Media | Piss and Moan

Influencer tendencies

Posted on May 31, 2023 by backuphill

I am not totally sure how the whole “influencer” thing start or how you achieve “influencer” status. Is it something you aspire to or do you just fall into it by having something go viral? I guess it doesn’t matter as I haven’t much desire to be an influencer, though having money for seemingly doing nothing would be nice.

A couple things that I have noticed about influencers:

Female influencers tend to
- Post a lot of clothing “fit check” photos
- Post videos of their makeup/skincare/hair routines
- Show more skin to get more clicks/looks/views/likes/shares
- Share a lot of food videos/pictures
- Shopping “haul” videos
- Product reviews…solicited and unsolicited
Male influencers tend to
- Post a lot of car videos photos
- Post a lot of prank videos
- Post “fit check” photos
- Share food and alcohol videos/photos
- Generally are way shallow in content

Did I miss anything? Is this how you get to be an influencer?

Anyway, I don’t know why I wrote about this today. I guess it was just on my mind and was wondering what others thought about the trend of “influencers.” Do you foresee a future with this trend continuing or do you think it will eventually tire itself out?

CD situation

Posted on March 10, 2023 by backuphill

CD. Compact Disc.

Do you remember those things called CDs? Remember when that was the next best technology and you were buying hundreds of those things? Remember when storage of those things became an issue?

Recently I was reminded of all those things…because I was cleaning out the entertainment cabinet and I had to remove FIVE folders that are capable of holding 100 discs at a time. All but one is full and the last one is 3/4s full.

Those folders hold all the discs I ever bought, plus the CD case art (from and back). Once upon a time it was difficult to store all those cases and moving them to the folders seemed like a great idea. Plus, those CD jewel cases were brittle as heck too, as soon as you dropped one it was inevitably broken and didn’t work correctly.

Well, now what the heck am I supposed too do with all those CDs?

Disc drives on computers are getting harder and hard to come by. Shoot, even cars don’t even really come with CD players any more. Converting them to digital takes time and storage (though I had already gone through every disc I had at one point and pulled all the songs off the discs I really wanted). So, now I am stuck…do I just trash them or do I donate them? Do I try to sell them?

UGH

There is a ton of money locked up in those and throwing them away seems like a waste since I purchased all the music, even if I don’t listen to it (well, all of it). Do you know what I mean? If I were to get rid of them, it feels like something would be lost but at the same time nothing would be.

What would you do?

Phone books

Posted on February 13, 2023 by backuphill

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Pexels.com

Truly an amazing piece of publishing…it’s unfathomable how these things are still being dropped off at our doorsteps, isn’t it?

So, the end of last week brought a dude up the driveway to the front door of the house (this is unusual in and of itself since most years it never makes it past the garage door) and he dropped off a double wrapped (in plastic bags) phone book. A completely useless block of paper. Wait, ok, maybe not completely useless – maybe it could be used to start fires or a booster seat for a toddler, or doorstop or a block under a table leg or something…

At my house, it literally gets unwrapped and dropped straight into the recycle bin.

Anyway, it amazes me that these things are even produced any longer.

Imaging being a phone book ad salesperson. What kind of conversation do they have to have to be successful? “Look, I realize no one is going to open this thing and look at your ad, but if you could just spend a small piece of your advertising budget on this pointless square on page X that would be great and I can then try to feed my family.”

Do these things still get produced just for the “older people” because they can’t handle technology? Someone in my family suggested this when I mentioned we got the phone book brick. Maybe that is truly the case. It only takes seconds to find any of the information in the book when you use the internet and do a search. Perhaps that is just too much for an old person to handle.

Anyone else still get a phone book delived to them every year? Anyone actually use it?

Weather balloon

Posted on February 3, 2023 by backuphill

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I don’t want to BLOW this out of proportion, but the story keeps EXPANDING. I think there are plenty of places to POKE HOLES in this story.

The Chinese, snickering to themselves, say it is a weather balloon and there is nothing to worry about.

Uh huh, sure it is. I don’t want to BURST their…balloon, but I am pretty sure no one is buying it.

What do you think? Does their story HOLD AIR?

WordPress ads a scam?

Posted on January 31, 2023 by backuphill

One of the many things you can do here on WordPress is earn money from your blog. There are (apparently) quite a few ways to do this. One of the more simple ways to earn money (at least I thought) was to show ads on your site, specifically on your posts. Seems simple enough, right? Write something. Post it. Ads show up on your page as people view it. You make money from them seeing the ads.

I did this a while back and I am starting to wonder if its a bit of a scam as there doesn’t really appear to be a rhyme or reason to how you earn money. Yes, I am aware that the more volume/traffic you have is supposed to get you more ads displayed, which I thought in turn would also create more money added to your account. It doesn’t, however, seem that this is actually the case.

I experimented a while back, August of 2022, to see if I could figure out how to earn more. What I found is that traffic doesn’t exactly mean you earn more. As such, I am beginning to wonder if using WordPress ads is a scam.

Here’s the thing: If an ad (any ad) is displayed anywhere on my blog, shouldn’t I get paid? They are allowed to insert an ad in my content – literally renting space on my site to display an ad that a company paid them to display. Forget the whole “bidding” thing. Volume shouldn’t matter. If an ad takes space on my site, I should get paid (at minimum) $0.01 per ad. But it looks like they get to rent space for any ad for free, even though they were paid for the advertising by the company purchasing space. If they are randomly generated and randomly displayed, there is nothing to really debate here. If this post has two ads displayed each time it is viewed, I should get paid for the two ads displayed during each view.

