Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Buy and sell your friends as pets! You can make your pets poke, send gifts, or just show off for you. Make money as a shrewd pets investor or as a hot commodity! Friends for Sale is the bees knees!
Yes kids! Social media is just like the real world where you can traffic in people for fun and profit!
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Facebook is kinda bugging me at the moment. It seems that they’ve almost given up on screening all the apps that are coming through both for plain offensiveness (like this one) and for dodgy spammy behavior.
I’m now beginning to hang for whatever the next-gen social networking wizbang thingo will be, I’m guessing I’m not alone.
My friends list is going berserk with this. Most are in the 30-40 something range too. It’s weird.
What annoys me are the apps that make you spam 20 other people before finding out the answer to the bloody quiz!
Very hard to navigate through, lots of bugs…pain in the butt really. Only reason I went on was to nick my daughter’s holiday pics.
Its American-centric nature is annoying too. There’s no nice little app like Patchou’s Messenger Plus where you can get rid of all the crap and configure it the way you like it.
The Next Big Thing will probably be something like an interactive live video chat site. yet another place for the self-obsessed to share their boring lives and utter dullness with the world.
Silly Mark.
Don’t use them.
But I wanted to know which French philosopher I was!
Anyway, I like Facebook, for all the complaints. Sorry, but I do.
And that goes to what I think is the cheapest shot at all social networking applications, and blogging for that matter.
“It’s just people talking about x” (fill in to your heart’s desire, and don’t forget how often what people fill in is coded feminine - ie cats, knitting etc - there’s a big element of “just girl talk” among the alpha male dissing of lots of aspects of web 2.0)…
Well, people’s lives are meaningful to them - and to their friends. How often are conversations we have with those close to us about “big issues” and how often are they about what we’re wearing, what we’re eating, something weird we saw on the way to the bus, etc. This whole “it’s the plebs babbling” meme seems to me to be profoundly elitist and anti-democratic. Most stuff people write on the web is not supposed to be some earth shattering insight. Most of it is just people hanging out and/or getting to know each other. Whatever is wrong with that?
*BZZZT* The author has fallen for the “oh no! teh interwebs is encouraging aberrant behaviour” meme.
Phil, you’re right that social media is just like the real world. But you don’t have to use the extreme example of human trafficking to make your point…
…have you *seen* how kids behave in the playground? They *do* buy and sell friends, and show them off, send gifts, and poke them etc. School-age friends have always been exchangable for the price of a PSP game/pokemon/Mars Bar/seat next me on the bus/a peek at Kylie’s bra/you can hang out wif me for two lunchtimes/conkers.
And when we get to adulthood, the transactions become a little more discreet and sophisticated, but there’s still a lot of status-and-acquisitions rules just beneath the surface of “friend” behaviour.
I’m obviously not talking about philosophical friendship, but rather the behaviour that goes on in the schoolyard/office/church/pub/sportsfield.
So is it really so surprising that a couple of just-finished-school coders come up with an app that captures this?
So, Mark, which French Philosopher *are* you?
Err, I Mercurius I think it was Phil making the point. I was just having a whinge about how Facebook seem to be dropping some of their control mechanisms and how I think it’s gonna make everyone go to MyBookTube or whatever will be kewl next month.
Does anyone have dibs on MyBookTube.com yet?
oops! Sorry Mick, errr Phil, err Mick, errr Phil…comment edited.
I fully expected to be over the whole thing by now, having used it for more than six months, but it hasn’t happened yet. I am well and truly over some of the applications I initially installed and have since removed them, and most of the new ones are shoddily made. At a certain point you inevitably get ‘application fatigue’ and do a bit of a purge, and suddenly it’s all quite manageable again. It’s very useful in some ways: sharing photos, news, invitations etc. I think those core functions will keep me on there until enough of my friends move on to whatever’s next.
And if that happens to be video chatting, as sorcerer suggests, then I won’t be involved. Anything even remotely telephone-like will lose me.
Exactly. And not just ‘It’s the plebs babbling’ but ‘It’s the plebs babbling, so very unlike our own lofty discourse.’
The spamming thing is a real shame, I agree, and I don’t use them any more either and will never find out which French philosopher I am. But I will go to the wall for Scrabulous (one day soon now Naomi and I will get our total points up over 700); I can see my friends Darcy’s brilliant astro-photographs almost as soon as he takes them (from the roof of his shed in Ceduna, 750 k from Adders and one of the best astronomy observation points in the Southern Hemisphere); and Traveller IQ has given me a much, much better education in geography than I ever got at school.
“What annoys me are the apps that make you spam 20 other people before finding out the answer to the bloody quiz!”
I agree. Wanted to find out what sort of cat I’d be, but didn’t want to send to 20 folks. It’s a like a giant chain mail that Facebook.
Sorry for inflicting the real age thing on people, but I wouldn’t have found out my real age otherwise (it’s 2, by the way).
“It’s just people talking about xâ€? (fill in to your heart’s desire, and don’t forget how often what people fill in is coded feminine - ie cats, knitting etc - there’s a big element of “just girl talkâ€? among the alpha male dissing of lots of aspects of web 2.0)…”
That’s so true. Silly broads talking about their cats and cardigans again while we “alpha males” (i.e. weedy geek boys) sit around debating the American primaries and sport (which we don’t play because we are weedy geek boys). Ohh, we’re so blokey.
What’s web 2.0?
“But I wanted to know which French philosopher I was!”
Since there are only two French philosophers, you’re all either Pascal or Descartes. I’m guessing most of you are Descartes.
