dear facebook: NYOB, STFU, SRSLY.
28 Jul 2008 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouSome of you may remember when I was grinding my teeth over the possibility of attending a HS reunion, a notion that filled me with so much goddamn ennui that words nearly failed me. (But not quite.) Regardless, a sort of compromise was achieved -- more like, I felt kinda bad that I have no really positive memories of anyone in HS except for maybe three or four people, only one of whom has ever kept in touch with me -- and since that one friend's not on LJ, I rather ungracefully agreed to maybe, y'know, kinda, sorta, looking at signing up on facebook for, uh, I dunno. I guess so if my friend wanted to shove my name in front of former classmates, even if every name mentioned drew an almost complete blank with me.
So anyway.
About two weeks ago, I guess, I finally said to myself, well, fuck it, get this over with. Then I can go back to being eternally grateful that the fuckheads who were our senior class representatives (whomever they are; I barely remember my senior year, let alone who we freaking voted for) decided to abruptly shift the reunion to August & not over Homecoming weekend, which meant I could slide out of attending on the pretense of not enough warning, etc etc.
Carrying on: imagine me dutifully signing up for facebook. I don't use my full name on the web, because I work in the IT world and I'm not inclined to make myself easily googleable. Besides, there are already about seven people -- quite successful and well-known people in the arts and journalism fields -- with my same name. That should confuse any nosy potential employer enough, anyway, and better yet if I'm low profile.
Facebook demands first name, last name. Insert whatever initials you want; when using my real-name, I always go by first two initals + surname -- when I don't just go by all initials. I enter AB for first name, C for last name. Ah-ha, facebook says, my last name doesn't have enough letters in it!
Snort of annoyance. I get the form again and this time I spell out the last name: CDEFGHIJ. Happy? Yes, except that the first name -- AB -- has (facebook so politely tells me) too many capital letters! I try A.B. instead, but punctuation isn't allowed. Fine, you bastards: I put in Ab. It takes it. Not exactly perfect but better than having my full legal name floating around on the net, especially on a site that so recently whored itself out, I mean sold itself, to become one big freaking MARKET MINING HELLHOLE.
And you wanna know why I say it's most definitely a marketing hellhole? Because it doesn't give you the option of saying "does not disclose" when it comes to gender. As point of comparison, here's what LJ asks you:
Pretty much the same for gmail, as I recall... while Yahoo does ask you gender. And, I should add, if you start a Yahoo acct and identify yourself as a 23-year old woman from Spokane, your viagra-spam is almost nil, but if you change the same account to a 80-year old man from Topeka, suddenly your viagra-spam amount skyrockets. I shit you not; I changed my gender and age on Yahoo every three months for almost five years, just to watch the spam-topic rates bounce like freaking superballs.
Male, female, no option of "undisclosed". I did give serious consideration to putting down the gender that I'm not, which I might find amusing but given this is my real name, I could see as potentially being somewhat disturbing to anyone who might genuinely be interested in tracking me down post-coworker or classmate status (fools that they are). There's not even an option to designate the gender as hidden, anymore than I can figure out how to hide the entire freaking account from spiders -- other than the "hide from all but friends" option. I'm not certain that's quite the same thing. Dunno.
My point is this: why does anyone need to damn well know what's between my legs for me to have an online account? Unless I'm planning on having SEX with the freaking WEBSITE, what value is there in determining gender, and how do I know the website's not lying about its gender, anyway?
If I am paying with credit card, then certainly, you would probably want to know my name and address and zip code, since these are the criteria used to verify that the card-user equals card-holder (among other card-specific details). And on a site like LJ or any other with age-based requirements, then sure, I can understand requiring that I enter some kind of a birthdate, even if it's totally bogus since it's not like I'm holding an ID up in front of a monitor to prove that when I say I'm an 80-year old nursing home inmate in Gary, Indiana that I really am toothless and bed-ridden. But gender? Unless we're talking about a site that claims it's only for women, or only for men, I can't see a single goddamned reason it's anyone's business.
Unless, of course, your site wants to know for [drumroll]... marketing purposes.
