How to Be Internet Creepy
So maybe you’re a creepy dude in real life. People can tell and you’re thinking, “Man I’d really like to be more creepy in all aspects of my life, especially the Internet.” Well I’ve brainstormed a few ideas you can try out if you already haven’t.
eBay-Paypal-FaceBook
This one is easy and perfect. Go on eBay and sell some stuff, whatever you want, whatever you think a girl might purchase. College books would probably be a good bet. For maximum creeping and minimal investment you can buy used books and just turn around immediately and sell them. Chicks are into a lot of psychology and marketing, I’d start there.
Once your item is purchased and paid for with Paypal you will have that person’s name, address, email address and possibly even phone number. Use that information to look them up on Facebook.
Recent studies show that girls on Facebook actually really enjoy being personally contacted by people they would only consider vendors and being complimented on their looks. It doesn’t matter how many miles apart you and said female are make sure you unveil all your ideas behind relationships, marriage and your favorite scenes in Star Wars. Love knows no boundaries.
If it’s starting to seem like she’s not really digging this contact you’re not out of luck yet. Accidentally put some bank receipts showing your incredibly high checking account balance, because you have nowhere to go and spend it on, inside the front cover of the book. Once she gets the book and realizes you’re loaded things will surely turn around.
Between this and Craigslist I’d say it’s how I’ve met 95% of the girls I’ve dated.
Start a FlickR Account
Maybe you weren’t aware but there is a world of people just like you out there who have an extreme fetish for women’s ankles and perfect elbows. So what next? I wish I could take all the credit for the genius in this idea but unfortunately I stole this master plan from some other freaky dude who left comments on a picture for me once.
First create a FlickR account if you don’t have one already. Use an alias that is similar to what your interests are in my pretend scenario I’ll use the name “AnkleBoi69″. Make sure if you post any photos to mark them private, this way when people visit your page they won’t know what you’re actually uploading. Type in your favorite fetish words into Flickr’s group finder join the groups that might interest you.
Next comes the more difficult part. You’ll need to scour FlickR for people who aren’t already posting photos in your group and can relate to your interests. Once you’ve found these photos make sure to comment on the “sexy ankels” or “beautiful thumbs” whatever does it for you. If you’re the admin of a fetish FlickR group, invite them to share their photo there. When the person clicks on your name to find out more about you they won’t see any photos but they’ll get a glimpse at all the really sweet groups you belong to.
Post Stalk on Facebook
After you’ve friended a bunch of people you barely know on Facebook make sure you religiously hit F5 and look for their posts. The second something new comes out, comment on how hot the girl looks, or how awesome her post was. Do this for every post, if they don’t respond, do it more.
Write on their wall like you guys are old chaps, talk about things that happened three years ago the one time you met them like it was yesterday; “LOL remember when Jack spilled the beer on himself LOL THAT WAS SO FUNNY!” Talk about how you guys need to catch up on old times, constantly.
Now It’s Open to Everyone
In my undying love for Google products I am trying out a lesser known one called Google Moderator. This little web app is used for generating new ideas and voting on them. We used something like this at work once called Spigit. Actually I think we still do and I imagine we paid more for it.
So next month a date has been set for our next trip. If you aren’t already aware James and I have created a Random Trip travel type thing… let’s call it a game. During our travels we perform a variety of tasks. Last time we came up with them, this time we’d like everyone else to, then vote on the best ones. Please avoid getting us arrested for any felonies with your genius.
Each idea can be performed by both James or Myself and everyone will be able to vote on who did it better; we’re real good about documenting the scenes with photo/video.
Due to not finding a better way to integrate this you’ll just have to use this link to vote and submit new ideas.
It has 10X Zoom And 12.1MP!
Tried as I might I couldn’t fall asleep. There’s this thing bothering me, eating at me, it’s your complete inability to understand how to buy a camera.
Seeing as how I didn’t get much in the way of “Thank you Ben you’re the best!” after my last photography related write up I figured it must just be because you didn’t have the camera yet. I’d say at least three to four times a year someone asks me “Hey, I need a good camera, you take nice photos what should I buy?” Because of this I’ve felt the need to first clarify a few things about digital cameras for you then maybe give you some sweet knowledge you can use to make your own purchasing decision some day.
X Optical Zoom
Thankfully a lot of people out there have learned that digital zoom is worthless, degrades photos and overall just a gimmick. Actually it seems like that’s one of the only things people know because they constantly feel they need to give me that tidbit from their photo knowledge arsenal “Yeah Digital Zoom is doesn’t do anything!” Well booyah, I guess. While Optical Zoom (meaning the lens is moving in and out) is “real zoom” and truly what should be helping drive your decision, the numbers manufactures like to assign to it mean nothing. Just because one camera says it has 5X optical zoom and another says 10X does not mean that the higher number is significantly better some how.
