Your average social networking site.

•SPOILER ALERT•

At maybe the lowest point in Terminator: Salvation, the guy who’s really an android, the guy who is part of the only real surprise in the movie that was ruined by the trailers that were much better than the actual movie, that guybot confronts Skynet itself and discovers it’s actually Helena Bonham Carter’s weird, glossy head on a futuristic screen.  You know it’s a futuristic screen because in the future all video cables are made of cobbled together garbage, thus ensuring that the video image looks terrible and sputters a whole lot.  Shoulda spent that extra ten thousand dollars for a 4ft hdmi Monster Cable at Best Buy, huh Skynet?  Huh?  Thought so.

So it takes a few seconds for it to really sink in that this scene is actually playing out, that they’ve personified Skynet and that Skynet is actually layering on the glamour filters, blowing out Helenha Bonham Skynet’s face to the point where it looks like one of those makeup commercials where some aged actress is telling you how this shit works miracles for her by apparently igniting a tiny sun in her skull, flaring out the camera and making you have to squint just to see any amount of detail in what no longer resembles a human face.  Skynet has a Myspace photo as its avatar.  I was actually surprised that the evil supercomputer wasn’t projecting a virtual bathroom behind the Bonham head, with Bonham head holding a camera at arm’s length to record her eeeevil expository dialogue while pooching out its thin lips.

I had already checked out of the movie some time back, but I did appreciate the new levels of stupidity that that whole moment brought.  Later, however, I got to thinking about how maybe it wasn’t such a half-assed bit of scripting afterall.  I thought that, if Skynet was actually the personification of all the computers of the world networked into one horrific overmind, would that mind not also be comprised of all the social networking garbage people have uploaded?   It would stand then that Skynet would think that it had to use an overexposed image to present itself to robot guy.  Hell, before appearing on that screen Skynet was probably checking itself out for maximum attitude angles in the preview window the way you would when preparing to have a video chat.

I couldn’t find a screenshot from that scene, but I managed to put together a mockup, and though it only took me seven hours, I think it’s pretty close.  Look:

BEHOLD! THE FUTURE!

I still think that movie was terrible, but also a bit more in tune with the future effects of the present than I gave it credit for.  McG, you fucking rock and I salute your inclusion of such visionary social science in your horrific, horrific movie.

*END SPOILERS*

Long story short, I’ve recently set up a Facebook and I thought I’d let you guys in on that fact, ya know?  I said to myself, “Dese guyses should know what’s going on, and if anyone deserves to know what’s going on, it’s dese guyses.”  That moment really did go down, and I really did say it out loud, confusing the hell out of the lady at the bank, but she dealt with it like a pro and eventually exchanged all that foreign currency I had accrued over the years from various trips abroad.

There’s a funny thing that happens when people find out I have such a thing as a Facebook page or a Myspace page or a Hot Teen Cats page, and by funny I mean sad and awful .  What happens is I get a lot of people saying things, in what I imagine are fairly ridiculous voices like ” I never thought YOU would have a Facebook page!” or “Why do you have a Myspace page?  I hate Myspace and it’s for stupid people.  DUHHHHHRRRR!”  I then imagine those people, the people that, for whatever reason have been sitting around in their precious free time thinking up some version of me that they seem to have a decent grasp on, people who seem to think they know me so well that they should be shocked when I, a perfect stranger to them in reality should do something out of character for the version of me in their terrifying heads,   shitting their pants and rolling around in it while screaming.

It’s easy enough for someone to say those sites are full of gibbering idiots, and it’s easy enough for me to agree because  yes, those sites are full of gibbering idiots, but the sheer lack of imagination when considering the alternatives to using something for the purpose of idiocy is what gets me.  To assume that simply because a thing is popularly navigated by drooling morons that everyone has to use it in exactly the same way is just to expose yourself as a drooling moron, no?  Just because gave up on Facebook or Myspace because your ex finally changed her status to “single”, the modern “dear John”,  crushing what’s left of your shriveled little heart doesn’t mean anyone else has to follow suit and despise it, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean anyone gives a shit about why you think those sites are stupid when they’ve decided to be a part of them.

In my case, just like with every case like this that came before, I started up a a Facebook because it comes to my attention that there are people out there with huge dreams that want to live out the oh-so badass life of a CARTOONIST.  These people start up fake accounts on these awful sites and start suckering fans in, and it makes me sick to think that these impostors might be lying to innocent morons, some of them attractive women, getting them to send in naked photos of themselves or who knows what else.  I won’t stand for the possibility of those photos not being sent to ME instead.  I sit at a desk all day, goddammit, and if some loser without the vision to impersonate someone a little bigger like, say, the guy who invented the toaster strudel,  is taking advantage of people while I reap none of the benefits, well then something has to be done about it.

Granted, these guys are doing me a favor in a way, as they collect the kind of fools that honestly think they are talking to me, despite the impostors coming off nothing at all like myself, posting pictures of me and being all around “attentive to people’s feelings” and other such rubbish.

It’s a thing I’ve dealt with from day one, really, with fakes popping up on Livejournal, then Myspace, then Facebook and Hot Teen Cats, as I’ve mentioned before, and it necessitates my creating a presence in these places, even if it’s just in the form of a mirror for the sites I do manage like my Twitter or the Question Sleep journal.  I’m going to guess the people that feel the need to complain about my having a presence on a site they deem to be unsavory don’t have loonies pretending to be them because nobody wants to pretend to be a boorish bastard unless that bastard created such classics as Rape-bo.

Long story short, here’s the Facebook page.  You know it’s really me because I’m not posting pictures of myself like a common internet whore and telling you what I’m having for breakfast unless I think it’s going to make you sick.  It’s likely going to get links from Mindspill when they pop up, same as the Myspace page, but if that’s your sorta thing, then go to it, have some fun, and try not to annoy the living hell out of people.

Some of you might notice that I have a personal profile page on these pages as well, but it’s pretty horrible even thinking of managing those, what with the friend invites and ridiculous app invites like “Join my gang of beet farmers!” and other such stuff that I can’t imagine ever looking into.  The sheer number of clicks just to add a person but make sure you don’t see their daily activities popping up in a news feed is just daunting, so I’m trying to reprogram my old NES R.O.B robot to handle that mess.  No offense, but I really don’t want to know what kind of salad you’d be if you were not a human being with no ability to moderate what poop comes out of your brain and splatters all over the internet.