Body Corporate

So I have been in the corporate game for over a month now, and the first thing I noticed was that there really is no such thing as a free lunch. During our grad induction, they fed us really well, but I noticed there was a bit of a catch to all the free food. At these lunches, there were always past grads, senior managers, and occasionally executives, and it's quite difficult to make an impression on them if your mouth is stuffed full of tasty, tasty, sandwiches. Of course, they make the impression that networking is really important, and if you don't make yourself known within the company, then you might as well put on a jumpsuit and pull out a mop and bucket, because as far as anyone is concerned, you're just another cog in the machine.

Seeing as I love food as much as I do, I opted to pile my plate with sandwiches and listen to a pair of twins make fun of me riding to dwarf weddings on unicorns in WoW (one of them noticed I was playing Secret of the Magic Crystals on Steam, and I think it melted his brain a little - they're both hardcore FPS gamers). The truth of the matter is, I have no interest in sucking up to people that I don't like. If I suck up to them, then someday I might end up working for them, and I will just get more and more angry at them to the point where I end up punching a hole in their desk out of frustration, and then I'll probably get fired. It doesn't make sense to put myself in that situation in the first place - would it be better to just be in some lowly position than be unemployed?

I don't think any of this is the fault of the company I work for - in fact, almost all of my team is really friendly towards me, and I'm starting to feel more a part of the group now that I've gone to a few of their social events. I think it's just more the fact that the role I'm in isn't really suited to me so I'm often left wondering why they hired me in the first place. The #se440 people say that it must be a bad place to work if Leigh is working there and I can't help but feel that maybe I am the less alcoholic version of Leigh (but not as good at Starcraft 2). In most cases, I wouldn't describe myself as organised or responsible, and it seems that that is also the general feeling of my friends. I am far better at making friends than I am at doing anything useful like programming or management.

In high school, in came up with a hypothetical that I often end up asking myself. Imagine that a new compound is discovered. Upon a preliminary analysis, scientists end up concluding that the element has the properties of the universal panacea. There is much rejoicing. However, before they are ready to announce their discovery to the world, another study finds two new things: there is only a limited supply of this element in the world, and once it is used, it is broken down into components that can never be reassembled. Given another 300 years of analysis, they may be able to replicate the component and mass produce it (how they know it is 300 years is irrelevant). The more of it they use up, the longer it will take before they can mass produce it, as they will have less to perform tests on.

So now imagine that for some reason, you are on the threshold of death. What is so important about you that these scientists should use up some of this compound in order to prolong your life?

I have never been able to answer that question to my satisfaction - the only answer I could come up with was that there is a small, small chance that I might discover or create something that would improve the world in some significant way, but to be honest, that is so unlikely that if I ever were in that situation, I wouldn't even bother contacting them. "Hi guys, I can make basic spreadsheets and fold Post-It notes into paper cranes - please delay the improvement of mankind and save me."

Why do we go to such lengths to save sick people? When I asked Stanley for some cake recipes that are allergy friendly, he said to me that it's the survival of the fittest. If we keep sick people around, aren't we just further polluting our gene pool? In the rest of the animal kingdom, the elderly and the sick are usually the first to fall prey to predators. Then again, we have managed to spread to many different areas of the world despite everything, so we must be doing something right.

Leaving the Social Network, Part 2

Have you ever held a non-Facebook people only event (and if so, how do you know who isn't on Facebook without having one yourself)?

Olek:

No, why would I want to distinguish between friends who use facebook and friends who don't? I think the question can be re-phrased to ask "how do you know who to invite to an event if they're not on facebook?" to which I would say email contact lists (address book). I think events are what I would use facebook for if it wasn't facebook, if it was just the events component. Some people may only want to go to events if certain other people are going, and some people may only want to go if certain other people aren't going. This is the sort of thing handled really well by facebook (unless the event admin makes the guest list private). A good idea for a web2.0 app would be to make an event organiser which can interface with facebook but not require it, which would allow for RSVP, and let you invite contacts by twitter name or by email or facebook or openID (without it being shown), and having a common "wall" for the event where people can comment. There may already be an app like this, I haven't checked.

