I want to feel rich

When Wendy and I sold our condo and bought a house we got to see a lot of staging.  In Toronto over the past 20 years staging has gone from a thing a few people do to being the standard.  I have complaints about how staging works and what things it promotes (classism!  rabble rabble) but the tricky thing about staging is that it isn't easily defined and it gradually slides from completely reasonable to icky without a clear dividing line.

I will admit at the outset that we staged our condo to sell it, so while I will complain about staging and its effects, I couldn't turn it down personally.  I know that the staging process made me money, so despite how destructive it is, I wasn't willing to toss away tens of thousands of dollars on principle... especially when our real estate agent included staging for free.

At the beginning you just have cleanup.  You want to sell your house?  Clear that old junk off the porch, mop the floor, pick up the laundry.  I can't see any reason to complain about that.  You want someone looking through the place to be able to see what they are getting and feel comfortable.  The trouble is you keep on doing things that seem reasonable and eventually your place has been repainted neutral white, is filled with expensive furniture, decorated with fancy art, and completely unusable because all of your tools and gear have vanished.  It is sterile, boring... and looks like the place a rich person might live.  The kind of person who has taste in fine art, pays other people to do the work for them, and thinks garish colours are SO last year.

That is the part of the process that grinds my gears.  The stagers tried to tell us that we had to repaint everything so that the prospective buyers could see themselves living in our space, but I think that is nonsense.  We weren't trying to let them see themselves... we were trying to trick their brains into thinking of our condo as a rich person's residence.

The buyer wants to be rich, and they love the vision of themselves as a rich person, so we designed our place to facilitate that dream.  We put up ugly, shapeless modern art because that is how people in our economic bracket think a rich person's home looks.  I am sure that if you are selling a higher end home the staging process changes; you want to make the house look like a person that has twice that much money lives there.  The ideal staging makes the person who is looking to buy that place feel like it is better than the price would suggest, but not too much better, or it triggers cognitive dissonance.

Wastefulness bothers me.  I hate that we had beautiful colourful walls and we had to paint them all white.  I hate that we had to install laminate flooring because that is what is expected at this price point, even if plenty of buyers aren't particularly interested in laminate floors.  So much of staging is doing work that will immediately be undone just to shove money one direction or another.  I like doing things to improve a building - I hate doing them solely as a trick.

The trouble is we are all trapped in a destructive cycle of game theory.  We are playing prisoner's dilemma, except that we only play it with any given opponent once, so everybody defects all of the time.  Nobody has an incentive to cooperate, and the real estate people have every incentive to get people to spend more to raise the selling price because they are paid a percentage.

Even though I can see how this ends up screwing everybody over (except the real estate agents....) I don't see a good way out of it.  People are emotional and foolish and as long as they desperately want to increase their social status and houses are expensive then staging and other trickery will take place.  People want to be rich and powerful and a person's home displays that status clearly.  While these things hold, we are going to continue to try to make our homes look like an Important Person lives there, and we are going to continue to waste our collective resources to achieve that.

Withdrawing from society

Almost a month ago I watched the Netflix show entitled The Social Dilemma.  It was about social networks and the algorithms they use to decide what to show users.  I knew that social networks used these algorithms and that these algorithms were there to increase ad revenue and engagement, not to promote truth, but this show outlined clearly just how bad things are.

As as example, FB was instrumental in the widespread influence of pizzagate.  Its algorithms noticed that people were extremely engaged with the nonsense story of a child sex ring operating out of a pizza joint, organized by high level Democrats in the US.  Obvious foolishness, but it got clicks, so FB showed it to as many people as possible, and plenty of them bought it.

In response I decided to unfollow everyone on Facebook.  I still use FB for messaging, and I can still be part of organizing events or conversations, but I no longer see anything on my feed except ads... which makes it quite easy to ignore my feed entirely.  I could have just refused to look at my feed of course, but I know myself - resisting the urge to look would take precious willpower, and I didn't wan to have to resist temptation.  Unfollowing everyone means that it would take a lot of time to actually make my feed exist again, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't do that.

This trick worked.  I unfollowed mostly everyone and I have ignored my feed for four weeks now.  I do feel better overall, but it isn't entirely rosy.  There are certainly bits of news I will miss, and events in the lives of my friends that I will not see.  Still, while most of those feel like a real thing at the time, they have no long term impact.  Nearly all of those things that social networks convince us are crucial actually don't matter at all a week later.  That said, if there was a good way to get those moments without having to scroll endlessly through a FB feed, I would get them.  Unfortunately, there isn't.

I am happy about the time I have retrieved from FB.  I don't scroll, wondering if there are new things.  I don't read stuff I have no interest in simply because it was there in my feed.  I also don't get misdirected and subtly influenced by FB's algorithm anymore.

Doing this has made me more aware of the other networks that I touch and how they react.  For example, a Youtuber I watch occasionally made a video about her dating life - in the past, she identified as straight, and thought the stories that her straight male friends told about dating were exaggerated or not important.  Then she came out as bi, went on some dates with women, and experienced the exact same frustrating behaviours that her straight male friends had complained about.  I think her politics and beliefs are similar to mine; this wasn't some right wing 'women are the worst' kind of garbage, just an acknowledgement that a new environment brings new perspective.

Youtube immediately begane shoving 'Feminist gets owned by LOGIC' and 'Watch Jordan Peterson demolish liberal snowflakes' videos at me.  A single video was enough to give it the clue that I might be receptive to the MRA / PUA / antifeminist outrage machine.

It doesn't matter that the Youtuber in question doesn't believe in any of that garbage, nor that I don't.  Youtube wants clicks, outrage gets clicks, so it is endlessly searching for something that will outrage me so I will click and click and click.

Algorithms have figured out that I like Hearthstone videos.  It knows I play World of Warcraft and will check out news stories about it.  These things are useful!  But they also desperately try to get me hooked on bigotry and tribalism because that is how you make money.  I don't know the best way for society to cope with this.  I am sure that the increasing polarization of society is in large part attributable to social media and algorithms, and I think long term that is going to cause some serious damage.  

Unfortunately just knowing that something is a problem doesn't automatically lead you to solutions.  I don't know how we all tackle this.  I just know that I am going to remove myself from the mess as much as possible.  I don't want it anymore, both because I think it is bad for my personal life, and also because I think it is bad for humans as a whole.

Algorithms, smart and stupid

Facebook has been shoving a new ad at me.  I am full of ambivalence about it, because I both want to praise the targetting of the ad and also ridicule it.

The ad was for a jaw exercising device.   It looks like a donut shaped piece of silicone, and the idea is that you chew on it to give yourself a chiselled jawline.  The actor in the ad talked about being 48 and how he used the device to get back his youthful jaw.

