On a more serious note, I just plain hate most social networking sites. I have accounts on some. Not a lot of them, but a few. A couple art sites, Twitter (of course), Fet, YouTube, damn near all the popular social bookmarking sites and… And now?

I want to go retrieve all my information and say, “Fuck internet socializing!” But I can’t. Cause it’s all out there forever, thanks to things like The Wayback Machine and Google archives. And I’m so incredibly glad I’ve been married to a man who specializes in internet security since before social networking sites were so huge. Because compared to some of my friends, I’m an internet ghost.

MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, FetLife, B.com, the five billion and one different dating sites, YouTube, all the hundreds of different ways to save and share your bookmarks, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, GoogleTalk, and Buzz, and Friend Connect, and Reader, and…

Wikipedia lists over 100 different social networking sites, and each of them does exactly the same thing as at least a dozen others. Some people (especially bloggers) have a profile on each and every one. And they re-post what they said on each over, and over, and over again. “Johnny had peanut butter and jelly for lunch!” shows up a hundred times in your inbox if you follow the same people on each site.

But that’s only the beginning.

People put every single tiny detail of their lives on these sites. Their real name. Their address. Their email address, which is often connected to at least one credit card, if only because they use eBay on occasion. What they’re doing, and where, at any given moment, on any given day. Where they’re going on vacation, for how long, and when. What they eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and their midnight snack. How often they masturbate and with what. All their favorite things. All the things they hate. All the people they love.

We’re doing the government’s and advertisers’ jobs for them.

Looking at any single average profile on FaceBook links you to that person’s boss, coworkers, any and all companies they work for or with, the vast majority of their extended family, their children, all of their friends local or online, the schools they went to, where they grew up, their age, their birthday, the kind of car they drive, what size they wear, how much they weigh, how often they’re online, when they leave the house…

And I’m really at a loss for words. Why don’t we see the problem with this giving away of one’s anonymity?

People are posting that they’ll be on vacation for X amount of days, and acting surprised when they come home and their house is empty. Allowing sex blogger friends who only have one account (for their sex blog) to add their non-sex-blog FaceBook page to their friends list and acting confused when suddenly their friends’ reblogging of their posts are showing up in their bulletins (Or whatever it shows up in. I am not FaceBook-app savvy.). Using the same email address for their sex-blog, and their mommy blog, and their FaceBook page, and their Twitter, and then can’t figure out how Jessica Fucksalot found them in real life.

While you may think it’s awesome having over a thousand friends, the reality is, it simply means you can look at a web page and find out the names of a thousand people who have computers. I know I don’t know who half the people I follow on Twitter are. I follow most of them because they follow me. Which is probably why I’m so anal about unfollowing everyone who unfollows me. For me, it’s more about exposure, and if I make friends along the way, that rocks! But that is not the reason I chose to join Twitter, or any of the social networking sites I belong to.

People complain about internet stalkers, but we’re perpetuating it with our undying need to tell the whole world who we are, and our overzealous desire to be eFamouser than John Doe in North Dakota. Get-rich-quick schemes –that really only work for those who jumped on them before the social networking site became popular– and hopes of being noticed by some major company or publisher feed our frenzied sharing of information, when the truth is we’re just enabling more people to destroy our lives. And total strangers we’ll probably never meet face-to-face at that!

People are getting fired because they forgot they friended their boss and updated their status to say, “Called out sick. Going to the beach.”, or because their sex blogs have been found through other social networking sites, or because they posted a picture of themselves bombed out of their mind, running down the street naked and peeing in the gutter.

And you wouldn’t do those things in real life. You wouldn’t go to the grocery store and pin up pictures of yourself at last Friday’s “Girls Gone Wild” party, or a letter about how shitty your wife is, or a picture of you with a joint in one hand and a straw in the other surrounded by empty beer bottles and leering frat guys. You wouldn’t stand in the middle of the street screaming, “My name is Jefferey Fitzgerald McCofski. I live at 1617 Applejack Way in Eureka, California. My phone number is 555-867-5309. My email is FitzMcCof@gmail.com. I’m an internet shopping addict, so that email address is attached to at least three credit cards, and I just paid the premium on all of them. By the way, I’m going on vacation this week, and I won’t be back till October. PLEASE COME ROB ME!!!” (Shamelessly stolen from M.)

