TWO TIER FACEBOOK?

 

ARE YOU ABOUT TO PAY FOR FACEBOOK?

I did the usual tonight. Logged into Facebook. We all do it. But tonight I was mildly surprised.

After wishing a friend a happy birthday by posting on their wall I noticed that a new button had appeared alongside the more normal ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ on my post. I also got a balloon notification. Apparently we can now promote our posts. This will apparently move our promoted post further up the news-feed. It asked me for £2-01p to do this.

Now I have always poo-pooed the stories that do the rounds on FB about it becoming paid for. We’ve all seen them. People asking you to share a post about FB costing so much per month from a certain date. Any I get are deleted within seconds usually followed by me informing the gullible that the story they refer to is a hoax. And it is. Facebook will always be free….. buttttttt.

I’ll tell you a story. Me and my Raven also use another social networking site. It’s now called MeetMe but recently it was better known as MyYearbook. It’s where we first met and I do keep it going as I keep all our old posts/gifts/messages etc on it. But anyway MeetMe has two types of membership. Free and paid for(known as V.I.P membership) The free one that I use is fine but it restricts your use in many way and you receive ads everywhere that do get rather annoying.

I do believe that this is the road that Facebook will take and what I have seen tonight with the ‘Promote’ button is the thin edge of the wedge. It is a huge moneymaking organization but as we have seen recently even that does not protect it from the vagaries of the stock markets. It’s probably why Zuckerberg is backing away from his baby. I believe he has taken it as far as it can go in it’s present form.It the capitalist society you cannot just sit still. You always have to be looking for bigger profits or jumping on the next bandwagon.

You have been warned.

Now I know that we shall soon start to see the boycott the Promote button posts and pages but they will have as much impact on FB as the ‘We want a Dislike’ button campaigns did. There are always plenty of mugs out there who will pay.

Be warned. And as always … BE CAREFUL AND BE AWARE.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

A CHANGE OF LIFE.

Any of you that follow my Facebook posts and statuses will know of problems I am having in life at the moment… amongst them are searching for the elusive crap job. Also living in a town I despise with a passion.

These past two weeks I have felt that change in my life was about to happen and I have said that in status updates. This was not prophecy or mystic messages but maybe more the inner voice telling me to do something I suppose. To wake up and smell the coffee as I am known to say.

This morning I took a decision that I have been mulling over all weekend…well all week really. I went down to the local jobcentre to trawl for the latest minimum wage no hope jobs in and around Haverhill. After about 2 minutes I walked out totally despondent at the state of the economy and the paltry few jobs on offer.

And I woke up and smelt that coffee indeed. Costa Coffee actually as that is where I went this bright sunny morning. I sat and partook of a latte. Looking out of the window (I was at the window seat) I made up my mind. I knew what I had to do. Why should I stay in a town I don’t like? Why should I spend so much time hunting for a dead end soul destroying job in that said town?

My love and life is in words and writing. These past few months for various reasons that writing has slowed to a mere trickle and sadly inspiration left me. But these past few days it seems that a floodgate has opened. Ideas are entering my mind so quickly and in such a torrent that sometimes it is hard to grasp them.

I am giving up looking for a job here in Haverhill. I do NOT want a job here in Haverhill.I will concentrate solely on writing. Complete creativity I hope. I will still have to visit that hope destroying job centre to get my government beer vouchers and apply for the odd job or two to keep bureaucracy happy and the said beer vouchers flowing.

And like last year I hope that by my birthday on September 11^th I will be elsewhere. If not then I think I will stick a damned pin in a map and head there or something anyway. I don’t care whereabouts it is in the world or the UK but this guy wants’ to head outta town and this guy is going to, although maybe I will pass on the Seychelles this time.

So until then it will be full out with the novels. Some short story and poetry competitions…Who knows?

The world is my lobster.

Suffolk Sky

Coffee with a Madman.

I have just joined a great little Facebook group called Coffee with a Madman, a Friedrich Nietzsche appreciation group. Why don’t you pay us a visit.

I am afraid I haven’t read any Nietzsche in many years but I do remember some of my earliest ideas on Nihilism and Anarchism (two ideologies often wrongly mixed up) coming from this man’s writings. I would definitely tend towards anarchism by the way. Also many of my ideas on the preposterousness of organised religion possibly bear some echo of his works.

For my little bit of Nietzsche I will use this piece from Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape…The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth…Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman–a rope over an abyss…what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end…”

Definitely my thoughts as opined in my views of the total unnecessity of religion in a modern intelligent society. As soon as we lose modern quasi religious fairy tales the sooner we can aspire to overman and leave our ape selves behind. My refuted nihilism probably shows a little in that thought.

By the way the trouble with madness is its subjectivity. The classic example was from the old soviet era when if you wandered far from the path of Communism you were considered mentally ill and could find yourself with a free ticket to the gulags.

