Brian Kameoka's blog

Is "Lock down your Facebook" the new "Wear a clean pair of underwear"?

According to news reports, this morning a twenty-something man entered the Roseville Galleria (an upscale mall just outside Sacramento), walked into a store and told the employees to leave.  He then locked himself in and allegedly set the place on fire.  He's now in custody. Luckily no one was hurt, though there's a tremendous amount of damage to the now closed mall.

A few minutes online revealed that I was more connected to the suspect than I thought. Turns out, he was a friend of a friend.

Well, not really.  He was a friend of a friend in Facebook terms. After hearing his Facebook profile mentioned on the news, I did what I think a lot of people did - I looked him up.  I was surprised when Facebook informed me I had "1 friend in common.” Turns out that our shared “friend” (a former classmate, we'll call him/her "Chris") went to the same school as the suspect and based on that had long ago accepted a friend request. The important thing to remember is that Chris didn't actually know the suspect in real life despite the shared school.  

I went to Chris's wall (Facebook terminology for the space on your profile where your friends can post messages) and saw a few people inquiring about the connection, “Chris? You knew the suspect?”  I emailed Chris privately and said, "You should unfriend him, tons of people are going to be looking at that profile and will be asking you if you know the dude."  The suspect has a public profile - so anyone with a Facebook account can see everything he has ever posted.  This has lead to news outlets reading his status updates as part of the breaking news.

Lets take this moment as a good reminder not to friend random strangers.  Surely its not worth risking being guilty by association or having to answer embarrassing questions that might arise in the future. If you haven’t already, as soon as you’re finished reading this, you should check to see if you're Facebook profile is set to private.  

As my mom, and every mom, used to remind us, it’s important to wear a clean pair of underwear in case of accident. A clean and private online presence is the “clean underwear” of the social networking world.

It’s too late for the suspect. He’s sitting in jail right now and can't turn his Facebook page off. His dirty underwear was exposed to the entire world. Surprisingly, Facebook appears to have intervened and cut off access to it. Most likely it’s some kind of automated shutoff due to the number of people posting to the profile. By now, most of us have seen The Social Network and we know Facebook doesn’t care about our privacy.

While TV has broadcast the information in his profile, we didn't need TV to tell us what's on his Facebook page, we can go see ourselves. I wonder if all the people with public profiles who are talking about him know that anyone can see their posts?  (I have purposely not mentioned the suspect’s name, it just didn’t seem right when I was telling people to protect their privacy. However, you can click here to see it, via YourOpenBook.org - and yes, this will give away his name.)

Now, go put on a clean pair of internet underpants! Clean up your Facebook friends and make your profile private. That way, you’ll never have to live with the humiliation of Katie Couric reading your status updates on the evening news.

Photo: Uh Oh... Emergency Underpants by Archie McPhee (it's a real product)

The Guild - Mucho Grande Burrito (a social media success story)

A couple of weeks ago a fan on Jeff Lewis's Facebook Fan Page asked, "has anyone else seen the Taco Bell training video that Jeff starred in?" Jeff replied that he was "speechless" as the video was probably ten years old.  According to Robert (the fan), he worked at Taco Bell at one point and thought this video was hilarious so he asked his manager if he could have the extra copy that had been sent to his store.  This was long before there was a web series called The Guild or a character named Vork.  Unfortunately, Robert had no way to convert & upload this gem from VHS.  So I messaged him and said "hey, I do have a way to convert & upload - if you send it to me I'll get it up on YouTube and mail it back to you."  So, through the magic of an Elgato Video Capture Device, social networking, a super cool fan of The Guild, this brilliant gem can now be shared.

I know that social media has made it's mark on global politics, changed the way we communicate, and done things like help an independent show like The Guild reach new audiences daily.  But it also helps unearth such rare gems like this Mucho Grande Burrito video.  Remember, it is by far the largest burrito on our menu:

The Crocker Art Museum

Since May of last year I've been working at the Crocker Art Museum as marketing specialist, but yesterday was my last day as I've had a few great opportunities come my way and have decided to pursue them.  But more on that later.  I wanted to write a blog entry about the Museum and how it was a great place to work, staffed with wonderful people.  Now is an incredibly exiting time for the Crocker as the 125 year old museum is set to open it's expanded "New Crocker" on October 10th of this year (yes, 10/10/10).  So, I'm sad that I will not be a staff member on opening day, and I will miss the marketing team which I was honored to be a part of.  Lead by Marketing Communications Director LeAnne Ruzzamenti, the team of Mark, Michele, Kathleen, Gregg and Anna was a fun group to work with, and I'll miss working with them.  The department was one I always admired and respected since I first moved to Sacramento.  Great marketing ideas and implementation.

I'm proud of my accomplishments at the Crocker, where I was focused primarily on social networking in addition to helping maintain the website and serve as one of the editors of the quarterly member magazine ArtLetter. I'm particularly pleased with the establishment of the Crocker's Facebook Fan page which in less than nine months has grown to over 4,200 fans and is one of the largest and most active pages in Sacramento.  I also established the Crocker on Twitter and YouTube and worked on its Flickr page.  It's funny, I had intended to post a blog entry when I got hired using the black "I am the New Crocker" button but never got around to it, and now it's been supplanted by the new New Crocker button.

More from Comic-Con: Pictures and Video

I was really looking forward to using my new camera on the trip to Comic-Con and I was able to grab a bunch of great pictures.  There was so much to see and photograph, and you can check out my Flickr sets for many of the photos I took.  One of my favorites is this one of Belle Chere as Red Sonja.  While at Comic-Con I posted my photos to several groups (this is one of the great powers of the social networking features of photo-hosting sites, being able to tag and share content from live events can instantly give you a worldwide audience).  Very quickly this photo became viewed by the hundreds, and then thousands, favorited, commented, etc.  What's even cooler to me is that someone commented asking if that was Belle Chere.  I had no idea who she was - but before long Belle Chere herself posted a comment saying "That's me!" and asking if she could use the photo on her site.  Turns out she's a well-known cosplayer and works by day as a theatrical costumer.  Pretty awesome - if you'd like to see more of her amazing costume work, check out her webpage here.

In addition, I spent some time hanging with Greg Benson of Mediocre Films and helped him to shoot some stuff.  We filmed a bunch of stuff walking around, but the first thing that made it up to his YouTube channel was this prank about throwing away handbills:

I loved this prank and had a hard time suppressing my laughter as we shot it.  Greg was actually drawing a crowd as he did this.  The next day, the video had something like 40,000 hits - I was amazed, but Greg said that with those numbers, for him, it hadn't gone viral, it wasn't really hitting and people weren't passing it around.  It was fascinating hanging out with him and learning some of the nitty gritty of YouTube videos.  The other video I filmed was the famed "stripper bus" that was transportation for the cast of The Guild on the day of the panel:

Fun stuff.  Greg is a YouTube star and I love his stuff.  He has two channels on YouTube - Mediocre Films and Mediocre Films2 and I recommend subscribing to his stuff (you can also be a fan on Facebook here).