Recent MR-scans of my knee showed that I've got about a square centimetre of 'dead' bone inside my joint. So part of me is officially dead, right? Yet, most of me is still alive. In my opinion, that qualifies as being a living dead.
I'm a sentient zombie! Hooray!
P.S. The same scans showed a really tasty looking piece of quadriceps.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Inverse censorship
Censorship.
Was it invented to stop us from seeing things we don't want to see? Or was it invented to stop us from seeing things someone else doesn't want us to see? Whatever the original intent may have been, surely it wasn't to apply it yourself to information that is important for your own well-fare?
The kind of person who throws their entire personal life on facebook, we all know someone like that. The kind of person who posts every up and down of their life, from taking a shower to the divorce of their parents. More oft than not, that sort of people has an amount of 'friends' well into the hundreds who, I do not doubt, have great interest in such matters. I think you, my readers, are pretty sure what direction this is heading. No, for once I will make an attempt at being surprising, I'll just continue with this subject.
Someone has been crying on facebook for the past few weeks. Apparently, a 2nd attempt at a relationship failed in 3 months time and he's been having bad luck since he was run over by a car in January.
Honoustly, does sharing that with 270 people make you feel better? Even if you have a shocking amount of close friends who are all eager to help you with your problems, 270 people? So yeah, I haven't seen or heard the guy since 2005, but now I know he's an emotional wreckage! Hooray!
Now, how does this bring us to censorship? Well, I'll get to that.
I usually ignore messages like that. Like, all of them. Whether they're from my niece, an old friend, a new friend, an attractive girl or the most hideous dragon the world has ever seen, I don't care, I read their status and ignore them.
Not this time, though. This time I felt that the guy deserved better than to waste his personal life on facebook. So I told him that he should look for help with his real friends, instead of sharing every depressed thought with 270 people who don't really care. You know, some hard but true advice to get him back on his feet and go on with his life. He deleted that comment to make room for people who fake caring. With it, he deleted the only comment that actually meant to help him. Naturally, I pointed out to him that he was placing censorship on the wrong post, a bit like the inverse of censorship. He deleted that comment too.
I did manage to squeeze in a comment about how I was only trying to help and give him advice. But in return, his other 'friends' advised him to 'unfriend' me. Seriously, is that going to solve his problems? Is that going to make him feel better? All that he'll achieve with doing that is see how a number on his facebook page drops from '276' to '275'. Yeah, I'm sure that will make him happy for the rest of his life.
My point in all this is that if you've got a problem, sharing it with the world and then censoring the people that actually try to help is not the way to solve it. Instead, you can talk about it with people that you know that care about you, or people you care about enough to share your feelings with. If you don't want help, don't pretend you do. If you do want help, then get help. If you're too emotionally fucked up to decide whether you want help or not (I've been there myself), then get help. Talk to people, not to a number on your facebook page.
Or, you can start an anonymous blog that nobody ever reads. Works fine for me!
Was it invented to stop us from seeing things we don't want to see? Or was it invented to stop us from seeing things someone else doesn't want us to see? Whatever the original intent may have been, surely it wasn't to apply it yourself to information that is important for your own well-fare?
The kind of person who throws their entire personal life on facebook, we all know someone like that. The kind of person who posts every up and down of their life, from taking a shower to the divorce of their parents. More oft than not, that sort of people has an amount of 'friends' well into the hundreds who, I do not doubt, have great interest in such matters. I think you, my readers, are pretty sure what direction this is heading. No, for once I will make an attempt at being surprising, I'll just continue with this subject.
Someone has been crying on facebook for the past few weeks. Apparently, a 2nd attempt at a relationship failed in 3 months time and he's been having bad luck since he was run over by a car in January.
Honoustly, does sharing that with 270 people make you feel better? Even if you have a shocking amount of close friends who are all eager to help you with your problems, 270 people? So yeah, I haven't seen or heard the guy since 2005, but now I know he's an emotional wreckage! Hooray!
Now, how does this bring us to censorship? Well, I'll get to that.
I usually ignore messages like that. Like, all of them. Whether they're from my niece, an old friend, a new friend, an attractive girl or the most hideous dragon the world has ever seen, I don't care, I read their status and ignore them.
Not this time, though. This time I felt that the guy deserved better than to waste his personal life on facebook. So I told him that he should look for help with his real friends, instead of sharing every depressed thought with 270 people who don't really care. You know, some hard but true advice to get him back on his feet and go on with his life. He deleted that comment to make room for people who fake caring. With it, he deleted the only comment that actually meant to help him. Naturally, I pointed out to him that he was placing censorship on the wrong post, a bit like the inverse of censorship. He deleted that comment too.
I did manage to squeeze in a comment about how I was only trying to help and give him advice. But in return, his other 'friends' advised him to 'unfriend' me. Seriously, is that going to solve his problems? Is that going to make him feel better? All that he'll achieve with doing that is see how a number on his facebook page drops from '276' to '275'. Yeah, I'm sure that will make him happy for the rest of his life.
My point in all this is that if you've got a problem, sharing it with the world and then censoring the people that actually try to help is not the way to solve it. Instead, you can talk about it with people that you know that care about you, or people you care about enough to share your feelings with. If you don't want help, don't pretend you do. If you do want help, then get help. If you're too emotionally fucked up to decide whether you want help or not (I've been there myself), then get help. Talk to people, not to a number on your facebook page.
Or, you can start an anonymous blog that nobody ever reads. Works fine for me!
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