GP:

Off the top of my head, I only know one other person who doesn't have FB, the boyfriend of a friend, and while I get along fine with him, I don't think I'd ever need to hold a party with him alone. He organised a surprise birthday for our mutual contact, and invited everyone, including me, by phone.

I guess I find out during small talk at parties, or over other media. I still frequent forums on the net.

My thoughts: I don't really care about exclusivity either, and I wouldn't be deleting my Facebook for some "OMG, I'm so different, look at me, and how cool I am for not having a Facebook!" reason.

GP's question: Do people (strangers) ever respond negatively when they find out you don't have Facebook? What about your friends?

Olek:

yes, occasionally. My friends mostly know now and seem to accept it even if they don't necessarily agree (i think for them the convenience for events trumps other stuff).

Strangers: Nope, not negatively. Maybe with a vague sense of curiosity. But most of the time not even that. I don't think that many people actually think it's that big a deal, facebook isn't really srs bsns.

GP:

I've never been insulted or attacked by a stranger I'd just met for not having FB. People are usually more stunned and curious than hostile, and in my limited experience, they are happy to hand over phone numbers or email addresses if they want to remain in contact. My friends were (and still are) incredulous over my decision, and often bring it up in exasperation, but have never been particularly negative.

My thoughts: I think these days, it's just a natural assumption that everyone has Facebook. I gave some people my email address at work for the purpose of adding me on Starcraft 2, but instead, they added me on Facebook. I guess it's still fairly new that it doesn't elicit the same response as, for example, finding out someone doesn't own a TV. That always gets me, even though I don't even watch TV anymore!

How do you go about organising an event and inviting people?

Olek:

Email. I get invited to events also by gtalk and sometimes irc and sometimes twitter. But if I was organising an event I just use email.

GP:

Texting. Even plans made face to face are confirmed via text. I usually send a message to one or two close friends, confirming a time and date they're free. If they reply affirmatively, I then send a mass text to all the people I want to invite. I've never organised a massive event, although I was planning a surprise birthday last year (it never came to fruition, damn exams). I was going to use email, which is still better than FB, because I don't know if you can hide an invite (say, a surprise birthday) from an individual friend (say, the birthday person) on FB.

It is possible to invite me to an event over Facebook by inputting my email address somewhere during the event creation. I can then see basic details about the event, such as date and time. I can also be added into private messages, and while I cannot reply, I receive an email update every time someone else replies, meaning I can at least listen to group discussions.

My thoughts: I actually prefer email for organising events - at least email with threaded conversations. I like how easy it is to branch off into smaller conversations to discuss things that don't concern everyone else, but still keep it all in one place for easy reference. I organised almost all of MrMan5.5's surprise party via email, but I had to resort to Facebook for the people who never seem to check their email and SMSes to his mum.

Has your phone bill become more expensive since deleting your Facebook?

Olek:

Ha! No. I barely use my phone. I pre-pay which gives you a month to use the credit, and I'll often get to the end of the month and have used only $10. I sometimes go weeks without buying credit for my phone. Although, I just have a normal phone, not a smartphone/iphone so I don't need a plan so that I can get 3G or whatever. (I don't intend to get an iphone/smartphone, but that's a different story).

GP:

Yes.

Do you find that you are "behind the times", in that your friends seem to know what's going on in each other's lives, and you are always the last one to find out any news?

Olek:

Yes and no. There are certainly times when I find out news about friends after other friends because I'm not on facebook. However, generally I prefer to talk to people in real life about what they've been doing rather than read their facebook walls and status updates. If I haven't heard from someone in a while then there's more to hear about when you do. Besides there's nothing really wrong with hearing things late. If they haven't told you about some big event directly then it's clearly not that important that you know, or they're not such a close friend anyway.

