Posts Tagged ‘blogging’
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
Many of the posts on this blog originate as ideas sketched out in note form. I work on these ‘ideas’ until I think they are ready to post or else I decide to discard them. Not all my binned blogs reach the stage of completed first drafts – but here is a list of 10 that underwent varying degrees of revision before I decided against posting them….
1. “The First 3 Letters of Espresso Are ESP, So Is Coffee a Psychedelic Drug?” - I guess I was high when I came up with this blog title. In the cold light of day it didn’t seem worth following through!
2 “Chatham Is Fucked” – inspired by my first trip to that town in 15 years. It was almost as depressing to write this as it was to visit one of the more blighted parts of the so-called “Garden of England”. A post on this subject would have been way too much of a turn off for my readers.
3. “Bill Ayers: Fake Leftist” – a critique of the former Weatherman explaining in simple terms why he is a reactionary tosser despite the pseudo-revolutionary posturing in his crap book Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist. In the end I preferred not to give this right-wing twit fulsome coverage on my site. It just isn’t possible to take Ayers seriously when he talks about ‘joining’ the working class in the same way as he might join the masons or the boy scouts. Ultimately I figured a relatively short review without direct citations from the book and placed on GoodReads (rather than here) was the best way to deal with vanguardist scum like Ayers.
4. “Synchronicity II at Tiwani Contemporary” – a lively exhibition of African photography running from 3 February to 17 March 2012. I went to the opening and spent as much time talking to Grace Ndiritu (who is in the show) as doing anything else there. While I had fun, the private view didn’t attract your usual London art world rent-a-crowd, so there weren’t enough people about who I recognised for me to be able to write an insider account. Indeed, apart from Ndiritu, I only recognised the likes of curator Caroline Hancock (who has been based in Paris for some years) . Shame as the work is definitely worth seeing, although I was only really familiar with James Barnor’s pictures before I went.
5. “Reading: A Town More Like All The Others I’ve Been To In England Than Any Other I’ve Ever Visited….” – middle England considered as a postmodern simulacrum. At first this idea seemed funny but the more I worked on it the scarier it became! The Stepford Wives can eat their hearts out!
6. Review of “Untouchables: Dirty Cops, Bent Justice and Racism in Scotland Yard by Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn” – necessary background reading if you want to understand how the phone hacking scandal unravelled into also being a sordid exposé of corrupt relations between the cops and the media. In the end I felt reading the book was a lot easier than providing a summary that covered all the ground.
7. “Chicks On Speed at The Showroom, London: 14 February 2012″ - a great night but writing about it didn’t add anything to what I’ve already said about COS.
8. “Uncreative Writing, Conceptual Literature & Flarf Poetry” – checking what was online under these headings, I found more than enough information to satisfy me. And so in the true spirit of ‘uncreative writing’ I decided not to add my voice to this discourse. Of course, this doesn’t preclude me from copying and pasting something written by someone else on the subject (without crediting them) at some point in the very near future!
9. “10 Reasons To Be Unfaithful To Your Lover” – in the end I didn’t really feel it was necessary to explain yet again why smashing monogamy is an integral part of destroying patriarchy! And my attempts to come up with laugh-out-loud lines floundered at point six.
10. “Why I’m Even More Bored With Facebook Now Than I Was Last Year (If That’s Possible)” – like point one, this never got beyond me typing up and saving the title. Facebook proved too boring to contemplate!