I am 41, and into fitness, so that much they got right.

Unfortunately for them, they also assumed that I am ignorant and desperate.

You can't fix saggy skin with muscle exercises.  You also can't remove subcutaneous fat with targetted regimens.  You *can* generally remove subcutaneous fat from your body with exercise, but you sure as hell can't pick a spot and nuke the fat right there.  This jaw chiselling device is a ridiculous scam.  It is no different from the Ab Blasters I saw advertised on TV when I was young.  Exercise is good for you, sure, but you can't pick a spot and nuke it!  You can pick a spot and make it strong, but the body removes fat where it wants to.

Facebook is hit and miss with these things.  It does aim a lot of board game and video game ads at me, which is accurate, but it also really tries to sell me trucks, which is a total non starter.

But the truck ads are understandable.  I am in a age and income bracket where buying a vehicle is plausible.  The most outrageous miss I have ever seen is when FB started sending surrogate mother ads at me.  Much as I might like to help infertile people to have children, I lack some key things that are required for that endeavour.  Shouldn't FB have my sex sorted by now?

I can't quite sort out how much to respect algorithms.  Sending a gym rat like me ads for adjustable home dumbbells during a time when I can't go to a gym?  Great idea!  (I am not buying, but it is a well targetted ad.)  But singing lessons?  Not so much.

The algorithms are getting better, and sometimes they do make great decisions, but we are a long way away from Skynet.

Armageddon, only not quite

Covid-19 is coming.  At this point the consensus is that everyone in the world is going to get it, pretty much, and a bunch of us are going to die of it.  That doesn't mean you should not worry about passing it on, of course.  Slowing the rate of infection is a great way to improve our response quality and lower the burden on the system at any given time.  Somewhere between .5% and 3% are going to die of it, most likely, with a heavy lean towards older people dying.  It isn't a thing to be trifled with.

Watching what people say about this is a fascinating exercise.  I have seen posts talking about how scary it is and emphasizing that everyone needs to wash their hands a lot, but also posts talking about how the flu has killed many more people this year than Covid-19, so calm the fuck down.  When something siezes the public imagination like this I can't help but stare at the human reactions in awe and wonder.

Personally, I am stocking up on food and medicine.  Not because civilization is going to end, because it won't, but if a ton of people get sick and governments start implementing quarantines supply chains start breaking.  Who knows what food and medicine I will be able to get when Toronto's infection situation is at its worst?  Also if I end up having to be home ill for weeks on end and can't go out without risking passing the infection on, I should have all my shopping taken care of.

I talked to the Flautist about this and it worried her a great deal.  Not just the news, but my response.  I have a 'bah, the world will be fine, don't panic' response to all kinds of things in the news that get other people all aflutter.  This is different though.  I have extra packs of menstrual supplies, toilet paper, ibuprofen, and cleaning products along with tons of dried food.  Not because it is time to panic, but because other people will be panicking and I need to get out ahead of them in building a stash.  I will end up using all the stuff I have bought anyway, so it won't go to waste.

It is going to be extra difficult on those who are in precarious financial situations.  I have the money to buy a month's worth of everything and it isn't a problem.  Some people don't though, and as usual when there is a systemic disruption it is the poor who won't be able to stretch to get past it.

Seriously though, you should stock up.  Don't fool yourself with things like "aww, it won't be that bad" because even if you are only kinda sick, you are going to be morally obligated to stay home, and you will need things.  Don't try to weasel out with "meh, I will just get food delivered" because if 25% of the delivery people are out sick, and 10 times as many people as usual want food delivered, you aren't getting that delivery.  Figure out a way to store a bunch of the food, medicine, toiletries, and other necessities of life now, while supply chains are still intact and getting those things is easy. 

There are already stores that are running out of things, partly because of panic, partly because so much of our stuff is manufactured in China.  Don't be the last person to realize what is coming.

Civilization is going to be fine.  You, on the other hand, might not.  So have a plan, and make sure that plan doesn't include getting scammed, because I have already seen Covid-19 based marketing out there, and more will be coming.

Maids and cooks and chauffeurs for all

The internet has been shovelling ads at me for food delivery.  Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes in particular have paid Google a small fortune to try to get me to buy food on the internet and have it delivered.

It is all a scam, a show, a grandoise lie.

These companies want me to believe that I can have servants.  I don't have to do the dishes, cook food, or drive.  Best of all, this is all extremely cheap!  It is almost too good to be true.

It is too good to be true.

I can have servants, yes.  I can get food delivered to me, I can have people show up to drive me places, and I can skip on the whole 'paying for it' bit.  But somebody always pays, and in this case it is the people doing those deliveries and driving those cars.

Notice how no company is offering food delivery services where employees that get a salary, benefits, and vacation do deliveries using company vehicles?  Know why that is?  Because no customers will pay the cost associated with such deliveries.

People doing these deliveries are doing so out of desperation or ignorance.  The amount they get paid isn't nearly enough to pay for the costs of car maintenance, gas, and a reasonable wage.  They get an hourly wage that works for now, and then they get hit with all the bills later, and the companies that hired them get rich off of the depreciation of the workers' assets.

If you think food delivery can profitably happen for $5, you are delusional.  Companies aren't offering that because they are efficient, they are offering that because they are ruining the lives of the gig workers who do the actual deliveries for them.  This isn't a company coming in to do things better, it is just another scam to siphon money off from those who are desperate and funnel it upwards.

What Uber and Skip the Dishes and Lyft are doing is simple.  They aren't employers paying people to deliver a service, they are banks offering loans to poor people at heinous rates.  They are doing the same thing as Cash Money and Money Mart and other similar payday loan businesses do - finding someone who is desperate for cash right now and leveraging them for profit.  They ruin people.  That is the *only* way their business model works.  If you had to pay the real cost of your Uber ride you wouldn't do it, and old style taxis would come back into vogue.  If you had to front the actual cost of your food delivery you wouldn't bother because it would cost as much for the delivery as it did for the food.

We can't all have servants.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to exploit you, or the servants.

You actually have to cook.  Or you have to drive.  Or you have to fucking *pay* for those things.  If the deal seems to good to be true, it is.

Specifically two

The Conservative political ads on the radio regularly piss me off.  Their pitch this time around is twofold:  First, Justin Trudeau is awful.  Really the worst.  Frankly they oversell the point, but I do have huge issues with JT.  I am mostly angry about his broken promise about electoral reform and grumpy about him being part of a political dynasty.  The Conservatives aren't critical of those things - they like dynasties and want to keep our archaic system that props up their party.

