Single Life

Just two days ago, I was out to brunch with a friend and somehow, the topic of video games came up. I think I was explaining to her what I felt the value was of being yourself from the giddyap instead of doing what other people wanted you to do so they’d be willing to hang out with you.

I told her something to the effect of a chick would be a fool to give me an ultimatum to choose between spending time with her and playing video games because without a split second’s hesitation, I’d be like “Don’t let the door hit’cha… Where the Good Lord SPLIT’CHA!!!” :D

I can afford that though, because I’m single and I don’t have any kids. If a chick doesn’t fit in with my style, she can vamoose and make space for the next gal who’s already on deck, waiting to step into the batter’s box.

So just now, reader “Kim” brought up the scenario of a guy having kids with a gal and still spending all day playing video games with his homeboys instead of spending time with the kids, doing chores, whatever.

Being that that’s a foreign situation to me, I have a hard time properly processing it. I know how it feels to play video games all day and not pay attention to SOME OTHER CHICK’S KID(S)! :D hahaha but I can’t really grasp anything other than MAAAAAYBE handing the kids controllers so they could make themselves useful in the game I’m playing. >:D

The reason I wanted to bring this up is that I think this is a very important issue that couples don’t often discuss before they accidentally have kids.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

It’s actually been funny to me, throughout the years, watching women get exasperated and frustrated because their boyfriends/husbands have ZERO to do with the kid’s maintenance. It’s funny because I know that in whatever brief fantasies I’ve had about having kids, I never imagined changing one or feeding one or really doing ANYTHING with them other than playing sports and reading to them from books, handing them video game controllers… you know.. FUN stuff! :D

Unfortunately for women, they feel like a guy’s going to automatically give a flying **** about child maintenance just because he’s the one that got her pregnant. It doesn’t work like that. They don’t give us baby dolls and carriages and ovens to play with when we’re kids. That’s “girl stuff”. They give us footballs and baseball equipment and send us for drum lessons. Changing a kid never crosses our minds because there’s no reason for it to. In order to have a kid, it’s got to come with a female, who just so happens to have been reared to take care of the kids since *SHE* was a kid. It’s like kids come with automatic nannies, off the bat.

This is why women are surprised and complain so much that they’re the ones that always get stuck changing and feeding the kid(s). They don’t get that THEY’RE the ones that go through hormonal changes during child-bearing, not US. :) We’re the exact same dudes that we were before… which brings up another issue…

Get a clue, ladies… If a dude doesn’t like to clean up after himself BEFORE you move in with him, what makes you think he’s going to want to start doing it AFTER you move in with him? O_o In fact, it’ll probably get WORSE now that he has YOU to clean up after him because that’s part of the reason he selected you as his girlfriend/wife in the first place.

Once again, no hormonal change occurs in guys when they move in with a gal that makes them different people than when y’all used to live apart from each other. If you want a guy to clean things when you live together… wait for it….. Date A Guy That Cleans Up After Himself From The Giddyap! :D

Same thing with taking out the garbage. Same thing with visiting your relatives on the weekend instead of staying home and watching the game. Same thing with going to Happy Hour after work with his co-workers. Same thing with him driving his Corvette when you think he should trade it in for a van so he can chauffeur your new family all over creation.

The Talk

I wonder how many couples have these conversations ahead of time?.. I know a bunch of them have the convo AFTER THE FACT! :D

I know I’ve never had a conversation where I would have claimed to take responsibility for ANYTHING, as you can guess, being that I won’t even let a chick interrupt my “ME Time”. I can only imagine that it’s stressful for both sides, unless the guy had been looking forward to feeding and changing kids beforehand.

If you have any comments on this topic (whether you have kids or not), please leave them below so we can all benefit from your wisdom. :D

Ladies, do you expect your boyfriends/husbands to automatically share, say 40% to 50% of the child-maintenance duties with you if/when you have kids?

Guys, is this something that ever crosses your mind, or do you just figure the female’s going to deal with it and call you when dinner’s ready? :D

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One of my most popular posts is 2008′s “How To Break Up With Your Girl”. It seems like every single day, somebody wants to know how to break up with a girl….

***** SPOILER ALERT for Real World: DC ***** If you don’t want to know what happened last night, stop reading now! :D

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Being a professional at getting rid of chicks while maximizing their potential to feel good about it, I was sitting there like :O watching Josh dump his girlfriend on RW:DC last night. It was horrific. It was brutal.

