TWITCHING MY WAY THROUGH THE FACEBOOK DT'S - HOW I REALIZED THERE WAS A TON OF THINGS I WANTED TO LEARN BUT KEPT CHOOSING TO BE STUCK ON A FREAKING COMPUTER FARM





Yes, I'm Starting To Feel It - And Hey, Read This Again Please, There's An Important Update - The US Military Does NOT Want Us To Quit!

As I sit here, a rather intense color (or colour, depending on where it came from) of hair dye on my head, my zoom at 250% 'cause I can't wear my glasses while I do this, I must admit I'm starting to feel the effects of not having Facebook almost constantly in front of me like I have for, uh, what was it... three years? Four? Surely it couldn't have been for longer than that...

No farm, no village with little babies crawling about, no news feed and no seeing what people on my friend's list were up to. Okay, so that's not so much to miss I guess.

Always the fantasy, never the reality...

Hmm? The hair color? Oh, I've dyed my hair since I was 15. As an adult I put away the blonde stuff and went for the red. I usually go for the demure shades, but once in a while I like to rev it up and yeah, I guess I like to shock people. One year I put a product in that turned my hair so bright, when I went outside, people stopped dead. 

They didn't die, duh, they just stopped. And stared. I'm used to that - my color has been, uh, unusual before. Like the time it was supposed to be a burgundy shade, but in the sunlight it looked deep purple. Meh, I liked it, the hubby - not so much. He can't understand why I wouldn't just want my hair to be natural. Men look great natural - so do women. But I like the brightness and to not have to watch a big swath of gray hair work its way across my scalp.


Whoops, this was supposed to be about Facebook. If you never have used it, don't start. You'll just get stuff (like what I've been babbling about) all day long from all these people you just sort of know. During my years on there I learned some interesting (okay, more irritating than interesting) things about people - most think they are really important and everything they say is fact, and if you don't believe it, you're a (insert personal bad symbol here).



It wasn't just the 'pray for the sick babies or you're going to Hell' kind of stuff - it was endless pictures of what they ate (I hate to tell you people, but the stew you made that was the best you've ever tasted looks to us like someone threw up on a plate), where they went (Do you really want people to know how many times a day you stop for coffee or a cheeseburger?), what they believe (and brother, you better believe it too or else...), and what they consider to be crap. 

I guess that really sunk in when people I'd known since I was a teenager were posting derogatory jokes and nasty pictures about my religion, but at the same time they demanded tolerance for 'everyone'. Five minutes later they'd post 'Love Jesus Or Die' statements on their walls. It just didn't seem to make much sense.

Some made their personal agendas an all-day project, sharing post after post ('cause none of these people had minds of their own apparently) of misspelled emphatic statements against one thing or another. Birth control, sexual preference, political views, 'lucky' coin or clover posts certain to bring you instant wealth... it was... exhausting. 

Toward the end, the only thing on my 'news feed' page (when FB graciously decided we could put people that bugged us out of sight) was the local news, my favorite horror pages, and ads. 

No, I didn't want the ads - that's a new Facebook thing. They're gonna need the money. You've probably heard and I've mentioned that they got caught manipulating people' emotions on their site. Now, at least in the UK, people are looking into whether that was legal and whether Facebook should be spanked.

There are two articles to consider, so I've made the print a bit smaller - hope it's still easy to read...

An article from a great site called 'Naked Security' (Hey, catches the attention, right?) printed the following today:

Did Facebook's emotion experiment break the law? ICO probes

by Lee Munson on July 2, 2014

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is investigating whether Facebook's emotional manipulation study broke data protection laws. The regulator told The Financial Times that it planned to probe the Facebook experiment, which manipulated the feeds of close to 700,000 users to determine how they reacted to positive or negative news, following widespread public outrage after a paper was published over the weekend.


A spokesperson for the ICO told the paper that it would liaise with the office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (Facebook has its European headquarters in Dublin), but it was "too early to tell exactly what part of the law Facebook may have infringed." The Information Commissioner's Office will likely look at how much user information was used and whether those affected had given permission for their data to be used in such a manner.


Yesterday, it was also reported that Facebook added a "research" clause to it terms and conditions four months after the experiment began. (Italics and bold added by Miss Murder)

That clause states that the company could use user data for "internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement."

However, a spokeswoman for Facebook told Forbes: When someone signs up for Facebook, we've always asked permission to use their information to provide and enhance the services we offer. To suggest we conducted any corporate research without permission is complete fiction...

