6 posts tagged “internet”
I wasn't one of the six....but I was pretty darn close.
If I didn't already possess all of their stuff, and if I had an extra eighty pounds burning a hole in my pocket, I might throw down for the memory stick version of Radiohead's catalog. It's a pretty cool and unique way to package a box set, especially in a Web 2.0 world (that was inappropriate, I apologize now).
I just want that memory stick. It would look wicked sticking out of my computer.
One of the blogs that I read is called Digital Ethnography. It is run by a group of students and faculty at Kansas State University that aims to explore the impact of the information technology on the way we study cultures.
The latest post is very interesting, especially if YouTube (see, I just neologized the site's name into a verb, perfect example!). Check out the video; it's pretty well done and features a number of newfangled YouTube celebrities sounding off on whether they think "fakes" and "frauds" should be allowed to continue posting on the site.
I must say that I fall on the side that is for entertainment. Sure, YouTube is built upon social elements, but this may be a new type of community that has less of a social contract than anything that has come before. Look at the stuff that gets posted! Yesterday I watched a video of a kid going mental over a Blastoise card, an excellent Adidas commercial, and a Sufjan Stevens music video. These have varying degrees of "authenticity," but I think that the real beauty of YouTube is the fact that all of this funny, poignant, awe-inspiring, heartbreaking and outrageous material is available from one single source. I admit that part of what makes the Pokemon card video funny is that this was the kid's real reaction (or so I assume). But it's augmented by the inclusion of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the super slo-mo growl.
I don't feel any connection with this kid. I don't know who he is, and I don't really care. I'm not really a fan of the confessional "vlog," which is at the root of this debate. But even if I was, I wouldn't be offended if I found out that most of them were stepping into some other persona as soon as the camera turns on (cameras tend to do that). Some people get into using YouTube as a window into the lives of people that they will probably never meet. There's a certain kinkiness to this, and I don't mean that in a facetious way. So when the authenticity of a video is put into question, it is revealed as just another form of entertainment. There are plenty of vloggers out there who are for real, and if they want to post their actual thoughts on the Web for all to see then that's fine. But other people want to use YouTube just to mess around and post videos of their babies farting in the bathtub or elaborate skits that they've cooked up with their friends.
I've never watched the Lonelygirl videos, but I'm sure that they wouldn't have been nearly as interesting had she (and the writers) announced from the get-go that it was all staged. No one would have paid any attention. But millions of people watched, and they were ENTERTAINED! Even if they thought it was real, they still found it intriguing and worth their time. Lonelygirl and her writers were successful.
P.S. The bald guy with the glasses in the video on Digital Ethnography is Renetto, another popular YouTube personality, and the clips were taken out of context. He's not on the "expose the frauds" bandwagon, and he clarifies his position here.
Also, Lonelygir15, Renetto and others are participating in YouTube's new revenue sharing program. You too can get in on the action! Now that there's money involved, you can kiss any images of the website as a bastion for reality goodbye.
Here are some of tonight's hot web headlines, listed in descending order of import:
Gonzales to face confidence vote
Google takes search to next level
Halo 3 and Crackdown: What the Hell Happened?
Paris drops appeal, jail awaits
What a world.
Can anyone explain how this website is legal? Is it even legal? How have they not been shut down yet? And if it is legal, how much money do they have to cough up in order to post all of this stuff? They offer load of shows and movies that you can stream and watch for free (even amazingly current ones like "300"). Sure, the quality is very low and some of the links don't seem to work, but even so, this is pretty wacky. And dangerous....
Upon further inspection, it seems that you can only watch the first portions of a lot of the movies. Kind of lame. They shouldn't tease in such ways. I'll have to investigate further some other time.
This is so funny, I have to repost it. It's an excerpt from the Toothpaste for Dinner blog. Toothpaste for Dinner has become my new favorite web comic. I was introduced to it by my friend Evan. It is a very simple, single-frame comic drawn with black ink on a white background. Its misshapen figures reveal the absurdities of working in an office, the internet, being a nerd, politics, and life in general. Here's the passage from the blog:
I'm glad that in 2007 the internet finally almost works like it's supposed to. You can actually do useful things on it. I think it's hilarious that it took nerds 38 years to get it working. The first 37 years were spent figuring out how to play D&D using computers, and the last year was their "catch-up" year. Here we are in 2007 and we all have enough bandwidth to do and make and see whatever we want, and the majority of the internet in 2007 consists of kids youtubing videos of them kicking each other in the balls. Whatever, dudes. Have fun with that. Hope you don't break your testicles. I can hear some of you out there going, "Yeah, well I hope you DO ruin your reproductive system!" Man, would you keep your misguided eugenics to yourself?! I hope everyone on youtube grows up to be happy. That's all I want.
I wouldn't find it so funny were I not a member of the internet fanboy legion that he derides. But then again, he is too. So there you have it. God bless the internet.
And if you like TFD, you might want to check out Married to the Sea, which is another comic this guy does with his wife. All of the comics take old 19th century lithographs and revamp them with new captions. It can be a bit more vulgar than TFD, but those old pictures are so funny-looking. Some of them are just begging to have a line of text about poop attached to them.
This may be one of the dumbest and most saddening stories that I've heard in a while. It seems to be a case of a school district overcompensating. What kind of parents are they dealing with? Have they ever used computers? Do they know what pop-ups are and how annoying they can be? As more and more technology invades the classroom, I think it is incumbent upon school districts to ensure that their machines are properly protected against pop-ups, spam, viruses, and other malicious entities. Also, they ought to provide quality training for all of their faculty and staff members so they know how to handle these things.
Also, the article claims that she was "assigned" to this particular class and that the "permanent teacher" had stepped out. Was this woman some sort of substitute? If she's untenured, and not even an accredited teacher, then this could also be a despicable example of the way in which schools favor tenured teachers and essentially let them get away with anything. Specifically, we see the other side of the coin: if this woman was indeed a substitute teacher, then the school district may have seen her as an easy target for swift and decisive action in the face of a scandal. The chances of this happening to a tenured teacher are probably pretty low.
Perhaps she deserves to be fired. I could buy that. She should have turned the computer off or pulled the plug, even if the school's policy was the the machines were to be left on at all times. Obviously there were extenuating circumstances that warranted the images being removed from the screen even if it would have violated the regulations. But a prison sentence?! Come on! She's facing up to 40 years in prison; I doubt she'll get that much. But even 18 months sounds very excessive. I really don't think she intended to expose middle school children to pornography. She attempted to close the sites, but went about it in a very incompetent manner. She shouldn't go to prison for that. This is an administrative matter that has turned into a public relations nightmare.
