Social Promiscuity

Your friends are promiscuous, well at least on social networks. How do I know? Let’s just say a friend told me.

This story is about the birth and rise of this friend and the conditions that allow him to exist at all. Think that imaginary friends are just for kids? Not anymore. What’s interesting is that the kids know their friend is imaginary, but the adults with imaginary social networking friends do not.


We Are Social Creatures

People join social networking sites to catch up with old and current friends, to share life events and opinions, and in general to be part of a community. We all want to feel loved and appreciated. For some people, their sense of popularity is measured by the numbers of friends, connections, and followers they have accumulated on their online identities.

More friends means you're more popular. People may start with the same intentions, such as only becoming social friends with people you really care about and then extending to others you know casually, but over time people can get corrupted. They want more friends. They need more friends. Social networking friends, that is.


An Illusion of Privacy

Social networking sites generally provide security settings to control who is able to view your posts and information. Even if you're very strict about your security settings you aren't protected.

Settings change and sometimes go away without you knowing. For example, Facebook used to have a setting to control who could view your wall, now called a timeline. With one change that suddenly no longer applied and people you prevented from seeing your wall could now see it. Did you know it happened? Probably not.

Try to keep up with all the privacy settings and new options. You can’t. The visibility of what you post is controlled not only by your own privacy settings but by the settings of the people with whom you interact. Translation: You have no real control over where the content you post ends up.

A simple rule to follow is that anything you post on a social network can be viewed by almost anyone in the world.

A Social Identity is Born

As an experiment, I created a Facebook profile for a fictitious person. A complete fabrication. Not pretending to be someone else, or similar to anyone. A whole new, yet imaginary, person.

The first step was to choose a name. I decided the person should be male because that’s what I know. His name needed to be rather bland and generic – forgettable, if you will. A name that makes you think that maybe you’ve met or known that person in the past. I won’t say which name I chose because that would blow his cover.

The second step was to choose a profile picture. I wanted someone roughly my age so I didn’t have to be concerned with time-sensitive references, for example, knowing the popular music or cartoons for someone born in a different decade. Not that I planned on using this identity to engage in conversations or discussions, but better to be safe in case the need arose.

I searched for a picture of someone on vacation, because people love to post vacation pics. The picture needed to show the person but from some distance so you couldn’t study their face too closely. And finally, I wanted a woman present as well to ease doubts for females who would receive my friend requests. Surely, if his profile picture shows a woman then he is in a committed relationship and not just out to meet and pick up random women online.

Setting up the Facebook profile took all of fifteen minutes – most of that finding a suitable picture. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, he is not friends with anyone that I am friends with on my social identities. That was one policy I established from the beginning.


Looking for Friends

Now that the profile for my fictitious identity was established, it was time for him to make some friends. You might think it would be hard for a fake person with no friends to find some. Au contraire. I started out with some random searches to find people with more than 1000 friends. I was pretty sure that these people didn’t really know over 1000 people. And I was right.

He started sending out friend requests to these “very popular” people. At this point I had no idea what would happen. Could my imaginary identity make even a single friend? The answer was yes. One by one his friend requests were accepted. Not all of them – it averaged about one in three – but he was no longer alone in this vast social world.

He was making friends: 1 friend, 3 friends, 7 friends.

With each new friend he made he would start to target their friends so his network would grow. Some people may not accept a friend request from a stranger, but if that person is friends with your friends then that somehow makes it acceptable.

Have you ever accepted a friend request from someone you didn’t know just because they were friends with five of your friends, or twenty, or fifty? Maybe you haven’t, but your friends have. The same people who won’t accept a request from someone they don’t know with no friends in common will nonetheless accept requests if there are common friends. “If he knows Bill then he must be okay.” Well, it turns out your friend Bill is an idiot.

Popularity and Pitfalls

Little by little his friend count grew: 15 friends, 25 friends, 40 friends.

I spent about five minutes each day sending out up to ten friend requests. I kept track of each friend request sent out and which ones were accepted. I had to make sure he didn’t send repeated requests to the same person. If the person rejected his first request then they might show up again on the suggested friends list, so I didn’t want to select them again because that would be nonproductive.

