Extra! Extra! Read All About It.

I feel comfortable saying that most of us have fallen victim to social websites spilling the beans on something. It could have been the winner of a game you recorded, the ending to a movie you wanted to see, or the plot twist in one of your favorite shows. The last one is what recently happened to me. Sadly, it happened to some other friends as well.

While hanging out with a friend, they got up to use the bathroom, and I decided to check my Instagram feed. There it was, smacked right in the middle; a character from one of my current favorite shows had bit the dust and I wasn't around to see it. A little picture with some lettering on it let me know what I had been waiting all week to find out. Needless to say, I got pissed and it wasn't just me. After checking facebook, it seems that the out of bag cat shat all over everyone's newsfeed.

Reading through everyone's comments and status updates, even taking a step back and analyzing my own reaction, I got the sick feeling that maybe we were caring too much. Our friends had instantly become hated and I even called someone a 'dipshit'. Really? I reverted to using a term I hadn't heard, let alone spoken, in years? It's only a TV show.

Don't worry. This isn't where I'm going to preach and tell everyone that there are bigger concerns in the world and that we're fortunate to have so much. No. I'm going to tell people, 'stop being an idiot!' There is no longer any glory in being the first to tweet or update about something that happened. You're being annoying and unless you've just had a child, there's really nothing you can post first that won't seem that way. This is especially true when entertainment and media are involved. Way to go. The only exception I'll make is for the announcement that Whitney has been canceled. Even then, I won't really care.

All Up In My Business

Over the past few months, I've gotten to know a lot of Apple employees. It's not at all because my computer has been breaking and I needed to stop in so frequently that I learned their names. I'm typing away on a MacBook that was put out in '06 and it still works like a charm, which is more than I can say for any clothes that I owned at that time (man, I've got to lose weight). I've come to know them because two of my closest friends have started working at the same store and we end up hang out together. But it's not just those two. I currently know five people who work for Apple that I've known before their time there.

What stinks is that my budding 'friendships' with their fellow employees has caused me to see how small the Apple world actually is. I could literally see the phrase "a few bad apples" come to life if I wanted to. Within this small circle, news travels really fast and that means I need to watch where I step. For instance: I started talking to a really cool girl who is an Apple employee - not even the same store my close friends work at. Before the week was over, it was known throughout a few stores that we hung out over drinks. I felt like a guy trying to squeeze out a fart in an elevator; no matter how hard I tried to keep it under wraps, everyone would soon find out. This didn't have any bearing on my thoughts about the girl, but it did make me question what the rumor mill would be like.

There is also the case of actually hanging out with my friends and their co-workers. Every get together's conversation has been dominated by the going ons of their job, usually leaving me and some others out of the loop, scratching our heads because we don't know who they're talking about. When the conversation finally dies off, it's always followed up by the taking out of iPhones and checking their social networks. It really made me self-conscious about the number of times I checked mine. I do have to say that it's actually gone down since I bought a watch, which I made the excuse of never wearing one because the time was on my phone. At least now I don't look like I'm addicted to my phone by constantly pulling it out of my pocket (what was the equivalent term of 'crackberry' for the iPhone?). Let's face it, whenever we check our phones for the time, we always forget what it is and have to pull it out again. So, I'm extremely thankful to my wristwatch for not making me look so addicted, which I guess is the same feeling heroin junkies have towards the veins in their legs during winter time.

Now the question is how do I interact with this community? I think I've come up with a solution. Get them drunk! Get them so drunk they stop talking about work. This method actually worked the night before Thanksgiving. There we were at our local bar, talking about everything under the sun except the latest gossip at Apple. Oh the good times we had. I also attribute it to the fact that most everyone in their social networks were present at the bar. No need to check Facebook if your status updates are all coming from the same location, right? And if anyone was posting pictures on Instagram, chances were that you're in the photo being shared (you can 'like it' when you got home).

So, that's my advice: forget about it all and become the 'bad apple' yourself.

Now, I know these friends are going to read this entry (you better or we're not friends!) and you should all know I love you. I just can't stand hearing about so and so who blows up the bathroom every day in between ping-pong matches in the break room (note: not an actual person).