who you are in text messages. A simple name and any reference to where you met may work, like:
   

   Hey there! Letting you know that I’ll be at Jack in the Box around 4:30, thanks. – Bes [from the "Let's stalk & shun all Teletubbies!" party last night]

5. Find out, if possible, about the text message plan the other person has. That way, you can realize if it would be better for you to send a single text message sporadically, or if you can send multiple text messages at will. It should all depend on the other person, if possible, to ensure, among other things, that you avoid creating a high cell phone bill for the other person.
6. Ask for permission before sending texts. Even if the other person has an unlimited text message plan, they may not want 20 text messages from you in one day, or every 5 minutes. Find out what the other person prefers by asking them if you can text message them at an interval or rate of your choice.
7. Realize that text messages may have the same notifications as phone calls for many people. The same way a phone ring may wake someone up in the middle of the night or bother someone in a restroom or during a meeting, a text message may also make a notification sound or vibration, and bother someone just like a regular phone call ring. Keep this in mind when sending text messages, and realize that whenever you send a text message, the actual way that other person may find out about it may be the exact same as that other person finding out about phone calls.
8. Inquire about the texting trend preferences of the other person. Ask the other person if they are comfortable getting text replies immediately, if they prefer full words or text message abbreviations, if they prefer texts only during certain times, if they prefer e-mails over texts when it comes to asking questions or sharing website addresses, what text message length they are comfortable with, and anything else related to text messages that comes to your mind.
9. Avoid forwarding text message spam. During the Obama/McCain elections, someone from Mississippi forwarded me a text message that said the following:
   

   Doing our own taly of who’s voting4who. Add 1 in front of who u suport.

   Obama 111111111 McCain 11111111

   Pass it on! Its ur responsibility.

   I love the idea of patriotism, bashing, and number tallying via cell phones. It gives me more material to think and write about. It also tells me that the elections of 2008 were rigged. The text message above later on was forwarded to me a second time by a different person, and by then McCain was winning by a landslide. Why is Obama the president now? We should have a recount in light of the two text message evidence my phone currently has.

10. Treat a text message like an actual phone call. The same way you would not usually call someone a second time within 5 minutes after calling them and leaving them a message, you may not want to text someone after you have already called them, or vice versa. Multiple text messages with the same message within a short amount of time, or at all, may also fall into this point.

The above 10 ways actually allow you to realize how your texting habits may avoid annoying other people, and thus how you can communicate more effectively through text messages.

What are your txting rules and preferences?

How often do you text message others? Do you like sending multiple texts or shorter txts? Do you like getting many txt messages from the same person in a single day? How fast do you usually reply to text messages? Do you prefer a phone call over a text message? What kind of a text messaging plan do you have, if you have one?

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or thoughts about this topic or article in the comments below or by e-mailing me directly. I have to stop here and see who sent me text messages because my phone is flashing.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it. :)

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We have pneumonia. We have aids. We have cancer. We have bird flu. We have Teletubbies flu. We have everything. Today. Right here. Right now. If you want to get infected with a disease and die soon, chances are you can find a way to make it happen within a month. Or maybe 3 months.

Mexico was the keyword in all the newspapers till yesterday. And now, United States is in the start of a growing panic mode because of the small child that died in Texas to be deemed the first death from Swine Flu in the United States. In the Middle East, Israel wants to call the flu “Mexico Flu” instead of “Swine Flu“ because the Holy Land of the Muslims & Jews do not eat pork and it is considered unhealthy for them, but that is being protested by Mexico. Korea also wants to call the flu the “Mexican Virus“, much again to the protest of the Mexican government.

Mexico has issued respirators for everyone. They look cool. I want one too please. Never before has the idea of being confronted with a virus looked so real, and so scary. Is it all a hype? Is this just like any other flu, with the only difference being that this is a new outbreak and thus the news is playing up the hype? Still, I want a cool respirator please. I will wear it everywhere. Why not? San Francisco police is said to be officially going to start having all San Francisco Police Force to wear the Swine Flu Respirators within a week. Today, supposedly, the Zodiac’s identity was revealed in San Francisco. “The Zodiac has come to San Francisco.” What a cool quote. I have a better one: Move aside, Zodiac. The flu has come to San Francisco.

The economy is bad. The feelings with the outside world are bad. Our internal systems of businesses are bad. And now, even the micro organisms hate us. Or maybe they hate each other. I am not sure. No one is sure. How must the parents of that child must be feeling today? We feel and talk about that child more because he is in America. Yes. Hundreds of Mexican deaths can all be described numerically. But this child has to be discussed in detail in order to show how serious we should be towards paying attention to the media. Or is it real? I am not sure. What was the child’s name? What kind of toys did he like? Who are his parents? Are they ok now? Did the child have any brothers or sisters? How is his overall family? Did he suffer? What did he go through? I don’t know. Does anyone care outside of the media paper and page the news was on?

Not everyone in America wakes up thinking “I want America to be the biggest super power on the planet!” Not everyone in America wakes up thinking “Hah! Those Mexicans are always dirty and thus they are getting these diseases.” No. Majority of us, the majority that is now shown on the news, wakes up thinking “Ohhhh, so sleepy, need coffee, and then need to get to work” or “Hmmm ohhhh, so hungry, need to relax and then decide what to do.” We are humans, just like you. I am human, I hope. I feel like a human, but if I am not a human, how can I be sure I am a human to feel like a human? No one knows. Though we say we are.