Adam Kramer, a co-author of the research paper, offered up his own explanation for the study on his personal Facebook page: The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product... we were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook. We didn't clearly state our motivations in the paper.


Can you say bullshit??? Even Miss Murder knows that changing a contract AFTER it has been made without notifying the person signing it is like racketeering. The definition of racketeering is the illegal activity that is inherent to organized crime. These crimes are committed with the protection and advancement of the organized-crime "business" in mind. Facebook committed a crime in that it put business over people to advance their own agenda and, of course, put tons of money in their pockets.

...As we (Naked Security) reported yesterday, Facebook said there was "no unnecessary collection of people's data" and none of the gathered data could be associated with a specific account on the social network.

Facebook spokesman Matt Steinfeld said: We want to do better in the future and are improving our process based on this feedback. The study was done with appropriate protections for people's information and we are happy to answer any questions regulators may have.

End Of Article

So, let me get this straight: When we asked Facebook to fix things that weren't working right, stop the scams and the fake news reports, keep ads off our page and stop making things happen like videos automatically running when you scroll over them (which takes up a lot of memory, especially when you're on a tablet or your phone) they listened to us and answered all our questions? Pffft. There have been statements from PROGRAM DEVELOPERS who have been frustrated with constant Facebook code changes and not only they but we were ignored, there wasn't even a place we could go to for help. 

Facebook does NOT have customer service representatives, nor does it have a site or an email address to send questions to. So Facebook doing what they wanted while indiscriminately telling us what was right and what was wrong (which changed without notice to some but not for others), that was okay, but it wasn't enough for you? You had to mess with us deliberately by seeing if we could get even MORE depressed by what we were seeing on our pages? Wow. That takes some big, big balls Zuckerberg. And that is NOT a compliment.

Aaaaaand once again I got totally off topic. Sort of. See, I am kind of itching to go back 'to the farm' and to see what my 'friends' (whom I never see or talk to) are saying or posting - but I know if I do, I can easily spend HOURS per day just doing that. And there's a lot of good stuff I'm working on right now. 

Sheah I WISH I was this good...
I'm still learning circles
and ovals and how to
make my figures 'walk' and...

I'm learning how to computer draw manga as well as anime, I have a really neat animation program that I'd like to get a cartoon going on my horror site when that's ready, I'm trying to get better at my movie reviews (they are supposed to be funny after all, and I think my sense of humor has been kind of strangled this year) and the time I do NOT spend on Facebook will help a lot, considering that the window of time I can work on the computer is short - most of the time I'm flat in bed, unable to move. 

See, right now I'm boring YOU guys in the time I would usually be on Facebook and all its' artificial pursuits. I guess it comes down to moderation in all things. Too much of anything is never good for you. Even if it's something that keeps you alive. 

I've read of people who've died from drinking too much water. If you breathe too much oxygen, a switch flips in your system and it will make you stop breathing (if you're conscious that's no big deal, but if you're not...). Too much exercise can hurt you. Too much of ANYTHING is... too much. My 'too much' was trying to keep up with all my oh-so-important Facebook pursuits (those crops weren't going to plant themselves you know).

I think I just wanted to belong, to be popular, to be part of the group. But I wasn't. I've been completely off almost a week and not a single person has tried to contact me to see if I was okay. Not surprising. Not even disappointing really. After all, I wasn't checking up on them either.

Let's see... movies, movies... oh yes. Coming up is PMS Cop (yes that's an actual movie) plus some other incredibly awful movies that I will attempt to make fun to read, because they certainly weren't fun to watch.

Oh well, at least it won't be World War Z. I've been punished enough for one year I think.


July 4, 2014 - Check this out kiddies... The US Military Does NOT WANT US TO QUIT FACEBOOK!

This article appeared on MSN News...

Though Cornell University, home to at least one of the researchers, said the study received no external funding, it turns out that the university is currently receiving Defense Department money for some extremely similar-sounding research—the analysis of social network posts for “sentiment,” i.e. how people are feeling, in the hopes of identifying social “tipping points.” The tipping points in question include “the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey,” according to the website of the Minerva Initiative, a Defense Department social science project.

It’s the sort of work that the U.S. military has been funding for years, most famously via the open-source indicators program, an Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity(IARPA) program that looked at Twitter to predict social unrest. If the idea of the government monitoring and even manipulating you on Facebook gives you a cold, creeping feeling, the bad news is that you can expect the intelligence community to spend a great deal more time and money researching sentiment and relationships via social networks like Facebook. In fact, defense contractors and high-level U.S.intelligence officials say that social network data has become one of the most important tools they use in the collecting intelligence.

