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the internet sucks
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webtards
Yesterday's article about Megan Meier, the Missourian 13-year-old who was cyberbullied by a crazed neighborhood mom until she hanged herself with a belt last year, made us think twice, again, about this whole 'internet' thing. 12-year-olds are saying things like, "Once you're on MySpace, you're trapped. You spend all your time online just trying to keep the negative stuff about you from spreading." And: "It's like I can't even do anything because everybody is sitting there with a cellphone just waiting for me to mess up." Seriously, guys, it is nice being able to look up movie times and look at LOLcats, but in general the whole thing should be shut down. [NYT]
Hey, did you know celebrities also eat food by putting food into their mouth, just like us? Some, like Hayden Panettiere even use forks and other utensils to transport the food from their plates to their stomachs! [Celebrities-Eating]
the internet sucks
Why Is There No Good Gossip Anymore?
"Now that J&J.com is over, did we learn anything from the experiment?" asks College Humor founder and deep thinker Ricky Van Veen, referring to the recent demise of Ricky's buddy Jakob Lodwick and Star Editor at Large Julia Allison's website and relationship. "Yes — that the gossip industry works on a model that can be disrupted. The gossip industry is built on second hand information, information embargoes, secret sources, tips, etc. But what if the people who are being gossiped about bypass that inaccurate mechanism and just make the information public in real time? ... That kind of universal transparency would put Page Six out of business." Right, if Lindsay Lohan was like "It's 10 on Sunday, I got a manicure today, I just relapsed and snorted a fistful of coke" at lindsaylohan.blogspot.com, Page Six would have nothing to write about. Ricky is so incredibly off-base. Except maybe, in a twisted way, he's also partly right? More »
i hate my generation
Selling Ourselves Is The Only Job Any Of Us Will Ever Have
There's this kid named Sean Aiken who is doing a different job every week for a year, Times workplace ponderer Lisa Belkin writes. "In the spirit of his generation — the one that brought us extreme sports, and made a mini celebrity out of a blogger who traded a paper clip for a house, and a mega celebrity out of a socialite who went on reality TV to move from job to job in 'The Simple Life' — Mr. Aiken has begun a most unusual search." Digest that for a moment, millennials: you are responsible for not only Paris Hilton and One Red Paperclip, but also extreme sports. Also, when it comes to the future of your employment, you are as fucked as a base-jumper without a chute. More »
office pirates 2.0
23/6 Is On The Internet Now
Guess what's live today? 23/6, the IAC-Huffpo comedy site that is pretty much two years in the making! Back in August, we pretty thoroughly trashed the beta. And now... here we are. (Launching a website on a Friday!?!? Do not ever do this, by the way.) So, really, what's to say? Well: Is there anything less funny than comedy? And: It's like Newser, but with irony! But we hope it's a huge success. We wouldn't want Barry Diller and HuffPo's Ken Lerer to lose any of their magical internet credibility. Also we hope the 23/6 kids don't hate working for 23/6 as much as we hear pretty much everyone currently can't stand working at HuffPo.
love
Prince Charming Searches For "NY Girl Of My Dreams," Or Just One Of The Million Other Sucker Girls Who Saw This And Were Like "Aww"
Illustrator Patrick Moberg saw the "New York Girl" of his "Dreams" on the subway last night and promptly made this webpage featuring a whimsical little sketch of her. She had "fancy braided hair" and "blue gym shorts" and was "writing in a journal" on the 5 train from Union Square to Bowling Green. Patrick describes himself as "skinny" and "not insane," a few inches above the spot on the page where he lists his email and phone number on the internet. It's like a Miranda July story mixed with Craigslist Missed Connections mixed with stalking mixed with everything that's wrong (and right!) about Boys Today. I'm confused about my feelings!
