I’ve recently come to the realization that I have never owned a pair of pants that fit me properly. This is largely due to the fact that it is nigh on impossible for me to find the “proper” cut of pants in a retail store. I have a large waist, wide hips, and I’m tall. Most retailers seem to think that if you’re overweight you have to be short, so in order to avoid having a horrible case of “moose knuckle” I wear my pants low on my hips, under my belly. This is fine in most situations, but if I wear a shirt tucked in I get a horrible case of Dunlap’s Disease. In researching my dilemma online it appears as though the solution to my problem lies in a pants with a high “rise.” They have an extra inch of length between the crotch and the waist line to give the boys more room and prevent the dreaded moose knuckle.
Forget fire and brimstone. Convince me that Hell looks like this and I'll be at church every week. Photo courtesy of the International Monetary Fund via Flickr.
As much as I may not like to admit it, I work in Corporate America. My company is a not-for-profit credit union, but regardless of that there are certain aspects of the organization that are no different than any other small to mid-sized corporation. We have a “culture,” we have a dress code, we have rules about what exits you can use to leave the building and what kind of decorations you can have in your cubicle. We make five-year plans and talk about improving efficiency. We have department rivalries, rumor mills, and the occasional scandal. Like I said, in a lot of ways we’re pretty much your average every day organization. The big difference, of course, is that we’re not bending our members over for billions of dollars in profits that are being paid out to shareholders or overpaid executives.
So we have that going for us anyway.
We also have meetings. Lots and lots of meetings.
I hate meetings.
A lot.
I do not, however, hate alot of meetings. The presence of an alot at a meeting would make it infinitely more interesting.
While I have a disclaimer on my blog here stating that the opinions here are not those of my employer I feel the need, considering the subject I am about to discuss, to state it again. What I am about to write is my opinion and my opinion alone, and in no way reflects the views of my employer.
Ok, I got that out of the way…Now…
On my way in to work this morning I heard a bit on the radio about how the new credit card regulations were going to be horrible for people who, traditionally, are responsible with their credit cards. These “responsible” credit card users are now going to be asked to carry the burden of the “irresponsible” people who have abused their credit cards, paid late, and carried high balances. This type of rage is generally accompanied by vitriol aimed at the Obama administration and how this is yet another step towards socialism.
There are certain aspects of this that I cannot dispute. Banks ARE going to raise fees on people who pay their balances on time and have good credit. They are, and have been, raising interest rates on those people for no good reason. This is, without question, a direct response to the new regulation and an effort by the credit industry to recoup the money they are going to lose as a result of it.
I remember when the internet was still new and shiny. Back then if you were one of the folks who actually had a computer and, on top of that, the “luxury” of an internet connection you could pick a handle to be known by and spout off whatever you wanted to online without fear of the people in your “real life” finding what you said. Oh, sure…it happened on occasion. I’ll bet most of us who were around back in those days had at least one uncomfortable moment where we were confronted with the person who we had slagged up one side and down the other on Live Journal. There’s nothing quite like that sinking, horrible feeling you get in the pit of your stomach the first time someone says “I read something about me on your blog” when you didn’t know the person in question even could even figure out how to turn a computer ON. On the whole, though, the internet was a vast anonymous playground in those days. The people who knew you in meat space were likely in your social circle and could generally be counted on to be trusted confidants. You could talk about anything you wanted to, and we did. Oh did we. We talked about our sexual conquests. We talked about how insane our families made us. We talked about our jobs, and what we really thought about them. We talked about our secret dreams. We talked about recreational drug use.
We swore a lot, too.
Those days are over.
I have to be honest with you. The title of my post here is pretty much a bait-and-switch. I don’t think Capitalism sucks. At all. I love making money. Money is good. Money lets me buy stuff, and I like having stuff. Money lets me do things like take my son to GenCon or join thousands of insane geeks like myself for Dragon*Con in Atlanta. Money lets me purchase memberships to Dungeons and Dragons Insider and spend hours upon hours trying to re-capture my childhood. I’m a materialistic fool who doesn’t wanna share and capitalism is the way to go for me.