I know how brutal it was because I did just about the exact same thing back in the day.

Cheating & Valor

Personally, I’m not a “cheater”. I put that in quotes because I don’t believe in cheating. I believe in Free Will. I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing whenever I feel like doing it regardless of what I say to some chick.

Being that I understand this about myself, the issue is circumvented by never committing to one chick. If you don’t tell one person that you’re in a committed relationship with them, you don’t have to extricate yourself from the relationship on the fly when something else comes up that you want to do.

Whomever you’re dating deserves that much, at least. They deserve more than on some regular day, they get a phone call from their boyfriend telling them that it’s over and that’s that. I’ve done it. I didn’t like “having” to do it. I wasn’t happy about it. I’m not proud about it. I wish I could have thought up a better way to deal with the situation, but I was like 19 and that’s all I had in my arsenal at the time.

The reason I brought up not being a cheater is because it’s an issue of valor and strength. If you make a verbal commitment to someone that you and she are in an exclusive relationship, you need to keep your word… not to HER, but to YOURSELF.

That’s like telling someone you’re going to work for them and then not showing up. That’s like having someone work for you and then not paying them. That’s like having kids with a chick and not supporting them. It’s an issue of valor. How are you supposed to look at yourself in the mirror, knowing that you’re a weak Human Being and a pathetic excuse for a male of the species?

So, besides the fact that I don’t believe in the concept at all, that’s why I’m not a cheater. When I say something, it means something.. To *ME* and to other people. I wouldn’t be happy with myself, telling some chick “You’re my girlfriend, and I love you” on the phone and then picking up chicks at the bar left and right.

This is how I ended up in the Josh-esque situation of having to dump a chick out of the blue over the phone. I wasn’t in the process of hooking up, because that’s not something I would have done BEFORE breaking up with the chick, but I could feel it coming… I knew damned well that if I had been in the moment, the moment would have occurred. I wouldn’t have stopped the action to have some sort of philosophical conversation with the girlfriend that I had already decided wasn’t my girlfriend anymore, so I did what I considered to be the right thing and dumped her BEFORE something happened. It was still ****** up, but it was the best solution I could come up with at the time.

Double Standards

So Josh’s chick heads for the bathroom and Josh heads for the phone. I’m hoping and praying that he’s going to do the right thing and fall on his sword, taking the entire heat for the situation, but I don’t figure that’s what’s going to happen.

From the way they’ve edited the show, it doesn’t appear that Josh has the capability to have an actual “girlfriend”. He said something a few episodes back about how he was homeless and she let him live with her or something. I’m sure he said a bunch of other good stuff about her that they edited out in order to develop his character in a particular direction, but it’s clear that dude thrives off of attention. It’s clear that he’s not the “No. I have a girlfriend” type of dude.

The funny part about all this is that a few episodes back, when he heard that HIS GIRLFRIEND might have been creeping around the way, this guy starts BITCHING AND MOANING about it to her, like as if they’re in some kind of important relationship. This is a fantastic and obvious case study of a double standard. “Cheat on me and I’ll flip my wig!!! :O .. Meanwhile, I’ll cheat on you and if you find out about it, I’ll break up with you because I already have another ***** anyway. Peace! :D”

I Kissed A Girl

So Josh starts off decently with sounding somber and like he might have been crying recently. That was good because you don’t want to break up with a chick like blah blah Peace! You want to seem as if you give a damn.. Assuming you’re interested in her mental health, well being and physical safety. You want it to seem like this decision is tough on you, when, in reality, the chick you’re about to bang is in the bathroom and you took this opportunity to absolve yourself from the guilt of having to tell your girlfriend that you hooked up AFTER THE FACT.

The first “OOF!” moment came when he finally started breaking down what was going on. He goes “I kissed somebody”. :/ I was like “Come. On. Player.. YOU *KNOW* that’s not what it is! :D Jeez. That was the MAJOR cop-out, because a) he had made out with chicks on camera BEFORE that night, and b) he was completely understating his level of involvement with tonight’s chick.

I understood why he did it. The intention was proper. He knew that HER reaction to hearing that he kissed a chick was going to be breaking up with him, which absolved him from guilt for hooking up with the chick he had waiting for him to finish yakking on the phone so they could do this, like Brutus and we always knew this.