Most religions still use the same methods but substitute the term ‘madness’ with ‘heresy’…

And before long as with most religions, the lunatics are running the asylum

25 FAVOURITE SONGS.

Another bit of tomfoolery from Facebook about musical taste.

25 Songs….mmm very hard. I could put down 25 now and yet tomorrow would think of a totally different 25 but here goes.

1 ) Blood – Editors

2 ) Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division.

3 )Sick & Tired – Anastacia

4 ) Come Up The Years – Jefferson Airplane.

5 ) Miracles – Jefferson Starship

6 ) Corinna – Taj Mahal

7 ) Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol

8 ) Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad – Moby

9 ) Goodbye My Lover – James Blunt.

10 )The Last Days of May – Blue Oyster Cult

11 ) The River – Bruce Springsteen

12 ) Iris – The GooGooDolls

13 ) You’re Beautiful – James Morrison

14 ) Stan – Eminem

15 ) Take My Hand – Dido

16 ) White Flag – Dido

17 ) Let It Be – The Beatles

18 ) Hey Joe – Jimi Hendrix

19 ) Wrapped Around Your Finger – The Police

20 ) Waiting in the Weeds – The Eagles

21 ) Little Rock – Collin Raye

22 ) Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd

23 ) Moonlight Shadow – Mike Oldfield

24 ) Affirmation – Savage Garden

25 ) Romeo & Juliet – Dire Straits Have fun..

25 Random Things About Me

1) I love snow.

2) I love reading and read pretty fast and frequently.

3) I enjoy wine, red or white.

4) I smoke but I am giving up on Monday.I have the patches already.

5) I love writing and have self published one novel called Love Sex and Time Travel.The absence of a comma is intentional.

6) I also write poetry, well verse really, I don’t like getting tied down with rhyming, although I do use it.

7) My poetry is of the self searching morbid variety.Not like me personally but I find the metaphors are better.lol.

8 ) Last year in October I took voluntary redundancy after 10 years in my job.

9)This year I am writing a book called From Suffolk to the Seychelles. It will be published.

10) I like sausages and mash, fish and chips and steak.Not all at the same time though.

11) I am not frightened of dentists..lol.

12) I am a romantic…cuddles and kisses are for me.

13) I was born in Hackney,London at the Clapton Mothers Hospital in 1953.

14) I like all types of music, from rock and blues through to soul and Motown.I like modern stuff like Snow Patrol,Anathema and Razorlight.I even like some Country music and some rap or R&B.

15) I am chronically shy when I meet people.I actually shake before first dates with fear.

16) TV…I like Hustle,Heartbeat,Wild at Heart, Life on Mars and Doctor Who.

17) Films I like…Kevin and Perry Go Large,The Blues Brothers,The Downfall,The Green Mile,You Have Mail,The Exterminating Angel and James Bond films.

18 ) I am right handed and I sing in the shower.I shower at least once a day.I cannot get going in the morning till I have showered and had at least 2 mugs of tea.

19) I have all my own hair and most of my own teeth..lol.

20) I am terrified of flying but do it nonetheless.

21) I don’t like spiders or creepy crawlies

22) I do like dogs and geckos

23) I have always been a rebel,probably done me more harm than good though.

24) I have no tattoos or piercings. They are just so common nowadays and I don’t like following the herd.I feel that walking round with a few pounds of metal stuck in my body or the contents of the local Chinese takeaway embellished on my ass is particularly pathetic.

25) I am a spiritual person. I just do not like religion.God is within us and all around us if we look.I don’t need some self seeking priest/rabbi/imam trying to stuff their holy shit into me.They astound me with their hypocrisy and the fact that people believe them I find to be abhorrent.

Jesus 103.

Does such a thing as God exist?
Is there a God and what denomination is she?
Looked him up on MySpace and yes he is dwelling there.
And she must be omnipresent or is that he.
Maybe neither and I wondered if they cared.
They have so many web pages, thats God and Jesus Christ
And yes Jesus talks to me I know.
Because Billy Graham told me so.
And now I know he does because
I found him on Facebook too
And I talked religiously
With Jesus 103
Asked him about him dying for our sins?
Weren’t he just a little premature?
And I engaged him in discussion
Asked could he save my soul
Could I have a little blessing
Just to make my life whole
But he told me to Fuck Off!
Holy words indeed.
To send me off to sleep.

And now this morning comes alright
Wake up with a hangover
Too much whisky and religion last night
Never a healthy mix you see
And after an evening of asking too many unanswerable questions of a deity.
I wonder where I went wrong with Jesus 103
Last night I had it all. Doubt, self doubt, self loathing,
Even fear of losing myself all washed down with booze.
I know its a bad mix, but I took it and I wrote that bit of bitter verse.
This morning, bleary eyed and still with the same doubts and fears, I thought.
Haha. I’m not so stupid after all.
Why wouldn’t God have his own MySpace page?
A sort of confessional for this internet age.
Why can’t we IM him with our fears.
Get him to wash away our tears
I am going to put him in my buddy list….right away.
Before I start this whole new day.