Sex is FREE!

I thought this video was cute. It is two guys kissing after being prodded or dared by their friends. If they were girls it would be soooo 1999.

The last comment in my cap is priceless. Sure homosexuality is wrong in your head, but in your pants it’s oh so right!

And yes for the record I love to watch guys kissing but in RL, not so much on video.

I built my first homepage in early 1995. I have always loved home pages built by people who talk about anything and everything that is of interest to them. I admire someone who will go through the trouble of documenting their life and hobbies to teach others. It takes a bright and intelligent individual to figure out how to make a website and then consistently add to it.

MySpace

Today however, the web is not reserved for bright people anymore and every vapid attention seeker and her dumb little brother can have a MySpace page or a Facebook account. When Kendra Wilkinson or Brody Jenner refer to their MySpace page as their official blog, I just cannot help but chuckle. How can you say this in the same breath as you talk about business and professional aspirations. A few years ago people would have told me to shut my elitist mouth up because MySpace did give us celebrities like Tila Tequila. What would we be without Tila?! In two years will we be asking “Where would we be without Tina Chen“? The state of the world is so glib that the bar has dropped very low on acceptable distractions. Anything will do.

Facebook

I have never had a MySpace account but I joined Facebook after a few friend nagged me to join (By that I mean in person nagging, not stupid e-mail spam notifications.) While Facebook is getting dumbed down, it is possible to configure it so you don’t have to suffer the consequences. Today I only have a few applications and they all display things that I have made myself such as my pictures, my videos, my Kiva.org businesses, my crafts, RSS feeds from 4 blogs (but not this one) and the few books I have read through. No glitter text porn star name for me (though I am very proud to not only, have a “porn star name”, but own the accompanying domain name too LOL) Basically my motto is: “If I didn’t painstakingly make it myself, it does not belong on my Facebook profile.”

I am quick to point out to people the security problems associated with certain settings in Facebook especially when it comes to viewable pictures that might depict something that is funny to them and their friends but perhaps not appropriate to show friends-of-friends or the public at large. That’s when they usually think I am a crazy stalker and ignore me until they run into someone they barely know who make salacious comments about their new thong bikini.

I discovered that there are crazy mass befrienders and pedophiles on Facebook when I became friends with Yoshi’s (TPB’s) 13-year-old brother Chibiyoshi. I triangulated all of his “friends” dropping the schoolmates and sports celebrities only to wind up with a list of a dozen random adults he did not seem to know in person. These people were either “friends” with a whole bunch of teenage boys or published inappropriate content (pictures and video) to his SuperWall. I went over the profile with Yoshi and we identified all the inappropriate applications that give access to him (by unknown adults) and Yoshi took care to clean up his little brother’s profile (and endure the firestorm of complaints and anger that ensued obviously.) As adults we are responsible for his well being even if we are not his direct parents. Too many kids are hurt while unrelated adults mind their own business. I think it is hard to explain to young teenagers how adults use their photos because they do not have a sophisticated understanding of “adult sexual intent” and most likely will never fully understand criminal, sexually deviant, psycopathic or sosciopathic intent. The number of these people is not great but applications like Facebook makes it easier for them to find you in search by searching through high schools. After almost 20 years on BBses and the Internet, I am still learning the makeup of the intent, desires and thought process or people who fall into those categories. After using Facebook to track and hunt down a very active criminal I can also appreciate that Facebook is a great counterstrike tool as well.

I feel that I must do something though to warn parents who’s 13 year olds will soon have access to Facebook as they enter high school next month. I live in a French speaking area and I fear French speaking parents do not have access to adequate information to understand and supervise their teen’s access to Facebook. The few articles written on the subject are only available in English and they only scrape the surface of how Facebook works. There are other issues as well because Facebook will most likely be the first public forum that teens access where online responsibility is a must. Because Facebook associates everything to your real name, great care must be taken when you use it.

But then again, sometimes we can be glad some dumb people don’t.

I was going to write about how I love Facebook too but I’ll keep it for another time…

A Special Gift
by Eva Vavoom

Well-to-do Waspy parents with their 13-year-old son in the dining room.