The second thing they have to say is that they are going to give everyone more money.  Also balance the budget.  They will spend lots of money on new things too!  It sure is great that Conservatives can produce money from nowhere, unlike other political parties.

Of course when they had to finally produce a platform it included enormous, crushing cuts to services.  Anyone who is surprised by this is delusional.  Money isn't free. 

The thing that really got to me about this new set of ads though is that they are pitching their giveaways by talking about how much money they are going to give *per couple*.  Not per person.  Not per adult.  Per couple.

That happens to work for me, but it is a crappy way to put it.  Many people aren't part of couples.  Many people's financial setup isn't a traditional one with two people married to each other.  This isn't a useful way to talk about how tax cuts will work.  It shouldn't be any surprise though that the Conservatives manage to erase people who aren't in standard couple type financial arrangements.  They want to make it clear that this is how they think, and that single people are doing it wrong.

I wonder if it is deliberate.  Did they have a strategy session where they hashed out their ad campaign and decided that they could say 'this tax cut will give the average adult X more dollars' but went with 'the average couple X more dollars' instead?  Did somebody decide that their base would be happier with some extra enforcement of norms on the side?  Or did they not even think about it at all and just wrote it that way because they didn't even consider what it meant?

Tricky to say.  They aren't stupid, so I am inclined to think that they are evil and did it deliberately.  On the other hand every intelligent person has huge blind spots, so maybe they did this without even realizing it because they can't see out of their own situations.

In any case it is business as usual for the Conservatives.  Hand money to the rich, strip away services from the poor, and, just for fun, take a steaming dump on anyone who doesn't follow the standard life plan.

A spirited debate

I don't care much for debates in politics.  I was on the debate team in high school, and I like debating as a hobby, but I think it doesn't do much for helping voters figure out what to do during elections.

The problem is that people who are thought to have won debates do so by having stage presence, clever comments, and raw attractiveness.  These are stupid metrics by which to select a leader.  You do get some information about the parties and their plans, but that information would be better gotten from official platforms, news articles, or paying attention to previous behaviour.  What a leader says in a debate has little educational value if you watch these other media.

I am not interested in a leader that has a nice suit, good looks, and charisma.  I don't see how that is relevant.  It might help in a few niche cases in international negotiations, but most of those are actually done by underlings over the course of many months - leaders show up to shake hands and get photographed but they don't do all the real work.  Pretty people 'win' debates, but that is a trivial thing when it comes to running a country.

There is some correlation between coming up with good quips on the fly and intelligence, but it is not a strong enough correlation for me to care.  Most of that is just practice and training, and it is utterly worthless for selecting a leader or designing policy.  I get that people want to see their favourite leaders trash talk others, but it is just entertainment.

It makes me grumpy that people watch political debates as if they are a critical window into the way a party will govern, and then end up voting for the handsome person with snappy comebacks.  Without the debates they would just end up voting based on tribalism, bigotry, and family tradition though, so I suppose the debates aren't really making things any worse.

You can suss out truth in a debate.  It is possible to figure things out by contesting ideas against one another, and carefully looking at each side's best arguments. 

I just don't think that political debates actually do that.

The older I get the more I pay attention to politics, the better I understand it, and the more likely I am to vote.  I also get more and more jaded and bitter about the entire process.

I know that the best progress for humankind comes from slow, incremental change.  Tiny bits here and there that slowly, falteringly, get us to a better place.  But the more I watch the farce that is our electoral process the more inclined I am towards simply burning it all down out of spite.

Moving tragedy

Sit down all ye people and hear my tale of woe and tragedy.  Prepare for a tale of bureaucratic incompetence, terribly written code, and complaining to customer service.

As many of these tales do, my story involves uhaul.

The Flautist was moving from Waterloo to Toronto, roughly a 1.5 hour drive away.  She had recruited me to be the driver of her rented uhaul truck and we had a plan:  I would arrive in Waterloo on Thursday at suppertime, spend the evening helping her to pack, sleep, then get the truck Friday morning in Waterloo.  Simple enough, and since I had already moved someone earlier in the week in just 2 hours, I was sure this would be a piece of cake!

On Thursday The Flautist messaged me to say that uhaul had made mistakes.  Instead of collecting the truck in Waterloo, I would have to get it in London instead, which is a further 1.5 hour drive from me in Toronto.  I couldn't possibly get there before closing time so I arranged to catch a train to London and called uhaul to arrange a pickup after the uhaul store in London would close.  No problem, right?  Just get to London, arrive at the store, use their convenient app, and grab my vehicle.  Easy as anything.

First off the train was two hours late.  The train company was apologetic, but there was no way around it so I just waited.  Instead of arriving at uhaul at 8:30 I got there at 10:30 instead.  This meant I would get to The Flautist at 12:30, which is late but totally workable.

Upon arrival at uhaul, I booted up the app and it informed me that I could not have a truck.  Helpfully it told me I could wait until the store opened at 7AM!  Thanks app!

No problem.  Customer service can certainly fix this sort of issue, I had no doubt about this. (Lies.  I had many, many doubts.)

After 10 minutes on hold, the first customer service rep insisted that they could fix the issue and put me on hold again.  I waited, pacing the parking lot.  Uhaul's hold tape helpfully informed me that if I had a problem I could go online and tell them about it so later customers wouldn't have to deal with this problem.  They told me this every 30 seconds for 20 minutes straight.  Finally, a customer service rep picked up the line.  A new customer service rep, who had no idea about the previous person.  This one tried to help me, but could not manage to get me a truck.  They passed me over to another rep who apparently had actual abilities, who managed to take my call after merely a 5 minute hold.  This new person was eager to help, perhaps assisted by my extremely grumpy and terse description about my plight so far.

They told me I could have a truck.  However, I couldn't have a truck that could be dropped off in Toronto, no no.  I could have a smaller truck that wouldn't hold all of The Flautist's possessions or I could have a truck that I had to drop back in London at the end of the move on Friday.  No matter that this wasn't what The Flautist booked, no matter that the trip back to London it would cost me $100 and take 8 hours - take it or leave it.

I called The Flautist to have a fast, unpleasant conversation about our options, and she said we should just get the proper size truck and deal with the fallout the next day.  I told the customer service rep that we would take it.

Unfortunately, I *said* I would take it, but that is a far cry from actually taking it.  I spent 20 minutes trying to get the app to work. It had the amazing design choice of not registering clicks - if you clicked, it might be doing something in the background, but there was no indication whatsoever that a click had registered.  No way to tell the difference between 'working please wait' and 'you didn't click'.  Combine that with clicks sometimes taking 5 minutes to do anything, and you have a great time.  Finally it completely failed, and the rep on the phone told me the app didn't work, and I should try to just do it on a browser instead.  Lovely that their policy and website both desperately tried to get me to use an app that simply did not work.  I tried the browser, and happily it got me a truck!  It sent me to a lockbox on site to get my keys.

