The Web Ebb

I'm coining that, by the way. If this becomes a real thing, then I'm the first one who came up with it. Even if someone else has used it, I testify that I haven't heard of it, so I came up with it independently. Anyway, on with the show.

Lately, I've noticed that some of my friends are either thinking of leaving Facebook or outright leaving it. Most of my friends have either closed down their MySpace or at least stopped using it. Five years ago, I would have seen five to ten of my friends on instant messenger at any given time, and now I see maybe two or three.

I don't know whether this is a real trend or just something in my demographic. I know that my generation, the ones in their mid to late twenties, was the first to be immersed completely in the digital age. I was around eleven or twelve when I first really started getting into computers: the internet, email, that sort of thing. I remember when I fell for one of the first "Bill Gates will send you money if you forward this to all your friends" ploys. I remember the days I would type in a topic, add .com, and see what came up. Those were the days before Google, when WebCrawler, Lycos, and Excite were my main search engines. Within a few years, everyone I knew had instant messenging and email. And a few years after that, we started hearing about just how plugged in we are. I've heard it said that the computers have gone from another activity you do to the way we live.

But these days, it seems like that mad rush into the digital frontier, the topic of so many TV specials and documentary films, is slowing down. Maybe it's across the board and maybe it's just those of us who have been immersed in it for more than a decade, but it feels like people are starting to come up for a breath. I've heard it said many times that the internet age sneaked up on us, and we found ourselves plugged in without realizing how far in we'd gone, but I think that awareness is becoming more common. We've been jacked in for so long that we're starting to see the effects it's really had on our lives--and we're starting to pull back.

I won't claim that I'm starting to use the computer less, just that my desire to do so has waned. I still get anxious if I go more than a couple of hours without checking my email. I still check Facebook at least three times a day. But when I do so, I spend much less time on it. I visit my favorite sites out of habit, but I don't stay long. I've stopped playing massively multiplayer online games and online RPGs. I'm no longer really interested in having conversations with people I've never met. That novelty has long since worn off.

I noticed a smaller web ebb a few years ago when people stopped using MySpace and blogs quite as much. For a while out of high school and into college, it felt like a half dozen of my friends had regular blogs. These days, no one I know posts more than once a week. Sure, there are sites like Twitter, but I don't know anyone in my age range who's really jumped into that. In particular, I feel like we are less and less likely to all get excited about something new, getting on some new service or program.

It's possible the web has become just so integrated into our lives that it's no longer exciting, but I don't think that's it. I think we're genuinely starting to drift away from our computers. In some small way, I think the real world is starting to have that novelty effect that the digital world had for us fifteen years ago. We've gone so long plugged in that unplugging has become the new frontier.

Future Love

Warning. I'm not very politically correct. I apologize to everyone who is offended. If you're not offended, I'm not apologizing. I won't be giving you any links to what I mean because, really, I don't want to do that to you. If you're really curious, a simple keyword search will bring you all the horror your fragile sanity can stand.

The Internet, namely YouTube (which is about a third of the Internet anyway, the other two thirds being Facebook and porn, and maybe a little 4chan), keeps trying to make me watch videos of fat peoples' stomachs. And fat people poking their stomachs. And stroking their stomachs. I must admit I first clicked one of these links because I was baffled about what could be in such a video (not to mention baffled by why the Internet thought that I would be interested by it). The videos themselves are pretty tame, as far as I can tell: fat people sitting around playing with their bellies. It's the kind of thing children do when they're bored. And let's be honest, we all enjoy a bit of belly button lint picking every now and then.

But it's the comments that disturb me. Just for you, dear Internet, I'm going to delve into one of these videos to give you a sample:

"I wanna rub her belly and stick my finger in her belly button."
"So beautiful, darling you should try to make it to the point of almost exploding. But be careful~"
"Please pull your pants down just a little bit so we can see you underwear. Thanks"

And each of those comments had people clicking the thumbs up button to recommend it. I would think the other button was the one that meant "Creeeeeeepy!"

Now, I'm all for a realistic body image, but doesn't encourage people to eat excessively fly in the face of everything we know about good health and diet? I'll be the first to give a bony model the sammich she so desperately needs, but this is people encouraging obese people to be even more obese.

There are plenty of bizarre fetishes out there that don't involve hurting anyone. I really only know about these because I watch Attack of the Show's "Around The Net." Things like balloons and giving people piggyback rides. I don't understand how this is in any way sexy, but at least nobody is getting hurt. But encouraging people to become obese? That's just about as sick as those people who want to be amputees.

