Catching up

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

Well, even if your son was only on a cruise ship for a few days, it was probably still a interesting experience. At least he's getting out there and enjoying the world.

We have been watching some videos on youtube about cruises and it really looks like they make sure that the guests are treated right. We want to try to book the trip soon so that we can surprise my mother for her birthday in July because I know she hasn't been on a cruise before. Most likely the cruise will be next year because the earlier you book the trip, you get better rates and better choices for the onboard events. We haven't decided where we want to go yet, and we still don't know if any of my siblings and their families will be going.

[Murfreesboro]

It sounds like a great plan for a family reunion!

[Murfreesboro]

Thinking of reunions, when we were in Yellowstone back in 2020, I saw an extended family wearing identical t-shirts that said "The _____ Family Adventure 2020." I thought that was cute, and it helped them find each other in crowds.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I like the idea and I know most of my family would wear them, but there are some members that I know would refuse to, and they're both teenagers. I have a niece that is into punk wear, so she won't wear anything white or colorful. The other niece only wears high trend fashion names, she absolutely won't wear anything that isn't from a popular designer and she is very arrogant about it, she is sort of like the mean girls you used to know in school. I hope that it's just a teenage phase she is going through, and she will eventually learn not to judge people by what they wear. When I'm not at work I like to dress casual, so I'm usually wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and she always makes fun of me and says that I look like a farmer.

[Andybev01]

Shorts and t-shirts 365 days a year, unless it's below 30°, then it's sweats.

Your niece will get over it when she has to start buying her own clothes.

[Murfreesboro]

I was thinking that very thing, Andy, lol.

My daughter buys lots of things from ThredUp and often lucks into designer stuff that way. Her thing isn't so much name brand, but wanting all natural fibers, which are surprisingly hard to find. She believes it is important for the environment. Also, her skin is ultra-sensitive and doesn't tolerate all fabrics well.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I know that most young people today want their clothes and makeup to be created without harming animals, and they are conscious about the effect that the factories have on the environment, but not my niece. She just cares about looking good.

As for her buying her own clothes, I don't think that she is going to have to worry about that for 2 reasons, my brother and his wife give her anything she asks for, and she claims that she is a influencer, so she is on various social media websites like youtube where she posts videos promoting certain products, some ot them she gets sent to her for free by the companies so she will deliberately give it a great review even if it sucks, and then her viewers go and buy that c-r-a-p because she, and other people like her tell them to.

Apparently that's how young people today make a living. Who knows how long this trend will last? She might actually be able to turn it into a career, or the large corporations that rely on social media to boost their sales will eventually find another way to manipulate potential customers, and then she will have to be a regular person like the rest of us.

Sometimes my kids wonder how she can be related to us.

[Andybev01]

In my opinion, the robot uprising can't get here soon enough...

[Murfreesboro]

My own daughter is afraid of social media and won't go on it. Her older bro tells her that she actually needs more of a presence there, because potential employers don't like it when a person has no "footprint."

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

Well, both your kids are right about that.

Your daughter is right because social media accounts let strangers know some of the most private details about your life, and you really don't know what kind of psychopath could be viewing your information and start stalking you. I don't think that young people today realize just how the information they are sharing with the world can be used against then. There is also online bullying which is just out of control and can turn a whole community against someone just because one person started a rumor and it spread and ruined lives. For example, I recall you telling the story about how your son was harassed by a girl and her friends online. There are other far worse things about social media as well, but we won't discuss them here.

On the other hand, your son is right about employers wanting to know what their employees are doing on social media, and this is for a number of reasons. Most companies that are hiring today want to make sure that their employees aren't a part of any groups that have a offensive message, or are posting any content that can be considered damaging to a company's reputation. Since most young people in their 20s today are on social media, and have been for the last 10 years, the companies will go though a potential employee's whole social media history when they do a background check to look for anything that could indicate what they are like in their personal lives.