That being said, there are things about Capitalism that make me very sad in our current times. Some of that, of course, focuses around the health care debate. This post is NOT about the health care debate, but I feel this is worth mentioning at least in passing. As much as I think he does more harm than good in regards to being the public face of liberalism, I do have to agree with Bill Maher when he says that there are certain things that simply should not be profit driven. Health care is one of those things. A system in which you are worth more if you are sick and dying is a broken system.
But, no. This post is not about health care. This post is really about something that has a much bigger impact on my daily life.
This post is about the internet and about how a bunch of greedy, lazy people are fucking it up.
I make no secret about the fact that one of the main reasons I started ShrinkGeek was to make money. Allow me to re-direct you to the opening paragraph of this post. I like money, and the idea of making money while helping people and writing is just delicious to me. The thing is, we made a commitment when we put ShrinkGeek together that we weren’t going to sell our souls in order to turn a profit. We want people to click on our advertisements. We want people to click on our affiliate links. We want to be attractive to advertisers so they give us lots of money to put their banners up on our site. We’re not going to get there, though, by tricking people. We’re genuinely trying to offer a valuable service to our readers. We’re not doing article swaps or posting fake reviews that are supplied to us by PR firms. We’re not using automated programs to get thousands of followers on our Twitter account. We’re not trying to game the system.
As a result we’re also not making much money at this point, and there is frankly no guarantee we’ll ever end up doing so before we decide the effort is not worth the investment.
What has me thinking about this recently is the absolute proliferation of bots and marketers on Twitter. It’s getting to the point where it is difficult to sift through the noise in order to decipher the signal, and that depresses me. Twitter is an amazing tool, but at the rate the garbage is filling the stream it isn’t going to be long before people who genuinely want to use the service to connect with others are going to move on and all you’re going to have left are people who are trying to sell you something. The same thing is happening with a lot of blogs these days. What started as a genuine movement is rapidly devolving into everyone and their brother attempting to get rich quick by either recycling content that was written by someone else or tricking Google to visit your web site instead of Amazon.com.
And I get it…I really do. I get the desire to make money without doing any real work. I’d love to get rich for doing next to nothing. I really would. But on the flip side it makes me really, really sad to see so much potential in the form of communication getting lost in a sea of…shit. There really isn’t any other way to put it. The internet is becoming more and more polluted, and eventually I fear we’re going to get to a point where the only way you’re able to find real content is by paying a third party to filter through the shit for you.
Premium internet – where nothing of quality is available unless you’re paying for it.
Maybe that’s the plan. I know the big media companies would really love for all of us to be paying to get to their content. All I know is that more and more it seems like Twitter, in particular, is predominantly dominated by a bunch of Marketers trying to sell Marketing techniques to…well..other Marketers. They aren’t offering anything new at all, but instead continue to re-package the same “10 sure fire ways to make money on the internet” and sell them to someone else, who is just going to try and re-package that information and try to sell it to someone else. In the mean time these people set up spam bots trying to trick folks into clicking their links and start to scare away some of the people who are genuinely trying to use Twitter as a means of building networks and/or communicating with their Fan Base (folks like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, both of whom have complained about this recently).
I see so much potential out there. We’re standing on the brink of a revolution that has the potential to fundamentally change the way we look at entertainment and information, but that potential is being watered down by sloth and greed.
I know that there is this ideal image of capitalism in which people who work hard and have good ideas are rewarded financially for that, but I don’t see that happening so much these days – especially when it comes to the internet. That is why, in this regard, I kinda think capitalism sucks.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to preface this particular entry by reminding my readership that I am ensemble member of the Jobsite Theater. All this really means, in the grand scheme of things, is that I have worked with Jobsite in the past and they do not need to see a monologue from me at the beginning of their casting season. They know what I’m capable of, and if they think I might fit a role they call me for that specific show. I am not involved in the business end of Jobsite at all. I am not on the Board of Directors. I have no financial stake in Jobsite beyond the shows that I do with them, and my interest in their health and future only impacts me directly in that if they were to fold I’d actually have to actively seek roles with other companies if I wanted to keep acting.
