Chronicles of Faceb**k Deletion: Chapter Deuce...

I want to thank Jack Burton for his hospitality. Whether his decision to allow my voice to be heard is genuine or simply an Affirmative Action quota, I can live with the end justifying the means here. I preface my Chronicles by saying that when it comes to technology, there are many different ways to complete the same task. The journey I am taking is a self-imposed one that I hope the end result is a significantly lowered carbon footprint within the Internet. In any case, I present to you......

If you missed Chapter 1, refresh your memory HERE ...

Chronicles of Facebook Deletion

Chapter 2: You’ve made it so you’re never truly unplugged, nor have you made it easy to find all the outlets.

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.” - Morpheus

A little backstory before discussing today’s adventure (Since this is a journey I’m sharing with you and we’re taking together, you should probably know a little about me and my reasoning. Think of this as a cross country road trip vice a daily commute in the Slug Lot (DMV reference)):

So a question that may be prevalent for the readers out there is: Why are you deleting your Facebook? To that I ask: Why does anyone do anything? Why do hot dogs come in packs of 10 and hot dog buns come in packs of 8? Why do people in wheelchairs have dirty sneakers? Why do we build Fountains? Truth is, there are many reasons I could call on for why I’ve made this decision, and truth be told, none of them are malicious. The biggest one is actually just a matter of pragmatism. It’s easier to clean my “friend slate” by switching to another site and sending the invites vice individually unfriending people one at a time. I realized the other day that I don’t actually know 329 people, nor would I pretend to, nor would I want them all to know me. But when you take that away, I guess I’m just saddened by what Facebook has become. I’m somewhere between how Common felt for H.E.R. and how Nas felt in Ether (What's sad is I love you 'cause you're my brother, You traded your soul for riches). However I’m not naive enough to avoid realizing it’s my own fault. I accepted the friends that invite me to Farmville, I accepted the friends who change their middle name to *supaheadbuttabiscuitsshooteminthefaceinternetgangstagitmoneygoonsquad*, I accepted the friends who get tagged in Gucci Sneaker Heels, but most of all: I accepted Facebook: The all-inclusive symmetric communication model of Social Networking (more on what I mean by that next time, on to why you’re here)

Picking up where I last left off, I deleted about 15 more of my photos and felt a need to move onto another aspect: Connected Websites and Apps.

As I said, I have a lot of profile photos that require manual deletion. A lot in this case being 200 as of now. I fear that coming back to just delete pictures everyday would weaken my resolve. I decided to look into How to Permanently Delete Facebook within Facebook itself. This will be my final step at some point so I figured a little more recon wouldn’t hurt. I already knew the answer via the Internet (more on that later) but I was curious on how complicated the process is made and how much you’re not helped with it by the site itself. 

To my surprise the option to delete is not an option within your settings. The closest you get within your options is to Deactivate your account, which for the record, merely makes your account inactive for others to see your information. Facebook still retains all of your uploaded data (photos, videos, statuses, entered profile information, etc…) should you want to come back, and coming back is a simple as logging in again and specifying to be reactivated. You actually have to navigate to the Help Center and search for How do I permanently delete my account? You’ll then receive an explanation of how deactivating your account gets the same effect of people not seeing your account while still leaving the option to come back, and that if you’re “Super Cereal”, you should submit your request here. Another window pops up explaining this again that will need another Submit click. A FINAL window pops up stating “You are about to Permanently Delete your Account. Are you sure?” and that if you are, you’ll need to enter your password and enter the letters from a CATCHPA prompt to finalize the process. Next you should receive an e-mail that the process has started and that you should not log into your account for approximately 14 days. Logging in during that timeframe results in your account being reactivated and the process being aborted (possibly for good and cancelled, but at the very least started all over).

NOW….enough people are thinking 14 days isn’t too difficult if you’re already dead set on deleting your Facebook, but here’s what I believe you didn’t think about and I’m sure none of those prompts told you about:

+If you live in 2011, there’s a good chance you have a smartphone of some form. All of which have a Facebook App. By default, these apps launch when you turn on your phone. Soooooo……You turn on your phone, Facebook app launches, guess what? You’ve just logged into Facebook. Process Aborted!

+If you live in 2011, you’ve browse the Internet. While browsing, you’ve noticed how simple Facebook has made it to connect to content you needed a website account for. Washington Post comes to mind, CNN, ESPN, hell even the Dominos Tracker, and so on and so forth. Soooooo….you open a webpage in the morning, want to read an article or comment on something before you start your workday or order a pizza online and want to share your tracker, you use Facebook Connect to see the content……Process Aborted! because you just logged into Facebook via Facebook connect. 

I can continue to rant here, but the point is that removing your connection to other websites and apps is essential to the deletion process. Facebook has such a far reach within the Internet that as you browse other sites, you don't realize how many times you're actually connecting back to it for enhanced content. Good news here is that the removal process isn’t very arduous; you go to your privacy settings and remove all of your platform sites and apps. As for a phone app, I recommend changing your login information or your e-mail address within the Facebook settings to an address you never/rarely use or isn’t real yet still resolves. What this will do will cause any apps that have your credentials saved within them to fail to log you in automatically. And so, that’s what I’ll do today…red or blue pill, you live and you learn.