The lockbox was empty.

The rep sent me fresh passwords for every single lockbox on site, trying to get keys.  Every single lockbox was empty.

The rep sent me to my truck, which was unlocked, hoping that if I searched it I would find keys somewhere.

No keys.

Out of options, the rep put me on hold for 10 more minutes.  Then he came back and told me if I got to another uhaul that was about an hour's walk away I could try to get a truck there - if they happened to have keys in a lockbox.  I would *still* have to return to the wrong city after the move.

As it was already 12:30 I gave up, and asked what would happen if I just sat in the parking lot until 7AM and waited for the store to open.  The rep informed me that they had lots of trucks available, and I could definitely get what was originally promised if I did that.  I told them I would just sleep in the truck, and they offered me a whole $50 off to make up for the hassle.

Which had already cost me $50 just in train and taxi costs.  And also left me with $20 in long distance bills from calling customer service.  And left me sleeping on the front seat of a uhaul van all night.

I brushed my teeth, refrained from spitting the toothpaste all over uhaul property, and tried to sleep.  I am a large person, and the seats in a uhaul truck are ... not great, even if you aren't big.  It turns out that seatbelt buckles aren't the best sleep surface.  In late August the weather is kinda warm, but sleeping in an unheated place eventually gets cold.  The first half of the night wasn't so bad, but by the end I was trying to use my spare shirt as a blanket; sadly a tshirt doesn't provide much in the way of coverage or warmth.

After a few fitful hours of sleep, I got up at 7AM and wandered to the store.  There were already people ahead of me, so I had to sit and watch them get their stuff while I seethed.  Finally the manager was free to see me.  I laid out my sordid tale, and she read the email from the customer service person attempting to help me the previous night.  She informed me that she would only charge me $50 for the entire rental and got me my truck.

Just before I left, she had one other thing to say. 

"You know, I was here until 2AM last night doing paperwork.  If the customer service rep had just called me I could have gotten you your truck right away, no problem!"

I blearily stared at her, not at all sure what to say about this revelation.

What do you do?

You sigh, think thoughts of murder and mayhem, and drive your damn truck 1.5 hours to the place you were supposed to get it from in the first place.  Then you spend all day carrying heavy things and driving in hideous long weekend traffic.  Then you faceplant and sleep a lot.

At least, that is what *I* did.

Burnout

The Fyre Festival is an example of legendary incompetence turning into spectacular failure.  It was a festival pitched as a luxury music experience in a remote, tropical location that was superbly marketed, but which completely failed in execution.  People who were promised villas on the beach got leaky tents, chefs serving sushi were replaced with cheese sandwiches, and all the bands pulled out and the festival collapsed after everyone had already arrived.

I just watched a documentary on Netflix called Fyre about the festival, cataloging its initial meteoric rise and subsequent implosion.  It was clear that this wasn't a series of unfortunate accidents, but rather calculated fraud layered on top of idiotic optimism and mismanagement.  I liked the show a lot, and I recommend it if you want to watch evil fools fail.

The thing about the documentary that I found most fascinating though is the way they marketed the festival.  They got social media influencers to post about it and make it a meme, and sold out all of their heinously expensive tickets in no time at all.  I know that social media influencers are a thing... but the idea of following them, much less buying shit they are shilling, boggles my mind.

Why would I care what any of those people say?  Aren't they just mostly spending their days composing photos to make you think their lives are better than yours, and then trying to sell you shit that in theory will give you the life they are pretending to have?

I think I have a weird relationship to my phone compared to most people.  Health professionals insist that you need to leave your phone away from your bed so your notifications don't keep you awake all night.  I can't fathom this.  Why the fuck would you have your phone near your bed?  If anything gives me notifications I uninstall it!  Stop bothering me!

I can look at an instagram model and appreciate the curves, or marvel at the gigantic biceps.  But following them to get more pictures?  Nonsensical, is what that is.  It isn't that I am claiming some perfect rationalism that makes me immune to sales pitches (though I am about as resistant as people get), rather I honestly can't fathom what it is that goes on in people's brains when they follow social media personalities so fervently.

Following celebrities?  I am barely interested in following people I actually know, and I curate my facebook feed to maximize 'people who link thoughtful and clever articles'.

But apparently just knowing how to get followers on instagram is a career option, so apparently it is me who is the freak.  Nobody is paying me gazillions of dollars or offering free stuff just for a mention on my blog, so by the logic of capitalism I am doing this *wrong*.

I guess I should start posting pictures of my fancy life, spending time oiling my arms and learning to use filters to put up muscle shots, and telling people they can have it all.

Or not.  Because the prospect of doing that regularly makes my skin crawl.

I wish for better advertising

I saw a poster in my local grocery store that showed a picture of a woman with a child, and talked about 'raising a food lover'.  The store also has all the employees wear shirts that say 'we love food'.

The marketing personnel who came up with this really ought to be ashamed of themselves.  You know who loves food?  Nearly everyone.  Do you know what a grocery store has to offer in terms of turning your child into a food lover?  Nothing.  People become food lovers because evolution demands it.  You know what happened to all the people who hate food?  They died.  They did not produce many children. 

The 'we love food' thing is the marketing equivalent to unflavoured oatmeal.  Gray, slimy, tasteless garbage.  I wish they would actually say something, anything, to provide me information. 

"We sell substandard food for cheap but the place looks like crap!"

"Our food is expensive but we have lots of employees handing out free samples and fancy music!"

"All of our food is locally sourced!"

These are all actual information that might bring me to a store, if I like their thing.  But instead they are trying to feed me rubbish designed to be inoffensive and boring.  It is like a politician saying 'I want to help struggling families' or a dating profile bragging 'I like travel and I am looking for someone kind and smart'. 

All of them are just wide open displays of cowardice.  Say something real.  Be vulnerable.  Share information!  These desperate attempts to pander to everyone while informing no one get me spitting mad.

Buckley's company message is one I can get behind.  "It tastes terrible, but it works."  +1 to their marketing team, sticking to a message that tells the consumer real things about the product.

Political signs boil my bodily fluids the same way.  They have a simple message - a name.  They don't tell me anything about a candidate, their positions, their record, or anything else.  All I can derive from political signs is that the candidate 1.  Has access to money to buy signs.  and 2.  Has at least one person who likes them.  Having access to money does not tell me anything good about a candidate, and given how the last provincial election went here I would be tempted to vote against someone on that basis if that is all I have available.  We could really use some poor people in office for a change.  Knowing that someone is willing to put that sign on their lawn is also worthless - the politicians I hate have plenty of supporters willing to do that.