Or maybe you would. I sure as fuck wouldn’t.

M and I were talking, last night, about how I feel like I should be begging Him to reconsider His adamant “No way, no how!” rule when it comes to most social networking sites. How I’m being bullied into at least setting up a FaceBook page for ID and Mindcryme by the companies I work with, and my friends, and my family, and companies I don’t work with, and people I bump into on the street, and the effing government, for crying out loud.

Yeah, I know those emails I get saying, “Please ‘like’ us on FaceBook! And tell your friends to ‘like’ us, too!” are mass-mailings. I know they don’t really look at me and go, “This chick doesn’t have a FaceBook! What is wrong with her?! We need to get her on board!”

But a couple companies I’d love to work with are only on FaceBook. I miss out on a lot of opportunities by not having a FaceBook. And not just the contests. Some of my friends know that pretty much the same group of friends is following them everywhere, so they try to make each social profile different, which means I miss out on some important events in their lives because they post about them somewhere I’m not allowed to be and don’t mention them to me because they assume I read it.

“I posted about this on Tumblr. Why aren’t you keeping up with me?! Don’t you like me anymore?”

Sure, I like you fine. But not enough to jump on the social networking bandwagon anymore than I already have. Not enough to put my life, my stuff, my job, my family, my privacy (Yes, I see the irony of me, someone who babbles incessantly to anyone who’ll listen about personal aspects of my relationship, bitching about losing my privacy to the internet.), my bank account, my credit cards, my pets, or even my plants in danger.

No, I will not “like” you on FaceBook. “Liking” someone on FaceBook requires me to have a FaceBook, and it’s just not gonna happen. And I’m not gonna tell my friends to “like” you on FaceBook, either. It’s not my job to convince my friends that you, or your company, or your cause, or your campaign are awesome. It’s yours. Do your own legwork. Cause you sure as fuck ain’t doing mine for me. Hell, I’ve considered unfollowing most of you (you meaning companies, not my super cool friends and readers) on Twitter for just that reason.

“You see we all perpetuate this. And whether you realize it or not, you welcome the government, cause we say, ‘Fuck the Patriot Act!’ but we do their job for them.”

I don’t like people buying things for me. Especially when they barely have money to spend on themselves. And I’ll even put off buying something I really need (like a new pair of shoes… shut up.) for months and months so M can have things he wants. If he knew to what extent I go with this, I’d probably get smacked. Seriously.

But besides that? The things people buy these days shock and appall me. Phones that allow people to find you via GPS, clothes that look like they just stepped out of an 80s hair band music video, games that have so much gore and ridiculousness that you lose the point of the game…

So here it is. The top five things people are buying that I do not want.

Number 5:

OnStar – Once upon a time, this wasn’t necessary. If you were in obvious distress on the side of the road, people would stop. Check on you to make sure you were all right. Let you use their phone. There was no need for a GPS tracking system in your car. Or a two way communication system allowing someone to hear you while you’re driving down the road.

I know all the benefits. Believe me, I do. But you know what? I’ve survived 29 years of driving all over the country and have never once gotten stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting in touch with someone in an emergency. Even when the idiot ex managed to slide us into a three foot snowbank, on Valentine’s Day, with the kids in the car, smack dab in the middle of farm country, we managed to flag someone down and get help. It took an hour, but I prefer that to having a GPS tracking system in my vehicle.

And don’t give me the “But, Rayne, what if?” speech. Because the answer to all your “what ifs” is “I don’t care.”

I don’t care if OnStar has saved thousands, millions or even billions of lives. In your car is a GPS tracking system. That means the government – or anyone else with the technology and desire, for that matter – can track you down whenever and where ever they want. They can pinpoint your location at the touch of a button. And don’t think for a second that they wouldn’t if they wanted to find you for some reason. They do. Frequently.

