Three Ways to Tell Who Really Likes You

Tags

do your friends actually like you?, humor, new york times, observations, parenthood, trump

Lost among this week’s media coverage of the latest asinine comments from Donald Trump was an intriguing New York Times article titled, “Do Your Friends Actually Like You?”

The thrust of the story is that not as many people truly like us as we imagine. Most “friends” are really just casual acquaintances. Others are friendly to us for their own selfish, manipulative reasons. The article quotes various academic experts who seem to agree that most of us each have, at best, four to five true friends who carry no agenda. These friends simply love us for who we are, and they genuinely enjoy our company.

I had hoped that the Times would provide some constructive ways to weed out your phony friends and identify the ones who really care about you. The Times is usually more than willing to tell people what to do with their lives, but this time it fell short. There were no tangible “next steps” for categorizing and managing one’s friends.

So I came up with some exercises that might help. Here are three simple scenarios you can create that will help you identify your real friends:

1. Have a Child

This exercise is particularly effective if you are among the first in your social circle to try it. Just get married, have a kid, and watch in amazement as interactions with some of your closest pals trickle down to an exchange of text messages every two or three months.

At your child’s first birthday, make a point of counting the number of non-relatives who call regularly, occasionally stop by to help with the baby, remember the baby’s name, and listen patiently as you ramble on about the baby. If you need more than one hand to list those friends, you’re doing better than most new parents.

2. Move Out

Plan to move to a new home or apartment. DO NOT hire professional movers. Instead, ask your friends if they would mind helping you out. Make a point of not packing any boxes before they arrive at your place at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Also, make it clear early on that you are running low on cash, and you won’t be able to provide free pizza or beer after the move is complete.

Those two or three people who are still around four hours later to help unpack your grandmother’s china? Those are your real friends.

3. Do Something Crazy

Invite all your friends to meet up for drinks after work. Excitedly explain to them how you are going to quit your job, sell your possessions, and dedicate the next three years of your life to traveling the country in search of The Perfect Cheeseburger. Sure, you only have $530 in the bank, along with a mountain of debt. But you’ve got a pup tent, your trusty 1989 Honda Civic, and a list of the best burger joints along the East Coast. Anyway, life is short. It’s time to follow your dreams.

Those people smiling and nodding as they try to wave down the waiter for their checks? They aren’t your friends.

The handful of people who are with you four drinks later, calmly asking if you’ve really thought this all the way through? The ones who remind you about your spouse and kids, and ask what happens to them during your quest for The Perfect Cheeseburger?

Those people are your real friends. They always will be.

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Your Password Has Expired

Tags

death, drops of jupiter, gmail, God, heaven, hell, humor, life, observations, pearly gates, satire, st. peter, timberland, train

Dale followed the light, which is what they always say you should do. His body was catapulted into some kind of cosmic vortex, where he floated around for what seemed like days.

Finally, he landed, his Timberland work boots touching a marble floor. Up ahead were six massive, ivory columns that reached into the clouds. A man with a long, white beard and a flowing gown approached him, and smiled. Dale knew he must be St. Peter.

“Hello, Dale,” he said. “We’re glad to have you.”

Dale nodded and blinked. Everything was very bright up here in the clouds.

“Just go over to one of the kiosks and sign yourself in,” St. Peter advised, extending a cloaked arm toward a battery of silver-plated work stations with glowing LED screens.

Dale walked to one of the kiosks and typed in his name.

“Do you have your confirmation number?”

“My what?”

“You need a confirmation number,” St. Peter said. “We sent it to you in a text message before you arrived. Do you have your phone?”

“Why would I have my phone?” Dale asked.

St. Peter shook his head. “People usually bring their phones. It’s okay. Let me help you.”

The apostle walked to the kiosk and moved his pale, perfectly manicured fingers across the screen.

“Can’t you just let me in?” Dale asked. “You obviously know who I am.”

“I do?”

“You called me by name when I got here.”

St. Peter looked at him dubiously. “That’s because it’s on your shirt.”

Dale looked down at the ironed patch on the left breast of his shirt. Dale had forgotten he was at work when the end came. His last conscious memory was scrambling across the floor, crab-like, as the underbelly of a Toyota Prius tumbled over him.

St. Peter squinted at the kiosk screen. “We just upgraded to a new system,” he explained. “To say that it has a few bugs would be a bit of an understatement.”

