This year, and I mean This Year, a lot of social media companies, unhappy with merely not capsizing and deflating and disappearing, are going through the unprecendented step of making themselves nuisances. From disenfranchising userbases to creating nonsense features that do nothing, to removing the publically-visible metrics that made their platforms interesting (before algorithms built digital cages so impenetrable that you need an anonymous browser to get anything useful out of them), to making themselves User Only Content, and more—the lions of yesteryear are shittier than ever, and less likely than ever to be replaced with better platforms. Let's face it: all your faved social media channels are going to hell.
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
9/13/13
Twitter Success Stories
I have heard a lot of horror stories from Twitter. Apparently it's crazy on there: it's like the peanut gallery of the internet and the character limit must help to keep things sharp. People buy and sell followers, mores change in seconds, public figures are subjected to ridicule and blistering trolling, politics are dished out, sometimes people get fired for tweets. It is the people's battlefield of the 21st century, and everything is at stake.
Names and reputations, professional identities, personal legacies are all made and destroyed there - I am just now reading that some #breakdowns have actually happened. One wonders if the ever-looming specter of cyber-bullying has haunted Twitter, and to what terrible effect. I'm sure that people become #twitteraddicts just like people claimed to be addicted to Facebook because they were simply being dumb or extremely lazy.
With all this doom and gloom it is easy to get pessimistic about a world including Twitter, but there is also a brighter side to the social media darling. For instance, the guy who invented the #twitterjoke hashtag is now a few hundred thousand dollars richer. Of course he is richer due mostly to his well-paying upper-middle class tech job, but the good karma from his innovative Tweeting must have helped him feel better, thus upping his potential in the workplace, and ultimately his net worth as well (as well has his 'net-worth', too, eh? #twitterjoke).
There was once a street urchin from Calcutta who began to tweet one day, as the story goes, and found himself on television the next, getting interviewed by such industry giants as: Vice journalists, various mainstream media, and finally Oprah herself. This urchin is set to publish a book this November about the Twitter-launched journey, and immigration papers for the U.S. are pending. Talk about #heartwarming, right? But also #bootstraps.
Meanwhile in the United States, Seattle urban residents banded together to 'crowdsource' a recycling initiative that saved a local bookstore, reinvigorated a local park, as well as funded the gym of a new public housing complex. Talk about 'retweet' am I getting to you here? Does this not impress you? Serious things are happening.
I remember one story from the heyday of Twitter, when it was truly still the wild west, in which a band of libertarians managed to close a soup kitchen and shame its operators into leaving town. Truly, for activism of the slackiest kind, there is no better PR wing than a Twitter account and an opinionated but well-spoken Comm. graduate.
In another story, the guy who started Shit My Dad Says (which is very #2009, I know) became a minor sensation and also managed to capitalize quite well on his inherent ability to quote people for humorous sayings. I don't know much about him because I was TUNED OUT in 2009/2010 but apparently he became something like a 'W'-list celebrity. He got a book deal out of Twitter (and he's not the only one!), they made a TV show out of it (you can bet he got something out of that, too), and apparently he will soon release a highly-anticipated 'solo-project' (which, don't worry, will include his dad). Twitter has done more for comedy than the next three internet 2.0 social media outlets combined, and that's a #fact.
The best part is none of these people got anything by Tweeting angrily or negatively about anything. They never went 'on the attack', never sold out, never complained, they never shilled for anything or anyone, it was just pure Twitter savvy that got them anything. They kept their noses clean and didn't start tweeting about politics or anything, they didn't ever chase scandals or sensationalism – all they ever did was try to help society, or try to be funny so that society was a bit less terrible... there's hope for all of us who see Twitter as an occasionally funny pile of shit.
Names and reputations, professional identities, personal legacies are all made and destroyed there - I am just now reading that some #breakdowns have actually happened. One wonders if the ever-looming specter of cyber-bullying has haunted Twitter, and to what terrible effect. I'm sure that people become #twitteraddicts just like people claimed to be addicted to Facebook because they were simply being dumb or extremely lazy.
