Did you not get the memo?

Dear all you poor, mistaken people on teh interwebz. This is an official announcement. Please go into your emails and enter reality.check@life.com into your contacts, so that any correspondence will not be directed to your spam folder. Why? Clearly some people didn't get the memo.

I hate it when people bitch about things on Facebook. I'm going to be a hypocrite here and use the whole hating on people thing as my first example. Last night someone posted a status bitching about someone not calling them. In fact, I'm sure a million people did. Is it not a well-known fact that people are freaking assholes? Don't bitch about things you can't help, especially when the facts are already apparent. The human race is flawed. Anybody who doesn't know this needs to be slapped upside the head with a bar fridge and check their spam filter.

Another thing that gets me with Facebook status updates - When people say FML about things. FML is a cool saying, and a cool site. But people take it too damn far. "I just broke a nail" is NOT a good status to follow up with "FML". These people need to find real issues and problems to be all FML about. Like rape. Or your granddad dying (in which cause it could be fuck his life). But not silly little things that you're going to live through.

Also on the subject of Facebook - seller copyright issues. On a day-to-day basis I see a lot of creations by Facebook sellers, and let's be honest, a lot of them have some bloody awesome stuff. But it saddens me when I see people blatantly using other people's ideas. There's a little thing out there, called appropriation. You see something someone's done and try to incorporate a similar technique, material etc into your own work. Call it gathering inspiration if you will. But to just up and do a REALLY trashy imitation of someone else's design, when it is their own intellectual property is NOT COOL! Fortunately I don't think I've had this happen to me. And I will admit there are certain circumstances where people arrive at the same idea - after all, everything has been thought before. But when you see a seller who you know is affiliated with someone else completely rip-off someone's designs, it's not appropriation, or gathering inspiration, it's attempting to steal someone else's business. Handmade creations are special and unique. They're not displayed to be ripped off and the idea cheapened.

For example, when checking out my referral URLs on ArtFire for -- let's say extensions: Many a time I've seen skull-print hair extensions. Now, let's be honest here - I don't think they're great. The pattern is blurry. But it IS a unique idea and one which I think is exceptionally cool. But I don't go around making skull-print extensions. I'm not going to go steal someone else's business using their idea just because I could do it better. I always use my own unique designs for my products - ones which I've taken the time to sketch out, and label and hell, even make prototypes for.

So anyway, before I leave you all, I have an idea. I should start making a name-and-shame list of all the copycat sellers on Facebook. If someone doesn't see this come into action, feel free to kick me in the butt cause I'll probably forget =]

I'm out.