Trip Of A Lifetime

Business has been slow the past two weeks. I'm hoping it's just a lull due to the holiday and not something more ominous. All the same, with too much time on my hands I tend to get morose. I needed a diversion and yesterday I hit on the perfect idea...

A Grand European Vacation.

Not a real one, of course. We can't afford that. We'll probably never be able to afford that.

No, I'm talking about a phony vacation.

On Facebook.

Yesterday I went on Flickr and started stealing people's vacation photos. By strategically PhotoShopping the boyfriend and I into the scene, we looked like we taking the Grand Tour. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I would upload them to my Facebook account, starting with out departure, tomorrow. Then it was on to London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Prague and Amsterdam. We may take a little side trip to Vienna. Haven't totally firmed up the itinerary. Every few days we'd jet to a new exotic local, and all of my Facebook friends would drool with envy.

"How lucky you are!" they'd write. "I wish I was there!"

"It's beautiful here" I'd reply. And after checking online for the current weather conditions for wherever we were supposed to be, I'd add a little local flavor. "There were rain showers earlier, but it's lovely now. Not too hot - it's 23C. That's 75 degrees for you back home..."

See, that's the thing about Facebook these days. Everyone lies.

What started initially as an almost magical way of connecting with lost friends and distant family has turned into a marketing tool, a way to promote a life you don't actually live. Everyone has turned their Facebook page into a storefront window on the life the want everyone to believe they actually live. Only the most carefully curated, spit polished version of events gets put on display.

I was slow to pick up on this trend. At the depth of the recession, when we were losing everything, it seemed everyone else was living simply wonderful lives. How could everything be going so wrong for us and so right for everyone else? Well, in a word, it wasn't.

One of my most insufferable friends owns his own business. When everyone else seemd to be losing their jobs and their houses, he appeared to be having a fabulous run of luck.

"It's Tuesday and I've already picked up TWO NEW CLIENTS! Life is good!!!"

"Having lunch with MY NEW CLIENT!"

"Business is GREAT!!!" Just signed up a NEW CLIENT!!!"

What he failed to mention is that for every NEW CLIENT he signed up, if they even existed at all, he was losing two. I just heard he went out of business.

And then there's a former colleague of mine from the entertainment business. We're around the same age and he suffered a similar fate; He was cashiered from his job around the same time I was. We both floated around through the freelance world and occasionally our paths would cross at various agencies. By mid '09, most of my entertainment work had dried up. So many agencies had gone under that there was a glut of younger (and cheaper) designers competing for a dwindling amount of work. I sometimes wondered what became of him, since I assumed he was probably in the same boat.

And then about a year ago he started posting new work to his Facebook account. Every few days there was a new poster design for some of the biggest films of the day. He's a wonderful designer and the work was amazing, but how was he scoring all these major coups? Even as I admired his work, something about the whole thing seemed fishy. How was he getting all these astounding commissions?

Well, easy. He wasn't.

The first clue that something was amiss was the work. It was beautifully designed, clever, tasteful.

The exact opposite of anything a studio would be interested in.

Plus, no studio legal department would let them be posted, especially for films that hadn't yet been released.

There was no way these posters were real.

And... they weren't.

Turns out he hasn't worked in over a year and was creating them on his own to give the impression he was in demand.

I'm assuming it didn't really work since he's still churning out fake posters to this day. It's a shame really because his fake posters are so much better than the real ones.

So that's what Facebook has become: The Liar's Club. My general rule of thumb when scanning Facebook is the sunnier the status update, the more dire the reality behind it. If someone mentions what a beautiful day it is, I just automatically assume they're losing their homes. If they post "interesting" articles, it means they have too much free time and are probably out of work. Or the husband left them. Or their daughter's knocked up. Or the son is in jail.

Facebook is much less depressing to read if you take this approach.

But back to our "trip". Ultimately I decided this morning not to go through with it, at least not just now. I realized most of my clients are Facebook friends and if they think I'm off on a European adventure they'll think I'm unavailable.

