Strangers with Wi-fi

My demographic was raised to be terrified of the internet. We were first exposed to it at the same time as our parents. It was just as new to them as it was to us. Back then our parents didn't see it as being useful for very much, except my dad was very excited about this whole "e-mail" thing. What they did realize was that it was a way for their kids to talk to strangers without ever leaving the house. Which meant, of course, that pedophiles from the Tron universe were going to scan us into the computer and cybermolest us.

You would hear vague rumors that almost coalesced into anecdotes about a kid who went missing because of someone they met in an AOL chat room, how this stranger with cybercandy figured out where they lived and where they went to school and one day the kid just up and got abducted. Of course, you would have to voluntarily divulge this information, but try telling that to a panicked parent. So they forwarded bad jokes to each other via their hotmail accounts and poured themselves stiff drinks. Or at least my parents did. And you know, I really don't blame them.

Then the Bush Era rolled around and it wasn't the pedophiles that were out to get us on the internet, it was the g-men. The FBI was reading every email you sent. The internet was a series of tubes, and each of them passed through a shadowy basement room in the J. Edgar Hoover building where dissidents were held without warrants and branded with cigarettes by scotch-sipping men in black. You were one email saying that all the guests at the party would be "blown away by your cake" from going to Guantanamo. These were true facts.

And now we're all in a panic about Mark Zuckerberg having rights to the information that we publicly broadcast using a medium he created. Unless you're Amish or my mom or some Yupik tribesman wandering the frozen tundra chewing on seal blubber, you've seen the statuses where people are making a disclaimer about their profile being their intellectual property. I actually don't know what the content of this chain status is. I haven't read it. Because I know that it's meaningless. You already agreed to everything they asked when you created your profile.

I don't even care if they use any of it. What's up there for facebook corporate to appropriate anyway. Pictures where I'm awkwardly tagged in the background? My futile attempts to be witty with statuses like "Fabric softener? I hardly know her!" The movies/bands/books I say I like in order to project some kind image of myself? Go ahead, take all of it.

In fact, it probably should be their intellectual property rights. The you on facebook isn't you, it's a version of you that was created by the constraints of the medium, and by the culture of sharing bits of pieces of your life that wouldn't exist without social media. If they have the patience to dig through all the garbage on my profile, then they deserve whatever turds they end up polishing.

Also, the first person to make this post their status gets a free Ozone Shack prototype coffee mug. Go!