GP:

Surprisingly, no, but I think I'm the exception to this rule. I don't think major news, at least amongst my friends, was/is spread publicly via FB too much, and I was never part of any sort of gossip private message circle when I did have FB. This is an interesting question for me, because I major in Journalism. I ask lots of questions, and people generally enjoy confiding in me, and as such I'm actually usually the first person to find out important news. A close friend recently broke up with his long time girlfriend, and while it was announced on FB soon after, another friend on holiday overseas texted me first to find out what the hell was going on before she started talking on FB, as she knew I'd have all the news first.

My thoughts: I'm not a big fan of gossip. If only I could reach some sort of agreement with everyone I know - if you don't gossip about me, I won't gossip about you. Unfortunately, gossip seems to be such an integral part of social interaction - though it is exciting sometimes! Although most of my gossip seems to come from QC, so I wouldn't really lose that from deleting Facebook.

What is your main method of communication with your friends?

Olek:

I don't really have one main one, I use several depending on which friends I'm communicating with: email, google talk, irc, twitter, sometimes sms.

GP:

SMS. I've never called people much, and oddly my friends don't seem to use email much. I know for a fact that some of my close friends don't actually know my email address.

My thoughts: Who knows people's email addresses these days? They're like phone numbers - store them in your address book, and never look at it again. I really dislike Facebook chat. It's slow, has stupid icons, and any noob on your friends list can message you - which I guess begs the question of why did I added them in the first place....

Do you find that you have more spare time to read things you are interested in, rather than being inundated with the boring minutiae of the lives of people you may barely know, or just more spare time in general?

Olek:

Erm, I use twitter alot (too much), so I still get my fair share of timewastiness. Twitter does tend to be more relevant and interesting than facebook though. When facebook changed so that it was more like twitter with the status updates, it didn't really replicate twitter. The feel is very different. Not many people talk about what they've been doing ("got coffeee, had a shower"), it's often tweeting about important stuff (or atleast what's in the media) and insights into things they might've seen (like during the QLD floods people posting videos/photos of the situation). It feels sometimes a little like a massive irc channel, but with celebrities and stuff posting links to funny things they're interested in too.

GP:

Unfortunately, I still spend the same amount of time on the computer. It's funny, now I don't spend time on Facebook, I spend more time reading news sites and catching up on current affairs. Essentially, I've traded the minutiae of about 100 people for the minutiae of almost 7 billion.

My thoughts: I don't think the reduce time-wasting purpose of getting rid of Facebook applies to me. Like Olek and GP, I'd probably just spend more time online doing something else.

Do you find that you want to spend more time with your friends just to

catch-up now that you're not on Facebook?

Olek:

No. I never thought of Facebook as a way to catchup with friends anyway, so not having it hasn't really changed anything. I don't find the communication it facilitates to be rich enough for me to want to use it like that. I prefer real life (or atleast voice).

GP:

Yes. I don't really distinguish a status update from an SMS, and now that I only have SMS, I've realised how impersonal, cold and emotionless a text is. I'm not a fan of moving our entire social lives over to the internet, as so much nuance, so much complexity, is lost in translation. I'm generally an anti-social person, but I've definitely found I want to spend more time with friends in real-life. Being able to share their stories, experiencing every emotion and memory together with them; it is so much more fulfilling than clicking a link to a YouTube video over Facebook. I worry that our ability to truly connect with another person will be lost in the future due to the banality of social media.

My thoughts: I'm not a big fan of catch-ups in the first place. While there are a few people I like to meet up with every now and again because I haven't seen them in so long, in general, I usually only like to meet up with people if I really enjoy spending time with them. I don't know... sometimes I find it a bit of a hassle when someone wants to meet up for coffee out of the blue to "catch up", when we really weren't all that close to begin with. It's a bit like the small talk you make with people you have just met. I find that the people I spend a lot of time with are the people I tend to click really well with, and being with them is fairly easy. As opposed to some friendships where I still value them as a friend, but they're not the kind of friend I could chat with for two or three hours and wonder where the time went.