Many people think Americans have no emotions. Americans include citizens, visitors living here for decades, illegal immigrants living here permanently, and all the animals and Bigfoot too. All of us do have emotions. Some show it in both extreme and non-existent ways like on this site. Others do not show it, like on this site also, while some others show it all the time and with full force, also like on this site. Regardless, we are doing everything we already were before the Swine Flu entered our vocabulary with such devotion. We are still going to the movies, and we are still having ice cream. We are still tweeting, and we are still walking around in the dark looking for new hiking routes. Some of us are still idiots, while some of us are still better. Some of us are still moronically selfish and manipulative individuals, while some of us are crying and wondering daily why we are being manipulated. Still, some of us just wake up, go to work, and come home and sleep. And if you did not realize it, every mention of the term “we” in this paragraph referred to all the human beings in this world.

People I know in Europe & Middle East are being advised to not come to the United States. I agree. Don’t panic, but avoid coming if you can. I do not know what it feels like to lose a son, but I know what it feels like to lose someone young. You decide. I am going to keep on doing everything. I am going to travel, going to go around taking pictures, going to meet people, going outside, and going to live. I am also going to try to get the respirator. Maybe because it may save my life. Or maybe because it looks very nice and I want to feel a respirator once again in life, after 18 years of not wearing one. Maybe the respirators are different than gas masks. In such a case, any respirator now may be my 2nd one. Otherwise, it would be the 3rd mask on my face in my life which may stay on for a while or during an emergency. Who knows.

It is now 2:24am. Not a single smiley in this article so far. Maybe it’s because I’m relaxed and tired at the same time. Let me go ahead and put a smiley –> :D:D:D:D:D. The World Health Organization WHO has labeled the Swine Flu a level 5, meaning it is one step short of becoming a worldwide plague in action. Level 5 means it is already on its way to becoming level 6. Let’s have 5 smileys–> :D :D :D :D :D

Forget about being associated with a certain culture or a certain country. Focus on humanity, and focus on yourself first. Wake up, and feel alive. And then feel that everything is hyped up or just an obstacle that you will either overcome or co-exist with. Not everything can be defeated. But you can try to keep on living in many weird situations.

Bird Flu. Cookie Flu. Swine Flu. Pig Flu. Mexican Flu. North American Influenza. Whatever the name may be, we keep on living. 10 years from now, articles like the Wikipedia entry on the Swine Flu will make it look like the entire world was crying and weeping on April 30th, 2009. No. 99% of us are not weeping over this flu. Our own President was getting applauds and joking around earlier today. This is just another news. The show must go on. We must go on. The difference between the show and us is, the show is there to get attention. We have to go on in order to keep on living and in order to co-exist with this new beginning.

So maybe this is how people felt in the 70′s when the previous Swine Flu outbreak was. Wikipedia article, once again, shows it as being kind of a big thing that caused millions of people’s lives to change drastically and immediately. Of course, Wikipedia also portrays the same impression about today’s 2009 Swine Flu outbreak, though I don’t notice anyone’s life changing drastically in California because of this. Has your life completely changed? Hmmmm.

The good thing is to see how your life has changed, and how the media says your life has changed. Then we can try to decide whether it is the flu that is the real outbreak, or the media. And we have the necessary power to deploy forces in any part of the world within 24 hours. But we do not have enough injections or medicine necessary to give to the entire population for the next 6 months. Brilliant! Clap with me please!

*If you’re dumb dumb and would like to be called a dumb dumb clap your hands! CLAP CLAP* – Bes

To everyone dying in all parts of the world, and their families, and their neighbors, and their friends, and their enemies, and their fellow human beings, do realize that there are others that realize what life is too. And they are living it also. And they have their own life and ideas too. Many of us have not forgotten you, nor disrespected you, on purpose. We may have our life to think about, the way you have your life to think about. We may just have other sidetracking things going on at the same time, like life itself. Even if it is at 2:42am.

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At its core, every suicide attempt usually tries to serve one purpose: to end one’s own life. In our societies, while ending someone else’s life is legal, allowed and even promoted as a preference in many situations, ending our own life is usually frowned upon and considered an abnormal behavior. At the same time, however, it seems that we try to react differently to a famous, rich person trying to commit suicide, compared to the way we would react finding out that our poor neighbor or classmate attempted suicide.

Johnny Cash attempted suicide in 1968

Why is it that a non-celebrity cannot walk around a party, head up high, after an attempted suicide, but we glorify, praise and pay to watch celebrities walk around with heads up high after their attempted suicide? Online, we run into similar issues, regardless of the celebrity or non-celebrity status. Recently, I posted an article called “Thought: I want to commit online suicide.” Because of that, I received numerous phone calls and texts in the offline, real world. Among the many interesting reactions, one business associate asked me “Would this affect your work or our project time line in any manner?” All of that made me realize even more as to how everyone focuses on the negative reaction people should have to suicide, instead of the actual reaction one may feel without considering the society rules and norms into the actual feelings. What is it about the concept of suicide that, when presented, results in almost similar reactions depending on the venues and people it involves?