What this all comes down to, though, is that I have a theory. I believe this is an evolutionary coping mechanism. As obesity becomes increasingly common, our brains start to change the way we see beauty to compensate. What would happen to fat Western society if we still held on to our old notions of athletic being beautiful? Imagine that poor minority of women who still fit that image who would increasingly bear the burden of continuing the species. Meanwhile, the rest of women have nothing to do but sit around, eat pizza, and watch Oprah. It only makes sense that, in order to preserve the species, somebody has to "hit that." And, in order to steel those brave souls to the unenviable but necessary task ahead, Mother Nature puts new thoughts into their heads. Thoughts like "your belly looks hot with it all bloated keep it up never stop of course take breaks but its sexy"

Yes, Internet, I went out of my way to find the creepiest comment on there. I hope your appreciation will make up for the mental scars.

I used to think that future babes would look like Raquel Welch. Or maybe Molly Millions. Oh, my poor, poor illusions.

PS I tracked down the source of YouTube's tragic mistake. In Rammstein's "Keine Lust" video, they dress up like fat people. I guess for YouTube it was either an unnatural attraction to fat people or else just burly middle-aged East Germans....

And, of course, by watching the videos necessary to gather the comments for this post, I have only confirmed YouTube's opinion of my deviance, so I can look forward to many more of these videos in the weeks to come.

Special Delivery

The internet has yet again poured onto my unsuspecting head a shining nugget of something completely worthless and yet irresistably, inexplicably awesome. It's given me something I never thought possible. Of course, it could be complete crap, but if it's true, then Ronnie James Dio once covered Jethro Tull. This is supposed to be a recording (a very crappy recording, which only cements its authenticity) that purports to be from Dio's days in the band Elf (or Elves, according to whoever put up the video).

You be the judge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYx6JJutH04

One thing's clear, it's not a Tull recording, so I guess someone must have recorded a cover of Aqualung at some point. And that's kind of cool. I guess.

lol. noobs.

Earlier this evening, I received an e-mail from someone obviously very confused about the way listserves work. This anonymous person wrote the following e-mail to everyone signed up for the Caine School of the Arts listserv:

I would like to be on this list.
Thank you! :)

I shook my head and smiled, hitting delete. Everyone would understand that someone had made a mistake, I reasoned. A few minutes later, the following, also anonymous e-mail response demonstrated that wasn't the case:

Um what?

=EDIT=

(It gets better:)

i think the system is messed up because i didn't write either of these messages and i don't even know what caine school of arts is.

(And then...)

Did everyone here just get a random message about this?

(And)

I don't want to be on the list

(And even...)

Take me off the list. I don't know what this is
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

=EDIT 2=

I finally got sick of receiving these idiotic e-mails (I got five in less than ten minutes at one point), so I sent out the following:

Due to the nature of this mailing list, every reply that you send to these messages will rebound to a great many people. We who are receiving your e-mails do not have any way of knowing who you are, let alone of removing you from the list. Please, if you have an issue with the service, contact a webmaster from the Caine School of the Arts about it. For the sake of everyone's sanity, do not continue to reply to these e-mails.

Only you can prevent more spam. And nobody likes spam. Well, nobody except Monty Python.

The First Horseman?

Now, I have never seen an Uwe Boll movie from beginning to end. But I'm told he's awful. And from what I have seen of his movies (mostly movies that ended up scraped off the inside of the toilet seat and stuck on the SciFi channel in between other crappy movies) proves that the general consensus that he's the most talentless director since Ed Wood could well be true. You do have to give him some props for getting angry enough to beat up five of his critics in real-life boxing matches, but then again, if that's the point you have to go to to make people stop making fun of you, you should probably re-examine what it is you are doing in the first place.

That being said, I found a hilarious tidbit on the internet (as I tend to do, from time to time). Petitiononline.com is a place for people with gripes to start petitions, after which they find out how few people actually give a damn about what they've spent the last few months bitching about. However, the online petition to get Uwe Boll to take his hands (some say tentacles? elder god Boll?) off of movies permanently has over 283,000 signatures as of this moment. Considering this suggests that 283,000 people have actually seen a Uwe Boll movie, that's pretty amazing in itself.

Comments on the petition left by signatories include:

Please stop before more damage can be done
My ass could make a better film than you Please, just stop. There is no need for you to make anymore films.
The film world is just fine without you.
Your movies make me feel funny

And, perhaps the comment that sums up how most people seem to feel about Uwe Boll:

All your films are penis


Please note, Mr. Boll, if you find this, that I haven't seen your movies, I just think this interesting web trend of wanting to track you down and fillet you like juicy carp guts is hilarious.