In many ways blogging has been superseded by the status update and the tweet. Information just keeps getting more and more compressed. But shrinking 10 potential blog posts down into one – as I’ve done here – is one way of keeping the superannuated form of blogging relevant! Back in the 1980s your typical postmodernist hack made an academic career of disappearing up his or her own arse. Web 2.0 has taken us way beyond postmodernism and the academy. Our turdy tongues have passed through our own guts and re-emerged from our mouths; enabling us to really shoot the shit in style!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 14 February, Bill Ayers, blogging, boredom, Caroline Hancock, Chatham, Chicks On Speed, Coffee, conceptual literature, COS, ESP, Facebook, flarf poetry, Fugitive Days, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist, Garden of England, Grace Ndiritu, James Barnor, Kent, Laurie Flynn, London, Michael Gillard, middle England, monogamy, patriarchy, post-modernism, postmodernism, psychedelic drugs, Reading, status update, Stepford Wives, Synchronicity II, The Showrooom, Tiwani Contemporary, tweet, uncreative writing, Untouchables, Untouchables: Dirty Cops Bent Justice and Racism in Scotland Yard, Weatherman, Weathermen, Web 2.0
Posted in humour, Web 2.0 | 20 Comments »
Sunday, February 5th, 2012
Instant blogs were first marketed in the USA in November 2002 under the brand name Technorati. The Technorati platform was founded by Dave Sifry, with its headquarters in San Francisco, California. Tantek Çelik was the site’s chief technologist – obviously they should have used someone else. The fact that Technorati is virtually useless can be demonstrated by the fact that it’s link to the feed from my rss worked for a few months and hasn’t uploaded anything now for more than two and a half years. Technorati’s ranking system is equally stupid and promotes tired and conventional views at the expense of innovation and smart thinking. The content of instant blogs has varied over the years, but with the maturation of Web 2.0 now generally consists of the following:
3 parts bullshit (can be cut & pasted from other blogs).
2 parts worthless opinion (can be cut & pasted from other blogs).
1 embedded video.
Seasoned with lots of pictures.
Mix all together.
Serve on WordPress, Blogger or LiveJournal.
Can be fortified with swear words! Fuck, cunt, motherfucker, shit, etc.
Can be thickened by adding gratuitous insults or spam links!
Instant blogs are on the whole self-referential, narcissistic and not quite vicious or crazy enough to keep me entertained. By way of contrast I’m sexy, seductive and smart! I’ve also gone beyond narcissism to become an ego-maniac on a world historical scale; and I’m so self-referential that my tongue has not only disappeared up my own arse, it has emerged once again from my mouth! No one makes an instant blog the way I do – compare and contrast and you’ll find this one is better than anything else on the net! Sarcasm and irony can only take you half-way there – you also need infinite, absolute negativity. And I’ve got that in spades!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Blogger, blogging, blogs, bullshit, cunt, cut and paste, Dave Sifry, fuck, instant blogs, irony, LiveJournal, motherfucker, narcissm, negativity, opinion, rss, San Francisco, sarcasm, self-referentiality, shit, spam links, Tantek Çelik, Technorati, video, Web 2.0, WordPress
Posted in humour, Web 2.0 | 20 Comments »
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
One time British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is often credited with coining the phrase ‘a week is a long time in politics’. When it comes to the internet things move even faster…. but the speed of these changes might be likened to ‘dynamic inertia’ (in both politics and blogging). The phrase ‘dynamic inertia’ has been used to promote the shake weight ‘exercise’ fad of recent years – and appears to have been coined for this purpose. Shake weights were marketed with adverts that featured women grasping these light dumbbell-like objects in their hands and jerking them about with their arms. The infomercials featuring this imagery went viral online because many saw in such hand and arm gestures a connection to onanistic sexual activities. There is now also a slightly heavier shake weight for men. The female shake weight has been marketed as trimming women’s arms and making them slimmer – whereas the manufacturers claim the male equivalent enables men to bulk up (although obviously what are essentially the same set of exercises cannot do both these things)!
Despite spurious claims by those marketing the shake weight, there is no scientific evidence to back up their assertions this expensive branded product is at all effective as an exercise aid. What the shake weight represents is a triumph of marketing over common sense – as do many other recent exercise crazes such as the power plate. Obviously any exercise is better than no exercise, but there are far more effective and less expensive ways to workout than using a shake weight or a power plate. What the people selling the shake weight have usefully done is provide us with a term to describe our current cultural condition. The phrase ‘dynamic inertia’ perfectly encapsulates the political and cultural situation we find ourselves in – which is no longer postmodern but has simultaneously failed to move on from the postmodern. This is a world in which capitalism (and thus official history) can only go backwards – and one where the products of alienated labour are still being falsely presented by our exploiters as having transformed themselves into ‘pure image’.
