Linked-In, Looked-Around, Logged-Off

Several years ago, I joined the online service Linked-In. Everyone else was doing it, so I figured why not jump off the same bridge?

For those of you not familiar with Linked-In, it's basically a semi-functional, constantly changing, over-promised/under-delivered social network for business people. Think Facebook, only without videos of dancing babies and talking dogs, and absolutely no Candy Crush Saga. Linked-In enables you to keep up with all the people you worked with years ago, all the people you work with today, and all the people you wish you had worked with over the course of your career instead of all those other people you're linked to.

Not only are everyone's business accomplishments listed out for you to see when you feel so inclined, Linked-In is kind enough to send you emails -- sometimes five a day -- letting you know that Sally Whatshername got another promotion and Willy Givakrap now has three professional certification acronyms after his name.

There are passive sales pitches of all kinds from every self-employed (read "unemployed" or "unemployable") would-be consultant with a laptop and a copy of "Business Plans for Dummies" at his breakfast table. There are total strangers requesting linkage to you for no other reason than to make themselves appear more important than they really are. There are associations and groups that will want to count you on their rolls without offering you much in return except off-topic discussion forums moderated by the Linked-In equivalent of a crazy cat lady. There are people with one-thousand, one-hundred and seventeen "connections" who post comments every three hours and others with seven "connections" who started filling out their profiles in 2007 and never managed to get back around to completing them.

But it isn't simply a one-way street. There's more to it than posting your resume and spouting your accomplishments. Thanks to the recommendations feature, you can help others spout about their accomplishments.

Presently, I have three recommendations on my profile, only one of which I didn't have to beg for. I would have more recommendations, but I'm not really one for reference-swapping with people I don't really know. Not that I mind someone lying to give me a leg up, just so long as they don't expect me to lie about them. I do have a phony baloney reputation to protect, after all.

The latest viral enhancement to Linked-In is the Endorsement feature. It's perfect for people who want to say something nice about someone else, but don't want to take the time to put that sentiment into words. Kind of like buying a Hallmark card, only with a click of a button you can verify that one of your "connections" is an expert in some random field of knowledge.

I have been receiving a substantial number of endorsements lately. There are endorsements for my sales acumen, my crazy-mad revenue management skills, my in-depth knowledge of hotels, my vast motel sales experience, and many more. Some of these endorsements came from people who might even know what they're talking about!

Just today, a person with whom I haven't worked for years endorsed me for a skill she could not possibly know I have in a field of expertise that has nothing to do with any position I've ever held at any job I've ever worked. Mixed emotions flooded over me when my third Linked-In email of the day announced her vouching for my noteworthy, and previously imperceptible, abilities. I thought long and hard over whether or not I should I accept the endorsement.

Oh, what the heck. Like anyone will ever try to verify my hang-gliding skills...



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Shoot the Messenger

In the last week, ever since the Boston bombing suspects were identified, I've noticed several lengthy messages being shared and liked on Facebook and Twitter. The gist of these messages goes something like this:

I don't want to hear anything about the suspects! I don't want to know who they are, or why they did what they did, or how they planned the bombings, or how the aftermath affects their families! Execute the one that survived the Watertown shoot out and bury their remains in unmarked graves somewhere no one will ever find them!

I understand the emotions and frustrations behind these kinds of comments. In a free society, we should be safe from terrorists, be they homegrown or trained on foreign lands. Our government should protect us from potential threats. Innocent children, women and men should not be blown up, gunned down or cut through by malcontents, zealots, psychopaths or sociopaths.

Yet no matter how hard we might try to wish away irrational behavior and hate, the reality is they will always exist. Society and culture can, at times when the collective will is strong enough, turn away from them or push them to the side. Unfortunately, in the land of the truly free we must allow space for individuals who believe what we find unfathomable and groups that practice what we detest, providing those practices do not bring harm to others.

