Over 16,534,928 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?
So, I've been living here since 2006. In that time, I've had three full-time jobs, two part-time jobs, and lived in four apartments (two at the same address). I've met and dated one girl, and gone through two breakups (both really bad). I've met some people who I'll always regard as family (multiple trips to Houston - Phantom, Kinky, Fyretygress and company, just to name a few), and run into some unsavory people who I wouldn't mind never seeing again (you know who you are).
Here's my appeal: those who have paid attention to what has been going on in my life know that I recently lost my home. I'm living in a hotel not far from where my old apartment is. I'm trying to regain a foothold so that I can get back into the swing of things, hopefully having my own place again by the summer or early fall; or, failing that, at least having saved up enough money so I can make the trip back east (New York City is my comfort zone). I still currently have a full-time job working tech support in Coppell. As long as nothing stupid happens with that job, I will have a steady source of income.
What I need is a secure place to stay, because I don't intend to spend the rest of 2011 in the Budget Suites. These are my preferences (all negotiable):
About me: I work 3rd shift, four days a week. My regular hours are 7:30 pm to 6:30 am, Sunday night through Wednesday night, meaning I'll be home Thursday morning. While this means I will be gone early enough so that I don't disturb you late at night, expect me to be back around 7 am when you're leaving for work yourself. Incidentally, I have been working lots of overtime lately, so I may be gone more.
I bowl at least two nights a week. I have no wife, girlfriend, or kids - in fact, my phone rarely rings unless a friend from New York is calling. Likely, when I'm home, I'll be holed up in my room, working on projects, gaming, or bouncing on Fubar. As such, feel free to ask me about any technical advice while I'm home. I diagnose VPN and networks as part of what I do for a living, so I'll be happy to help out with that.
Above all: this is a serious request, so I will only entertain serious inquiries. I'm not blogging for points or rates. I seriously need this done. If you are able to help, please leave your contact info by private message only. Apartment locator services need not respond.
Thank you.
Owl
So, it's been eleven monrhs since I last posted. I haven't been entirely social because things haven't been great lately, and in my experience, people only want to hear good news.
In the last year, I have:
As I said, it hasn't been a great life in the last eleven months.
I could use this as a forum to complain and whine about how I wish things would get better. I choose not to. Instead, I'm going to use this as a way to get the message out there.
I need a new place to live, and quickly.
The apartment complex I'm living in wants me out, plain and simple. I live in Lewisville (North of Dallas, not far from I-35E). I work in Coppell.
Do you know of a deal we can work out?
So, everyone's gone and made New Year's resolutions and are now four days deep into the new year. Some of these resolultions are the typical ones: lose weight, get out of debt, get a better job; others are a bit more wacky. On Facebook, my cousin has been broadcasting that he's going to see how long he can hold off on having sex. I'll be nice.
I've given up on making resolutions. Invariably, I'll get a week or two into it and discover I've broken it and get back to business as usual. I think the only resolution I've been successful with is the "lose weight" one, but now, it'ss safe to say I don't need to lose any more - in fact, I need to bulk up a little.
If I were to set a goal for myself, it'd have to do with the social life again. Although, in 2009, I kept trying to put myself out there, thinking I'd make some friends. It turned out horribly wrong, unfortunately. I ran into at least three people I used to talk to and then realized why I don't anymore. Sadly, these were Fubar members I had some sort of involvement with previously.
The alternative: don't meet anyone and stay out of the game completely? Well, I don't know. It's still kind-of lonely out here, and things are even more empty now that I'm out of work, too. I spent this past New Year's eve in a car, driving to St. Louis just to get a White Castle hamburger.
I'm not sure how to handle this. And, of course, it's not really everyone else's problem. I look at the bar tab here on Fubar and see people managing to hook up all the time - guess that's Fubar working as intended.
2010 is my crossroads year. I'm going to be 35 this April. My lease ends June 30. Either the Dallas area finishes strong, or I finally get off my behind and go somewhere it will work out. I'm getting too old to float around anymore.
