To Get It Right

I was reminded again yesterday of how difficult it is to do what "The Onion" does. It is, of course, a satirical news site- something that didn't really exist before it did, so far as I know- and it's fantastic. Whether it's as good now as it has been in the past is debatable, but they are still very good at doing the critical things that all imitators I've seen so far fail at. Someone eventually will manage it, but for one reason or another, they all fail catastrophically somehow.

A big thing is that you have to have some kind of real world grounding. You can get crazy, but it has to fit into some kind of realistic framework, if that makes any sense. The Onion had an article where Obama is an Anti-Christ figure bringing about a dark age of hell on Earth, but it worked because it was playing on an incredibly heightened version of how some people see him. Obama was not acting or sound like he would, but since the joke was not on him, it worked.

Change Of Heart

I have lately started doing a thing that I once swore I wouldn't do- something that I hated. I'm pretty active on Twitter, but for all of my effort since I got very serious about it, I have struggled to attract a very sizable following. I suspect that a part of it is my antipathy towards chasing trends. Twitter is heavily composed of trends, and it happens to be a big way in which anyone gains a following beyond their own friends.

I never have much gone for writing tweets for trending hashtags, and I always hated seeing them from those who I follow. I always tolerated it, but I hated it. Finally, I had a conversation with a friend who had done it, and he talked about the practical gains in followers he'd made based on things like live-tweeting wrestling matches and doing this thing called Hashtag Wars from a show called "@Midnight". Several days a week, they post some combination of two things, and the goal is writing funny combinations of them both. A recent one was "Failed Sports Teams", so you write examples of what that would be.

Bailing

My best days are probably the ones where I never end up getting on the social networking websites. Focusing on my own affairs has the effect of leading to real productivity and also that of filtering out all the awful stuff that is on those websites. Sadly, such days are all too few and far between, as my level of discipline is lackluster at best. Most days I have those sites open on my computer all day, and I reach an apoplectic state numerous times.

There are countless ways in which I am angered. The most incident is a common thing with me. Someone who I like in general was wringing his hands over the list of the most popular articles at the New York Daily News. Most of them concerned the death of actor Paul Walker, and all of them were very yellow journalism. Given that the newspaper in question is a tabloid, I was unsurprised and unbothered. He was very bothered, as were others.

Shane In The Membrane

The internet, I will not send you into conniptions by saying, is a curious thing. What's very interesting to me, among other things, is what happens to those who are granted prominence online by the collective attention of the internet's users. There are a lot of different things that can happen to you. Take the case of Noah, a little boy who feared ridicule for having to wear glasses. He must be living at least a few years before I was born, because glasses are now so prevalent that it's hard to imagine someone thinking that.

In any case, Noah's mother turned to the internet to console him (which is not good parenting if you ask me). She formed a group seeking to have people assure the boy that it would be all right for him to wear glasses. They evidently did so, and she needed to do no more than a little quick e-marketing. Noah was lucky. It seems to me that the internet could just as easily have cruelly cyber-bullied him into an even worse state.

Ennui, On Me

Something is really bugging me. I have said how I strive to not let something I disagree with online take up too much of my time. Sometimes I do well with that, but today I don't know that I did. What happened is that a friend was excited by the news that a Robocop statue meant to be erected in Detroit is nearly finished. It has been substantially financed by that odious fundraising site, Kickstarter. Needless to say, I'm not a supporter.

I made my points about how Detroit needs plenty of things more than it needs a statue of a character from a movie that casts the city in a bad light and which was filmed in Dallas anyway. I was answered that the statue would somehow be an example of law and order and that public art is laudable. I disagreed and said no more about the matter, but I kept thinking about it all day long. I'm still thinking about it now, and I can't say I'll have let it go by the time you're reading this.

Unfollowed

Being rejected is unpleasant, whatever form it takes. The anticipation of it is sometimes worse than it is itself, but often the reality is as bad as feared. I find that can be the case in an arena where thinking about things in these terms is perhaps rare: Twitter. I accumulate Twitter followers at a modest rate, and have not terribly many for someone as active as I am. For that reason maybe, the loss of followers can be affecting.