Mother: “William, your father and I thought that you deserve a gift for getting good grades this year.”

A proud dad hands his son a flat box that looks like a book with the bold title:

The son’s eyes widen as he opens the box to find a Wi-Fi enabled laptop computer.

William: “This is the coolest gift ever! Thanks mom and dad, I love it so much I am going to sleep with it!”

–
These short social commentary and comedy scripts are meant to be made into cartoons, videos or art pieces. They are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada. To browse the Creative Commons scripts see the Scripts category. I have further material that is too long to post here at this time and will develop into TV treatments.

A Special Gift by Eva Vavoom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at www.evavavoom.com.

A bit over 3 years ago when I became single after 10 years in long-term monogamous relationships, I signed up for Lavalife. I quickly found out that people don’t really use the dating and relationship sections, just the “player” one. I was kind of put off by most profiles and only got messages from 20 year olds. User base is a bit young. Still I met the most wonderful guy (still lovin’ after more than 3 years!) and also became acquainted with someone who introduced me to my friend Viky and consequently most of my female friends in Montreal. He also became a friend and frequent business partner. So while I think that Lavalife was mostly a bad source of datable men, there appear to be a few good apples in there.

I tried Science Connection. It is a site for science geeks. I have known of its existence since 1990 when they ran ads in Toronto weekend papers. I used to have a lot of time on my hands while working in a museum and would read the Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal Saturday papers from cover to cover during my shifts, including the funny personals. SC has very few members in my area, like 3 at the most. I dated M., a 52 year-old scientist who passed for 30 everywhere we went. He’s since move to Toronto. I also went on a date with a German post-doctorate from New York City. We ran around Soho looking for official fireman t-shirts. Often, very geeky guys find me amusing (maybe attractive) but are too shy to do anything about it. But it’s okay, it’s a date not a contest.

I was invited by a geeky friend to try Badoo (He’s yummy but would rather talk about dragons than take me out.) Profiles on badoo are robo-texted from a membership form. It has a wide base of users from other countries. It is also full of ‘Nigerian’ scammers. I quickly noticed that men on Badoo do not have reading or writing skills. Here are a few funny ones:

I deleted my profile a while back. I was irked by the messages I was getting even though I was specifically asking for LOCAL only, no chatting or camming. All I got was crude requests written in LOLCat. I could not find anything redeeming about Badoo to tell you about.

I recently created a profile on OKCupid. I joined a while back because of the funny tests.

As an aside, here’s my recent collection of funny questions from the site.

That’s what people in polling call a leading question. Bombs, no but AWESOME bombs, maybe!

This one from an equality and acceptance test. Had some interesting questions!

This from a sexual purity test that has 100 question and failed towards the end. I don’t have the patience to do it again. To think that when I saw this question at first I was like: “Kewl a new sex thing!”

OK Cupid is actually a dating site. It’s free and it is full of geeks!!! It must have a lot of shirtless 20 year-olds with backwards caps but I can’t see them because of the matching system. I feel like it’s 1994 again and I am surrounded by true tech nerds I already know W. my best match on the site. He clocks in a 80% compatibility way above everyone else. He is a fantastic person so I have confidence in their matching capabilities. I am surprised that guys read all the way through my purposefully long profile and make specific comments on parts of it. Wow, they can actually read, and even between the lines, impressive!!! Now all I have to do is kick myself out of the house to go on a date and I am doing that tonight.

I have consumed so many police dramas and forensic shows in my life (starting with Hawaii 5-0) that I spend a lot of time processing info into CSI scripts in my head. Evidently when the topic of crime comes up, I have the best and creepiest scenarios in the bunch. I don’t watch Law & Order: SVU anymore, it just saddens the hell out of me. This is how you know that a topic that creeps me out is the victimization of young people. It kind of depresses me but I know that if I want to work towards helping young victims of crime, I have to get over it. Writing about how teens make themselves vulnerable online and off might be good therapy for me.

A few days ago I wrote about “Are You Interested?“. This app has about a million daily users, mostly teens. Most 13-17 year olds who use this application will have a high school and class year listed under their name once you find them in Facebook search. Even though I cannot view their profile, I have their full name, what school they go to and in what grade they are. The picture is also useful to spot them in a crowd. I know who all their friends are and I have their picture as well. Sure, some pervert from across the ocean probably wont abduct you as you exit school but locally, this might be too much information to leave lying around.