One philosophy we Fubar Bouncers try to follow is the refusal to get involved in member drama. We often point at TOS #7 when someone complains they are getting harassed.
Recently, my attention was drawn to this little gem of a status message:
This self-serving statement came from the profile of a 20-year-old female. While the rules prevented me from killing the rude status message from the very obviously self-obsessed female, after some thought, I decided that it would be a better idea to enlighten and educate those of us on Fubar who feel that they are better than others just because their bodies meet the description of something closer to what's considered the "norm."
I started to browse her pictures and noticed something else: she, herself, was no waif, and definitely was no supermodel. I am no expert, and I'm definitely not GQ model material, but it seemed to me that she was the epitome of the type of person who uses "projection" to cry out about her frustrations over her own low self-esteem. Sadly, these people do not realize that their lack of consideration hurts others reading her post; not everyone handles issues of self-image in the same way.
If I knew this girl better, I would probably suggest to her to keep her negativity to herself, or find another, more constructive way to vent. However, this is Fubar, and image is everything... right?
By the way: cleavage and chest shots without faces are almost always going to be marked NSFW by Fubar Bouncers. It may be best not to follow her advice. Let us see your faces. Some of you look better than you think.
This one's quick. I promise.
Want to find a quick way to annoy me? And I mean, quicker than camping my cash flow in fuMafia every hour would, or quicker than shouting me with urgent questions when my status indicates I'm not here or even logged in?
I know Fubar is all about rating people and getting rated back. Why do people feel it is necessary to comment "rated" or "fanned" or "re-rated" as a status comment as though I cannot read my bar tab?
If I'm here, and you rated me, it's in my bar tab. I don't filter those out. I will get back to you. Maybe not immediately (especially if my status has the letters "BBL" in it), but it will happen. There's no need to remind me by leaving me a status comment telling me you did -- hell, I'll take shoutbox over that any day. At least I don't have to look at the annoying yellow text saying "You have a new status comment!" and get my hopes up that someone cared enough to say something profound.
Here's a pro-tip...
If a girl who has convinced you that she wants to be with you suddenly changes her cell phone number, and then you call her house phone and discover that not onlydoes she not give you her new number, but her former boyfriend (you know, the one she complained about stalking her and giving her grief in public) is at her house without the stressed tone of voice that comes from being kicked out...
... leave it alone. Find another hobby. She's not worth it, and neither is the emotional beat-down you're already experiencing.
Just sayin'.
I didn't think it would be possible to be downsized from a pizza delivery place.It happened this morning...
So, now, the job hunt begins again. Loss of income feels like loss of a limb to me...
This is one of the many things I have to put up with.
I'll preface this blog by reiterating that it is the job of the bouncers to help enforce the Terms of Service. We don't play referee. If one informs you that you're breaking TOS by doing something, please comply with the instructions you're given. Don't be like this guy here.
Me: You know you have to change that status message... right?
Me: You can't attack other members in a status message. If you have problems with members here, your recourse is to block them or simply not interact with them. We won't tolerate this behavior here.
Him: REALLY??? HE ATATCKS ME EVERYDAY .
Me: Then be the better man. Moreso, stop offending other users who aren't involved. Please change your status.
Him: WHY DONT U GO TO HIS PROFILE, AND CHK HIS MUMMS AND POST
Me: We'll worry about that at another point. Right now, I'm asking YOU to change your status.
(changes his status to another one with the term "sand-n*gger" in it, referencing the same member)
Me: And not to that.
Me: Take out the reference to {user's name snipped} AND remove the N-word.
Him: WELL ASK HIM TO STYOP HARRASSING ME EVERYDAY.
Me: It's not my job. Block him (on your main account - I know this is a sockpuppet).
Me: Please do as I ask. It's not just him you're offending.
Him: NP.
Me: Thank you. And... Do something about those other accounts, please. This has gone far enough.