Facebook doesn’t like it when you have too many unanswered friend requests, so I had to cancel his old friend requests that were still pending. Were these people afraid to say no to a request from a stranger? Maybe they wondered “How do I know this person?” and thought they might remember him later. Maybe they were too polite to outright reject a friend request. Who knows.

He received some warnings along the way from Facebook saying that he shouldn’t send friend requests to people he doesn’t know. Wrist, consider yourself slapped.

He plodded along, just a little each day: 60 friends, 75 friends, 100 friends.

The criteria for selecting friend targets became less strict. In the beginning he only considered people with over 1000 friends. In time that dropped to 750, 500, and even 300. Interestingly, the percentage of people who accepted stayed about the same, likely helped by the fact that he had friends in common with the new targets.


The Seeker is Sought

One day, not too long after starting, something quite unexpected happened. Someone sent him a friend request. Someone, in their infinite wisdom, decided to send a friend request to a fictitious person. And that wasn’t the only one – he received a dozen friend requests over time. Of course, these people were using the suggested friends feature of Facebook, just like I did. The point is they didn’t care that they didn’t know the other person. They wanted to grow their friend list. More friends on Facebook means you’re more popular in life, right? Being gracious, he accepted most though not all of the requests.

So what did he post as status updates while growing his friend list? Not much, really. Mostly inane comments in general, some observations on current events, and some comments and likes on other people’s posts. He generally kept a low profile, but wanted to show some activity for the sake of appearances.

And his friend list continued to grow: 130 friends, 160 friends, 200 friends.

He stopped pursuing new friends once he was well past 200. The point had been proven. It took about three months to get these friends using a made-up profile, more than I made with my real life profile in a few years. Then again, I chose to be friends with real people I actually know. At least I think they’re all real.


Warm Wishes

Another unexpected surprise came in the form of birthday wishes to my fictitious identity. I created a birth date for him because you need one to set up a profile. For kicks, I left it visible so people could see it. But still, I did not expect anyone to wish a happy birthday to someone who didn’t exist.

Not only did he get a few birthday wishes, he in fact received a large number of them. Many were the standard “Happy Birthday” and “Have a great day!” messages, but some people put more thought into it and posted a nice message. An actual message like you would send to an actual friend.

The next year he received even more birthday greetings. One contained a little heart icon. I found that one to be extra special.

So, feel good when your friends wish you a happy birthday, but know that they’re doing the same to people they don’t know and who don’t even exist. When a person you know from years and years ago that you never communicate with reaches out with a birthday message and you get to feeling special that they thought about you, then don’t. They probably send even nicer messages to people who don't exist.


Fictitious, Not Malicious

I am continually amazed at what people choose to share online. Perhaps they don’t realize that it can be seen by almost anyone, or perhaps they don’t care. In my experiment I didn’t collect any personal information nor was that my intent. But were I so inclined, there was no shortage of personal and juicy tidbits to harvest.

And yes, I’m sure creating a fictitious identity violates the Facebook terms and conditions. Heck, they may even ban my real identity. It doesn’t matter to me, though. I’ll camp out on Google+. It’s much less crowded there, so I get more legroom.


Social Condoms

Getting back to where we started, what lessons can we learn from this experiment?

• It doesn’t matter how careful you are at screening your friends because you can’t control who they’re friends with and how careful they are.
  
• Your friends are socially promiscuous. Not all, maybe not many, but I guarantee that some are. Just like sex, it’s not only who you sleep with but who that person has slept with. Which means that anything you post that can be seen by friends and their friends is public information.
  
• What you post online can be used against you in many ways. People have been fired from jobs for inappropriate online activity. Medical conditions you discuss could pose a problem. Posting about vacations while you’re away can lead to break-ins. Does it happen often? No, but it does happen. Why put yourself at risk?
  
• If you are one who puts faith in friend decisions made by your friends, then at least change your security settings so that non-friends are not able to see your friends list. Otherwise, someone who wants to target you can first target your friends and accumulate friends in common with you before sending a friend request to you. Now instead of receiving a friend request from a completely anonymous person, it is from someone who has friends in common with you. What you don’t know is that none of your friends actually know that person.
  
• The only way to be safe is to protect yourself. Assume that anything you post online can be seen by anyone in the world who cares to find it. No court order, subpoena, or government intrusion is required. Just someone with a few minutes a day, half a plan, and a search engine or two.