The execution was *****. Straight up. You know what you’re about to do. Let your girl down properly if you’re going to do it at all. If you just HAVE TO BE THAT WEASEL whose word doesn’t mean jack-**** then let her know the real deal. Don’t make her feel like there’s a chance at reviving the exclusivity of the relationship by acting like you kissed a chick and came home solo and were about to go to sleep. :/

Having said all that, I’m aware that these are edited shows, and as an editor, I could have made Josh look as valiant or as creepy as the producers wanted him to look, so it’s entirely possible that they deleted the parts where he explained that he was about to screw the chick he kissed tonight as soon as he got off the phone with his girlfriend… I just completely DOUBT that that’s what happened.

Woman-Speak

Josh then proceeds to talk too much and say that he kissed a girl that he’s been “seeing a couple of times”. :/ BUZZZZZZZZZZZZ.. Wrong Answer!

This is where the whole situation dove downhill. Most guys don’t understand woman-speak. Women will tell you the amount that they’re COMFORTABLE telling you. Unless you’re tight with them (which means, by default, that you’re not dating them), they’re not going to tell you what ACTUALLY happened. They already know this about themselves. This is why when you tell women about something YOU did, they automatically escalate what you said a couple of levels.

If a chick you’re not tight with tells you that she went out with a dude, she may very well have ****** his ****. If she tells you she did that, she probably screwed him. If she tells you nothing at all happened, she probably made out with him. This is the logic they apply to what YOU tell THEM.

So, for Josh to say he kissed someone, she’s going to assume he did way more than kissing. For Josh to nail his own coffin shut by saying “This promoter that I’ve been… seeing a couple of times”, he’s admitting that a) he can’t be trusted around women that are supposedly platonic business friends of his, and b) that he’s been actively pursuing this chick that he supposedly ‘just’ kissed while he was in a committed relationship to his girlfriend.

Play “Taps”. The Fat Lady is singing.

I’m Only A Man

So then he tries to weasel his way out of the situation by saying “I’ve tried my hardest.. I can’t stand to hurt you anymore”. This is where I started to get disgusted. He wasn’t “hurting” his girlfriend because he had been HIDING his behavior this whole time. This phone call wasn’t to relieve her of some kind of current pain she was in. Josh knew he was about to get pizaid and he didn’t feel like a) admitting it after the fact and making himself look like more of a crumb, or b) having the chicks in the house spill the beans to his girl, which would have been even worse.

Of course, his girl starts going berserk, as if that matters. “How Could You Do This? blah blah blah”. Nobody cares. This is the guilt-absolution conversation, not the “let’s talk about this” conversation. This is the “I have a ***** waiting for me in the bathroom” conversation.

So just when I thought the situation had hit rock bottom as far as Josh not taking responsibility for his own desires COUGHtigerCOUGH, she aks him why he did it and he goes “I can’t help myself… I’m only a man, and I can’t help myself. I don’t know what else to tell you”.

……

No. Sorry, Dude. :/ If you want to bring the word “man” into this, you need to say “I’m a man, and I do THE **** what I want to do, including ******* this chick that’s waiting for me to finish dumping you right now”.

This is the end result of women running all over creation screaming “MEN ARE DOGS!!!”. Guys have now adopted this as their ‘out’ in all situations. “What did you expect me to do? I’m only a man. :(“. What’s your point, dude? There are only two options.. Male and Female. You’re saying that all guys cheat? Maybe you’re saying that you’re a sex addict? O_o

UGH! I was so disgusted. Just admit that you’re with a chick that you feel like banging right now, regardless of the fact that you have a girlfriend and you just plain don’t care enough about what your girl says, thinks or feels about what you do with YOUR life and YOUR body.

This is where the term “Man Up” originates from. It means BE. A. STRONG. PERSON!.. It doesn’t mean to hide behind stereotypes to explain away your DELIBERATE actions as some kind of mental or especially gender-based weakness.

Disheartening?… Enlightening?

So anyway, Josh ripped his girlfriend’s heart out, then went to get laid.

I think this is a really important episode for women to watch, even though, as I’ve said, it’s clearly edited and probably doesn’t show the entirety of the conversations and Josh’s behaviors so we don’t really have a full picture of what actually happened.

