Social Media is Scary, but Not as Scary as Me Being an Awesome Spy

I am hesitant to say anything regarding my job because it is my sole means of support now that I am no longer a student with allowance. And did you know, in the real world you have to pay rent? And this thing called utilities? And that, when the living room light gets left on all night, the latter increases? Yes, it is all quite overwhelming and confusing but I have been putting on a brave front and writing checks, which I find is easier to do if you are blissfully unaware of the contents of your bank account. I assume I have enough to cover this month's rent, let's just leave it at that. Like that old saying goes, "Assuming makes a .. happy person ...out of me." Or something like that.

Anyway, let me remain purposefully vague because I am keeping in mind one incident in which my sister's roommate went for an interview, came back discouraged, vented about said interview in her blog, and received a call not thirty minutes after it was posted -- from her interviewer. Asking her to take down the post. Because he had seen it through Google Alerts. Yes, the world is a scary place.

So for all our sakes -- including that of my landlord, with whom I'm not well acquainted but who I am fairly certain does not have a secret fondness for bounced checks -- let's just say that I am a spy by profession. And occasional blogger by night (but mostly couch potato).

One day, my daily routine of getting to the spy office by 8 AM was disrupted because -- TADA! -- I had something else on my plate that morning. Not literally, spies don't have time for breakfast. What I had to do was attend what everyone else there referred to as a "social media workshop" but which I referred to (mostly in my head) as a "super secret spy mission". The conference/mission was amusing for two reasons: I was experiencing a weekday morning outside of a cubicle for the first time in over two months (if spies got depressed this would be a good point to do so), and THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CONFERENCE WAS TO LEARN ABOUT FACEBOOK.

But first I had to get there. The directions were vague, giving only the address to what turned out to be a huge cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. Parking in the underground garage (for which the fee was $18, and quite beyond a spy's salary, so I was relieved to find later that it was validated for the conference), I made my way up the stairs and into the first building I saw. Which was the cathedral, of course. I don't know what I thought, that the workshop would be held inside the cathedral? I suppose we could have sat in the pews, and the presenter could have spoken at the ... alter? Podium? I'm not familiar with religious terminology. But this sacrilegious scene was not to be. When I made my way into the cathedral, I saw only a few bowed heads, devout worshippers in prayer for who clearly did not have profile pictures or friend requests on the mind. I tiptoed back toward the door, afraid that the echoing sound of my work heels against the stone floor would disrupt some sort of religious epiphany. It wasn't until I saw a man frowning at me that I realized mincing along with my body curled into the shape of a question mark wasn't the most inconspicuous thing I could have done in that particular situation. Luckily by then I was near the door, so I made my escape.

Soon after I found the actual conference being held in a modern conference room with no pews or praying people whatsoever. It was a lucky thing it was located next to the cafe, ensuring that sooner or later I would come across it, whether in search of the conference itself or just a nice frappuccino.

So I was finally at my social media conference. For those of you who are like I was a few months ago, social media is roughly the concept of marketing through social platforms on the internet. Or something like that. I didn't take notes on that part because they had FREE DANISHES. Spies have priorities, you know.

Anyway, it turned out I didn't really have to pay attention to much of it at all, because most of the conference was spent explaining things like Facebook fan pages and how to effectively use Twitter. Considering my ..spy company.. blocks the use of any website it deems unproductive (goodbye Bejeweled, cracked.com, personal blogs, or anything that may bring a tiny glimmer of light and hope into the dark abyss that is cubicle life), I settled in to enjoy the rest of the conference with a nice blueberry scone.

That is, until we got to the Powerpoint presentation. An extremely nice and dapper older gentleman was presenting from a local nonprofit, explaining how they'd used Facebook to spread the word about their fundraisers. He showed us screenshots of their page, which I guess was taken from his computer when he was logged into the account, because he suddenly cleared his throat. The audience followed his eyes to where he was looking at the advertisements on the sidebar. That's when I noticed for the first time that the ads were extremely... specific. GAY MOTORCYCLE CLUB, the first one said. The second one: GAY AUTOMOBILE CONVENTION. Okay, I didn't even know they had those. We went onto the next page. GAY BOWLING CLUB. "You know," the presenter said, very graciously, "I don't know how they find out this stuff."

All in all it was quite a successful morning.