Although, I guess it's important to catch-up with people, as otherwise you will lose friendships, and it also might mean you miss out on finding out something important about someone - something that completely changes how you think about them. I should really get out of my comfort zone a lot more often. =(

And that concludes the 2-part series on leaving Facebook! I have been given quite a lot of food fodder for thought, thank you Olek and GP. =)

Leaving the Social Network, Part 1

(This blog post ended up being quite long, so I'm splitting it into parts.)

I find that the more I want to do with my life, the more worried I am about being "exposed" for thinking a certain way that some people may find undesirable. Which I feel is also a bit ridiculous, as I am someone who believes in freedom of speech, but at the same time, I know that there will be people out there who will form preconceptions about me if they were to find out about the things that I am interested in.

In fact, today we had a BBQ for all the tech people in my building, and of the 350 or so people who were there, David pointed out that there were very few females. Albert jokingly added, "That means you'll go far in this company, Anna." I know he was kidding, but I replied saying that if I ever did get promoted, all of my co-workers would wonder if it was because I slept with one of the higher-ups, and soon I'd be hated by everyone - I imagine that my various blog posts on the topic of sex probably wouldn't help defend my innocence. While the females in senior positions that I have met so far are well-liked, I know in my last job, there were a lot of rumours going around about various dealers sleeping with people in order to get their second game earlier.

Obviously, one of the ways in which I could reduce this threat would be to delete my blog, but again, the freedom of speech thing comes up again. Also, blogging is very therapeutic for me. I've never blogged with the intention of being picked up by some publishing company, or tried to be the gossip hub of my friendship circles where everyone would check here to find out all the juicy developments. I enjoy being able to lay out my thoughts, and if I'm writing for an audience, then it forces me to try to explain myself as best I can, and this can often lead to a realisation that my thinking is illogical (or someone will at least point it out in the comments).

My next thought was to delete my Facebook. Facebook is notorious for its privacy issues, and I think that without it, people are very unlikely to make the link between me and this blog. The guy who tried to take on Anonymous was an idiot, but I believe that there is some truth in his theory that you can work out information about someone on Facebook despite how private they make their settings, because not all of their friends will have use the same settings. I blogged a while back about the Blizzard RealID debacle where someone was able to find out so much information about someone given only their first and last names, and which city they lived in.

Ever since I joined the ranks of the smartphone owners, I've been more and more active on Facebook. A lot of what I do is read things that Luke links, which I could probably do from Twitter, but Twitter links don't have that preview feature that you can get from Facebook, so I don't like waiting for something to load unless I know I'm likely to want to read all of it. Other than that, I have more of a passive use, which is so that people are able to invite me to events.

When I create events, I will usually have a guest list in mind, so I will invite people from my mental guest list (although I always start typing Olek's name in, before remembering that he doesn't have a Facebook anymore, but that just ends up being a trigger to remind me to email him instead), then I will browse the rest of my list to see if I forgot anyone. So losing the ability to invite people over Facebook isn't really that much of an issue for me. If I didn't add them to my mental checklist in the first place, then they're probably not 100% suited for the event (in terms of interest in the activity, cohesion with the rest of the people invited, general availability).

I know that deleting a Facebook isn't the end of the world - Team Zuckerberg is ready and willing to hand me back my account if I decided it was all a mistake, but I thought I'd ask two of my friends who have done it how they dealt with it before trying it myself.

Why did you delete your Facebook account?

Olek:

Privacy concerns and lack of control you have over your own information. It was around the time the facebook privacy issues were in the media. Some geeky people (mostly Cory Doctorow) started deleting their accounts and once I read their reasons I did as well. I should probably mention I didn't use it that much anyway, well not as much as other people. I didn't play games on it, or have important contacts on it (like some people have business contacts that don't want to lose and therefore don't want to delete the account). I used it mostly for events and occasionally looking at photos.

