None of those questions matter.  In fact, they are absolute bullshit.

Life is simply cause and effect.  Some dude shot a big load of jizz into your mom’s vajayjay and nine months later she squirted you out.  That’s how you arrived on this planet, and someday you will check out and be dead forever.  If you want to dig deeper and learn why this happened….

Why do gazelles exist?  Apart from following the same formula that created you, they are here for two reasons.  One, to keep the vegetation in their habitat in check.  Two, they are food for cheetahs.  The overarching reason for all existence is to further existence, to procreate, multiply, and die.  That’s how the world works.

But why are you here?  You’re not food, in most cases, for other animals.  Our true purpose on this planet has been lost.  We’ve erased all attachments to our natural being, although we still retain the instincts (to fuck, to eat, to fear, etc).  The only thing we still know is that we have an unending drive to fuck and reproduce (and you could argue to consume every last natural resource available).  And since we don’t know the reason for our existence, how we’re supposed to live in harmony with Mother Nature, we have to make shit up to fill that void.

And the system has just such a package: passion, purpose, and meaning, and it’s all for sale to every willing sucker.  They want to sell you on finding your purpose and passion, which inevitably leads to the ever fleeting “happiness.”  They, meaning the rubes who claim to have already achieved it.  The truth is, selling the dream is the source funding their dreams.

Now I’m not saying that purpose and passion and meaning are evil.  But see them for what they really are, which is nothing more than things you really like to do that fill the time between eating, fucking, shitting, and sleeping.  They are things you created or adopted as a function of the environment you live in (i.e. the world you occupy).

Always be wary of those “selling the dream.”  (If I actually could live my dreams, I would be terrified most of the time, or horribly confused.)  You already own everything you need to survive and thrive on this planet.  Being lost, feeling uninspired, depressed, or sad, or not having much to be passionate about is OK.  There’s no need to force anything.

Just keep moving and ignore the bullshit.

I envy the grunts digging and building a new parking lot outside the window. From the perspective of most, they serve me. I’m in a nice, comfortable, air conditioned office and they’re out in the hot sun, sweating and working with their hands while I work with my brain (or some facsimile thereof).  But the truth is, they serve no one and are simply supplicating to my fat ass, in exchange for a reward. I want to be one of them instead of the catered-to. Making things easier only sinks me further into the comforting bosom of the system, and more like a slave who is plugged in and checked out.

Empires crumble when the collective bottom feeders rebel, refusing to do the shit work that serves the elite few.  All it takes is one swift motion and united action and the self proclaimed royalty will fold, no longer able to support themselves on the backs of their servants.

I wrote this while taking a shit break at my fucking job.

People work hard to build little mini “empires” for themselves that’s mostly smoke and mirrors, and more about reputation than actual rewards.  It’s sad really, because that’s the vision that’s taught to us our whole lives.  We’re not taught how to be leaders, or visionaries, or risk takers, or kings of the world.  We’re taught how to be good, docile, obedient servants of those who refuse to be such.  Most people don’t figure it out and eventually get funneled into the system with just barely enough to eek a decent, comfortable life for themselves.  Stay on the rail and don’t deviate.

A handful do figure this out and become discontent, but never do anything other than complain.  In fact, I’d say most people recognize the chasm between the haves and the have nots, but are too weak to do anything about it.

Which camp do you fall in?

Steer the ship aground and see what happens.

In fact, all advertising that depicts an ingest-able product should be held to standards that force them to show the actual results of consuming their product.  In most cases, this would mean hiring obese, out of shape, disgusting people.  Why not market to who’s really you’re number one customer instead of trying to addict youthful, attractive, fit people and turn them into disgustingly repulsive fat blobs who shouldn’t be given the means to reproduce?

How do people date in the real world?  To be clinical, what is the workflow?  Boy meets girl, either through mutual friends or within some activity or just by chance at the grocery store.  They talk for a bit, then one of them asks for contact info so they can make plans to see each other again.  In most instances, I would imagine boy contacts girl and asks her if she would like to go out sometime.  Girl either accepts, rejects, or ignores.  That’s how people start dating.

