Thomas Wictor

I opened a Google+ account to improve my search-engine optimization (SEO). It’s completely insane. Nothing makes sense. You put something in place, and then it changes. Why? No idea.

After I made a Ghosts and Ballyhoo photo album, the order of the photos changed. Photo Number One became Number Nine, Number Seven became Number Eighteen, and so on.

They have this stupid “sharing” thing that lets you choose who gets to see your stuff. I want everyone to see it, because I’m trying to sell books. Every time I go there, I have to choose which one of me will use the site, since I have multiple gmail addresses. I’m two managers and the “publisher.”

The creepiest thing was that they told me to install some pinwheel-thing “for easier uploading.” So I did, and what happened was that it copied every single photo in my computer and put it on the page so that a manager-me—but not the publisher-me—can decide whether or not to let the public take a gander at what I’m downloading.

What the fuck is going on with the world? Don’t people understand that not everything has to be made public? Just because you like something or do something doesn’t mean that you have to announce it. And no, it’s not “hypocrisy,” you idiots. Mainstreaming every single vice and interest isn’t healthy. Becoming a culture of exhibitionists is moronic and narcissistic.

I got rid of that pinwheel-thing that copied every photo from my computer and uploaded it without my knowledge or permission. Here’s what it looks like.

If you install something called “Auto Backup,” are you going to assume that it’ll take every single image in your computer and put it on your Google+ page? It could be my advanced age, but I sure didn’t expect that a backup system would upload my private stuff onto the Internet without asking me to approve such a drastic step.

It also did weird crap to my photos all by itself. It put some animated falling hearts on the image in the middle; it’s like some horrible vision of romance from North Korea, tacky and sinister at the same time.

But the worst-best, most grotesque, invasive, hilarious, nightmarish thing it did was make an animated gif of self-portraits I took when I posed for this, “Practicing to be a Dead Bassist.”

The original idea wasn’t to look dead. Somebody on Facebook wanted people to post their “bass-face,” the involuntary expressions they made when they played the bass. So I took several shots and chose one that made me look like an ex-bassist, bereft of life, resting in peace, having joined the choir invisible.

Google is pretty scary, because it made a hideous animated gif from several poses. Again, I didn’t ask it to do this, nor did Google tell me that installing Auto Backup would cover my photos in falling North Korean hearts or make animated gifs of me that are so disgusting they should never see the light of day.

Which is why I’m posting the gif here. First, play this video before you scroll down to the gif. You have to have the music going when you first see it.

Okay, so do you have the music going? To get the full effect, you have to.

Play the music.

Press the “play” button.

Is it playing?

You promise?

I mean it.

Go back and play the damn music, okay?

Is it playing?

Great.

Here’s the gif that Google+ made without me knowing a thing about it until I signed in as a manager-me and saw with horror that all my photos were now uploaded, and in the middle of them was this…abomination.

I’m just trying to sell books, for Christ’s sake. Must I be subjected to this?

MUST I?