Up popped a picture of a woman performing fellatio on a man. Various nude bodies took various positions in the background.
Porn has pocked "Did You Swim Today?" which has been just about the only reason I use facebook®™©.
Porn's sudden presence where no one expected it — and I trust most don't want it — has sent ripples which may spell rifts. I'll watch and wait.
When I started on DYST?, as users often call it, there couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred users, but they came from far and away — many parts of the United States and the United Kingdom mostly, but elsewhere too.
They have all to this point fulfilled a simple mission, as espoused here on the page:
Here's a place for swimmers (NOT SPAMMERS) to report on their daily swims. Did you? Where? Was it in the open water or a pool? Was it hard? Did something cool happen? Who was with you? Did somebody tell a good joke? Do you have a good tip to share? Is there an event coming up? Did you rip a good time?And that's what has happened. Simple sharing, simple support. From a first time across a 25-yard pool, to multiple times across the English Channel, swimmers on DYST? have described their swim and how they felt, and others have encouraged and advised. Swimmers ask many and varied questions, and other expert swimmers, having been there and done that, answer in kind.
Swimmers have been funny, have been vulnerable, have been sympathetic and even teary, but in almost all encounters I've encountered, the conversation has been resoundingly, unremittingly in favor of everyone else's shared passion, no matter where, no matter what.
I have met some of them, from in the state and around the globe, and celebrated those visits.
Some have promoted themselves, or causes, in various degrees and fashions and frequencies — more than, "Hey, look, I swam here!" — but I take it there's a tacit agreement that it's all good in the name of swimming. Pursue it or don't.
About the only time I've seen swimmers get worked up over topics, it's been about swim technique and training devices or nomenclature; some argued a year back, for example, about "wild swimming" as a term some British habitues use for open water swimming, as perhaps implying vulgarity or lack of discipline. Everyone has an opinion on these kinds of things. But it's never gotten snarky or dismissive.
I'd bet the house that "(NOT SPAMMERS)" was not part of the original credo. It's a late addition.
I wasn't paying attention until complaints arose about the porn spam that DYST? now has more than 11,000 members — exponential growth since I started contributing and sharing less than two years ago.
As it's grown, I guess, DYST? attracted spam. Occasionally some person or entity will try to sell sunglasses, sometimes sofas (?). Some swimmers will try to cheekily shame them into going away, and I sometimes join in. Eventually the spammers will go away, though I doubt the shaming caused it.
Now the porn. I saw the complaints first and not the actual porn, so I wondered at first whether DYST? users might just be extremely sensitive. I mean, these people pictured in their swimsuits look pretty darn good.
Then I saw it: Yep, porn, standard explicit variety. No swimsuits.
Some have complained about it on DYST? Others say they still have not seen it. Some of those who have are threatening to leave the page, or have bid their adieu, prompting responses.
Here's where the whole concept of social media gets weird for me.
Some of the responses, in the spirit of DYST? have expressed sympathy for the feelings of the person leaving, and wishes that the person would reconsider.
In our fear of the unknown, some have said even hovering a cursor over the porn will invite a virus on your computer, or open access to private data, or stash porn secretly on your computer as a kind of rogue server.
Others, breaking wide of the DYST? ethos, have said in essence, "Good riddance!" or "Lighten up! It's just porn," or, "That's reality. Live with it."
All of which have spawned their own responses, and the discussion has acquired an acid tinge. Meanwhile, the guy who created the page, and someone on DYST? who seems to be in a position to know, said they're making efforts to get rid of the porn, which may or may not have been put their by people or entities that had gained access to the page.
The DYST? creator recommended maybe not using the page for a couple of weeks while spammer control ensues.
Which I'll probably do, being just about the last person who has any idea how facebook®™© works, nevermind how to root out spammers among more than 11,000 users.
Forgive me for sounding like the late Sen. Ted "The Internet is a Series of Tubes" Stevens when I say that facebook®©™ has seemed to me like a boundless cocktail party, only with generously distributed time-space portals. Except each is by him or herself in front of a screen, really, and any cocktails are B.Y.O.
One schmoozes at this or that klatsch, and one says something and others chime in, "I like that!" or comment as if in conversation. Someone shows you a plate of chicken vindaloo she's eating, or pictures of the vacation they're somehow concurrently enjoying, or produces a baby in a cute new outfit, or another handy offspring with a medal around his neck, and seeks your review and approval. And you give it or don't, and since you're really in a room alone in front of a screen, it's hard for the approval seeker, likewise alone, to infer by your lack of "like" whether you like the food or baby or medal.
Ads run in constant display about the perimeter of the cocktail party, along with alerts about what others in a vast corner of the party are doing. A nearby portal whisks you there to like and comment, or look and do nothing.
Now that I know that more than 11,000 people are on DYST? —and I know I haven't encountered more than, say, 200 different people in all the time I've been on DYST? — I wonder where all the rest are.
So now I imagine a boundless cocktail party divided into limitless banquet halls, each connected by open doors. I'm in the hall with the subset of 200 I see most every day, and the rest are in other halls somewhere, sharing and conversing with each other. The chance exists that I may see and encounter some of those in other rooms, but I think it's slim.
Someone, somewhere, brought porn to share or infect or anger or disgust or delight or whatever. The stash hasn't made it to all the rooms; the battle is met, apparently, to keep it from doing so.
I'm hoping the DYST? defenders win. It's another pressing issue over which I feel helpless. DYST? is important for me, even though it's difficult each day even to visit the posts of the seven dozen or so DYST? members whose exploits I see regularly.
I like to go to the Irish Sea with them, or the storybook stream beneath the stone bridge near the Lake District of England, or Lake Geneva or Lake Michigan, or myriad points along the California coast or the ascendant St. Johns River or the glacial depths of Argentina. I like the painless close encounter of jellyfish or moray eels, the vicarious wonder of dolphins arcing.
I'd be heartbroken to lose it.
• • •
In other news: I'm keeping it.
Or keeping losing it. Thanks to old friend Robert Zint who hollered all the way from Texas, "Use an electric shaver, you barnacle-domed dolt!"
He didn't say it really. He merely and in the most friendly way suggested the shaver, which is so much better than scraping with a razor over the bumps. I'm just trying to sustain the melodrama.
• • •
In still other news:
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