Social media intrigues me…
Or I guess, more correctly, people intrigue me…
I spent many years working in a Casino and to the uninitiated, well… it’s exciting and glamorous…
The reality…
Well… interesting…
If you’re inclined to people watch… then even more interesting, doubly so, as you get paid to indulge your obsession…
See… people think that croupiers get paid to deal the games…
The reality…
Well… the dealing is the tiniest part, the smallest detail…
The main reason you are there is to spot cheats… the eye is smarter than the camera’s eye in the sky and many eyes from many angles can’t be easily blocked…
When it comes to social media, it occurs to me that it is very much like having a global gaming pit in your living room…
All the players are there…
The fake IDs and frequent name changes…
The bluffing, the blagging…
Poker face public persona…
Mr Big! Mr Don’t you know who I am?!
The Sharks…
The Lampreys…
Old ladies feigning dottiness…
Acting out…
Faux dramas
Pointing fingers, blaming shaming…
Distracting…diverting…
Top hatters late betting…
Hoping to not get busted…
Croupiers…
Very rarely watch faces…
The shows and tells, are often shoes and smells…
The body leaking tics, jigging feet beneath the steady hand above the baize….
Croupiers… they watch… they remember… they see the quirks… the patterns… the signals…
The old guy who always twists sideways in his chair and drapes his right arm over the back when he is moments away from blowing his stack…
It was a fine art that old school dealers prided themselves on…
Knowing the punter… clocking his swagger as he entered the room…
Who’s he with? What’s he up to? What’s he calling himself this week?
Old croupiers… they knew the game…
It was never about dealing cards…
More about reading people…
Old croupiers… with wry laughter and lopsided respect for angry losers who tried to tip the tables…
Ranting, raging, spitting, cursing, tossing chips, flinging profanities…
Byronesque anti-heroes! Mad, bad and dangerous to know!
In the faceless world of the cyber(r)age…
I see all this too…
Though in pixels it strikes me as
Drab! Sad! I just don’t wanna know…
In life, tantrums come and go, heave and flow and are soon forgot as many memories rewrite events and tell tales to glorify Joe less than average into some kind of Urban Myth…
Details lost as quickly as micro-expressions that flit across furtive faces…
Tics and snipes lost in time…
In social media…
You can never die…
Even if you delete/deactivate/block/ignore…
Somewhere, someone has your eFootprints loitering in their account…
The strikes on a keyboard… the clicks, the likes…
Echoing for all eternity…
In cyberspace…
Everyone can hear you scream…
The pure and blessed way 