But, apparently it doesn’t work that way. Misleading, isn’t it?

A few shots to show a comparison. The first set of pics displays one of the best months I have seen while having ads on my site. As you can see, “Ads Served” doesn’t necessarily mean more income since September 2020 had more ads served but October 2020 had fewer ads but more income. Seems rather random, doesn’t it?

So, that sure makes one wonder when looking at how this whole thing works. Doesn’t it? Here are the test results from (basically) two year later.

August of 2022 saw 846 ads served – the most ever since I set this up – and yet was only paid $0.01. Notice the month prior (July 2022) only 206 ads were served but the earnings were the same as the following month. Yet, June of 2022 saw even fewer ads served but there was triple the earnings.

Got questions now? Yeah, me too. But I am leaning towards WordPress cheating the people they “rent” space from.

They need to pay for ALL ads served. Pure and simple.

Sucky search

Posted on January 18, 2023 by backuphill

Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi on Pexels.com

Not helpful. Not helpful at all.

Why is that when I click on the “Search” tab on the Reader page that 90% of the stuff that comes up is related to one of the dumbest sports on the planet – basketball? Why is it that I get a lot of results to basketball, hockey, soccer (football), and other things I have never, EVER, searched for? I don’t click on them either so why do the results continue to return things I am not interested in?

Anyone else notice this?

How are the search results determined? They certainly aren’t related to any tags or categories I use in my own blog, so where or how does it work?

I have tried searching for things I am interested on to change the results and it hasn’t helped at all.

So, I get a sucky search. Completely useless for finding new blogs I might be interested in.

Way to go WordPress. So helpful.

Prisoner swap

Posted on December 9, 2022 by backuphill

The “big news” over the last couple days has been that some basketball “star” being held in Russia on drug charges was released in a prisoner swap for a convicted Russian arms dealer. I don’t believe she should have been released and she should have served the time. I REALLY don’t believe there should have been a prisoner swap, at least not her.

Quite frankly, I have heard that in the past she hasn’t really appreciated all the blessings she has as an American and was maybe taking that for granted. I don’t know, really, if that is true. But if it is true….well, let’s hope she has a hell of a lot more appreciation for her country now.

As Americans, I don’t think we undeerstand how great we have it till it’s gone. Unfortunately, we have quite a few people within our own country trying to take away our (and their own) freedoms.

Makes zero sense.

Stocking stuffers

Posted on December 5, 2022 by backuphill

Honestly, if you do stockings for Christmas, either for a spouse or children/grandchildren, how much do you spend? Do you have a budget for your stocking stuffing?

The things I am seeing advertised as “stocking stuffers” is kind of ridiculous, if you ask me.

Who buys a car for someone and drops the keys in a stocking?

Who buys a refrigerator at a stocking stuffer? (never mind the other implications of buying an appliance as a gift…)

Who spends hundreds of dollars to fill a stocking?

I know companies gotta sell their wares, but seriously do the people that write these commercials or the marketing department even consider that most people are working on a budget and can’t afford the lavish gifts they are pushing as stocking stuffers, let alone as a gift during the holidays.

People in the real world gotta work within a budget and I don’t think my budget has ever been above $50 per person ($60-70 if you include all the stocking stuff). That happened to be a pretty generous year as I ain’t made of money and isn’t typical at all.

Besides, Christmas isn’t about gifts anyway…well, at least it shouldn’t be ya dang heathens…

Time of year

Posted on December 1, 2022 by backuphill

It’s that time of year folks! No, not Christmas. No not holiday gatherings or shopping. No not the time with family or snow. No not the scrappy drivers or grumpy shoppers.

It’s that time of year where all your friends, family, and acquaintances share their Spotify listening habits with everyone on their social media accounts like any of us would possibly care how much time they spent listening to the app and what they were listening to.

So freaking annoying.

Post more pictures of the food you are eating.

Post more pictures of your animals.

Post more pictures of the landscapes you are seeing.

Post more political stuff.

Post more pictures of your cute outfits.

Post more pictures of duck lips and stupid faces.

Post more pictures of the beer you’re drinking.

Post more controversy.

I really don’t care about your musical habits. You’re just wasting my time with this stuff since I am not going to listen to what you listen to. You can’t change my habits or my preferences by showing me what garbage you listen to.

Look, I don’t share mine (never mind that I don’t use Spotify) so stop sharing yours.

Seriously.

Single issue

Posted on November 2, 2022 by backuphill

While watching a couple hours of TV last night I was struck by the type and tenor of the commercials. In about two hours of watching Hulu I saw roughly 13 commercials and 8 of them were political ads. Those political ads were all from Democrats running for office (incumbents and challengers) in the upcoming vote. All 8 ads mentioned a single issue – the “right” to kill babies.

Democrats are so scared of losing this election that they are focused singularly on one issue that is an emotional hot button topic, but really irrelevant to most voters right now. Its like their platform has a single, tired plank.

Other issues in this election? NOPE. Gonna focus on the need to kill babies all the time, any time, because that’s what the people need right now. Not national or local security. Not illegal immigration. Not the explosion of drugs. Not the poor education of our kids. Not the high prices of everything that makes having a budget difficult. Not the homeless. Not the infrastructure. Not the high cost of health care. Not corruption in and of the government. Just killing babies.

Anyone else find this interesting?