Obviously the only way to go beyond this post-postmodern condition is through the revolutionary transformation of capitalist social relations. This will be an overflowing in which we’ll be able to realise every aspect of ourselves as human beings, and together enjoy the wealth of this world in a truly collective fashion. Although it will number among the more minor benefits of communist revolution, I will at last be able to dispense with my spam filter, something I currently require to block ‘messages’ such as the following: “Discover The Untold Secrets Used By The World’s Top Cat Trainers To Make Their Kittens Listen To Their Every Command” (link removed). It should go without saying that we don’t want a society of ‘order givers’ and ‘order takers’ (or even one divided into ‘hep cats’ and ‘kittens’), we want a society of equals!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: alienation, blogging, capitalism, communism, dynamic inertia, exercise, Harold Wilson, hep cats, hype, kittens, onanism, post-postmodern, postmodern, power plate, pure image, revolution, scam, sex, shake weight, spam, spam filter
Posted in advertising, mass media, scam, spam, Web 2.0 | 20 Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
“How To Make Money Fast” is just one of thousands of spam comments my filter prevented from being posted on this blog. If the spammer in question actually knew a good way of making money fast, it’s unlikely they’d be telling other people about it. My filter is also repeatedly blocking spam comments from someone offering to write cheap blog posts for me and my readers. This seems to rather miss the fact that I prefer to put my own spin on shit – not to mention that with all the spam that comes my way, I’ve more than enough material from which I can write blogs fast, so I don’t need to pay someone else to do it for me. I could probably spend hours taking the piss out of the spammer offering to add Facebook fans to profiles on that platform… Fake fans aren’t about to bring anyone fame or money… and ultimately it’s more satisfying to engage with people than have them look up to you for no good reason. The star/fan relationship ain’t exactly a groove sensation – and using social media to replicate it online seems to completely miss the point of web 2.o, which is that it should give people the opportunity to interact on a more equal footing.
During my spam deletion process, I tend to pay slightly more attention to those comments offering search engine optimisation services (SEO) and free backlinks, than virtual pitches for lawyers. plumbers, escorts, watches, baby clothes, handbags, diets and designer shoes etc. However I wouldn’t click on SEO cowboy links or allow their outrageous claims to appear on my blog – because they’re likely to lead to some virus infested scam site. What all this bot-driven ‘activity’ ultimately reveals is the desperation among those who think social media is the new Klondike and that they’re about to strike gold. As I’ve said before, focusing on content will ultimately result in getting people to engage with a site – building links may raise you very slightly up some search engine rankings, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to anyone looking at what’s on your pages. Content is still king and ninety-nine percent of the time monetisation is a pipe dream – which is one of a number of reasons why there are no ads here!
If you still want to make money fast you’d probably do better ram-raiding a jewellery store.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: add Facebook fans, baby clothes, backlinks, blog posts, blogging, bot, build links, designer shoes, diets, escorts, free backlinks, handbags, jewelllery, lawyers, links, make money, make money fast, pitching, plumbers, ram-raiding, search engine optimisation, SEO, social media, spam, spammer, virtual pitches, watches
Posted in advertising, scam, spam, Web 2.0 | 22 Comments »
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
I’ve already written about my experiences of producing the first season of the Mister Trippy blog at MySpace. It is obviously a little early to write about the second season in any depth since this is its closing post. There is also less need to write about Mister Trippy season two because I’ll be leaving the posts up rather than taking them down as I did with not only with the first season of Mister Trippy, but all my MySpace profiles (to protest about the platform’s support for US imperialism), in Spring 2008.
