Pangs of Guilt

I never really thought of myself as a “user”, but obviously I’ve been in deep denial.

Years ago, I saw an obscure movie on HBO. It probably had a very short theatrical release. Up until 5 minutes ago, I thought the name of the movie was “Dutch Treat”, but a check of IMDB finds a different movie by the same name.

For me, the most memorable line of the movie that I seem to have forgotten was “You car is your dick. RIght now, you have a really small dick”. That was the life lesson taught to a mid-west kind of innocent guy who moved to California.

Well, Twitter is the same.

I think you measured by your number of followers and your “Klout”.

FacebookYesterday, I decided to take some drastic actions to increase my number of followers and “Klout”, since both had stalled out in the past week after some nice and steady growth. Like most men, I wanted bigger Klout.

I wanted to cast a Klout shadow that would make Anthony Weiner envious.

First, I opened a Facebook account.

I actually had one, that was closed to everyone. I used it only to be able to place Facebook ads. I was proud to have no Facebook friends. I actually worked that fact into nearly every converstaion that I had with real people.

But since I now want to sell books, I was told that I need a Facebook presence and a page for Option to Profit.

Okay. The page went up and I was immediately stunned to see how many suggested friends were out there for me. Some names sounded slightly familiar, most not at all. Was I getting Alzheimers? Was there a reason I wasn’t remembering my “friends”? WHo were these people?

But before I get back to Facebook, I also decided to start following all of my Twitter followers. Previously, I had about a 4 to 1 ratio. I followed relatively few people and maybe, as a result, I had relatively few followers.

Maybe, the reason for that was my content was “drek”, but I’ll choose to ignore that possibility.

So follow I did and lo and behold, I increased my number of followers by about 20%.

I’m a user. No doubt about it. Facebook, Twitter. It’s all about getting people and then getting their people and their people’s people. All to buy books.

That’s when the reality hit.

If I thought that my Tweets were tripe, that all changed when I saw what was now pouring into my Twitter stream.

Holy tripe.

Here comes the guilt.

I need to unfollow most of those new people. I feel badly about that.

I do, because when someone no longer follows me, I feel just a little bit sad, although I often wonder why they were following in the first place. Was there anything in my Tweets or blogs that indicated I would be a good place for learning a daily Russian word?

At first I thought that I just couldn’t do that sort of thing, because I really wasn’t that kind of person, but then came the realization.

I stopped being a guilt ridden person that day that I gave up on buy and hold stock strategies. It has to all be about the outcome, not the process.

These days, I’m in and out. Not quite a day trader, but one whose trading pattern more befits my attention span. I also have way too much regard for my mental well being to be a day trader, although I do make about 4 trades a day.

For example, I expect that today, I’ll be buying shares of Home Depot, Transocean and the Financial Sector SPDR, with the cash that will come pouring in from assignment of my shares in AIG, GS and JP Morgan.

I plan to write in the call options immediately on all three, with expiration this Friday.

Home Depot, in fact, goes ex-dividend on Wednesday and if it gets exercised, I’ll be happy and just buy something else and again sell call options.

No guilt there. Just want to wring every cent out of those shares as quickly as possible. Sort of like Jack the Ripper.

So I started the Twitter pruning this morning with a newly discovered guilt free feeling. Sorry “Great Deals in Southern Florida” peddler. Sorry “Job Bank in Sacramento” guy.

And so it went.

But being a cautious kind of guy and still wanting to retain my followers, I hedged my bets. Not much of a surprise, considering how I trade.

I decided to start by dumping those people that had lots of followers. Looking through their Tweets, I couldn’t understand why they had so many, but I figured they would never miss me and would be less likely to reciprocate.

If that works, then it’s time to prune down those that seem to have a strong evangelistic tone. I’m all for religiousity, but I want mine in spasms of more than 140 spaces.

As the soon to be old saying goes “You lost me at Lord”.

Now, back to Facebook.

My sister immediately found my presence. I had long resisted her suggestions to join and become a part of “communities” of our past.

Her response was “OMG” and then posting a photo of us taken in a photobooth, probably about 45 years ago, back in the days when we had such things as booths.

My oldest son, posted this one Twitter: “Just received a #facebook friend request from @theacsman #sellout”

I’ll have to agree with both of them.

Not being one of great diplomatic talents, Sugar Momma and I went out for dinner last night with two friends. Interestingly, they had also found me on Facebook and sent in their “friend requests” an hour before our dinner.

 I accepted. What else could I do?

Then at dinner we spoke about many things.

I only wanted to know how to go about “de-friending” people. Not them, of course, just people.

Forget the guilt.

As I was starting to look at the “wall”, that monstrosity that I had somehow created, all of these obscure friends of friends were now appearing. There was no “greater plan” and my Option to Profit book theme was getting buried.

Remember, all I want to do is sell books. I really didn’t need to know about little Moishe’s bris and how scrumptious the whitefish was.

It’s not becasue I’m anti-social, I just don’t care.

And that too, extends to stocks. I really don’t care about all of the details. I don’t even necessarily want to know wehat a company makes or what services it provides.

I’m a user. I just want it to make money for me.

Is that so bad?

Now, if it turns out that the Facebook page gets my “friends” to read this blog, I’ll have some explaining to do, but then at least I’ll know that the advice to start a Facebook page was a good one. Better yet, increasing book sales would really make the point.

My new friend, Adam Pflantzer, at Shmish.com (a nice financial news aggregator site),  has told me that I need to put my facebook address out into the ether, so here it is: http://www.facebook.com/TheAcsMan

There’s nothing like profits to ease the guilt pangs.

So here’s to friends and followers. Especially the ones that buy books, post on their walls and the walls of their friends and their friend’s friends.

And so on and so on.