As most of the readers of my blog know, as do my Facebook friends, I spend a lot of time sharing pictures of cats and links to articles that make me generally annoyed. (I like the cat pictures--it is the articles that annoy me--in fact, I LOVE cat pictures.) And being a writer, I am generally curious about why certain articles and trends light up the internet.
Contagious--Why Things Catch On (by Jonah Berger) is one attempt to explain why certain things on the internet and elsewhere go viral. It is not the only attempt that I have encountered, but it is the first that I have read by an actual Ph.D. who has conducted research on the subject.
Berger starts off the book with the story of Barclay Prime's hundred-dollar cheesesteak (the brainchild of Howard Wein), something that I never heard of before. Yes, I said, hundred-dollar cheesesteak. Exactly the type of item that I would have been curious about when I was still in the restaurant business...and let's be honest, I am still curious about such things. Berger hooked me with an interesting story, and kept me interested though-out the rest of the book.
I learned a lot about marketing from this book. I am not sure if I can make any of it work for me; let's be honest, I am not great when it comes to marketing (an advertising major, I am not). On the other hand, the book does give me hope that a certain project that I am involved in (yes, the farting monkey project) might have viral potential.
I give this book five stars. And I am keeping the book for my own personal library.
[Disclosure: The book used for this review was given to me by the good people at Simon & Schuster, a result of a GoodReads First Reads contest that I entered--thank you Simon & Schuster and Professor Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsylvania.]
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Facebook is not going to charge you
There is a bad meme, a Facebook Status Virus, making the rounds today. It is one of those copy and paste to your status things insisting that Facebook is about to start charging users for the service.
It is false, untrue, and completely wrong.
Facebook is not about to charge you for using the service.
Sure, they change your privacy settings back to their uber-preferred "everything is public" setting everytime you turn your back on them.
Sure, they change the layout everytime the wind shifts.
But they are not going to charge you for using the service.
You see, they are already making quite a bit off of you. They count up all your eyeballs, and tell their advertisers that they have a mighty X number of eyes available to look at advertisements everyday.
And then the advertisers hand them big bags of money.
Charging you to use Facebook would hurt their eyeball count, and the flow of those big bags of money that they love so much. They are not going to kill the golden goose by making it pay.
No, they are going to continue to mess up your settings, and changing the layout...that way, you keep noticing the ads. After all, it is ok to upset the golden goose as long as you don't kill it.
It is false, untrue, and completely wrong.
Facebook is not about to charge you for using the service.
Sure, they change your privacy settings back to their uber-preferred "everything is public" setting everytime you turn your back on them.
Sure, they change the layout everytime the wind shifts.
But they are not going to charge you for using the service.
You see, they are already making quite a bit off of you. They count up all your eyeballs, and tell their advertisers that they have a mighty X number of eyes available to look at advertisements everyday.
And then the advertisers hand them big bags of money.
Charging you to use Facebook would hurt their eyeball count, and the flow of those big bags of money that they love so much. They are not going to kill the golden goose by making it pay.
No, they are going to continue to mess up your settings, and changing the layout...that way, you keep noticing the ads. After all, it is ok to upset the golden goose as long as you don't kill it.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Taking care of business
Did some minor business updating today (profiles, account information, etc.).
The most important update was probably the fact that I decided to swap around my "real" name and my "alternate" name on Facebook.
When I signed up on Facebook, it was to keep touch with a couple of friends that I made when attending college. That is why I signed up---college. So I used my real, legal birthname, the one that my college friends would know me by. It is also the name that people who went to High School with me would know me by.
What I did not realize was that more of my Facebook friends would end up being game players (most of my networking involves game-playing) or people who had knew me by my pen-name (who probably never heard my birthname before encountering it on Facebook) than people I was going to college with.
As my regular readers know my pen-name became the name that I introduce myself by because one of my family members did not want my activities being associated with them. There is a moment in one of the Harry Potter books where Uncle Vernon wants Harry to claim to be attending St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys because they do not wish to admit that there is a wizard in the family. I understood that scene; I have been there.
