064: Ello, Ello?

Well, apparently I'm not one of the cool kids yet, at least as far as Ello is concerned. They sent me an invitation to join (thanks to my RL friend Moffatt -- dude you rawk!) but the code just didn't work. Nevertheless, I have high hopes.
If you are not one of the cool kids either, Ello is the hot new site that's going to replace Facebook, at least among people who don't want to use the name

on their birth certificate for social media. And so far that seems to be a lot of drag queens -- Jackie Beat was how I heard about this in the first place -- anyone who's got or has had a stalker, people who want to be known by a name they've chosen rather than the one they are legally entitled to, people with professional names (PeeWee Herman comes to mind) and ... and of course,

everyone in Second Life who isn't really truly allowed by Facebook's rules to have a social media presence in the name of their avatar but wants one anyway.
So right now all the cool kids -- well, okay, this cool kid is waiting for Ello to come out of beta so I can sign up for real. I'd like to have a social media presence as my av ... and I know that a lot of SL residents have had problems

with that, and would like to ditch Facebook as a result. (For instance, my friend and fellow resident Bock McMillan -- check out THIS great rant!) Ello promises no advertising, you can call yourself anything you want, and they apparently don't care if you put pictures up of nearly anything at all. Unlike FB, which I think would delete my avatar's account merely because it's there, let

alone if I put up pictures of taking a leak.
I think Ello is not necessarily going to be the Facebook killer that people might be expecting, but I do think that it's a very welcome sign that FB is not the be-all and the end-all that it once was. I'd like to relegate it to the part of my life that plays hidden-object games -- FB is very good at providing those! -- and keeps in touch with my high-school girlfriend. And

then I can use Ello, or some other service that isn't constantly trying to inundate me with advertising, and if I want a wider range of services, I'll buy it from them, as they suggest.
I'm very much looking forward to having the opportunity to see all of my Second Life friends on Ello, just as soon as they let me have an account! And then we'll all have a venue in which to agree that

Facebook has -- jumped the shark.
Oh, the pictures? I take a lot more snapshots than I publish, believe me. This was a photo shoot I did for fun at a place that offers various backdrops, props and poses whose name escapes me, for the moment.  Ostensibly it was to see if I could get better at arranging camera angles, but really I just wanted to be a supermodel for a while. Enjoy!