cautionary tales
Michael Wolff And Newser: No Contract, No NDA
Last night Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn was host to a party for Napeolonic media mufti Michael Wolff and former New York mag honcho Caroline Miller's new project Newser, the web 1.0 news aggregator. Ten years ago, Michael Wolff wrote Burn Rate; it chronicled the spectacular failure of his first web venture, NetGuide. Along the way, Wolff seriously burned his backer Alan Patricof and nearly everybody else he worked with. SoMore »
the internet sucks
Magazine Reading For Lazy Idiots
You know how all these magazines come to "your" house, but how "you" don't read them? That is the thesis of a Washington Post writer named Frank Ahrens and an entrepreneur named Jeremy Brosowsky. So now Jeremy has made "a Web site that creates 100-word abstracts of articles from dozens of magazines and rates them." Yes, Brijit review-summarizes articles from nearly 50 whole magazines and pays freelancers five dollars to write a summary. Well, we guess that's 20 cents a word. (In doing so, Jeremy employs hipster hottie and music-loving blogger Orr Shtuhl.) This all could be worse. Somehow. Or? You know what? I recant my previous opinions about the internet making people smarter and better readers. The internet is destroying everything. It is worse than T.V. and we should turn it off permanently.
Finally someone takes on the great evil of our time: SHELFARI, the stupid book-centered stupidly-named social networking site that auto-sends an invite to everyone in your address book when you're dingbat enough to sign up. I hate them so much and I scream a little inside every time one of these damned "DO WE LIKE THE SAME BOOKS?" emails arrives. They are basically social networking rapists. [NYO]
public ridicule
Tone-Deaf Howard Kurtz Most Hated By His Own Blog Commenters
Howard Kurtz is cracking up, people! That is to say, he used the word "D'oh!" in his Washington Post column today, in which he reckons that Comedy Central funnyman Stephen Colbert actually is running for the Office of President of These United States because: "Not only was the guy on 'Meet the Press' Sunday, but some pundits are openly debating how many votes he'll get in South Carolina." Poor Howie—his book on the network news wars is being touted as "the new cure for insomnia" by Harper's Washington editor, Ken Silverstein, who read Kurtz's blog last week and threw up in all our mouths a little. More »
From the mailbag, regarding Ivy League alum and douchey online dater John Fitzgerald Page: "I talked to John Page for 3 hours last night. So I called him.....a couple of times (and yes that is all it took). I don't know where to go with the information I have now after talking to him for seriously 3 HOURS. I will send you a copy of my phone bill a) if ATT has put it up yet b) you tell me where to send it, to prove what I am saying.... What do I do with 3 hours of information from the most hated/loved/entertaining/douchey guy on the internet today?"
We have high hopes for this brand new website! They're just at the manifesto stage now, but we suspect the fun will begin soon. [Your Blog Blows]
balls
Fameball!
"I believe I am an early-stage Fameball, and nothing I do or say will change my trajectory. I will attempt to use this to my advantage," Vimeo founder and Star Editor At Large Julia Allison doinker Jakob Lodwick has been quoted as saying. Upon hearing Jakob's self-analysis, our first response was: "we want to quit our jobs." After all, writing about how obnoxious it is that Jakob has declared the process of his fame-accumulation unavoidable is, inescapably, part of the problem. After all, Jakob defines the fameball phenomenon as "individuals whose fame snowballs because journalists cover what they think other people want them to cover." But all that doesn't necessarily mean that Jakob is right. More »
the internet sucks
Are You Less Successful Than A Block Of Cheese?
Remember "Wedginald"? It's that stupid wheel of cheddar cheese that the whole stupid world is watching mature on the Internet. Well, yesterday was a very big day for Wedginald indeed! Creator Tom Calmer cut the cheese to assess its maturation. More »
breakups
Jakulia Allodwick Split Sends Internets Reeling
My friend Alice likes to say that we're living in the Too Much Information Age, and you don't have to look further than any breakup between any two people who both have blogs to understand what she means by that. And if those two people are both Internet-created pseudocelebrities, you have the voyeuristically fascinating, oddly revelatory theme park of narcissism that is the Julia Allison—Jakob Lodwick breakup. More »
"WWW.CHEDDARVISION.TV: It must rank as one of the weirdest spectator sports, having attracted a global audience of more than 1.5 million in less than a year, and it involves, literally, nothing happening. People across the globe have been logging on to a website in huge numbers to watch a 44lb handmade cheddar cheese from Shepton Mallet slowly mature. Addicted surfers have, over the last nine months, been able to admire the Somerset-based cheese, named Wedginald by its creators. So far, 1,525,548 are registered as having logged on. " [Times (U.K.)]