Defense One recently caught up with Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who said the U.S. military has “completely revamped” the way it collects intelligence around the existence of large, openly available data sources and especially social media like Facebook. “The information that we’re able to extract form social media—it’s giving us insights that frankly we never had before,” he said. In other words, the head of one of the biggest U.S. military intelligence agencies needs you on Facebook.

“Just over a decade ago, when I was a senior intelligence officer, I spent most of my time in the world of ‘ints’—signals intelligence imagery, human intelligence—and used just a little bit of open-source information to enrich the assessments that we made. Fast forward to 2014 and the explosion of the information environment in just the last few years alone. Open-source now is a place I spend most of my time. The open world of information provides us most of what we need and the ‘ints’ of old, they enrich the assessments that we’re able to make from open-source information.”

Open-source intelligence can take a variety of forms, but among the most voluminous, personal and useful is Facebook and Twitter data. The availability of that sort of information is changing the way that DIA trains intelligence operatives. Long gone are the spooks of old who would fish through trash for clues on targets. Here to stay are the eyes looking through your vacation pictures.

“We train them differently even than we did a year ago because of the types of tools we have. There are adjustments to the trade craft, and that’s due to the amount of information we can now get our hands on,” Flynn said. The growth of social media has not just changed day-to-day life at agencies like DIA, it’s also given rise to a mini gold rush in defense contracting. The military will be spending an increasing amount of the $50 billion intelligence budget on private contractors to perform open-source intelligence gathering and analysis, according to Flynn. That’s evidenced by the rise in companies eager to provide those services.

Some of them are well known like Palantir, the Silicon Valley data visualization giant that’s been featured prominently in Bloomberg Businessweek and has graced the cover of Forbes. Collecting or analyzing social network data wasn’t something they originally wanted to get into according to Bryant Chung, a Palantir employee. Palantir doesn’t market itself as a data collection company. They provide a tool set to help agencies visualize and share data. The company worried that partnering with the intelligence community to do social network data collection could hurt their reputation among the tech community, increasingly wary of the government, according to Chung. When the company was approached by NATO and some U.S.intelligence groups, they decided to explore the marketplace for sentiment analysis of social network data.

“There are a lot of other commercial companies already in that space. Unless we know we’re going to crush it, we don’t want to get in,” Chung said. “I think we have a differentiated capability, especially at a macro level. For example, you are interested in monitoring an election somewhere in Africa and you want to know who are the people tweeting on one side of an election versus the other, or who are the most influential tweeters or you what if you have intelligence that an explosion is about to happen at a particular square, can you confirm that using Tweets?” That’s the sort of thing Palantir wants to help you with. Many of the groups doing this sort of work on behalf of the government are small outfits you probably have never heard of. And ideally, you never would.

One of them is a company out of Austin, Texas, called SnapTrends, founded in 2012. They provide a “social listening” service that analyzes posts to provide insights about the circumstances of the poster, one of the most important of which is the poster’s location. The company uses cell tower density, social network knowhow, and various other elements to figure out who is posting what and where. Are you someone who refuses to geo-tag your tweets out of concerns for privacy? Do you turn off your phone’s GPS receiving capability to stay under the proverbial radar? It doesn’t matter to SnapTrends. One tweet and they can find you.

“If it’s a dense environment. I can put you within a block. If it’s a [bad] environment I can put you within two or three blocks,” said Todd Robinson, director of operations for Defense Military Intelligence for the company General Dynamics Information Technology, GDIT, and SnapTrends president for Middle Eastern operations. GDIT partnered with SnapTrends to sell their services to the government. “Once I do have you, I click this button right here, I can go back five years [of social media posts.]” SnapTrends says that the tool was extremely helpful in the investigation following the 2013 Boston Marathon bomb attacks. Using social network analysis, “we found the college kids that had access to the computers [owned by the suspects]. We were able to get to them first,” said Robins.

The use of social network data for intelligence isn’t just fair, Robbins says, it’s a no-brainer. Scrawling Facebook for clues about human behavior doesn’t require breaking in via backdoors or other elaborate pieces of technological trickery. “When you join Twitter and Facebook, you sign an agreement saying you will post that to a public web page. We just pull data from that web page.” ”I’m a retired intelligence guy,” he said. “This is not that difficult, people.”

But while social data may be an important tool in intelligence collection, it’s hardly a permanent one. In the same way that observing the behavior of some subatomic particles changes the behavior of those particles (called the observer effect), watching the tweets and posts of targets can create an environment where people tweet less. You poison your own well by drawing from it. That happens on an individual level in terms of specific human targets but also on a larger, societal level.