Which is really just as goddamn bogus as expecting that when I tell you I'm twenty-five, no, really! I'm being just as honest as when I say I'm eighty-five, no, really! At the very least, there is some kind of minor relevance in age-groups when it comes to marketing -- you could probably assume within a certain amount of reason that the twenty-year old wouldn't qualify for AARP and probably doesn't own an RV, just as you'd probably be on the mark more than off it if you figured that most folks in their thirties are starting to think about (or at least have recently started) some kind of 401K, or currently have -- or want to have -- a home of their own, or are looking at a car purchase. Okay, this doesn't stop me from lying like a goddamn throw rug on any and every form that asks me age and income level, but it's still something for which I can see a marketing purpose in that any marketing conclusions -- if I were that actual age/income level -- might be somewhat valid. I just can't say the same when it comes to gender. Actually, I can't say it at all.
I mean, let's look at my personal example. CP rides a Harley, but the Harley is in my name (since it was my gift to him, and the bastards at the dealership didn't think to say, "gee, would you like to put it in the name of the actual rider?" because they're dickheads, but that's another story)... and if you looked at our spending rates at the local hardware store, it'd be a good chunk of change every month with my name on it, and none from CP. Hell, the last time I spent $200 on a major grocery trip, the bank actually froze my account because the system had never seen me spend that much money at the grocery store and they automatically assumed my card must've been stolen. I don't cook much, I wasn't the one who picked out the vacuum cleaner, and in fact, it's my income alone that carries us. Looking at spending patterns, we're flip-flopped in every way that the average marketing person might want to classify us, if going solely by gender.
There are an awful lot of women on my flist who purchase power tools and know how to use them, and probably would back the hell up and cast a pensive eye over that new motorcycle or chainsaw. There are also an awful lot of men on my list who spend a lot of money at the bookstore, or who have regular expenditures for their business wardrobes, or who buy curtains or get their sofa upholstered. I just can't peg any one thing -- in terms of a marketing-interest, spending-pattern behavior -- that I could safely say would indicate that the purchaser is male or female. Okay, outside of being able to define that if the person is female she probably purchases women's shoes.
Which is still not accurate, because some women buy their shoes in the men's department because you know what? You just can't get sturdy hiking boots unless you're in the men's section. You might be able to find them in the women's section, but they're going to cost double and last half as long, so if that means special-ordering a men's size 6 and wearing thick socks, fuck it. And meanwhile some poor marketing person is going, "who are all these men with the really small feet?" Hell, same goes for women who purchase men's jeans, or even the men I've known who prefer women's jeans (if you're unaware, the inside cut on women's jeans -- along the crotch -- is actually deeper, which is more comfortable for some folks; I've known at least two men who regularly grabbed women's levis for that reason, without qualm).
So why the hell does facebook need to know my gender? Okay, perhaps as a social networking thing -- in which case, put it as an option on that stupid page that has "status" and "looking for" and whatever else crap that page has. Make the default options as male/female/undisclosed with the option to identify on the profile-whatever-crap. Then again, that stupid "single/married/it's-complicated" bullshit is another eyeroller -- do you want me to mistake this shit for myspace, sure, whatever -- but if that's not why I'm using the site, then I can't see a single bloody reason you need to know my gender, unless you really are data-mining me for every last possible tiny cross-referencing statistic.
And, hell, there's nothing like the joys of that, since as soon as I gritted my teeth and obediently filled out the stupid little blocks and checked the boxes that needed checking and figured out how to turn off everything -- what should I see? Along the left, a little advertisement for an obscure artist I'd listed under music. "Buy tickets today! July 30th show in Los Angeles, tickets now on sale..." Gee, could it be coincidence? Hit refresh and it's a different ad, this time for -- I kid you not -- foreign languages learning tapes. Hmm, think they parsed the list in "favorite books" that included my copy of the Oxford Chinese-English dictionary? Gee, ya think?
Which I don't actually mind too much, because at least it's a logical data mining for the marketers: you parsed what I entered and determined that there's a fair chance I just might be interested in that sale at Sears this weekend on power tools. Fine, fine, whatever. It's just that gender is not a logical data mining point. Maybe it was, once upon a time when life was smaller and gender roles tighter and you could pretty much assume that in a single-income house where the income was over the minimum wage that it was probably a man doing the earning but you know what? Ain't been true for at least twenty years, and I sure as fuck hope it's never true again, and that means it's a fair chance that a lot of women out there are doing the buying o' things that once may have always had a man's name on the credit card. And just maybe, you scum-sucking illogical nosy marketing bastards, the women are doing the buying o' these things for themselves.