Having produced posts for the first Mister Trippy season daily, I found it far easier to blog every other day in this second season (except for the first month, which was daily). That said, at exactly a year long, this season was also quite a bit shorter than the first. While the comments remained an integral part of the blog, there were considerably fewer than during the first season. I’d view this as a consequence of hosting season two on my own site rather than a social networking platform, and also because I didn’t concentrate on replying to comments as much as I did during the first season. That said, I appear to have more readers here than when Mister Trippy was hosted at MySpace, but far fewer of them commented and those that did made less comments than on the first season of the blog. From a conventional media point of view, upping both the number and percentage of lurkers is probably a good thing, from a full-on committed to Web 2.0 perspective it probably isn’t so good, although it does make life easier! That said, there have still been loads of great comments containing both solid information and some really way-out humour on the season two blog!
A few facts and figures. Mister Trippy season two ran from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2009, during which time I posted 193 public entries (including this one). As I write this there are 5,007 approved comments split across these posts. Likewise, between myself and the Askimet anti-spam software 10,207 comments were blocked or removed. All the blocked or removed comments were of a commercial nature. Obviously the number of approved and blocked comments will increase as time goes by, although probably not at the same rate as when I was posting on a regular basis.
I’ve found this blog and the main website to which it is attached a good way of alerting people to information I’m seeking. It has enabled me to locate individuals, unearth facts, and in particular extend my knowledge of my mother Julia Callan-Thompson and her bohemian social circle – as well as my first cousin once removed Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones (a legend for audacious Robin Hood-style thefts from the rich and famous, as well as a successful 1958 prison escape with a subsequent two years on the run). That said, while – for example – I now know that Francois Raymond who exhibited photographs of my mother in 1967 is dead and I have contact details for his brother, I’ve drawn a complete blank in my attempts to nail down the fate of Malcolm ‘Grainger’ Drake.
One of the things I’ve always tried to do on this blog, as well as the main site to which it is attached, is put information online that wasn’t previously available via the web. The pieces I’ve posted about my mother’s circle and Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones are good examples of this. When I began researching my mother’s life there wasn’t a single entry about her online. It is because of my efforts that a search engine request now brings in more than 15,000 results for Julia Callan-Thompson, rather than none (which was the result I got from my early web searches for her). There was material about Ray The Cat on the web before I started blogging about him, but by locating a primary source in the form of Ray’s testament about his life and going back to contemporary press coverage of his exploits, I’ve expanded the range of material available online and shown that recent retellings of his escape from Pentonville Prison completely distort the facts (and that the confusion appears to begin with inaccuracies introduced by Mad Frankie Fraser and his ghost-writer James Morton). However, to see this you’d need to read through all my blog entries on Ray The Cat. My research is ongoing and I revise what I have to say on the basis of what I discover. Putting material online is important, there is unfortunately a growing trend (particularly among the young), to look for information on the web and if it can’t be found there then to assume it doesn’t exist.
My research methods appear to confuse some of those I’ve spoken to, since I’ve had the odd email complaining I’ve not written up a story as the person recontacting me originally told it. I always try to find as many sources as possible for what I write. Sometimes these provide me with conflicting information, and some people even provide more than one version of the same story over a period of time. Using archival records where they are available, and all the oral history I am able to collect, I try to reconstruct events as accurately as possible. This can result in a specific person’s recollection of events being discarded; not because I necessarily think the individual in question is lying – memory can play tricks and the person concerned may simply be mistaken about what happened. Someone claiming to have direct knowledge of something does not automatically make them a reliable source for the subject. I work from all the evidence available to me and sometimes this will indicate (or even prove) that a particular individual’s memory of a specific incident is faulty or fraudulent.
Moving on, I trust that the interest of media professionals in blogging is waning, since it has had a deleterious effect on the activity. There are individuals who take up blogging in the belief that it might make them famous. Although this is unlikely, it doesn’t stop people trying and thus producing narrowly focused blogs with very limited subject matter, or else simply going in for egoblogging. One of the elements of this blog that proved particularly popular with a large swathe of readers were my reports of London art world openings. It would not be difficult to construct a blog around nothing but reports of this type, but for me it would become boring and is therefore to be avoided, despite – or rather because of – the fact that it would lead to me being viewed as a greater conventional ‘success’ than is currently the case.