Your Pledge Repeat after me… My social network friends are promiscuous. I will not share anything on a social network that I don’t want the whole world to know about. Ever.

What Matters

---

What Matters

Wading in the surf

Ignoring the waves

For they matter not

Waves come and waves go

Not worthy of names

For they matter not

'Til that rare moment

Taken by surprise

A wave that matters

Knocking you over

Upset but laughing

A wave that matters

Strolling home smiling

Ignoring the waves

For they matter not

---

This may seem out of place.  Out of character.  He has lost his mind.  Stick to the inane, drivel-boy.  But I see it differently.

It seems out of place because I do not have a place to post things such as this, so I chose to post it here.  My character likes to explore varied areas to gain new experience, although it doesn't happen as often as I would like.  One can argue that I lost my mind quite a long time ago, and one may or may not win that argument.  And as for the inane drivel, well, that comes exceedingly naturally and takes many different forms.

This is my useless poetry drivel.  Something that formed in my mind while sitting in an airport waiting for a flight, sitting on a plane waiting to take off, flying the red-eye exhausted but not able to sleep.  Something that starts as a single idea, a single emotion, and then takes on a life of its own in my mind.

I will never be a Yeats or a Keats.  Instead of Ode to a Grecian Urn, I am much more likely to create Ode to Grecian Formula.

The poem is meaningful to me, inspired by life events.  Yet, in the grand scheme, I still classify it as useless poetry drivel.  But it is my useless poetry drivel, and that is what matters to me.

Because...

Our view of the world is influenced by so many things.  There are obvious associations and others that are much less so.  This video is the story of one observation that makes complete sense in my world.

Life Cropping

In photography the term cropping refers to trimming down a picture to focus on what's important and remove unnecessary and distracting elements. Most photo editors give you some ability to crop a photo and save off the result. As we all know, there are many, many people who aren't aware of the benefits of cropping or perhaps just don't know how. If you're crop-illiterate, do a web search or ask a friend how to do it on your computer, phone, tablet, whatever.

Going beyond the realm of photos, one can think of the concept of Life Cropping. The same premise applies: Focus on what's important and remove unnecessary and distracting elements. It is too easy to get caught up in the noise of everyday life coming from work, kids, bills, relationships, and so on. Take the time to look at your life and determine which parts should stay in the picture and which should be cropped to improve the picture that is your life.

Now in case you're thinking "he's gone all inspirational on us", well "he" hasn't. I started out with the idea for the picture below.

After seeing thousands too many uncropped pictures on the internet, I wanted to poke fun at them. It started with a simple idea of just the fortune cookie, but that didn't translate well by itself so I added the other elements.

Maybe the moral of the story is there are life lessons everywhere. You just have to look for them.

What's in a name?

You have a name.  You must have a name - the government forces you to have one.

You may have been named by your parents at birth.  You may have been adopted as a baby and renamed.  You may have decided at some point in life that you wanted to change your name.  No matter what, you have a name.

There is the "why did my parents pick this name" aspect and then there is the "what does my name mean" aspect.  As a kid I remember being interested in the meaning of my name.  We had some book that listed names and their meanings.  And there it was... Brian = "strong one".  Yes!  Score!  My name conveys power and superiority.  I am truly fortunate to have this name.

Fast forward to my (much) older and (somewhat) wiser self.  It was during one of my dedicated introspection sessions that I had a revelation.  In this case the "dedicated introspection session" was when I was washing my car.  I started thinking about names and their meanings.  The much delayed light bulb that went off in my head was that almost without exception all the names were associated with something positive.

What does your name mean?  King, Queen, Princess, Holy One, Majestic, Strong, Angelic, Conquereor... even Strong One, just to name a few.  Anyone detect a pattern here?  Of course, it's so obvious - the "meaning" of each name is at best associated with someone in history (factual or fictitious) with whom you can make a positive association.

You're not getting the whole story - not by any means.  What if you were told that statistically your name which means "strong one" was associated with 0.001% of the people who ever carried that name?  Make you feel better?  Of course not.