Market-mine me based on what I spend, based on my income, based on my zip code, based on my age or education or taste in music or books or movies, but you just can't assume any more that if I'm some chick who dropped $100 on a pair of high-heeled platform boots last year that I'm automatically disinterested in finding great deals on new DeWalt circular saws.
Which is to say that even if you were to try and break down the stats on membership -- 70% of our members are gender A, and the rest are gender B -- this still doesn't really tell you jack about your site's sucess or failure in relating to Generic Woman or Generic Man, because there just ain't such a thing anymore. (If there ever was, but I suspect if this is more true now, it's because to some degree both genders feel a bit freer in taking chances to cross those gender-defined lines where men can do the cooking while the woman of the house is busy doing oil changes on the household cars.) It's just not a statistic that, on the whole, really means as much as it might've, once, so why the goddamn nosiness?
This reminds me of a lovely snarkfest about web design and forms, that unless you have a valid reason for needing X piece of information, that you don't ask for it, and you sure as hell don't make it required. In fact, usability and user-studies on the web have shown that when people can figure out that it's not really necessary for a site to know X, Y, or Z info that people have absolutely no qualms about lying through their teeth. If you want me to register so I can download your PDF, why the bloody hell do you need my street address and phone number? You don't. There's not a single damn reason you do, so yeah, I freaking lie, and I don't just put in something fakey-real, I put in something blatantly false -- "123 Street" for address and "Alcatraz" for town and "999 555 1212" for phone number (when I don't just put in "asdf" for phone number to really throw them off).
I'd figured that was me being ornery, but apparently -- according to the article -- web architecture studies have discovered that this is a normal reaction. The authors even commented that given how many marketers have to be getting membership names of "Mouse, Mickey" and addresses of "Disneyland, CA" you'd think they'd realize it's all bogus and useless and drop it... but no, they don't, because it's not actually a marketing value anymore. It's a marketing fetish -- gotta have that info, even if it's patently useless from the get-go.
Sort of related to forms is the annoying habit of some sites to sign you up for everything and force you to click a zillion stupid little radio boxes or checkboxes to turn the shit off. I'm not kidding; I went looking for how to turn off all the stupid alert emails I'd already gotten -- you've opened an account! you've changed your details! you've added someone! you've been added back! -- what the FUCK, you facebook imbeciles, did you forget already that I was there when this shit happened?
(Or is this some kind of assumption on how bad my short-term memory must really be, and just what is this saying about the majority of your users if that's the kind of assumption you're making as a default?)
At the very least, for crying out loud, there should be an option on the lengthy page of options that says, "turn off everything in this category". I find the opt-out assumption to be annoying enough as it is -- don't freaking sign me up for crap or set my security levels on my behalf and then hide this shit where I have to go purposefully looking for it, because I know full well that the vast majority of users will never think to go looking (and if they do, they won't even be sure where to look), and I know the site designers are probably aware of this too, which tells me they're more than happy to use that to their benefit in all the ways that de-benefit users. But it's even worse if I put myself in regular-user-headspace and look at a double-length must-be-scrolled page of things to click off... that's not just unfriendly, it can be intimidating, and I promise you dollars to donuts that it's designed exactly for that purpose, to do everything it can to make it as hard for you, and as time-consuming for you (which is often the same thing, on the net) to go through the bother of turning shit off.
I know this stuff, and seeing outright manipulation like that just pisses me off. When I run into a site that does not opt me into everything -- or at the very least, makes the opt-in/opt-out function obvious and upfront and short -- I'm more likely to retain some kind of trust in the site. Believe it or not, LJ has proven to be relatively decent about that: if you look at its opt-in/opt-out pages, they're broken up logically, they're not hidden, and they're almost always only two or three lines of options before you get a visual break and move to the next category. They're sure not a list of almost eight options per category in unbroken lines with nothing but yes/no or radio boxes to turn on/off (much like Yahoo's options are, incidentally).
Yeah, I did go down the line and click OFF on every single one... while making a note to myself that the next time I'm talking to a client who says, "and we want a setup like facebook," I'm just going to laugh in their faces and tell them to find some other information architect. I've got better things to do with my life than design sites that will have users sporking my anonymous-voodoo doll like crazy, thanks.
This all also ignores the fact that the idea of broadcasting gender, age, and city location (along with a big emphasis on posting a picture of yourself) on a site that does its best to demand your full name is just freaking asking for trouble, in my opinion. I'm not so arrogant as to presume off the bat that anyone would freaking care... but I'm not so naive as to think that this non-caring will extend to everyone, all the time.
