not now

Facebook supposedly has a new button. It is for friend requests.


Instead of "confirm" and "ignore" you will now see "confirm" and "not now."


When you click on "not now" the friend request is hidden. It is not denied, just tucked away, and the person who sent it remains unaware of this event.


It would seem that the world is becoming so delicate that we can not take being told that someone does not want to be our friend. Someone, whom, we most likely will never meet and have never met.


Or,


maybe it is becoming so socially acceptable for people to behave brutally and nastily towards strangers that we are seeking ways to avoid possible turning up the flame in anyone's burner. Behaving brutally and nastily to people we know is already socially acceptable, we have created entire industries out of that behavior - from treatments to rationalizations to forms of entertainment, we have encoded it as something that "just is."


One of the things I do every so often is remind myself of the harder realities of the world and especially the Internet. Googles's recent transparency release has given me the opportunity to do that recently. If you haven't seen it you should go look. Go look and start to pick through the categories and look at how different countries use the Internet. It can shift your attitude about a lot of things.


They keep trying to call facebook the first Internet nation with its 500 million users. But a nation of what? Over 80 million are whiling away their life playing farmville, about an equal amount are devoting large blocks of time to make sure that their past is preserved. Then there are the trends about what things to get outraged over, what griefs to support, what complaints to be made and who to shut out (without ever saying their name) while condemning their behavior by essentially repeating it.


Oh wait....that is a lot like a real nation.


:)


silly me


what was interesting to me was to look at, by country, who translates pages or phrases on the Internet the most.


I am trying to ignore the fact that I can barely walk through the cave, everything is pulled down and in piles. But...not only did the ceiling creep out again, but a wall sprang from the ground. I took the time to make MK a special toy that hangs from the bottom of the heavy bag and she has absolutely no interest in it. She would much rather f--k with me and the wood.


I am almost, almost caught up enough to just write and that....is something I look forward to like you have no idea.


c.2010 Cassandra Tribe. All Rights Reserved.