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No More Dumb Word Play in Titles of Articles About Google Buzz Please

Oh, Google Buzz, I love you. I’ve had so much fun with this thing, especially since I got my Nexus One in the mail. Actually the first thing I did with the phone was Buzz about my having just unboxed my Google phone. So it started out harmlessly but it has become an obsessive liability.

You see, a key component of my Buzz MO was crossing the boarder into Harlem where I would proceed to cross the line by posting something just slightly, oh so benignly slightly, racially overtoned to provoke a soulfull response from the hood. In my most recent Buzz I was engaged by a native a rap battle. I can’t post his attack, way too nasty for this place (but admittedly a pretty decent set of rhymes that made me feel bad about myself), but with the help of an online dictionary I came up with this retort:

Not bad, right? Cocksure of victory, he invited a vote from other Buzzers:

Can’t you see why I want to go back north and Buzz some more? So can my uncle, but he can also see why I ought not to. An email from him this morning:

Doug, in view of your pending employment, I’d like to suggest you tone down your Buzz page. People who want to do a search of your background could come across this and they might be influential on your getting work. I wouldn’t want to see a prospective employer get spooked (bad choice of word) about offering you a job after reading so much cross-cultural commentary if you catch my drift. It’s entertaining all right but maybe not appropriate at this time.


If it got back to my uncle that means at least one of my cousins saw it first, then told the other cousin and then my uncle, so it going viral as they say and that was at least one branch that I knew of. Had to pull the plug fast. My response to my uncle:

I tried to start toning it down but realized quickly that just about everything I posted, as fun as it may have been to do, was not in my interests to have posted, especially considering that I need this job and this is the sort of thing companies sometimes try to check out before hiring someone. Not to mention I’m trying to keep myself firmly positioned to get married to a girl whose father might not entirely share my sense of humor. I got myself a Google phone and obviously got way too carried away. As is my wont, historically. So I saved it for posterity and then zapped the whole thing.

So it’s gone, don’t bother trying to look me up. I really didn’t want to do that and wished I lived in a world where even the people who enjoyed my writing wouldn’t curb their encouragement just because of how things might be perceived by other people, but that’s not how the system works apparently. Not to mention this was really getting on my fiancee’s nerves, and as a result she got on my nerves. But understandably.

I told both her and my uncle that I’ll stick to this blog for my writing outlet as for whatever reason, unlike Buzz, I only take a few jabs at the Chinese and that doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone yet. This site is as far away from Harlem as you can get, ain’t that right.

So that’s what I’m doing now, using you as an outlet. Thanks for indulging me. You’re like Nicorette to me right now. To try to make this a little more constructive, the issue I suppose worth suggesting as something to think about or discuss is having to tone down your online behavior for the sake of your employment and relationships, and how much that bums you out. Especially when what you’ve written is gold.

Gold, baby.

Doug Simmons

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