The goose has flown on that particular ploy a few years ago. Someone I went to High School with connected the dots between me and my pen-name. And given the size of the town I went to High School in, well...if one person in the town knows---everyone knows.
Today, someone noted that they still could not get used to my real name, and I decided that enough was enough---so I decided to swap the names around. Besides I had it rigged already that you could find me by either name.
The second most important update today (maybe) was the fact that I enabled adsense for my Bukisa account. Bukisa had decided to abandon their Bukisa Index (mainly due to fraudant traffic), and pay out though Google Adsense or Chitika Ads instead (taking a forty percent cut off the top). I already have an Adsense account, so I went with it. Not that I have much up on Bukisa, just three test articles (someday I will get around to fleshing out that section of my writing portifolio).
Doing stuff like this is not why I became a writer, but it is neccessary stuff to do.
The most important update was probably the fact that I decided to swap around my "real" name and my "alternate" name on Facebook.
When I signed up on Facebook, it was to keep touch with a couple of friends that I made when attending college. That is why I signed up---college. So I used my real, legal birthname, the one that my college friends would know me by. It is also the name that people who went to High School with me would know me by.
What I did not realize was that more of my Facebook friends would end up being game players (most of my networking involves game-playing) or people who had knew me by my pen-name (who probably never heard my birthname before encountering it on Facebook) than people I was going to college with.
As my regular readers know my pen-name became the name that I introduce myself by because one of my family members did not want my activities being associated with them. There is a moment in one of the Harry Potter books where Uncle Vernon wants Harry to claim to be attending St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys because they do not wish to admit that there is a wizard in the family. I understood that scene; I have been there.
The goose has flown on that particular ploy a few years ago. Someone I went to High School with connected the dots between me and my pen-name. And given the size of the town I went to High School in, well...if one person in the town knows---everyone knows.
Today, someone noted that they still could not get used to my real name, and I decided that enough was enough---so I decided to swap the names around. Besides I had it rigged already that you could find me by either name.
The second most important update today (maybe) was the fact that I enabled adsense for my Bukisa account. Bukisa had decided to abandon their Bukisa Index (mainly due to fraudant traffic), and pay out though Google Adsense or Chitika Ads instead (taking a forty percent cut off the top). I already have an Adsense account, so I went with it. Not that I have much up on Bukisa, just three test articles (someday I will get around to fleshing out that section of my writing portifolio).
Doing stuff like this is not why I became a writer, but it is neccessary stuff to do.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Put up links to the fanpages
Today, I put up the links to both my own Morgan Drake Eckstein fanpage and the Bast Temple (Golden Dawn, Denver Colorado) fanpage on a page of the Bast Temple website. While there is probably not a large audience for my work (after all I am a niche writer), I still wanted to get the links up.
The reason I am going with fanpages is multi-fold.
The first and most important reason is that silly 5000 friend limit on Facebook. After seeing a couple of writers on Facebook dealing with this limit and having to set up fanpages for themselves, I decided that I would just sidestep the problem and set up my fanpages early.
The second reason as I have noted before here and elsewhere is that I play a lot of games on Facebook. I am quite sure (ok I know for a fact) that some people are annoyed by this aspect of my life.
The third reason is that I am getting better at shameless self-promotion. Or at least, I think that I am getting better at it.
The fourth reason is that it is harder for your account to get removed from Facebook for spamming people if the offending page is an actual fanpage. (Long story involving dirty Golden Dawn Order politics...of course, I have no idea why the one party wasn't using a fanpage in the first place.)
Fifth and final reason, occasionally my personal life erupts on my personal Facebook wall and I would like to keep some of it locked in the closet.
I also put up a link page on each of my blogs for my writer's fanpage, and one on my Golden Dawn blog for the lodge's fanpage (different audiences, different levels of interest in the fanpages I figured).
