Not because she’s become more mainstream than Miley Cyrus, not because her latest album sounds like a rehash of hits from the ’90s, and not because she started referring to her fans as monsters. I don’t like her because she perpetuates the idea that gay people are freaks. GaGa validates everything The Family Research Council thinks and says about gays on a daily basis. That gays are inept, narcissistic, unmotivated, drug-infused, flamboyant, caddy and bizarre. Lady GaGa is to gay people what Flava-Flav is to African Americans. Except she isn’t gay.

Let’s back up to summer 2008. The first time I heard “Just Dance”, I loved it and wanted more. I bought GaGa’s album on itunes the day it came out, and got tickets to see her in concert (they were $20 at the time). In March of 2009 I went to the concert with a few friends and was blown away. She really was a fantastic performer with the right attitude and good music. There’s no doubt the woman has talent. Everyone at that concert knew she was going to be really, really big.

Things are a little different now. GaGa is a grammy-winning superstar. She calls her fans monsters and has only gotten stranger and louder. Consensus is her latest album pails in comparison to the last. While it has some catchy hooks, most are forgettable, and many are way too familiar for some (listen to “Electric Chapel” and “My Favourite Game” by the Cardigans back-to-back, it’s the same song). The singles have done well, but there’s just something missing.

I’m a firm believer in be who you are and do what you want, but you can’t put out songs about being in love with Judas and stick subliminal Illuminati symbols all over your videos without scaring the Sunday Crocs off of Wal-Mart Shoppers. When you’re less than 10 percent of the population trying to convince the other 90 percent of the population you’re equal to them and deserve rights as such, it just doesn’t help to have someone that polarizing (and, for most of middle America, frightening) speaking out on your behalf. Some might argue that people have the right to be who they are and that’s what gay rights advocates are fighting for. Maybe they should, and maybe they are, but progress takes time. You can’t just shove some fake blood and a disco stick in the face of an Alabama housewife and expect her to hang a rainbow flag outside her trailer.

Don’t confuse this message with one that every homosexual should be the “discreet, straight-acting” guy on Grinder that wants it up the ass all night (followed by an intense crying session.) No, gay people should be who they are. PEOPLE should be who they are. But most gay people are just like everyone else, sans the butt sex (except I have these Venezuelan neighbors and I’m pretty sure this girl is getting it from her boyfriend), and we need more people who represent that. People like Ellen DeGeneres, Ricky Martin, Neil Patrick Harris, etc. High-profile people who know what they’re fighting for and why they’re passionate about it. Those are the people that will win over the 90 percent, rather than alienate them.

Some accuse GaGa of exploiting the gay audience and making claims she cares about gay rights just for publicity. I won’t go that far because I don’t know her and can only assume her heart is in the right place. She’s probably a lovely person. There is something to be said about any artist, straight or gay, that speaks out in favor of gay rights. Still, one could imagine most social workers would be hesitant to give Lady GaGa a baby, and then would probably think twice about anyone she endorsed for the care of said baby. While the message may be appropriate, the persona delivering it does not seem so.

The bottom-line is: gays shouldn’t want Lady GaGa representing them in the political arena any more than African Americans should want Flava-Flav to cosign on their auto loan. You may have a good message, but any message is difficult to deliver when the recipients think you’re the spawn of Satan. Keep Try making some good music for your next album, keep your little monsters happy, do some crazy shit, wear some crazy things, but for the love of god please stay away from our President and Senators.

But before we write off facebook as quickly as we did Lindsay Lohan, think back to a time when facebook didn’t have a feed or status updates. If you don’t remember, then you either didn’t go to college or didn’t go to college in the past decade. Ah, yes, circa 2004: the first Grand Theft Auto with a black male lead, a new Green Day album that you could listen to without being a stoner, the first year in the war for oil, Mean Girls (*omg gay squeal*), and MySpace. ‘Twas a grand olde time. MySpace was huge. In 2005 NewsCorp (Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, Ganonodorf etc.) even paid about $580 million dollars for it because they KNEW this was going to be the future of the internet. They later dumped it for about $35 million.

MySpace was great and everyone loved it. Except that it wasn’t and everyone hated it. Nobody wanted to admit MySpace was a totally creepy concept and was super annoying. Really, if I wanted to search for new friends within 5 miles of my home, I would go outside and talk to them (or if you’re gay and have social anxiety problems you use Grindr). MySpace was like the neighborhood watchdog site where you can put in your address and see all the pedophiles who live in your neighborhood (neat-o!), except with MySpace you could send them messages and (if you’re lucky) get molested/left for dead in a dark alley. Ugh. I miss the Bush era.