I mention this only because what I’m about to write is going to be fairly critical of another local company, American Stage, and I do not want you all to think that my words are in any way motivated by a desire to see them fail. The truth of the matter is that any company that does well here is good for the community at whole, and that’s kind of why I felt the urge to make this post.
Is there any way at all for me to describe the way I’m feeling about Tuesday’s events that we haven’t seen over and over again in the news? Can I possibly come up with another word to describe the feeling in my gut, the utter fear, the constant replay of those planes smashing into the World Trade Center in my head?
No, I really don’t believe there is.
I hung an American Flag out in front of my house today. When I bought this place, in December of 1999, the previous owner left a flag in the utility room. It has sat there the entire time I’ve been here. I tried to make sure it didn’t hit the ground, sure. I mean, I DID spend years in the Boy Scouts. Some of that shit is ingrained in my head. To this day I can spout the Scout Codes and Laws as if I were 12 again. Other than that, though, I never really paid it much mind. It didn’t seem important to me.
Part of the problem, you see, is that it’s just not hip to love your country anymore. Really, how often do you see members of my generation (the now approaching and in many cases over thirty-something Generation X) being patriotic? Do we stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance? Do we sing the national anthem? Do we get tears in our eyes on Memorial Day? NO! We scoff at it. We think it’s beneath us. We think it’s an archaic throwback to our grandparents time.
So, you see, it was actually with some sense of trepidation that I hung my flag today. I had to stop for a minute and think about why I was doing it. If I really felt patriotic, or if I was doing it just because I was supposed to. If my friends would understand, or if they would think I was being cheesy. It it really MEANT anything to me.
In the end I decided to risk appearing to be Velveeta and hang that blessed flag.
I AM proud to be an American. I always have been, even in the height of my discontent with it. During Operation Desert Storm, I ripped up my draft card in protest. Mind you, I didn’t do this and mail it to the draft board (I was rebellious, not stupid), but I was angry that my country was fighting in a war that I didn’t understand and I didn’t support. I still, however, loved being an American, and would not have dodged the draft had I been called (on a side note, I took steps to try and get registered as a conscientious objector. You can make me go, damnit, but you aren’t getting me to kill anyone). So today I put my flag up, and I was proud to be one of the many in my neighborhood that did. Times like this can bring out the best in us.
It can also bring out the worst.
I’ve talked to several people who have made absolutely moronic statements in the last few days. Things like, “I better not see anyone wearing a turban” or “I just want to go kill me a sand nigger.” What’s worse is that some of these comments have come from my family. I’ve also heard people talking about wanting to be secure so badly that they are willing to “be inconvenienced” a little more. I’ve heard talk about closing borders.
This kind of talk is insanity, and it is our responsibility as sane and logical members of this country to put an end to it NOW. Killing and hatred is evil, period. There are times that it is a necessary evil, but it is NEVER a good thing. We must hunt down those responsible. We MUST ensure that they will never do this again. We must rise above relishing in the task, however. We must not let hatred mire us down, because it reduces us. It makes us less, and that is unacceptable. It is also unacceptable to talk of closing borders, or restricting freedoms. If we change our way of life because of these attacks then the bad guys, even if they end up dying because of it, have won hands down.
That’s it. I’m spent. I want to sleep for 12 hours in a cold room under a thick blanket and try to get these images out of my head, but I can’t. I’ll be up tomorrow morning, watching the news, seeing the crashes all over again. Weather permitting, though, I’ll be hanging that flag again.
Friends, family…even strangers. I love you, and I am glad that you are alive to read this.