Could it be that we usually follow the stereotypical society trends when dealing with topics like suicide and celebrities? Could it be that because of our affiliation with wanting to be normal in the society, the stereotypical trait of worshiping celebrities takes priority over the idea of hating the concept of wanting to attempt suicide?

Random List Of Celebrities You May Worship Who Attempted Suicide

It may be easy to overlook the fact that someone not famous may have a character outside of their suicidal interests, the same way we may tend to overlook the fact that a celebrity tried to commit suicide. Similarly, we may simply overlook that someone may have tried to commit suicide and may have nothing going on in their life, but that they may believe certain reasons for such trends in their life to be true for their case.

To help understand how we may allow the celebrity status of a person overshadow the fact that they tried to commit suicide, I present to you the following random list of famous people who have attempted suicide in the past:

• Owen Wilson. Tried by slashing wrists in 2007.
• Princess Diana
• Halle Berry. Tried by gasing herself in 1996.
• Elizabeth Taylor.
• Drew Barrymore. Tried by slashing her wrist at age 14 in 1989.
• Gary Coleman.
• Mike Tyson
• Donna Summer
• Drew Carey. Tried twice, by drug overdose in 1976 and 1978.
• Eminem
• Peter Fonda
• Billy Joel. Tried by drinking furniture polish in 1970.
• Jennifer O’Neil
• Elton John
• Johnny Cash. Tried by drug overdose in 1968.
• Charlie Parker
• Michael Jackson
• Vanilla Ice. Threatened suicide while on a 911 call in 2008.
• Britney Spears
• Jean Wallace. Tried twice by sleeping pills in 1946 and with a knife in 1949.

Because of the fact that the people above have attempted suicide in the past, do you respect them less now? Do you respect them more because of their suicide attempts? Will your attitude towards any of the above people now change in any manner, because of finding out or knowing that they once tried to end their life?

Are you more sympathetic towards suicide attempts made by celebrities compared to suicidal attempts made by non-celebrities?

Princess Diana is said to have wanted suicide while pregnant

What is your view on this matter? Can you think of other celebrities who have attempted suicide? Do you know someone who attempted suicide? Have you thought of committing suicide yourself before and faced any of the stereotypes or trends mentioned above?

What do you think?

Do the trends and actual behavior of sympathizing with celebrities who attempted suicide tell us that it may simply be the society values and stereotypes that cause us to look at the concept of suicide with our eyes closed? If we can overlook the fact that a human being tried to commit suicide because that human being was and is a celebrity, does that mean we can come up with other qualities or labels, or trends and observations, including a change in our own thinking, that can allow us to respect and treat everyone who attempted suicide the way we would want to respect and treat everyone who has not attempted suicide?

Please let me know what you think in the comments below. Thank you for reading. :) I really appreciate it.

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WWII, Nazis, Germans, and Ingluorious Basterds

It is the very concept of the “final solution” by Hitler that prompted one of the then-freshest directors of our time, Quentin Tarantino, to come up with the idea of “Ingluorious Basterds.” You can stop reading this entire article at this exact moment and sentence, because from this point onward, there will be details about the movie mentioned which may give away the plot of the movie to you. To many people, such plot details result in a lot of crying and anger, because many people do not like to know about the details of a movie unless they find out by actually watching the movie on a TV screen. Of course, you can pretend that this article is the actual movie, and thus you can keep on reading if your imagination skills are, amazingly, glorious.

The movie focuses on how the Nazi soldiers are dealt with, and how eventually all the main Nazi officials, including Hitler, are killed in a very interesting attack. The main characters of the movie are a band of Jewish American soldiers headed by Brad Pitt who plays the role of “Aldo“, a French Jewish girl who during her yearly teenage years survives an attack on her life by the Nazis, and the highest ranking German Nazi Security Official who later turns the entire tide of the war.

Today, I would like to share with you what I learnt from the movie, as Quentin Tarantino shows a lot of things in the movie which leave a very different impression than what actually happened, or what actually should have happened, in my view.

28 things learnt from Ingluorious Basterds

Here are 28 things I came to realize, and learn, from the Ingloriously Bastardish Ingluourious Basterds. Please sing along and enjoy, as this is Hollywood entertainment.

1. All Germans are evil.
2. It is ok to laugh at Germans who are being tortured.
3. French people, in addition to being weak, also tend to sell out the location of the hiding Jews in order to protect and save their own French lives.
4. German people are incapable of pure love. The ones that show pure love to the rude and traumatized French Jewish girl are to be shot in the back. And they also shoot back. Ending the entire balance of a very uncomfortable love that should never exist between Germans and French Jews.
5. Unlike what history tells us, it was Hitler that was afraid of the Jews and the Americans, and not the other way round.
6. Brad Pitt looks like the real Hitler.
7. Unlike what history tells us, it was the Germans, and not the Americans nor any other race, that hated the black people and called them “Negros.”
8. The main Jews that fight against the Nazis are half American. Not Half Polish. Not Half German. Not Half French. Half American.