But even pedophiles had a reason to hate the ‘Space. Really, how are they supposed to get off to some 12 year old girl’s bikini pics when their computer is about to crash trying to simultaneously load 167 images of Hello Kitty with Bye Bye Bye streaming in the background?! The internet was different back then, kids. Most people didn’t have ultra-efficient macs that run forever and are awesome in bed. We didn’t have the option to purchase different internet speeds based on our income. It was like, you got cable internet, and when more people in your neighborhood got cable internet yours got slower. This is why you told everyone how much cable internet sucks and not to get it because the DSL thing was SO the future. That was how you got all the bandwidth to yourself (my preeecious). Times were tough.

So then Mark Wahlberg invents facebook, right? They were all, like, exclusive and shit. It was only for college students (so if you got a message from some pervert, it was a friend of a friend who was age appropriate, at the very least) with a valid college e-mail address. Better yet? It was only for select colleges (Penn State!) so you weren’t going to have to look at your friends that enrolled in The University of Phoenix every day and get sad. No, this was for the upper echelon of the 18-24 crowd. Your profile wasn’t just some amalgamation of cats, pokemon and Insane Clown Posse. It was an organized, yet personalized, reflection of you. …and all the pictures of drunk you. Because we all know that’s the most accurate portrayal of your college existence. But who cares? Nobody knows it’s you, and even if they did, only your college-age friends can get facebook. This is awesome!!! Vive La Facebook forever!!! Right? RIGHT??? Ugh. You know what happened next.

Facebook got really big really fast. It’s like when Lady GaGa launched her first album and you thought she was totally balls-to-the-walls crazy cool, and you were like “I’m going to a Lady GaGa concert.” People were all like “Lady GaGa? Is she British? I don’t get it.” Then two years later she’s everywhere you turn, putting out mediocre music that’s just enough to get by and stay near the top, and every poser you know is in love with her. Sooo over that bitch. But, anyway, that’s what happened to facebook. First they slowly opened facebook up to more colleges, then all real colleges, then community colleges, then high schools (wtf), and at some point they were just like “fuck it, just let them all in.” So they did.

If that weren’t enough, it got to the point where the major facebook updates seemed like a daily thing: Guess what, facebook user? People can tag you in pictures now so everyone knows that was you throwing up in the litter box! You know what else, facebook user? You have a “like” button now, so you can officially tell the world “I approve of this.” OMG and you know what else?! Now facebook tells EVERYONE whose wall you wrote on, what you liked, who just accepted your friend request, what you posted to your wall, and the last time you took a shit! Isn’t that super cool?!?! Also, your parents are on facebook and they want to be your friend. You can’t reject them because it’ll look super shady. Also, your grandmother. Better untag yourself from that girl-on-girl pic. …no, the other one.

Fast-forward a couple years to the present. facebook sporadically makes minor tweaks here and there. About once a year, they update their privacy policy to let you know what percentage of your life they own, and some douchebag lawyer/World Of Warcraft Mage goes on CNN bitching about it and pretending like he read it. At some point they split the news feed into two separate views: “top stories” (updates facebook thinks are more relevant to you) and “most recent”. Last week, they decided to put both views in the same window *gasp* and place a separate live feed that updates in real-time in the right hand corner. You know, where the ads for gay underwear and pictures of people you don’t know used to be. People find it confusing and/or ugly. Of all the changes to facebook ever, this was the one that did it. People were ranting about it on their facebook updates, twatting about it on twitter, and even yelling about it on cable news. facebook is going down, girlfriend.

But slow down, take your pointer off the “delete account” button, and put the chihuahua down. facebook isn’t the new MySpace. google+ isn’t the new facebook. Why? Because if google+ was going to happen, it would have happened already. google isn’t a social networking pioneer, they just know how to make very profitable business tools. Face it: google isn’t cool and never will be. They’re good at what they do, but google for social networking reeks of nerd. They’re never going to get the attention of Gen Y, which was that catalyst that sparked facebook’s success. Also, facebook isn’t really that bad. Considering I’ve had facebook for the past 7 years, a lot has changed but at the same time nothing has changed. I still don’t get spam or random friend requests from pedophiles like on MySpace, I don’t have to wait for 100 images of Justin Timberlake to load on your page, and it’s still relatively easy to use. Plus, all my friends already have it (since facebook decided to be a whore) and adding them all again on another site sounds incredibly time consuming.

I’m fine with facebook, and if you’re not, then that’s fine. Maybe you can try google+. I hear they opened it up to everyone that wants it. All 4,367 of them.