The reason I am going with fanpages is multi-fold.
The first and most important reason is that silly 5000 friend limit on Facebook. After seeing a couple of writers on Facebook dealing with this limit and having to set up fanpages for themselves, I decided that I would just sidestep the problem and set up my fanpages early.
The second reason as I have noted before here and elsewhere is that I play a lot of games on Facebook. I am quite sure (ok I know for a fact) that some people are annoyed by this aspect of my life.
The third reason is that I am getting better at shameless self-promotion. Or at least, I think that I am getting better at it.
The fourth reason is that it is harder for your account to get removed from Facebook for spamming people if the offending page is an actual fanpage. (Long story involving dirty Golden Dawn Order politics...of course, I have no idea why the one party wasn't using a fanpage in the first place.)
Fifth and final reason, occasionally my personal life erupts on my personal Facebook wall and I would like to keep some of it locked in the closet.
I also put up a link page on each of my blogs for my writer's fanpage, and one on my Golden Dawn blog for the lodge's fanpage (different audiences, different levels of interest in the fanpages I figured).
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Living in a Fishbowl IV
This last month or so, I learned another problem with living in a fishbowl. It turns out that the glass goes both ways; not only can everyone see what you are up to, but quite often you can see what other people are doing and saying also.
I discovered this on Facebook. As some of my readers know, the last relative still talking to me, one of my sisters, decided to throw a fit because I decided that plans made months in advance (plans which involve other people's schedules and feelings) were more important than her plans announced at what I felt was the last minute. There was the additional fact that they said some harsh words in my direction the previous year---basically, it boiled down to the fact that they felt my entire life was a waste of time.
I tried to come to an understanding with them, but got tired of being told that I did not measure up and that I was not allowed to have hurt feelings over how they were treating me ("That is just the way I am"). As my friends know, I do not respond well to anger, threats and blackmail. And if I can't tell you the truth, I quit talking to you.
Even more serious was I tried to take certain things private (emails) only to have them explode in public on my Facebook wall. I am still not sure what that was supposed to accomplish. Maybe they thought that I cared about my reputation...I know that they care about theirs (a habit that mom drilled into us kids).
Of course, the cherry on top was that they decided that they could not work around my schedule and started to make snide comments on their Facebook status updates. An example: "There are two types of people in the world: those who always have time for friends and family and those who do not." Ok, maybe I am paranoid; maybe that was not aimed at me. And if it was, well, the plans I had scheduled months in advance involved friends and my nine-year old god-daughter (who acts like she is related to me)---my crime was not having time for friends and family; it was that I refused to give my sister a higher priority after learning what she thought of my life and that I was required to change while she was allowed to continue being a PITA.
The snide comments went on for days. Now, she was not holding a gun to my head forcing me to read this stuff, nor was I forcing her to read my status updates (I generally went about my life as normal [sort-of]; I did get less writing done than normal).
Then when she got done with her vacation, she went on Facebook bragging about how wonderful her family was (including my abusive mother). I treated these updates the same way as the others, I ignored them (aka did not take the bait, did not respond).
So what did I learn from all this? Well, all public figures get to see what other people think of them. Besides Facebook updates from frenemies (you have to love that term), we also get to see unfavorable opinions about ourselves in the comment sections of articles, on forum postings, and (if you write books) in the review section of Amazon.
Of course, I do not have to read about other people's opinions of me. I can ignore other people's reviews of my work, and comments they make about me. It is easy to ignore one's bad reputation when your very own family set out to destory it before one's public career even started.
And in this case, I do not have to read someone's snide comments disguised as status updates. Why? Because they chose to defriend me yesterday. I guess I am no longer talking to any of my relatives (unless the relatives on my father's side of the family decide to talk to me now---can they be any worse?).
