I’ve always felt comfortable in front of audiences when it comes to me speaking freely, unencumbered by a script or lines I need to recite. As long as I’m making it up off the top of my head, I can go on and on in an unending filibuster until folks are tired of hearing me. It’s not audiences that make me uncomfortable.
It’s when you put memorization in the mix, things change dramatically. Suddenly there’s a new element. Not only do you need to connect with the audience but you’ve also got to regurgitate lines or information you’ve memorized, or hope you’ve memorized. While experienced in being in live plays at my church over the years, I still get the white knuckles anytime I’m about to go on stage. I always fear I’m going to get up there and go blank, forgetting my own name. I fear I’ll become Cindy Brady in that one episode of "The Brady Bunch" where she’s left staring at that red light during the game show (Google it). While it’s never happened to me, there’s always a chance it will the next time I’m in a play.
So, Duane, why are you talking about church plays? Well, actually this column has nothing at all to do with acting, performing or being in plays. It has to do with memorization in the technological world. Specifically, I’m talking about passwords and how companies force us to have a blue billion of them to access our accounts.
A few years ago it wasn’t that big of deal. You had a password for Facebook, one for banking and maybe one to access a credit card company. Now, everything has a password.
And, unfortunately for us honest people, the need for these passwords is because there are more and more cyber thieves out there trying to hack our accounts for nefarious purposes. Therefore, companies not only require passwords but they require them to be increasingly complex.
“Password must contain capital letters, numerical characters, alphanumerical characters, and blah, blah, blah, blah,” the registrations read. And, every time you enter a user name and password it comes back saying it’s already been taken. It becomes an exercise in frustration just to register anywhere online.
Then what happens once you do get registered? You promptly forget the password because you were forced to make it so complex. You may write it down but then you lose the piece of paper. Or, you could be like me. My publicist has all my passwords to all my social media. This is because most of my social media today is for my novels not personal social media. I don’t have the slightest of any of my log-ins. Should my publicist quit, then I won’t be able to log into anything.
So what’s the answer to this issue? Personally, I think as a consumer I should be able to make my log-ins as insecure as I want. It’s my life. If I want to use the No. 1 as my password, I should be allowed. Let us make passwords we can remember instead of having to use ridiculously complex algebraic formulas just to check our Twitter.
Standard reporter Duane Sherrill can be reached at 473-2191.