Likewise, most newspapers seem to have given up on investigative journalism, or even research, and at a time when we need much more of it; clearly it is those with particular interests and specialised knowledge who are far better qualified to do this than so called media professionals, and blogging is a cheap and efficient way for the ‘real’ ‘experts’ – in other words, amateurs like you and me - to gather and disseminate information. I’m not seeing as much research based blogging or other web reportage as I’d like, but hopefully there will be more of it in coming months and years – and far fewer blogs being updated via Twitter feeds. I’d also like to see the majority of bloggers trying a little harder with their writing. While splurging something out is a great way of getting it down, you do then need to rewrite and revise. I’ve always tried to compose my blogs the night before I posted them, so that I could give them a final rewrite in the morning. Too many blogs look like their author hasn’t read through what they’ve posted even once! If you’re not prepared to read your own writing, you shouldn’t expect anyone else to do so either!
In conclusion, while I wouldn’t rule out a third season of the Mister Trippy blog, I’m not committed to doing one either. I’ll just see how things go. For now I’d rather concentrate on other pursuits. I will continue to update the main website to which this blog is attached – check the new additions page if you want to see what is being added. Wow, this may also be one of the least humorous blog I’ve written over the past year, so I obviously do need a break from Mister Trippy!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 2009, art world, blogging, egoblogging, email, Frankie Fraser, investigative journalism, jail break, James Morton, Julia Callan-Thompson, London, Mad Frankie Fraser, Mister Trippy, MySpace, prison escape, Ray Jones, Ray The Cat Jones, Raymond Jones, research, Robin Hood, social networking, Stewart Home, Twitter, Web 2.0
Posted in Web 2.0 | 30 Comments »
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
We call on all bloggers to turn off their computers and cease to post from 17 to 30 August 2009.
Blogging is an indulgence of a self-perpetuating elite; those who can afford regular access to computers and the internet. Those bloggers who struggle against the reigning society find their work either marginalised or else co- opted by the bourgeois net establishment.
Blogging creates the illusion that, through activities which are actually waste, this civilisation is in touch with ‘higher sensibilities’ which redeem its exploitation of those who live outside the overdeveloped world. Those who accept this logic support the bourgeoisie even if they are economically excluded from the class.
To call one person a ‘blogger’ is to deny another the equal gift of vision. What a blogger considers to be his or her identity is a schooled set of attitudes; preconceptions which imprison humanity in history. Show solidarity with the wretched of the earth, those who cannot afford regular access to computers, don’t blog between 17 and 30 August 2009!
Blog Strike is a side project to the Art Strike Biennial, 18-24 August, Alytus, Lithuania.
And if you can’t keep your computer switched off during the blog strike, don’t get too sucked into text, watch the following film which explores the aesthetics of boredom instead: The Worst Video On YouTube Ever!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Alytus, Art Strike, Art Strike Biennial, blog strike, bloggers, blogging, Lithuania
Posted in Web 2.0 | 27 Comments »
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Having blogged about click thru ad busting and related issues in the recent past, I’m now moving along to take a look at so-called ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites. The bottom line with these frauds is that a bunch of suits use content you create to attract an audience for click thru ads. There are many different companies running scam sites of this type, and among the better known are Triond, Helium and Associated Content. It should go without saying that the sweated labour which monetizes such rip-off schemes is conned into thinking they’ll be ‘rewarded’ for their graft; but if they see any money at all, they only get a tiny percentage of the click thru income they’ve generated for the swindlers raking-in the real profits. The idea is that other people get rich at your expense!
If you really want to try to make money from producing content that generates click through advertising, it is obviously more sensible to set up your own websites and blogs on which you run Google AdWords. While most of those doing this report very low earnings, their income is nonetheless far higher than if they’d allowed a third party like Triond or Associated Content to rake-off the lion’s share of this advertising revenue. My own view is that only a fool would try to make money from producing click thru content, but you’re an even bigger fool if you chose to work in this way on other people’s sites rather than your own. I regularly receive emails asking if I’ll accept click thru on this site, and I ignore them all because click thru screws up the web.