It's not bad if I am unfollowed by someone who was only following me in the hopes that I would follow them. If I didn't like their stuff enough to follow them, it is fine when they get the message and stop following me. If I felt that way about them and they unfollowed me because I tweeted too much or wrote something objectionable, that's fine too. The sheer number of followers doesn't matter as much to me as whether they signify anything meaningful.

Still Kicking

They were heady days when Google was preparing to launch their answer to Facebook, which had done much to create discontent but which had faced little real competition. It seemed that Google Plus must be a success, or at least a vigorous challenger capable of making Facebook grow to remain dominant. Of course, while Google Plus is still there, it seems to have already passed the point of real viability.

When they were making people sign up for a waiting list or else get an invitation from someone who had already gotten a Google Plus account, it was about the hottest ticket in town. Everyone seemed desperate to get on board, and then came the time when it was opened up to all, and many people did sign up for accounts. Somehow it developed that people came but didn't stay to do anything. This is how it looked to me.

Something New, Maybe

I have lately got into the latest social networking fad of "Vine". At the speed these things progress, it likely has no more than a few months before growing passe and dying out, but for now it's quite fashionable. It is to videos what Twitter is to the written word. Rather than being confined to 144 characters of text, one is restricted to seven seconds of video which evidently can be shot and edited only in sequence. It's rather elegant in its simplicity.

I hadn't gotten into it, nor had I really intended to, until I met a woman on the train from San Diego who was really into it. A man will do funny things over a woman, but there's no need to get into that truism. The point is that I got into these "Vine" videos. I feel I am well-suited to making the occasional one, although I am a little lazy to put much production value into them. So far I have made a handful, one or two of which proved very good in my eyes.

Knowledge Is Good

I am angry afresh over the predilection that so many people seem to have for disseminating quotes. It is a terrible plague on the internet, and I wish I could do something to put a stop to it. At least as bad (and seemingly new as a presence online) is the proliferation of allegedly fun facts. Just as with quotes, certain friends seem awfully fond of posting "fun facts", apparently convinced that they are what they purport to be.

One friend incessantly posts fun film facts, all of which are either very old news to me or which are not fun in the least bit. I concede that fun is a subjective quality, but then isn't that a very compelling reason to call them something else? I would not like them any better if they were neutrally described as just facts, but I would be forced to admit that they are what they claim to be, and how can you get mad at anything that is what it says it is?

A Regrettable Trend

There's this meme that was going around a couple days ago. A "meme", if I understand it right, is simply some kind of joke or idea that sparks a trend online. I never have cared for them myself, maybe because I've never been trendy. In any case, this one revolved around maintaining one's privacy on Facebook. Supposedly, if one posted a certain message filled with legal-sounding jargon, one's postings were protected from theft by Facebook itself or anyone else.

People can be dumb. Even the smart ones can act dumb at times, and so lots of people went and posted the message like it was going to do something. Of course, it wasn't and couldn't, so it was like having a magic amulet or something, except those at least are a nice piece of jewelry to wear. People really can be dumb. I just assumed it couldn't do anything, and so I didn't bother to go to the trouble of researching it.

Dislike

Writing for this blog is a struggle far more often than it is a breeze, and for more reasons than my moribund base of readership. I relatively seldom seem to seize upon a subject that has me racing to keep up with the thoughts I wish to commit to writing. Today is one of those days that I have come up with something, although it is not one of the even rarer days that I choose to write about something topical. One out of two ain't bad, as Meatloaf might say.

Ever since Facebook introduced the "Like" feature, I have not cared for it. I don't like the fact that there is no complimentary "Dislike". You are left with the binary options of "liking" someone's post or implying by your silence that you do not like the post. I find that unsatisfying, and I know I'm not alone on that. Plenty of people say, if only in jest, that they would like a "Dislike" option for sad or infuriating posts. I know I would like that.