It really stresses me out. How will I know if I’m getting antisocial? If I’ve had facebook longer than everyone else does that mean I have a more severe case? Do I really need actual human contact? Why is Anderson Cooper’s T-shirt so tight? Why is Anderson Cooper even wearing a shirt? So many questions (seriously Cooper, at this point you might as well just lose the shirt, it’s win/win) and an uncertain future.

I guess they could always be wrong. Similar outrageous theories have been proposed by the media before. I think back to when the internet started to get really mainstream for Americans (circa 1996-ish?) and remember how we were warned e-mail would drive the U.S. post-office out of business. …Oh. Wait. Nevermind, bad example. How about when they told us that corporations would be able to pinpoint your exact location and market to you exclusively based on your likes and disl- …Oh. That, too? Fuck.

You can’t argue with the fact that social media does make people kinda hateful. You’re drinking Belvedere with Kylie Minogue on a rooftop terrace in Bali? Well guess what: half the people on your facebook are unemployed, underpaid or living in New Jersey. Just because someone hit the “like” button doesn’t mean they aren’t going all Santería on your bougie ass out of spite. Just changed your status to “in a Relationship”? Your single friends (who obv know better) just started a pool to see how long it lasts. Just tweeted about your new Volkswagen? Someone’s going to tell you about how the company is in a tumultuous merger/takeover with Porsche and builds their cars in Mexico so they fall apart after 90 days. …but that one’s true so you should thank them for warning you. You’re welcome.

We may be assholes by nature, but the internet gives us a way to be even bigger assholes without an immediate slap across the face. I thank god every day for Al Gore inventing the internet and Mark Wahlberg inventing facebook.

Now for the record, I’m not a Democrat or a Republican, though I am a left-leaning Independent. I think the very existence of political parties is one of the reasons things are so fucked up right now (you’re a “moderate Democrat” but you love guns, hate abortion, and just-for-fun ran over a gay Mexican with your SUV this morning? idk). I used to be a really hardcore liberal (like one time I recycled for a whole week and voted for John Kerry) but then I had a job working in healthcare while I was in college and the exposure to medicaid patients kinda turned me into a super-conservative asshole (I shot Dolphins with a rifle and ripped up old people’s social security checks for a week). Now I fall in line with most of America as a lukewarm, apathetic moderate. Sarah Palin’s antics don’t make me laugh like they used to (isn’t it like shooting wolves from a helicopter at this point?) and I don’t quite understand why Harry Reid is allowed to be in charge of anything. Being an Independent is the best thing that ever happened to me.

But OK, I still just don’t get gay Republicans as a concept. I mean, I get that you don’t identify as a Democrat just because you’re gay. Nobody should. The Democrats do and say a lot of stupid shit. They’re pussies and they give your tax dollars to crack addicts. But identifying as a Republican and being gay is like starting a Jews-for-Hitler group. You’re identifying with a party whose agenda includes restricting your rights to pretty much anything. It isn’t just about gay marriage. The Republican platform promotes the idea that it’s OK to fire someone or exclude them from an organization because they’re gay, among other discriminatory policies that claim “religious discrimination” if you disagree with them. Let’s just agree that the “I care more about my money than my rights” argument doesn’t make you look smart and non-conformist, it makes you look like an asshole.

Gays who are Democrats just because they’re gay aren’t in the clear either. Let’s face it: a lot of gay people are really stupid. They think a bicameral system is part of your car’s engine and didn’t go to college because it cut into their gym/Kardashian time. Still, they’re ready and willing to tell you how much George Bush fucked up their life because he’s “such a douche.” Then they tell you that Clinton was the best president ever because they had so much more money back then and he didn’t start a war. You know what? You had so much more money because you were 12 and didn’t have to pay rent, car payments or cell phone bills. Also, Clinton did have a war. It was in Kosovo. We also bombed an Aspirin factory in 1998 trying to get Bin Laden. He wasn’t there.

Never abandon your own interests for the sake of belonging. If you’re going to be passionate about something, know why you’re passionate about it. You’re not a Republican just because you don’t like taxes (though it’s a good start) and you’re not a Democrat just because you support gay rights. Even though most people lean one way or the other, the majority of Americans are still Independents and need to come out as such. I’m a self-admitted left-leaning Independent. It doesn’t mean I’m any less passionate about my political beliefs, just that they don’t fit into any one ideology. I think we need more taxes, less welfare and that gay marriage will save the economy because they just buy SO much glitter. There’s not a politician in the world that would take that platform, but at least I know where I stand and why. Plus, I can make an argument for my opinions with facts and examples, instead of calling Obama a Muslim or comparing Sarah Palin to Hitler.