9. Aldo and his men, in the movie, were torturing and scalping the Nazis in 1941. The first extermination camp was built in 1942, according to historical accounts and documents. Thus, according to Tarantino, Aldo and his men were brutally and psychotically killing the Nazis for simply being on the opposite side of the war. Today, we would call such behavior torture and barbaric. Of course, we do not know what had happened to Aldo and his men before, though Aldo’s neck could have been bruised and scarred because of fighting the strong Antisemitism in America itself in 1941 and before.

   Today, 2009, 14% of the Americans have strong Antisemitism views and beliefs, so it must be hard for an American Jewish soldier like Aldo to live a happy and non-traumatized life back then in America, and also for being sent to Germany afterwards. Even the famous Major-General Ulysses S. Grant issued an Anti-Jewish order banning the Jews in 1862, to extract and kick out all Jews from the states of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky, because of his belief that the Jewish people were handling and managing the entire black market in the south. Thus it was the United States in 1862, and not the Germans in 1930′s, that first started expelling and banning all the Jewish people from the communities through legal and authorized military orders. Of course, Aldo probably skipped history class and thus missed that lesson.



10. Hitler died like a dying mannequin in a movie theatre while screaming like a Nazi.
11. You are not a terrorist for being suicidal and for blowing up and killing people in extreme rage. It is the Germans that are being killed, including drivers, waiters and butlers, so it is all right.
12. All Nazi Soldiers are robotic idiots with no heart.
13. It is all right to ask black people to commit suicide with you in order to kill the Germans. The black people will agree to it within 30 seconds.
14. Every Nazi Soldier, and anyone part of the Nazi Army in any form, must have the Nazi sign carved in their forehead with Aldo’s knife. Apparently, The current Pope Benedict XVI who was enlisted in the Hitler Youth, got away untouched.
15. The British can drink liquids other than tea.
16. The calm and the collected British does not listen to the American, and gets killed. Honorably. And in style.
17. The British, with his fluent German language and movie culture skills, gets killed within 12 hours of being in Germany because of a simple counting habit. Aldo, on the other hand, survives for 4+ years in Germany without knowing any German. And no understandable Italian either.
18. The head of the Nazi Security and part of the Waffen-SS and SD, Colonel Hans Landa, the so-called “Jew Hunter“, is the smartest fox of all, and smart enough to overturn the entire war. He is, however, stupid enough to put his life in Aldo’s hands near the end and get a nice Swastika carved into his head.
19. All Germans die a horrible Germanic death, including the German spy that helped the British and the Half American Half Jews.



20. It is ok to batter around psychotically with a bat, mutilate without conscience, and scalp humans with pure rage. As long as the humans are Germans and the batterers, mutilators and scalpers are Half American Half Jews.
21. It is completely normal for the Nazi soldiers to put high ranking officers inside a French Cinema Theatre without checking the projector room, the films, and the back of the projector screen room. It is also completely normal to have no guards outside the movie theatre once the movie starts.
22. Unlike what history tells us, Hitler only had 2 security guards, the same guards who stood outside his cinema box.



23. It is normal for Nazi soldiers of all types and classes to not have any gun that could be used to blast open the doors in case of any fire or laughing girls.
24. It is ok to clap and laugh at all of the above in a movie theatre.
25. The British come into the WWII scene well after the Americans have taken care of many things in German and Germany-occupied European lands.
26. The Head of the German Propaganda wishes to accomplish through biased German movie things that seem to be getting accomplished through Tarantino’s current movie.
27. Bridget causes chaos to the single British hero and many German and American heroes. Helen caused chaos to Sparta and Troy.
28. Coming out of the movie, the people labeling the movie as “Bullshit Propaganda” get called “Anti-Jewish Propagandists” by some people, and the people labeling the movie “Realistic, what movies should be” get called “Jewish Propagandists” by others. Bes takes notes.

So what have you learned, or learnt, from Ingluorious Basterds?

Ingluorious Basterds gets hype and a lot of attention due to several things, 4 of which are:

1. It is made by Quentin Tarantino. Because of Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs, and the recent Grindhouse: Death Proof, people expect interestingly nice, “Must watch”, kind of movies.
2. This movie has been in planning according to Quentin for almost 10 years.
3. Brad Pitt is in it.
4. The German Nazis get tortured and scalped.

The movie achieves the purpose, whether or not it was the intention, of extreme violence, several very well dramatized nervous moments, and a cast that does indeed play its role well. The storyline is very unique and a different step than majority of the WWII-Jewish-Population movies that have come out in the last 50 years. If one wants to look at something different, and definitely biased, I would recommend this movie. It can be taken lightly and enjoyed tremendously. However, if you feel like you have a weak mind and starts believing any agenda presented in a movie, then unless you are willing to be biased into different areas and thoughts because of every propaganda-type movie, you can watch this movie while realizing that it has a strong biased message and opinion to it.

What I recommend watching

If you are looking for recommendations, I would strongly recommend watching Cross of Iron and Das Boot, to see the real emotions, lives and chaos endured by German soldiers during WWII, without any mention of the Jews, since majority of the Nazi soldiers were on the front line fighting non-Jewish and non-German forces. Those two movies are masterpieces, told solely and directly from the German point of view. Also recommended are The Pianist and Schindler’s List, with The Pianist being one of the best movies, about the Jewish suffering during WWII, in my view, and Schindler’s List focusing solely on a German Businessmen helping the Jews first for business reasons and then for personal morality reasons. In my view, these 4 movies are 4 of the greatest, realistic, I hope as unbiased as possible compared to the myriad of so many biased movies out there, and best WWII movies ever made, with Das Boot being on top, and then The Pianist.