The problem with these young idiots today is that they post EVERY single detail about their lives, and when they are a young teen posting something hateful or commenting on a war or some other topic that they really should not comment on, they don't realize that the comments they made 10 years ago will always exist on their social media accounts, and they can come back to haunt them when they are seeking employment.

With that said, companies are always concerned when someone doesn't have any social media accounts because it can be a red flag that the person is hiding something, this can be from something simple like the person is antisocial, to something more deviant like they are part of a Nazi group, or they support terrorist groups, so they monitor everything that their employees do online. As a employer myself, I can tell you that the practice of monitoring social media is enforced by the Government, as it is something we are required to do before we hire someone, and we have to report anything that is considered to be suspicious, threatening, or illegal if we come across it.

The world has certainly changed since we were younger, back then it was perfectly normal for a person to want their private life to remain private, but the kids today don't understand, or care about the concept because everyone wants to be famous, and they have been conditioned to put every aspect of their life online for the whole world to scrutinize and they seem to be fine with that, and the Gov is happy about it because they can continue to monitor every person that has, or ever will create a social media account.

As for myself, I don't have any personal social media accounts, but my wife does and I share her accounts with her to communicate with family. We do have accounts for our businesses because it's important for any business to have social media to succeed today. My wife or one of the managers usually handles the posts for our businesses though because I really don't care for facebook. We always sit with our kids when they go online, we won't let them do it unless we are with them, and we do our best to teach them now while they are young about internet safety so that when they are older they will know what to look out for. I've also already started teaching them basic website coding so that when they start learning it in school they will be ahead of the other students, and so far they are doing very well at it.

I know that Andy has mentioned before that he doesn't have any social media accounts, and that's a good choice. I'll be honest with you Murf, your daughter is very smart to resist the pull of social media, it can be a very dangerous place for people.

Dang, that turned into a long post.

[Murfreesboro]

I didn't realize that the govt actually requires employers to comb through social media accounts when hiring. I guess I can understand how that might alert someone to a potential terrorist, but, wow, just wow.

I don't have any social media accounts, either.

[Murfreesboro]

You know, about Facebook. I remember when Zuckerberg went before Congress and was extremely embarrassed to confess that FB had been selling its intimate knowledge of patrons to various companies, so they could pitch personalized ads to FB users. People reacted as if that were scandalous. But I come from an advertising family (my grandfather started the business in the 1920s, and it got sold out of the family in the 1990s, but it still exists). And I had thought his business model was transparently obvious from the beginning. After all, nobody pays anything to use FB, yet Zuckerberg is a gazillionnaire. How did people think he was making his money? I was astonished that he acted all hang-dog about it. I'd have just owned it. Maybe he thought it made him look hypocritical? Because he uses his fortune in part to fund lots of leftist political causes and politicians, yet he is one of the most successful capitalists on the planet. Advertising is pretty much the heartbeat of capitalism.

[Murfreesboro]

Re the fashion industry, my daughter (as well as my older son, the scientist) are both very concerned about what they call micro-plastics, tiny particles of indigestible plastics that pervade the ocean and all the food chains. The fashion industry, with its use of synthetics, is very much responsible for lots of water pollution worldwide, especially in China. My kids tell me that nowadays even babies in the womb have measurable amounts of microplastics in their systems. Nobody knows what this means, but it can't be good.

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

The regulations vary across the country, but you would be surprised to learn some of the regulations that employers have to follow that regular people have no idea about. Some employers use a outside company to perform background checks for them, but we do it ourselves to make sure we know what kind of people we are hiring. Most of the young people that work for us are exactly what you would expect a young person to be today, their social media accounts are filled with the usual things like posts about relationships, family, graduations, and their interests.

So far we haven't ever had to report anyone for anything on their social media, and most of them are good kids that just want to live a normal life. The only issue I've ever had with my employees was when there was a young male that was harassing the female employees and we had to get rid of him, but aside from that, most of them have been great to be around.