Here is an example of me creeping out a 18-year-old in Chicago. I was on a Webmaster forum in 2003 and would get messages from this kid. I chatted with him a few times. We had platonic conversations which is him making innuendos and me not really biting. Cyber-flirting makes me want to puke. He was desperate for me to call him so he gave me his phone number. Many days later, I called him to say hi. I knew I had a valid phone number. He did mention he liked Wired magazine.

I reverse-looked-up his phone number, got his address and sent him a 12$ gift subscription of WIRED Magazine. He thought I was a total hacker. When I do something like that, I fear I come off as a total perv rather than someone trying to raise awareness. But truthfully, I did stuff like that for cheap giggles. It is how I realized that just by being who I am (apparently a super hot MILF) I can easily attract all the guys who have ever seen American Pie and wield an amazing amount of influence over them. Wow, I have SUPAPAWA!!! But sincerely, let’s try to use them for good

I don’t really consider myself a hacker, I’ve just been using this Internet-like technology for 18 years. As a programmer, I know how things work below the surface. I used to take for granted that young people were on par with me as far a technology goes but that was only true for a few years. Web 2.0 applications are so easy to use that there is no barrier for teens who want to self publish today. And they are clueless about the risks involved.

In conclusion I want to say that I have never been harassed because of my online activities. I am very liberal and transparent when it comes to posting info about myself. Here I adopt an anonymous persona but not so in about a dozen other outlets. I think it’s cool that people are becoming more transparent but I make sure to let people know that I am not the type of person you want to mess with. People who victimize others choose the path of least resistance, online that means single women and teenagers.

Be safe!

A rant intended to stir shit or raise awareness depending on which side of the coin you’re on.

Edited: I have removed some parts of this text to make it more to the point. I will bring back the rest in different expanded articles.

I’m on Facebook. I love it! It lets me communicate with people I know and care about. Teens seems to think it’s a dating site. It sure seems like today’s teens select each other based on T&A/A&D (Tits and Ass / Abs and Dick.) I have been doing research on various Facebook apps to build my own. I resisted adding novelty and hookup-type applications until I was invited to install “Are You Interested?” (from SNAP Interactive). It is a badly built, ugly and annoying application. There are three ads per page so you know right there it is purely profit driven.

I wondered what would happen if I click ‘YES’ on someone in “Are You Interested?“. I picked the guy who was at a theme park with his daughter and the fireman. There were not that many pictures in my age range, most were greasy looking guys who gave me the creeps. I could click YES on all the pictures of men who look like they are dads (a desirable accomplishment) but they are probably not single. Again, waste of time. When the fireman friended me I noticed that he (who is in a relationship and just had a really cute baby) likes to add all the “Tell me I’m desirable, I absolutely must know now!” applications that are available on Facebook. I am itching to ask him why he needs the validation, he is already a cute guy in a fireman outfit, with a girlfriend and a really cute baby. In the list of awesome things worth having that you couldn’t possibly buy with money, those are lot of check marks! If I was his girlfriend I would wonder about his capacity to survive the first 6-12 months of being set aside for the needs of the new baby.

My point…

I noticed that guys interested in me, based on my profile picture of a toad, were all 18 years old and this is how I noticed, to my horror, that there is a search line for 13-17 year olds in “Are You Interested?” This is retarded! And not because of the aforementioned bad idea of choosing mates based on physical characteristics.

Here’s how Facebook works. You can join Facebook if you are in High School (13+ years). You can friend you classmates, buddies and family. They are the only ones who can see your profile. The dumb things you post about yourself after that are supposed to remain somewhat private until you piss someone off and they re-post your private texts and photos in public forums.

However “Are You Interested?” kinda violates that by publishing a picture of your “attention needing” self with your name and city.

Here’s a random teenager. I picked him because he is the only one I found who’s trail does not lead to an exact location within 5 minutes. Unfortunately, you can easily find where most other “Are You Interested?” users between the age of 13-17 are RIGHT NOW.