The crime isn't allowing these people to exist. They already exist, whether or not we want them to. The crime would be closing our ears and shouting like children to drown them out. A wish and a prayer are sweet sentiments, but they aren't practical choices in the face of ignorance. Just take a look at that couple facing criminal charges for the death of a second child because they chose to pray for God's healing instead of bringing their children to a doctor. You think any amount of wishing away their irrationality will change their belief structure?

The way I see it, the real problem is not that the world is a more violent place than ever before. Go back just 70 years and you'll find that World War II was responsible for the death of approximately 2.5% of the world's population at that time, or roughly 60 million people. According to the CDC, in 2010 homicides accounted for a total of 16,000 deaths, or 0.005% of the nation's population that year. Tragic, but a far cry from the worst this world has seen.

Don't get me wrong. In the case of the Boston bombings, I want justice served. I believe in the death penalty and firmly believe it would be appropriately handed down to someone who can come across a young boy eating ice cream with his family and calmly murder him. There are depths of hell not deep enough for some of the twisted souls allowed to crawl the surface of this earth. But I also want to know who they are, why they did what they did, and how they did it, because it's the best way to understand what went wrong with these two men and, hopefully, prevent others from following in their footsteps. All of us need to understand, so we can carry a measure of that understanding and awareness into the communities in which we live. If it takes a village to raise a child, then surely it must also take a village to maintain civility, rationality and order.

What I don't want, or need, is twenty-four-hour media coverage from people with no immediate knowledge of the events. I don't want talking heads on television, enhanced by animated graphics and dramatic musical intros, talking endlessly despite the fact they have no new information to offer. I don't want newspapers so desperate for a scoop to prove their validity in a digital age that they disregard traditional sourcing of information, ruining lives in the process. And I certainly don't want online would-be news sources replacing static informative articles with meaningless Twitter feeds just so some schmuck in Abilene with PhotoShop can pretend he's an extra in "All the President's Men."

In the rush to be first and loudest to scream the latest developments of a disaster from the rooftops, the news media belittle the gravity and meaning of such a situation by turning it into a relentless audio-visual circus that offers plenty of noise and practically no content.

On the other hand, the media is only giving us what we've proven by our viewing habits we want. Maybe if we stop tuning in, the message would change and we'd feel less inclined to shoot the messenger.


© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Old Man Shoes

A few comments on Facebook the other day got me thinking. I know, this whole thinking thing is dangerous, but I risked it.

When my sons graduate from high school as part of the Class of 2020, I will be 52 years old. To some of you old fogies, that might not sound unreasonable, and I'm not typically the kind of person who gets all hung up on age, but I must say that I strenuously object to the whole concept of the fifties as an age range.

For starters, fifty is the first milestone age that sounds old. It's ridiculous to compare fifty to twenty, or even thirty, and expect it not to seem significantly older. But even when compared to forty, an age I reached several years ago, fifty has a ring about it that sounds like a somber church bell.

Take a moment to reflect on the two numbers: forty and fifty. Say them over and over in your head for a minute or two and then tell me that your mental image of a person turning forty doesn't differ dramatically from how you picture that same person turning fifty. Forty suggests a settling in to one's skin, a well-respected and hard-earned maturity, and a classy graying around the temples. Fifty suggests wisps of ear hair like out of control Q-Tips, an irreversible thickening around the waistline, and an I-just-looked-in-a-full-length-mirror understanding of why you can no longer wear the latest trendy summer shorts.

It doesn't help when Our Daughter throws out snarky teenage criticisms, like calling my latest choice in sneakers "old man shoes." Maybe they aren't flashy, or sexy, or cool, but they provide excellent arch support and they don't crowd my toes. All in all, a very practical pair of sneakers. So what if they look like I stole them off a night shift nurse at the hospital?

Back to the point, I suppose this age thing is all just a state of mind.

When I turned twenty it was a joyous occasion -- one year closer to legal drinking age! When I turned thirty, I was a new father and completely oblivious to anything other than changing diapers, thawing frozen breast milk, and figuring out how to assemble plastic children's toys with three missing parts and the wrong tools. When I turned forty, I proudly and declaratively announced it to the world: "I am forty!"