I discovered this on Facebook. As some of my readers know, the last relative still talking to me, one of my sisters, decided to throw a fit because I decided that plans made months in advance (plans which involve other people's schedules and feelings) were more important than her plans announced at what I felt was the last minute. There was the additional fact that they said some harsh words in my direction the previous year---basically, it boiled down to the fact that they felt my entire life was a waste of time.
I tried to come to an understanding with them, but got tired of being told that I did not measure up and that I was not allowed to have hurt feelings over how they were treating me ("That is just the way I am"). As my friends know, I do not respond well to anger, threats and blackmail. And if I can't tell you the truth, I quit talking to you.
Even more serious was I tried to take certain things private (emails) only to have them explode in public on my Facebook wall. I am still not sure what that was supposed to accomplish. Maybe they thought that I cared about my reputation...I know that they care about theirs (a habit that mom drilled into us kids).
Of course, the cherry on top was that they decided that they could not work around my schedule and started to make snide comments on their Facebook status updates. An example: "There are two types of people in the world: those who always have time for friends and family and those who do not." Ok, maybe I am paranoid; maybe that was not aimed at me. And if it was, well, the plans I had scheduled months in advance involved friends and my nine-year old god-daughter (who acts like she is related to me)---my crime was not having time for friends and family; it was that I refused to give my sister a higher priority after learning what she thought of my life and that I was required to change while she was allowed to continue being a PITA.
The snide comments went on for days. Now, she was not holding a gun to my head forcing me to read this stuff, nor was I forcing her to read my status updates (I generally went about my life as normal [sort-of]; I did get less writing done than normal).
Then when she got done with her vacation, she went on Facebook bragging about how wonderful her family was (including my abusive mother). I treated these updates the same way as the others, I ignored them (aka did not take the bait, did not respond).
So what did I learn from all this? Well, all public figures get to see what other people think of them. Besides Facebook updates from frenemies (you have to love that term), we also get to see unfavorable opinions about ourselves in the comment sections of articles, on forum postings, and (if you write books) in the review section of Amazon.
Of course, I do not have to read about other people's opinions of me. I can ignore other people's reviews of my work, and comments they make about me. It is easy to ignore one's bad reputation when your very own family set out to destory it before one's public career even started.
And in this case, I do not have to read someone's snide comments disguised as status updates. Why? Because they chose to defriend me yesterday. I guess I am no longer talking to any of my relatives (unless the relatives on my father's side of the family decide to talk to me now---can they be any worse?).
Thursday, July 1, 2010
OMG I am a blogger
Last night, during the tossing and turning brought on by the most recent email from my sister, who I feel is trying to convince me that I am one hundred percent at fault for our bad relationship, I came to some conclusions. Not pleasant conclusions, but still they are conclusions.
One of my conclusions is that I am NOT a writer, and NOT a journalist. No, I am a blogger.
Yes, this is a step down in the way I describe myself. I have always considered bloggers to be less classy than writers and journalists. Hence, in the interest of feeding my ego, I always called myself a writer or journalist, rather than embrace the truth.
The point of her email that made me realize that I was lower on the classiness totem pole than I thought was came when she asked me how I felt about everyone in the world knowing how she currently felt about me.
Do you see?
Yes, that is right. I didn't care. In fact, I thought it was slightly amusing.
That is why I have to turn in my union cards at this point. Writers and journalists are supposed to care, and do their best to keep their lives secret. Bloggers, on the other hand, tend to be like stand-up comedians, if we can get a good bit out of talking about our personal lives we will.
I always joke with my wife that if I ever do stand-up, she is going to end up with a starring role in my routine. And yes, she knows that I have blogged about her.
Obviously, I need to issue the same warning to my relatives. (I think that my friends, frienemies, and enemies know that they are fair game already---I hope.) And I probably need to add the stand-up creative license warning also: If the joke is funnier when I am not telling the complete truth, then that is what I am going to say actually happened.