“We’ve seen that already,” Robinson said. “There is always a risk that as people understand this, they’ll quit putting [posts] on there.” The view was seconded by SnapTrends co-founder and CEO, Eric Klasson. “The more the ‘bad guys’ know about what is possible, the less they will use social media. This undermines state, local, federal and international law enforcement efforts,” he told Defense One.

When asked if he was concerned that people might stop using Facebook, Twitter and other social networks as a result of U.S.intelligence activities, Flynn answered matter-of-factly: “Yes. We have to be agile enough to watch how those adaptations occur and we have to try to stay ahead of them for when we see them and adjust our capabilities to be able to understand them. People will constantly adapt to their environment in order to survive,” he said.

DIA has some time before the social network pool is spoiled. Today, Facebook remains the number one social network in the Middle East. More than 90 percent of all the Internet users of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates use the service. Should millions of people decide to abandon the network and seek out another one to connect to and communicate with the outside world, the U.S. intelligence community will likely already be there.

REAL LIFE IS WORSE THAN FICTION - ESPECIALLY IN THE NEWS... REALLY! JUST TRUST THEM! THEY KNOW! AND IF THEY DON'T, THEY'LL JUST MAKE SOMETHING UP! AND DON'T WORRY, IF IT'S NOT TRUE THEY'LL JUST REPORT SOMETHING ELSE...

Is this picture real? Nope, no matter how many times  you share it...

Why We Can't Trust The News Anymore

It used to be way way back when I was a young female pup, you walked over to your television, turned it on, and turned the dial very slowly until your father found something he wanted to watch. Usually, it was the news. Whether local or national, a news station had the job, nay the duty, to provide us lowly folk with current events so that we could at least pretend to be part of the human race.




Today, a lot of people don't even watch the news on televisions. They stream it on their computers. But this does not mean that news sources no longer have the duty to provide us with accurate news stories, both local and national. But somehow, that duty seems to have fallen by the wayside. You see, the news itself is apparently too boring for us normal people. At least major news sources seem to believe this to be true. 

No, seriously, this is my uncle's cousin's best friend...

More and more often, we are getting stories with all the facts equaling what you might find in a copy of the now defunct Weekly World News. It has gotten so ridiculous, that one cannot even trust that a story has been properly researched and confirmed before it reaches our televisions and computers, even if it comes from such past trusted sources such as, and I'm just picking this one, CNN.

I am deadly serious about this. Now since I am still using Facebook, at least for right now, I am more than used to seeing stories that are total fabrications or were printed by a site that is satirical, but then is passed along as gospel truth. Although they seem that they should be easy to spot, people suck it up and pass it along endlessly.



Snopes, Facecrooks, and Hoax Slayer are just a few of the sites you can go to to check to see if the story you see on your feed is real or fake. People do not want to do that. In fact, people started getting very angry with me for pointing out when a story that is being passed around like wildfire is false. That is why I no longer have any real people on my news feed. I have my news sites, my comedy sites, and, of course, my horror sites.

I once tested to see how long it took from the time I saw a story on my feed, looked it up on one of the hoax sites to determine whether it was true or not, and post the results. I couldn't. My watch won't measure tenths of seconds. In fact, one person I know quite well made the comment that it must be nice to have so much free time to look up all these stories. Wow. In other words, this person was telling me that obviously I have nothing useful to contribute to society, and thus spend all my time pissing people off on Facebook for no good reason. 

That person and I rarely speak now. I wonder why.

But there is a trend, and it is growing, which is very disturbing to me, that the so-called REAL news no longer can be trusted. Within the last few months, there have been more news stories retracted then I've seen happen in years worth of broadcasts. Am I exaggerating? Maybe a little.

One of my favorite sites, Cracked.com, actually has a regular listing of news stories that were spread everywhere, not just by Facebook people on their feeds, but by supposedly trustworthy internet news sources. All accepted at face value as gospel truth. All a bunch of bullshit.

It has become so bad that I no longer look at a story and assume that just because it was from a major news source, that it was properly researched and therefore accurate or even true. I look to Cracked.com or a hoax site for confirmation. How pitiful is that?

And now, for no reason whatsoever, this awesome Trent Reznor song parody...

Let's have a recent example. Now people love to pick on North Korea. It's a hot spot right now, and so everything that happens there is under scrutiny by the world. This was "trending" on March 26, 2014. It read basically that Kim Jong-Un was now requiring every grown man in North Korea to have the same haircut he currently wears. 



