Taking a Page from Facebook

I'm assuming you Facebook (and am also assuming that wasn't the first ever recorded use of a less-than-real-noun as a verb in the English language). I think Facebook is Facebook in other languages, too. I don't remember receiving a friend request from anyone in Germany for Gesichtbuch but that may have more to do with my not having friends in Germany, or anywhere else come to think of it, than in how it's a universal concept.

My point is that there's all kinds of advertising for everything under the sun running along the length of the right-hand side of the screen. You can join a group or like a page or indulge some of the commercial posters who have convinced themselves that this form of advertising is a fundamental part of their strategic communications plan for their "brand."

These are also the people who emphasize the purchase of lottery tickets as "integral" to their retirement portfolio, along with recyclable can futures. I'm teasing, I think, to some degree on that since I've installed something similar to a pop-up blocker (look at me type this smack like I know what it is!) that culls most of the on-screen ads from the screen at no charge aside from personal privacy and right to it.

Yep, I, too, was incensed at the NSA spying on me, those stumblebunnies, when I give away five times more personal data for free in order to qualify for a chance to bid on an English Muffin almost once eaten by the guy who sings in Coldplay (or some prize approximating that). Even at work, where I don't have the doo-dad on the computer I look but don't see the advertising-you're probably the same way. There's so much of it that it's just part of the scenery after awhile.

The people who create it think they've made art and the rest of us just shrug. So how to explain these whackjobs? These are some of the angrier Mad Hatters running around loose right now and while I'd like to consider myself an advocate of 'live and let live' I admit to less magnanimity when I'm looking at cockroaches and silverfish rather than otters or baby seals.

These folks bear no resemblance to either otters or seals if you're following my drift though once the last of them has been eradicated I may be slightly more mellow. Are we talking exchanging Hallmark on-line cards? Probably not, but there's a degree of difference between blocking them with a click of the mouse and the launching of a drone.
 -bill kenny