Dale nodded. He was extremely tired.

“What’s your gmail address and password?” the saint asked. “That might do the trick.”

Dale tried to remember his password. He gave St. Peter a combination of his first pet’s name and the year he graduated from high school. It didn’t work. Dale gave him the name of his first girlfriend and the year he lost his virginity. Still no luck.

“Cheese and rice! This new system! I wish I could just wave you through, but I can’t,” St. Peter said. “Look, it’s getting late, and you’re exhausted. I’m going to book you a night at a place near here, and we’ll try this again tomorrow. Sound good?”

St. Peter reached into his gown and pulled out an Android phone. He made the arrangements. Dale checked into the Pearly Gates Lodge, which billed itself as “The Closest Thing to Heaven.” The bed was rock-hard and the remote control didn’t work, but he was too tired to care. The breakfast buffet the next morning was pretty good, although the eggs were a little runny for Dale’s liking.

“Hello, Dale,” St. Peter said, glancing at his shirt. “We’re glad to have you.”

“I was here yesterday. I remembered my gmail password.”

“Very good. Let’s give it a try.”

They walked to the nearest kiosk. The password had come to Dale as he awoke that morning on the rock-hard motel mattress. FairLane#1968—it was the model and year of his first car.

“Oh, heavens,” St. Peter said, after keying in the password three times. “Not good. Not good at all.”

“What is it?”

“It says, ‘your password has expired.’”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

Dale stood, a hand propped on his hip as St. Peter swiped through several brightly colored pages on the kiosk screen. Dale looked around. It seemed odd that he and St. Peter were the only two people at the entrance to Heaven. He crossed his arms and listened to a familiar melody playing softly over the PA system. After a moment or two, he identified the song as “Drops of Jupiter,” by Train.

“So, what’s Hell like?” Dale asked.

“Hell?” St. Peter said, still staring at the screen. “Oh, it’s a mess, total chaos. They run things on a paper-based system. It’s like being in the 1970s all over again.”

“Yeah?”

“The bars down there are all open until two in the morning, though. People need to self-medicate, you know, to deal with all the inefficiencies of being in Hell.”

“Sounds like my kind of place,” Dale said. “How do I get there?”

“The saint gave him a disapproving look. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I think I’d like to give it a try,” Dale said.

“Well, there’s no easy way to transfer you. If you’re really serious about going to Hell, you’ll have to fill out a few forms. It could take weeks to sort everything out.”

Dale pivoted on the heel of his boot and gave St. Peter a wave as he walked toward the gold-hued cumulonimbus clouds.

“No thanks,” Dale said. “I’ll figure out a way down there myself.”

The Sadness of the Selfie

Tags

buzzfeed, Facebook, humor, media, obama, observations, oscars, president, selfie, selfie stick, twitter

Me, in my car today.

There once was a time not too long ago when taking pictures of yourself could only mean that you didn’t have anyone in your life to take your picture for you.

Nobody took selfies, not even with Polaroid cameras. To do so would admit to the world that you were either a pathetic, lonely loser, or someone who was extremely egotistical. A self-taken picture was sad and embarrassing, like a teen-aged boy caught playing alone with a football and making his own crowd noise in the backyard.

Times have changed.

Anyone with a smartphone knows that selfies are now an accepted, and frequent, form of social expression. Even the President takes them. If you missed the BuzzFeed video from a week ago of the Commander-in-Chief mugging around with a Selfie Stick, here it is.

Obama took a lot of flack for it, just as he does for everything else. I feel for the guy, but I have to admit that there’s something embarrassing about the Most Powerful Man in the World, the one responsible for our foreign policy and all our troops oversees, staring self-consciously and making faces at his phone like an eighth-grader. The message of the video seems to be, “Hey, the President is a regular guy, just like you.” That is not a sentiment that fills me with a rush of confidence.

It would be easy for me to plant a flag in the ground and say, “Hey, we weren’t taking pictures of ourselves back in the 1980s and 90s.” The reality is that we probably would have been if the technology were around to make it so easy to do. Selfies are not making us more narcissistic. We have always been narcissistic. Selfies just make our narcissism more obvious to the outside world. Maybe that is a form of public service.

