Archive for December, 2007

The Definative Guide to Myspace Rules

Monday, December 31st, 2007

Myspace.com is a social networking website where users create profiles of themselves for these purposes only: [to]
-promote/sell themselves in their career of music, modeling, comedy etc.
-flirt with strangers in an attempt to get laid
-occupy the vast stretches of bored time they have in their pathetic uninteresting lives.

Weather you are new to Myspace or are a veteran user of the site for any of the 3 reasons, there are rules to using the site.

PROFILES

SPAM PAGES. Learn about them. Profiles with one picture, no personal information and a short ‘about me’ section are fake. You’re not retarded for not knowing, but you need to start learning this. Stop accepting the friend requests and leaving comments saying “hi! you’re really cute. comment me back!” when you should be marking the profile as spam.

USAGE

WHO ARE YOU? If someone adds you and you don’t know them and their profile is not completely blank – don’t leave them a comment or message asking “who are you”. And if you do, don’t get bitchy when they reply saying “oh, sorry, I thought I was on a website that displayed my name, age, location, personality traits, favorite things, where I went to school, personal videos and albums full of pictures of myself. Instead it seems I’ve somehow stumbled upon a website for lazy idiot jerks, so naturally I didn’t understand why you didn’t know who I was at first.”
The only thing worse than asking who the identity of a completed profile is, is phrasing it as “do I know you?”. Bitch. Have you ever known any psychics in your life? No? Then you don’t know me. Cuz how else would I know what you know and what you don’t? Don’t ask ME what YOU know. “Do I know you” is a phrase designed for a situation when a person acts as if you do indeed know them – so in such case, it is appropriate do show that you don’t recall their acquaintance by asking THEM if YOU know THEM or not. If someone just adds you then get a grip. You don’t know them. They added you because they are promoting themselves, spamming you, or were attracted to your page by your slutty main pic and want to do you. Quit acting like a request from someone you don’t recognize is like a stranger crashing your birthday party.

TOP 8. If you’re not in someone’s top friends, they already know it. Telling them “I’m not in your top 8!” doesn’t do anything but make you look like a depraved little jerk-off. In the history of myspace, no one has ever responded to “I’m not in your top 8!” with embarrassed shock because they totally thought you were. They were there when they selected the top list. You didn’t make the cut. It means nothing. Get over it.

PRESENTATION/IMAGE

YOU ARE NOT A BADASS. Badass gangsters in da hood don’t have Charter Online internet service through their moms house and they don’t post pictures of themselves looking gangsta to intimidate and earn the respect of 13 year olds on social networking websites. You are not a gangsta. You are a pathetic little bitch. No one visits your profile and thinks you’re hard core because you have a rap song on autoplay, a rapper background and pictures of guns and money you found on Photobucket to supplement your profile pictures of you playing cowboy with a ridiculous bandana tied around your chin.

LANGUAGE.

Speak. English.
Do NoT tAlK LiKe tHis. It doesn’t make you interesting.
Yo, do NAH tak lik dis, ma. It doesn’t make you look cool.

DONT TALK IN ALL CAPS. It doesn’t make you look exciting.
Dont use excessive punctuation and internet acronyms!!!!! LOL!!1! It doesn’t make you NOT look like a manic 12 year old.

PICTURES:

PICTURES ARE NOT ALIVE. Pictures are still life images captured and frozen in time. They are not interactive. If some skank with daddy issues is screaming for attention by posting pictures of her tugging at her clothing to where it just almost reveals her boobs, vagina or ass – leaving a comment that says “little lower sweetie!” is not going to make it happen. No, you are not cool for thinking of that clever comment all by yourself. Same goes for the whore profiles posting topless pictures with their hands over their boobs. Leaving “move them hands!” as a picture comment, won’t work. It’s a picture. It wont do what you say no matter how smooth your delivery. I’ll update this post when I figure out why everyone who leaves those comments are almost always racial minorities – but in the mean time: If you want to help fight racism, you can start by smashing the “tribe member that thinks camera’s steal your soul” stereotype by not talking to a picture like it’s going to talk back.

REPETITION. We aren’t fascinated with you as much as you are. Even if you’re hot, we don’t want to see pictures of you from 5 seconds apart. Making a different face in your mirror pic or standing at a different angle in your room on each of 4 pictures you took with the timer on your camera is not interesting to look at. I understand you’re growing and are interested with yourself and hungry for acceptance, but save the doubles for yourself. Post only one picture taken at the same exact time in the same place. If I can make a flip book animation out of your pictures, you have gone unforgivably over your limit.

MESSAGES

LAZY CONVERSATION STARTERS. If you want a reply, say something to reply to. Don’t message me and say “hey! hit me back!”. What the fuck am I hitting back? You didn’t say anything. If you have nothing to say: SAY NOTHING.

POINTLESS MESSAGES. “What’s up?” and “how are you?” are also not acceptable. Do not waste peoples time with a message that says nothing but “how are you?”. I’m FINE. Either dig up a reason to message that person or just leave a comment saying hi. Since September 2007 when myspace stole the status feature from Facebook, you can now check “how” your friends are without asking. I didn’t type out what I’m doing that day and choose from a list of 67 emoticons just to have you waste my precious time asking “how are you?”. “How are you” is a stupid thing to say online. No one believes that you were just sitting at home and wondering if I was good or bad or what my feelings are at that moment and just had to ask. You were bored and wanted attention. Stoppit.

SOLICITATION. Don’t go into long detail about how you have feelings for a person, proposition them for sex, or leave your phone number in the very first message you’ve ever sent someone you don’t know. Just take the shorter route and get a tattoo that says “I’m a desperate creepy ass fuck” on your forehead. It saves time and it’s less humiliating.