Please let me know what you learnt and learned from Ingluorious Basterds, or this article

Please share your insights, comments, questions, or any thoughts about the above or the movie in general.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it. Now I must go and find out if I can eat some “Jewish” specialty dishes at a “German” restaurant owned by an “African American” living in the East Bay Area.

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Does social network profiling result in discrimination and prejudice?

It is interesting to see that more and more companies are starting to think that your behavior outside of the workplace is an important factor to consider when figuring out whether or not you are useful to the company and your job. My question is: What does the non-work online life of anyone have to do with the work life? Employers should only care about something that affects the workplace or the job at hand by following the golden rule: mind your own business.

Can employers and interviewers use the social profiles of job applicants and employees as a way to base biased decisions against the stereotypically-stereotyped people, like homosexuals, females, minorities, politically minded, certain races, and more?

Employers should not care about the online social activities of employees outside of the workplace.

Employers have to learn how not to judge an employee because of a social online account not related to work. Employers also have to come up with better ways to analyze candidates than to use online posts of employees and candidates as one of the main deciding factors. Many times, if not most, using MySpace or social profiles as a way to “weed out” candidates is a cheaper and faster way for interviewers and others to not do the extra work of figuring out who is a good applicant for the job at hand.

According to a CareerBuilder survey in June of 2009, “Forty-five Percent of Employers use social networking sites to research job candidates. Jennifer Van Grove on Mashables says “Though this may seem as a big downer for those of us who are oversharers, the reality is that there’s still opportunity to use your social presence to land that job.”

Background online profiling can be the same as stalking

Snooping around to check an existing or prospect employee’s private or online life, which may have nothing to do with one’s work, is the same as stalking employees or prying into places which should not be used for judging the professional working ability of someone.

This may mean that the act of checking the social profiles may be considered bad in more than just the “unethical” banner, like considering it stalking. One example is an employer cyberstalking his restaurant employee in a private discussion group on MySpace, built solely to vent and share the personal frustrations at work, and then using her private posts as a basis for firing her.

Employers are also known to create fake accounts just to find out more information about private accounts of workers. BBC has a story of a woman recently fired because of being on Facebook through her iPhone while resting in bed, after she had taken a day off from work for being sick. She says that one of her mysterious Facebook friends online was probably one of her co-workers or boss, who mysteriously vanished from her Facebook friends list after she got fired. While there is a lot of focus on the general media advising the general public to either not post many things online or to protect such online postings further, there has been a slow increase in the amount of attention people are giving to the idea of suing employers for discriminating against and stalking the online profiles of potential and existing employees.

The same way following a person to bars, the public park, library, movie theaters and other places is a form of stalking and does not contribute in any significant manner, in many cases, to the value and integrity of an employee, should employers snoop around the online public profiles of job applicants and existing employees, when such profiles are not related in any manner to the employer or a job?

Censorship is the main reason many employers check employee’s social profiles

One of the reasons employers monitor their worker’s profiles is because of censorship: many employers do not want their employees to say anything bad about the company outside of the workplace, as BBC Video reports in the case of 16 year old Kimberley, who got fired by Ivell Marketting & Logistics for saying on facebook “ma job it poingLESS” to her friends. Kimberley’s co-workers had forwarded Kimberley’s Facebook status updates to their boss.

Also, companies seem to be taking extreme action even if someone voices a strong disapproval of the company actions. A very good example of this is Dan Leone and his facebook account. Dan Leone was fired from his job as a game-day employee for voicing his disapproval of the team on his Facebook account. No one sat down with Dan, and he was not offered a chance to express his side of the story and the situation. It should be known that the thousands of Eagles fans voiced the same exact opinion that Dan did. The only difference was that Dan was working for the very organization that he voiced an opinion against.

Another example, as reported by CNN, is of anonymous bloggers being fired by their companies and employers for having blogs and for posting opinions on them. Also, CNN itself has fired senior producer Chef Pazienza for having his own opinionated blog under his own name while working for CNN and not adhering to CNN’s journalism standards. It should be noted that Chef’s blog is personal, and was not in any manner related or competing with the “journalism” offered by CNN.

What logic is used to consider unrelated online activities as being 100% related to work performance?

My question to all the employers and other people suggesting that people should be careful in their online activities because of the impact of such online details over one’s job: Why? Why should one be scared to post stuff online? What about in countries, like in Europe, where smoking a joint or eating hash cookies, is legal? Would posting pictures of someone smoking hash in Europe get them into trouble in Florida?

What logic and reason, including any logical connection, exists between posting a picture of yourself smoking a joint, and with your actual job performance? Why should an outside bias against any action be allowed to affect our image of someone’s working professional life and qualities, when the two have not intersected so far? Should employers and interviewers allow their own personal judgment and any opinion of things like smoking a joint, affect and cloud their judgment over completely unrelated things like a job performance?