There are a lot of articles online advising you how best to write copy for sites like Triond and Associated Content. One of the key pieces of advice most of them contain is that you need to dumb down. Looking at them, I frequently came across rhetorical questions like ‘when was the last time you clicked on an ad?’ The proffered ‘advice’ then usually proceeds along the lines of: ‘since you’re obviously not dumb enough to think ads offering you the chance to meet Russian girls are worth investigating, and you only make any money if people click on the ads, you need to tailor your content for idiots.’ But then only someone with their brains housed in their asshole rather than their head could be fooled into thinking that generating click thru content for idiots, and further cretinising themselves in the process, will be financially remunerative. This is very definitely a case of dumb meets stupid.
Another piece of advice you’ll find in many web articles about ‘making money’ from ‘get-paid-to-write’ sites is that you should favourite your own efforts on Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon etc. So you’re not only working for peanuts, you’re also on the case 24-7 generating traffic for the likes of Triond or Associated Content. Obviously you’d do much better putting all that effort into a blog you actually control, and why not help raise the general level of human intelligence and knowledge instead of actively playing a role in lowering it? Basing what you produce on the search engine optimisation (SEO) rules that ‘get-paid-to-write’ sites drum into their ‘content providers’ is a sure-fire way of diminishing both your own humanity and that of your readers.
According to James Boswell, Samuel Johnson once quipped: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Today this line should run: “No one but a blockhead ever wrote a hundred articles a year and spent several hours a day generating traffic for ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites in return for the price of a cup of coffee.” The stark truth is you’ll spend more on the electricity to run your computer as you generate content for ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites than you’ll earn for your efforts! So remember kids, if you want to have fun on the web only favourite and link to sites that don’t carry click thru ads!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: ad busting, Associated Content, blogging, click through, click through advertising, click thru, click thru advertising, con, Digg, get paid to blog, get paid to write, Google AdWords, Helium, James Boswell, make money from the internet, meet Russian girls, rip-off, Samuel Johnson, scam, search engine optimisation, SEO, Stumble Upon, Triond
Posted in advertising, economics, Web 2.0 | 26 Comments »
Saturday, January 31st, 2009
Blogging can be a curious experience, sometimes it makes 3 weeks feel like a life-time ago. Talking of which, only 20 days have passed since I reviewed a recent book by Ken Wark, although subjectively for me it feels like this was done back in my 2006 MySpace blog days. In his tome, Wark observed: “The newspapers are devolving, bit by bit, into shopping guides. The ‘quality’ magazines are just coded investment advice. One turns with hope to the blogosphere, only to find that it mostly just mimics the very media to which it claims to be an alternative. Alternative turns out just to mean cheaper…” I like that quote, and while there are some blogs drifting through the depths of cyber-space that groove me, many are just a waste of time. Indeed, one of my mantras is: ‘if I want to see anything worth reading, then I have to write it myself’.’
A lot of blogs would be massively improved if those running them actually rewrote and edited what they’ve banged out, rather than just sticking it straight up online. I try to write my blogs the day before I post them, so that I can sleep on what I’ve written and revise it the next day. That said, a daily blog can often surprise its producer, as well as its readers, by forcing them to come up with something they’d never have thought of writing if they hadn’t felt under pressure to do so.
Prior to installing WordPress on the back end of this website a month ago, I hadn’t been blogging since March 2008, and a daily blog for January was a good way of getting back into the swing of things – while simultaneously creating a sufficient mass of material to make this new non-MySpace Mister Trippy blog worth visiting. But from here on in I’m going to slow down in my postings, and while I’ll keep right on blogging, I’m not necessarily going to be doing so daily. So if you turn up here in the future and there’s nothing new, please do go ahead and add comments to the old posts. And then come back in a day or two when there will be something new….