This story was everywhere, whether it was an Internet source, or a television source. Even Conan O'Brien made a joke about it on his show (which was disgusting in itself and I won't repeat it) showing that everyone had accepted this little tidbit as gospel truth. But I was highly skeptical - this sounded way too stupid for words.

So I went on Google. Needless to say, but I will anyway, it took me under two minutes to find an answer. I'm going to go ahead and give you the source, since they seem to be, at least for this story, the only news site that actually checked this story out at all - The Washington Post. I read the article, and found that not only had they contacted people who had actually been in North Korea only several days before, but both Korean and English publications that report on the goings-on of NK. None of their sources saw anything to suggest that this story was accurate.

In one sentence they summed it up: Don't mistake a trend for an order. Longer version: Although North Korea DOES have a limited number of hairstyles that it allows for men and women, the hairstyle of Kim Jong-Un is NOT required for anyone. If there are men with that hairstyle, it is either because they want it that way, or it is their way of showing respect to their leader.

So, on my Facebook horror page, I put the link to this article, telling people they could file this story under bullshit. Now remember, my Facebook horror page has a whole 60 people on it (I have no idea why, when other horror pages with pictures of bunnies or old movie posters have thousands). But because the words North Korea and the name of their leader was in it, it was read almost 5,000 times. That's pretty sad. Especially since NONE of them 'liked' my page (whimpers pitifully). 

This morning, March 27, 2014 when the top trending news now reported that North Korean men do not have to have this haircut (and they didn't treat it like a retraction or anything, they treated it as a new news story) I put a small paragraph on my horror page kind of saying 'Ha ha double dumbass on you'. Interestingly, only 14 people read that. I wonder why. And, I really would like to know how Conan O'Brien fared when the LGBT community heard his crude little joke last night.

So that's your lesson for today children. If something sounds a little wonky, check it out. Please. And Conan? I don't watch your show. I don't plan to start watching your show. But I do not envy what is going to happen to your ratings when the LGBT community hears what you consider is 'funny'.

https://www.facebook.com/dumbandboringmovies

NO! I SWEAR IT'S TRUE! IT HAPPENED TO MY BROTHER'S GIRLFRIEND'S COUSIN'S SON WHEN HE WAS TRAVELLING ON HOLIDAY...

Urban Legends And The People Who Swear By Them

I have mentioned before (and been roundly ignored) that besides the sick baby scams on Facebook what I hate most are the hoaxes. If you use any kind of media, whether just a browser, email, Facebook or Google + you are going to see them - sometimes several times a week. I used to get really upset with the constant barrage of them (especially those who give false medical advice that if someone actually followed could make them really sick) and I'd post links to anti-scam sites like Snopes. 

You know what I got for my trouble? Reactions ranged from 'thanks a lot' to 'well I'm glad YOU have time to look this stuff up', 'better safe than sorry', 'passing it on can't hurt', to an outright rage filled diatribe against ME for being... honest. That's why I keep all my 'friends' on a separate page I can't see unless I want to. Only a few true 'friends' are seen by me on a regular basis.

People want to believe. They like the fact that Jackie Chan, Morgan Freeman and Eddie Murphy (and, once, Bon Jovi) die on the average of once a month. They want to believe Bill Gates wants to give them $5,000. They think it's great that drinking a lot of water at certain times of the day with prevent/cure (insert malady here). 

They want to believe they can get free passes to Disneyland, Southwest Airlines, or $100 gift cards from Wal Mart, Target, (enter your favorite store here). And, most of all, THEY DO NOT WANT YOU TO TELL THEM THAT IT IS A BUNCH OF CRAP AND MOST OF IT IS YEARS OLD.

• Posting false rumors can be personally damaging to innocent individuals.
• Posting false rumors take up bandwidth and space.
• Posting false rumors take time to read, share and act upon. Time is not refundable.
• Posting false rumors often steal photos belonging to other Facebook users, which can cause much upset.
• Posting false rumors can cause unnecessary panic and distress to Facebook users.
• Posting false rumors make you look foolish.
• Posting false rumors can stir up racial hatred which causes isolation to ethnic minorities.
• Posting false rumors can help scammers.
• Posting false rumors are often designed purely to attack personal figures or companies.
• Posting false rumors induces more false rumors.
• 9 out of 10 rumors that we see circulate Facebook are either totally false or inaccurate.
• Posting false rumors devalues the extent to which social networking acts as an effective method of spreading true information.