With all this doom and gloom it is easy to get pessimistic about a world including Twitter, but there is also a brighter side to the social media darling. For instance, the guy who invented the #twitterjoke hashtag is now a few hundred thousand dollars richer. Of course he is richer due mostly to his well-paying upper-middle class tech job, but the good karma from his innovative Tweeting must have helped him feel better, thus upping his potential in the workplace, and ultimately his net worth as well (as well has his 'net-worth', too, eh? #twitterjoke).
There was once a street urchin from Calcutta who began to tweet one day, as the story goes, and found himself on television the next, getting interviewed by such industry giants as: Vice journalists, various mainstream media, and finally Oprah herself. This urchin is set to publish a book this November about the Twitter-launched journey, and immigration papers for the U.S. are pending. Talk about #heartwarming, right? But also #bootstraps.
Meanwhile in the United States, Seattle urban residents banded together to 'crowdsource' a recycling initiative that saved a local bookstore, reinvigorated a local park, as well as funded the gym of a new public housing complex. Talk about 'retweet' am I getting to you here? Does this not impress you? Serious things are happening.
I remember one story from the heyday of Twitter, when it was truly still the wild west, in which a band of libertarians managed to close a soup kitchen and shame its operators into leaving town. Truly, for activism of the slackiest kind, there is no better PR wing than a Twitter account and an opinionated but well-spoken Comm. graduate.
In another story, the guy who started Shit My Dad Says (which is very #2009, I know) became a minor sensation and also managed to capitalize quite well on his inherent ability to quote people for humorous sayings. I don't know much about him because I was TUNED OUT in 2009/2010 but apparently he became something like a 'W'-list celebrity. He got a book deal out of Twitter (and he's not the only one!), they made a TV show out of it (you can bet he got something out of that, too), and apparently he will soon release a highly-anticipated 'solo-project' (which, don't worry, will include his dad). Twitter has done more for comedy than the next three internet 2.0 social media outlets combined, and that's a #fact.
The best part is none of these people got anything by Tweeting angrily or negatively about anything. They never went 'on the attack', never sold out, never complained, they never shilled for anything or anyone, it was just pure Twitter savvy that got them anything. They kept their noses clean and didn't start tweeting about politics or anything, they didn't ever chase scandals or sensationalism – all they ever did was try to help society, or try to be funny so that society was a bit less terrible... there's hope for all of us who see Twitter as an occasionally funny pile of shit.
5/9/13
Has the Golden Era of Adblockers Passed?
Recently I tried to watch some online video on a television channel's website. The video applet failed to load completely and it didn't take long for me to develop the correct suspicion. I disabled my adblocker and reloaded the page. No fucking video. So I open the page in a vanilla browser and it loads, a wild contrast from what I had, up till that point, been used to. On the vanilla browser there is a banner and large square add. Then the video starts and I am subjected to extra-loud advertising, TV style, with a vengeance. In addition to the other adds. Another advertisement plays, and a third, before my content is loaded.
Adblockers, with the advent of hijacked banner ads and unscrupulous marketing, to say nothing of the paranoid or political users of the internet, are not simply a tool entitled users employ to rid themselves of annoyances. Ad-blockers are legitimately a way of keeping your computer clean, of preventing your oft-used technological distractions from compromise. The fact you don't have to watch commercials (which are basically always: manipulative, insulting, indoctrinating or some shameful combination of all three) is an added bonus to not having your internet-accessing-device fucked with.
I am not a poweruser but I've been adblocking for years - since I discovered it was possible. I understand that advertising revenue drives some smaller sites, and, yes, I'd agree they deserve their due - assuming they police their advertisements for some level of quality. Fine, whatever, have your .005 cents per impression. You deserve it, plucky little website. However, the worst offenders are often large media sites – sometimes even those which already use paywalls. Let me present a brief overview of the galloping trend of online advertising.