I think this is a CLEAR case of a guy that’s down to have as many chicks as he can have, and he’s willing to be a weasel to get them. Whatever they need to hear, that’s what he’s going to tell them to get them to lay down. That’s not unique. He’s not an anomaly. He’s not an exception to a rule.

What I would like women to go watch is how a guy can get on the phone with you, yak about whatever, tell you he loves you and then get back into bed with the next chick and pick up where he left off. I would like y’all to watch how a guy could have his girlfriend travel to see him, spend time with him, hook up with him and as soon as she breaks out, he’s hooking up with the next chick.

I’m not making this stuff up myself. :) Reader “Marie” called my posts disheartening. That may very well be the case, but I see things from a different perspective. These people with their happy-go-lucky dating blogs are only telling you half of the story… and it’s NOT the half that’s going to help you when YOU’RE the one that gets the “I’m dumping you” call (or text) out of the blue from the guy you thought you were in an exclusive relationship with.

“I’m only a man” might work on *YOU* and get you to go to your girlfriends yammering about how weak your now-ex-boyfriend’s mind is that he wasn’t able to resist the slightest “temptation”, but I guarantee you that same dude isn’t thinking about you AT ALL while he’s hooking up with the next chick, except for those brief moments in time where he thinks “Thank God I’m rid of what’shername” in between strokes.

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One of the reasons I really enjoyed MTV’s “Jersey Shore” is that they finally showed the lifestyle of what I call “Hunters”. Pauly & Mike were hunters, at least at the time that show was taped. They were down for the game. Fresh (new) chicks every night. They had a couple of repeat chicks, but for the most part, they were struggling to see what they could do every day and that’s what hunting’s all about.

Hunting isn’t for everybody. A lot of guys are looking to land the best chick they can get and retire. That’s what Ronnie did. He definitely COULD have hunted if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to. :D He sold out for the guaranteed daily lay with a chick that floated his boat and there’s nothing wrong with THAT! :D ‘Matter of fact, it looked like Mike was hating himself for having his hands on Sammi first and blowing it by pulling more random chicks to hop in the hot tub and make out. Had he realized his error earlier, it might have been “The Situation” that sold out and Ronnie & Pauly hunting.

Vinny didn’t do much of anything extraordinary. He pulled this old chick that his landlord/boss had been trying to kick it to and he pulled Mike’s sister after Mike HELPED VINNY by introducing them. Throughout the show, Vinny was the balance for the guys, bringing the “nice guy” and “voice of reason” vibe to the group.

Distract The DUFF

One of the best parts of the show was when Pauly & Mike are standing outside a club figuring out their prospects for the evening. They had been in it to win it but didn’t come up with anything satisfying to both of them, so Pauly agreed to take one for the team and assist Mike in getting on with this chick he liked.

Pauly’s job was to distract the DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend), which they referred to as a “Grenade”. The idea is basically that the chick was a grenade someone threw and Pauly was willing to fall on it to save Mike. hahaha oh man. :D

In case you’re not aware of what Mike needed saving from, it’s called CockBlocking. It’s when someone sees that you’re about to get laid or whatever and deliberately messes up your action. If Pauly hadn’t gone with Mike to invite the two girls back to the crib, Mike wouldn’t have been able to extract the one girl by herself = no sex. By Pauly talking to the DUFF, which he said ahead of time that he wasn’t interested in messing with AT ALL, it gave her HOPE that she might hook up with a guy she liked. That’s really all you need to extract girls from situations.. Give them all HOPE that they’re all going to have a good time.

Without that hope, she’s going to hate. She’s going to hate on Mike for trying to get laid and she’s going to hate on her girlfriend for being more attractive than she is and always getting the offers & attention. It’s in her best interest to destroy Mike’s rap, which means she’s a grenade.

If you’re going to help your boy out and distract the extra chick, it’s your boy’s job to make it ******* SNAPPY and get on as soon as possible. He should know that you would rather be watching television, playing foosball, drunk-dialing some chick you actually want to kick it with or just plain BEING ASLEEP rather than wasting time distracting the DUFF, so he should be courteous and hurry the **** up with makin’ it happen.

