My kids and I were sniffling as we prepared to move. The dust hesitated in the air, and like a swarming mob crowded into the crevices of our sinuses. That made the task of prepping to move more and more miserable by the moment. Then at the height of my misery, I came across a picture that rescued forgotten memories long missing in action tucked irretrievably just outside my consciousness.

I chuckled at rogue roommates, silly siblings and funny friends. The grunge of basement grit covering me was overpowered by the satisfaction of revisiting beautiful people, wonderful places and wondrous things. I had the proof to tell the stories. So, how to share in a post Kodak mindset? I could post these pics to the Kodak gallery, load them on flicker, create a PowerPoint presentation or . . .?

Or, I could use them as the beginning salvos in the greatest Facebook picture war known to mankind. Of course my flair for the dramatic may overstate my aims just a tad, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to shoot for the stars. The more I pondered, the more I realized we needed a Geneva Convention of sorts on how to war fairly. I do believe in fair war, so what follows is a delineation of the rules of combat for a well executed honorable Facebook war that will leave friends and family just that, friends and family.

Rules of Engagement

1 – Know your subject well enough before posting:

Do not post pictures of someone as the main subject if you do not know them well. This is in poor taste. As a rule of thumb, if your response to randomly spotting them in the mall is a lukewarm hand gesture, chances are, you two are NOT not on it like that. No pictures for you.

If, on the other hand, you knock an elderly person to the ground while making a bee line to greet them, you’re good. Post away. If there are others in the picture who are not the main focus of the pic and you a.) don’t know their name, or b.) don’t care what their name is, fa-get-about-it. We call these folks fb pic war collateral damage. It’s expected that a certain number of these folks will get trapped on your Facebook page.

2- No pictures of children whom you are not related to:

On a serious note, protecting others should always be in the forefront of our minds when posting online. To this end, be mindful of posting pics of children whom you are not related to because some parents are extremely protective of their children’s privacy. Many of them have good reason to be.

3- Be mindful of relationship status prior to posting:

You know when your significant other asks the question, “did you have a xxxxxx with so and such?” By not posting previous relationship pics, you uphold their answer, regardless of their answer. Other folks simply have a tremendous amount of pride, and if they see who their significant other has dated in the past, they may be extremely insulted and terminate the relationship on the spot!!

4- No compromising photos:

It’s important to recognize that people grow. We all are hopefully smarter and wiser than we were during earlier periods of our lives. It’s mean spirited and calamitous to knowingly post photos of others in situations or scenes that would jeopardize their relationship, their job or their security. I know posting a compromising pic of your ex seems like an equitable way to repay them for that wonderful gift they left you with, but, you will appear as the villain and you can’t undue what you’ve done. This also applies to posting ugly pics of models and could even extend to posting pics of people you know who are now “famous.” When in doubt, refer to rule #1.

5- Move when asked to remove:

Be responsible for the pics you post. If the person whom you have added or tagged requests that you remove their picture, do it promptly. Now be mindful some folks are a little bashful and some are hard of hearing, so depending on which side you fall you may need to request harder or BS better.

6- Post with a sincere heart:

The cardinal rule of thumb is to post in love and appreciation. Be mindful, your FB Pic War has the potential to touch, move and inspire!! How great is it to share with others the beautiful people whom your life has been blessed with? Isn’t it also motivating to reflect on where your life has taken you? At the end of the day, your FB Pic War should be about bringing family and friends closer. Keep this in your heart and win lose or draw, your war will have been worth it.

Every now and again I hear that soul stirring emotional gripe, “my Facebook account has been hacked.”  Or, maybe you are one of the unfortunate individuals to whom this has happened. My condolences.

I was skeptical at first. Not because I didn’t believe it could happen,  but because many computer problems are affectionately known by techies as a PEBCACs (Problem Exists Between Chair and Computer). After seeing more and more posts about the hacks on various sites, I looked a little deeper and was moderately interested in what I found.

Getting your Facebook, or any other social media account, hacked can and does happen. For individual low profile folks out there, access is typically gained through poor password selection or installation of rogue applications. Low profile meaning NOT Sara Palin or Barrack Obama.

When it comes to generating passwords, despite knowing better, most Americans are just not that creative when it comes to creating a password. This is the lament issued by a collection of high school teachers on their blog, “Teaching High School Psychology.” They go on to list some of the most common reasons that hackers are able to guess passwords for general user accounts.

