I signed on to my YouTube account the other day. Haven’t been there for a while. For the past several months, the sign-on process has been pestering me for my real name, but I could always skip it and tell it that “Booted Harleydude” is the name for that account.

Now, however, Google forced a change on YouTube, which they can do since they own it. They now require setting up a Google Plus Profile or Google Plus Page. They are very clear about a profile being only for people using their own names, and that pages are for pseudonyms.

The problem is…

…Google Plus, Google’s answer to social networking, is yet another mess that will require an intensive amount of time that I don’t have to keep my “Booted Harleydude” identity within its own world. There are various reasons I do that. The LAST THING I want is to mess with another social networking site. (Some say that Google Plus is a “Facebook killer.”)

“BHD” is “all in” on my website and this blog.

“BHD” holds his place, identity-wise, on a few other sites (BLUF, Recon, GearFetish) — but mostly just to prevent others from using the same identity for themselves (that happened once when some preacher from Pennsylvania (married to a woman) used that identity and set up a profile for himself with my photos on one of these sites and began to troll for sexual encounters with men. One of his victims contacted me and I put a stop to his behavior.)

“BHD” does not participate on Facebook or Google Plus — or any type of social network. Not only do I not have time for that, I (BHD included) am a married man. My BHD identity does not want to social-network with other men (or women).

This is a long way of saying that because Google forced this change upon YouTube — making its users create a Google Plus profile or page — I will not participate on YouTube any more. Period. I’m done. I can’t stand Google’s tactics anyway, so this change was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Google sucks, big time.

I will leave the videos that I have created on YouTube up there, but I will not post any more. I haven’t been able to do videos since my spouse retired anyway, so the decision not to do videos is not difficult to make, as it pretty much has already been made due to lack of available alone-time to make videos.

I will continue to resist these attacks of technological change. I do not feel they are improvements. I am happy to remain a dinosaur. Who knows, my next four-wheeled vehicle may just be a real-live dinosaur because you can’t get a vehicle these days that doesn’t come with a bunch of techno-junk (blue-tooth, navigation, satellite-based communications, back-up sensors, etc.) that I don’t want (because I won’t be forced to pay for tech toys I will never use!)

Pardon the rant — sometimes dinosaurs like me have to grumble.

Life is short — and much more simple before computers and technology took over the world!