I don’t recall ever having a need for the word “transient” before living in South Florida. I mean, maybe if I wanted a fancy name for homeless people in center city Philadelphia, but for the most part an unused word lying dormant in my vast vocabulary of mostly four-letter words and brand names. Then I moved to Miami. One of the first things people tell you about Miami (though it’s really applicable to all of South Florida) is “yeah, Miami is really transient.” In other words, not only do people not normally stay here forever, but most of them flee back to wherever they came from so fast you would think botched plastic surgery is contagious.

Miami can be a really cool city, so it might be hard to understand why new residents find the place so toxic they need to pack up and leave after maybe a few months. Downtown Miami is beautiful, adorned with modern skyscrapers and causeways. South Beach is a nonstop party where there’s never a shortage of beautiful people and cars that cost more than most people’s homes. This is all really fun and exciting at first, but at some point that excitement fades away. You realize the beautiful skyscrapers lie empty and tied up in bankruptcy court, that Rolls Royce is a rental, the local government is plagued by daily corruption scandals as if it were a third world country, and that girl only got so skinny because she has a major coke problem (if you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, replace coke with meth).

The aforementioned are all relatively tolerable nuisances, but there’s one factor of life here that tends to be a nail-in-the-coffin. The sheer fact that the majority of people in Miami are just… stupid. Not stupid like ditzy stupid, stupid like stupid stupid. People in Miami either don’t care or don’t understand (leaning towards the latter) what goes on around them unless it’s broadcast on BRAVO TV.

That being said, I think Miami is one of the greatest cities in the world to live in.

Totally bipolar, I know. But hear me out: Everything about living in Miami is difficult if you’re not an heiress and don’t speak Spanish. I’m not and I don’t. Somehow, I managed to get a decent job in South Beach, with a great company, right out of college and in the middle of a recession. It wasn’t easy, and there were definitely times my fridge had more vodka than food (like now), but somehow it worked out. Miami kicked my ass, called me a bitch, and kicked it again. But it forced me to grow up, and brought a lot of awesome people into my life along the way.

Miami is a great place to live for a while or, for a handful of people, for good. So move to Miami, lose your job, get a new one, lose your boyfriend/girlfriend, get a new one, get addicted to cocaine, get a reality TV show where you get clean, become a success. Just don’t get sucked in. Don’t be that burnout who was going somewhere, stopped in South Beach, and got stuck. You don’t want to be that 46 year old server at Rosa Mexicana who dropped out of FIU and still thinks he’s going back. Sure, you’ll be able to afford a semi-nice place at the Flamingo because you don’t have a car or student loans, but you haven’t left South Beach in 20 years. You can’t work as a server when you’re 80, and that $5,000.00 you’ve got in a jar won’t even get you through the first year of retirement (you’re just going to blow it on strippers anyway). Also, you’re getting ashy and you’re caucasian, so maybe you should have worn sunscreen.

Instead, watch 500 days of Summer. It’s totally hipster, which normally shouldn’t be encouraged, but it has an overall good message. When you look back on the relationship after a breakup, once the rose colored glasses are shattered, you see all the things you couldn’t before. See that he wasn’t perfect, wasn’t perfect for you, and also why does he laugh like that?

Face it… in real life, Adele can’t sit with us. She’s overweight and has a bad dye job.She’s always bitching about her breakup and how much she can’t get over her ex. She loves telling you how awful her life is because her boyfriend left her, how it’s her fault and the crazy things she wants to do to get him back. She hopes she can just find someone like him and she’ll be ok. She’s ok with settling, and even when another man comes along she will STILL post facebook statuses about the one that got away. This girl does not know how to be happy. This girl doesn’t want to be happy.

…But Britney gets it. You won’t find one song on Femme Fatale about sitting in your apartment crying and eating jars of nutella all day because you had your heart broken. Just one about trying to get one more fuck out of him before it’s really over, because you’re a crazy bitch like that. Britney gives you a whole track list of finding new love and having lots of fun in-between, and you can do it ’til the world ends. Britney is your hot new friend who’s going to show you a wild time but make sure you’re OK along the way (so you don’t end up on that “intervention” show).

Take a page from Robyn and Rye Rye. Say to yourself “He Never Will Be Mine”. Accept it, realize yesterday wasn’t the time of our lives. Don’t quote “Someone Like You” on facebook. Tell the world “I don’t want someone like you, I need so much more”, then flip your hair, turn around and walk away.. People will respect you for it, and eventually someone will love you for it.

“Learn from the past, proceed, get better.”

I don’t have much to say so I’ll just post a picture of my cat. Also, he has a mental retardation problem. No shit.

Still, he’s pretty fucking cute.