And that's the point.  These name meaning reference guides will refer to the best name association available for that name.  They won't mention that there was only ever one person in the history of the world who lived up to the "meaning" of that name.  For every high performing namesake, there are scores, hundreds, thousands, and more of people with the same name who dream of mediocrity but don't even reach that stage.

So now that it's out in the open let's be real here.  You try to pull a good meaning from your name but often there was no thought beyond it being the name of a relative to whom a loan payment is owed or a name that "just sounds good and doesn't rhyme with any curse words".

No one enters the name game thinking they want a name that means "weak underperformer", "slovenly poop scraper", or "oafish crossdresser".  But reality is that there are probably many, many more of those types of people with that name than there are kings, queens, princesses, strong ones, etc.

So celebrate your name.  Don't feel entitled in any way because of what one of those name reference lists says your name means.  It's really just propaganda.  Live your life and make a name for yourself.  Inspire others to name their kids after you, at which point they can cite the positive meaning of the name.

Then again, if the kid has an innate research drive, they'll quickly find that while the name was inspired by a noble and esteemed colleague or friend, the reality is that the name was chosen somewhat arbitrarily.

No parent is going to say "I've named you after an oafish crossdresser".  Parents are funny that way.

Thoughts on the New Orleans Saints

Week 3 of the 2012 NFL season is complete and the New Orleans Saints have yet to win a game.  The games were all pretty close, but as you know close is meaningless.

Because of the bounty scandal, their head coach Sean Payton was suspended for the entire season.  Other coaches and even their GM were suspended for part of the season.  Some players were suspended, though those suspensions have been put on hold, at least temporarily.  The team lost their second round draft picks in 2012 and 2013.

The team and fans felt that the punishment far exceeded the crime.  They adopted an "us against the world" mentality.  Unfortunately, the world seems to be winning, at least for now.

Given the perfect clarity that three games can deliver, I have the following observations:

1. Sean Payton is a genius.  Obviously he is the reason why the Saints have performed so well over the past several years.  Seriously, what team loses their head coach and immediately falls from the top echelon of the league to the basement?  You'd expect a team to fall if their star quarterback could not play.  Look at Peyton Manning and the Colts.  Without him they had nothing.
   
   
2. Sean Payton is an idiot.  He was suspended because he lied and tried to cover up evidence that a bounty program existed.  He didn't get punished for the "crime" itself.  Ask Martha Stewart and numerous others - getting caught lying gets you in more trouble than if you had been truthful up front.
   
   
3. Sean Payton is a genius.  People believed he was an exceptional coach, but without being suspended no one would understand how the entire team's success depended on him.  Because of his forced absence, that point becomes abundantly clear.  Upon return, his salary should be doubled or tripled.  Without him, the team is directionless.

4. The Saints defense is like a Play-Doh extruder.  You know the things where you put in the Play-Doh, press down, and it comes out the other end in shapes and patterns?  That's the Saints defense.  They're not stopping anything.  Put in the doh, press lightly, and out the other end comes big plays, touchdowns, and field goals.  It's just that easy.
   
   
5. Gregg Willams used old Play-Doh.  Think what you want about former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and his style of coaching and personal ethics, but one thing is sure:  He knew how to harden up the Play-Doh.  The defense was still an extruder, but it was much harder to get that doh out the other end.  Steve Spagnuolo, the new Saints defensive coordinator, brought all new Play-Doh.  Teams squeeze it out the other end with very little effort.
   
   
6. Drew Brees was fortunate.  Brees received a new 5-year $100M contract before the season.  He is a great quarterback, but as we find out now he's not the reason why the Saints were so successful - it was all Sean Payton.  If Brees' contract were up after this season then I'm sure he'd get a whole lot less.  After all, Chase Daniels could have delivered an 0-3 start for next to nothing.  Brees should kick a little cash over to Payton, heck, a lot of cash.
   
   
7. The Saints found a way to stick it to Goodell.  As part of their bounty sanctions, the Saints will lose their second round pick in 2013.  The Saints' record will be so poor this year that they'll get the first draft pick in 2013.  Since Goodell didn't take away their first round pick in 2013, this is the best way the Saints could say "in your face".

It's all so obvious, isn't it?

Video Puzzle #1

This video depicts a memorable movie quote.  What is the quote and in what movie did it become famous?

If you can't figure it out or want to see the scene then click here.