Social Media

[jaylach]

I built and administered the 22 forums as a volunteer (in hindsight I was stupid cos it meant being online 23 hours out of 24, sometimes more than that if issues arose since the owner lives in Houston, Texas and I am in the UK so a totally different time zone)

The forums were his "baby"...he supplied the software and licences and had the last word on everything. I only built them, sorted the moderation teams and generally watched over them.

That said, the owner did invite me to his wedding and he did pay for my flights etc. So not all bad. But if asked to do it again....it would be a "no". I might not have much of a social life (and my social media has all of 6 friends on it) but spending so much time every day in 22 places at once, was truly beyond the limit of sanity.

Sounds like you did all the work and he got the benefits.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

Sounds like you did all the work and he got the benefits.

When on your own and unable to do normal work it was nice to just feel useful......granted I was far too soft when it came to his aquiring more and more ideas on what to have as subjects for discussion and I should have said "no" more often but it was fun...insane and insomnia inducing fun. Still would not do it again though.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

The only serious downside @jaylach was that a moderator decided to stalk me and make a nuisance of himself at group meet ups (specifically when we arranged meet ups of members from the cruise ship forum....he would say he could not attend, then he would show up and follow me around at a distance just to make things very uncomfortable)

It got so serious that the police had to be brought into it and I got a restraining order against him.

It really was not a pleasant experience and definitely one not to be repeated....or wished onto anyone else.

 

[jaylach]

When on your own and unable to do normal work it was nice to just feel useful......granted I was far too soft when it came to his aquiring more and more ideas on what to have as subjects for discussion and I should have said "no" more often but it was fun...insane and insomnia inducing fun. Still would not do it again though.

Don't know why but what you said made me think of something I used to do when I had my business. When I was doing a system upgrade I'd offer a 20% discount on labor if the client would donate their old stuff. I'd take the odds and ends and put together viable systems that I would donate to families with kids that could not afford one on their own. I still do that a little bit but it is few and far between as I just don't have the parts coming in to work with.

 

[jaylach]

The only serious downside @jaylach was that a moderator decided to stalk me and make a nuisance of himself at group meet ups (specifically when we arranged meet ups of members from the cruise ship forum....he would say he could not attend, then he would show up and follow me around at a distance just to make things very uncomfortable)

It got so serious that the police had to be brought into it and I got a restraining order against him.

It really was not a pleasant experience and definitely one not to be repeated....or wished onto anyone else.

I could use a stalker... preferably fit with red hair. But seriously that must have been a bad experience! Of course I don't know details but I tend to pity people like that as they must have serious issues.

 

[GaryE]

You'd be surprised at how many people, especially women, have had stalkers. I had one for a long while - a disgruntled ex co-worker who had confronted my boss. Being a good guy, my boss said I'd had him fired, and that he, as the boss, had nothing to do with hiring and firing. That was news to me, as I wasn't involved, but I sure became involved fast. I learned a lot about how many women must feel with these dangerous guys.
The man had convictions for violence, and lurked around for a long time. He ended up arrested and luckily seemed to have found effective psychiatric help there.
If any guys reading this feel like they have the right to stalk someone - don't. Get medical help.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

You'd be surprised at how many people, especially women, have had stalkers. I had one for a long while - a disgruntled ex co-worker who had confronted my boss. Being a good guy, my boss said I'd had him fired, and that he, as the boss, had nothing to do with hiring and firing. That was news to me, as I wasn't involved, but I sure became involved fast. I learned a lot about how many women must feel with these dangerous guys.
The man had convictions for violence, and lurked around for a long time. He ended up arrested and luckily seemed to have found effective psychiatric help there.
If any guys reading this feel like they have the right to stalk someone - don't. Get medical help.

The problem I had started when the owner of the forums wanted me to let my moderators have my contact number so that they could get in touch if servers went down etc

I was not entirely happy about that...even though 8 of the 10 moderators I had already met and we were friends. It felt like an unneccessary step since if any issues arose I was online more often than not.