It all points to just how much of a farce some of our core concepts of democracy and capitalism are. People don't make sensible economic decisions to benefit themselves.  They buy whatever garbage advertising has associated with curvaceous asses, adorable children, or monetary success.  Voters are swayed by vacuous promises, meaningless appeals to happy feelings, and signs with people's names on them.

Sure, we do make decisions here and there that are truly informed and reasonable.  But advertising works, political lawn signs matter, and a pretty photoshopped face is all you need to sell snake oil.

The big sad

Many of my friends are sad these days.  The provincial election did not go as we had hoped and our new government will be a Conservative one.  The people of Ontario decided to elect a party that never published a complete platform, made promises that are completely impossible, and is led by a buffoon, Doug Ford.  I wouldn't vote Conservative in any case, but there was a whole list of other contenders for leader I would have been vastly less harsh on.

I am sure people have lots of reasons for voting Conservative.  Mostly they seem to be terror at what a left wing party would do; these are usually pitched as fiscal concerns.  Many people claim that their Conservative vote was to protect Ontario's finances from the NDP.

I don't buy that crap.

The NDP published a properly costed platform.  The Conservatives published a list of promises that didn't even come close to adding up.  Economists on all political sides agreed that the Conservative promises were ridiculous and would lead to enormous deficits, higher than the other parties'.  If the Conservatives had actually published their numbers then perhaps they could have refuted these criticisms, but since they did not, we can only go with our best guesses.

You could also look at the party's history and see that they have no track record of financial responsibility.  Across North America deficits and foolish spending are not attached to any particular political party or even a leaning, left or right.  I would love to say that left wing governments are better this way, but we all know that every party wastes money and has financial scandals, and the data supports this.

You *can* choose how parties throw your money around though.  Right wingers will tend to throw it at rich people and shareholders, while left wingers will throw it at poor people.

I know which way I would prefer it, and I don't stand to benefit from helping the poor, quite the opposite.

So why vote Conservative?  Well, there are three reasons, I think.  Bigotry first among them.  Ford in particular is terrible for promoting bigotry and I am sure the fact that the three party leaders were two women and one man did some extra heavy lifting to get the misogyny vote out.  Lots of people want to vote for bigotry but few will actually admit it; these people of course often defend their position with "But what about fiscal responsibility?" and ignore the fact that there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that the Conservatives are better that way in general, and in this particular election they are far worse.

Some people really do vote for fiscal responsibility, and it isn't just a shield for bigotry.  These people are just misinformed or ignorant of the facts of the case here; I am sure there are times when you would actually be voting in a more fiscally responsible government by voting for the right, but this certainly wasn't one of those times.

And then there are those that vote for the right simply because they always have.  It is a tribal thing, and has nothing to do with policy of any sort.  There are simply people that always vote one way, and these folks are found in all parties.  I think their way of deciding who to vote for is terrible, but I am not the sort of person who is particularly into tribalism as moral compass.

Hard to say how much of what elected the Conservatives is evil, how much is clueless, and how much is random tribalism.  No matter the case, it makes me sad.  It won't affect me much directly, except insofar as they wreck the finances of the province, but it makes me so mad that they clearly intend to go after those who are vulnerable to placate the part of the electorate who did vote for them on the basis of bigotry.

We will get through this - there have been plenty of Conservative governments before, with similar goals.  But still I wish that the people of my province were better than this.

I am ok

Yesterday a van was driven into crowds of people on a street here in Toronto.  Ten people died, many more were injured.  The first I heard of this was Facebook prompting me to tell everyone that I am okay.  It was strange to be asked to confirm that I am not in fact dead or injured when I have no idea what it is exactly that might have injured me, but I ended up clicking to tell Facebook and my friends there that I am fine.

I won't be doing that again.

It made me feel weird and uncomfortable.  Facebook 'helpfully' listed all of the people I knew who live anywhere near this area who had clicked that they were safe, but of course I know more than one hundred more who had not clicked.  I don't know why they didn't click, but presumably most of them simply didn't log onto Facebook.  This ambiguity didn't bother me at all because even if they did click it doesn't tell me they are safe *now* - in the time since they clicked they could have died from something else entirely.  In fact if the only thing I knew was that ten people had died it is still more probably that someone I knew died from something else entirely than that they were hit by the van.  Toronto is a big place.

This system is basically just exploiting people's inability to intuitively grasp extremely low probabilities to inveigle them into staring at Facebook, worried about an unlikely but anomalous event, instead of worrying about that which is actually threatening.

Facebook is just trying to leverage tragedy for personal gain.  They pitch it as trying to help people cope with disaster but their system is mostly worthless.  It is clearly designed to get people to log in to Facebook every time they find out about a disaster both to click 'safe' and to obsessively check the list of other people to see who else has clicked it.

We know that desperately checking social media to see if people have clicked on a thing does not make people happier.  All it does is feed our collective addiction.  I don't want my friends wasting time trying to find out if a problem that is far removed from me randomly hurt or killed me by extreme random chance - you can't do anything about it anyway, so just move on with your life.

Tragedies happen.  It sucks.  But nothing will be improved by sitting staring at Facebook refreshing the page.  Go out and do things that bring you joy, and accept that disaster sometimes strikes but sitting in terror of unlikely events will bring nothing but sadness.

A nice conversation

On Friday I went to a family party for a large chunk of my family in law.  I wasn't really expecting to click with the majority of people there, as I am quite a lot younger than them, live in a different country, and have nothing else in common.

But I figured I can make polite noises at people and socialize, when I have to.

Instead I ended up sitting beside an older American man who was yelling loudly about politics.  He led off with "And no government in the history of the world has ever done anything better than a private company would."

I was really going to try to not argue politics with these people... but I'm not made of stone!

I stood up and said "How about healthcare?" and the debate was on.

And by debate I mean he leaned in close to me and said "Fucking Bullshit!"  After recovering from my surprise I told him that the US has private healthcare that costs drastically more and delivers drastically less per dollar than any other developed nation, and then he told me that the profit motive is necessary because the land we were standing on would still be forest if not for profits!

I had some choice comments about how the natives living here when it was all still forest probably aren't such big fans of the effects of profit on North America but I figured if was to have any chance at progress I needed to keep my focus narrow and stick to health care.

Sticking to health care was not in the cards.  Before allowing me another word in he talked about how socialism was destroying the world because the Fed is just printing more money.  Also the Fed is controlled by 12 powerful families who are the real Illuminati and they are trying to make everyone their slaves.