Thing is, X, is a variable – it could really be anything. Zoom is measured in millimeters and what something like “6X” means is six times the widest mm range. Camera makers obviously thought it was far too technical, and rightfully so, to tell you the real specs of a lens. I guess they figured if they said, “It goes six times further in from when you’re zoomed all the way out” you’d get the idea. It works too, when you’re buying things in person. Problem I see though is everyone wants to buy cameras online and they see these X numbers and assume bigger is better but take this scenario for instance…
Your goal is distance, you’re really into birds and have learned they’re not fond of you getting near them. You see two cameras, one is 5X and the other 7X. Under further inspection though you find out the base mm of the 5X is 30mm and the 7X is 20mm. Meaning the 7X goes 20-140mm and the 5X does 30-150mm. The 7x is wider, it’s not further. The shorter the mm number the wider the lens, the bigger the number the more “zoom” you get.
Though not always, you can typically find the real millimeter rating for a point and shoot camera. You don’t have to understand what it means just how it compares to the other camera you’re looking at.
Megapixels
Luckily more and more people are starting to realize that this number does not matter. I feel like I need to cover this a little more anyway though. For those that don’t already know: Megapixels = Size of the Photo not: Megapixels = Quality of the photo. In fact, many point and shoots try to cram too many pixels on their small sensors and it actually makes their photos look worse in full size. It has a very similar effect that you get from digital zoom which we already know sucks. You end up having to shrink the size of your photo so that it looks good when the pixels become compressed. If you’re going to do that, what was the point of that number being high to begin with?
In a recent survey I made up for the sake of writing this 95% of people do not crop their photos. They take a picture, load it on their computer and if the photo is lucky enough maybe they click the “enhance” option in iPhoto before uploading it to Facebook for their friends to see. Sometimes they print them, 4×6 at Walgreens. 2.1MP cameras have been printing wonderful 4×6 photos for years, but for the sake of safety let’s just say anything over 5MP is a safe buy.
Someone is saying right now “I crop all my photos, fu” Well then I’d have to respond with “You’re stupid and obviously your camera doesn’t zoom far enough.” Because that’s the reality. Cropping photos is few and far between. You might do it because Jessica is like totally a huge bitch and we’re not even friends on Facebook anymore and she’s like standing like right next to me in this photo I want to use for my profile picture without her in there. Or maybe some guy is exposing himself just to the left of your group family shot outside Old Country Buffet, whatever the reason you’ll likely still be okay… even if your megapixel count isn’t giant.
Digital SLR
So many people would be better off if they just stuck to buying point and shoot cameras. They go out, buy this SLR camera for $500-800 dollars, it comes with a standard kit lens and they feel like now they’ll finally get those really kickin’ rad soccer pictures of their kids. In general the lens that comes with an entry level SLR is 17-55mm which pales in comparison to some of the optical zoom options available in the point and shoot realm. After you’ve realized that your friend’s $250 Panasonic camera has better zoom than your new Canon Rebel you might be a little distraught and feel the need to go buy another lens to fill that void. That’s when you’ll realize SLRs are the biggest money pit on the planet. Your next affordable option would be a 70-300mm lens which you can pick up for as low as about $150. It also happens to be complete garbage and a total waste of your money. With exception of the 50mm F/1.8 lens there is very little you can buy for under $300 that will really distinguish itself from anything in the point and shoot world.
The second biggest reason you’d be better off not buying an SLR camera is because you’re still shooting in auto. The automatic mode in a P&S makes the bold assumption that the user really has no clue what they’re doing and just wants to press the button and make a pretty picture. They’ll generally do a better job about being shot on automatic mode as the SLR wants to believe you know at least something about photography. For example, your auto modes in a P&S might be Portraits, Night time, Landscape, Macro. However, on the SLR it’s pretty much “Auto” and it’s left to try and guess at what you’re doing; picking generic ideal settings rather than you telling it how it might want to think.
For $500 dollars (even less) you can get a top of the line point and shoot. It will have modes for all sorts of situations, have more zoom than an entry level SLR, and probably even have nice things like facial recognition all baked right in. With the money you’ve saved you can buy a little case to put it in and maybe some memory cards.
Since I’ve covered my big pet peeves about people’s assumptions on photography I think that’s enough for tonight. I’ll write a follow up later that explains what you should really be looking for come camera buying time.