It was a moderator who I had not met who then took it upon himself to call me at all hours day or night and claim he had misdialed, dropped the phone or some other excuse. Despite being unlisted, he managed to discover my home address and despite living 300 miles away, I saw him watching my home from a shortish distance away quite frequently. I asked him to stop calling and to stop coming near my home. He apologised and it did stop for a few weeks, then restarted again.

One summer some of the US and Canadian forum members were coming to the UK on cruise ships, they all had the same port of call on the same day - Liverpool. So about 40 of us in total, including those on the ships, decided to have a get together in the city.

The moderator said he would not be going...which was a relief to me. I had already explained the problems that I was having with him to the other moderators and the owner and he lost his moderator status.

Come the day of the meet up, I got the train to Liverpool and we all started meeting up alongside one of the ships.

The individual who was causing issues used a photo of himself as an avatar. One of the other moderators took me aside and told me she had seen him lurking over the road from where we are. He followed us all day at a distance.

At the end of a brilliant day meeting everyone and seeing those from the ships off to their next port of call I was going to go to the station and he was still loitering. So my other two moderators who attended came with me to the station, I got on the train, came home and contacted the police. They sent an officer to my home, took details and copies of photos taken at the meet up of his lurking. The police here contacted his local force and they helped to get a restraining order to keep him away.

All of this happened in 2009 but it feels like it was yesterday....I am always nervous when outside the flat for any reason like when taking the bins out...I watch through the curtains sometimes when I hear a noise outside etc

I changed the phone number and did not give anyone my number and I still screen calls before answering the phone.

When it happens to you, you never forget it.

 

[GaryE]

There's another aspect of social media that I am confronting now - algorithms.

I recently bought one of the little windows 11 laptops - the cheap chromebook competitors, just so I could work in places like... the fishroom. My older, traditional laptop was kaput.

When I go online with its obligatory Edge browser, I get a homepage that is all media supposedly for me. I have the option of rejecting sites and stories, though no real ability to suggest why. Those I reject come back anyway. I assume they pay for the right to intrude, and only those who pay enough get to appear in feeds.

I'm identified as an older male. So the algorithm started with a wave of extreme right wing sources, which I blocked. Neo-Nazi and extremist 'personalities' were all over my feed. Then it followed with more royal gossip than anyone could imagine. Maybe it's because I discuss parasites here, but man, am I ever supposed to like the apparently feuding princelings and all the drama connected to them. Nothing I do stops that subject from popping up.

I chose no celebrity gossip, so I get tons of it. I would say that having tried to set preferences and been ignored, in a few hundred articles and clips offered, two have been of interest. They've clearly decided I am stupid, maybe because I tried Edge in the first place. Celebrity worship is big stuff online, as is really crude advertising.

We do get shoved and channelled into worlds though. I've always had my own homepages, and done my own choosing of credible sources and interesting subjects. This is my first computer that hasn't been 'free' even if I paid for it. Because of my age and gender, the companies decided I must hate immigrants, and love authoritarian leaders, guns and losing my money to cryptocurrency scams. What happens if you don't reject their choices, and just lock into a groove of reading the propaganda social networks choose for you? You would never see a quality news outlet or a good science site - never see history that wasn't simple-minded clickbait or are arts that were creative. What is happening here is obvious because they missed on what I would want to read so radically that I had to be aware, but maybe if it had been closer to my world view, I would accept it and be spoon fed my ideas, which might not really be mine.

 

[Rocky998]

There's another aspect of social media that I am confronting now - algorithms.

I recently bought one of the little windows 11 laptops - the cheap chromebook competitors, just so I could work in places like... the fishroom. My older, traditional laptop was kaput.

When I go online with its obligatory Edge browser, I get a homepage that is all media supposedly for me. I have the option of rejecting sites and stories, though no real ability to suggest why. Those I reject come back anyway. I assume they pay for the right to intrude, and only those who pay enough get to appear in feeds.

I'm identified as an older male. So the algorithm started with a wave of extreme right wing sources, which I blocked. Neo-Nazi and extremist 'personalities' were all over my feed. Then it followed with more royal gossip than anyone could imagine. Maybe it's because I discuss parasites here, but man, am I ever supposed to like the apparently feuding princelings and all the drama connected to them. Nothing I do stops that subject from popping up.