Number 4:

Baby Phat – For those of you not in the know, Baby Phat is one of the leading hip hop brands for female apparel. Which means it’s the favored brand of the ladies out here in Schenectady. While there are a couple outfits on their site that I would rock with pride – Like this one. I want! – the majority of their clothes are just too shiny for me.

Baby Phat, you’re beautiful, but lose the shine. Seriously.

I understand the need for “bling” out here. It makes a person feel good when they’re so broke they’re starving. But really, what’s a fat girl like me doing walking around with a giant golden cat on her chest? It’s blinding!

I’m really not sure what’s up with the trend of wearing glittering metallic clothing. I don’t like it. It looks phony. And it screams “Oh my god look at me!” Just… ew.

Number 3:

PSP (PlayStation Portable) – GameBoy was a bit much. Really.

It was rockin’ awesome that I had something to keep me occupied in the car when we traveled cross country to grandma’s house. But it got to the point that I was so addicted to that hand-held gadget – that only played games! It didn’t double as a cellphone or allow me to watch full-length movies or connect to the internet. It just played games. – that I didn’t even play my Nintendo anymore.

I stopped reading. Why should I read when playing video games just became so much more convenient? Hell, the GameBoy was smaller, and, in some cases, lighter than my books. And if the book I happened to be reading was boring, it was sure a hell of a lot more fun. You knew, with the GameBoy, that all it took for entertainment was the flip of a switch!

I could see myself being worse with PSP. And I see kids around here worse with PSP. Sneaking it in their backpack so they have something to do “at the bus stop” and then sitting through class playing it under their desk. Walking down the street almost getting hit by cars cause they can’t lift their eyes from the screen long enough to cross safely. It’s just… sad.

Number 2:

Sony Vaio Notebooks – I don’t have a lot to say about why I don’t want this. I just don’t.

Okay, I have a little to say.

When Vista first came out, the Vaio came with a factory install. And let me tell you, Vista sucks ass. I mean, even Microsoft admits that Vista sucks ass. When have you ever known them to rush production? And they sure as hell rushed to have Windows 7 out, didn’t they?

So, now Vaio comes with Windows 7. And normally, companies listening to their customers would make me happier than a pig in shit. But Vaio is wicked sensitive. As in, my mother spilled a thimbleful of water on her Vaio and it was completely fried. It could have been fixed but…

The warranty might as well only cover out-of-the-box problems. The hoops you have to jump through to prove that the problem wasn’t caused by you are ridiculous. So if it breaks of its own volition before the warranty runs out, and you can’t prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you didn’t cause it? Expect to be stuck with the repair bill or the price of another laptop.

And trust, the repair bill will be huge. The estimate for my mother’s repairs (She needed a new motherboard.), not including labor or tax, was a couple hundred dollars over what she ended up spending on a new laptop.

I’m clumsy, remember? My Vaio would be dead in three minutes flat! And then what? I’ll pass, please and thanks.

And weighing in as the top thing people are buying that I don’t want:

The iPhone – Okay, really? I get it. I do. I’ve seen some of the apps – like Yowza! Yowza! is hella cool! You can save tons of money through them! – and I understand this growing need we have to be in touch with everyone in the world.

Okay, I don’t understand that need. It blows my mind, actually.

M has this smart phone for work from ATT and I. fucking. hate it. It never leaves his hand unless he’s at his computer. And even when he’s at His computer, it’s not far away.

And it’s got all the bells and whistles. He can check his email, babble on Twitter, play games, browse the web. Occasionally, he checks bus schedules and the news and his job’s network. He’s so connected I swear the fucking thing is plugged into his brain.

And why? Because they knew that if they bought their engineers a gadget that kept them plugged in, they’d stay plugged in. And it worked!

You’re all sheep. You’re playing right into their grubby little hands with your Blackberries and iPhones and wireless notebooks that have a five hundred year battery charge. But whatever. While you waste your life on staying connected, I’m gonna keep writing for a living and staying disconnected. It works for me.

What are some things everyone wants that you guys think are lame?