Who, Or Is It Whom Shall I Piss Off Today Part 2

A few months ago I wrote the original post which I guess now is Part 1.
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/who-or-is-it-whom-shall-i-piss-off-today
It was prefaced with this short but to the point mission statement:
The Modus Operandi Of Pissing People Off.
Well, it’s really simple.
A. Have a strong opinion and
B. Voice it.

1. People Who Want Stuff For Free: 




I occasionally visit a site called Founder Dating, which is probably the most misleading name for the kind of site that it is.
Founder Dating appear to be some sort of advice site, where people who are establishing businesses ask questions and, allegedly, experts pipe up with sage advice.
The assumption here is that the people who are giving the advice would, if the advice is good, be able to develop some sort of supplier relationship with the people heeding their advice,
There’s only one catch. The people who need the advice don’t have any money.

I’m not sure where the concept of starting a business with no capitalization came from. But it’s an idiotic notion that too many people have bought into.
Obviously there’s a certain amount of cockeyed optimism on the part of the founders of these businesses. But there is, if you comb through this site for even a few minutes, the definite impression that free stuff is what’s expected.
I find this very distressing and have from a very young age when my mother would make my allowance contingent on the completion of a certain number of household chores each week. (I can’t complain because that’s where I learned to iron clothes and prune hedges).
How this affects people is that they often end up not really understanding the value of the services and products they need to establish their business and make them grow.
They also don’t get the benefit of understanding the root principle: That one definition of stupidity is starting a business without proper funding, to cover your own time and the time of the people who are going that actually help you turn your business into something.
Someone on this site even went to far as to suggest that there should be a directory of free services on the site itself.
At this point all you can do is shake your head and wonder what the hell is happening to the world if this is the future of entrepreneurism.
My friend, a designer, summed all this up rather nicely in a conversation we had a while ago.

“Your business is your dream. I’ll be happy to help you build that dream as long as you remember 2 things…1. That’s what I get paid to do, and 2. It’s your dream, not mine.

2. People Who Want beBee To Be More Like LinkedIn

Between myself, Paul Croubalian, John White, Phil Friedman and several others in addition to the beBee staffers and owners, there has been a ton of stuff written about how beBee functions and what makes it a unique entity in the social media universe.
And the majority of people who come here, mainly from LinkedIn, have embraced the concept of beBee’s affinity based structure.

But there are a few people who still don’t get it and I get the feeling, mainly from the comments they make in some beBee posts that they would really like beBee better if it was more like LinkedIn.
Well, being a good beBee bee, I will politely state that we can agree to disagree on that.
First of all, if beBee isn’t enough like LinkedIn for you, then maybe you never should have left in the first place.
But you did so you must have seen that the stuff that makes beBee unique is the kind of stuff that will help you build your personal brand or achieve whatever the hell you can here came for.
And right now, meaning for that past year or so, LinkedIn has made that virtually impossible, though a number of bonehead moves that these same people most likely hated.
People who wish that beBee could be more like LinkedIn remind me of tourists who spend thousands of dollars on a trip to Europe and then only eat their meals at McDonald’s or Burger King. They’re missing out on a big part of the experience.
A social media site is a culture. And beBee has a vibrant one. If you go to all the trouble to sign up and build some relationships here, you should also consider capping your nostalgia for LinkedIn.
Because by comparison they are like night and day. And I will take beBee over what LinkedIn has turned into any day of the week.

3. The Electronic News Media

Yesterday US President Obama came out and gave the press a shot upside the head.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/watch-obama-shames-the-press-for-not-challenging-trumps-outright-wacky-ideas/
This was something that, in my opinion, is long overdue. And yes, it all revolved around the candidacy of Donald Trump.
However this is not about Trump.

It’s about the corporate greed of the American news corporations who saw the shit circus that a Trump election run would create and what a boon it would be for their ratings and more importantly, their advertising revenues (the greed part), to keep this story alive and kicking for as long as possible.
They have, since the beginning of the primary season, given Trump and his strange representatives an estimated $2.5 billion in free air time. They have kept his name and his point of view front and centre in the eyes of the American public. And with the nature of sheeple being what it is, have probably been the most to blame for Trump’s popularity.
This, in any fair-minded world, would be considered a flagrant abuse of power. But unfortunately, it actually breaks no laws. It seems that a lot pretty nasty things get done by the media, and probably always have, because there are no laws against them.
I’m a Canadian and, I like to believe a person, who thinks for himself. I freely admit that I have no dog in the American election fight. But this isn’t about that.
It’s about what what right and what’s wrong. And it’s about the morality having the ability to exert undue influence on the general public and taking advantage of that power for your own selfish ends.
This sort of thing makes the world a much sadder place. Especially if you agree what President Obama started in the video above.
OK, so that’s it for this go round. I’ve tried, in the spirit of being a good bee, I have tried to steer as clear as I could from hard core politics, because that is a lead pipe cinch to piss people off and, hey, where’s the sport in that?
As usual, comments cheerfully accepted. Sharing of this post sincerely appreciated.

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