Random warnings and anecdotes
Apparently you should not use a Facebook app called “Who’s peeping my profile?” or “Who’s been looking at my profile?” It will spam your friends, though I don’t see why anyone would bother setting something like that up.
Honestly, there are large swathes of the Internet whose purpose I don’t understand. What’s the point of a spam app? What does its developpers *get* out of annoying people on Facebook? I know, Facebook is a data-miner’s dream, so maybe they’re skimming emails or names/birthdays, but I suspect they may be like the Underpants Gnomes, and their plan for world domination goes something like this:
1. Spread an app through Facebook, spamming merrily along
2. ?????????
3. PROFIT!
So there’s your random warning. Now a random anecdote:
During my 2nd year in university I picked up a gig for a few days at a high school in a northern suburb. It was a long trip there and back. On the way back from (I think) the last day, I was whiling away the subway ride by writing in my diary. I should mention that the diary was an 11×17 shiny silver-coloured hardback. (This will be important later.)
It was still somewhere in North Toronto when I realized that someone was smoking in the car. This being against the rules, the culprit standing up across from where I was sitting, and me being young and a little clueless, I said:
“Dude, put your cigarette out,” or words to that effect. It might have been, “Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Put your damn cigarette out.”
Now this was on a Friday night, and this dude was drunk. And an asshole. So he finished his cigarette and came and sat down next at me.
“Whatcha doing?” he said.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
“Are you writing about me?”
“No.” Though by this time I totally was.
There was some more vaguely sexually harrassing banter – I can’t remember it in detail anymore – and a minute or two later I felt something looming next to my head. I turned to look and saw it was…
…the dude, with his tongue out, ABOUT TO LICK MY FACE.
So I did what anyone with sense would do. I hit him on the head. With my large, hardback diary.
He left me alone after that, though I did have to stay on a couple of extra stops to wait for him to leave first. I don’t know if there’s a moral to the story, other than, “Carry a large book at all times,” or possibly, “If you are a young and attractive woman a stranger will probably try to lick your face at some point in time. Sorry.”
A while ago the TTC had a campaign asking for riders’ stories about transit, looking for inspirational material for its advertising. I submitted that story. For some reason they never got back to me.