I don’t take selfies very often. One reason is that I have short arms, and I only learned about the existence of the Selfie Stick about a week ago. Another reason is I don’t think very many people are interested in viewing self-generated photos of me. A third reason is plain old sheepishness: a selfie posted on Facebook or Twitter seems squeamishly revealing, like inviting someone I don’t know very well to come over to my house and watch me make faces in the bathroom mirror.

I should just get over myself. The selfie is here to stay. Neil Patrick Harris is already bragging about how his selfie at the upcoming Oscars is going to top Ellen’s selfie from last year’s Oscars! What can you say? People love it! We selfie, therefore we are, or however that old saying goes.

In a way, selfies may be the most honest form of expression, and may reveal more about ourselves than we intend. I’m going to try to remember that the next time I take a photo of my feet in front of a swimming pool.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Good Luck

Tags

a plot for pridemore, fiction, humor, luck, observations, Stephen Roth

Around 20 years ago, I was playing tennis with a friend at a park near my home in Mexico, Missouri. At some point during our match, I noticed a familiar-looking car cruising through the parking lot next to our court. I quickly realized that it was my car, or it used to be. It was the grey 1987 Ford Taurus I had sold to a local dealership a couple of weeks earlier.

The driver rolled down the window and called out, “Stephen, is this your old car?”

I set down my racquet and walked over. The driver was a woman who had worked with me on some videos for the local TV station. She and her son were test-driving the Taurus, thinking it would be a good car for him now that he had his license.

“This was my car,” I said. “How did you know it belonged to me?”

The woman reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a box of new checks from Commerce Bank. The blank checks had my name and address on them. “We found them under the front seat,” she said. “You might want them back.”

“Yeah, I do,” I said, somewhat puzzled. “Thank you so much.”

She asked me a few questions about the car. I told her that the Taurus had a rebuilt engine and its radiator was on borrowed time. She thanked me and pulled out of the parking lot, probably thinking that I was a complete idiot.

I recall that exchange from 20 years ago and I still marvel at how lucky I was, how several things had to mesh perfectly for that event to occur. First, I was extremely lucky that someone I knew test-drove my old car and found my checks under the front seat (though I had a balance of about $500 in the bank back then, someone could have found those checks and starting floating them around town). Secondly, it was pure coincidence that the woman and her son were driving through the park and saw me playing tennis. What are the odds of all of these things working together for me to get my checks back?

I know that is a small thing in the grand scheme, but it makes me think of all the times I have been lucky or blessed in my life. I might not even be aware of some of those instances when my luck was strong, when a road not taken might have rescued me from disaster. I have had some hardships and tragedy in life, but I have also been very fortunate for the many times when forces out of my control somehow worked in my favor.

What about you? Can you recall a moment in your life when somehow, against the odds, different forces pulled together to bring you good luck or, even, a blessing from above?

10 Amazing Reasons why Facebook Sucks

Tags

advertising, Facebook, friends, observations, people, politics, social habits, social media

Once upon a time, Facebook was a happy place. Friends shared cute photos of their kids or their pets. People wrote witty little observations or mini-stories in 100 words or less. Occasionally, someone would ask for a restaurant recommendation. Maybe they would explain why they liked a certain movie or song. The response among friends would be instantaneous and usually thoughtful. Unlike Twitter, Facebook was truly interactive. Reactions and conversations fueled Facebook’s growing appeal.

That was a long time ago. Today, Facebook is like a once-thriving neighborhood now littered with payday loan stores, political campaign signs and ugly billboards. The sidewalks that were once filled with friendly pedestrians are mostly vacant. Neighbors don’t venture outside to talk to one another much anymore.

I’ve come up with a top 10 list of things I dislike about Facebook mostly because lists seem to be the only way we can communicate and process information these days. Maybe you will agree with some of my observations. Some of them you will certainly find to be cranky and old man-ish. Anyway, here they are–10 Amazing Reasons Why Facebook Sucks:

#1. Personal Branding. Participating on Facebook has become less about sharing information and more about managing your own personal brand. I’m as guilty of this as anyone and probably more than most. The past several months, I have been using Facebook to promote my novel to an extent that even I am now tired of writing about it (it is delightful book, by the way). Even if I didn’t have a product to pitch, I would still probably spend way too much time thinking about my Facebook persona. A few weeks ago, Father’s Day rolled around and I felt this strange obligation to post something about the holiday. Why would I feel that was an important thing to do? It’s not like I’m paid to write about Father’s Day, or that anyone beyond a dozen people would care about my thoughts on the occasion. Ten years ago, I would not have considered sending out a blast email to all of my friends and contacts about Father’s Day. Why do I feel pressured to do so now, to compete against other peoples’ personal brands with my own Father’s Day post? It doesn’t seem healthy.