Market data-mining, my freaking foot. If I wanted to be a freaking statistic, I would've gone ahead and become a junkie adolescent parent with a full scholarship to Harvard. At least then I would've been some kind of an exciting statistic, not to mention been able to sell my partially-plaigarized autobiography for a gazillion dollars.
So anyway.
About two weeks ago, I guess, I finally said to myself, well, fuck it, get this over with. Then I can go back to being eternally grateful that the fuckheads who were our senior class representatives (whomever they are; I barely remember my senior year, let alone who we freaking voted for) decided to abruptly shift the reunion to August & not over Homecoming weekend, which meant I could slide out of attending on the pretense of not enough warning, etc etc.
Carrying on: imagine me dutifully signing up for facebook. I don't use my full name on the web, because I work in the IT world and I'm not inclined to make myself easily googleable. Besides, there are already about seven people -- quite successful and well-known people in the arts and journalism fields -- with my same name. That should confuse any nosy potential employer enough, anyway, and better yet if I'm low profile.
Facebook demands first name, last name. Insert whatever initials you want; when using my real-name, I always go by first two initals + surname -- when I don't just go by all initials. I enter AB for first name, C for last name. Ah-ha, facebook says, my last name doesn't have enough letters in it!
Snort of annoyance. I get the form again and this time I spell out the last name: CDEFGHIJ. Happy? Yes, except that the first name -- AB -- has (facebook so politely tells me) too many capital letters! I try A.B. instead, but punctuation isn't allowed. Fine, you bastards: I put in Ab. It takes it. Not exactly perfect but better than having my full legal name floating around on the net, especially on a site that so recently whored itself out, I mean sold itself, to become one big freaking MARKET MINING HELLHOLE.
And you wanna know why I say it's most definitely a marketing hellhole? Because it doesn't give you the option of saying "does not disclose" when it comes to gender. As point of comparison, here's what LJ asks you:
Pretty much the same for gmail, as I recall... while Yahoo does ask you gender. And, I should add, if you start a Yahoo acct and identify yourself as a 23-year old woman from Spokane, your viagra-spam is almost nil, but if you change the same account to a 80-year old man from Topeka, suddenly your viagra-spam amount skyrockets. I shit you not; I changed my gender and age on Yahoo every three months for almost five years, just to watch the spam-topic rates bounce like freaking superballs.
Male, female, no option of "undisclosed". I did give serious consideration to putting down the gender that I'm not, which I might find amusing but given this is my real name, I could see as potentially being somewhat disturbing to anyone who might genuinely be interested in tracking me down post-coworker or classmate status (fools that they are). There's not even an option to designate the gender as hidden, anymore than I can figure out how to hide the entire freaking account from spiders -- other than the "hide from all but friends" option. I'm not certain that's quite the same thing. Dunno.
My point is this: why does anyone need to damn well know what's between my legs for me to have an online account? Unless I'm planning on having SEX with the freaking WEBSITE, what value is there in determining gender, and how do I know the website's not lying about its gender, anyway?
If I am paying with credit card, then certainly, you would probably want to know my name and address and zip code, since these are the criteria used to verify that the card-user equals card-holder (among other card-specific details). And on a site like LJ or any other with age-based requirements, then sure, I can understand requiring that I enter some kind of a birthdate, even if it's totally bogus since it's not like I'm holding an ID up in front of a monitor to prove that when I say I'm an 80-year old nursing home inmate in Gary, Indiana that I really am toothless and bed-ridden. But gender? Unless we're talking about a site that claims it's only for women, or only for men, I can't see a single goddamned reason it's anyone's business.
Unless, of course, your site wants to know for [drumroll]... marketing purposes.
Which is really just as goddamn bogus as expecting that when I tell you I'm twenty-five, no, really! I'm being just as honest as when I say I'm eighty-five, no, really! At the very least, there is some kind of minor relevance in age-groups when it comes to marketing -- you could probably assume within a certain amount of reason that the twenty-year old wouldn't qualify for AARP and probably doesn't own an RV, just as you'd probably be on the mark more than off it if you figured that most folks in their thirties are starting to think about (or at least have recently started) some kind of 401K, or currently have -- or want to have -- a home of their own, or are looking at a car purchase. Okay, this doesn't stop me from lying like a goddamn throw rug on any and every form that asks me age and income level, but it's still something for which I can see a marketing purpose in that any marketing conclusions -- if I were that actual age/income level -- might be somewhat valid. I just can't say the same when it comes to gender. Actually, I can't say it at all.