I just hope I can reach fifty with the same enthusiasm. Very likely I will, although I expect there will need to be a strong support system in place to keep my spirits elevated and help reaffirm my belief in the notion that I look good for my age.

Perhaps continuing to monitor the effects of the ravages of time on my old high school friends through Facebook will be enough to do the trick. Unlike many of those poor old bastards, I happen to have more hair on top of my head than I do growing out of my ears. For now...



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Tomorrow, the World!

When I started writing this blog, I had no expectations. I figured, at best, there would be a handful of family members and friends who would kindly humor me by reading a few posts from time to time.

"Oh, look," you might say upon seeing my note on Facebook alerting you to a new post being published. "Mark just put out a new little blog on his little rambly thingy. It's called 'A Sock In My Shorts?' I don't like the sound of that. It sounds dirty. I think I'll wait for the next time he writes a syrupy sweet one about his family."

Truth be told, I'm not much of a blog reader. I'm not much of a reader at all, actually. My reading happens in fits and spurts, and I get tremendous satisfaction if I reach the end of a Reader's Digest three-pager about a spelunker who had to chew through his own rappelling gear in order to save a kitten from a mountain lion before my legs fall asleep from the pressure of the toilet seat pushing up into them.

Strange to think I was an English major in college. And a lit major for the first two years! I guarantee in those first two years at SUNY Plattsburgh I read maybe -- maybe -- five books from cover to cover. While I never cheated or plagiarized anyone else's work, there were plenty of times I turned in six-page, ten-page and even twenty-page papers after staying up until 2:00am in the all-night study lounge at the student center, yanking quotes from chapters I hadn't read to support a thesis I hoped was correct.

One time, I wrote a paper on the first half of "War and Peace." Problem was, I had read only half of the first half of "War and Peace."

Have you ever read it? It's 1,200 freakin' pages long! I can barely make it to the end of an Emily Dickinson poem and they're expecting me to read this never-ending borefest? Ten pages into it and I was hoping all the characters would pull an Anna Karenina and throw themselves in front of a moving train...

Anyway, I plucked a thesis out of my butt and wrote the paper. Then I started skimming through the book for supporting quotes. As I skimmed, I realized my thesis was wrong by 180 degrees. I literally was able to leave my paper mostly intact, drop in the quotes I had found, and where I said something wasn't true I simply changed it to say it was true and vice versa. That was the only "A" I ever received from Dr. Burde.

So, having suffered a lifelong aversion to reading, I'm always surprised to see so many people embracing the activity so rabidly. As someone who fancies himself a writer, I appreciate it, but I'm still surprised when anyone reads anything I have written. In January when I published my first post to this blog, I was amused at how quickly certain people picked up on it.

Now, when I look at the tracking of hits coming with each new post -- particularly those that have catchier titles and are muchly more betterly wrote -- I'm amazed to see visits to the blog by people living in places in which I know for dead certain I cannot possibly know anyone. Look at the map of the United States below. Every flag represents someone from a city who visited this blog.


If I rack my brain over each location, I'm sure I could come up with the usual suspects from Facebook for about ninety percent of them. A few of them are probably just me checking in while I'm traveling for business. Houston and Charlottesville definitely are. But that doesn't explain the map below.



I'm pretty sure I've never traveled to Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Italy, England or Russia. And I don't have any penpals in Moscow or Dubai of whom I'm aware. I can understand how someone in New South Wales might stumble across my review of "Dinner for Schmucks" from some intermediary website or search engine, but please tell me why the hell someone in Dhaka surfed their way to "Toilet on the Edge." Twice!

While I'm trying to keep this international notoriety from going to my head, I have set what I think is a perfectly reasonable goal for "Ramblings of a Very Pale Man." Before 2010 draws to a close, I want to be able to track hits from every continent. So far I have North America (no thanks to any support from Canada or Mexico), Eurasia, and Australia. All I need to get is South America and Africa. I doubt I'll have much luck with Antarctica. Something tells me they don't have a very strong WiFi signal down there.