A lot of people say things like "oh I only use it for events, I don't have personal info on there, and my account is on highest privacy settings so no one I don't know can see what I do anyway." The thing is though, it doesn't make that much difference. You still appear in photos other people put up of you and they can still tag you in them, they just can't get to your wall. Also, people leave accounts logged on in public(ish) places like university computer labs or net cafes and people can just come along and snoop around. Also there's nothing stopping a "friend" of yours from being on their facebook with a bunch of their friends (but not necessarily yours) in the room and going around trolling. Also nothing to stop them copy-pasting images and sharing them over imageshack or whatever. There's loads of ways to abuse the facebook privacy settings. You can still make a minimal facebook account with just a fake name which you use just for being invited to events...which is possibly okay, but it leads me into my second point...

I don't like that facebook has become the de facto tool for organising events. Something like that should be separate from other information. Having all your info in one "basket" means there's a single point of failure for having all your info leaked. Google has the same problem with their products. Whether anyone really cares about your info is another issue. There's a tradeoff between privacy and functionality with most of these Web2.0 apps. I don't find the functionality of facebook to be worth the amount of info it wants me to put up or the privacy concerns associated with it.

There's another side to this also which I only came across recently while watching this roundpanel discussion about Wikileaks and internet democracy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMzEdkiz5tY). Basically someone on the panel asks (paraphrasing) "what will people do when their primary form of communication is a closed platform owned by companies subject to the law?" Or something similar. This is basically the case with facebook and twitter. They're both companies which have been hit by US government subpoenas asking for usernames, ip addresses, contact details, BANK details, etc. We only really heard about it from twitter since they were the only ones to try and fight this subpoena (but you can bet anything that facebook and google also received one (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/07/twitter/subpoena.pdf)). Not only do I not like it that facebook is now the de facto event organiser, I also don't like how the de facto forms of COMMUNICATION are now privately owned by companies which can be subpoena'd (and worse). This all sounds a bit paranoid but it's also the principle of the thing.

GP:

I was using it too much. Checking it every 10 minutes, wasting time playing Mafia games (Farmville wasn't around when I had FB), it was a drain on my life. I spend way too much time on the computer anyway, and I figured the time I spent off FB could be used for a better purpose.

Also, while I'm often very interested about serious issues people face in life, I don't much care for the boring minutiae and myriad random details people post on FB and Twitter. I honestly don't care if you thought the train was late today. It's late most days. It isn't news! I know a wide variety of people, but I don't have many close friends, and I was beginning to find all the status updates draining. (you can now remove people from your feed, apparently).

Mostly, however, I think I deleted my Facebook account because I was feeling bored and a little down one day, and just did it for the hell of it. I promptly reactivated it very briefly in order to steal the very useful list of birthdays, allowing me to remain at an optimal social level. (I send a text on their birthday.) It has been completely deleted though now, no chance of getting it back.

My thoughts: I agree with Olek on the privacy issues. I've been doing compliance training at work, and one of the topics I did was on the Privacy Act (seeing as a lot of bank employees can potentially access pretty private data), which in a nutshell is: "We have to tell you what we're going to do with your data, we can't collect stuff we don't need (like sexual orientation) and we'll try our best to keep it secure, but we may have to release it if ordered to by a court." We can feel safe, as Civ III rules state that a democracy has minimal corruption, not every country is ruled by a democracy, and you may find that if you are in trouble overseas, your country might not save you due to political pressure.

I second GP's comment about a lot of status updates not being "news". There are so many passive-aggressive comments on my feed that I have to wonder if it's just me who seems to attract emo people. I once made the mistake of asking someone if they were OK, then was bombarded with cryptic replies along the lines of, "I can't believe that happened to you!" or "Next time we see each other, I'll sort it out!" and I never even found out what the issue was!

