Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Necessity and All That

If necessity is the mother of invention then desperation must be its father.  Yes, and desperation has forced me, yet again, to do stuff I dun wanna do!

I'm really not as antisocial as I seem [that's a lie] but I prefer not to engage in social networks as a general rule.  I enjoy blogging-mostly at my own site-and keeping up with friends as often as possible, but I'm not a big fan of globally recognized social networks.  The bigger they get the higher your chances go up for having some content you post or upload getting ganked.  Facebook recently lost a lawsuit over content they used from a woman's profile in ad targeting.  The content was a photo of the woman's child she shared on her timeline I guess.  I don't know all the details, like whether or not she opted out of that dubious bit of facebook's increasing creepiness, but I do know that I wouldn't want my pictures plastered all over the internet for all the world to see, much less my own kid.

Recently my son took up a hobby.  He makes YouTube video tutorials with tips and tricks for playing video games.  Unfortunately since Google own YouTube, they've made some changes recently that, frankly, I can do without.  I stumbled across this nasty little bit of change when I logged into my YouTube account and tried to add a song to one of  my  playlists.  Up popped this box telling me to create a YouTube channel, which requires creating the whole Google+ social network stuff, which I'd recently deleted.  I can't post comments, like or participate without the whole kit and kaboodle.

It's a nasty bit of business when you're forced to do things you don't want to do but this is increasingly the way of all things internet.  It's the new normalcy.

I used to peg myself as a raving paranoiac but I don't think that's the case.  I'm not paranoid.  I'm just private.  I'm individualistic, I hate conformity and uniformity in most of its guises.  Or disguises.  So when I sign up for A and am then told I must take B, C, and D to use A, I feel manipulated on general principle no matter how small and seemingly insignificant the issue.  It's almost always small things but when this is the way of 'all things internet,' it all piles up over time and it seems like every internet-related corporate interest has their nose parked right up your ass crack.

And none of this is news.  You guys all know this about me.  You've heard the arguments, the theories, the.... >.>  conspiracies. 

But...I really want to help my son out with his YouTube hobby and I guess it wont kill me to poke my turtle's head out of my shell from time to time.

7 comments:

  1. I don't like it either. I actually have a channel on Youtube that I was going to start Vlogs on but I had it on hold. When I came back to it, I'd forgotten the password and the e-mail that I used to make the account. So I am locked out and can't seem to get back in, which sucks.

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    1. Well, you could always make a lost password request over and over with each email you may have used for it until it recognizes one and sends you a password reset. You may have already tried this and if that doesn't work then they've changed how to recover a lost account too. :-P

      Was it the Patchouli one? Or is that Amanda's. It's on my subscription list.

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    2. That's hers ^^ the Patchouli Poop (I think is what it's called lol). As for Youtube >< I hate all the crazy crap the internet is doing. I just want to use it to get homework done and to keep in contact with friends via email and chat, etc. I will keep facebook because it's a way for me to network with the people in my MFA program as well as network with the creative individuals from college. On the whole though, people that I care about know my phone number and know how to get ahold of me without the need for FB ><. *sigh* I kind of wish I could erase myself from the net in a way. But you have to have accounts, etc. to do almost anything!

      I do think that's awesome that your son is doing tutorials on youtube! Best of luck to him and lol yeah I suppose popping your head out every now and then ain't a bad thing. ^_^

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  2. I'm a gamer too you know,and would have enjoyed the link to your son's channel.:-)

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    1. I did not know that about you, Will! I'll post a link. He's hungry for subscribers and feedback. :D

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    2. Here's a link to his channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/xI2ei

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  3. I went ahead and subscribed so thanks for the link.

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