The Faceless Facebook Generation

One thing I have learned about people is how much time and energy is wasted in wrong action. I still do alot myself but I am better than I was and getting better. Take my step daughter for instance, she is doing a photography course at college at the moment, but is not really enjoying it. what she does enjoy is socialising with her friends and partying. One way to socialise and party is online partying via sites like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. So much so that it has interfered with her college coursework resulting her not doing it, then panicing she will get into trouble so to avoid trouble, she skives! Then she gets college ringing here so the cycle starts all over again.
The amount of time her and her friends spend online is massive, now there is nothing wrong with this at all. But couldn't they be putting this time and the internet to good use while they are doing it? We are currently living in the best time in history for earning easy and passive income thanks to the internet. If done right, there is no need for many of us to need a job, do a 9 to 5 or become a wage slave.
Her and her friends really do not want to work, and I understand that, neither do I! Working becasue you choose too and having a job you enjoy is alot different from having to work which is what most people do. The majority of people work to earn money to live. My step daughter and her friends know on the surface that life, socialising and parties cost money. To be fair to trully enjoy life requires lots of money. I am aware that somewhere in some back hole of Canada you may find a spot of land where you could pitch a handmade wigwam and live a life free of costs but even then, you may need to rent the land, or pay for some food, or buy a solar panel to power your electric toothbrush.The simple truth is You Need Money!
So to earn some money my step daughter is working as a cleaner in a school and a cafe at a carboot on a sunday. The school is a special school for children and young adults with learning difficulties, I know full well that some of the older horemonal autistic boys do not just use the toilets for toiletting!! She is cleaning floors, hoovering and polishing classrooms and cleaning out the toilets each evening for possibly £5-6 an hour. On Sundays she comes home stinking of chip fat! Not a smell I often see bottled and on sale in Boots, maybe Sarah Jessica Parker could front it and call it hmmm, Tasty!
Now don't get me wrong, I am very proud of her because she does work hard and do a good job, she is not sitting around scrounging from the Goverment or us but, you still have to ask, why?? She is a photographer! she could be using one of many sites to upload and sell her photos online for web desingers orgraphic designers to use for websites or magazines. She could have her own site set up for as little as £50 a year! I did pay out £30 and set up a shop for her on Cafepress, selling notebooks, bags, tee shirts , posters etc with her photos on them. We had business cards made so she could hand them out. She could have been making a wage from home as she chatted on Facebook to her friends, with her ipod playing in the background but alas, it was too much hard work. With Cafepress, all you do is promote your shop, they take the order, print the item, and post it. Then if you have made enough over the month once they have taken out their material and admin costs they post you a cheque. She sold a few items but not enough in the first month, maybe she was expecting a cheque to come in with thousands but she became dis-heartened. I told her that she needed to send traffic to the site, people cannot just land there and buy, some might but many won't.
She could be running a blog or many blogs discussing topics that they talk about on Facebook and with links to her Cafepress shop and othersites. At the same time she could earn a small living from google ads placed on her blogs and sites. She could also promote affiliates items through her sites and blogs increasing sales and income. But it saddens me that they moan and complain about the shit jobs they have, that they are not earning enough and they have no money or time to socialise or go online. Thats the life you made! The potential, the possibility, the answer is there, right in front of your eyes!! The internet, reaching all around the globe. 6 billion potential customers! 500 million in the English speaking nations alone, right there at your fingertips! These days you do not need a computer or laptop, there are people running internet businesses from their mobile phones while sat chilling in bars or on beaches in many wonderful locations! Bit different from my dad's day selling stuff out of his corner shop.
You can run a money making venture from your bedroom, with your fingers while you enjoy all that you have around you, Facebook, TV, cups of tea but instead the younger generation seem not to want to put in that little bit of extra work to get it going, the time is often spent filling in pointless and predictable questionairs or waiting for someone to 'comment' on a self taken at arms length mugshot that looks like all the other thousands of self taken at arms length mugshots on these profiles. Ironically it seems they would rather go out, put in hours of time sapping, dull, repetative, boring, dirty, annoying work like cleaning shit and spunk covered toilets.
Hmmm they say youth is wasted on the young, thank god intelligence isn't!
Thanks for reading and until next time, Have fun.
Andy