Or that they pay me too much.

Cirque du Freak

Some of my previous posts may have left the impression I'm some kind of online Luddite. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My only issues, really, are with Facebook. I honestly just don't get it. Sure, there's the initial thrill of reconnecting with old friends from high school and college, but then you quickly realize there's a reason you haven't spoken to them in twenty years. I don't really care what I had for breakfast, so why would I give a fuck what everyone else had? With pictures!

"Mmmmm.... Grand Slam Breakfast at Dennys!"

In Utah. You'll be unsurprised to know they look exactly the same there as here.

Give me a break.

You can spend hours weeding through all the farms and Mafias and videos of giggling babies and piano playing cats and petitions and be left exhausted and none the wiser.

But finally I've found something on Facebook I can whole heartedly recommend. My friend in LA, Lou Beach, noted artist and illustrator and all around raconteur, has started writing short stories.

Really short stories.

420 characters long to be exact.

It seems that 420 characters is the maximum limit you can write in your Facebook status update. Including spaces. So almost every day, Lou starts a new story in his status update. You get the first 420 characters of the story, and then that's it. It's up to you to finish it in your own imagination, because the next day, he'll have a new story. Or the beginning of one. You don't even have to read them yourself - he has audio clips of his high powered friends reading them. People like Jeff Bridges. Do check it out, won't you?

But back to me. Me, me, me. Rather than being web averse, I realized a long time ago I needed to beef up my online presence. It actually could be a tremendous opportunity. If, as they say, "In space, no one can hear you scream", than it's equally true that "Online, no one needs to know I live in Bako". If I can get my work out there and get clients from the online world, than I no longer have to prop up the house of cards charade that I still live in LA, which coincidentally almost came crashing down yesterday when one of my big LA clients called a sudden meeting. To them it was no big deal, because they still think I live a few miles away. I had to do some fancy footwork to get it changed to a conference call. So, making a bigger footprint online has become a priority.

Then the question becomes... where? There are thousands of online professional sites and portfolio portals and it would be impossible to try and join even a fraction of them. So, to get a better idea of where to go, I started stalking. Most of my former colleagues and co-workers are struggling to keep their heads above water just like me. But a few of them are doing OK. Better than OK, actually. So I selected a handful of them and have been stalking their online world, seeing which sites they belong to, what services they use, which appear to be effective, which appear to be a waste of time or simply too much effort. And after a couple of months I had compiled a list and finally set off to make a splash online.

Some, I was already involved with. I beefed up my Facebook business page. Yes, I have one. Not happy about it, but it's all but required these days. Same with my Linked In profile, although I long ago became convinced that the only people "Linked" are all unemployed. And then I went on a joining spree... Coroflot, Creattica, Behance, Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter... on and on and on. I even started another blog, a "nice" one.

It's a full-time job keeping it all up to date, and often, after the boyfriend goes to bed, I'm up until the wee hours trying to keep all the plates in the air.

And then there was Deviantart.

I have to admit I thought it was a bit dodgy. It evidently started as a geek site for people to post their unicorn paintings and Kirk/Spock erotic fiction. But it's evolved over time to be a portfolio site, and all the people I was following had a page. So I figured what the hell.

So late one night, I opened an account and started uploading my work.

And the weirdest thing happened.

I noticed in my account mail box I had several "likes". Actually, as soon as I uploaded a piece, someone "liked it". Not only that, but each piece was being added to someone's "favorites".

Well, how flattering is that? What a nice little ego boost. Somebody out there likes me! And my work! The commissions are going to start rolling in!

Being new to the system, I didn't realize at first I could check out who my fans are. But once I did, I discovered all the "likes" and "favorites" were for the same person. Whoever could it be?

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my Number One Fan...

"Mr. Kitty Cosplay".





He lives in Australia.

It's nice to know I'm big Down Under.