The system is flawed

Netflix thinks I'd give the Gummi Bears cartoon series a rating of 4.2/5.

Clearly, something has gone very, very wrong in the world. It's like a disturbance in the Force. It made me feel almost bad to tell the system that I'm really not interested. Almost like I was saying no to a part of childhood....

Not that I ever watched that show. Okay, maybe once. But I was young and foolish. I also watched He-Man.

The Sims Online dies

I actually found an online-related thing to post about today. This blog doesn't have a stated agenda, really, any more than my thoughts, but this is in keeping with the cyberpunk-theme that it has revolved around a bit.

EA Games is closing down The Sims Online. (The article calls it EA Land, but the game used to be called The Sims Online, which is what I assume most of us will know it as.) And what are they giving to all those people who paid $9.99 a month since 2002, hoping that the game would get better? The people who believed the hype at the end of last year that the game would be significantly improved and all those things they had been promising would finally arrive? A $15 gift certificate.

Now, I only ever played this game's free trial, so this is no skin off my back. But consider the ramifications: EA Games, a huge game company, is just dropping a game like it has the crabs. Well-loved old games like Everquest and Ultima Online chug on even in the face of new competition (read: World of Warcraft), but something like this only plays on one of my oldest fears:

Scenario: I spend thousands of hours online. I pour my heart and soul and waking hours into a game and a character, developing a person that is real in all but body, giving him the very best gear, position, stats, and everything else I can. I make friends, real friends, people I share ups and downs with, share my thoughts with, spend hundreds of hours with.

Then, it's all gone. The character, the world, the time is as though it never happened, except for the memories. Some of my friends go one way, some go another; we try to keep in touch, but it goes away.

I felt this a little when World of Warcraft supplanted Neverwinter Nights, but at least I can go back and play a bit for nostalgia, and I never had to pay for online play. But imagine when this happens to World of Warcraft, which I'm sure it will, sooner or later. What then?

This is why I'm terrified of falling in love with an MMO. I know that, sooner or later, it will go away, and then I'll be hurt.

Enter Douche

I had a good post written up about this, but then the internet ate it, thinking it was a carrot.

Have you ever wondered why you're all alone? Why it seems like all the beautiful women in the world have gone away, perhaps to a mystical, magical place called Narnia, or perhaps just across the sea to where the elves go? Well, the fact is, they're still here on the material plane. They're just hanging out with douchebags. And the proof is a site that draws together pictures from all over the place (although, apparently, New Jersey is a favorite) and proves once and for all that beautiful women, for one reason or another, are attracted irresistably to assholes. Here's the site. Enjoy, particularly the Hall of Scrote section.

Could this be for real?

One has to wonder whether this is all just a pipe dream, the way jet-packs and flying cars were in decades past, but I found an article through my friend's blog that claims we may soon have holographic communication and virtually instant downloading through something called "the grid," which makes the Internet look like analog mail. Sound too good to be true? Yeah, it probably is. But wouldn't it be awesome if it was?

Maybe I'll have to change "the Second Web," the superfast cerebral internet in the cyberpunk novel I'm working on, to "the grid."

The Czechoslovakian Legion in Russia

So, I've been reading on the Internet about something amazing. If I would have heard yesterday that, near the end of the First World War, there was an army of about 50,000 Czechoslovak soldiers in Russia being transferred east along the Trans-Siberian Railroad so they could, through Vladivostok and the USA, fight on the Western front, rather than the Eastern Front which collapsed in 1917, I would have thought it was something from a bizarre alternate-reality story. Can you imagine a bunch of Czechoslovakians just stranded in the middle of Russia, trying to go to France to fight the Germans? To make it even more interesting, throw in eight train-cars' worth of Imperial Russian gold falling into the hands of the Czechoslovak legionnaires and being demanded by the Bolsheviks. Well, it turns out it's true. What's even more amazing is that most of them made it out alive: although they started out all spread out over the railway, they managed to regroup in Vladivostok and, with the help of mainly American and Japanese troops, evacuated and returned home (the First World War was over by then, although the war in Russia was still raging).

In other news, here's a little blast from the past:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE-1RPDqJAY
and an "interesting" combination of two memes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3TK0MEtM-E
Speaking of combining memes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP4uUnOJL2M

That's all for today.