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Notes From an OG Internet Geek

Today, I am reminded that 90% of the people using FaceBook are either young (under 30) or old (over 50). On top of that, these are people who either grew up on FB (the youngsters) or think that FB *is* the internet (the olds). And the overlap of just dumb people who share characteristics of both groups.

Sure, there are plenty of us on FB who have been internet users since the 90s. We were there for AOL, dial-up, Mindspring (RIP), the platform wars (Apple vs Microsoft), Nutscrape (3.0 GOLD!!), Dogpile, Alta Vista, HTML websites, screen savers (Boris, Flying Toasters), Hamster Dance, chat rooms, usenet and having to manually find answers to EVERYTHING. WE are the OG Internet Geeks and WE know what’s up. We knew the nascent internet, when it was pretty useless unless you were very persistent and crafty. WE WERE. We still are. We know the true shitshow that is social media, because we remember the ‘net without it. And it was GLORIOUS.

Here is my take on the various groups and what it’s like to be an OG. It ain’t pretty.

The Youngsters
The youngsters are oblivious to everything and can’t do a Google search to save their lives. They have grown up with the sum of human knowledge in their pockets, yet are unable to use any of it. I really don’t understand WHY this is, just that it is. If I had $1 for every time I’ve done a simple Google search and hand fed the answer to a youngster, I’d not be worrying about my bills. It is at the same time extremely irritating and fascinating. I think it’s the generalized dumbing down of education that is the root of this lack of intellectual curiosity and intellectual laziness. It’s also lack of training on how to use a search engine to find what you’re looking for – a basic internet literacy course would go a long way. These users are using FB less and less, mostly because they don’t want to be on the same platform as their parents and other clueless olds. When they do use FB, it’s spotty and not nearly as obsessively as other groups. They generally are not too bothersome on FB because they are too busy with TikTok.

The Olds
The olds are ALSO oblivious to what is actually going on with FB, but they THINK they are not. They think that they control their accounts and FB can be trusted to keep personal memories, photos, etc. They also think that FB is the whole internet and they use FB like a search engine. This is because they don’t know how to use The Google, and they can’t understand the difference between The Google and The FaceBook. These are the people who post stupid shit without checking it, play every game presented, give out their personal info, then go insane when their account is hacked. They then ask for help, but reject what they are told – which is generally: too bad, so sad, welcome to FB, the miner of personal data. These people are not worth engaging, they are militantly ignorant and will not listen to a word you say. These are the ones who insist that making a police report will solve the problem. LOL They also scream about “cybercrime” a lot. I’ll get back to this.

There is a subset here of people who are not all that old, but they are still ignorant AF about the internet and how it all works. These are the people who act just like the olds, but are not in that demographic. They, too, cannot use Google, just like the youngsters. I call them the Dumbasses, and these are to be avoided just like the others. Lots of Karens in this bunch and they will TOTALLY call the manager to get this FB issue FIXED. LOL

Then there’s us, the OG Internet Geeks. Most of us are Gen Xers with a smattering of Millennials. We are ALWAYS ignored, but we actually are the ones who know what’s up.

Poor us.

We are the ones who put up with these other assholes day in and day out. We listen to their whines about how unfair it all is, how FB is to blame for their account being hacked (not that abc1234 pw or the info given out to data mining, of course), how you just can’t PROVE anything on the internet, there’s no way to find information, blah blah blah.

We try to help these morons, yet it is a thankless job, since they typically don’t really WANT help, they just want someone to commiserate and validate their butthurt.

Today I was in the mood to troll a little, and I found the perfect Karen for it. I had TRIED to offer her help with her hacked account, firstly by telling her that calling the local police was a waste of time. Which it is. What did I get for my trouble? Well, a scolding, of course! What else? I don’t think this person is an old, but she is definitely a dumbass Karen. After I told her that local police do not control FB (I’d deleted by the time I did the SS), she went OFF about how she lost her something something and can’t get it back and she has a “background” in criminal justice, so SHE KNOWS WHAT TO DO!!! So, I wrote back, “Didn’t realise this was a PERSONAL ISSUE, not a FB issue. NEVERMIND. Jaysus. You’re not looking for assistance, you’re looking for validation. I misread your ask.” She is so oblivious that she ANSWERED THAT. The snark went right over ole Karen’s head. ::cackle::



I wish this was an isolated incident, but it is not. Notice the indignation that I dared to actually help – not commiserate – and the dumb’s favourite claim: “cyber crime”. Yep. FB is a cesspool of ignorance. I am there because I admin umpteen pages for our stuff and clients. I get really sick of this shit, y’all.