I have been living in a fishbowl for a long time. I had the misfortune of going to a high school in a small town where everyone knew everyone else's business. For a long time, I did my best to conceal certain facts. Not that I think that it worked (in hindsight). I bet everyone back home knows the real reason that I failed high school (and it was not the reason that I was supposed to pretend was the reason---I am not a lazy moron---everyone probably knows the real reason why I was not doing homework and skipping classes, but shhhh---no one is supposed to know the truth; it might make someone else look bad and their reputation is more important than mine).
It gets better. My mom was horrified that people might find out what I was writing about. Hence my pen-name. A few years ago, I caught onto the fact that certain people back home were not surprised by what I was writing. And if they knew already...well, the whole town obviously knew. At that point, I decided to openly admit that yes, MDE and EME were the same person.
Of course, this is all just an aspect of my family hiding lots of skeletons in the closet. If my sister was really smart, she would look in the closet and ask what was in there that installed the vast distance between the two of us. I would think about telling her directly; but earlier in the recent spat I chose to keep something off the grid, and she responded by openly exploding about it in full public view.
(For the record, responding with anger to me when I am trying to be rational and am telling you the truth just makes me more more likely to mistrust you. And mistrust does not led to close relationships.)
There have been several things I have kept off the grid. For months, one of my cousins have wanted to know who said certain things. I have been ignoring the questions. I wonder if my cousin knows who it was now.
I will admit that I am impressed by the quick clean-up that my sister did. But it makes me wonder what skeleton in the closet has a poppet of her in its hand at the moment. And part of the dance it making her do blinds her to the fact that I am NOT the same person that walked out of that house in 1984---threats, blackmail and public explosions do not phase me. After all, I am a blogger and this is just the natural behavior of the envirnoment that I chose to write in. (Proof of that can be seen everytime I do another bad book review.) And I am going to continue sharing my personal life because it is part of my stock and trade.
One of my conclusions is that I am NOT a writer, and NOT a journalist. No, I am a blogger.
Yes, this is a step down in the way I describe myself. I have always considered bloggers to be less classy than writers and journalists. Hence, in the interest of feeding my ego, I always called myself a writer or journalist, rather than embrace the truth.
The point of her email that made me realize that I was lower on the classiness totem pole than I thought was came when she asked me how I felt about everyone in the world knowing how she currently felt about me.
Do you see?
Yes, that is right. I didn't care. In fact, I thought it was slightly amusing.
That is why I have to turn in my union cards at this point. Writers and journalists are supposed to care, and do their best to keep their lives secret. Bloggers, on the other hand, tend to be like stand-up comedians, if we can get a good bit out of talking about our personal lives we will.
I always joke with my wife that if I ever do stand-up, she is going to end up with a starring role in my routine. And yes, she knows that I have blogged about her.
Obviously, I need to issue the same warning to my relatives. (I think that my friends, frienemies, and enemies know that they are fair game already---I hope.) And I probably need to add the stand-up creative license warning also: If the joke is funnier when I am not telling the complete truth, then that is what I am going to say actually happened.
I have been living in a fishbowl for a long time. I had the misfortune of going to a high school in a small town where everyone knew everyone else's business. For a long time, I did my best to conceal certain facts. Not that I think that it worked (in hindsight). I bet everyone back home knows the real reason that I failed high school (and it was not the reason that I was supposed to pretend was the reason---I am not a lazy moron---everyone probably knows the real reason why I was not doing homework and skipping classes, but shhhh---no one is supposed to know the truth; it might make someone else look bad and their reputation is more important than mine).
It gets better. My mom was horrified that people might find out what I was writing about. Hence my pen-name. A few years ago, I caught onto the fact that certain people back home were not surprised by what I was writing. And if they knew already...well, the whole town obviously knew. At that point, I decided to openly admit that yes, MDE and EME were the same person.
Of course, this is all just an aspect of my family hiding lots of skeletons in the closet. If my sister was really smart, she would look in the closet and ask what was in there that installed the vast distance between the two of us. I would think about telling her directly; but earlier in the recent spat I chose to keep something off the grid, and she responded by openly exploding about it in full public view.
