Does this drunken kissy face pic say “fun and flirty” or “tanked and trashy”?

"Look at this thing I did! Looooook!... Shit I'm cool."

The facebook profile picture is both a highlight and lowlight of my life. When I was younger I just put up whatever picture I deemed ‘alright’ for public viewing. As I got older I started to realize that this was the picture people I had full conversations with in lecture, friends of friends, distant family members, that cute guy I met at that party, and outright strangers were seeing and judging me by. Being as over-concerned with my public appearance as any single girl I started the manufactured profile pic.

The manufactured profile picture n. is a picture that one takes exclusively to post on facebook or any other social networking site as if others exist pfft. It consists of dressing up and posing in front of a white wall, and perhaps later Photoshopping the image before presenting it to the world. Please note that it is possible that the author is the only person that does this.

- This party looks like it sucks

Then you wait for validation. And if few, or no people comment on how “hot” or “stylish” I look in the picture I spend at least a half hour struggling… should I take the picture down? Do I have something on my face I’m not seeing? Am I downright ugly? Does no one like my haircut? OMG has my nose always been that big? IS EVERYONE AT SOME PARTY I WASN’T INVITED TO BECAUSE I’M SO UGLY? IS THAT WHY NO ONE IS COMMENTING?… okay… breathe… in… now out… okay, I’m cool.

The point of this story is, why have we (okay… maybe only me) been reduced to needing people to click a stupid thumbs-up button to feel good about some picture we took alone in our rooms when we were bored? If you’re not naked, it should be fine right? Or in your bra and underwear. Or piss shit drunk. Or smoking a bong. Or doing ‘icing sugar’ off your bestie’s ass. You know what? People should just use wildlife photos for their profile pictures. Those people need money.

It’s so much easier to embarrass myself now that the internet is around

"Is that your diary?" "NO! It's a journal where I put all my intimate secrets, fears, and triumphs."

When I was in middle school I used to have a diary that I kept in my desk at school, since apparently 8 year old me is a dumba$$. At the time I was both astonished and horrified that the popular girls had taken my diary and read aloud all the appraisals I had made of the physical appearance of a boy in my class. This meaning I wrote “Oh my God, Justin is sooooooooo hotttttttt.” When I was discovered, being the b@tch I am, I instantly outed my friend as having the same appraisals of Justin’s appearance, and we both had to go through the day being embarrassed.

Was my head always that big? OMG! Is it big now?!

It used to be that this was the only way I could embarrass myself—by overestimating humanity, and having it shit in my shoes to spite me. That is until I Googled my name and found a picture of me in my school uniform striking a pose and lamenting about my love of Stephenie Meyer. For those of you without tits and a vagina, this is the author that spawned “Twilight”. f@ck.

Literally minutes before I posted this I went to edit my You Tube page and found that not only had I listed “Heroes” as one of my favourite movies (it was a TV show btw), but that in an attempt to project high self-esteem despite my low self-esteem, my profile was littered with comments where I complimented my own physical appearance.

I’ve never heard my mom say that she’s disappointed with me, and she won’t ever have to. Thanks to the internet’s preserving capabilities, I will have more than enough chances to be disappointed in myself. In a couple years I’ll probably look back on this blog and be disappointed by the amount of swearing on it. But for now… I’m say whatever I firetrucking feel like.

I think I was a really dumb 10 year old…

I watch these “Kids react to…” videos all the time. 1) Because even though I’m sure at least half of the people that know me would never guess, I really like kids, and 2) because it took me awhile to finally come to terms with that fact that there are kids born in the 2000s, and these videos remind me that yes, these 2000 kids are real people in real life.

When watching the video you may have noticed William age 10. Likely because he is a super genius. I swear this is the smartest kid I have ever seen. He is aware of political events happening around him and is able to understand the duality of good vs. bad. Many adults can’t even grasp the idea that there is no such thing as justified murder. Hence the death penalty. And here we have nearly philiosphical insight… from a 10 year old boy.

Initially I thought, this kid has the most intelligent and amazing parents in the entire universe. Then I sat for a minute, made my brain actually do some work, and thought, yeah maybe he had really good parenting… or maybe he had average parenting. Or even more likely, maybe he just has really permissive parenting.

Remember buying programs legally to use on your computer?

The difference between when I was his age, and him being his age currently, isn’t a giant leap of faith between our IQs, but more likely a difference in the technology of our respective generations. Maybe I’m saying this to feel better about my 10 year old self, but think about it. I had a shitty dial-up internet connection, Windows 98, and an acer PC where the monitor wasn’t flat. Remember that? Computers with monitors that weighed as much as your flat screen TV? Okay, I’m getting a little crazy, they still have those in lots of places I’m sure. But I’m also sure that William has high-speed internet, Windows 2010, and an hp laptop (he seems like a PC kind of kid). My parents weren’t monitoring my internet usage when I was younger, but honestly I could do little more than check my email and play neopets. Nowadays kids can do everything under the sun on the internet provided that their parents are ignorant permissive enough to let them.

Is the internet entirely to blame for William’s ‘beyond his years’ intelligence? Probably not. He’s probably a really smart kid whose parents watch the news and involve him in current events, and he probably has a much higher IQ than 10 year old me. My thought, is that what makes him seem beyond his years, is that he has the base intelligence to use the internet to its fullest (as opposed to playing the neopets ‘cheat’ card game for hours and whining about how you can’t afford a rainbow paintbrush, which was ridiculous priced anyhow) and as such is taking in a lot more information that he would be exposed to otherwise.

The moral of this rant is… I feel really bad for knowing less about the whole Bin Laden assassination debacle than children nearly half my age. I was the first on the scene about the death of Michael Jackson, but couldn’t be assed to educate myself about a very prominent political assassination. If it helps, I’m Canadian, so really, it’s none of my business, right?