I mean, let's look at my personal example. CP rides a Harley, but the Harley is in my name (since it was my gift to him, and the bastards at the dealership didn't think to say, "gee, would you like to put it in the name of the actual rider?" because they're dickheads, but that's another story)... and if you looked at our spending rates at the local hardware store, it'd be a good chunk of change every month with my name on it, and none from CP. Hell, the last time I spent $200 on a major grocery trip, the bank actually froze my account because the system had never seen me spend that much money at the grocery store and they automatically assumed my card must've been stolen. I don't cook much, I wasn't the one who picked out the vacuum cleaner, and in fact, it's my income alone that carries us. Looking at spending patterns, we're flip-flopped in every way that the average marketing person might want to classify us, if going solely by gender.
There are an awful lot of women on my flist who purchase power tools and know how to use them, and probably would back the hell up and cast a pensive eye over that new motorcycle or chainsaw. There are also an awful lot of men on my list who spend a lot of money at the bookstore, or who have regular expenditures for their business wardrobes, or who buy curtains or get their sofa upholstered. I just can't peg any one thing -- in terms of a marketing-interest, spending-pattern behavior -- that I could safely say would indicate that the purchaser is male or female. Okay, outside of being able to define that if the person is female she probably purchases women's shoes.
Which is still not accurate, because some women buy their shoes in the men's department because you know what? You just can't get sturdy hiking boots unless you're in the men's section. You might be able to find them in the women's section, but they're going to cost double and last half as long, so if that means special-ordering a men's size 6 and wearing thick socks, fuck it. And meanwhile some poor marketing person is going, "who are all these men with the really small feet?" Hell, same goes for women who purchase men's jeans, or even the men I've known who prefer women's jeans (if you're unaware, the inside cut on women's jeans -- along the crotch -- is actually deeper, which is more comfortable for some folks; I've known at least two men who regularly grabbed women's levis for that reason, without qualm).
So why the hell does facebook need to know my gender? Okay, perhaps as a social networking thing -- in which case, put it as an option on that stupid page that has "status" and "looking for" and whatever else crap that page has. Make the default options as male/female/undisclosed with the option to identify on the profile-whatever-crap. Then again, that stupid "single/married/it's-complicated" bullshit is another eyeroller -- do you want me to mistake this shit for myspace, sure, whatever -- but if that's not why I'm using the site, then I can't see a single bloody reason you need to know my gender, unless you really are data-mining me for every last possible tiny cross-referencing statistic.
And, hell, there's nothing like the joys of that, since as soon as I gritted my teeth and obediently filled out the stupid little blocks and checked the boxes that needed checking and figured out how to turn off everything -- what should I see? Along the left, a little advertisement for an obscure artist I'd listed under music. "Buy tickets today! July 30th show in Los Angeles, tickets now on sale..." Gee, could it be coincidence? Hit refresh and it's a different ad, this time for -- I kid you not -- foreign languages learning tapes. Hmm, think they parsed the list in "favorite books" that included my copy of the Oxford Chinese-English dictionary? Gee, ya think?
Which I don't actually mind too much, because at least it's a logical data mining for the marketers: you parsed what I entered and determined that there's a fair chance I just might be interested in that sale at Sears this weekend on power tools. Fine, fine, whatever. It's just that gender is not a logical data mining point. Maybe it was, once upon a time when life was smaller and gender roles tighter and you could pretty much assume that in a single-income house where the income was over the minimum wage that it was probably a man doing the earning but you know what? Ain't been true for at least twenty years, and I sure as fuck hope it's never true again, and that means it's a fair chance that a lot of women out there are doing the buying o' things that once may have always had a man's name on the credit card. And just maybe, you scum-sucking illogical nosy marketing bastards, the women are doing the buying o' these things for themselves.
Market-mine me based on what I spend, based on my income, based on my zip code, based on my age or education or taste in music or books or movies, but you just can't assume any more that if I'm some chick who dropped $100 on a pair of high-heeled platform boots last year that I'm automatically disinterested in finding great deals on new DeWalt circular saws.
