Since I’m too cheap (or rather “frugal”) to pay the 100€ for Blogtalk Reloaded here in Vienna, I will attend another blogging event today that’s probably quite as much fun as above mentioned 2-day event. Why? Because it probably won’t be filled with hundreds of people attending just so they can live-blog to their own websites. And it’s free.
Monthly Archive for September, 2006
It has been a rather long while since the last give-away I received. Actually, the whole experiment hasn’t been as vibrant as I had imagined, but hey, that’s what experiments are for. Tor prove or disprove. In my case, the hypothesis of the thousand give-aways turning me into a rich man has been definitely disproven. Mainly because I give people angry looks when they approach me. Hell, someone could be trying to hand me 10,000 € in cash, and I’d never know. On the other hand, looking interested in each and everyone approaching me would probably turn me either into a homeless or a madman. Or quite possibly both.
Today I saw someone handing out something that looked like more than just a leaflet, so I paced my way just right so she could hand me one of those packages. And here it is:
Only when I unpacked it I noticed that it was microwave popcorn. I don’t own a microwave, and my anti-social tendencies have provided me with a rather low number of friends who do own one: zero.
In case you’re wondering. “Bob” is a new cell-phone company. Its claim to fame? Very cheap rates and a marketing budget the size of Albania’s GDP.
I’ve learned that descriptive titles draw people to blog postings. Actually, I’ve learned that cryptic titles do the same, so it’s a collision of paradigms. Anyway, there are people who will ignore this posting, and there are those who just won’t be able to resist. And that’s that.
I’m returning from my unintended two-week hiatus with the happy news that I’m once again back in fair Vienna, and that I’ve just missed my one and only chance of seeing my bank account display actual credit. The translation-job company people transferred my final payment five days ago. I had expected them to transfer at the end of the month, so I didn’t check my bank account. I did today, and even though the numbers are at the wrong side of zero, I was happy to see that they actually had been on the correct side for about a day.
I had missed that day, and today I’m once again the proud owner of nothing, or rather, minus nothing. Which leads me to that one fateful question: If I was out of debt for a day, but I didn’t see it, was I really?
I love the Internet. I especially like the services that let me connect, share and compare my ideas, my ideals and my interests with others.
But there’s a dirty underbelly to that wonderful creation, and that’s the fact that there are thousands if not millions of people out there who are just not mature enough to handle the Internet. Case in point:
A guy posts a fake ad on Craigslist. He pretends to be a woman who’s looking for rough sex. The answers come in, many of them by married men looking for a fling, and what does he do? He posts the hundreds of replies complete with real names, pictures, phone numbers and sometimes work email on a wiki (read about it here).
Now, the problem here is twofold. On the one hand, single-handedly a guy is destroying not just people’s lives, but also every trust anyone could have in the Internet. Especially today, when services like 43Places, Twitter or generally Blogs are enabling people to open up to the world and discover what else is out there, pulling a prank like that, is one big disaster, causing people to retreat back into their shells and adhering to the “rather safe than sorry” mentality. And well, they have a point.
I remember posting about a girl who got entangled in a plagiarism affair, and even though I didn’t make it clear enough then, exposing her to the Internet was a cruel and wrong thing to do. This recent prank? About a million times worse.
The second part of the problem is the fact that a majority of the people responding to above linked Wired blog article, were in favour of the guy who did this. Here’s an example:
Wow. You seriously think it’s okay for married men to troll the internet for ass without any consequences, and that anyone who catches them, outs them and calls them on it are actually the assholes in such a scenario.
I seriously can’t believe you guys. You have no reasonable sense of morality whatsoever. And WE’RE the social conservatives?!
That you two have a forum like Wired to express your backwards, amoral point of view is supremely horrifying.
The fact that the commenter decided to post anonymously displays exactly what makes me hate the Internet: The fact that there’s always a mob of self-righteous cowards just around the corner, waiting to impose their backwards, pseudo-moral views on whoever they think deserves it.
The Pope’s in Germany.
I’m watching the broadcast of the mass he’s holding, and can’t get over the fact that so many people don’t think there are better ways of spending a Sunday morning than standing in the glaring sun and watching scores of men in silly robes reciting from a book that’s lost its relevance a long time ago.
On the other hand, here I am, watching it all on TV, marvelling at the scores of men in silly robes and wondering where all the good ghostwriters in ancient Jerusalem had been hiding when they were casting for that book. So maybe it’s not that bad of a pastime after all.
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