(For the record, responding with anger to me when I am trying to be rational and am telling you the truth just makes me more more likely to mistrust you. And mistrust does not led to close relationships.)
There have been several things I have kept off the grid. For months, one of my cousins have wanted to know who said certain things. I have been ignoring the questions. I wonder if my cousin knows who it was now.
I will admit that I am impressed by the quick clean-up that my sister did. But it makes me wonder what skeleton in the closet has a poppet of her in its hand at the moment. And part of the dance it making her do blinds her to the fact that I am NOT the same person that walked out of that house in 1984---threats, blackmail and public explosions do not phase me. After all, I am a blogger and this is just the natural behavior of the envirnoment that I chose to write in. (Proof of that can be seen everytime I do another bad book review.) And I am going to continue sharing my personal life because it is part of my stock and trade.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Living in a Fishbowl III
This last week I learned another hazard of living in a fishbowl. One of my relatives pointed out that they could read about my life despite the fact that they were not actually a part of my life. Basically, they implied that I was being rude by writing about my life while refusing to confirm to their standards of conduct.
Now, given a year ago that this person declared that they did not want to hear about my business, my writing, my college experiences, my religion, and my involvement in Golden Dawn, I realized that this recent comment basically is going to give me a single very bad choice.
Either I can quit blogging about my life and quit using Facebook and Twitter, or I can make it hard for this person to easily see what I am up to. (I will never be able to make my life invisible from them---unless I am willing to go back to flipping burgers and completely give up writing and the internet---but I can do the magician's force and make sure that they have to google it and don't automatically see it in their updates [aka defriend them on Facebook].)
The reason why I am thinking about this today is simply because I so want to talk about what I did yesterday. Unfortunately, it is deep in the 99% of my life that this relative never wants to hear about ever again. So I am now standing here with a skull and asking the Shakespearean question "To defriend or not to defriend, that is the question."
And no, I am not going to drop out of university, give up my religion and Order involvements, and cease to be a writer just to please them. I refuse to spend the rest of my life flipping burgers just because they do not like my lifestyle.
Now, given a year ago that this person declared that they did not want to hear about my business, my writing, my college experiences, my religion, and my involvement in Golden Dawn, I realized that this recent comment basically is going to give me a single very bad choice.
Either I can quit blogging about my life and quit using Facebook and Twitter, or I can make it hard for this person to easily see what I am up to. (I will never be able to make my life invisible from them---unless I am willing to go back to flipping burgers and completely give up writing and the internet---but I can do the magician's force and make sure that they have to google it and don't automatically see it in their updates [aka defriend them on Facebook].)
The reason why I am thinking about this today is simply because I so want to talk about what I did yesterday. Unfortunately, it is deep in the 99% of my life that this relative never wants to hear about ever again. So I am now standing here with a skull and asking the Shakespearean question "To defriend or not to defriend, that is the question."
And no, I am not going to drop out of university, give up my religion and Order involvements, and cease to be a writer just to please them. I refuse to spend the rest of my life flipping burgers just because they do not like my lifestyle.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Testing to see if this link works
This is a test to see if I can figure out how to get people from the blog here to the fan page that I created for myself as a writer. Visit the fan page of Morgan Drake Eckstein.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Season of stress and no time
Regular followers of my blogs have probably noticed that I have not been posting much lately. The reason is simple; I am deep in the final assignment and exam season of the spring semester. And it is not over yet, I have two finals on Monday, one on Tuesday and a fifteen page paper to finish (thirteen pages to go) due on Thursday (it counts as a final).
Due to this, the biggest thing I have done with my business lately is to set up a fan page for Morgan Drake Eckstein (that is me). I also set one up for Bast Temple Golden Dawn Denver Colorado, the local lodge I belong to. Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out their permanment links (urls), so that I can get people to them without having to be a facebook friend of mine. (I do believe that they can be found though search). I have wondered why more people do not use the fan pages, and now I know---no one can figure out how to link to them properly.