Overall, the very question of whether or not employers should look at such profiles, when they are unrelated to the work at hand, should be brought up in order to make sure that the unrelated activities of people do not affect their job prospects because of the employers putting unnecessary emphasis on such online profiles.

Random examples of online social profiling resulting in bias and prejudice

Different things that are used to form biased judgments about someone’s working abilities can include the following.

• A person cannot drink on a job but drinks every night at home and at parties and gets wasted. Is that a disqualifier for an existing job? Will religious or other interviewers who are opposed to drinking count this into their final interview decision, yet still say that the online profile of the applicant does not play a “significant” role in the hiring process?
• A person goes around smoking marijuana in Europe but has a perfect job and professional record around their city of work. Should they be disqualified by someone who is against illegal drugs in America?
• A person has had more than one abortion and posts publicly about it on her blog. Would a pro-life interviewer have any interest in checking our her blog when the job may be about something like computer hardware repairs?
• Would a “hard core republican” have his chances of employment at a “hard core democrat” management corporation ruined because of his pro-republication status messages on twitter?

Such points and interests can give interviewers prejudice, since such points are usually pursued by employers and interviewers for no reason other than to find out anything bad that the employer or the interviewer may not agree personally outside of the workplace. Employers and interviewers usually say that they do not use online social profiles as an important element in deciding whether or not someone should be an employee. My question to employers and interviewers: If online social profiles do not affect your judgment in a hiring process, as you, the employer and the interviewer claim so many times, why do you check out the social profiles of people in order to find out qualities, like what a person does at 11pm, which has nothing to do with what a person may do between the stereotypical hours of 9am and 5pm?

Many employers are spending heavy resources on finding out what kind of MySpace and Facebook pictures job applicants and existing employees have on their MySpace and Facebook profiles, instead of interacting with those people directly to find out what kind of job qualities and skills they have.

Is checking an employee’s or potential job applicant’s online social accounts, if those accounts are not related to work, the same as stalking and cyber-stalking someone? Many entities think that spying on people is an acceptable behavior. An example of this on a massive government level is the case of the city of Bozeman in Montana asking all existing and prospect employees to hand over their usernames and passwords to their Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking accounts. A Millersville University teacher Stacy Snyder was denied a teaching credential because of her online MySpace picture, shown to the right, which shows her drinking beer with a pirate cap on.

A so-called conservative interviewer could disqualify a job applicant who drinks heavily every other night and posts the pictures on MySpace, while a very so-called liberal interviewer could then disqualify a job applicant who preaches about religion a lot through their blog. A Christian employer could deny a job to a Muslim job applicant who talks openly about the war in Iraq on Twitter, while a Muslim employer could deny a job to a Jewish job applicant who talks openly about Palestine and Israel on their Facebook. A gay interviewer could deny a job to someone who is against same-sex marriages through their Facebook groups, while a religious man-to-woman-only-marriages employer could be harsh on a gay job applicant who runs and promotes pro-same-sex-marriage groups on MySpace. A white interviewer could ignore a black job applicant who runs pro-affirmative-action groups on Xanga, while a black employer could deny a promotion to a white or a non-black person who runs anti-Obama groups on LiveJournal. In all these and other cases, a stereotypical person could easily use the non-work related online social profile activity trait of a worker as a way to affect the work-related progress of that worker in a completely unrelated real of someone’s life.

According to the article “Googling your Nanny” on Care.com, in which caretakers were asked if they were comfortable having their non-work related MySpace, Facebook and other online accounts researched by parents who wanted a caretaker, people like Erika W. said “I think it’s a great idea because then parents will know if their babysitter is honest and responsible! I’m a great babysitter, so please come check out my profile!” while people like Dawn said “MySpace and Facebook are about friends and child care is about work. Obviously at your job you’re going to be professional and attentive to the children…The things I do in my personal life have no reflection on the things in my professional life. ”

What Jason Falls thinks about online profiles, employers and employees

Here is a very interesting presentation Jason Falls about your online social accounts, and how they are visible to employers,.

Employers should pay heed to employees directly, and not the online social stereotypes

Employers and interviewers should stop using social profiles and non-work related habits of people as one of the main ways to figure out whether or not an employee is fit for a job. Employers and interviewers should actually be fired for relying too much on online social profiles instead of their own offline abilities to figure out whether or not an employee will do good at work, and whether or not the actual work, educational and other skills of the employee would help the company and employer in question.

Val Calvert says “You wouldn’t air your dirty laundry in the backyard, so why would you air your dirty laundry on MySpace?” My question: how are those two things related? MySpace is a personal profile for many, and if someone wants to post something personal about themselves online, why should an outside employer, who is not part of the personal life and only part of the professional life, decide to use that information to form judgments about the working qualities of an employee or an applicant? Also, Jason Falls considers people who smoke joints in their pictures to not have a job soon. That is a very important thing to consider, because of the stereotypical trend in the business world where employers and interviewers assume that the online life of a person should greatly help in deducing whether or not a job applicant or employer is a good candidate for the future.

Kit Eaton at Fast Company talks about the unjust horrors of not censoring your Facebook page from your future and current employers. Of course, more and more companies have already been firing people because of social media, as mentioned before by Doug Caverly of WebProNews. Mark Glover of The Sacramento Bee says that employers must set up online social networking ground rules for employees to follow.

