Signs of the Times, Issue No. 245 - 01/29/13

YOBO - You Only Blog Once.......... a week.

Greetings to one and all. My name is Aaron. Perhaps you've heard of my blog, "Signs of the Times"? Welcome back. Today I'd like to talk about sketchy online dating and a bunch of things that people say and do but don't really understand. On we go! Over the weekend, I came across a new show on MTV called "Catfish: The TV Show." I had heard the term "catfish" in reference to the Manti Te'o saga. A "catfish" is a person who creates a fake online profile as, essentially, an alter ego in order to pursue a romantic relationship with an unknowing partner. Such, allegedly, was the tale of Mr. Te'o, who claims that this fake, dead girlfriend was the love of his life, even though they had never even met. Pretty sketchy story. I didn't buy it. Not a bit. Anyway, I saw this show on TV the other day and decided to check it out. As I clicked on over to MTV - something I haven't done in probably a decade and a half - I felt like I was sinning. But I jumped right into an episode about 20 minutes in and hoped for the best. Now, I thought this show was some prank show like "Punk'd" or something where it was all a set-up, but I watched as some poor, witless girl naively agreed to go meet this male model (allegedly) that she had been online dating for months. As they pulled up to the guy's house (allegedly) and knocked on the door, I had no clue what was going to happen next. Who would come out? The guy? Not likely. Her best friend? Her worst enemy? It turned out to be some "big boned" girl with slight same-gender attraction that was just doing it all for fun. Just for the heck of it. She had played many, many other innocent girls by faking this profile on Facebook! Incredible! But... was it a joke? I still didn't really understand. In the end, no! This is all real. And it's all really crazy. I checked the DVR menu and saw that "Catfish: The TV Show" was on for two more hours with two more consecutive episodes. I was hooked. In two days last weekend, I not only watched seven "Catfish" TV episodes, but also watched the 2010 documentary that started it all. This stuff is absolutely shocking! I can't believe the lengths that some people will go to to satisfy these sickening addictions. It's disgusting, it's disturbing, and I find it absolutely fascinating. What about the online couple that had been corresponding for 10 years and had never met in person? What about the redneck who thought he was in a relationship with a former Miss Teen USA? Ahh! I'm hooked! [unintentional fishing pun] I can't get enough of this stuff! They're even uglier in person. To finish up my thoughts on Manti Te'o, after watching "Catfish," I do feel sympathy for him - well, more sympathy than I did before, anyway, now that I see that this junk goes down all the time! - but I don't totally forgive him and I will never say, "Oh, poor, poor, poor Manti Te'o! He was a victim!" because he was part of the lie. He joined in on the lie and he played along with it, garnering sympathy from the national media along the way, even after he knew it was a hoax, and he still wants people to believe that he is totally innocent. Nope. Not buying that. Not buying that at all. A lot of you have questioned my ethics in so consistently unfriending my online acquaintances on Facebook. I commented about it on Facebook the other day and I stand by my stance. Stop me if I say something unfair. If you - in real life - hung out with a bunch of friends all the time, but nobody ever talked to you, you didn't have anything in common with any of them, nobody ever asked you to do anything with them, and only acknowledged you when you approached them, would you continue to hang out with them? I know I wouldn't! So I don't! I semi-frequently re-assess my online "friendships" and, if somebody doesn't act like a real friend, if the only reason I keep them around is just so it looks like I have more friends, but nothing more, I get rid of them. I figure that I'll hang onto the people who I actually communicate with from time to time and people who actually show interest in my life rather than just adding everyone I went to school with from the time I was 8 until I graduated college just for the sake of being "friends." Those aren't friends. Those are acquaintances. And I don't think that those people need to be clued in to every little thing I'm doing with my life. If they want to know, they'll ask and if they don't, they won't. Then, if they don't for long enough, I give 'em theaxe. Any Questions? No. Of course not. There usually aren't. Moving right along. Bye bye. As I was going through the week during these past seven days, my mind reflected on the horrible state of conversational grammar in America. We certainly say a lot of things that don't make any sense at all. I think that general and overall laziness is to blame for probably 75% of that problem, but I also think that cliche phrases contribute to our stupidity, in the sense that we hear people say things all the time, we think those things that they say are cool, so we begin to say those same phrases, ourselves, without entirely knowing what the heck we are talking about. Additionally, I think that, perhaps out of fear of potentially hurting somebody's feelings, we say or do certain things in an attempt to bail ourselves out. If you were ever looking for some defining Signs of these Times, look no further than these preposterous things that people say and do and you will clearly be able to tell the state of our once-illustrious nation. It's sad. Take a look. "The customer is always right" - I almost guarantee you that the person who started this phrase was a customer. "Sorry, who is this? I got a new phone and I lost everyone's number." - Yeah right. How often do people honestly get new phones? Maybe once every three years or so, unless you're obsessed with Apple - and in that case, it's more like once a year. If you actually just deleted my number and don't want to talk to me anymore, just man up and say it.