In the early 90's during the second wave of the internet, when things became graphical enough that advertisement in the classic sense became possible, it was largely internet entities that advertised for themselves, and certain forward looking companies often related to the tech-sector. It was a simpler time. By late 1999 basically everyone who wasn't under a rock or a dinosaur was getting into online advertisement. 'Hey, check out our website at http://www.geocities.SonnysPizza/index.htm for some coupons' and other types of hilarity abounded. Whatever, wherever you got advertised to, it took a slice of your pitiful bandwidth and generally wasted time and resources, but you had to face it. Eventually MSN Messenger (R.I.P) becomes huge, and eventually it begins to advertise to you.
Side banner; top banner; .gif flames - all of these things were familiar. Between then and now the internet has grown up and come of age to the point where a huge section of people use it. All the troglodytes, termites, attractive well-adjusted people, and infants came out of the woodwork and the internet is full of everyone now. Whatever, other people will tell you about it, and some gigantic nerd could probably make a convincingly venomous deal about it... all I'll say is it drove a wave of advertising intensity that eventually rivaled the notorious realm of television adverts.
Fucking pop-ups were one thing, but there came layers of advertising that would jump into existence around key-words. Video sidebars that glitched out your browser and had to fling their audio payloads into your ears. 'Interactive' commercials made by committees of dullards and shills. YouTube videos became clogged with side, top, and skippable pre-video advertisements for every user account considered important enough to waste your time for their profit. What was once dumb, became even dumber, amen. So it goes, right? Absolutely. Yet there were additions to your browsers that would kill all advertising.
True to form, adblockers were free. They worked, and nobody who adopted them ever looked back. Surfing without them was like going back in time. It sucked, you were exposed to all the reprehensible shit that barely existed in your ideal internet experience. Going back to ads is like hitting yourself in the face with a shoe. Beautiful adblocking programs, released by benevolent and right-minded developers, worked on classic print ads, video ads, and even ads played in video content. It is like a magic balm that drives mosquitoes far, far away. For those who use adblockers, the internet just is that much less shitty. It's less claustrophobic and it can seem like the terminal cash-in state of the world has been opposed.
So of course, it comes to an end, by hosted content ('hosting ain't free, yo') which a profitable broadcaster puts online. Until very recently I had never been blocked for anything but geographical reasons (though nationalization of the internet is another ugly recent phenomenon) but a week or two ago I was denied a show I had been following online. I imagine in a year it will be impossible to skip video-advertisements everywhere, and only the smug power users will know what to do about it. Hopefully the same people who did the good work of blocking online advertising will keep up and their programs will not lapse into irrelevance due to some frightening and monstrous online advertising epidemic.
Because what the hell? You're running a profitable business already, and why not add some more revenue? Why not even more? Why not three advertisements every five-and-a-half minutes on video content? Why not have it be 30% louder than actual content, like on TV? Who cares is the commercial is ideologically loaded or bankrupt of all value? Who cares if it's annoying? 'I like money, gentlemen, and nobody gets a free lunch!'
A browser without an adblocker is a sign of a pitiable person trapped in the commercial arena, a hopeless square, a submissive lackadaisical fuck, a worthless shit hyperbole rapist. This is one fight the internet should not lose.
Adblockers, with the advent of hijacked banner ads and unscrupulous marketing, to say nothing of the paranoid or political users of the internet, are not simply a tool entitled users employ to rid themselves of annoyances. Ad-blockers are legitimately a way of keeping your computer clean, of preventing your oft-used technological distractions from compromise. The fact you don't have to watch commercials (which are basically always: manipulative, insulting, indoctrinating or some shameful combination of all three) is an added bonus to not having your internet-accessing-device fucked with.
I am not a poweruser but I've been adblocking for years - since I discovered it was possible. I understand that advertising revenue drives some smaller sites, and, yes, I'd agree they deserve their due - assuming they police their advertisements for some level of quality. Fine, whatever, have your .005 cents per impression. You deserve it, plucky little website. However, the worst offenders are often large media sites – sometimes even those which already use paywalls. Let me present a brief overview of the galloping trend of online advertising.