Additionally, according to him, he reads 4 hours a day and is extremely well informed and intelligent.

Then he demanded to know what my wealth insurance was.

I was a bit surprised because honestly I had no idea what he was talking about.  It turns out that according to his sources when the great collapse happens the only thing that will have any value is gold and silver, so he is invested in gold.  They are the only thing that has retained value over the last 5000 years, don't you know.  (Not at all true, btw.)

I really, really wanted to tell him that my biceps are my wealth investment, because if our entire civilization collapses I will use them to take his gold if I have any desire for it.  I probably won't have any desire for it though because civilization just collapsed, so the only things I want are weapons and food.

Eventually a four year old dragged me away from the endless stream of nonsense, much to my relief.

He spent the rest of that evening leering at me at every opportunity, telling me what a great discussion we had, obviously trying to get me involved again, and he very clearly felt he had gotten the better of me.  Then we had another event the next day and he did it again.

This whole thing was really interesting inside my head.  Director spent the whole time thinking that there is no point at all in interacting with the crazy.  This guy is a right wing nutjob conspiracy theorist and nothing in the world a Canadian socialist will say will have the slightest impact.  The only thing I will do is upset the other family members there.

But Passion wanted to yell.  Fuck this guy, dominating the conversation with his nonsense.  If we have to talk about this stuff, then at least I should spend the entire evening tearing his arguments down around his ears so nobody mistakes it for fact.  Plus I can be savagely disrespectful and insulting if I want because if he doesn't ever want to see me again that is a bonus.

I felt dissociative, particularly when he was goading me, trying to get me involved in another 'debate'.  A sense of disconnection, of being far away from myself.  This is often the case when my two natures are at war.  Director wins, as is virtually always the case, but it is uncomfortable.  I feel Passion straining at the bars of his prison, wanting to get out and run amok.  Keeping him imprisoned takes energy, and gives me that dissociative feeling.

When we left Wendy asked how the event had been for me.  I told her it was a success because I avoided tossing the angry man out a window, and that seems like a win given the circumstances.

I think it is funny because people often accuse me of not having any filter at all.  I find that hilarious because no one has ever seen me with no filter for more than a few moments at a time.  I feel like I spend my whole life filtering most of the stuff I want to do out, keeping Passion locked away from the world.  Maybe someday Director will just throw his hands up in despair, walk away to a corner of my head, and say "Fine, I am not in charge in more.  *You* deal with him." and then I will only be Passion.

That will be an interesting day if it ever happens.

A game of babies

The other day I saw something that illustrated clearly to me the struggles we have with compassion as a society.  In a forum about the World Boardgaming Championships which I attended two weeks ago someone was complaining about baby changing stations in the bathrooms in the convention centre.  You might imagine that people would be complaining that there weren't enough change stations, or that the change stations were only available in the women's washrooms.  I have encountered both of these issues personally.

But no.

The complaint was about changing stations existing at all.  The complainer was unhappy that children were being changed in the washrooms, because he expected people with children to take them back to their rooms to change them.  His preference was that change stations would be eliminated entirely because that would get rid of the problem of people changing babies in public spaces.

His complaint was pitched around the idea of contamination.  He didn't like the idea of the possibility of fecal matter from baby changes being spread around, and expressed concern that other babies might get sick if they were changed on the same change table that another baby had used.

This nonsense reminds me a lot of the arguments used to try to force breastfeeding out of the public domain.  It is entirely driven by people's ick reactions, with the added twist of sexualizing breastfeeding parents and/or babies.  Some people will be honest and just say that they are icked out by the whole thing, and although I think they should just shut up and cope at least they are being honest about why they object.

It really riles me up though when people make bonus 'safety' arguments to justify their attempts to control others just based on an ick response.  The idea that baby changing stations should be removed to help the babies is transparently absurd.  Toilet seats aren't removed to 'help' adults who don't want to spread around fecal matter.  We don't ask fully grown people to walk long distances to their rooms to use the washroom to reduce contamination.  But some of those adults still seem to feel justified asking parents and babies to travel this way.

In the same way some people insist that breastfeeding ought to happen in cars or washrooms to get it out of the public eye.  It is usually pitched as a way to make things safer for children who might accidentally see a breast, with no thought as to how much of a problem it is for the baby or the person feeding them.

The classism is these arguments really gets to me.  Some people have enough money that they can easily set it up so that they aren't the ones who have to cope with a baby's needs.  When they want to go out they just pay to have somebody else deal with their children.  Rich people are also in a much better position to have one of the baby's parents dedicate themselves entirely to child rearing which makes dealing with these logistical issues simpler.  But many people don't have the money to farm out baby care and they have to bring their infants along with them.  They don't have the resources to sequester their infant's bodily needs away from all the people who are made squeamish by them.  It is a situation of a rich person being angry at a poor person for the crime of being poor.

Even when it is a choice we should support it.  Even if someone has plenty of money we ought to set up the world so that they can care for their babies as they go about their day.

I totally understand that some people, especially those who have never made a baby, can find it hard to know what a caregiver needs.  That small bit of ignorance is easily enough cured.  The real problem is people who know what caregivers need and then insist that they not get it in order to keep babies at bay, and do so with bogus 'safety' arguments.

The 4 hour bullshit

I got The 4 Hour Body, a book about how to make yourself superhuman by using all kinds of tricks.  It is written by Tim Ferriss, who got famous primarily by writing The 4 Hour Workweek, a book about how to make lots of money only working 4 hours a week.

I am not going to link it or show the cover because I do not want you to buy or read this book.

There are things in The 4 Hour Body that are true, and other things that are good.  The book is aimed at straight men, and part of the 'be amazing at sex' section is a bunch of stuff about how to focus on women's pleasure during sex, and even a bunch of stuff on performing clitoral massage without the masseuse involved having any sort of stimulation at all.  Convincing straight men to think about this stuff is good!  I like it.

But much of the rest of the 'be amazing at sex' section is rubbish.  It follows the pattern of the rest of the book, which is that Ferriss talks about how you can do magical things just by taking some supplements or eating a particular food.  Become irresistible sexually!  Heal like Wolverine!  Pack on muscle in ways that are literally impossible without sewing meat onto your body!  A pack of lies and nonsense packaged in a pseudoscientific shell is most of the book, complete with links to help you purchase the products he recommends.

On the other hand Ferriss does provide a really useful critique of many of the issues with mainstream science publishing including issues with methodology that you should watch out for.  This stuff is actually totally reasonable and there is a lot of information on how exactly experiments and data can be twisted to show things that aren't really there.  This is useful information and surprisingly better written and informed than I expected.