I DO know how it all works. I DO remember when the internet was snarky AF, but you knew that going into a chat room, so it was OK. I DO remember having to word your searches just so to get any decent results. That is why my Google Fu is strong, I’ve searched without it! I do remember hand coding sites and I’m damned glad there is CMS now (WordPress). I do remember BLOGS and the vast amount of content we dumped into them. (This one is 23 years old and has 1473 posts!) I have a whole different view of the internet than the above mentioned and I DO know that social media has fucking ruined society because I’ve watched it happen.

I’ve watched the internet, the sum of all the knowledge of humanity, become a zoo full of shit flinging monkeys.

Twitter, FaceBook, InstaGram, TikTok, YouTube, ALL OF IT is nothing more than distraction. It is trash. We OG bloggers know this, but good luck getting the FB crowd to see it.

This is why we OG folk are coming back here, to our blogs. No more content given to FB or other bullshit social sites. We are taking back our content and some authors (including me) are starting up Substack email newsletters (free and paid) again. We are going back to pre-social media times and controlling our content. We are sick and tired of FB using our content for free. Yes, our blogs are public and free, but we are not handing over our content to an entity who can do with it as they wish – AND we are getting our content indexed by Google rather than being ONLY in FB. Substack is set up for monetized newsletters, which I think is GREAT. People are used to subscriptions for everything now (another rant for another day), so why not subscribe to an author you like, right?

So, we OG Internet people invite all of you to leave the walled garden of FB and the others. Come OUT to the internet. See its expansive content.

It is the sum of all human knowledge at your fingertips; it is amazing and mindblowing and beautiful and terrible and VAST.

Come on out here. Leave the curated and algorithmed bullshit of platforms. Come out and learn things. Come out and see the art of 1000s of people, the cultures of 1000 societies, the recipes of 1000 cuisines, the languages of 1000 places.

JUST COME OUT OF THE CURATED BULLSHIT AND EXPLORE THE WORLD. IT IS RIGHT HERE.

Just ask The Google for what you want and go from there. You never know what you’ll find. You might even begin to understand why we OG internet folks are sick of your shit… ;)

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FB Harassment

It is real. FB has jailed me again for saying “Remind me to punch you in the arm next time I see you” in response to a friend’s horrible dad joke. Oh, yes, I’m “inciting violence”. Yup, definitely. But those right wing nutjobs who want to overthrow the country? Eh, that’s just a little joking FUN!! Cuz the FB AI is all about overthrowing democracy, burning books, medical misinformation and other right wing bullshit. THAT is just FINE. Stonekettle has been banned yet again for posting a photo with the label “macro lens of water drop”. YUP. Facebook is TRASH.

Facebook’s AI has run amok. That is why people are fleeing right and left and that’s why their stock fell 23%. Because letting AI run your goddam platform is stupid. I sincerely hope that we are nearing the end of Facebook’s reign of terror over the internet. Those of us who remember The Before Times™, when blogs ruled, WE are taking our content back to our blogs and posting elsewhere.

I also found out that my backup account has been linked, without my knowledge or permission, to my main account, so the sanctions affect that acct, too. Which means it serves no purpose at all. The whole point was to have a backup for all the pages I manage in case FB did exactly this and jailed me or outright banned my account. I am going to have to give admin privileges to Nick for all my pages as backup, which is not optimal, but at least it’s something. So far, FB hasn’t lumped our accounts together despite a shared IP.

I’d just not go back to FB at all if it weren’t for the pages and the constant stream of moronic questions that comes through one client’s page. Daily drivel from Teh Stoopid™ that must be managed. I’ve set up autoresponses, but OF COURSE they only work part of the time.

Instagram is still working, but who knows how long that will last. It is inevitable that the AI will be put in charge of IG, since FB, ‘scuse, META, clearly cannot afford real people. Poor Zuck, how can he possibly be held accountable for his bullshit platform? He’s too busy counting his billions and not paying taxes.

And speaking of Meta, who does Zuck think he’s kidding? He has clearly stolen the idea of a fully immersive internet experience from Ernest Cline, who created the Oasis in Ready Player One. Zuckerberg should pay Cline for the idea. It is not original.