(Name has been changed, duh!)

His name is Jean-Something, he is 14 and lives in Montreal. Kinda looks like he is 10 years old but let’s keep digging.

Fortunately for us Jean-Something is not such a common name so let’s find him in Facebook search.

There he is. It’s easy, same picture!

Great, now we know his full name is Jean-Something Lastname. Fortunately for Jean-Something he is only is the Montreal network and not associated with a high school. But would it really be hard to find out where he lives by triangulating info about all his friends? (Actually if I triangulate his friends I get the distinct impression this profile might be a fake teen profile created by someone who wants to approach teens but I don’t have time to find out for sure. We can talk about this kind of fraud later. There are about a million users, mostly 13-17 year olds who use this application and most will have a high school and class year listed under their name in Facebook search.)

As a parent, I feel for those who do not know what their kids are doing online. Are they posting videos of themselves dancing in their underwear or flashing their boobs on You Tube? Are they desperately seeking attention from strangers on My Space? Are they advertising their need for approval on Facebook? I feel that doing so is misguided, it is asking for attention from the WRONG people. Not all online kooks teenagers encounter are sexual predators, they are also confidence cons, scammers and thieves. All these shady folks need is a bit of info about you to work their magic.

So, what do you think? I also wrote a follow-up on this.

(I guess that includes me if I’m talking about it…)

I think that yesterday was the last day I will ever care to stop by PerezHilton. Perez posted a picture of Vanessa Hudgens with her mom and little sister with the headline “My sister is a whore”. Such postings are truly disrespectful to Vanessa and her family. She is a young actress who has chosen to act in family films for Disney and seems like an all around good person. She is certainly not doing anything to attract attention to herself. I had excused his inappropriate comments and annoying compulsion for drawing penises on celebrity photos to the fact that he is a sheltered Hollywood fag who doesn’t know any better but this last comment tells me he may lack a soul.

My daughter is a fan of Hudgens and will likely hear of the nudie pic scandal at some point. I do not mind explaining to her that when people take naked photos of themselves, they are usually embarrassed by it down the road. I am still thinking about what I will say to her actually because I have to try to see it the way she will (if she ever does.)

When I was 10 or 11 I found pictures of my mom naked and giving some dude a blowjob. I thought that was icky icky poo! It should have kept me from taking topless pictures of myself when I was a teen, at a Kmart photo booth no less. I have never cared to videotape myself having sex. I hope nobody else has but I fail to see how anybody would care to see that.

What Vanessa did seems to be common among today’s teens. Most have cell phones with cameras. I have never dolled up my daughter, I rarely take posed pictures of her and never keep a webcam on the computer… I tend to think that doing that will establish an expectation of privacy in my daughter. But habits change and the cell phone she will have in 5-6 years will inevitably transmit video. I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about how I can raise a confident girl who will not subscribe to the idea that her purpose in life is to be a Bratz doll.

Something doesn’t change however: Taking revealing pictures of one’s self invites people (i.e. boys mostly) to make dumb comments.

I read both the comments on PerezHilton and Vanessa’s MySpace on the day of the picture was confirmed as authentic. One comment that I saw a dozen times made me laugh. Why do teenage boys feel they must tell Vanessa to shave her pubes? When a guy brings to my attention the topic of going “bare down there” he is telling me that he is ignorant. He is telling me that he has seen so much porn that he thinks girls are genetically modified to never grow hair anywhere. He is telling me that he has only seen strippers naked in person. He is telling that maybe, if he is lucky enough, he has only ever ‘dated’ a sex worker. These are the women who do go bare down there because it is expected in their job. Women who aspire to work in the sex industry or become decorative people may have breast implants and often schedule a Brazilian wax every six weeks… The rest of us don’t really give a fuck what you think.

When I first saw Vanessa’s picture I voted on ‘No, it looks like someone else’ and I was glad that her team came forward and immediately set the record straight. The media is very harsh on actresses for every little things that they do, or don’t do… but rarely vilify actors who live a womanizing, drug and booze lifestyle. I have followed gossip about the lives of celebrities for 20 years and I am starting to think that Hollywood is Hell.