For the record, I did plan on hacking out a Cafe World article today; unfortunately just writing this post and trying to do some simple math makes me think that is not going to happen. Hopefully, I have caught all the grammar and spelling mistakes I have made on this post...if not, I have mentioned that I am in the season of stress and no time, haven't I?
Due to this, the biggest thing I have done with my business lately is to set up a fan page for Morgan Drake Eckstein (that is me). I also set one up for Bast Temple Golden Dawn Denver Colorado, the local lodge I belong to. Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out their permanment links (urls), so that I can get people to them without having to be a facebook friend of mine. (I do believe that they can be found though search). I have wondered why more people do not use the fan pages, and now I know---no one can figure out how to link to them properly.
For the record, I did plan on hacking out a Cafe World article today; unfortunately just writing this post and trying to do some simple math makes me think that is not going to happen. Hopefully, I have caught all the grammar and spelling mistakes I have made on this post...if not, I have mentioned that I am in the season of stress and no time, haven't I?
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Living in a Fishbowl II
One of the tightropes that a working writer, especially in today's social networked Googlized environment, gets to walk is how much of your life do you allow to be known. In many ways, all of us are living in a fishbowl today. Every social networking site we join, every article we publish online, every web page we make, every blog post we write: All of them decrease the amount of privacy we have as writers.
For instance, if you play games on Facebook, do you really want the whole world to know that you are wasting that much time everyday...and if you need to spend that much time playing them, what does this say about your mental state? (Feel free to comment about my game playing habits in the comment section.)
In my case, the concern started early in my writing career. I was still a member of the print market at that time (technically I still do the print market)...well, the internet hadn't really begin yet...anyway, the important part is that I had to decide relatively early how much of my life I wanted to make public.
Or rather a member of my family decided for me. Horror of horrors, not only did I chose the wrong religion and set of spiritual beliefs, not only did I chose to pick the wrong profession, I actually chose to combine the two. For her sake of mind, I decided to write under a penname.
In recent years, due to various factors, this has became a problem for me. I want to send people to places to read my writing, but often they know me by my legal name and not my penname.
I decided to give up the whole pretense a couple of years ago when I realized that it was probably an open secret that Emil Michael Eckstein and Morgan Drake Eckstein was the same individual. If I could figure it out using Google, I was sure other people could too.
And honestly, I gave up caring a damn about it. Having your sole source of income be your writing tends to do that to a person. I still introduce myself to people as Morgan (except on campus, where I am Emil), but my Facebook page is under my legal name. I write my honest opinions about my religion (I am Egyptian/Norse pagan/Wiccan---feel free to comment about that combination), my involvement in Golden Dawn, my experiences in magic, my opinion about my college classes and professors, my gripes about my friends and family, my lack of ethics (if you read my Golden Dawn blog, you know what I am talking about), and anything else I feel like talking about.
The amazing part is that outside of a couple of members of my family, no one seems to care about how big of a lunatic I am. The people I went to High School with already knew that I was weird...therefore the whole town knew already (it was a small town; everyone knows everybody). Everyone in the local esoteric community knows that I have a few screws loose, but could care less (I am classified as a harmless nutcase). Heck, I am even married (don't ask me what she sees in me, I have yet to figure it out).
So in my case, living into today's internet cached Googlized fishbowl is not so bad. After all, I have been doing it my entire life without realizing it.
For instance, if you play games on Facebook, do you really want the whole world to know that you are wasting that much time everyday...and if you need to spend that much time playing them, what does this say about your mental state? (Feel free to comment about my game playing habits in the comment section.)
In my case, the concern started early in my writing career. I was still a member of the print market at that time (technically I still do the print market)...well, the internet hadn't really begin yet...anyway, the important part is that I had to decide relatively early how much of my life I wanted to make public.
