Tag Archives: Dingleface

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People are really telling Dingleface all this stuff?

Hackers gained access to “gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or Pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches” for 14 million users…

I would like to meet some of these people.

“Let me hold your wallet for a minute.”

“Oh, sure. Here you go.”

“I’ll just be taking this photo, some of the cash, and one of your cards. Okay?”

“Um…okay, I guess?”

“Yes it is. Tell me, do you hold any sort of degree?”

“No, I only went to college for a year.”

“Okay. Dating anyone right now?”

“Not at the moment, no.”

“Got it. Now, what was the last thing you bought?”

“It’s kind of embarrassing, but if you must know, it was some Immodium and some toilet bowl cleaner.”

“I see. Well, thanks! Nice to meet ya!”

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This bears repeating every now and then

Something I wrote seven years ago:

A friend mentioned during a lengthy conversation that, though he texts a lot and was about to set up a Facebook page for his restaurant ’cause that’s what you’re s’posed to do these days, he didn’t really get the appeal of Facebook. I told him that it exists primarily in order to teach youngsters early to undervalue and give away every last remnant of their privacy so that Facebook and others can make oodles of dough selling as much of their data as they can. He had just been regaling me with tales of how various customers had pissed him off in the restaurant during the day and how disgusted he was with people generally, so I concluded by saying that Facebook and Twitter were a lot like people, only condensed and therefore worse. My, how he laughed.

I still haven’t signed up to any of those things, for the same reasons that I don’t quaff sulfuric acid with my breakfast, jab at my eyes with knitting needles, or taunt rabid raccoons with sticks.

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The other compelling argument

I just skimmed this article, and I can understand what they’re saying, but all the while I was thinking, “Okay, but this is all made irrelevant by the single overriding and compelling argument not to join the fool thing in the first place: one glance at its founder. I would not buy a used car from that man.” I always thought the same of Richard Nixon.

[Dingleface’s] small print may be the next big thing in European antitrust as watchdogs home in on how the world’s biggest social network collects information from users that helps generate vast advertising revenues.

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office is examining whether [Dingleface] essentially takes advantage of its popularity to bully users into agreeing to terms and conditions they might not understand. The details that users provide help generate the targeted ads that make the company so rich.

In the eyes of the Cartel Office, [Dingleface] is “extorting” information from its users, said Frederik Wiemer, a lawyer at Heuking Kuehn Lueer Wojtek in Hamburg. “Whoever doesn’t agree to the data use, gets locked out of the social network community,” he said. “The fear of social isolation is exploited to get access to the complete surfing activities of users.”

[more at the link]

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“Gas…Market Basket…veg…Dingleface. Wait, what?”

See if you can spot the fraudulent transactions on my debit card:

dcu

On submitting the dispute just now, I said:

I’m not a member of Facebook or any of the other ultimately antisocial media sites (case in point).

I’ll stop by the credit union tomorrow for a replacement card – for the third time in a little over a year.

I thought it unusual when a friend told me recently that she routinely cancels her debit card and gets a new one every six months. I no longer think that unusual.

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Just stop it, already

This sort of inclusion in a news article is pointless and maddening:

This has created a storm of criticism against this TV pundit known for her strong and often extreme opinions, but more than 11,000 people have pressed the “Like” button for this blog article on [Dingleface].

Well, sure, but worldwide, I’m certain you could easily find 11,000 people who would “Like” the idea of smashing your own thumb with a hammer, or feeding ground glass to dinner guests, or dropping toddlers off in the centre of a highway at naptime. Why not instead tell the truth?

This has created a storm of criticism against this TV pundit known for her strong and often extreme opinions, but, unsurprisingly, more than 11,000 trolls and/or mentally ill people enthusiastically supported her as they sat in mostly dark, unkempt rooms, mostly in their pants, in another of their series of feeble attempts to be noticed by someone…anyone. Such is the world.

The great majority of media outlets seem to believe that antisocial media totals gathered at filing time make their stories more relevant, maybe more in tune with the younger demographic, but these might-as-well-be-random numbers only make the articles more superficial and trivial. They’re the news equivalent of packing peanuts, but a little less so: They’re light, fluffy, and perhaps useful as filler when one needs to reach that word count, but in the long run, they will not protect the media jobs within.

peanut