• 16% used their own first name or that of one of their children
• 14% used simple keyboard combinations such as “123456789″ or “QWERTY”
• 5% of the passwords were of television shows, famous names, etc. such as “Hannah,” “Matrix,” or “Ironman”
• 4% used the word “password” or a close variation “password1″
• 3% used phases such as “Idontcare,” “Whatever,” “Yes,” or “No.

What’s more, I bet quite a few folks reading this have a password or two residing on a dubious list entitled, “The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time”.  If you see your password here, go straight to jail and do not pass go. But before you do that,  change your dang password to something not on the list. Keep in mind that any information in the public domain can and will be used against you by hackers. ANY piece of information (Read: Google yourself and see what information is out there about you, you might be surprised).

This means your dog’s name, your children’s name, your birthdate, your home state, your zip, your street address, your alma mater, everything is out there for the taking.  A hacker can assemble all of these items into a  list and begin running through the combinations to generate probable passwords.  That’s not good news.

Want to know how to choose a better password? Grab a small cup of joe and peruse the following link;  Click here to peruse. Yeah it’s boring and completely non-sexy, but at least you won’t have to send an email to everyone apologizing for the hee-bee-gee-bees you gave their pc (sorry, sorry. Or Mac). And remember to change your password at least 3 times a year.

The other predominate way to get hacked on Facebook in particular and other social sites in general is to continually install and allow random applications to access your information. Keep in mind, these applications ARE NOT, in general, built by Facebook and its development group. These are private groups and organizations with wild ideas and dreams of grandeur that assemble the applications.  Some have good intentions and others, not so much.  There is no verification process for developers putting together Facebook applications so installer beware.

On Facebook in particular, the applications will rifle through your user list sending random join messages to your unsuspecting friends. And bam, before you know it, cyber calamity. It’s ok to decline to allow applications access to your information. If they really need it, they’ll IM you.

Enough talk, go change your passwords and practice saying, “No, you can not have access to my information.”

Stay safe.

I just read an article that drew some correlations between grades and Facebook use. The gist was that students who used Facebook were typically a 1/2 letter grade below students who didn’t. You can check out the article here.

The really difficult thing about assessing these types of claims is that many angles have not been covered BEFORE the “results” are released. Yes, the writer makes it abundantly clear that she has no slant and that their is more to study, but why make the claim if you have to disclaimer it into oblivion? It’s akin to the tv show COPS showing a man chased down by a small battalion of officers who then beat the mass out of him while cuffing him and then running the disclaimer, “All suspects are innocent till proven guilty.”  Guilty as sin!!

Imagine the legions of overzealous parents that have now banned Facebook in their households to their children’s disbelief.  They’ve relegated Facebook usage to second shift after Saturday morning cartoons, if anyone still watches them. Kids will be forced to Facebook in dark desolate alleys.  What really bothers me about these studies is in many instances their is no historical context give for the subjects that are included. In other words, were these individuals already performing below non-Facebook students prior to the study? Were their study habits filled with other tasks?

Granted, I haven’t taken any master’s level statistics, or even undergrad level coursed. But I smell a rat. Interesting article, I just hated the dangling connotation.

I recently visited a good friend’s Facebook page and sat stunned as I watched a group of white high school kids sing “Shout” by Otis Redding in Black face and wigs. What’s worse is that it was my high school and I remember the performance. As I sat there watching, all the emotions which had been wrestled into submission since high school came rushing back. I remembered that my graduating class of 320 counted only 6 blacks in its graduating class. In the jumping and gyrating of disrespectful caucasian coons, I saw years of black jokes, and curly hair jokes, and burnt people jokes crawl back into my ears as my heart beat louder and louder. The denigration of generations for a cheap laugh, justified as nostalgia, history and good humored fun. The high school I remembered was the one I struggled to forget.

My breath quickened and my stomach dropped remembering deeply seated friendships growing into romance only to be butchered by obscene words like, “my parents won’t approve,” and “my father would kill me.” The isolation that some of those years brought about settled into my bones as though I had graduated only yesterday. That strange feeling of being in the midst of people but somehow keenly disconnected, reattached itself. Within me, the rage swelled. Growing up I learned to distrust people. Period. I distrusted blacks because when I spoke, I pronounced my words like “white people.” That made you square and ineligible for the in crowd. White had their own version of you are out. As I remember how cool I was with many, there always seemed to be that one black joke they had been dying to tell since they met you. There was a fundamental inability to recognize the destruction of trust their jokes engendered. Not that they cared, but their ability to highlight the difference eroded the commonality you had hoped would be there.