In the early 90's during the second wave of the internet, when things became graphical enough that advertisement in the classic sense became possible, it was largely internet entities that advertised for themselves, and certain forward looking companies often related to the tech-sector. It was a simpler time. By late 1999 basically everyone who wasn't under a rock or a dinosaur was getting into online advertisement. 'Hey, check out our website at http://www.geocities.SonnysPizza/index.htm for some coupons' and other types of hilarity abounded. Whatever, wherever you got advertised to, it took a slice of your pitiful bandwidth and generally wasted time and resources, but you had to face it. Eventually MSN Messenger (R.I.P) becomes huge, and eventually it begins to advertise to you.
Side banner; top banner; .gif flames - all of these things were familiar. Between then and now the internet has grown up and come of age to the point where a huge section of people use it. All the troglodytes, termites, attractive well-adjusted people, and infants came out of the woodwork and the internet is full of everyone now. Whatever, other people will tell you about it, and some gigantic nerd could probably make a convincingly venomous deal about it... all I'll say is it drove a wave of advertising intensity that eventually rivaled the notorious realm of television adverts.
Fucking pop-ups were one thing, but there came layers of advertising that would jump into existence around key-words. Video sidebars that glitched out your browser and had to fling their audio payloads into your ears. 'Interactive' commercials made by committees of dullards and shills. YouTube videos became clogged with side, top, and skippable pre-video advertisements for every user account considered important enough to waste your time for their profit. What was once dumb, became even dumber, amen. So it goes, right? Absolutely. Yet there were additions to your browsers that would kill all advertising.
True to form, adblockers were free. They worked, and nobody who adopted them ever looked back. Surfing without them was like going back in time. It sucked, you were exposed to all the reprehensible shit that barely existed in your ideal internet experience. Going back to ads is like hitting yourself in the face with a shoe. Beautiful adblocking programs, released by benevolent and right-minded developers, worked on classic print ads, video ads, and even ads played in video content. It is like a magic balm that drives mosquitoes far, far away. For those who use adblockers, the internet just is that much less shitty. It's less claustrophobic and it can seem like the terminal cash-in state of the world has been opposed.
So of course, it comes to an end, by hosted content ('hosting ain't free, yo') which a profitable broadcaster puts online. Until very recently I had never been blocked for anything but geographical reasons (though nationalization of the internet is another ugly recent phenomenon) but a week or two ago I was denied a show I had been following online. I imagine in a year it will be impossible to skip video-advertisements everywhere, and only the smug power users will know what to do about it. Hopefully the same people who did the good work of blocking online advertising will keep up and their programs will not lapse into irrelevance due to some frightening and monstrous online advertising epidemic.
Because what the hell? You're running a profitable business already, and why not add some more revenue? Why not even more? Why not three advertisements every five-and-a-half minutes on video content? Why not have it be 30% louder than actual content, like on TV? Who cares is the commercial is ideologically loaded or bankrupt of all value? Who cares if it's annoying? 'I like money, gentlemen, and nobody gets a free lunch!'
A browser without an adblocker is a sign of a pitiable person trapped in the commercial arena, a hopeless square, a submissive lackadaisical fuck, a worthless shit hyperbole rapist. This is one fight the internet should not lose.
10/29/12
Twitter Strategies for Journalists: An Existential User Comment Rodeo
CJR posted a great bit about getting Twitter followers that almost makes me want to dust off my twitter account and make it live. I used to try to follow twitter. Now I mostly blog lackadaisically in order to tell myself I am doing productive writing. I see people tweeting and they repost their tweets to facebook and I think, "Goddamn that's insane." but on the other hand they sometimes get 100 or so impressions. Which is generally still pretty insane. They are engaging with the imaginary yet somehow relevant aimless messaging system. Some people who have encouraged me to join actually have audiences and purposes for tweeting – which, in a fast-moving, egalitarian telegraph machine, are the most difficult things to achieve and understand.
I might be biased. I see every twitter account as the equivalent of a Minecraft video on YouTube. It does not inspire me. I see tweets in various news media and have to restrain myself. Jimmy Fallon uses twitter in cool ways, though, and the service has been used for all kinds of mischief so it can't be all bad. But on the other hand, the volume of tweets alone is a barrier to entry. The slavishness of hashtag culture, the ruthless advertising. Twitter has as much of a mercenary heart as facebook. But who cares what I have to think or say. I still have to think or say it if it's not broadcast.