So what if there was a site that made those steps a little bit easier?  That introduced you to new people who are interested in being introduced to potential dating partners, then facilitated them actually meeting in real life (instead of encouraging endless online interactions).

The current dating site model promises the world, that you will find your soul mate and live happily ever after.  That’s a croc of shit.  Matching heuristics don’t mean shit until you come face to face.  The most important element of attraction is 90% to 95% non verbal, meaning the other person has to be in your presence before an attraction can be triggered.  Why then, do the big dating sites make this difficult?  Probably because it’s more profitable to keep people playing tidily winks online.

So my proposition for a new way of thinking about online dating is as follows:

• Eliminate search and matching “algorithms.”  Answering endless questions and filing out worthless forms about your likes, dislikes, interests, occupations, etc is a colosal waste of time.  Attraction happens in person, not by answering the same question similarly.
• Make it easy to get to rejection quickly.  Instead of forcing guys to think of clever messages to send to women they are interested in meeting and to save women from having to wade through mountains of lame messages from douche-bags, get rid of the messaging paradigm altogether.  And while you’re at it, eliminate winks, flirts, bumps, etc.  Create an easy way for a guy or girl to say “hello, would you like to meet for coffee?”  And while you’re at it, make it easy to arrange the date at a locale conducive to both parties.
• Make it easy to quit.  I have a feeling if you build an effective avenue for guys to meet girls, the guys will keep coming back, and so will the girls.  Instead of forcing people to pay up front for 3, 6, 12 months, make it month to month with zero commitment.
• Limit the number of users.  The number of men on dating sites far outweigh the number of women.  Re-arrange this ratio, where women slightly outweigh the number of men, somewhere close to the natural ratio of the world (about 52% women to 48% men).
• Throttle who I can see.  Don’t show me the world.  Show me a handful of people at a time and let me decide if I want to take action on them.  And when I’ve “batted around,” don’t make me keep paying.  I’ll come back later when I think the pot might be fresh, or maybe you can tell me when there’s some new people I might be interested in seeing.
• Let me report users who are flakes or weirdos, and ban those users.  This is self explanatory.  Also, it would probably be a good idea to offer background checks, just to keep out potential psychos.
• Make it easy for me to find locations to meet.  Show me a map of where I’m at and where my potential date is at, then suggest points somewhere in between.  You can easily use Google maps to show the locations of Starbucks in the area.
• Purge users who aren’t active.  If someone isn’t actively participating, for whatever reason, delete their profile to make room for others who will be active. To go further, figure out a way to weed out people who are only in it for validation; those folks who never intend to meet anyone, who are just there to soak up attention.

Solving the Chicken & Egg Problem

You need a relatively large pool of single people already using the site before you can attract  singles to use the site.  I think a good rule of thumb to follow is get the girls and the guys will follow.  It’s a simple principle that has been used successfully by bars and clubs all across America (ladies get in free, half priced drinks, etc.)

Start local and expand slowly.  It will be much easier to reach critical mass locally rather than struggling to get people all at once.  Start local, think global.

Easier said than done, but if you can prove the model on a local crowd first, then expansion is just a matter of logistics.  And don’t give it away for free, because that only proves that people are willing to pay nothing for something.  Although, to solve the chicken and egg problem, the earliest adopters might have to be let in free, until you reach some maxim where there’s value in paying.

However great this all sounds, the million dollar question remains.  Is this what people really want?  Do they really want to meet other people in person?  Or are they content fiddling around online under the guise of actually dating?  This is an area that will have to be validated through testing.

Attention Deficit Disorder.  Let’s analyze the name of this “disease” for a second.  It implies that one is not generating enough attention, that there’s a deficit of some sort measured against a norm.  What’s the norm?  How do they measure attention?  Is there such a thing as too much attention, perhaps Attention Abundance Disorder?  Or is it, just maybe, that doctors and pharmaceuticals need a reason to sell you more pills?  Or maybe we, as a society, need something to label our kids with when they are not sitting perfectly still in class and paying 100% attention to a boring teacher babbling on and on about addition and subtraction?  In other, to unload our responsibilities as parents and teachers onto a convenience pill.