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: blogging, cyber-space, McKenzie Wark, Mister Trippy, MySpace, Stewart Home, time, WordPress
Posted in Web 2.0 | 34 Comments »
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
Sometimes I like to try fairly random web searches just to see what comes up; and this has the added bonus of confusing data miners. Doing this today I started with “empty blogs” coz like Hegel in the Logic I figured you should start at the bottom and work your way up (not that you’d catch me stoppin’ with the Prussian state!). Unfortunately the search for “empty blogs’ didn’t turn up much of interest. Personally I just can’t take supposedly ‘professional’ blog tips seriously, and especially when they include advice like don’t repeat yourself. As you probably know, I love repeating myself coz it’s so post-modern, as well as being side-splittingly funny. Oh and I also found a site hosting blogs that was berating users who’d opened up accounts but failed to post anything. A blog about this from the management team concluded with the message:
“You are not allowed to comment on this entry as it has restricted commenting permissions.”
Yeah, search for shit and you get shit. So I figured I might as well apply my alchemical knowledge to this search and transmute some shit into gold. I went for “empty blog’ and “Stewart Home” and got only one entry, but what an entry! A blog by top American novelist Dennis Cooper from 30 July 2006:
“Joe Mills said… if the competition was a ploy to out The Lurkers – it worked. Lots of new names – unfortunately not much info on their (often empty) blogs… Jeff said. Everyone here should check out lutherblissett.net. Dennis, have you heard of the Luther Blissett project? I think Stewart Home is involved…”
Yep, it looks like it is the all important comments that will pull the traffic onto your blog, coz they just produce such wonderfully post-modern random word combinations.
Moving on I figured I should reverse my search process with a double dose of shit by looking for “empty blogs” and “Kate Muir”. And it was no surprise to be told: “Your search – ‘empty blogs’ ‘Kate Muir’ – did not match any documents.” Yes, out of nothing comes nothing. And little Katie the Times columnist with an irrational fear of ‘drunk ventriloquists” really ain’t worth nothing at all! But all that has changed thanks to me. From now on when you search for “empty blogs” and “Kate Muir” you can come here… Like that old groover The Almost Fake Heraclitus observed way back when: “it is impossible to step into the same data stream twice…”
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: alchemy, blogging, data miners, Dennis Cooper, drunk ventriloquist, empty blogs, Hegel, Heraclitus, Joe Mills, Kate Muir, Luther Blissett, Prussia, random web searches, Stewart Home, The London Times
Posted in humour, Web 2.0 | 39 Comments »
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
As some readers know, the Mister Trippy blog was something I originally ran on MySpace. I was interested in exploring web 2.0 and that blog was one of the ways I did this. Eventually I deleted my MySpace profile, although a couple of cloned versions are still around. I also deleted my Bebo account because I found it boring. I’m still on Facebook although I don’t much like it… it seems like Twitter but for those who prefer to interface with computers rather than mobile phones. The key function on Facebook is the status, update it frequently and you’re a true Facebooker!
Recently there have been a couple of Facebook 24 hour blackouts organised to protest about the way FB treats those who use its service; i.e. suspending accounts without explanation etc. The most recent blackout in the middle of December 2008 appears to have been supported by several million FB users who refrained from logging on to their accounts over the designated period. When I deleted my MySpace accounts (I had m0re than a dozen) I encouraged others to do the same thing, but what mostly happened was people kept their MS accounts, with some also following me onto Facebook (some had been there before me too). It shouldn’t need saying these social networking sites don’t exist to serve us, but rather to gather data on us and deliver us up to advertisers. Therefore it is a bad idea to get too tied into any of them because there is no guarantee they’ll maintain the ‘service’ they offer. That’s one reason why I’ve now put this blog on here, aside from wanting to make my own site more Web 2.0. At the same time I prefer to bypass certain elements of Web 2.0, like click-thru advertising. For me, our own blogs on our own sites is the way forward to Web 2.1. I think it’s better for us to blog on our own sites rather than on the WordPress site because it keeps us decentralised; but if you haven’t got your own site, then go to WordPress.