Urban legends can be fun. 'But you dummy!' I hear you say, 'These are scams, not legends.' Hey, some of them have been around so long they're becoming legends. Like one I got a couple of months ago, the Budweiser frog screensaver hoax? That one, my friends, had it's (false) beginning in 1999! THAT is a legend. To me anyway, I find some of them hilarious. And every country in the world has them. A particularly horrible movie told of one of them. 

It was ATM (2012) about three people you don't give a damn about stuck in an ATM enclosure while a killer waits outside. Anyway, they brought up the urban legend that if you use your card but put your pin number in backwards, it sets off an alarm that will bring the police. I liked the response one gave, 'That's stupid. What if your pin was 4224? You'd be screwed.' But pressured, he DID IT ANYWAY and yup, his card was confiscated by the machine. Duh.

We are pretty familiar with a lot of the urban legends in the US, some of which actually travel to other countries (I've heard some being repeated in the UK and Australia). So what DO other countries hear that makes them swear to the heavens above that what they heard is the absolute truth (some actually claim they've seen it on the news)?

Let's start with Japan. The Asian culture is really big on curses and grudges. So while there are 'natural' urban legends there, it's the supernatural that are more fun:


Cursed Kleenex Commercial: In the 1980s, Kleenex released three Japanese commercials for their tissues, featuring a woman dressed in a white toga-like dress and a young child dressed as a Japanese ogre, sitting on straw. Each ad had the song "It's a Fine Day" by Jane & Barton playing in the background. Many viewers found the advertisement disturbing. 

Some complaints claimed the music sounded like a German curse, although the lyrics are in English. Because of its unnerving ambiance, several rumors began to circulate about the cast, such as with the crew meeting untimely deaths through accidents and the lead actress Keiko Matsuzaka either dying, being institutionalized or becoming pregnant with a demon child (Sort of sounds like the 'Poltergeist' actors' curse as several of them have met with untimely or sudden deaths.).

Red Room Curse: The Red Room story is an internet legend about a pop up which appears on the victim's computer. The image simply shows a red door and a recorded voice asks "Do you like-". Even if the pop up is closed it will repeatedly reappear until the voice finally completes the question: "Do you like the red room?". Those who have seen the pop-up are found dead, their walls painted red in their own blood. The legend began with a flash animation of a young boy being cursed after encountering the pop-up, but gained notoriety when it was found that an 11 year old schoolgirl who had killed a 12 year old had this as a bookmark on her computer.

The Slit-mouthed Woman:  Children walking alone at night may encounter a woman wearing a surgical mask, this is not an unusual sight in Japan as people wear them to protect others from their colds or sickness. The woman will stop the child and ask, 'Am I beautiful?'. If they say no, she kills them with a pair of scissors she always carries with her, but most children will answer yes, in which case the woman asks 'How about now?' and removes her mask to reveal her mouth has been slit from ear to ear. 

Regardless of whether the child answers yes or no at this point, the woman will kill them, if they say no, they are cut in half, and if they say yes, she cuts their mouths to be exactly like hers. To escape you can answer her second question with "You're average" or "So-so", and you can escape while she is confused, or you can throw fruit or sweets at her which she will pick up, thus giving the victim a chance to run. One other way is to ask her if you are pretty, she will get confused and leave. (Wow that's complicated rules for a little kid to remember).

Toire no Hanako-san: This is a famous legend associated with Japanese elementary schools (think of it as their version of 'Bloody Mary'). The story tells of an omnipresent ghost who is thought to be the spirit of a student who committed suicide due to excessive bullying. However the entity is also known to just appear for no apparent reason. Hanako-san is a popular legend in elementary schools in Japan, and supposedly haunts the third stall of the girl’s bathroom. Characterized by a pair of stark gleaming eyes, the spirit scares any person who sets eyes on it. Not known to be malevolent or vicious in any way, Hanako-san is simply an eerie entity that only serves to severely scare its victims.

Well, that's just a small sample. Later we'll see what makes kids from other countries wet their beds.

https://www.facebook.com/dumbandboringmovies

WHY FACEBOOK IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

I have been having problems lately with Facebook (says every user in the known internet world). One of the most frustrating things about Facebook is that people go by the creed that if something is in print, it must be true. Bloody freaking hell do I get a lot of garbage on my page of rumors, scams and just plain idiots.

My constant battle for truth often gets me in hot water with my 'friends'. As you know, actually, most of the people you probably have on your Facebook page are not really your personal 'friends'. They're either people who know people you know, people you play games with, or just strangers that you happened to take a chance with and decide to add them to your page. I think among those on my page, probably about 1/4 are people I personally know. And even they are sometimes prey to those that print anything and pass it on 'just in case' whether it be a lie or not.