The harassment of users will be the downfall of Facebook. Or, it will become a right wing conspiracy nutter farm, which is fine with me, I am only going to use it for page management henceforth.

Now, I need to get friends to use Signal or Apple Messages rather than FB messenger to chat with me. I really do NOT want to use any Meta products if I can avoid them. SO, for those of you reading this, please know I’ll be transitioning to Signal for chats, or you can text me. Apple Messages is encrypted and I can use it on my desktop, so PLEASE use that if you have an iPhone. Of course, since this will not post to FB, no one will see it. LOL

PEOPLE, we need to stop relying on FB. Period. ANYTHING is better at this point. But I know I’m talking to myself here, because I can’t even convince people to not play the hacker driven personal info gathering games on FB. Sigh.

I am stepping back from FB. I’ve logged out, and I’ll remain logged out for a week, then when I can use the account(s) again, I am taking care of the pages and that’s it. I’ve been only doing memes and bullshit on there for a couple of months, so this is more of that.

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Welcome to the 20th Year of Misangela.com!!

That’s right, folks, my blog turns 20 this year – June 21 to be exact! Can you believe it? My first post is about gender bias and it is still, sadly, relevant today.

This blog being a Gemini makes sense since I’ve ranted and raved and blabbed my business on the ‘net for TWENTY YEARS! Geminis are chatty, you know. ;) I don’t blog nearly as much as I used to, thanks to fucking Facebook and all the other social media outlets that keep me busy. I used to blog about daily stuff, news, etc., all the things that social media does for the masses now. Despite FB ruining true blogging, I still feel that blogs are relevant and should not be tossed out as outmoded. Same for websites. Again, thanks to FB dumbing down the collective IQ of the internet, people don’t even have sites for their businesses half the time. THAT is a mistake, but they really think that FB is the internet.

This past year was about transition and we’re still in it. I wonder if I’ll be a pub owner or going through bankruptcy on June 21 this year? Interesting to see what happens. I truly hope it will be the former and not the latter, but odds are pretty even right now.

I’ve not said much about the pub process, mainly because I can whine on FB and secondly because I just don’t have the brain power to write coherently right now. I tell you, though, once the outcome has been determined, I’ll be writing a fucking book about this process. It is yet to be seen if it will be a cautionary tale or a tale of victory.

Hopefully VICTORY. QaPla’!

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Responsive Design

Ugh. Two words I hate the most. YES I KNOW this site is not responsive. You know why? Because I don’t WANT it to be. Yes you have to zoom in on your phone. I really don’t care. This site looks the same on every device and I like it that way.

I detest it when I go to a site in a browser (on my Mac) and get the mobile experience. SO MANY companies do this. Even the taqueria site does this because the template sucks. But it was a massive job to beat that template into submission, so I leave it. I detest a site with infinite scroll (at least the taqueria template doesn’t do that). That seems to be the ultimate goal in “responsive” design: infinite scroll. I HATE IT. I will NOT comply. It is shit design and I won’t do it. (And: get off my lawn ya whippersnappers!)

I’m just waiting for the web design standards to shift again and leave the infinite scroll and hamburger menu (those ubiquitous three lines stacked like a burger that reveal the menu when clicked) crap behind. You should NEVER EVER see a hamburger menu when surfing on a computer. NEVER. It is a specific design tic for phones and has no place in a full fledged computer browser. Yet I see it often. GROSS.

You should NOT see two different sites when you surf there via phone or computer, IMO. Nor should you see a mobile site with infinite scroll and hamburger menus when on a computer. The site should look MOSTLY the same no matter what you use to view it, but most sites do not. Which is why this site will continue to be as it is for the foreseeable future. I just don’t have the time to tear it down and start from scratch. The Atahualpa theme was updated (half assedly, the theme is mostly dead) to be more “responsive”, but to install it, you have to pretty much start from scratch and/or rewrite half the CSS by hand. NOPE. I just hope the damn theme keeps working with WP updates. ::fingers crossed::

So, you’ll just have to deal with zooming in on your phones to read my site. I do not care. I am happy with the layout and the content prints beautifully (recipe printing), which are my main concerns. I’ll redo it one of these days, but probably not for a while. So, thanks for enduring the horror of a non responsive site for me. LOL Of course I know that most of you just read this on FB anyway, so whatever. Enjoy!