Drawers

We all have secret lives.

Secret parts of ourselves, kept in secret places, like drawers that reach into the dusty dark and keep your fingers grasping like knobbly ghosts.

People are so surprised when we show these parts of ourselves. But why? Don't we all have hidden sides? Stories to tell that are never told?

Sometimes, these places are not very secret at all. Now we can stow them away all over the web -- where strangers may peruse your pictures and words in the safety of anonymity, while we do the same with theirs.

There is comfort in not knowing each other prior to this instant. There is wonder, delight, disdain, disappointment, nonchalance, ignition, mutual passion -- but we remain strangers. We can enjoy each others' company free of baggage; free of the past. In the moment, nothing else matters.

Secret lives are lonely lives. But in some ways they are also a joy.

To invite someone you know well (in your main sphere of life) into your hidden places is to extend the friendship to intimate new levels. But you don't always have to extend the invitation.

At this secret party, people can invite themselves. They can pop by unnoticed, surprising you, surprising themselves; by thinking that they knew you and finding out they were wrong.

So who leads the party? Who holds the key to the drawers? Was there ever a key?

And who do we trust with it?



~

Spambots: More Hateful Than The Average Pedophile

Spam always feels vaguely threatening even when you know they’re non-personal messages generated by bots. Maybe it’s because those bots were made by humans. Humans I hate more than bank robbers and pedophiles combined.

Spam is more than annoying. It is a crime against privacy. And I am one of those people who guard my personal space fiercely. I invite people openly into my space; but if you’re not invited, Stay The Fuck Out.

That’s just the irksome factor though. The threat factor comes from the spam machine feeling like just that - a machine. This thing is attacking you and you Don’t Know Why. Nevermind that you are simply one of a hundred or thousand getting stupid shit in your inbox or alerts; nevermind that spam has existed since the age of AOL and Hotmail (and not forgetting paper Junk Mail). It still arouses that powerful feeling of nausea, hatred and intrusion.

We can physically weed out the trash that comes in between our bills and letters. And adjust the Spam Filter settings on our email inbox to make all penis enhancement ads invisible. But many social networks do not as of yet have a proper bot detector; so till then, we will occasionally be barraged by a faceless, nameless army of cold-blooded privacy killers.

Be very afraid.

Disclaimer: The post title is a strict generalization and is inapplicable to pedophiles who indulge in rape, molestation and acts severely traumatizing to children. It does, however, suggest that spambot creators be placed in the same jail cell as them.

-