Still, I do my best, despite having posted legitimately cringe-worthy abominations, to say interesting or informative things in a neutral language which does not rest on lazy assumptions, fallacies, or promote negative patterns of thinking. I try to do my best, on the internet or at least this blog, at least sometimes but it can be so hopeless and tiring. The internet, used anonymously, has a tendency to communicate the worst aspects of individuals and their cultures. There are heartbreaking stories about these kinds of problems and what their fallout is. Unless you're not paying attention, you have probably heard one.
Probably you came here to add followers to facebook and increase your clout score or whatever. I already linked to it at the top. The specifics of the linked article are great and all, but there was one user comment that was essentially critical of Twitter, but also probably uncomfortably accurate:
The flood of user-generated everything, from literature to the internet to economics, is an incredible problem that is both happening and waiting-to-happen. An unthinkable volume of information is kind of awesome, but also kind of terrifying. This brave new world is, after all, the kind of world that spawned the hollow 'expert culture' – an institution that is essentially quackery in all but name. The fact that the article shows at least one case of people forced to contribute to twitter against their will is equal parts hilarious and sad.
I might be biased. I see every twitter account as the equivalent of a Minecraft video on YouTube. It does not inspire me. I see tweets in various news media and have to restrain myself. Jimmy Fallon uses twitter in cool ways, though, and the service has been used for all kinds of mischief so it can't be all bad. But on the other hand, the volume of tweets alone is a barrier to entry. The slavishness of hashtag culture, the ruthless advertising. Twitter has as much of a mercenary heart as facebook. But who cares what I have to think or say. I still have to think or say it if it's not broadcast.
Still, I do my best, despite having posted legitimately cringe-worthy abominations, to say interesting or informative things in a neutral language which does not rest on lazy assumptions, fallacies, or promote negative patterns of thinking. I try to do my best, on the internet or at least this blog, at least sometimes but it can be so hopeless and tiring. The internet, used anonymously, has a tendency to communicate the worst aspects of individuals and their cultures. There are heartbreaking stories about these kinds of problems and what their fallout is. Unless you're not paying attention, you have probably heard one.
Probably you came here to add followers to facebook and increase your clout score or whatever. I already linked to it at the top. The specifics of the linked article are great and all, but there was one user comment that was essentially critical of Twitter, but also probably uncomfortably accurate:
The flood of user-generated everything, from literature to the internet to economics, is an incredible problem that is both happening and waiting-to-happen. An unthinkable volume of information is kind of awesome, but also kind of terrifying. This brave new world is, after all, the kind of world that spawned the hollow 'expert culture' – an institution that is essentially quackery in all but name. The fact that the article shows at least one case of people forced to contribute to twitter against their will is equal parts hilarious and sad.
9/5/12
The New Microsoft Logo: Explicit Huey and the News Reference?
Well it's kind of funny on a few different levels. I could make a joke about the Samsung lawsuit also, if it was necessary. I don't think it's entirely necessary. I guess, though, what they are saying is that it's hip to be square. Or maybe they're just futureproofing the brand. It's tough to say, at this distance, what any of this really means. It could be a meaningless change, and it could be the herald of some insane twist ending so devious that it drove its author insane and hid itself in a dusty pile of manuscripts, waiting for a foolish hack's sweaty fingers.
The real issue isn't whether or not rounded edges are completely illegal, but rather what exactly a non-curved surface means for the consumer. Will it entail a less-flexible Microsoft Windows? Will tiling finally wear out its welcome?
Is this a sign that yupsters are on the make? Is the 99% going to have to deal with the fallout? Is the 100% going to have to? Where do I send strongly-worded letters about this? Why is my local mailbox welded shut?