I'm not popular on Facebook, mostly for just this reason. I can't and don't let this kind of garbage go. I just can't. The statement 'it can't hurt to pass it on' is a bunch of shi... uh, garbage. In one recent case, a person maliciously posted a statement saying a certain person was wanted for raping children. It was copied and shared over 15,000 times. There wasn't a shred of truth, proof or evidence that it was real. But that man is a pariah. Can't hurt, huh?

There have been fake Amber alerts, fake sick baby hoaxes, photoshopped pictures passed around as fact, medicine or health tips that are either just plain wrong or dangerous or at least misleading. Can't hurt, huh? One we were warned we would see and sure enough it's started is this:

“Looks like I won’t be going to work EVER!!!! Share this photo and I will give a random person 1 million dollars!”

Article: Hopeful (and gullible) Facebook users wasted no time spreading this message far and wide across the platform. At the time of this writing, the photo has received over 550,000 shares!

For those of you that don’t know, the Powerball lottery paid out 588 million dollars this week (5/24/13), and Nolan (if that is even his real name) is using the event as a way to dupe thousands of people. One of my own friends shared the photo, and when I called them out on it I got the typical response: “I figured it wasn’t true, but why not try?”

The image wasn’t genuine and has been photoshopped. It has also been pointed out that on a legitimate ticket, the numbers would be presented from the smallest to the largest, and this photo clearly shows numbers out of order.

Before getting caught up in the moment, always take a few moments and verify Facebook rumors, updates and posts. It might save you some embarrassment from looking really silly to your friends! End Article

The trouble is, the phrase 'it can't hurt' can hurt plenty. I get more grief for posting links telling of fake photos or stories you'd think I'd just stop. I mean, it's not like I'm never wrong - I'm wrong A LOT. But I'm willing to admit it and correct it. Others - not so much. In fact, posting on the above 'community page' of this scammer got me spanked by Facebook and I had to file a protest - but right now I'm banned from making 'public comments'. Nice, huh?

Another that is constant and annoying as hell are those stories that take up your whole damn page about some impassioned speech given by somebody... trouble is, it wasn't. The story usually is a compilation of different quotes from different people, attributed to a respected person, usually an actor (Morgan Freeman or Bill Cosby for example). And because it's been told so often to be fake, some people have actually posted 'I know (whoever was listed as the author) didn't write this but I agree with it'. Like that makes it okay. And makes me just that much more unpopular. Here's another:

Article: It’s a common sight on Facebook: people posting images, videos or statuses and asking users to like or comment on them. The posts usually contain some sort of promise, like “if you type ‘MOVE’ into the comments section, watch what happens to the image,” or “if this status gets 100,000 likes, I will run a marathon.” These types of viral posts, benign though they may seem, are actually a form of a Facebook scam called “Like Farming.”

These posts work by slowly gathering likes for a Facebook page, usually full of innocent content like famous quotes or photos. However, the true purpose of these pages is often to gain enough traction in Facebook’s algorithm to begin appearing in users’ news feeds. The owners of the page can then post advertising and links that reach a much wider audience because of the groundwork they’ve laid by collecting likes. They can link to whatever products or sites they wish, including products that they may receive a commission on or identity-stealing malware. 

Some of these like-gathering pages are even listed for sale in online forums, despite violating Facebook’s Terms of Use. (The AOL story linked to above mentions a Facebook page about cuddling with over 1 million likes that is listed for sale at $7,000.) Facebook users should be both smart and selective about what they like. The act of liking a page can associate a user with that page’s content, and with these underhanded “Like Farming” pages, it’s best not to give them what they want. End Article

People who do this are often called 'like whores' - not very nice but very, very accurate. They're people willing to post anything to get tons of likes on their pages. THEY WILL USE ANYTHING. Here is one more that comes up constantly and probably always will. So if I lose people who think I have nothing better to do than expose all the lies others post on my page, so be it. I could use a smaller 'friend' list anyway:

Scam Message: Who Viewed Your Profile – Introducing the new “Who Viewed Your Profile” feature on facebook!

                

The scam creators cleverly import the profile pictures of the user’s Facebook friends to make the scam appear more legitimate.

Scam Type: Profile Viewer, Rogue Browser Extension

Trending: March 2013

Why it’s a Scam:

Clicking the scam link takes you to an external website and you are prompted to install the browser extension shown below:



We decided to stop here, and we advise you to do the same.