#2. Advertising. It is no big revelation that Facebook uses your personal data to sell you things. This was first revolutionized by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, when he used bookselling as a tool to learn peoples’ personal tastes and how to market to them. Facebook is just following suit. Still, it is irritating to scroll through my news feed and see one ad after another for the Dollar Shave Club. I don’t go to Facebook to buy stuff. I want to find out what my friends are doing.

#3. Politics. Hey, friend who used to write amusing posts about his family, sports and pop culture–I get it. You hate the Republicans. They’re destroying the country. I may agree with you on most points but that doesn’t mean I want to read every single article you share from The Huffington Post, Politico or MSNBC. I’ve got news for you, political friend. You are talking to the same circle of agreeable buddies while everyone else has tuned you out. You have not changed anyone’s mind about the important political issues of the day.

#4. Shares. It seems to me that most of us on Facebook have migrated from writing original posts to just sharing news articles, memes or surveys that we find amusing. Now, we can even share streaming videos that stream whether the viewer wants them to or not. The result is a visual cluster with no rhyme or reason. Just glancing at my feed right now, I see “29 Terrifying Panorama Fails That Will Haunt Your Nightmares,” a meme about getting up when life knocks you down, an ad about paying off my mortgage and “26 Struggles Anyone Raised Catholic Will Totally Understand.” Some days, finding a text post in your news feed that actually tells you what somebody is doing with their life is like discovering a rare, precious jewel.

#5. Misinformation. I was guilty of this the other day. I shared a piece about how much time people spend on their phones that was, upon closer examination, probably made up. I’ve also seen a quote about funding for the arts attributed to Winston Churchill that he never said. There is a lot of bogus stuff on the Internet, and we all get fooled every now and then. Lately, however, I’ve noticed “friends” trying to trick each other with misinformation. For example, an article about a celebrity death that you click on only to find the headline, “You been owned!” Shame on me for having a morbid curiosity about one of the stars of The Walking Dead, I guess.

#6. Narcissism. This one is nothing new. Facebook and other social media have made all of us more narcissistic. Still, I believe that the problem is evolving from “self-absorbed” to “totally lacking in self-awareness.” Yes, you may be a good friend, but that doesn’t mean I want to be updated four times a day about your latest adventures in Cancun. It just makes me jealous. Also, sometimes it’s a little irritating to be part of a mass layoff from a company you worked at for eight years, and then read posts from your former co-workers gushing about how cool it is to work for that company. That’s my bad, of course. I don’t have to read those posts and, in the future, I won’t be friending as many co-workers on Facebook.

#7. Unoriginal Narcissism. Back when everyone got digital cameras on their phones, some people truly believed that the quality of experimental photography would explode. What we’ve gotten, instead, is people taking the same damn types of pictures as everyone else, in addition to a gluttony of photo-bombs and selfies. I really don’t care to see your feet, even if they are landscaped against a beautiful Caribbean beach. That photo has been done a million times before. The only feet I really care about seeing belong to my wife and my child, and that’s it.

#8. Anger and Negativity. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to use social media to complain about your problems, take shots at a former spouse or cuss about that stupid thing Obama did. I just think it reflects poorly on a person’s character (just like writing a 1,300-word screed about Facebook probably reflects poorly on my character). It is also important to note that those comments never really go away. Even if you delete them, which Facebook now allows, those posts are floating out there somewhere. Someday, your angry vents on Facebook may work against you. Also, if negativity becomes an important part of your personal brand (see #1 above), even your friends will stop reading and caring.

#9. Meddling. Based on what you share and with whom you interact, Facebook thinks it knows you better than you know yourself. That is why only certain friends, products and stories keep showing up in your news feed. Eventually this can become a form of mind control. If I haven’t interacted with my friend George for six months, his updates and shares will disappear from my feed. Since I never see anything from George, I assume he is no longer active on Facebook. Pretty soon, I stop thinking about George because, unless I look up his profile, I am not connected to his life. Ultimately it’s my fault for not picking up the phone and giving George a call, but Facebook still plays a subtle part in bringing us closer to some friends and distancing us from others. That power over what and who we care about is frightening.