No, this can't be so drastic. But my eyes can't be lying to me. This isn't anything like Morrowind to Oblivion in terms of regression, but it makes me wonder if I shouldn't switch to... but wait. Apple's undergone its brand shift already, and it's planning something as well. Macintosh and Microsoft. It's the ongoing browser crisis all over again, which makes Microsoft Chrome; Apple Firefox. Except Apple is a more yupster brand than Microsoft, anyway, so really nothing makes sense at all. I only hope they do a commercial with the proper mainstream pop rock song accompanying shots of stressed office workers, pale and/or fat kids, and septuagenarians holding conference calls on Win8 phones.
Well I for one don't care so much. Things will be alright even if the vistas are grimmer than the early-adopters and hype-men would like. I think Win7 is where it's at, and I'm happy to square about that. As long as it can run Age of Empires 2, an operating system is pretty good. Anyways, anyone who knows anything knows which was the best logo and is still puzzled, like me, about the incomprehensible loss of that incredible relic. Rest in peace,
Is this a sign that yupsters are on the make? Is the 99% going to have to deal with the fallout? Is the 100% going to have to? Where do I send strongly-worded letters about this? Why is my local mailbox welded shut?
No, this can't be so drastic. But my eyes can't be lying to me. This isn't anything like Morrowind to Oblivion in terms of regression, but it makes me wonder if I shouldn't switch to... but wait. Apple's undergone its brand shift already, and it's planning something as well. Macintosh and Microsoft. It's the ongoing browser crisis all over again, which makes Microsoft Chrome; Apple Firefox. Except Apple is a more yupster brand than Microsoft, anyway, so really nothing makes sense at all. I only hope they do a commercial with the proper mainstream pop rock song accompanying shots of stressed office workers, pale and/or fat kids, and septuagenarians holding conference calls on Win8 phones.
Well I for one don't care so much. Things will be alright even if the vistas are grimmer than the early-adopters and hype-men would like. I think Win7 is where it's at, and I'm happy to square about that. As long as it can run Age of Empires 2, an operating system is pretty good. Anyways, anyone who knows anything knows which was the best logo and is still puzzled, like me, about the incomprehensible loss of that incredible relic. Rest in peace,
3/23/11
Today's Celebrity Death: Brought to You By Twitter
I know this is a serious event for lots of people, but for me it is a death in the midst of thousands of others that are not reported, so don't think of me as callous. I am a realist and goddamn, I am sort of happy the media only reports 'big deaths', because the worst kinds of death happen either en masse or without reportage.
Elizabeth Taylor died today at the age of 79, after ailing for some time and disappearing from the public eye. I just want to talk about how this affects me, personally, because this is my blog, and I am a heartless, callous, pseudo-realist type of person.
J.G. Ballard's novel Crash will never be the same after this moment. Vaughn's hoodlum scientist ambition to die in an automobile wreck with Elizabeth Taylor is now completely hopeless. I even doubt it will change any future reading of the book, but you have to admit (if you've read it. And you should.) that is now an even more ghostly tale with serious undertones of having been written almost forty years ago.
I've done my own research on Elizabeth Taylor today. Her last Twitter post (did she write or dictate them?) is dated February 9th, 2011. Let's gloss over it for now and find a memorable, positive, wise statement under 140 characters that we can remember her by:
Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.
Elizabeth Taylor died today at the age of 79, after ailing for some time and disappearing from the public eye. I just want to talk about how this affects me, personally, because this is my blog, and I am a heartless, callous, pseudo-realist type of person.
J.G. Ballard's novel Crash will never be the same after this moment. Vaughn's hoodlum scientist ambition to die in an automobile wreck with Elizabeth Taylor is now completely hopeless. I even doubt it will change any future reading of the book, but you have to admit (if you've read it. And you should.) that is now an even more ghostly tale with serious undertones of having been written almost forty years ago.
I've done my own research on Elizabeth Taylor today. Her last Twitter post (did she write or dictate them?) is dated February 9th, 2011. Let's gloss over it for now and find a memorable, positive, wise statement under 140 characters that we can remember her by:
Not at least until I'm dead, and at the moment I'm having too much fun being alive...and I plan on staying that way. Happiness to all.
No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor herself.
My interview in Bazaar with Kim Kardashian came out!!! http://j.mp/eqQsGa
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