Trying something different.

It's Wednesday night, September 23, 2020, and I'm here to record that I haven't looked at Twitter for 4 days. This is a big deal in my little life. I've been spending way too much time, either on my phone or on my PC, reading, reading, scrolling, scrolling, checking, checking. I follow strangers, not friends or even acquaintances. I follow people who write about, report on, and talk about national politics. A few politicians, a lot of ex-Trump employees, a lot of news organizations and reporters, pundits and comedians. It's gotten to be too much. And so depressing. Aren't we all just a little depressed as a species right now? Why add Twitter.

I'm hoping to keep up my little boycott. I think I feel a little better today compared to Saturday.

Here's my babe. She's the apple of so many eyes! Three months tomorrow. Unexpectedly, I saw her in person for about an hour on Monday -- long story. It was wonderful. Every minute with her is golden!

Does Google control it all?

If this link works for you, you will see Internet intrusiveness at its most benign, although some might argue that it's not really that benign.

The link takes you to an automatically generated photo album, called Saturday in New York, A Story by Pam Jones. I had nothing to do with the creation of this Story, which was generated by my Google+ account using a recent post about a trip to NYC. Maybe the number of pictures in the post triggered some program that compiled the Story, as Google calls them. The photo album just popped up one day in front of me when I logged into Google. Basically the whole thing creeps me out. 


The Wall Street Journal says of the feature:
"Google will automatically sort through your pictures and turn them into stories based on when they were taken."
From here.

Always something new in the Big Wide World of The Interwebs.

Early Days of the Internet.

From some guy at The Daily Beast

America Online was a magical part of the Internet. ...
 
Here’s how it worked. You went to your “computer room.” The den, the basement, wherever your family’s single PC—a big, clunky desktop—happened to be parked, ...You turned it on. You clicked on the triangular America Online icon.
And then you entered your screen name.
 
What unfolded next is a thing of the past—an ancient ritual...
 
You waited for the modem to connect. It dialed. It screeched. It sent out waves of anticipatory static. It probably got a busy signal. Finally, after a couple of thwarted attempts, a chipper male voice announced that you had arrived. “Welcome,” it said. “You’ve got mail.”
 
 And with that, you were free to explore the web’s pleasantest walled garden,...—at least until someone else needed to use the phone line.

Illustration by Henry Darger.

Cookie money.

For 2 weeks I've been doing something that really makes very little sense. Inspired by a friend who recently became a paid freelance copy-editor for an SEO company, I applied too and was hired. Three weeks ago I barely knew what SEO meant. Today I know a little about it but there's still a whole lot I don't know.

I don't know if I'm working for a white hat or a black hat SEO outfit, or for a shade of gray in between. Their website says they are white hat, but that doesn't totally reassure me. I feel quite sure that I'm not personally doing anything illegal but I don't know what the rest of the company is doing. And I'm not sure what legal even means when it comes to SEO.

I know that I'm making about $1 or $2 an hour, when you count all the time I spend checking my email. I earned $11 my first week, $13 last week.  I think of it as my cookie-buying money. I love to copy-edit and proofread. It's extremely satisfying and after decades of doing it, it comes pretty easily to me. But wow is there a lot of crap being written for godknowswhere on the Internet. Blogs and newsletters I guess. But whose blogs? A major chain book store is one client, a recognizable blue-enveloped coupon company is another. Somebody's blogging about coupons? Apparently. Where?

Writers are instructed to never mention the company in the articles. Instead they must use certain keywords -- an example would be cool deals on eReaders -- which should be worked into the copy three or four times. Writers make $5 a story so a writer who can pump out four an hour could make $20 an hour. Most of the stories are quite awful. Competently written, but lacking much in the way of news or consumer advice or useful information. Could you string together 600 words about how to use coupons online to get discounts on hotels in Delhi?

All of this feels a little dishonest and I hope it's not. It's just advertising, right? Advertising 101 these days. Like Mad Men but with the Internet. 21st century would-be Don Drapers and Peggy Olsons sitting in their PJs in front of laptops clacking out blather about baked beans....or the Lumia 2520 tablet by Nokia.

I don't know how long I'll do this. Although it's fun editing, it's not fun keeping my eye on my computer screen from about 2 PM until sometimes 10 PM or later, waiting for the writers to finish the stories I've been assigned to edit. This is seriously eating into my reading time, and I probably won't tolerate that for long. I don't let it interfere with dinner though, which means about 2 hours of inattention on my part while the stories pile up waiting for me to get to them. The workload varies wildly. On some days there's nothing to do, and on others there are so many stories to be written and edited that the supervisor of the writing/editing team peppers all of us with short little emails throughout the evening saying "There's a lot more to do tonight gang so let's speed up a little so everyone can sign out soon!" They like using the word "gang" in emails. An attempt to make us feel like we're all part of one big happy family I guess. A family working for about a quarter of the minimum wage.