COMMENTS
Myspace allows you to ‘comment’ on your friends profiles and pictures.

PURPOSE. Comments are for saying good things about the contents of that persons profile or the person at large. Nothing else. Don’t ask personal questions or tell me things about something I didn’t ask on my comments. What the hell do you think private messages are for? When you leave a comment it must have a justifiable purpose to be broadcast in public. Everyone can see them, so are you leaving the comment to get attention for yourself? Or to praise that person you’re supposedly commenting on/to?

BEGGING. Don’t. If you uploaded brand new pictures and are desperate to receive confirmation of how hot you look in them IMMEDIATELY, then, if you MUST – post ONE bulletin saying only that you uploaded new pictures. Everyone who wants to see them, will click over and look. Everyone who wants to comment them, will do so. Everyone else will not be persuaded by your annoying ass frantic pleas to “comment tha new pics!”

IMPLIED BEGGING. Leaving crap like “omg, I look so ugly” as captions on your pictures is prohibited. If you really believed that self deprecating assessment, you wouldn’t have posted the picture. Stop fishing for compliments. Likewise, leaving opened ended sexually suggestive questions like “wanna come in?” or “wanna see more?” is retarded. There are more subtle and less pathetic ways to feel good about yourself.

THANKS FOR THE REQUEST. I will delete all comments that say “thanks for the request” anywhere in them. This should never be left as a public comment at any time. Saying “Thanks for the add” and nothing more is lazy, lame and pointless, but acceptable. Saying thanks for the request is just as lame with the addition that it is a shameless announcement to everyone that “hey – just so you all know – this person requested ME”. My profile is a tool to make ME look good. Not you. bitch.

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The Truth About Tipping

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

3 lady friends of mine go out to eat at 3AM on a chilly December night just a few days ago and despite being total snobs, they accept their options to be very limited and go into a Denny’s. I wasn’t with them. This is how one of the girls recounted the story to me today:

They waited to be seated, which for some snobby reason annoyed her. Their waitress was young and pregnant, and obviously, working the night shift at Denny’s – not in the best of finances. She delivered what they deemed to be crappy service, so they stiffed her on the tip. The girl telling the story said she left 1 penny, “and I dug deep to find the dirtiest penny I could too”.

After laughing profusely, I explained that they were going to hell.

She objected, citing the poor service. I retorted by explaining “Ya, but in those cases then you’re only supposed to leave 10% if you’re really angry about it”. She quickly disposed of that doctrine asking what she would be paying for if not quick service. Not that she was smart enough to have ever heard this, but the word TIP, is often considered an acronym for To Insure Promptness (and by “often considered” I mean I heard someone say that once and thought it was clever even though is has no historical truth). But still, I said; she is an unfortunate soul who is your age or younger and pregnant – she needs the money. “So what?” was the response. “That ain’t my fault. I didn’t force that bitch to open up her legs for some guy that can’t take care of her financially”.
Hm. Sound logic. What can I say back?

The only thing really TO say is the harsh truth: that waitering = begging while performing a meaningless task. And sitting down to eat in a restaurant in America is submitting to a commitment to donate to this beggars coffer. Agreeing to be served is like agreeing to have the bum in the city squeegee your car window while you wait at a red light. You are not legally required to pay them anything, but you are an asshole if you don’t. The reason: because you 1) know they are only performing the task under the expectation that you’ll pay them a small something and 2) know the person needs that money they will get from you, because if they didn’t, they would have a more meaningful profession. It’s no different with a waiter at a restaurant.

So if you don’t want to pay the minimum, then don’t accept the service. Doesn’t matter if it’s crappy. In fact, you should expect it to be. These are not talented people and their task requires no skill.
The quality of service never negatively affects the final price with charity. It can only add to what you decide to give. If you are turned off by the benefactor of your charity case, then it is your responsibility to ask for better service or to leave the restaurant.

You willingly follow these rules for the pre-mentioned reasons: because, yes, these people are begging, but at least they are doing so after performing some small task that requires no talent, even if they do it badly.

No one is arguing that their job is important to society. Indeed even the laziest or most elderly among us would think you were retarded if you claimed that filling their drinking glass and walking their plate of food from kitchen to table was worth more than a 50 cent delivery charge at most. For the price we pay waiters to carry a plate of steak and eggs 15 feet to our restaurant table, we could have paid Fed Ex to deliver it to our doorstep. Twice.

But we don’t mind paying for a vastly overpriced useful service because we know its a hand out. That’s not how the public consciously thinks of this profession because there is so much of it and we are uncomfortable calling non-homeless people beggars, even when that is exactly their profession. If you are a “server” in a restaurant, you are a bum. So, accepting this, you must also be as gracious as your patrons under this dictum and have low expectations of the result you will get, only to be occasionally rewarded with above average tiding.

So should you be ashamed if you are a waiter? No. That’s not the point.

The claims of personal responsibility go both ways.

To the patron: yes, no one forced this person serving you to take on this lowly line of work, but ethics require that if you accept their service, you pay them even for sub par performance.

To the server: yes, it is expected that you will receive additional money in a ratio to the customers final bill, but if the sum is not to your liking then that is tough luck, and if you get stiffed on occasion then that is also the risk you assume in taking such a job.

If both sides can be honest about their roles in society many of these unspoken rules would be more obvious to both sides. They aren’t because waitering is romanticized and tipping is encouraged in places far beyond all reasonable means. These two things combined cause confusion, frustration and stinginess all around by distorting the purpose for tipping and the role of tip receiver. When there is a tip can at every ice cream parlor, coffee house and gay brothel – surely the concept has been lost in our culture.

Other civilizations have failed to foster such an infantile sense of entitlement and in some other cultures or situations, giving a tip is not expected and offering one would be considered condescending or demeaning. And as well it should be.

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