My question to everyone who wants employees to hide and change their life habits online solely because of upsetting an employer: If something is online and accessible, like the social profiles of job applicants, should employers simply take such information and use it as an element in their analysis of the prospect employee?

The online activities of employees, if not related to actual work, should be ignored by employers.

The act of expressing ourselves online is being used against us by entities which would prefer us to express things they want to express in order to promote their image and business in the personal lives of people, outside of the workplace. That is prejudice and unjust bias, similar to what many entities experience because of their background culture, race, color, religion, political views, gender, sex, and age. To put it simply: the idea of being able to express ourselves, using the online world, is being discriminated against and targeted heavily.

Do you think it is important to put emphasis on the social profile and online activities of a job applicant? Does the “Getting wasted Friday night & barfing all over the car” picture of a job applicant affect their performance at work? Should a company really require you and other employees to exhibit a typical “professional” attitude throughout your life, outside of the workplace? Are employers and interviewers putting too much emphasis on the public image of their employees than the job performance and potential of those employees? Is such a trend, of heavily factoring in the social profiles of job applicants into the interview process, a sign of the non-adapting nature of corporations and workers who want to hire drones that exhibit a workplace attitude 24 hours a day? Are interviewers and employers discriminating and being unethical when searching out and profiling your online social profiles?

Just because you are an employee of a company, it is not a stated fact, nor should it be a requirement, to never have feelings or judgments against the company you work for. Businesses should not ask for blind patriotism, nor should employers enforce a robotic environment where any emotion that the company, as a money making machine does not share, results in the termination of such emotion holders.

Have you ever been asked or told by an interview or an employer about anything related to your social profiles? Have you ever had your social profile researched and viewed by employers, interviewers or co-workers and then brought to your attention?

Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. Now I must go and try to take a few pictures of some toys so that I can post them online to share with everyone in the professional and non-professional world.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

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What happens when you stop going online? Your online status accounts on Facebook, Twitter, BrightKite and other places will look like they have not been updated in a while. Your e-mail accounts may start bouncing, because some free e-mail accounts deactivate if you have not logged in for 3 months. If you have your own website and an e-mail account related to that website, your website may go offline within 2 months due to non-payment of the monthly hosting fees. That can be a big clue that you are either going offline, or that you are really going offline. A lot of people then may start assuming that either you have changed your domain name, or that you have decided to take a break from the online world. Some people may immediately start wondering if you have also decided to take a break from the offline world.

Do you have a backup plan?

In cases of death, or in cases of not being able to go online anymore, some people may be inclined by the idea of coming up with a backup plan to have their online accounts taken care of. Do you have a backup online plan that deals with the fate of your online accounts in case you die? Would you want someone specific to get access to all your passwords and accounts so that they can continue your posting frenzy? Is there any entity out there that you would want to go online to tell the rest of the world that the amazing you has passed away? Who would take care of your online accounts? Who will voluntary take care of them?

Online services to share your secrets, with your approval, after you die

A service called Death Switch aims to help you with this exact backup plan. After you sign up with them, you will tell Death Switch what kind of an e-mail and what attachments to e-mail if you die or go missing. The service sends you e-mails on a regular basis which you have to check and click links within. If you stop clicking the links in those e-mails, for reasons like death or boredom, the service will eventually send your super secret e-mail, that you dictated when signing up for the service, to the people of your choice. Such an e-mail can contain secrets, long lost thoughts, and even the picture of the real Zodiac. Legacy Locker, Great Good Bye and Vital Lock are other such services that offer either service plans, to meet the needs of ever dying soul that wishes to transmit information from beyond the grave, like Sadako.

One sole use of the services like Death Switch and Legacy Locker could indeed be to share your passwords with someone, because, as Elinor Mills for Cnet reported, not sharing passwords can result in more headache than many people realize after they die. While the analysis of the overall “If I die what will happen to my twitter account?” thought and reviews of services like Legacy Locker are interesting, it is even more interesting to question if we should actually care about the online world in case of our deaths or amazing disappearance.

Are automated notify-after-your-death services necessary in your life?

However, since such services are automated, what if you simply go on a vacation without remembering that you have to click on the verification links? What if you lose all your passwords in a laptop fire? Regardless, any form of a backup plan that involves sending messages to specific people in case of your disappearance, or online inactivity can result in your “Yes, I am gay!!!“, “You SUCK as a boss you $^#*@(@& @)@*@* – I hope you rot in hell & I &*( on your corpse from heaven!!“, and “I married you to be close to your older brother….” e-mails will surely reach the shining and living e-mail inboxes of your parents, your boss and your spouse. And they may indeed make your life more amazingly complex if you were on vacation and forgot about clicking the verification links from the above services.

What Ryanne Lai shows happens to your e-mails after you die

Here is a nice presentation by Ryanne Lai as to what happens to something like your e-mails after you die:

What happens to your online things in case you do not take care of them?

The idea of figuring out what to do with something like a website and an e-mail account has been around for a while. Dylon Boyd from Eroi.com has already asked “What the heck happens to your email accounts when you die?” MSNBC has asked the question “After your death, how will the information be located?”