The latest anti-Facebook sensation on FB is a “mass suicide” in the form of an organised mass account deletion. I like the basic idea, but the term mass suicide is a bad tactical error, it is too closely bound up with nutzoid cults to be worth using. Headlining it as a mass deletion might have meant less attention, but would have been an infinitesimally preferable syntactical choice. An even worse mistake was the decision to hype this ‘anti-event’ as “The Facebook Final Solution”. Realistically I don’t think it will garner a fraction of the support enjoyed by the 24 hour blackouts, and I’ll keep my account for now so I can continue to support the latter activity.
This how the organisers of the “Mass Suicide” describe their event: “FBMS – Facebook Mass Suicide. The Facebook Final Solution. Event Info Host: Internet. Type: Other – Ceremony. Network: Global. Time and Place Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009. Time: 12:00am – 11:55pm. Location: Everywhere. On February 4th every participant to this group will deactivate his own Facebook account by committing a ritual-synchronized mass suicide. In conjunction with the fifth Facebook anniversary the participants will choose suicide strategy declaring their independence from controlled and pervading social-emotional cliché. Join us!”
Today’s blog as I originally created it ended here. But I now feel the need to add a coda. Far more exciting than the above proposal is the way in which the precognition and ESP experiments I’ve been secretly engaged in are bearing fruit. They were secret because I hadn’t told Michael K I’d been trying to form a mesmeric link to his mind. I’ve been writing my blogs the day before I post them and then using mesmerics to project the content into K’s mind. The idea being that although he’s on the other side of the Atlantic right now, he’ll leave comments on the blogs I’ve just posted that actually apply to the blog I’ve just written but won’t post for around 24 hours. Now check this comment that K left on yesterday’s blog:
“I fell thru a wormwhole and ended up at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream because a UK cyberfriend, who I actually like, invited me to join Facebook. I’ve also found one or two people I haven’t talked to in years on Facebook, and wish I’d never met them again.
“Never paid a cent to join. Never bought anything through the site. Never bought anything advertised on the site.
“Overall, I find it MUCH less interesting than MySpace, mostly because people only link up with folks they already know. Pointless. I tried to make friends withan attractive stranger who was a fan of the Renaissance painter Massaccio and she responded to me “Excuse me, do I know you?” I mean, FUCK OFF!
“Personally, it doesn’t bother me that much that a bunch of rich, goofball righty militarist futurists out to abolish reality and enslave the universe own this thing. Sounds like Chicken Little panic. If the CIA wants to know that I listen to the Fall, watch Plan 9 From Outer Space and root for the New York Giants, they can call and ask me. I don’t really care if they know.
“Nor does it really bother me that a bunch of even loonier hedge funds and venture capitalists want to throw money at these guys. Remember the Internet bubble?
“Overall, it’s pretty naff and seems populated by wingnuts who like to send each other cyber-cheesecakes and give each other cyber-noogies. But Tom Hodgkinson needs to get some perspective, remove the duct tape from his window frames and take a deep breath.”
What is really exciting about this precognitive post is that it is almost a word for word re-post of a comment K left on the Trippy blog a couple of years back when I was running it on MySpace. Then it was a response to my re-posting of an article by Tom Hodgkinson about how Facebook was used for Data Mining…. Like wow, before you know it Michael will have full recall of that incident with that basket of skinhead gear and the dead pea fowl in the Charing X Station that happened to me rather than him! And this won’t be because we are different schizophrenic manifestations of the same personality, but because we are genuinely psychic! Try the mesmeric link baby, it’s a groove sensation!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, Bebo, blogging, cyber politics, ESP, Facebook, Facebook Mass Suicide, internet, Michael K, Mister Trippy, MySpace, precognition, social networking, Tom Hodgkinson, Twitter, web, Web 2.0, Web 2.1, WordPress, world wide web
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