Solid Following

I have lately stepped up the frequency of my tweeting, turning over everything funny that would have gone to Facebook over to Twitter. This has payed off, at least in the sense that I typically make a greater impact on any given day than I managed to when I tweeted every here and there instead of a regular seven to ten times a day. The impact has been mostly positive, although it has not exactly resulted in more followers.

I say not exactly because while there have been a lot more followers, they have all been what I would call spam. Spam, like weeds, is all of the ones you don't want. The followers that I don't want on Twitter I block. What's interesting is how they come to me. It's a rather crude system as far as I can tell. As I tweet so often these days, I sooner or later use a word that is being targeted by some business that itself tweets. A recent example would be 'billiards'.

No Comment

I try to be a hopeful person and believe the best in people. It's not easy, but it helps to know so many wonderful people here who are smart, funny, kind and generous. They are enough to give you great hope in the future of humanity, and that would develop into a downright optimistic and exuberant attitude if I never left the presence of those people for the others who make up the bulk of humankind. This is where I begin to sink into despair.

The place where it's probably the worst is in comment threads online. I speak of that well-intentioned feature which lets everyone chime in on the merits of some video or have a reasoned, even-tempered debate on the issues raised by some news article. Unfortunately, I can't say that I've even once seen things play out that way. The best you can hope for is a smattering of inane, mindless praise. It really doesn't get any better than "Wooo!"

Free WiFi: Why?

When we as a family used to travel a lot either by plane or by car, the options for occupying oneself in the hotels and airport terminals were limited. A pile of books was the chief means. Sometimes I would have some music on a cassette tape. The hotels usually trumpeted the availability of HBO, which tended to be a disappointment. If all else failed, the other members of the family could be engaged in conversation. It never would have occurred to me that the family computer be brought along for amusement or productivity.

For one thing, it was obviously far too heavy and fragile to even contemplate such a thing. Secondly, the internet was hardly even a thing at that time. How things change. Most places you go now offer Wifi. I have said that if they have it on Greyhound buses and at Denny's, then they must have it anywhere they ever will. It's a very handy thing, and I found it indispensable on this trip. Numerous times did we consult it for logistical matters that would have been brought to the man at the front desk, and heavily did I lean on it for amusement instead of the tv.

Cycle

Yesterday I wrote a big, lofty piece on writing philosophy. I didn't mean for it to get so 'important'. It had its origin in a status update. As I said then, I hardly seem to post those anymore, and figured that it was because I was writing so much for this blog now. I tried to address the terrible shortfall over on Facebook, where I had gone so many times to write an update only to come up empty. It's an uncommon thing to find oneself bereft of any idea worthy enough to make into a status update. Actually, I should say that it's a very common thing, but it's more uncommon to keep from going ahead anyway.

Well, this time I started to write one about how I don't write them anymore. I like to be brief and concise, so that's generally my objective. I don't always manage it. One line became two, and two became three. Before I knew it, I had a full-blown paragraph which had no hope of being read all the way through by anyone in that forum. I myself would skip past it. Keeping my nose to the grindstone and reading long uninterrupted text is no easier for me than for anyone else, my ability to write such text notwithstanding.

A Curious Progression

It's interesting to consider how my habits have changed online in just today's internet. When I say that, I mean what it has been since the advent of social networking sites. What it was when I first began online seems too primitive even to grant consideration now. My first step into social networking was on Myspace. By the time I had heard of anything like Friendster, it was already gone. On its successor Myspace, I diligently updated my status, mood and customized my page to the extent I knew how. So important was it to have a great background and song blaring out!

Before I even joined that, I knew of Facebook. It was engulfing the nation's colleges at the rate of a handful a day. It would leave its exclusion to schools behind soon enough. When I joined, it was with the zeal of the converted, and I was posting status updates throughout the day most days. Friends today who knew me then will confirm how annoyingly I flooded the site with a myriad of trivial thoughts and mundane updates.  I understand it was more than some could bear, and they 'ignored' or 'unfriended' me for my boorish behavior.