But then he concludes that instead of actual science you should trust his personal experiments where he randomly does stuff to himself and then draws broad conclusions from that single data point.  The fact that 'I did a bunch of weird stuff all at once and saw changes anecdotally so my hypothesis must be true!' is far *worse* than the other crimes of science that he talks about seems to have escaped him.

You can find useful things in the book if you are hunting for them.  He talks about vitamin D, and I realized that I often don't get much sunlight.  I have since been spending time reading in the sun on my balcony regularly and that seems like it will be enjoyable, even if it has no effect on my health.

But then he goes and talks about how you can put on 34 pounds of lean muscle in 28 days with only 4 hours spent in the gym.  Just eat this handful of supplements and get HUGE INSTANTLY.

Hint:  If people could put on 34 pounds of muscle in a month by eating random supplements half of the population would already be doing it.  You can't, they don't, it is bullshit.

Honestly what it comes down to is Ferriss is selling a pipe dream.  People want instant answers, effortless gains, magic pills.  He tells them that they can become magicians, if only they follow the proper incantations and rituals he has written down.  He forgot to include eye of newt and feathers of a cockatrice but other than that he might as well have been selling spells from Dungeons and Dragons for all the good it will do anyone.

It bothers me.  I get why people want answers, and they want to believe that there is hope.  After traditional methods have failed, surely it is good to believe that there is some way forward, a hidden path to utopia that has been so far overlooked?

Maybe there is, but Ferriss isn't the one who is going to find it.

If you want to find the things that Ferriss does well there are other books that will give you the same information without the hype and the snake oil pitch.  Go out there and find them.

What does google know

Google knows I want to get ripped.

To be frank, Google knows an awful lot of what I want.  When I talk to Wendy about the rats involved in her research my internet is full of ads for exterminators.  Close one Google, but no cigar.  But when Google pitches me ads about getting ripped abs it is on the money.  I have been amping up my exercise in general but also particularly adding on stomach exercises.

Wendy told me that getting bulky isn't really a good thing.  In fact she thinks my shoulders look worse because I actually have a bit on muscle on top of them now.  But a six pack, that is the ticket.  So I am doing more tummy exercises in a fruitless attempt to amp my abs.

Here is the thing about Google's abs ads, when targetted at me.  They all say "Men over 40 are getting ripped abs doing this one weird thing!"

Sorry Google, I am 38.  Hell, you *must* know that.  You know everything else!

But then I ask myself:  Are the ads showing grey haired men with preposterous abs aimed at men in their 30s too?  Is the idea to shame me into buying stuff because men older than me have sculpted bellies?  Maybe they aren't aiming the "Men over 40" nonsense at me by accident, but rather deliberately.

I followed the stupid ads today, wading through 45 minutes of crap to finally get to the payoff.  What is it, I wondered, that these snake oil fraudsters with their immaculately built bodies are trying to sell me?  Pills that do nothing?  Steroids that do something, but also many wrong things?

Nope.  After 10 minutes of bragging, 10 more minutes of vague generalities, 10 minutes of insulting every 'conventional' diet and exercise regimen, and 10 minutes of complete pseudoscientific nonsense about optimizing your hormone levels via carefully guarded secrets, I finally got to the 5 minutes of real stuff.

Which was just a diet and exercise program.  Apparently the most ripped 24 year old on Youtube and his personal doctor have an amazing, groundbreaking program that will activate my hormones, blast away my belly fat, and make me into a monstrous beast of a man.

They seem to be leaning on new, shocking techniques like "Eat a lot of meat for protein and vegetables, and don't eat sugary crap" and "Exercise hard using multiple muscle groups".

All of which will activate my leptin and testosterone hormones and give me a stomach that will cause random scantily clad women to fawn over me.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind that whole fawning thing, at least for a bit.  However, I was honestly expecting a lot more from all that build up.  If you want to convince me that your program is all that, you really ought to come up with something a lot more interesting.  If all I get is generic pablum of exercise advice I really don't need to pay you for it.  Their advice doesn't even look bad, it is just backed up with endless prattle that is a pack of lies surrounded by half truths.

But damn, there are SO MANY ads for this garbage.  They must be getting a lot of people to buy into it.  That part makes me really sad, because I was willing to watch 45 minutes of trash on the side of my screen while working on something else because I was curious about what the final pitch was.  Unfortunately there are a lot of people who believe this nonsense and end up handing over their money.

Just one more moment that makes me weep for humanity.

Arms made for licking

The other day I saw Wendy watching this video.


There are some very ripped men doing some challenging yoga poses and at the end they go upside down, their kilts fall down, and you get to see their butts.

Wendy was watching it with a look that clearly said "I really wish they would spill something on themselves so I could offer to lick it off of them."

I don't get it, not exactly.  I mean, I recognize that they have the kind of bodies that create that feeling in many people, but I don't get the feeling myself.

But I do want to get that reaction from people!

I don't want to do hours and hours of yoga each day though.  And I can't suddenly be 23 again, those 15 extra years are stacked on me and they aren't going away.  Also I don't have a video team sitting around trying to get the hottest possible shots of me.

What I can do is get bigger, so that is my goal.  As I have many times in my exercising kick I went online to see what the world could tell me.  Specifically I was trying to find out how far apart I should space my workouts.  I knew that the advice about how to work out was nearly worthless with advice being vague or contradictory or both.  Perhaps the advice on how often to work out would be better, I thought.

I was wrong.

The advice on how often to work out was 'as often as once a day or as seldom as once every four days, depending.'  Great, how useful.  When details were given they were couched in such uncertain language it was clear the author was desperately trying to avoid having actually recommended anything in particular.  However, every though each individual article was worthless, when I looked at all of them a trend emerged.  They were all referencing the fact that muscle growth occurs during rest and healing.  So I asked a friend of mine who is into weight lifting in a big way if the solution was to just wait until you stop hurting and then work out again.  He agreed, and said that you should work out again once your body has healed from the previous.

This is actionable advice!  Simple, yet flexible based on the individual situation.  Why weren't people telling me this, I wondered...

But a few seconds of reflection made it clear.  You could give really good lifting advice by telling people to find a weight that is challenging to lift, lift it until you can't anymore, take it slow and easy, and after lifting rest until you feel good again before the next workout.

No one is going to pay for that advice.  It is obvious, does not project any great expertise, and doesn't set you up to make money off of giving more advice.

I feel good again after a single sleep.  I don't need multiple days - the next day I am ready to go again.  This means that all I have to do is lift for an hour a day, every day, and then I will have arms that make people wish I spilled something on them.  I have a plan.

