Drunk Birds, alien clouds, and other social media intrusions

When I went to California a few months ago to help a friend, I discovered that she had tape across her laptop camera lens....and also tape across her phone camera lens. I asked her why, and she said it was so no one, especially the government, could use it to watch her without her permission.

I said, "Oh, OK...." Then I went into the kitchen and made her a hat out of aluminum foil so the aliens couldn't read her thoughts.

She didn't think that was very funny...but I was concerned that she might be crazy. She also looked really good in aluminum foil, but that was irrelevant. She said I was making fun of her.

Of course I was making fun of her. It's what I do.

Then I came home and started this whole blogging thing. When I researched how to become a rock star blogger, I discovered that if I wanted to have people look at the stuff I wrote, I was going to have to join a bunch of social media sites.

No big deal, I thought. I started with Google+....and it took about two days for me to totally freak out and start wearing an aluminum foil hat.

It turns out that when you sign up for these things, they all "sync" with each other...and in an instant they know EVERYTHING about you. Who your friends are, what your interests are, what you research, what you eat, what you buy, when you sleep, where you are, what you read, what you listen to...

I sat down at my computer and found a "notification" from Google+ asking me, "Is this you?" It showed me an image that somebody else had taken, a long time ago, where I was a person standing in a crowd of other people. There was a little square around my face, and I was supposed to confirm that it was actually me.

It was so unexpected...and I was having a really bad hair day in that photo...so I ran around the house screaming for a few minutes. Then I came back and actually read the "privacy statements" (HAHAHAHA) on a few of my social media thingies. They mentioned stuff about my accessing my GEO locator, my contacts list, my built in microphones and cameras, my emails...

So, after I put on my tinfoil hat, taped up my camera lenses, and went into the closet to keep reading about algorithms, face recognition capabilities, and to discover that every picture I've taken since 1984 (ironic) existed out there on some kind of "cloud," I totally freaked out and decided that I was going to delete it ALL. HAHAHA! ALL of it!

I mean, Facebook was scary enough...but at least I fully understood the privacy options. When I went to delete my Google+ profile, a warning screen came up to tell me that I could go ahead and do that, but that over the next few weeks they would gradually be deleting my Picassa photo albums, my gmail, my blog that I had been journaling in for the past eight years of my life, my contacts lists, my family, my friends, my cat, my self-esteem, my memory...and that once I hit that DELETE ACCOUNT button, I couldn't change my mind (which they would also be deleting)...and was I SURE that I wanted to do that?

I thought about it for a while (while crying in a fetal position), and I ultimately decided to embrace the WHOLE thing. I wasn't ready to erase my whole life...or my cat...in for a penny, in for a pound...as somebody (probably a Google alien) once said. Go big or go home! Why not, indeed?

So, I signed up for EVERYTHING.

It's how my falsely bifurcated brain works. Of course, Google+ already KNEW that, didn't they? HAHAHAHA!

So, now if I blog for ninety minutes, it takes me another three hours to share it to all of my social media sites. I mean, I'm blogging, stumbling, tumbling, tweeting, texting, instagramming, pinteresting, facebooking, my-spacing, soundclouding, googling, yelping, yahooing, foursquaring...I'm link'd in baby...

I'm exhausted. I sound very athletic, or sometimes, like a drunk bird...

stumble, tumble, and tweet...oh, my

Most of these social media things do link to each other, so if I submit to one of them, I might be submitting to twelve of them...my friends will probably get sick of seeing my "content" out there...but most are sensible enough to NOT have joined ALL of them.....like I DID...HAHAHAHA....OMG.....

I'm kind of afraid to talk critically about Google+...I've seen 'Silkwood'....and I've noticed the headlights behind me as I drive at night...

Of course I'm in Phoenix...which has a lot of traffic....so it could just be that...but, if I disappear, please check to see if I've been deleted. Or if I'm trapped in a cloud...or something.

Actually, I think that perhaps these guys (aliens) might have my best interests at heart. I woke up this morning to a notification that Google+ had talked to Yahoo, and they were concerned that I was overdue for a colonoscopy...so apparently they had given me one while I was sleeping...and everything checked out OK.

So, that was kind of sweet.

I'm watching you....