Tag: social media

Here We Go Again…

All I ever knew about TikTok was that it was the app of choice for Adderall-popping zoomers to post their lipsyncing videos, videos reacting to lipsyncing videos, or videos of themselves “dancing” while lipsyncing to reaction videos.

These activities don’t interest me, and I’m especially not interested in sharing my mobile device’s photos and videos, browsing history, IMEI, Public IP, or any other information with the CCP.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received an email notification letting me know that my username had changed to [Redacted]x69. Of course, it would end in “x69”! What could be cooler and edgier than that?

Seeing how someone so thoughtfully decided to create an account for me using MY email address…again… I decided to log on. I didn’t remember the password, so I just used that handy little “Forgot Password” link and got myself logged back into my account.

It Just Keeps Getting Worse…

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t let me delete my account as I couldn’t provide the One-Time Password (OTP), which went to a mobile number I didn’t have access to. So, I decided to see what I could do on my account in the meantime!

To my surprise (and annoyance), someone had taken the time to upload many selfie lipsync videos. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t my bag, so it all had to go. I could change some settings, such as changing the account from private to public, setting screen time limits for myself, and changing my profile pic and description. Here’s what I chose as my TikTok avatar, my “TikTokitar,” if you will:

This picture comes from a video of a talented barber with a penchant for setting his customers’ (victims?) hair on fire… I chose this because his facial expressions captured the gestalt and indescribable angst I feel when someone uses my email address to sign up for services because they can’t be bothered to spend 2-3 minutes creating their own.

I then uploaded things I was interested in, such as stock videos of grocery store meat, seafood, and fish markets.

Push Me, Shove You! Oh Yeah, Says Who?

Unfortunately, the fun didn’t last, and my anonymous benefactor decided to remove these videos and set my account back to ‘private.’ Although I could not unlink their mobile number from my account, I could (and did) change the associated email address.

For whatever reason, email address change OTPs go to the registered email address instead of the account’s linked phone number. Problem solved!

Epilogue

A few days later, I tried logging on but found my account locked! It was probably the result of an impersonation report I filed a few days earlier. Just as well, I was getting tired of this TikTok Tug-O-War… Tik-Tug-O-War?

The good news is that my email address is no longer associated with that (or any) TikTok account anymore, so that’s a win in my book!

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.” – Someone I disagree with on the internet

I’d like to preface this by stating that I don’t do the social medias. It’s not that I disapprove of them for you, your organization, club or even Big Jim; do what you want, it’s a free country (or at least it used to be)…

Farceböök, Twit, Instant Grams, Oh Snap Chatter…hell, even Taxed Massages; I have no use for any of these – it’s not that I’m a luddite, far from it, but that they simply serve no discernable purpose in my life.

If I want to write someone a letter, I use email. I’ve had an email address for about 30 years now, and while names and providers have changed, it remains a perfectly viable way for me to keep in touch with people I care to.

In the late 90s, ICQ came along, and I used that to send “instant messages” to other people. This wasn’t a new idea, I’d been active on BBS chat rooms and IRC prior, but this was different in that it focused on one-to-one conversations. Like my email address, this has given way to other internet messaging services but the core principle remains the same; a non-verbal means to communicate in real time.

Before any of that, if I wanted to talk to someone remotely, I used the PHONE. My first phones had dials, those gave way to buttons, lost their cords and eventually went ‘mobile’. Coverage got better, devices and service became affordable and all sorts of ancillary nonsense became the norm. Nevertheless, the primary reason I have a phone (even a mobile one) is to make and receive phone calls.

As an avid gamer, I could see the advantages of voice communications in team-based games, and embraced Ventrilo, and later Discord, but again – this has a purpose.

#FuckYouMyCrook (Bonus points to anyone old enough to get that reference).

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OMFG This congee is Amazballz! Fuq yu if you don’t like it!

As far as I can tell, social media is largely a means to:

- Share pictures of what you had for breakfast
- Get into arguments with strangers on the internet, and/or…
- Get into arguments with strangers about the picture of what you had for breakfast, over the internet…

#ProveMeWrong

Since I have no interest in any of those things, it’s never really bothered me that I don’t have them – or at least I didn’t…until now… 🙁

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I’d been thinking about getting into VR but have been waiting for the technology to mature and some standards to emerge and codify. While I’m grateful to early adopters for spending obscene amounts of money on things so I can get a better, faster, cheaper model later, I’m not about to throw in and join them.

Sure enough, the prices had come down substantially, and a very good mid-range VR rig can be had in the way of the Octopus Quest 2 for about $300 USD (or if you want to spend an extra $100, you can upgrade from 64GB to 256GB of onboard storage).

Unlike other VR products, you don’t need a fancy gaming rig to hook it up to, you just put on the headset and grab the controllers and you’re good to go. That said, if you happen to have a fancy gaming rig, you can connect it to your PC using a USB-C cable*.

*Octopus sells a “link cable” for $78 – which is an overpriced USB-C cable. You can buy a high-quality 16.4′ Active USB cable for about $25 here, which is what I did (two in fact, one for power and one for the PC).

So what’s all this got to do with Böökenzifäce (i.e. sitzen affen scheiße schleudern)? Octopus VR, LLC was bought by Foshizzlebizzle in 2014, and until 5 months ago, you could have a standalone Octopus account without having to register a separate Bark Fart account. In October 2020, that stance was reversed, and not only did they require that all users would need to have a Bjork Fork account to use the device, but that it had to be a REAL account (i.e. no fake names or aliases). Those who tried to skirt this requirement ended up with their accounts banned, lost access to all of their software/data and bricked their device…

So what choice did I have?

Send the device back
Following the rules, but as petulantly as humanly possible

I opted for the second. Yes I made a goddamn Face Fuck account. Yes, I used my real information. After that, I locked it the fuck down. I turned on every privacy setting I could find. You can’t find me there, and if you did, there’s nothing to see and never will be.

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Someday I’ll trade up for one of their competitors but until then, I’ll make due with what I’ve got and chalk it up to another lesson learned.