Spam - a true story

New Personal Message from Hotgirl3243

Subject: Brill vids dude

hi there,

hey there... your video today that you uploaded was totally awesome.

i wish you were like big on youtube with loads of subscribers so i could see you on the homepage lol

heres a good website if your looking to get some subscribers.

www.***********.com

one of my brothers used the website and they have over 500 subscribers from it withing 3 days.

hope you keep the videos coming and good luck

sarah

oh i forgot you can also do it each month or week to help get more subscribers. 

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Subject: Re: Brill vids dude

Dear Sarah,

Given that I have never uploaded a single video, and given that you have sent this message to a bunch of people, I suspect you are a spammer. There is a special place in internet hell for spammers. I hope you repent. Because in internet hell everyday is Monday and the download quota has just been capped. Oh and the lolcats aren't cute OR funny. It's terrible.

Sincerely,

Lizzyish

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I've found a new hobby.

Gen Y: a state of being

Ah yes, a young person with too much time on her hands starts a blog, it really is only a matter of time before she starts ranting about the whole Generation Y thing.  Gen Ys kinda arch up at the way we are depicted in the media etc, and it is often justified – we get a really bad wrap for our anti-social and ungrateful ways. However, I am not about to arch up* because I am, quite frankly, both anti-social and ungrateful.

But I am going to argue that Gen Y is not an age bracket, or even a generation at all – but a state of being. How many older people (men often) do you know who have an iPhone and know all the lingo and play video games etc etc etc? Like at least 4 right? If everyone knows at least 2 that’s actually quite a significant percentage of the population acting like Gen Y-ers who aren’t Gen Y-ers at all.

And, on the other hand, I know a bunch of well-dressed, well-spoken, organised, punctual, grateful, respectful and generally perfect humans who are 18-25 years old. Can we really call these people Gen Y? Sure, they were born in the 15 or so years after the Gen Xers all grew up, but they don’t fit any of the other defining characteristics. They fail at being Gen Y, which should technically make them win at life in the eyes of older people. It never seems to redeem them though; those poor fucks get lumped in with the rest of us despite their good personal hygiene and lack of twitter accounts.

So, dear reader – you might be asking yourself now, ‘shit, am I Gen Y or not?’ This seems like a pretty stupid thing to be asking yourself, given that you are currently reading a blog and probably simultaneously watching a Youtube video, illegally downloading songs and eating nutella from the jar. But anyway, there is a sure fire way to test your Gen Y status. I speak from absolute experience on this:

Ask yourself, have you ever been lying in bed at night in a location (probably a fabulous holiday location) with little reception and been so desperate for contact with the outside world (be it text, tweet or status) but too lazy to get up that you’ve sleepily held the phone high above your head, arm fully extended, and then DROPPED IT ON YOUR FACE? Well have you?

That is the moment dear friends, when you must concede that no matter how old or socially adequate you are, you do in fact belong to that technophilic, whiney, disrespectful cohort known as Gen Y. Welcome, we’re looking for people to start a social netball team.

*Except to say that it is almost predominantly members of Generation Y (and little old ladies) who consistently thank the driver when they get off the bus. I’m just sayin’…

Hello, we're here to talk to you about Jesus...

... turns out, he's not real and we've got to get round to everyone by Christmas before we all embarrass ourselves for another year.


Alas. If only that is what happened. What actually happened is that at precisely 5 minutes after I should have left the house for work, two people of the Jehovah's Witness persuasion knocked on my door. At first, I ignored the little timid knock in the hope that whoever it was would leave me alone. But then, of course, I had to leave. So, to the door went I to find two rather timid individuals retreating down my front steps. Boo, if only I'd waited another minute. They looked like rabbits caught in the headlights, kind of disappointed to see me - as if they too were secretly hoping we could avoid this whole awkward interchange. But no, of course, I went and opened the door didn't I?

Important contextual information:

I am an atheist - in the sense that I do not believe in a god of any kind
I am culturally insensitive, and have Tibetan prayer flags over my door (cut me some slack, I live in New Farm)
I was raised to be overly polite to Jehovah's Witnesses (I don't know why - dad always invites them in for coffee and everything)

So there I am, framed in my shitty New Farm doorway, wreathed in Tibetan prayer flags.

Me: "Hello"
JW: "Hi, I'm here to talk to you about Jesus"

Ok. That's not true. I think she said she was doing community work, and had a pamphlet for me about contentment, or happiness or something.

Me: "Thanks, but I already have my own belief system and I'd rather not read about yours"
JW: "No problem, thanks for your honesty"

AH. LIKE A DAGGER IN MY FACE. She totally knew I was lying! She stared into my heathen eyes and knew I was a  big fat liar.

And then of course I had to awkwardly leave the house, and awkwardly follow them up the street as they tried the next few houses. I wasn't stalking them or anything, I walk to work. Promise.


But now that I sit here, in blogging repose, it occurs to me that I wasn't lying. I do have a belief system. It is that religions are fine until you're on someone else's doorstep handing out pamphlets. I mean surely, if you can fit even just the key beliefs of your religion into a pamphlet then your religion needs to take a good hard look at itself? Maybe it's because I was raised a Catholic, but if I became religious I'd want a faith that covered all bases - with a friggen library of information on really specific issues: "what our religion thinks about having sex before marriage if it's with someone that you really like and is protected and you thought about it pretty hard before hand and you're not even drunk or anything - well you were when you hooked up but not now - and you really want to and your friends think they're nice.

I'm too arrogant to be religious: when things go my way I like to think it's because I'm AWESOME not because they were preordained, or because I'm blessed, or lucky, or full of good karma. In my opinion (and I'm being serious), religions take away from how awesome people are sometimes. And they certainly don't explain how shit people are some other times.


In conclusion, unless you've got a pamphlet on the ways I am awesome, I'm not interested. K. Thx. Bai,