A blade of pink

I have bought a fair variety of disposable razor blades over the years.  One odd thing I found was that the rate of replacement was independent of how regularly I shaved, and depended entirely on the passage of time.  If I shaved five times a week my razors lasted a week, if I shaved once a week I had to change the blade each shave.  Somehow my beard did a fixed amount of damage to the blade per unit time.

A few weeks ago I had run out of blades and had a fiercely itchy face so I decided to just use one of Wendy's razors.  I wasn't sure if there were actual differences between razors marketed to men and those marketed to women, but it certainly seemed like it would do the job.  I am not so picky.

Strangely it did a far better job than any razors I have previously used.  It was sharper, shaved more cleanly, and felt better than all previous versions.  Not only that, but I used it multiple times and it lasted a full month rather than a single week.

It isn't a savings in terms of waste because the new razor has a handle attached to it so I need to toss the entire thing instead of just the head attachment but it lasts four times as long so that seems worthwhile.  It is a savings in terms of money though because it is far cheaper to use pink razors marketed for women than the ones I have been using for years and years.

I wonder why this is.  Is it that pink razors also have stronger steel, better components, or some other feature?  Perhaps I just have a face uniquely suited to a razor mostly designed for legs and armpits rather than faces.  Is my face like a leg moreso than it is like other men's faces?

My impression is that many things marketed to women cost more than those marketed to men even when quality and design is the same.  There is a cost to having a pink box, as I understand it, purely for reasons of profit.

But my razor experience flies in the face of that.  Pink razors marketed to women are by far superior to all my previous options both in quality and value and I don't know why.  If anyone can enlighten me as to why this would be true, please do speak up.  Are men's razors a scam?  Is my face weird?  Why is this a thing?

Just giving it away

Somebody is telling secrets, and I don't know who.

A few days ago I was chatting with someone on OKCupid and the topic of the movie Willow came up.  You know, the fantasy story about a little person on a quest to fight the evil queen, with Val Kilmer as Madmartigan, the greatest swordsman in the world?

That isn't a particular interesting thing.  Just chatting about an old movie, whatever.

The interesting part is that the next day Facebook slapped some Willow stuff on my page, trying to leverage it to get me to click on things.  I am pretty sure Willow has never appeared there before, and the timing is more than a little suspicious.  I know Facebook targets ads, as it has certainly decided that I want to see fitness oriented ads lately, but since I upload my recent exercise related posts to Facebook that is no mystery.

But how did Facebook find out that I like Willow?

I came up with three possibilities.  One is that gmail is selling me out.  I get emails from OKCupid to let me know about messages, and they contain snippets of conversation.  The name of a character from Willow was there, so it is possible that gmail noticed the character name, linked it to Willow, and sold that information to Facebook.

The second possibility is that Chrome monitors all my text inputs into the internet and sold that information directly to Facebook.

Lastly, OKCupid itself could be selling my information to Facebook.  That seems less likely though as OKC doesn't have my real contact information the way Google does so they would have to guess - or perhaps they could just match up my email address and give Facebook information that way.

It isn't as though this bothers me.  I would happily just tell all these companies that I like Willow.  All the better for them to give me more entertaining advertisements!  Also since I post all kinds of far more personal stuff on my blog this is hardly an issue.

But it does make you think, and should certainly worry anyone who wants privacy on the web.  You don't have it.  Companies shuttle your information back and forth in a desperate attempt to find more efficient ways to get your attention and dip into your wallet.  There is no way around that without just flat out refusing to use things like Facebook completely.  For me this is a cost well worth paying since after all I use these services for free and you don't get something for nothing.  If they couldn't find some sneaky way to monetize free online tools I would either have to pay hard cash or do without, and I don't particularly want to do either.

Obviously this sort of stuff is evil, in a way.  But it is useful evil, to me at least.  I just wish everyone understood exactly how it worked before they signed themselves up for it.

Cleaning up

I have had a profile on the dating site OKCupid for a few years now and they have finally recognized my greatness!  By which I mean they have asked me to do a bunch of work for no pay and no recognition.  Which isn't really the same thing, now that I think about it.

What specifically happened is OKC sent me a message telling me that they think I am a good contributor to the community and they want me to help moderate the site by flagging photos and profiles that are against the rules.  While I generally am not big on the whole 'do work for a company for free' thing, I really could not stop myself at least checking it out to see what exactly they would have me doing.  I thought it would be fascinating to see exactly what sorts of problems they have to deal with.

I was not disappointed.

The main thing that moderators have to deal with is endless spam from sex workers and scammers.  There are endless profiles using pictures of attractive young women that have been grabbed from the internet and slapped onto OKC.  I assume some of them are escorts / prostitutes, some are cam sites, some are other dating sites, and the balance are just a bunch of con artists looking to get me to pay money because Real Russian Women Want To Date You.  Most of these sorts of profiles get flagged and the moderators all agree that the pictures are easily found in Google Image Search so they are clearly fake.

The second most common thing is profiles flagged as overtly sexual.  Some of these are just people posing with very little on, or even nude but positioned such that their genitals / nipples are covered.  Certainly some users object to this but it isn't against the rules.  However, I have had a small collection of dick pics pop up on my screen and those definitely are against the rules so they get squelched without any thought required.

So since we have covered greed and lust, what is the great third sin that occupies the time of OKC's volunteer moderators?  Think on it for a minute...

Incompetence, of course!

I got a lot of profiles that contained perfectly normal pictures of men with perfectly small, boring descriptions but which were listed as female and looking for single men.  Initially I was puzzled as to why this might exist, but then I discovered that OKC defaults to female and straight.  This is just a case of these men being useless and lacking attention to detail.  They spent enough time to upload boring photos of them standing in their living rooms but not enough to check that their basic stats were correct.  Now as you would expect these men didn't take the time to make decent profiles otherwise either, they are just a couple of vague 'looking for someone fun, no drama' statements combined with bland, useless platitudes.

The last thing I got sent to deal with was profile pictures that didn't actually contain a picture of the person.  Some of them were actually really nice photos of mountains or sunsets or cars or whatever that weren't in the least objectionable, but the rule is that a profile photo is actually supposed to contain the user so these photos get flagged for removal.  One was a roughly eight year old girl with her picture having a French flag filter on it... which is so not right as a profile picture and out it went.  Doesn't matter if that eight year old is the user many years ago, pictures of kids as profile pictures is not at all allowed and that is a policy I can get behind.  This section isn't really a great sin so much as people not quite grasping that others actually want to see what they look like and a beautiful autumn nature scene isn't quite doing that.

Not sure I am going to keep doing this any more but it was certainly interesting to have a quick look to find out what sorts of things exist in the quagmire of online dating moderation.  I do like the idea of cleaning up the internet though...