Just ram this pill down their throat and turn them into zombies.  Problem solved.  Oh, and that’ll be $600 a month for the rest of your life.  Oh, and another thing, we’re not really sure what the long term effects are, so we’re probably gonna get you later in life when other “disorders” crop up.

Economic Slavery

Could there be a more effective form of slavery?  If the 1% control access to all the resources, what can the 99% fight back with?  Sticks and rocks against 200 ton bombs?  This is your lot as an employee.  Bottom line, to quote 50 Cent: “Get Rich, or Die Tryin’”.

OK, so you’re most likely not going to get rich, ever.  So what’s a brutha to do?  I don’t know, stop working so damn hard and breaking your back to line the pockets of the king(s) you work for.  Whenever I catch myself putting in the slightest bit extra at the slave pit, I ask myself if it’s worth it.  Given the choice being fired for “poor performance” or stressing myself out to get something done for a maniacal, corporate lackey boss who’s only goal is to “look good,” the former typically is winner.  The latter has never come to fruition (too many liabilities for firing someone).

God Loves Me

God is trying his best to make a believer out of me.  He seems to place opportunity in my lap, but I ignore it every time.  I’m talking about opportunities to get laid, which as of the last two years has been a subject that I receive a big fat F- in.  But God keeps on throwing young, attractive women into my path and I keep ignoring them like they don’t even exist.  But anyway, thank you God, and keep up the good work.

The bottom line is: lack of sex.  Reproduction is really our only purpose on this planet.  Propagate the species.  In the wild, the natural order of things makes this easy, where the dominant males reproduce with any female they choose.  And kill or make subservient the beta males, who very rarely get an opportunity to procreate.

With humans, we’ve eliminated the natural order and elevated the weak to power.  It’s an imbalance that’s taken hundreds of years to cultivate.  In numbers, the betas can control and develop “societies” that punish the strong, so that they, the betas, have more opportunities to fuck.  That’s why they invented things like marriage, and the concept of “slut.”  It’s a control mechanism to keep women from following their natural desires, which in most cases is to fuck any and every available dominant man they come across.

Now we have a mutated species, where disease and conformity are the norm, and any natural display of power outside the system is punished severely (prison, financial sanctions, etc).

But still, betas lack the sex that a normal, healthy, dominant man receives in his lifetime.  The 80/20 rule still applies, no matter how many controls they try to put in place.  80% or more of the female population is fucking only 20% or less of the men.  That means the other 80% or so of betas still get sex, but not from the variety that the 20% enjoy.  And the girls they are banging, their wives and girlfriends (women under contract), are out banging the 20% behind their back.  Think those kids are yours?  Maybe you should think again.

So without an abundance of sex to occupy their time, beta men need something else to fill that void.  Thus is born careers, pursuit of power and money, and the myriad of other destructive behaviors that is essentially a scorched earth mentality; if I can’t get all the sex I need, then fuck the earth.  Every technological advancement we have around us is the result of this behavior.  When we moved out of the jungle, we lost any semblance we had of our natural being.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing being a beta, if you accept your role.  Unfortunately, most of the 80% are unable to do this.

It’s a little far fetched, but not so distant from the truth.  Where are you, in the 80% (most likely) or the 20%?

You wake up one day to find yourself fragile, finally realizing what all those old people were telling you when you were young.  The realization that when you reach a certain age, you are incapable of recovering the time you’ve pissed away.  And now you most certainly are destructible; recklessness is all of the sudden frowned upon, unlike the days of a teen.  Being set on a path of self destruction usually leads to just that, although at the moment when that realization hits, you’re not ready to fly over the edge.

But the real enigma is what could’ve been, what is the line between wasting time and spending time wisely?

It’s probably a safe bet that we, as comfortable living westerners, waste most of our time inventing excitement and manufacturing “experiences.”  Unless you’re in a real struggle to survive, which these days means making enough money to pay bills and eat, then escape is the only outlet to combat boredom.  Think about it, you have a decent job that pays at least OK, you have a roof over your head, plenty of food that you’ll never ever have to worry about acquiring (at least not in the foreseeable future), and an unending appetite for something more.  What that something more is is intangible, can’t be defined, and is most likely the result of having every basic need taken care of and then some.  A void, I suppose, that needs to be filled.