Which is to say that even if you were to try and break down the stats on membership -- 70% of our members are gender A, and the rest are gender B -- this still doesn't really tell you jack about your site's sucess or failure in relating to Generic Woman or Generic Man, because there just ain't such a thing anymore. (If there ever was, but I suspect if this is more true now, it's because to some degree both genders feel a bit freer in taking chances to cross those gender-defined lines where men can do the cooking while the woman of the house is busy doing oil changes on the household cars.) It's just not a statistic that, on the whole, really means as much as it might've, once, so why the goddamn nosiness?
This reminds me of a lovely snarkfest about web design and forms, that unless you have a valid reason for needing X piece of information, that you don't ask for it, and you sure as hell don't make it required. In fact, usability and user-studies on the web have shown that when people can figure out that it's not really necessary for a site to know X, Y, or Z info that people have absolutely no qualms about lying through their teeth. If you want me to register so I can download your PDF, why the bloody hell do you need my street address and phone number? You don't. There's not a single damn reason you do, so yeah, I freaking lie, and I don't just put in something fakey-real, I put in something blatantly false -- "123 Street" for address and "Alcatraz" for town and "999 555 1212" for phone number (when I don't just put in "asdf" for phone number to really throw them off).
I'd figured that was me being ornery, but apparently -- according to the article -- web architecture studies have discovered that this is a normal reaction. The authors even commented that given how many marketers have to be getting membership names of "Mouse, Mickey" and addresses of "Disneyland, CA" you'd think they'd realize it's all bogus and useless and drop it... but no, they don't, because it's not actually a marketing value anymore. It's a marketing fetish -- gotta have that info, even if it's patently useless from the get-go.
Sort of related to forms is the annoying habit of some sites to sign you up for everything and force you to click a zillion stupid little radio boxes or checkboxes to turn the shit off. I'm not kidding; I went looking for how to turn off all the stupid alert emails I'd already gotten -- you've opened an account! you've changed your details! you've added someone! you've been added back! -- what the FUCK, you facebook imbeciles, did you forget already that I was there when this shit happened?
(Or is this some kind of assumption on how bad my short-term memory must really be, and just what is this saying about the majority of your users if that's the kind of assumption you're making as a default?)
At the very least, for crying out loud, there should be an option on the lengthy page of options that says, "turn off everything in this category". I find the opt-out assumption to be annoying enough as it is -- don't freaking sign me up for crap or set my security levels on my behalf and then hide this shit where I have to go purposefully looking for it, because I know full well that the vast majority of users will never think to go looking (and if they do, they won't even be sure where to look), and I know the site designers are probably aware of this too, which tells me they're more than happy to use that to their benefit in all the ways that de-benefit users. But it's even worse if I put myself in regular-user-headspace and look at a double-length must-be-scrolled page of things to click off... that's not just unfriendly, it can be intimidating, and I promise you dollars to donuts that it's designed exactly for that purpose, to do everything it can to make it as hard for you, and as time-consuming for you (which is often the same thing, on the net) to go through the bother of turning shit off.
I know this stuff, and seeing outright manipulation like that just pisses me off. When I run into a site that does not opt me into everything -- or at the very least, makes the opt-in/opt-out function obvious and upfront and short -- I'm more likely to retain some kind of trust in the site. Believe it or not, LJ has proven to be relatively decent about that: if you look at its opt-in/opt-out pages, they're broken up logically, they're not hidden, and they're almost always only two or three lines of options before you get a visual break and move to the next category. They're sure not a list of almost eight options per category in unbroken lines with nothing but yes/no or radio boxes to turn on/off (much like Yahoo's options are, incidentally).
Yeah, I did go down the line and click OFF on every single one... while making a note to myself that the next time I'm talking to a client who says, "and we want a setup like facebook," I'm just going to laugh in their faces and tell them to find some other information architect. I've got better things to do with my life than design sites that will have users sporking my anonymous-voodoo doll like crazy, thanks.
This all also ignores the fact that the idea of broadcasting gender, age, and city location (along with a big emphasis on posting a picture of yourself) on a site that does its best to demand your full name is just freaking asking for trouble, in my opinion. I'm not so arrogant as to presume off the bat that anyone would freaking care... but I'm not so naive as to think that this non-caring will extend to everyone, all the time.
Market data-mining, my freaking foot. If I wanted to be a freaking statistic, I would've gone ahead and become a junkie adolescent parent with a full scholarship to Harvard. At least then I would've been some kind of an exciting statistic, not to mention been able to sell my partially-plaigarized autobiography for a gazillion dollars.
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Date: 7 Aug 2008 05:09 am (UTC)