Or rather a member of my family decided for me. Horror of horrors, not only did I chose the wrong religion and set of spiritual beliefs, not only did I chose to pick the wrong profession, I actually chose to combine the two. For her sake of mind, I decided to write under a penname.
In recent years, due to various factors, this has became a problem for me. I want to send people to places to read my writing, but often they know me by my legal name and not my penname.
I decided to give up the whole pretense a couple of years ago when I realized that it was probably an open secret that Emil Michael Eckstein and Morgan Drake Eckstein was the same individual. If I could figure it out using Google, I was sure other people could too.
And honestly, I gave up caring a damn about it. Having your sole source of income be your writing tends to do that to a person. I still introduce myself to people as Morgan (except on campus, where I am Emil), but my Facebook page is under my legal name. I write my honest opinions about my religion (I am Egyptian/Norse pagan/Wiccan---feel free to comment about that combination), my involvement in Golden Dawn, my experiences in magic, my opinion about my college classes and professors, my gripes about my friends and family, my lack of ethics (if you read my Golden Dawn blog, you know what I am talking about), and anything else I feel like talking about.
The amazing part is that outside of a couple of members of my family, no one seems to care about how big of a lunatic I am. The people I went to High School with already knew that I was weird...therefore the whole town knew already (it was a small town; everyone knows everybody). Everyone in the local esoteric community knows that I have a few screws loose, but could care less (I am classified as a harmless nutcase). Heck, I am even married (don't ask me what she sees in me, I have yet to figure it out).
So in my case, living into today's internet cached Googlized fishbowl is not so bad. After all, I have been doing it my entire life without realizing it.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Happy Solistice!
I took the day off from writing today. I spent it sending people season's greetings and trying to catch up with everybody's facebook page. That is one of the advantages of self-employment: you can take the day off to be human.
To all my blog readers:
Happy Solistice! May the coming year bring you Health, Wealth and Love!
To all my blog readers:
Happy Solistice! May the coming year bring you Health, Wealth and Love!
Saturday, August 29, 2009
So it is spam you are after
Well, we all knew the day would come; I just deleted one of my connections on Facebook for being nothing more than a spam generator. I guess it goes with the territory of being semi-public in my activities. At least, I am doing better on Facebook than on MySpace; on MySpace every friend request is about sending spam.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Finally created a twitter account
Well, I finally set up a twitter account. I have avoided doing this for awhile. I realize that as a writer, I should have a twitter account. Or at least, that is what the good folks over at Associated Content tell me.
Personally, not believing in mobile phones, the idea of twitter has passed me by. You can have a cell phone; but for myself, I had one for a couple of years, and I think I used it a dozen times over that time period. So it is like a hundred dollars per time I actually used the phone to make or recieve a call.
But a couple of people I know have twitter accounts, and actually update regularly. So I created a twitter account to be able to read their updates.
And if I can figure out how to do it, I will set my Associated Content account up so that it posts a link every time I publish something on AC because I am not the world best promoter of my own material. Having some of my self-promotion set on auto-pilot might help.
So if you want to get updates of all my Associated Content stuff (some of it might actually be readable), follow me on Twitter. And I will try to update it as often as I update Facebook.
Personally, not believing in mobile phones, the idea of twitter has passed me by. You can have a cell phone; but for myself, I had one for a couple of years, and I think I used it a dozen times over that time period. So it is like a hundred dollars per time I actually used the phone to make or recieve a call.
But a couple of people I know have twitter accounts, and actually update regularly. So I created a twitter account to be able to read their updates.
And if I can figure out how to do it, I will set my Associated Content account up so that it posts a link every time I publish something on AC because I am not the world best promoter of my own material. Having some of my self-promotion set on auto-pilot might help.
So if you want to get updates of all my Associated Content stuff (some of it might actually be readable), follow me on Twitter. And I will try to update it as often as I update Facebook.
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