- "YOLO (You only live once)" - Not if you ask James Bond! Apparently this is a popular phrase that people say when they need an excuse to binge drink, fornicate, or go skydiving. In fact, come to think of it, I think the only people who say "YOLO" are commonly known by another acronym. They're all GPOCs. Alma 34:32-34. "Epic" - Probably my least favorite word in the Modern Era... I've used this example in the past, but I once knew somebody who referred to a concert that he or she attended as "epic" - an epic concert. I wanted to respond and ask them if a dragon came out and lit the pianos on fire whilst the performers fought with iron-cast swords. Now that would have been "epic." And I don't want to hear that you had an "epic weekend" unless you, like, narrowly survived frostbite and a close encounter with a snow monster while backpacking through the Alps with a wizard and a dwarf. Shortened words, such as "Totes (totally)," "Cray (crazy)," "Obvi (ously)," "Jelly (jealous)" - Are we seriously so lazy that we only have the motivation to say half of these already-short words? Come on, people. I seriously had to stop hanging out with a girl who talked like this because it made me feel like I was dealing with a middle schooler. She was acting totes childish, you might say. It drove me cray cray. "You'll find the right girl when you least expect it..." - It seems like the people who give the worst dating advice are married women. I discount everything they say by about 75%. Just because it worked for you doesn't mean it's gospel truth. Oh, and hey, guess what? I've been "least expect"-ing it for several years now and I'm still single. "I don't have time to watch TV/text back/relax/go to church/go on a date" - Really? You're busy from sun-up to sun-down? Every single day, including weekends? Wow... That's rough. We'd never get along. "Decisions determine destiny" - I recently saw a picture of a girl that got a tattoo that said this. There's nothing inherently wrong with that phrase, itself. But the decision that girl made to get a giant tattoo of it on her body eternally destined her to look like trash. "Raised Mormon" - This is code for "I was born into a Mormon family, but I'm too cool for that stuff and I decided to become alcoholic instead." Girls' obsession with mustaches - I'm sick of seeing girls taking pictures of themselves and their friends with fake mustaches. Like... somebody please explain to me why this is such a fad right now. It's not attractive and it's not funny. So stop it. "...Said no one, ever." - Except for you. You just said it. "I'm not gonna lie..." - We all certainly appreciate the honesty. "I could care less" - Oh, you could? That must mean you do care about it a little bit, right? Or did you mean that you couldn't care less? "RNA number"/"PIN number" - First of all, there's no such thing as an "RNA" number. It's an "RA" number, short for "return authorization." I have no idea what an "RNA" number would be. Secondly, the "N" in "PIN" stands for "number," so when you refer to it as a "PIN number," you're really saying "personal identification number number" and that's just silly. Hashtags on Facebook - I've said it once, I've said it a million times, but #usinghashtagsonfacebookmakesyoulooklikeanidiotbecausetheydon'tdoanything!! Also, #youcan'tputpunctuationinahashtag,youidiots. And finally, #you'reaposer. So yeah. Stop doing that stuff, please. I realized late last night that the Super Bowl has just snuck right up on me. It's this Sunday night, of course, and I suppose that none of you care what I have to think about it. Oh well, I'm going to make a prediction for all of you sports haters, anyway. I never thought in my entire life that I'd ever cheer against my once-beloved San Francisco 49ers, but, alas, that day has come. I will not be cheering for the Niners this weekend, largely (and almost entirely) due to the fact that Jim Harbaugh did dirt to Alex Smith and I'm still bitter. Obviously it wasn't the wrong move and it wasn't a bad move, but he came off looking like a total jerk. I'd love to see Kaepernick get pounded by Paul Kreuger and the Baltimore D. However, simply due to my rooting interests, I'm predicting that San Francisco comes out and wins big. So... that's a bummer. Seems like the team I cheer for typically loses in the Big Dance. Hey, what can you do? Not a whole lot, in this case. Who ya got?? Speaking of people that hate sports, how about all those closet Utah Jazz haters that came out to play last night after the Jazz took a 45-point beatdown at the hands of the Houston Rockets? It's like people who have never even heard of organized sports before come out of the woodwork to mock me after each Jazz loss. Well guess what? Just like a win is a win, whether it's by one point or 10, a loss is a loss, whether by five points or 50. It's just one loss. Hopefully the Jazz will pull their heads out and look forward and not backwards - and on, on to the victory, so to speak. And hey, it could be worse. The Lakers are still six games below .500. Heh. The Shoutout of the Week goes to ummmm... Ed Rothlisberger. You can never get enough of Ed Rothlisberger. That guy is awesome. That's about it for this week, kiddos. I'm outta here. You know where to find me. Until next Time, Move It. Sell It. And Leave the Door Open. Aaron