Anon vs The Masses
joebeard
I was going to post this onto my journal, but I like to keep that rant free so I'm posting this here instead. Muahaha!
OK, everyone knows the old school playground tier system. The 'cool kids' sat at the back of the bus and the 'not so cool kids' sat at the front. These groups were then broken down further into the 'super cool and hard', 'uber geek' and who can forget the pairs of friends who never ever spoke to anyone else except their best buddy. It was all, frankly, total and utter crap which everyone grew out of. The cool kids are serving fries and the geeks are getting on with their lives.
Only now this idiotic system is being ressurected in the form of Myspace, Faceparty and the like. The cool kids are once again proclaiming to the world how many chicks they've shagged, cars they've crashed and vodka they've downed. The geek kids are writing gothic poetry and pretending they've got serious personal problems that go deeper than 'mum wanted me to get the groceries today, it's so unfair!'
Well I've got a message for all of these attention whoring idiots: Fuck off!
Leave our internet alone! An avatar and a username, that's ALL you need! If you're determined to make a name for yourself, at least put some god damn effort into it! Make your own website, be truly unique, else you're just one of the idiots on the bus again.
And no one cares about the idiots on the bus.
Cat Morley
I love how you can find out about the people you were at school with and if they grew up to be what you thought they would be.
zootm
[url=http://www.myspace.com/zootm:9d0fc]VISIT MY MYSPACE, DAMMIT[/url:9d0fc]. Seriously though, this is just bound to happen. As much as it'd be nice to be able to proclaim the internet as "our domain", the fact is that its greatest strength is in the sheer number of conflicting minds which are connected through it, and the lack of real filter control over those who make up that group. The best advice is, as it's always been, simply to ignore those who bother you. If they're being puerile asses, you don't have any responsibility to do anything about it. Just leave them to it.
Annie
The cool kids are once again proclaiming to the world how many chicks they've shagged, cars they've crashed and vodka they've downed. The geek kids are writing gothic poetry and pretending they've got serious personal problems that go deeper than 'mum wanted me to get the groceries today, it's so unfair!'
I AGREE! Personally, i've visited about one myspace in my life, and never bothered to go on facebook, HOWEVER: I find it's happening a bit with msn. Well, more like people are attention-whoring in their msn names, writing angsty little quotes, or pretty much publically displaying their personal life, and their ability to chatspeak. I've honestly lost count of how many times i've wanted to virtually strangle someone.
Okay. Now that I type it out, it doesn't have much to do with what you said, but there's dealing with attenion-whores in both.
Slight tangent; why do you think that annoys you so much? What is it about these actions that's so intrinsically irritating?
Slight tangent; why do you think that annoys you so much? What is it about these actions that's so intrinsically irritating?
Well it's because I advocate anonymity, those people are trying to change the internet into something it's not. They're trying to introduce their own class system (even if they don't know it) by giving everyone such a detailed identity that eventually the information people put onto the net will become second to who they are.
Information is just that - information, it should have nothing else attached to it or at the least, very little else. Once people begin to care (even subconsciously) about who the information belongs to/was submitted by, in a way that information ceases to be free.
I disagree. Information is typically meaningless without interconnectedness to other information, and although anonymity can be useful, it is most useful when it is optional. The fact that someone chooses to omit information is telling, as is the fact that they choose to release it.
Most things are manipulations of information in one way or another, and cliques are not any different. The fact that they appear in systems like this should not really be attacked, in my opinion.
Besides, information without an "owner" lacks authenticity, and I don't think there's many rational people arguing that the concepts of "intellectual property" (as concepts, rather than whatever you think about the actual implementation) are bad ones. People are right to be proud of their work; nothing is truly free, and that is exactly how things should be.
Kirsty_Legg
We never really get out of the high school groups and culture - its how people work. People like to categorise themselves for security, to allow them to say "i'm better than you because (insert reason)" allowing them to feel secure within their own heads.
take the cool kids at the back of the bus - they think they are above the geeky kids, their habits portray what they think is right. They are better than the geeky kids because they go out, drink, catch STD's because its a "playa's life" and probably what their parents did.
Meanwhile, the geeky kids think they are better because they are smarter and wouldn't do such stupid things to themselves, because in their minds, just like the cool kids, they think their ideals are the right ones. Go to university, do a computing degree, miss out on the fun the others are having?
High school will continue to repeat itself no matter what age you are. The internet is like high school - several different types of people all in the same place trying to carve out a path or a name for themselves, when all they really do is continue to argue about the same things over and over again.
The myspace forums are the best - even on the gaming forums (yes i visit the gaming forums, i dont care about being categorised as a geeky kid, as far as im concerned getting pregnant at 14 like most of the cool girls in my school did is wrong) people will argue day and night about why games suck, why games are good, which console is the best... its the same principle for everything - a bunch of different people arguing pointlessly because at the end of the day its opinion, and no matter how unique you try to be, there will always be someone out there with the same opinion as you.
However, to contradict myself, the internet is a good place because of this too. like you say, all you need is a username and an avatar and boom! you are a new person. Its bad? Can you honestly say that as a 12 year old boy you were completely happy with yourself and your surroundings? look at the opportunity this presents for the people of that age now - the most insecure time you will go through, and the internet provides you with total annonimity - now you can be exactly what you want to be and cover up all those unsightly blemishes on your personality - a younger, more insecure version of me would have jumped on that. In a way its bad because its clouding who we really are, but the other people on the internet probably won't care or meet you, so at the end of the day its still kidding yourself...
oh my god i blether the largest amount of CRAP...
People learn much more quickly when in contact with other people, though. That's kind of, in effect, what the internet is. People communicating faster and over more distance than ever before. Regardless of how clique-y it gets, and how much of a caricature of real life problems it becomes, it's still another step forward.
And when are we ever ourselves?
Courtney Couture
GAWD I HATE THAT!!
im glad that my friends dont cut me down for being myself
queenfairypants
'The cool kids are serving fries and the geeks are getting on with their lives.' I think after high school you realise this and if you never realised it in high school then you reeeeeally do realise it if you're the one serving fries. But life is no better and people are no better after high school, its just people, people are crap.
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