Category: Social Media

The Dark Side of Pinterest

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We all do… unfortunately not everyone knows when it just isn’t worth documenting…

Here’s a bit of advice: if you’re feeling a little down, whatever you do, don’t browse the “Quotes” section of Pinterest. It will send you spiraling into a full blown depression for one of three reasons:

  1. The realization that there are people out there who actually believe some of the crap they post
  2. The bad spelling/copyediting
  3. The relative lack of actually good quotes and witticisms

Here is an assortment of some of the most terrible quotes I could find, many of which, I’m hoping, came from the diary of a melodramatic 15-year-old. If you don’t like snark, don’t continue. Continue reading →

Confessions of a Pinterest Junkie

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I am developing a severe Pinterest addiction.

I blame my backyard.

My yard was, in general, kind of a wasteland when I moved in. Its was basically just sandy dirt with some weeds thrown in. But nature bounces back pretty quickly and my front yard is looking damn good. The lawn is green, if not exactly all “lawn” in the traditional sense of the word — by which I mean, weeds are just as green as grass when you can’t afford to be picky. My winterberry holly came back nice and green, and my flowers are starting to fill in. Another few months and it will be a paradise compared to what it used to look like. Continue reading →

Singleton

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I love these kinds of stories… you know the kind that say unmarried women are, statistically, happier than married women — the opposite being true for men — or, in this case, that women living alone are happier than men in the same situation. But the funny thing about this article, is that I can’t stop thinking about MaryAnne Singleton from the Tales of the City stories.

But I digress:

But modern conditions make it possible to combine an active social and romantic life with the option to retreat to a solitary haven. When you can step outside your door and find three cafes, five bars, and streets teeming with acquaintances and intriguing strangers, living alone is no sentence to solitude. Still less so when, from your kitchen table, you can chat, text, email, or Skype with remote confidants.

I do have to wonder, though, if social media and other modern communication tools will help men who tend to isolate build better networks of support.

Slow & Steady

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My experiment in self-publishing is getting off to a slow start. This is hardly a surprise.

I’ve been hitting the review sites, begging and pleading for reviews. I’ve been bothering my Facebook friends and working on building my Twitter presence. I even tried a week of Facebook ads…you know, for good measure.

This week though, my attention is turning back to the debacle that is buying a house. I’ve been told that I’ll be closing on Friday, but I’ve heard that before. I’ll believe when those keys are in my hands. So my attentions are split — three ways if you count the day job. Despite my lack of focus, I plan on continuing with my experiment.

I figure my next step is finding some sort of chat room for guys with foot fetishes. I mean, that’s gotta be worth at least a few sales, right?

 

Grammarians & Pedants

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I’m usually as annoyed by bad grammar and poor spelling as the next editor, but lately I’ve started to find myself more annoyed by the pedants of the social networks who feel the need to point out their basic grasp of grammar. For instance:

Continue reading →

The Fine Art of the Status Update

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By webponce, Flickr Creative Commons

When I was in college AIM was all the rage. “Away Messages” were the “Status Updates” of the early 2000s. I used to get annoyed to no end by people with literal away messages: “In Stats until noon” was awfully boring. I was a fan of song lyrics and cryptic inside jokes. If I was at dinner you could count on, “At the meat market with the Smurf.” The “meat market” was what my roommate (Smurf) and I called our cafeteria, where girls who didn’t even get out of their pajamas to go to class would put on heels and formal wear for dinner. Now that no one uses AIM anymore, Facebook status updates and Tweets have replaced away messages. And I take my status updates very seriously. Continue reading →