Mind Soup

MIND SOUP : Everyone knows that blogging has exploded recently in Lebanon. There's even a Blogging Convention in a mere couple of weeks where our very own Moudz will be in attendance! With that said, as blogging in general is becoming more and more popular in Lebanon, so are Lebanese LGBT blogs. The blogs are very new, less than a year old and two new ones popped up just this month. The themes of the blog are as diverse as the Lebanese LGBT community itself. Posts include favorite music, coming out stories, bad dates, and complaining about Lebanon (the hallmark of a Lebanese blog). Most of the blogs are anonymous (due to privacy concerns and the rampant homophobia still present in Lebanon). Beirut Boy : The author is a young, Lebanese businessman in his 20s. He posts about dating, music, fashion, and is an activist for gay rights in Lebanon. He (as well as many other bloggers) has joined the Save Aya campaign. Gay in Beirut : This blog mainly has humorous and light-hearted pos...

AP : Dread of the unknown hung in the air as Lynn France typed two words into the search box on Facebook: the name of the woman with whom she believed her husband was having an affair. Click. And there it was, the stuff of nightmares for any spouse, cuckolded or not. Wedding photos. At Walt Disney World, no less, featuring her husband literally dressed as Prince Charming. His new wife, a pretty blonde, was a glowing Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by footmen. "I was numb with shock, to tell you the truth," says France, an occupational therapist from Westlake, a Cleveland suburb. "There was like an album of 200 pictures on there. Their whole wedding." Affairs were once shadowy matters, illicit encounters whispered about and often difficult to prove. But in the age of Facebook and Twitter and lightning-fast communication, the notion of privacy is fast becoming obsolete. From flirtatious text messages to incriminating e-mails, marital indiscretions are much easier to...

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Lebanese bloggers were able today to postpone the Lebanese E-Transactions Law. According to SMEX,org , the vote on the E-Transactions Law was postponed for one month, sent back to committee for revision. After many long awaited years and after many opportunities and money wasted the Lebanese are finally getting their e-transaction law. But instead of cheers and hallelujah, the online community is greeting this law with a big big gloom and anger. This law, if passed, will take us backward in time and will drive all foreign investments away. [...] This is simply like looking up to a light at the end of a very dark long tunnel only to find out that the source of this light is a burning fire that you can’t even avoid. ( link )                                                            ...

While this picture from Shoebox Blog is quite funny, it's really not much of an exaggeration of what's going on in real life. Facebook's (lack of) privacy settings have gotten worse over the years. Essentially, we have to treat everything we do on the internet as completely public. Times have changed and we have to change with them. If we don't, things we posted months or years ago on Facebook will come back to haunt us. *Tip of the Day* Google your full name in quotations every once-in-a-while, i.e., "[first name] [last name]" to see what's out there about you. Future employers and grad schools regularly Google the names of their applicants. Figure out what sort of information people can find about you and if any of it is problematic, try to remove it before applying anywhere for jobs or higher education.

It seems that placing privacy settings on your social networking profile isn't enough to keep snoops away. Nathalie Blanchard, of Quebec, Canada, learned that lesson when her long-term, sick-leave benefits were stripped from her because of photos on her Facebook account. For the past year and a half, Blanchard had been on leave from her job at IBM as the result of being diagnosed with serious clinical depression. Since the diagnosis, she had been collecting a monthly check from Manulife, her insurance firm. But after Manulife investigators discovered photos on her private Facebook page that showed her out partying with friends at a bar and vacationing on sunny beaches, the company decided to cut off benefits. The insurer considered the photos evidence that Blanchard was no longer depressed, according to a report by the CBC. Blanchard told the CBC that she was only following doctors' orders and trying to have fun through nights out and short getaways. She added that while s...