I chose no celebrity gossip, so I get tons of it. I would say that having tried to set preferences and been ignored, in a few hundred articles and clips offered, two have been of interest. They've clearly decided I am stupid, maybe because I tried Edge in the first place. Celebrity worship is big stuff online, as is really crude advertising.

We do get shoved and channelled into worlds though. I've always had my own homepages, and done my own choosing of credible sources and interesting subjects. This is my first computer that hasn't been 'free' even if I paid for it. Because of my age and gender, the companies decided I must hate immigrants, and love authoritarian leaders, guns and losing my money to cryptocurrency scams. What happens if you don't reject their choices, and just lock into a groove of reading the propaganda social networks choose for you? You would never see a quality news outlet or a good science site - never see history that wasn't simple-minded clickbait or are arts that were creative. What is happening here is obvious because they missed on what I would want to read so radically that I had to be aware, but maybe if it had been closer to my world view, I would accept it and be spoon fed my ideas, which might not really be mine.

Sad... Really sad

 

[Back in the fold]

That was sure weird reading about stalkers. I guess I am more naive than I thought. How do you stalk somebody you've never met ? I don't even know what you jokers look like or care. I figured if somebody ever posted something outright nefarious in intent then the mods would banish them to oblivion and they would have to go find a new playground. Yeah , weird !

 

[Essjay]

It's one reason we don't like members to give their location too close to home. Or use their email address as their user name - that has been known. Or put their phone number in the open forum.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

A long time ago, I published my address on an Irish music forum, for reasons I won't go into here (It seemed like a good idea at the time). I took care to mention that I am boring, not terribly attractive, politically neutral, and own both firearms and a large dog. Nothing much ever came of it.

 

[Back in the fold]

And for cripe-a-ninnies sake why would anyone in their right mind say (type ) stupid stuff to a woman for crying out loud ? That's an open invitation to being knee capped verbally . Every woman has the unique ability to say things to any man that will have him lying in a fetal position , sucking his thumb and crying softly.

 

[jaylach]

There's another aspect of social media that I am confronting now - algorithms.

I recently bought one of the little windows 11 laptops - the cheap chromebook competitors, just so I could work in places like... the fishroom. My older, traditional laptop was kaput.

When I go online with its obligatory Edge browser, I get a homepage that is all media supposedly for me. I have the option of rejecting sites and stories, though no real ability to suggest why. Those I reject come back anyway. I assume they pay for the right to intrude, and only those who pay enough get to appear in feeds.

I'm identified as an older male. So the algorithm started with a wave of extreme right wing sources, which I blocked. Neo-Nazi and extremist 'personalities' were all over my feed. Then it followed with more royal gossip than anyone could imagine. Maybe it's because I discuss parasites here, but man, am I ever supposed to like the apparently feuding princelings and all the drama connected to them. Nothing I do stops that subject from popping up.

I chose no celebrity gossip, so I get tons of it. I would say that having tried to set preferences and been ignored, in a few hundred articles and clips offered, two have been of interest. They've clearly decided I am stupid, maybe because I tried Edge in the first place. Celebrity worship is big stuff online, as is really crude advertising.

We do get shoved and channelled into worlds though. I've always had my own homepages, and done my own choosing of credible sources and interesting subjects. This is my first computer that hasn't been 'free' even if I paid for it. Because of my age and gender, the companies decided I must hate immigrants, and love authoritarian leaders, guns and losing my money to cryptocurrency scams. What happens if you don't reject their choices, and just lock into a groove of reading the propaganda social networks choose for you? You would never see a quality news outlet or a good science site - never see history that wasn't simple-minded clickbait or are arts that were creative. What is happening here is obvious because they missed on what I would want to read so radically that I had to be aware, but maybe if it had been closer to my world view, I would accept it and be spoon fed my ideas, which might not really be mine.

Go to the settings for Edge and set a Home Page... I use Firefox as my normal browser but have Edge setup with all my streaming services in tabs as my home page.

 

[TheTenthDoctor]

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Dont use snapchat much though. Only got it because I wanted to talk to this one guy