It’s important to remember that anything offering to show you who has viewed or visited your profile is certain to be a scam. Facebook doesn’t allow developers access to the data required to create such apps or extensions. In fact, here is Facebook’s own help topic on the subject:

Can I know who’s viewing my profile (timeline) or how often it’s being viewed?

How to Deal with the Scam:

If you did make the mistake of installing the rogue browser extension, then use the guide shown below to remove it:

How to Protect Your Facebook Account From Rogue Browser Extensions

If you or your Facebook friends are falling for tricks like this, it’s time to get yourself informed of the latest threats. Be sure to join the Facecrooks page on Facebook to be kept informed of the latest security issues.

https://www.facebook.com/dumbandboringmovies

                                                                 

MOVIES I'VE REVIEWED AND WISHED I'D FORGOTTEN




Chain Letter (2009)

Now that I have an index up and running (and am busy adding to it so you can find whatever it is you want) as of 2014, this was one movie that was so familiar sounding that I had hoped I hadn't already reviewed it because it was total crap and total crap that has sat and fermented and been reviewed is... just awful. But lucky you, this was the only review of this movie and the only time I will watch it - and you shouldn't watch it at all.

I watched this 'cause of Brad Dourif, one of those character actors I'll watch in anything (you probably know him best as the voice of Chucky), even if it's about stupid high school kids and their symbiotic relationship with their electronic toys. The movie starts with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche (you know, Hitler's favorite writer): 'Life is a dark chain of events.' I think they only used it 'cause it had the word 'chain' in it.

It's a massive duh that this and the next generation has become glued to their toys. When they actually have to pass laws to prevent people from texting and driving, I think that's a good indication that things have become really ridiculous. I myself have had the same dumbphone for almost seven years and I'm not changing until the poor little thing finally gives out. It's the middle of 2014 now and it's still going just fine. 

I've got to give Sanyo props - after all this time the battery still holds a good charge, it of course makes phone calls and I do NOT have any apps or use it to FB or text (unless it's a short note to the hubby). The only device in my house that could be considered a 'smart' device I didn't touch for so long it went completely dead so I had to buy a charger for something I didn't want in the first place and still haven't set it up as of 7/14 to use for anything. I think the dumbest device is me.

Chain letters have been around when snail mail was the only means of contacting a large number of people. If you had use of a copier, you really could push stuff around. Chain letters usually had the same format - you had to send it to ten or twenty or so people or bad luck would befall you. They really, really worked. No, really! I promise you they worked.... okay okay you caught me. They were as real and reliable as a Nigerian prince. As the internet got up and running, chain letters by email became very popular as it was quite easy to purchase or just get your hands on a huge list of people to pester. 

At least it isn't one of those 'Pass this
prayer on or Jesus will cry' messages...

Then we got Facebook, who forced us to have an email in their name. Thanks a lot. Now even more can pass the garbage around. Not that you need an email to do that. How many posters appear on your Facebook page a week stating that if you spit on your cat, do a little happy dance, lick your refrigerator and fart in your pajamas that you will have good luck for the rest of the month but do it within five minutes or it will be bad luck. And how many of your 'friends' insist on passing this tripe around endlessly?

I guess this movie was trying to make a statement but what it did was just become another one of those movies with a bunch of privileged teenagers you want dead as soon as you see them. Oh and Mr. Director? Using flashes of light and shaking the camera back and forth does not create suspense, it creates a hell of a headache. Just a heads up. We start with a girl taped up and chained to what are apparently two cars who, when they go separate directions...

So someone who hates technology for no particular reason (oh it will kill us - so will a thousand other things) has decided to teach a small group of teenagers a lesson - a lethal one. Each gets a chain letter and must pass it on to five friends within 24 hours or a life will be lost. Personally I was rooting for them to just delete the thing so somebody would die - that would mean the movie is getting closer and closer to the end.


Which they do. There are some particularly gory ways in which these kids are splatted by faceless attackers and the splatter and gore is pretty respectable, even if the story has more holes than swiss cheese. Finally we're down to the smart girl (there's always one) who, at the end, wakes to find herself (say it with me - SAY IT) taped and chained up to two different cars. They belong to her parents who are so self absorbed they 1. Don't look at the car they're getting into; 2. Don't hear the chain as the car starts to move; 3. Don't look in their rearview mirrors; 4. 

Even when a car screeches in front of them they don't stop long enough for the male teen who's trying to stop them from moving (Hey wait, a teenager's still alive, what the hell?) but they ignore him. Only the mother finally looks and sees but her husband has already started zooming down the road with half of his daughter dragging on the road behind him. Huh, I guess there was no smart girl in this movie after all.