Saturday, January 27, 2018

Rant - Spams, Scams and Paint Cans

Rant – Spams, Scams and Paint Cans

Every Saturday afternoon, at about 2 o’clock, our phone rings. Call display informs that it’s a toll-free number, so we don’t answer. We already know the outcome – well, we think we know, and therefore predict the outcome.
It’s some vulnerable underpaid worker, maybe an immigrant student on a temporary visa being exploited by a telephone trolling centre under contract to (a) a chartered bank, (b) a political polling firm, or (c) a criminal organization posing as the Canada Revenue Agency.

It’s true that it could be someone offering a Mediterranean cruise in return for the purchase of a lifetime supply of lightbulbs, or a lifetime supply of sidewalk de-icer in return for answering a few simple questions about our pets. But, we’ve made a conscious decision to take a chance and not take a chance.
I have always resisted signing up for the so-called no-call list. First, I believe that too is a scam; but my main reason is that I believe that call centres are full of vulnerable people who really need the employment. When we do pick up the phone, we are always polite until forced over the brink of civility by someone who doesn’t seem to see where the conversation is going.

Personal and professional ethics are subsumed in favour of survival. Capitalism requires that we need employment to survive, so we succumb to selling anything at all, to anyone and at any cost including dignity.
But it strikes me as odd that the telephone scam continues to exist as a business model. Isn’t it weird that there is a group of people who think this works as a revenue stream? Likewise, how is it that we still get pleas from nearly illiterate scammers sitting in Internet cafés in Siberia offering to transfer their family fortune to us if we simply share our banking information?

It reminds me of a story I heard about a slightly inebriated bootlegger trying to get an easier-to-remember phone number for his “friends.” “Just how stupid are your friends?” asked the telephone salesperson.
My point here is not that I am upset with spammers and scammers, per se, but I’m concerned for the future of humankind as indicated by lack of imagination. I mean, who falls for this stuff anymore?

Which leads me to the subject of graffiti. Trestle tagging. Racist, fascist, hate-motivated vitriolic vandalism is nothing to joke about. I am writing about run-of-the-mill aerosol – the “Kilroy was here” type of graffiti, graffiti that longs for peace and love.
The next time you see “peace” tagged on a dumpster behind Sobeys, or “class of 2020” on the underbelly of a decaying concrete bridge, or “DRK LRD rools,” signed by “RMK,” take a look at the typography – if I can use so grand a term for it – and use of graphics. The font, the flowers, the doves, haven’t changed since the 1960s, for heaven’s sake, and not because those boxcars were on forgotten Detroit rail siding for forty years. It’s because the creators are, creatively speaking, stuck.

Is it not a worry that this stuff hasn’t changed? Should we be concerned that three out of five broadcast radio stations are playing the hits of the 1980s? And that the other two are either looping Celine Dion and Harry Connick Jr., or the incomprehensible machinations of disaffected thirty-somethings? (Sorry son.)
Geez, when my parents were my age they complained that everything was changing too fast, and it’s beyond my ken that I should now find that things are not changing fast enough. For goodness sake, it’s 2018 and they still let Don Cherry on TV!

Graffiti, generally anonymous, is a form of expression without commitment – a dark figure darts from the shadows, waves their instrument, and returns, leaving a mark to which only they can lay only silent claim. Don’t we hate graffiti, though. Municipal officials go apoplectic over the defacement of all those empty and condemned buildings they have yet to remove.
On the bathroom wall, graffiti exposes the lack of understanding of basic poetic forms such as the limerick, but social media encourages all manner of digital graffiti, exposing a diminishing number of literate social progressives to increasing numbers of insults and threats.

It may not be coincidence that Facebook wants me to “tag” my friends in their picture posts from the weekly coffee klatch at the local Tim Hortons. Social media encourages tagging – quick in-and-out commentary, insults and threats created for all to see. They may be fleeting, but they have the consequence of accumulating a negative charge, like dragging knuckles on the carpet and touching the doorknob – spark! Why is everyone so angry – and all the time?
Like the subterranean slime in Ghostbusters II, digital trolls have emerged from under the bridges and beds of the nation to become shape-shifting, uber-conservatives coughing up the vitriolic mud of their dark haunts to stifle debate – an ungodly sucking sound matched only by the collective intake of breath on the part of a mass of witnesses. Ironically, it’s safe for liberal-thinking people to cross bridges now, but not to be seen in public.

As bad or worse, even the even-tempered are lashing out, caught up in a downward spiral of negativity. (Hey, just thought of a new 21st-cetury theme for holiday worship: the negativity scene. Oh, and how about a new digital fox hunt: “Tory-baiting: Trawling for Trolls.” But that’s another rant; just remember, you read it here first.)
I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw in my youth – a soldier brandishing a smoking gun, peering into the distance. “Who went there,” read the speech balloon.

Now, we can approach this in two ways: we can feed the trolls, or we can kill them with kindness. Here’s my new approach. I have on my desktop a document template that I can draw on whenever I see unfair, unwarranted, or just plain rude behaviour on Facebook. I can edit the template to suit the occasion. So, when a friend comments positively about our Liberal Prime Minister, and is immediately attacked with all kinds of venomous verbiage, I hit reply and paste something like this:
“We don’t know each other, but I feel compelled to respond to your comment about our Prime Minister. I know nothing of your accusations (insert rancour-of-the-month subject here), but while I have been disappointed in our PM at times, those times are far fewer than during his immediate predecessor and many of those before him. And, while I have you, along those lines I also feel that all of us need to temper negative rhetoric in Canada, lest we succumb to those forces who would have our politicians behave in the manner of those presently holding power over our neighbours to the south.”

Or, when so-called Christian leaders lash out in a non-Christian manner:
“It seems contradictory for a leader that identifies as Christian to continually incite violence against others and the planet. The 13th century is long behind us and Crusades-like rhetoric ought to be as well. In fact, that is something a practicing Christian might seize upon to protest, rather than rail against social values that reflect the charity that is, I think, at the heart of Christianity. Please, find it in your heart to recognize how decidedly un-Christian are your recent remarks and in future strive to consider your beliefs before contradicting them.”

I have a great idea for a ball-cap slogan: “Make graffiti great again.” I'll sellmillions. Wait for my call.
=30=