The desire to crush and obliterate trembled in my fingers which pulsated to the rhythm of the sledge hammer now driving the thump of my heart. As I searched for words, my mind flew past minority feelings of inferior expectations and landed in the open arms of Howard University. With fumbling fingers, my anger leaked onto my keyboard, painting underlined letters, supporting big exclamation points. Like a mother whispering to a child, ancestors spoke to me reminding me how such a negative experience had pushed me into a world filled with giants like, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison and Ossie Davis to name a few. Without these high school slights I would never know people who looked like me birthed civilizations lasting 15 times longer than the age of the US. The pages of Alex Haley’s “The Autobiography Malcolm X” may have never graced my eyes had I not been set apart. As I began to fall in love with black people, I found myself and a whole universe that had been hidden from me in the suburbs. In loving this sense of self I received a wife who embodied all that I was and could be.

Without the experiences of high school I would have never found my voice. I wouldn’t have known that it was OK to speak up and set boundaries. Without those experiences, I might not understand how to deal within an industry that after 12 years has never graced me to work directly with someone who as actually shaded like myself. As I typed terse words, I weighed old friendships against a newer voice.

As luck would have it, there was no need to decide, it was all a mistake, but someone somewhere is fighting this Facebook battle when the new and old worlds collide.

Speaking of sticks and stones, I stumbled across a Facebook group, Uncle Tom: Anthology and I couldn’t help but ponder on the pejorative, Uncle Tom.

Like school yard kids eager to exact retribution for bubble gum stolen and secrets revealed, Black Americans, and oddly enough Al-Qeda and even Ralph Nader love to hurl this incendiary insult. This Facebook group dedicates itself to the maintenance of a list of Uncle Toms. Go easy on them, lest you get tagged with that sticky label. I think the idea, albeit a little less than constructive, is interesting. Who is with us and who is against us.

The use of the term Uncle Tom and the devotion of a group to its full scale usage has a bit of mob mentality rising from it. It’s kind of reminiscent of McCarthyism when careers were lost and homes relocated to undisclosed international destination at the mere mention of the C word. I completely get the concept but I think there are some pretty fatal flaws.

When I was in college it was easy for us to brand anyone who looked unsympathetic to our cause or had politics deemed “anti-black” as an Uncle Tom. Among those was Colin Powell. Despite his popularity NOW, there was a time when black America didn’t think so highly of him. Primarily because of his conservative agenda and his break with mainstream black thought. Colin was not always so well liked. He was labeled an Uncle Tom.

I heard him speak one day, and it came to me that we (people in general) love to sit in philosophical judgement of others. We render verdicts and hand down ill fitting sentences all the while relying soley on our community politics to universally condemn. It’s similar to West Indians coming to the states and looking at some black Americans and judging all Black Americans based on a lazy few.

What this assumption fails to take into account is that the transplanted West Indians are clearly, in general terms, a highly motivated group. Otherwise they would still be on their island. Their collective demonstrated initiative requires them to overcome to be here. They then think, well, if I did it, why can’t they. There are quite a few “theys” that are doing it.

So the first immutable law of Uncle Tomism, is that the insult takes out of context the environment of the denigrated. We call those slaves who shucked and jived Uncle Toms. Well, believe it or not shucking and jiving kept families together and skin intact. Just like we’re fond of dreaming every African was a prince, we’re also in love with the notion that we held the power during the troubling period known as slavery. I still think most Americans, actuall Universal citizens, can not fathom the depths of suffering endured by enslaved Africans throughout the diaspora. It’s easy for us to sit in air conditioned rooms theorizing, but those folks ,fewer luxuries necessitated simply survival. Their choices were hard and fast.

Consider another point. Early minstrel entertainers are often the butt of jokes. But without these brave, yes I said it, brave performers who had to endure unimaginable treatment, you wouldn’t get the Will Smith’s and Sydney Poitiers. This is the long road to success happen like that. The roads to success must be paved and the pathway is paved with heartache, pain, blood, sweat, tears and sorrow. Shouldn’t we be compassionate for all those who would walk that road for themselves and others?

The last point about the pejorative, Uncle Tom is that it is less then accurate and it’s an easy way. By using the blanket term we are relived of all obligations to prove the allegation and be clear about our motivations. It’s much easier to say Uncle Tom, which is less than descriptive of the particular offense against blacks, than it is to say more precisely, Clarence Thomas is hypocrite.

Now granted, in what Uncle Tom does have going for it is that it is a bucket to hang those who violate the rules of blackness. Now I hope I haven’t violated too many rules and won’t end up blacklisted (that was fun) as an infidel and blaspheme.