How do you feel when your friends have been invited to an event and you haven't? Have you ever decided to gatecrash anyway?

Olek:

Well usually I get people asking if I'm going to be there before it happens. When I say I don't know about it, they just invite me anyway. I never find out about secret events to which I'm not invited, unless I'm then invited.

GP:

Obviously I feel a little left out, but honestly it doesn't happen that often. I give credit to my friends, who are quite adept at telling me about parties before they happen. The main people who don't invite me to parties are usually partners of my friends, those who I've met, but don't know the friendship groups well enough to think too hard about inviting certain people. One girlfriend of a mate in particular has forgotten me several times, but she seems genuinely apologetic about it. I have considered gatecrashing her parties, as I'm sure I'd be welcome, but never have.

I often won't get invited by the person who is hosting/creating the event, but they usually ask "could someone message GP about this?" I always feel flattered when that happens.

The one thing I miss about events is the random invitations to parties from friends of friends, as they simply tick everyone off their friend list. A guy who I'd only met briefly once at a party invited me to his intimate 21st over FB once. I had a great time, despite not knowing anyone (our mutual friend arrived late), and made some friends I still talk to today (and who invite me to parties off FB...). The random party never happens any more.

My thoughts: I guess the thing that I'm most concerned about is, "Would anyone really want me there?" I don't consider myself outgoing enough to be a "party-girl", and I fear that if I wasn't on Facebook, would people actually make the effort to make sure I am invited? Obviously Olek and GP are too popular to ever have to worry about this. =P

Roll d20 For Friendship

I went to a CYN lunch with some of the Mergo people, and it dawned on me that a lot of the Mergo people have been friends since high school, and still regularly talk to each other. Sometimes my high school friends invite me to do things with them, but whenever I want to do something, my high school friends are rarely the first people who come to mind. I guess I've always felt like my uni friends are the friends I chose, and my high school friends were the people I got along with the most out of the 60-odd people in my year level (I realised there were more people in MrMan5.5's Year 12 class than my entire school). I think the only person I really see from high school is Sharon, and Kelly on the odd occasion that I do something with her and ArO.

Anyway, back to the Mergo people. I call them that, because I can't think of a better way to refer to them. In my head, I normally call them Paul's high school friends, since I kinda met him first, but they're my friends as well, so it's not like how I can call Graham's South Lawn friends the South Lawn people, because I guess I don't really think of them as my own friends. I think right now I feel like I want something like the Mergo people. I've never really had a group of friends that I thought of as my "crew", I've had phases where I've wanted to hang out with certain people, usually related to what I spend most of my time doing at any given point in time (e.g. When I was playing WoW a lot, I spent most of my time either talking to WoW people online, or going to WoW dinners (or playing WoW)).

So the answer came to me at the CYN lunch in the form of GMJoe. Strangely, it turns out that he was the first Mergo person I met, with the second being Sphericus, and I believe Paul is third, though I may have met others, just not remembered it. I don't know why, but during the lunch, I had a strange feeling that I had met GMJoe before, and so I asked him about it, and it turns out that he was the one who introduced me to the game Paranoia. (Funnily, when he was telling me about Paranoia the second time, I mentioned that someone had given me a brief explanation a few years back, not realising that person was him.) I believe that at the time, I expressed interest in joining his game, but then didn't see him for many years, and so I'm guessing that's a no.

After the lunch, GMJoe lamented that he is always the GM and never a player and asked if I was interested in running a game. After much thought, I decided that maybe this is the solution. I wanted a close-knit group of friends, and this might be one way to create one, plus, I feel a bit weird having been the president of II but never having run a game. I don't know what type of game I want to run, when I'll even have the time (probably the most important factor), or even where I'll run it (maybe after I move out). I'm half-tempted to mention it to GMJoe and then never invite him, but I'm not petty like that. Maybe...