Adios, till next time.

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Red Band Time....

It's here....the reimaging of the Ashton Kutcher/Natalie Portman classic, "No Strings Attached".

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What the hell is vidding?

What the hell is Vidding ?

Vidding is to vid.  Vid is:

To jinx; to change the result by doing the opposite of what is needed; to expect an outcome only to have the opposite happen ex:  John vidded the Patriots by saying they would win, in the end the Jets destroyed them.

Let's say your favorite team is......the San Antonio Spurs.  Your natural reaction is to root them on.  You WANT them to win.  You announce to others that you want them to win.  You wear their gear, hat, shirt, whatever....

Then they lose.  You vidded the San Antonio Spurs.


Well, I can just counter that by rooting for the opposite team???  Right???  Wrong.  Doesn't work like that.  Vidding is an incredible power.  It's like using a cross on a vampire, you need to believe, you need to have faith.

To truly "vid" something, you have to believe it will happen, you have to want it to happen, then you need to let it be known, whether its visible (wearing something that shows support) or verbal (telling everyone your feelings).  Then, and only then will it be a true "vid" and thus destroy any hope that you HAD for that person/place/thing.

The person in this photo, just happens to be named Vid.  It's only coincidence that he rooted openly for the Spurs in this year's NBA playoffs, who despite having the second best record in the regular season, were ousted in the first damn round.  It's only coincidence that he wore a Washington Captials t-shirt, during the NHL playoffs when they got swept yet again.  It's only coincidence that when deciding to choose who to root for BEFORE the Masters, between Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy, that he chose Sergio Garcia, only to see Rory have an amazing weekend.  BUT IT IS NOT COINCIDENCE THAT HE OPENLY AND BOLDLY DECLARED THAT THE US WOMEN'S SOCCER TEAM WILL WIN THE WORLD CUP FINALS.  NO.  IT IS NOT COINCIDENCE.  That my friends..... is VIDDING.

P.S.  Japan won.

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Just cause it's everywhere now....

This teaser is so cool, they get to recycle bits from the first and second movie and add literally 10 seconds of footage cause they know they can!!!

It's the equivalent of me telling you, "In Batman Begins, he became Batman, in Dark Knight he rode the Bat Pod, now Commissioner Gordon wants him to come back to fight a new bad guy."

There.  Done.  Aren't you sooo excited now?

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Chronicles of Faceb**k Deletion

 Nobody like moving.  If you do, you're a facking liar.  How about making a "move" in cyberspace.

Ever thought of leaving Facebook?  Google+ is now that shiny new [secure?] McMansion.  Here is one person's account of leaving the dreaded FACEBOOK.

Mik 

Chronicles of Facebook Deletion. Chapter 1: You're even going to make this a pain in the ass aren't you?

So I downloaded my entire profile so I have an archive of everything. The process begins with Facebook collecting all of your info. It appears to take about a few hours ( depending on how long it takes for someone to finish eating their hot pocket and washing it down with Mountain Dew ) and you receive an e-mail when it's ready to download. What you get is a .zip file ( .zip = ZIP file format. Used primarily for data compression and archiving. I probably didn't need to explain that since Google savy folks tend to have higher degrees of technical literacy ) that contains all of the following:

+All of your photos
+All of your videos
+Indexed .html ( webpage ) of your homepage containing all of your profile info
+index .html of your photo album homepages and any comment anyone has made on them
+pretty much an index .html of everything else on your Facebook that I didn't mention

With my information now archived, I'm ready to begin deleting everything. I've decided to delete everything because:

A) I don't trust Facebook with my information

B) as a google+ friend pointed out to me, unless you delete everything manually, your account will not be deleted.

Anyway, figured I'd start with deleting my photos. I have a moderate amount uploaded compared to some and a small amount compared to the really really vane. I figured I would just delete the entire albums and be done by the time my morning toast popped up. That process was working well until I reached my Profile Photos...which you actually have to delete ONE AT A TIME! Seriously! Where's the logic in this? I'm reminded of when I flew to Columbus Ohio for a friend's USMC Officer Commissioning.
Its been a while since I flew and forgot about the whole "no liquids" nonsense. To make this deviation from my tales short, my shaving cream and toothpaste was confiscated,...but THEY LET ME KEEP MY RAZOR BLADES!. So yeah, Facebook , TSA, Where's the Logic in your rules?!??.

For me, I have a lot of profile photos, so I grabbed a snickers because I'm not going anywhere for a while. After deleting about 30+ photos manually, my account is now "Temporarily Unavailable". It wouldn't be too much of a stretch that Facebook considers a mass exodus and deletion of data to be "Suspicious Activity" because "hey, who would ever want to delete us? We're awesome ghey! we're Facebook !". So that's what I think happened here. How pissed would I be if they restored everything I deleted?

In any case, it's enough for me to take a break from deleting for today. Assuming my account access is restored later, i'll let you know what happens next.

Ciao for now.... (to be continued.....)

Read Part 2

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just cause.... NSFW

no idea what this movie is about, but i see bush in the poster.  sooo....i had to share...

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One of us is lying.

ok mother f'ers!!!!  here's the first trailer for the Thing prequel.

dammit.... they got me!!!  I am totally in.

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