That’s not what Mike did. Apparently, he was too drunk to recognize the situation and he was playing it as if Pauly had a girl he was trying to hook up with, which would have meant they had all night to get on. Meanwhile, the chick got on Pauly’s nerves to the point where he just flat-left and the grenade ended up blowing up Mike’s rap and extracting her girlfriend when Mike already had her in bed. :D *BOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM*!!! HAHAHA :D

Wingman Courtesy

Pauly was completely within his rights to leave Mike with both chicks. Mike was at fault for having a slow-ass rap. I know how it feels to be on wingman/DUFF duty and time moves SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOWLY. I mean it takes FOR-EV-VER for your boy to finish up and hit the bathroom so you can finally BOUNCE (assuming you don’t live there). In the meantime, you’re at your wits’ END trying to keep this chick amused without tipping your hand that you’re trying to keep her amused. You have to act interested in her or else she’s going to figure out what’s going on and barge in while your boy’s tagging up and ruin the entire experience for him.

I didn’t mind wasting my time because my boy was already hooking up. I was just making sure he didn’t get interrupted. Mike took so long to get to the nitty-gritty that Pauly broke out before Mike even CONSIDERED extracting his chick to a private room. If that had been how I was feeling, I would have told my boy to use it or lose it and he would have had to do two-minute-drill to get his girl alone or I would have been out.

Other than that.. Just like they advised in “Top Gun”, Never Leave Your Wingman. If you can’t get on, at least you can get the assist. Of course, sudden opportunities sometimes arise where you’re getting attention from a chick you actually want, in which case you should inform your boy that you’re going to peel off to see about the other chick and he’s going to have to deal with the grenade until you get back… IF you get back! ;)

Team Selection

Another important issue is that you have to be somewhat matched up with your wingman. By that, I mean that y’all have to have approximately the same vibe, even if one of you is superior to the other one in a bunch of stuff.

Like, let’s say it would have been Mike and Vinny instead of Mike and Pauly… Mike might not have gotten to extract his chick at all because the DUFF might not have considered Vinny her type and she would have vetoed the action from the giddyap.

Unfortunately, types change from venue to venue. A dude might make an excellent wingman in a ghetto bar and be an absolute liability in a wine bar. You have to know where you’re going when you’re assembling your team. For Seaside Heights, Ronnie, Pauly & Mike could have cleaned up.. Vinny, not so much.

Also, even if your boy has the look, he has to have the right demeanor. You really can’t afford to have your props dragged down into oblivion because your boy is all thirsty and drooling over chicks. When I’m hunting, I like to play the wall and scope out the action. You have to figure out which chicks are kickin’ it with or might have arrived with which guys, which chicks are crowded together in a defensive huddle, which guys are scheming on chicks they haven’t met yet, etc.

You won’t see me on the dance floor because I didn’t come to the party to dance with chicks. That’s a waste of my time. That’s the cheap win. If they ask *ME*, then yeah, I’ll dance with them, but you’re not gonna see me hovering around the dance floor like a vulture trying to rub up on some chick’s ass. You look thirsty and cheap and the chicks figure you for a “mark”, meaning some Herb they can get free drinks off of because you’re hoping to land a number or extraction from them at the end of the evening. I’ll be right on the side, checking my email, texts, foursquare & gowalla for whatever other action’s going on in case this place is lame.

The problem is.. If your boy’s not on the same vibe, it really doesn’t matter how cool you are. He’s going to hustle on over to the chicks and start playing himself and buying drinks and then come back over to you, making you look needy and thirsty right along with him because birds of a feather flock together… Next thing you know, you have chicks tryin’na bum drinks offa you that you’ve never spoken to before in life! :D

Communication

If you’re gonna work with a guy in pulling chicks, communication is entirely and absolutely essential. You need to be able to signal important information like “Go away”, “Go away and take that chick with you”, “Come get this extra chick off of me”, “Come here”, “Call me away from these chicks”, “This isn’t working”, “Switch girls”, “Check out those chicks over there”, “Did you see her ass??? :O”, “Got one! :D” and “Let’s get out of here” without the chicks noticing what’s going on.

You normally want to do this with eye contact and hand gestures that mean something to you and your wingman but don’t mean anything to anyone else. At this point, you can also use texting, except that a guy looks rude checking and sending texts while he’s having a conversation with a gal.

If you don’t have your communication game tight, expect NOTHING from a guy you’re hanging out with as far as helping you rap to chicks. Nothing. There’s no reason he should know what you’re trying to do or what you want HIM to do if you don’t explicitly inform him.