But if you think there's a chance of a penguin with bluetooth checking in one day, I'll keep it on the list. Maybe my next post should be all about krill recipes and the dangers of leopard seals.


© 2010 Mark Feggeler

Confirm or Ignore?

The great thing about Facebook is finding and reconnecting with people from your past. If you're lucky, you find the people with whom you once shared a bond -- life experiences, sense of humor, taste in movies -- whatever it was that made you friends, or at least friendly.

Likewise, the worst thing about Facebook is knowing people from your past whom you disliked, perhaps even loathed, can find you.

You might have caught glimpses of them lurking in the shadowy FB alleyways, eyeing you from some dirty little grotto, practicing their greasy, fake smiles. Their names pop up unexpectedly on your friends' friend lists, maybe your spouse or cousin or neighbor links up with them. They worm into your circle. Sometimes you can feel the bullseye landing squarely on your back. You wait, dreading the message that might arrive. Then it comes...

About two weeks ago, my lovely wife received a friendship request from a local politician. Sure enough, just a few days later, I also received his request for Facebook friendship. Unlike other politicians whom I know only by name, this one is well known to me. Both directly and indirectly, this trolling creature has touched my life on several occasions and never left me any the better for it.

When I first met him, almost twenty years ago, I was a newspaper reporter and he was a first-time candidate for state-level public office. He sidled up to me like a snake after a meet-the-candidates forum, asked me who I was and then asked me for a favor. I forget the specific request but it doesn't matter. His manner and appearance were enough for me to know I should dislike and distrust him.

Some people require time to determine the quality of their character -- and my first impressions often have proved incorrect -- but every now and then those first impressions prove deadly accurate. In the pit of my stomach I believed this was a man not interested in serving the common good but instead simply wanting power and title. As time would prove, at least to me, he willingly and single-mindedly served as a mouthpiece for the wealthy, privileged and politically connected of his district.

One day, following a press conference at which he made a vague accusation about another public official taking a bribe to push through a public works project, I wrote an article that labeled his conduct as "mud-slinging." In all honesty, ninety-eight percent of all newspaper articles are pretty tedious to write, so when you get a chance to use a word like mud-slinging in a straight news piece, you take it. Even my editor seemed to enjoy the word enough that it made it into the headline!

Of course, as expected, the politician objected to the word appearing so prominently on the front page of our little paper, so much so that he called me at home on a Sunday to take me to task over it. Youthfully indignant, I told him: "I thought the word was appropriate. My editor thought the word was appropriate. And I am a reporter, not a public servant, and do not appreciate being called at home on a Sunday." Then I hung up.

Two years later I ended up working with his wife. The entire first year we worked together, only seven or eight doors apart from each other, she neither greeted me nor acknowledged my presence. In those two years, he had risen meteorically within the political ranks. Had he not sabotaged his own political career with unwise alliances and risked his good standing by picking the wrong side in a factional fight within his own party, he might still be in a position of power today.

I could fill a book with recollections of this man's perceived unethical behavior but I don't want to beat a dead horse -- or get sued for libel.

It's all ancient history now as I wend my way through my forties. I am more realistic, maybe jaded, less self-righteous, and I know that self-serving politicians are a dime a dozen. I'm not in any way special for having experienced this man and it never was, nor should have been, my life's calling to cut him down to size. After all, he managed that quite nicely on his own.

In fact, several people I have known who richly deserved being humbled have been getting their due, and in some cases publicly.

As the karmic wheel turns to crush their unwieldily aspirations, I should be able to calmly and serenely accept the knowledge that a life well-lived is rewarded and a life misspent is punished. However, being a poor-grade Christian, my brain rejects such nobility in favor of a fervently bitter "F--- them!" I can't help feeling that people who spend so much of their lives going out of their way to cause misery and hardship deserve it back on themselves tenfold.

Which is why, today -- tonight, in fact -- as I log in to Facebook, I know the very first thing I will do. I will pull up his friendship request and click "Ignore," wishing only that the options available for responding also included a "Go Screw" button...