If I had it to do over again, I’d make different choices.  Who wouldn’t?  Not to avoid mistakes, but to involve myself in more interesting pursuits, other than just shrugging them off and going out to party with my stupid friends.  Now it’s too late to recoup that lost time, but not too late to reinvent and begin something worthwhile.

Dear Employee,

I would like to thank you for all the hard work, long hours, dedication, and sacrifices you have made to help in my quest to line my pockets with gold.  You’ve made me an extremely wealthy man, and in the process I’ve fed you booze, teased you with hot girls, and given off the illusion that “we care.”  And boy did you buy it!  In fact, you bought it so much that I paid you as little as I could get away with; the bare minimum amount to keep you slaving away for my glorification.

To show my appreciation, I’m spending millions of dollars to throw myself a ridiculous, over blown, ego stroking party, where you’ll be able to stand at the base of a 15′ stage and worship me as I parade around as if I was a rock star.  But don’t even think of getting close to me, and it would probably be best to not make eye contact with me either.  I’ll rope off a special section for those suckers who paid to have the honor to lobby for my company so the laws would land in my favor and I could rake in even more money for myself.  Oh, and there’ll be plenty of booze on hand, but only the first two are free, the rest I’ll be making a huge profit off as you overpay for them with pleasure.

The best part of the party is, it doubles as a PR stunt and actually gets the media thinking that my company is a great exciting place to work!  Instead of sharing the wealth with the people who have worked hard to make me a filthy rich man, I’m spending it on myself.  Is that really a surprise?

Your’s Truly,

Egomaniacal CEO

p.s. Ha! Ha! Fuck you!

The most interesting thing about Van Halen is they were more popular (i.e. sold more records) as the one dimensional Van Hagar than as the original with DLR.  Why?

I think it’s two things.  First, they were more generally appealing as Van Hagar, writing more radio friendly songs and not being even remotely experimentally, unlike the original, more dynamic version.  Second, they found the winning formula with 1984, which rocketed them into popularity.

But there’s something more interesting going on here.  As the edgy, often times experimental Van Halen, they were a better band.  And by better, I don’t mean more musically gifted.  Rather, they had a rabid fan base that anticipated every record, every single, and every concert they produced.  They looked forward to it and was willing to plop down money to be a part of it.  Sure they didn’t make as much money or sell more records or get more radio play, but they had something going that could’ve lasted a very long time, something that Van Hagar destroyed the second they formed.

There’s a big difference between making a record for your truly rabid fans and the general masses.  As a rabid fan, you want them to be pushing the envelope, even if they go a little too far and it’s unlistenable.  You want them to experiment with different styles, different sounds, different instruments even to try and go beyond what you’ve heard from them before.  It’s not always going to work, but your loyal, rabid fans will most likely support you through it, unless, of course, you shit in their mouth and keep producing crap.

Or you shit in their mouth by becoming hugely popular, which is exactly what Van Hagar did.

I’m not saying they sold out.  They couldn’t have, because how could they have known that Van Hagar would be more popular than the original?  But what happened did destroy them, creatively, musically, and financially.  They became hugely popular and as a consequence, they became a commodity.

When you’re making a record for the general population, you can’t be experimental.  You can’t push the envelope, because if you fail, that’s it, people will jump off the bandwagon and abandon you.  So in order to continue the level of popularity, you have to keep churning out the same hit (garbage) and keep following the formula and keep appeasing to the executives, the distributors (radio in this case), and the generic housewife who just a few years early, had no idea who you were.

And the worst part of all, when you reach a level of general popularity, nobody cares any more.  Even though they’re buying the album and going to your concerts, they don’t care.  Because when you eventually fizzle out, when your formula becomes old, they have something else to glom onto, the next big thing.  There’s always someone on your heals who can follow the same formula, except they’re younger, better looking, more appealing, fresh, etc.  When that happens, you’re toast.  Career over.  It’s very hard to recover once you’ve been tossed aside.

Bands achieve longevity by flying under the radar and appealing to their core rabid fans.  As a result, they become richer than any megastar super band.  The lesson here?  At all costs, don’t become a commodity, build something that a handful of people care about and the rest will fall into place.