Follow The Leader

You also both have to have equal status as far as vetoing situations. When two guys are hanging out, one guy doesn’t become the wingman until the other guy gets a rap. If your boy kicks it to a chick and you just can’t see yourself falling on the particular grenade she’s with, pull him to the side and let him know that he has about five minutes to get some kind of contact information for this chick because you’re about to break North, regardless. There’s no reason why you should waste your evening because your boy wasn’t courteous enough to kick it to a chick that had good-looking friends for you.

Unfortunately, this is also a function of Team Selection. If you don’t have a properly-balanced team, you end up with leaders and followers instead of a squad of relative equals. In that case, you don’t want to follow the followers and you don’t want the followers attempting to lead the leaders. Everybody needs to play their position so the night runs as smoothly as possible.

The optimum situation is that both sets of guys & gals that got paired up are into each other and everybody’s looking forward to a good evening. If one of the fellaz has to take as short, so be it. Your boy *SHOULD* look out for you next time, actually even attempting to HELP YOU pull the hotter chick because he owes you from last time. However, if worse comes to worse, Like Clint Eastwood said, “A Man’s Gotsta Know His Limitations!” :D

Related Posts

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Social Media Responsibility and Ethics

Leora & Bill

So the other day, I took some pictures (so what’s new?), except one of the chicks we were hanging out with wasn’t feeling confident about her looks.

There were some general shots that she happened to be in, but then when she was asked to specifically be in a pic (not with me, haha so let’s not start with the “Maybe it was YOU?” :D ), she declined, saying that she wasn’t photogenic.

* This actually happened to be incorrect, but that’s an image and self-esteem topic, having nothing to do with ethics…. *

Sharing

So I had told the group I was going to share the pictures with them. When I reviewed the set the next day, I realized that there were a couple of pictures that the non-photogenic chick (I guess I’ll call her NPC) hadn’t “signed off” on.

Now, these weren’t Social Media people. I’m sure they didn’t imagine they were hanging out with someone whose blog posts get literally world-wide coverage. 99% of the people that I hang out with know that if they see ME and they see flashes going off, that the pictures are going to be on the internet, practically immediately. Being that these people weren’t aware of this, it became MY RESPONSIBILITY to be clear on which pictures were authorized by which people for what. It’s like being a bus driver. You’re responsible for your passengers. You can’t go all buck-wild with the driving. So I ended up with three categories of pictures:

1. Pictures that were confirmed for personal use
2. Pictures that were confirmed for public use
3. Pictures that weren’t confirmed at all

Grace, Christine, Bill, Kathryn & Annie

This is one of the reasons I don’t take pictures of random people.

I don’t take pictures “to take pictures”. I’m not an “event photographer”. I’m not building a photography portfolio.

I take pictures to commemorate and broadcast good times that I have and the people that I share those good times with. Random pictures of random people mean absolutely nothing to me. Tagging the pics after the fact is probably 1/4 of the fun of the entire evening for me.

Distribution

So I’m looking through the pics and sorting them into the categories. When I had them together, I sent a specific subset to this good friend of mine, this guy who was there and part of the evening and the pictures. What I sent him was [Pictures with him in them, posing]+[Pictures that the girls had signed off on for public viewing]. The reason I specify “posing” is that some pictures feature people in the background, or unaware that a picture’s being taken. Other pictures are clearly posed and everyone in the foreground is aware of the picture and interested in being in it.

I use a digital camera, so right after I take the shot, everybody gets to see how cute they look and sign off or veto the pic. Therefore, by the time I’m working on my sets, I’m already aware that I’m working from a good set of pictures that everybody likes, except in the cases where there are things you can’t see on the small screen that become apparent in the full-size image.

So I send him the pics, and he calls me and we’re talking about the evening. At some point, he brings up the fact that more pictures were taken than I sent him. I verified that I had a couple of pictures that NPC was in. His predictable response was “Send them to me!”…

Responsibility

I took a few seconds to attempt to formulate a smooth response, but I couldn’t figure one out, so I just said “Nah. Leave her out of it.” Next came the appeals to friendship and appeals to personal trust. Of course, those met the same response and then the topic was dropped. I could hear his disappointment over the phone, but there was nothing I could do about that. Somebody was going to have to feel sad in this situation, and he was clearly the lesser of the evils.