Him: YES HE HAS..
Me: YOU. I'm talking to YOU.
Me: Pretend for a moment he doesn't exist. I'm talking with YOU right now.
Him: WHEN ARE U GONAN REPORT HIM FOR HARRASSING ME EVERTYDAY, CALLING ME A PEDO.
Me: Block him, then. Meanwhile, don't make matters worse by breaking TOS yourself. We'll handle other violations of the TOS, but we'll do it the RIGHT way.
(changes his status to "going out with a bang", then minutes later, "{user's name snipped} your day is comin soon...hell or high water.")
Me: You know, you're not making this easier.
Do you know what the problem with having a sense of entitlement is? You think you own everything, and no one else matters. This member was willing to offend a large portion of the Fubar community because he had a problem with one member. Now, keep in mind, my job here was not to stick up for the person he was attacking. My goal was to get him to take the racial epithet and attack out of his status. The two can probably go shoot each other, now, but as long as they do it offline, my task is done.
June 18, 2009, will mark my three-year anniversary of being a member of this site. During this time, I've made friends, had encounters, run into old friends, and gotten a good look and the ins-and-outs of what Fubar, in whatever shape, form or name, has had to offer. Recent events, however, have made me ask myself whether or not what I'm getting out of this is worth what I'm putting into it.
Initially, when I was putting this blog together, I thought about writing how being a bouncer has changed my outlook on the site's progress. I am not going to turn this into a "Bouncer is a Thankless Job" article. Instead, I'm going to take a more generalized approach, since a lot of my thoughts seem to be more related to how I'm interacting with people - friends and strangers alike.
A recent conversation with a member (who turned out later to have feelings for me) went awry. I made the mistake of going to Yahoo chat and uttering the four worst words known to mankind: "Hi, how are you?"
She responded with a simple "OK." No "And yourself?", no "How was your day?", no "I'm busy, screw off," but just an "OK."
It bothered me at first. Just 24 hours earlier, she was complaining to me in my shoutbox about how we always fight when we talk... even though we rarely talk anymore. I spent a lot of energy trying to convince her that we were friends, I harbored no ill will towards her, and I wasn't willing to drop her like a bad habit that quickly. She seemed disinterested in having a normal conversation, but rather, she was in the mood to pick a fight.
After five minutes or so of silence, I finally decided I was going to let her heal from whatever perceived wound I'd caused her and leave her alone. I said, "Nice talking to you," followed by "At least I can't say I didn't try."
This opened the floodgates. Apparently she was watching what she said because she was absolutely sure that something she said was going to trigger a fight. She didn't even try to be civil.
I closed my chat window with her and logged off.
I don't put all of the blame on her. At one point, I was the hardest man on Fubar to get along with. I wasn't happy in my own skin, and I was lonely in an unfamiliar environment, to boot. No one who spoke to me lived within 200 miles of me, and I spent a lot of time physically alone (at home, at work, etc.). I lashed out and cost myself lots of friends.
I thought I'd changed enough after a while... after being conscious about how my words could be perceived in a medium where tone of voice is not a factor. I chose my own words carefully from that point on, and maybe even took things to an extreme to make sure I didn't hurt anyone else (including an attempt to treat everyone on Fubar as though they were customers and clients, but not friends). This, of course, did not give the greatest result, either; the majority of the members who stuck by me while I was drowning in a pool of misery eventually cut ties, too.
It's hard to find a happy medium. It's harder when each time you try something new, you cause more harm than good.
It's affecting my well-being in more ways than one. I would probably be a lot happier if I knew that I could stay in one of these friendships without risking hurting the other party. It would be great if people recognized I was trying to be civil. I would absolutely love it if I could get through one of these things without worrying about how damaged I'd be as part of the outcome.
The risk, alas, sometimes isn't worth the reward. However, thankfully, the modifier is the word "sometimes." People manage to maintain great friendships on Fubar.
I'm still learning.