Now comes a very important question. What happens to your Facebook account after you die? What happens to your MySpace, Twitter and Flickr accounts? What happens to your ICQ and AIM accounts? What happens to your Yahoo Mail and Hotmail e-mail accounts? What do you think will happen to them, and what would you like to happen to them? If you do not have a backup plan, will you be able to let someone know about your online accounts, if you wish, right before your death bed, or the ambulance bed? Even more interesting, what happens to your computer after your death?

Can you be an Online Account Donor?

Like Organ donors, would you be willing to donate your online account to a worthy cause? Would you give your MySpace account to your friend, or the Red Cross if they could use it to promote their services? Would you want anyone else to have your online account once you die? Would you donate your online account, whether it be your e-mail or your Facebook account, to a relative, a company, a friend, a neighbor, or a randomly stranger on the first bus that passes your house after 48 hours of your death, picked randomly by a lottery number? Would you be willing to carry around a government-issued, or a self-printed picture id, with the words “Bes The Online Account Donor – details on my MySpace & Facebook profile!” card? Would you like to an an Online Account Donor? You would, of course, have the choice of donating all of parts of your online accounts, like donating your Facebook photos area to someone, and your notes area to someone else. Theoretically, of course.

Should you have a backup plan?

Now comes the real question from my thought. Is there any need for you to let anyone online know that you are dead? Do people want to go on their Twitter accounts and see “Hey, this is Kylie’s friend. He r died! I r za new acount ownar! add meee biatches! :D xoxo“? Do people want to get up at 2am and check their Facebook friends feed to read “Phil has died“, with a way to give a thumbs up vote to that news entry and a way to remove the dead Phil from your living friends list? Heather Spencer, from the OK Gazette, says that “closing out your Facebook, blog and Twitter accounts must be added to the list” of things the family and friends of a deceased person must address. If any of such family members or friends do decide to close your account, should they let everyone else know that you are dead?

We can compare this briefly to your offline ideas of death, if you have any. Do you have an offline will? Now, regardless of the answer to that question, would you like to have an online will? Do you have any messages to share with others once you die? Should you have any will or directions for anyone to have your passwords transferred to someone after your death? Any messages to be posted on your site? Should you have such plans?

If you die, will anyone online find out about it? If you die, what will happen to your online accounts?

So we are now at the main big question. If you die, what will happen to your online accounts? Is that something you should think about? Is it something that you think may be something important to consider? Or do you think letting online people know about your death is not important? Do you think it is not important to have your online accounts taken care of after your death? If you die, what will happen to your online life? What happens to your emails, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, pictures, writings, any online earnings or files, etc? Would anyone online find out about your death?

One thing is for sure: If you die, your online accounts will surely find out about it through inactivity and the absence of love or abuse. Ohhh, the trauma for your online accounts! :(

Please let me know what you think, or if you have any questions, comments, or anything else on your mind, you can share them by leaving a comment below. I now have to go and see where the offline world takes me.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it. :)

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I am thinking of the idea of deleting all of my online identities everywhere, delete all my posts, all of my websites, pictures, social networking accounts, wipe off as much information about me as possible, leave whatever I cannot touch out there for everyone to see, delete my e-mail accounts also, and go offline. I am thinking about the idea of commiting the online form of a suicide and going completely offline.

The online world is not a real world.

One of the main reasons majority of the people are online these days is because of the media coverage. Not a day will go by this year that a news channel will not think of Twitter. Not a day goes by now that millions of people in California alone do not think of logging into Facebook to poke someone. MySpace is thought of every minute in millions of people’s hearts. Text messages these days are slowing getting conquered by mobile notifications from social networking sites. Would leaving all of these be a bad thing? It, however, does not matter whether or not it would be a bad thing in the eyes of those who rate such a decision. No need to check anything online.

Being completely offline means less clutter.

It would be very good to be completely offline. No e-mails. There are phone calls and text messages. There are letters too. No more social networking on Facebook or Myspace. Time to socialize in person at different places and also the same place. No more hanging on to bright kite to spot whales and harpoon them. Time to go out and hunt in person. If you feel like you have been online longer than most others and have done online things other would only imagine, what does it matter if others think leaving the online world completely is a weird choice? The offline world offers so many goods and evils, that they can only be matched online by typing “OMG look at this video” or “I did this…” Time to actually do it offline instead of also talking about it online?

Being online means more stereotypical trends and people.

It is becoming very easy for people to forget that they go online by doing things offline. Does not matter. Slowly, the fun and excitement in “OMG I SIGNED UP FOR THIS NEW WEBSITE ITS RAD DAAAAMN!” sounds and feels so lame, that sometimes hearing such and similar online statements from people via e-mail or instant messages results in the offline world of boredom to seem like a better choice. Body language, misinterpretations, fake messages, fake affection and caring, and many other things are so easy to type out and show in the online world, that every day some other idiot emotions keeps flying in everyone’s direction. And if more people talk about it, it becomes the trend.

Been online for so long and so deep, being 100% offline sounds ecstatic!

I went online because I was curious at the same time. It would be awesome to commit online suicide because of being bored at the same time too.

What do you think? Now I must go offline now and try to eat, play, drink, work, and jump around. All offline, of course.

Thank you for reading.

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