What I didn’t have time to explain to him in the few seconds before I vetoed his request was that he has no idea how far-reaching media is these days and I do. I’m sure he feels like he can put a picture on his website or some Social Media site and nobody will ever see it, because nobody’s “checkin’ for him” like that. Well… Maybe Google’s checkin’ for ya behind your back. Maybe people are randomly looking through pictures, hoping to find people. Maybe someone that you know houses your picture from your site and puts it on their site… or puts it on MySpace… or puts it on Facebook and TAGS IT! How about that?

So, basically, the issue wasn’t whether I could trust him as a friend or not. The issue is that I had a particular design in mind for the pictures that I took, and I’m the only one that I can trust to enforce that plan. To sidetrack for a second, it’s like sex. If you don’t want to get a chick pregnant, make sure you don’t spill any liquid on her. Similarly, if you want to maintain your integrity in a situation and live up to your own word to yourself, make sure you retain control over your media that hasn’t been earmarked for general consumption.

So, do I trust him as a friend? Yes. Do I trust him to maintain MY word about something? No. I can’t. It’s just stupid. On top of that, how about the people that HE trusts? How about the people that THEY trust? Once the “NOC list” is in the open, you have ZERO control over what happens to your media and might put people in compromising situations. If you spill in the chick, you can’t shake her up and down like the cartoons to get it to come back out…..

~Bill Cammack

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Michael Arrington is the founder of TechCrunch, a leading “tech blog”. This morning, he wrote “Some Things Need To Change”, in which he describes being at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany and having someone approach him, spit on him and walk away in a crowd of people.

Michael: Yesterday as I was leaving the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany someone walked up to me and quite deliberately spat in my face. Before I even understood what was happening, he veered off into the crowd, just another dark head in a dark suit. People around me stared, then looked away and continued their conversation.

* Normally, I wouldn’t Ambulance-Chase something like this, but comments were turned off on the actual post, so I’m writing about it here.

Of course, there’s lots of speculation about WHY this occurred. Most of the blogs I’ve read so far label the guy (I assume, being that it was a tech conference, and as far as I can tell from the pics from these things, females are few and far between) as someone who was upset with TechCrunch’s coverage or LACK OF COVERAGE of their startup. Of course, we’ll never know ANYTHING about the perp until someone takes responsibility for spitting on him.

I think we can safely assume that the guy knew who he was spitting on, assuming this happened inside the conference and not outside. According to this post, Arrington is 6’4″ (six feet, four inches tall), so he must be pretty easy to spot in a crowd.

Michael: “Yesterday I was battling the flu, jetlag and little sleep, and had been battered for three days straight with product pitches from entrepreneurs desperate for press. The event was over and I was on my way back to my hotel. The last thing I wanted was another product pitch as I hurried to the car that would drive me to Davos for the next event. So when I saw this person approach me out of the corner of my eye, I turned away slightly and avoided eye contact. Sometimes that works. But in this case all it did was make me vulnerable to the last thing I expected.”

So, again, we can assume this was a guy, because it wasn’t stated otherwise. We can assume he knew who he was spitting on and we can assume that he wasn’t concerned about consequences & repercussions, because he apparently blended in with the crowd instead of running away. One person running would have been easy to spot.

I think these points indicate arrogant behavior, so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone stepped forward to take responsibility for this within the next couple of days before it all blows over on Google Blog Search.

I also find this to be an extremely bold move because I would assume that a conference like that would have lots of Social Media people there with cameras snapping and video cameras rolling. What are the odds that NOBODY caught this on tape? Also, the crowd appeared to be observant, yet disinterested. It seems like nobody pointed out the perp as he calmly walked away. I don’t know “how they do” in Munich, so it may be a common practice for people to spit on each other, so, to them, it was no big deal.

On top of that, you have to wonder what made the perp think he was going to get away with this scot-free. It doesn’t sound like a good plan to walk up to a guy who’s 6’4″ and spit in his face. It’s an ESPECIALLY BAD PLAN when that guy’s in a crowd and you don’t know who he’s with. So, it seems to me that whomever did this won’t be able to contain themselves and should be blabbing to their friends soon enough… Either that, or maybe someone DID catch it on tape…….

~Bill Cammack

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