I have to admit, it's given me pause. I had convinced myself that jumping through all these hoops would be our ticket out of here but now I'm starting to believe it's all just one big circus. Or giant Fairy Forest, if you're into that sort of thing.

At any rate, I hope something comes of all the effort. I don't think I can take much more crushing disappointment.

Best DeFriends

I never followed through on my threat to commit Facebook suicide and deactivate my account. For many reasons, not the least of which being that in this digital age it's about as close to heresy as you can get. Plus, I already have age working against me and by jumping the Facebook ship I'd just be confirming my "old coot' status, yelling at the kids to get off the lawn.

I did make one change, however.

I "de-friended" someone.

His crime?

He is having a simply FABULOUS recession.

I don't begrudge anyone their good fortune, especially in these trying times. And his status updates seemed innocent enough about a year ago...

"Knock on wood this awful recession hasn't affected my business yet..."

But then it all quickly escalated.

"Business is Great!"

"What recession!!!"

"It's only Monday and I already have TWO new clients!!!!"

His success is completely baffling. He owns a small business that offers a service that would be considered discretionary even in the best of times. And he isn't that good at it - trust me, I used to use him. Then again, he's always been a master huckster, so more power to him.

But then came the posts about the new car, the new backyard, the trips to Mexico....

"Waking up with the birds singing outside my window and my pups kissing my face. It's going to be a GREAT day and I feel like shouting out to the World how happy I am to be alive!!!"

Yeah, well, fuck you. And enough with the exclamation marks.

Seeing as how these remarks always seem to come sandwiched between other people's comments about being out of work, losing their houses or being laid off it seems almost beyond insensitive. No real surprise there, he was always kind of a narcissistic asshole.

But over the past couple of weeks he's become messianic. This is no longer a recession, it's Judgement Day, and God has clearly picked the winners and losers. And he has absolutely no doubt which side he comes out on.

"Bad times happen to the passive and the weak. Here's to the assertive achievers that continue to thrive in these times meant for WINNERS!!!!!"

Well, enough of that.

Buh. Bye.

Karma's a bitch, "Winner". I hope the brakes on your new car fail.

If You Can't Beat Them, Friend Them

In what will either prove to be an act of shameless self-promotion or an indication of how much free time I have, take your pick, I started a Facebook page.

I know... Facebook. Oy. But there's no stopping it, so may as well jump on the bandwagon.

So... won't you be my friend?

Just look up "Eric N. Bako"... yes I now have a middle initial.

There's actually someone named "Eric Bako".

Poor dear.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest...

So I'm seriously contemplating committing digital suicide - deleting my Facebook account. I never really understood the attraction of it, but since simply everyone was on it, and I was told it was a great way of generating work, I signed up. Well, the work part never really panned out, so what's the point?

It says I have 182 friends. Or rather "friends". I don't know half of them. Never met 'em. People would "friend" me and maybe I recognized the name from the agency biz, or I knew they were a friend of a friend, or I hadn't the slightest idea who they were, but they knew me, so what the hell, I hit "accept". But the fact of the matter is I couldn't pick most of these people out of a police line-up. It was fun for about a month, but then it just got tedious. Besides, I think almost all of them have "hidden" me. I don't take it personally because I've hidden almost all of my "friends" too, especially the people from High School. We weren't friends then, so why the hell would we be friends now? I stopped posting anything months ago because I never would get any response, not even a "like". When the cute photos of my dogs didn't even get a "thumbs up", I was pretty sure I'd been disappeared by everyone. Probably because I refused to join their "Mafia". Whatever. No great loss. I'm not going to miss "Lil Blue Cove" or the poking - if anyone poked me in real life they'd get slapped upside the head. And I'm pretty sure I'll survive without knowing my Leprechaun or Klingon name.

But the real reason I may pull the plug is it's just too depressing reading about home. Makes me feel like a ghost, looking down on the living.

Plus it's only a matter of time before someone from Bako "friends" me, and then my whole charade will collapse like a house of cards.