Regarding advertising online, companies have always used ads to attract their target demographic, it was usually through tv and radio commercials and magazines, back then, if you were watching a show aimed at adults you would get ads about cigarettes and alcohol, so targeted ads is nothing new, but the internet changed how advertisers reach potential customers.

I'm sure you're aware of how internet cookies are used right? Well, If you aren't, the simplest explanation is that they are small text files that websites store on your device to remember information about you and your browsing activity. They say that the main purpose is to help to personalize your online experience and make websites more user-friendly, and while that is part of their function, most websites use the information gathered to generate ads targeting their interests by specifically using their browsing history to get that information.

The truth is that everything you do online is tracked and monitored in one way or another, regardless of what device you are using, even if companies and the Gov won't admit it, people will say that it's in the interest of national security, and for the most part it is, by monitoring everybody you can look for specific behavior and conversations online to help prevent possible attacks from happening, that's also one of the reasons why there are so many cameras in our society now, to make sure that people stay safe.

I know that most websites and forums log your I.P. address when you create a account, as well as every time you make a post, I'm not sure about this forum because it's using outdated tech, but I do know that this forum, and almost every website online, is plagued by web crawling bots. Most of the bots are just gathering data for simple reasons like Google search results, archiving web pages for the internet archive, browsing habits, and to target specific criteria to report back to companies for various purposes. However, there are web crawling bots that are sent out by bad people as well, with the purpose of gathering information that can be used to harm somebody, it can be something simple like looking for email addresses to spam you, or they can actually ruin your life depending on what they find out about you. As I told you before, you have no idea just how much information somebody can find out about you just from knowing your email address.

Look at this forum for example, while we do share personal stories about our lives with each other here, we are still just a username, and remain anonymous on some level unless we choose to share sensitive information with another person by PM, and even then you can't be sure how secure it is. When I got here I posted some photos of the decorations in my yard, and I should have edited the number of my house out of the photos but I didn't remember to, although that information isn't useful unless somebody knows my location. Why do you think I haven't ever mentioned the name of my restaurant, or my location? While I know that you, Mike, and Andy are good decent people, I also know that the bots are gathering information, and there are also people that visit the forum and don't ever post, they just hang around. Of course, that doesn't mean that they are going to actually do anything to harm somebody, but you don't know what their intentions are.

There are ways to be online and not be tracked, but even they have flaws that can be exploited, so nothing online is really secure. I use a variety of different tools when I watch movies, or download music online to cover my tracks. The internet was created as a free and open resource for information, so the way I look at it is that there is nothing wrong with downloading copyrighted material for your own personal use. Some people might say there is a ethical debate to be had about that, but everybody does it, I know that Andy does, so what are they going to do about it? They can't go after everybody for it.

If you think that what I said so far has been scary, it's nothing compared to the information about you that is already out there online that is publicly available for anyone to access. If you don't believe me then just go Google your own name, or home phone number or address, or the information of a family member, and you will be shocked at what you come across. That information is there waiting for somebody to use, you can contact the websites to request to have the information removed, some of them will ignore you, and some will do it, but it's a unbelievably long and unnecessarily complicated process.

The real question has now become does privacy still exist? Is giving up our rights to privacy a fair trade just so everybody can be connected and monitored in a imaginary online world? The short answer is no, but I guess that greatly depends on your personal views. The world is far scarier than it used to be, and while the internet is a amazing tool that can be used to further humanity to new levels, it can be, and unfortunately is, often used for nefarious reasons, and it shows you the dark side of humanity and how sick some people can be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY

[Andybev01]

"I am not now nor have I ever been, a member of the communist party."

Murf, your daughter might consider signing up on an employment networking site named Linkedin.

It's primarily for job seekers and employers looking for same.

Like any other website it has devolved somewhat into a social networking site ( kiten pics and 'inspirational' memes) but remains a reputable place to get your name and resume out to the broader world.

A few years back I took great pleasure in updating my profile position to 'retired'.