So there you have it—-nine reasons why Facebook definitely sucks. Wait, did I say there were 10 reasons? Well, I can’t think of a 10th reason.

I guess Facebook really isn’t so bad after all.

Stephen Roth is author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Nine Things You May or May Not Know About Me

Tags

Facebook, humor, my life, observations, satire, social media, Stephen Roth

Okay, my number is nine. So here goes…

9.) I once dressed up as Twinkie the Kid and wandered around downtown Chicago in an effort to promote the crème-filled snack cake’s 70th birthday party.

8.) At age 16, I landed my first job at Dairy Queen despite listing “Soda Jerk” as one of my preferred positions on the application.

Twinkie the Kid

7.) The best greeting card I ever planned at Hallmark featured a grinning donkey locked behind bars who says, “If loving you is a crime, then throw my happy ass in jail!”

6.) As a reporter in Florida, I was attacked by an umbrella-wielding escapee from a state hospital, interviewed a man who tried to sell both of his kidneys in a personal ad, and covered the capture of a 600-pound alligator wandering the streets of Ft. Myers. This all happened over the course of a week.

5.) It took me more than 10 years to write and find a publisher for my novel, A Plot for Pridemore, which will be released as a paperback and eBook next year!

4.) I quit my high school job at Blockbuster Video because my manager wanted me to work late instead of attending my own “surprise” birthday party. I understand that company has been going downhill ever since.

3.) My scariest reporting assignment was riding a C-47 transport plane with retired pilots who hadn’t flown that kind of aircraft since the Berlin Airlift.

2.) I once asked P.J. O’Rourke if he had any advice for an aspiring newspaper journalist, and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Just try to get through it.”

1.) My best reporting assignment was covering an international business group called “Compass” in a nondescript bank building at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning in 1998. That’s where I met my future wife.

Here’s Boomer!

Tags

current events, dogs, gary matthews, government, here's boomer, humor, media, news, observations, pittsburgh, Stephen Roth, television

When I was a kid, there was a show on NBC called “Here’s Boomer,” about a likeable, shaggy dog who led this wandering, hobo life. It was an unremarkable series, a kind of knock-off on the more popular Benji films of the day. The show had become such an arcane piece of TV trivia, in fact, that I actually thought I might be the only person alive who even remembered or thought about “Here’s Boomer.”

Then I read this article a few days ago, about a Pittsburgh man who was so affected by the show, that he actually decided to become a shaggy dog himself and have his named legally changed to “Boomer.” My first impression upon reading this was, “Boy, the people of Pittsburgh have changed a lot from the tough, hardscrabble steelworkers of the industrial age.” My second thought was, “What a sad, lonely man.” My third thought was, “Well, why not become a dog, if that’s what he wants to do?”

Pittsburgh’s Gary Matthews

I guess you could say I’m a little conflicted about this story. Part of me thinks that, as long as you aren’t doing something that’s destructive, criminal or harmful to somebody else, you should be free to do it. By all accounts, Gary Matthews, or Boomer, just enjoys barking, eating from a bowl on the floor and occasionally sleeping in his dog house. What harm is there in that?

Another part of me, the “judgy” part, thinks perhaps Boomer should get some psychiatric help, and also worries if this story isn’t indicative of a larger trend. There is, after all, a sub-culture of people called Furries who like to wear animal suits and pretend that they are cute, cuddly creatures. Most Furries treat this as a hobby, but what if many of them, like Gary Matthews, decided to pursue their passion full-time? A lot of kids, like Gary and myself, loved “Here’s Boomer,” and the 1976 Disney movie, The Shaggy D.A. Could these media now be considered gateways to a mid-life crisis spent chasing garbage trucks, digging holes in the yard, and marking territory on various hydrants and mailboxes?

The original Boomer

Finally, how does local government respond to activities by men who decide they want to become dogs? Does a leash law go into effect? We can’t just have these Boomers running loose on the city streets, can we?

“It won’t come to that,” you might tell me. “This is an isolated incident,” you might add. But, in this age of social media and attention-seeking me-too-ism, is there really such a thing as an isolated incident? Gary Matthews may be the first American to attempt the transition from man to Man’s Best Friend, but will he be the last?

I think we better have some extra Pooper Scoopers on hand, just in case.