Conner's Blog

I’m starting to understand why those who don’t get social media don’t get social media.  Just check out all these reasons to avoid it.

• Why would you want to connect with a ton of people from all over the country and world?
• Why would you want to engage with people in your industry who might one day be a connection to a job or a potential positive addition to your company?
• It’s an awful thing to walk into a restaurant alone at lunch time and find out that someone you’ve been talking to for weeks about politics, sports, your interests, or current events is sitting in the corner table without a lunch partner.
• That first real life meetings is always awkward, sometimes these people are actually just as smart/funny/interesting in real life as they are online.
• Getting tickets to a show through a new friend who happens to know you love the band because you won’t shut up about it the weeks leading up to the sold out show feels almost like cheating.
• Getting a chance to meet an old media rock star who happens to also be a new media rock star in person and then have that person get the bar to sing you happy birthday because the mayor of Minneapolis declared your birthday the rock star’s day, well that’s embarrassing. (but really freaking cool)
• It’s always better to watch sports without forty other fans to provide commentary, the television announcers are always more intelligent.
• Raising money for charities was so much easier when you only had to cold call or knock on doors.
• Restaurant critics who work for a paper always know what they are talking about, a hundred people just like you providing instant feedback is completely unnecessary.
• Without social media you can still go see the new comedy that came out on Thursday on Saturday without knowing it is in fact, awful.
• Journalists are the best fact checkers, and having numerous trustworthy sources to tell you someone is full of crap is unnecessary.
• I’m too busy watching reality television to talk to real people online.
• Email isn’t social, it’s communication, and totally different.
• Social media is clogging the tubes and I won’t be able to watch my funny cat videos on Youtube.
• It’s easy to find the best restaurants in new cities, why ask your friends?
• This Internet thing is a fad and once it goes away you’ll lose all those friends anyway.

See there are countless reasons to stay away from social media, stop trying to convince everyone it’s cool.

I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t met someone today who was actually worried about it.  ABC published this article a while ago, and it must have aired on channel five recently.  It’s your basic public safety piece.  It’s about a “reformed” thief who breaks into a car and a home and steals a bunch of stuff and how the family is shocked to find out they are vulnerable.

These pieces always drive me a little nuts.  Everyone’s home would be an easy target if someone spent time learning their routine.  In this example, the thief knew the family was at a Little League game so it was obvious he would have free reign of the home for an hour or so.

This was the part of the article the woman I met today was worried about.

Let’s start with your car. If your GPS has a key lock, use it. If it doesn’t, don’t list your home as “home.” Instead, call your address “ice cream store” or “supermarket.” That way, a thief can’t find out where you live.

Dear ABC, I really doubt car thieves make it a priority to rob the same person twice.  Additionally, it’s not difficult to find the home address in a vehicle.  The last time I checked your home address is on a few items on your car including the registration and possibly your insurance card.   If a thief was really stupid enough to intentionally rob the same person twice, its the work of a minute to open the glove box and put the address into your GPS.

For anyone reading this who might not have their address in their car.  Please don’t think your safe renaming your home address “Ice Cream Store”   Security by obscurity is a poor form of security in any guise.