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I wonder if telling Facebook that I was attracted to men would get it to stop putting scantily clad women all over everything? I wonder if that would be worth confusing everyone I know?

Today I noticed that I have had a more-or-less steady weblog, in some form or another, for six years now. (I installed my copy of NewsBruiser on dear absent wifl either at the beginning of or just before June 2002.) Some of the exchanges I remember having on this livejournal, with people who still read and comment, happened in 2004! It doesn't feel that long ago, unless I think of it relative to other landmarks -- e.g., that it was before I took any college courses -- at which point it feels much longer.

When I was 16, my dad lost his apartment, and so I started living with my mother full-time, after spending most of my life beforehand moving from one house to the other every two weeks. One of the stranger side-effects of this new inertia was that it was like a metronome had been turned off, and suddenly I had no sense of time; for that first year or two some part of me was convinced that it had just been one long two weeks, and anything more than a couple of days old was all jumbled together in such a way that I might go for several months without realizing my position relative to any of it had changed. (That I was, for unrelated reasons, pretty severely depressed during this period surely didn't help matters.)

This reminded me of that phenomenon, but it isn't still the same thing; eventually I broke out of my depression, and, for that reason or just because my brain taught itself new metrics (I think I pay more attention to the calendar and seasons than I used to), my sense of relative time became stronger again. For several years now, I've not had that trouble; to the extent that I'm temporally disoriented, it's for the much more common and traditional reason that time seems to accrete much more quickly now. This weblog thing is really a reflection of that; at some point I was accustomed to think of it as something I'd really just started, and now, some hurrying later, I notice that I forgot to take that label off.

Like most people, I am made somewhat anxious by the quasi-Buddhist observation that things change and decay, and I can't hold on to them. But for my weblog to have turned at some point into a moderately old and well-established Andy's-life institution is a pretty positive change, I think.

Date: 2008-06-06 10:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] synchcola.livejournal.com
Livejournal is about to e*x*p*l*o*d*e!

But for my weblog to have turned at some point into a moderately old and well-established Andy's-life institution is a pretty positive change, I think.

Yay!

Date: 2008-06-06 11:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vorkon.livejournal.com
Nope, there is really nothing you can do to stop facebook from throwing scantily clad women at you. You just need to accept that, and possibly one day learn to enjoy it. ^.^

Date: 2008-06-06 03:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] masamage.livejournal.com
I think he might enjoy it more if they didn't have creepy-as-all-crap photoshopped bodies with the heads sometimes cut off, or else with alluring eyes that say "You should purchase something totally unrelated to me."

There's a difference between a real woman who just happens to have a gorgeous body and a fake 2-D woman who is deliberately using her body to pry your brain open.

Date: 2008-06-06 06:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] garran.livejournal.com
You're close, though removing the photoshopped artificiality wouldn't solve my problem. But, yeah, I don't mind looking at photographs on Facebook of scantily-clad women I know, who put those pictures up themselves; my issue is having my libido deliberately prodded by advertisements smugly secure in my complicity.


-Andy H.

Date: 2008-06-06 11:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vorkon.livejournal.com
Very true. However, there is unfortunately really no way to get around it short of not using facebook altogether, so I'd rather take the position that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. :op

Date: 2008-06-07 02:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meta4mix.livejournal.com
One could employ Firefox's (or Opera's, or whatever) "Don't Load Images" list to remove at least the visual component of ads. I blocked images from ads.ak.facebook.com and spe.atdmt.com, and with very limited testing that seems to have done the trick. And without breaking Facebook.

Date: 2008-06-07 03:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] masamage.livejournal.com
I knew I liked you!

Date: 2008-06-07 04:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tanetris.livejournal.com
A solid Opera "Block content" list makes the internet a whole different place. I've permanently gotten rid of that stupid snapshot thing, killed that form of advertising where they turn random words of a webpage into ad links, even taken down google ads, to say nothing of intrusive images and Flash files, both advertising-related and not.

(some sites, particularly webcomics I enjoy, I leave their ads intact on grounds that I am constantly chomping at their bandwidth and viewing an ad for them is the least I can do)

Oh, the Irony!

Date: 2008-06-06 02:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vegetius.livejournal.com
You write: I wonder if telling Facebook that I was attracted to men would get it to stop putting scantily clad women all over everything? I wonder if that would be worth confusing everyone I know? While listening to: Barenaked Ladies. This amuses me.

Date: 2008-06-06 04:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] masamage.livejournal.com
Yay. I like you and your weblog and this post. All are interesting and fun.

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Andy H.

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