“That’s so true. Silly broads talking about their cats and cardigans again while we “alpha malesâ€? (i.e. weedy geek boys) sit around debating the American primaries and sport… Ohh, we’re so blokey.”
But don’t you see? Boys disparaging girl-talk is simply an integral part of boy-talk, just as girls complaining about how boys are so mean to disparage girl-talk is an integral part of boy-talk. Didn’t any of the lads from the tree-house in the yard ever toss rocks at your window in the middle of the big slumber party? And weren’t you aggravated, yet secretly curious what they were doing up there in the tree-house? And didn’t you just HATE that one really rude boy with the dirty sneakers and the perpetually runny nose and that unruly hair that just wouldn’t stay put no matter how much you thought about combing it for him, and the interesting little scar along his eyebrow gee I wonder how he got that, anyway I just hate him so much I can’t stop thinking about it, darn it now I’m so distracted I’ve forgotten where I was with my knitting…
Well, I’ve got to run along now. After all, there are pigtails to pull and so forth.
I think we’re beginning to see a pattern here:
1. Social networking site launched, promises to be different from current spam-laden/ad-ridden/annoying/buggy social networking site.
2. Users flee old network for new shiny.
3. Owners of new shiny capitalise, lading site with spam, ads and annoyance as massive new user base reveals bugs.
4. Rinse and repeat.
j-p-z,
What about Sartre?
Everyone.Am on MySpace but as I can never log on, I’ve given up. Might try Facebook. Sounds fun. Or will it give me the willies?
Join up, Paul, so we call all have another friend.
Facebook is a bit cleaner than MySpace. Just ignore the persistent applications.
And you can find about what French thinking dude you are, or what cat you are.
I’m Derrida btw.
“yet another place for the self-obsessed to share their boring lives and utter dullness with the world.”
hehe. That made me laugh, because its kinda true. Definitely some narcissist appeal among the convenience of file sharing etc.
I say that as someone who has just started using facebook more seriously - so I’m accusing myself here too!
Okay, that does it, I can’t stand it another minute — fifteen or twenty of my Facebook Friends had better brace themselves to be spammed. I need to find out. You may all spam me back to find out which breed of cat / French philosopher / Argentinian astronaut / dessert / make of helicopter / knitting stitch you’d be.
Spam away PC. I’ve forgotten what my password is to FB and the spam catcher takes all the emails so it will never worry me.
Ah bon, je suis Voltaire. And since there’s a link to ‘What German Philosopher Are You?’, ich bin auch Leibnitz. Clearly I’m a couple of centuries out of my comfort zone, but at least I didn’t have to spam anyone.
Facebook anti-union activity shock! http://community.icontact.com/p/labourstart/newsletters/inside/posts/victory2
Paul Burns: “What about Sartre?”
You mean the chap who wrote that book, “Being and My-Contribution-to-the-Resistance”?
Actually I was only kidding. What I know about formal philosophy would fit on the bottom of a Bazooka Joe comic.
I think one of the feminist commenters here should volunteer to be Sartre. That way you could go back in time and make him treat Simone de Beauvoir nicer. Or better still, just convince her that she’s too good for you [him/it], she really oughta be with Camus, or Beckett. Think of it — Second Life set in post-war Paris, or something.
And since we’re defining “French philosopher” so very broadly these days, can I get to be Sacha Vierney (li’l nod to Fine over on the other thread) or Jacques Brel?
FORTUNE: Obama will be the next president… of Cuba.
To cheat with those quizzes, some of them will put your result in the news feed before you invite 15-20-700 friends to take the quiz. So, just check your profile, and the answer is probably there…
Not on Facebook, but I choose Zinedine Zidane (though I’ll admit Sartre had some good lines).
I’ll take Zizou’s activist approach to freedom of speech any day over Voltaire’s self-hating liberalism.
PB - Satre isn’t a philosopher. (Nor, I suspect, is Derrida.) Most philosophers have names like Ayers and Russell.
No, David, they are philosophers, just not the kind that you like.
How can anyone use Facebook seriously?
Might get around to joining Facebook early March. Buried in the throes of trying to research/write a book review at the moment. Deadline 1 March. Not panicking - yet.
For any one in doubt Sartre is a philosopher - not that I imagine many of you would be in doubt - even if a lot of the time he expounded his philosophy through novels and plays. I mean, can you think of anything more philosophic than “Hell is other people.”?
“How can anyone use Facebook seriously?”
Sorcerer, it probably helps if you wanna hang with literary pysiognomists. Anyway, I hear Eleanor Rigby has filed to adopt a malnourished waif named Tamagotchi. Between El’s relentless bouts of melancholy, the kid is bound to get a good feed occasionally and will no doubt be thankful for the cyber charity.
Anyway, the ultimate French philosopher of the twentieth century is Eric Cantona. “When seagulls follow a trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea”. Genius.
At least it keeps ‘em off the streets. You can control facebook easily. Just reject the offers, don’t accept new applications; or reset your preferences and your “friends”.
Declined the True Age test today. May be a sign of it!
if Sartre was alive, he would be on Farcebook - hitting on the young chicks who only talk about going out … and he would have sold Simone for 40 francs
I dont mind all those invitations because I know why I’m getting them
I know what sort of cat I am - full of food and hogging the couch.
There’s a Facebook petition with over half a million members calling for apps to be banned from requiring friend invites:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9912127233&ref=nf
“What’s web 2.0?”
Tell me if I am wrong, but we’re in it…