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A WORD FROM OUR FOUNDER
No more facebook At some point during my birthday I either aged ten years or became ten years younger…I can’t decide which. All I know is during the course of the day I became reacquainted with an old friend called “lack of patience for superficial bullshit”. Superficial bullshit
can apply to friendships, relationships, t.v. shows, music, what have
you. you know what superficial is right? Like it’s shallow in content and or merit.
That’s not Webster’s definition but you get the idea. I’ll give you some
examples …Chinese food from the mall=superficial food.
Clay akien = superficial music, sitcoms from any of the big three
networks = superficial. These
things are all well and good if you want a boring pointless existence
that when you get to the pearly gates St.Peter says “look,
I know you didn’t kill anyone or cheat on your wife but…you could
have been eating great Chinese food from that weird hole in the wall
restaurant, listening to black flag, and watching deadwood…I’m gonna
have to pull the big lever on you just for missing out on so much.”
Now I’m not an
elitist and I know there is only so much time in the work week to seek
out new things. I’m just trying to get across what I mean by superficial.
And since I’m not ready to bitch about specific superficial
crap/assholes…I will turn my ire on facebook I’m done with
facebook…I gave it a good honest try and I think it’s stupid.
It’s superficial. It’s
lying to yourself about what you are doing.
Facebook is clay akien and myspace is black flag.
I’m going to sound over the top here but I mean what I am about
to say. If art imitates
life…if the point of art is to capture some element of life...then
myspace is as beautiful as any Picasso, da vinci, or micheal angelo.
I’m 100% serious. Each
page is a glimpse into that persons life.
There are videos, songs, goofey images, the arrangement of the
“top friends” gives you a glimpse into what they want you to know
about them, the comments page, the pics they put up, the blogs and
posts, are all a glorious kalidascope of that individuals train wreck of
an existence. On face book
everyones page is the same, you can’t add music to it, you can’t
change the background, you can’t post a blog…that's right!
no blogs!
The main method of expressing yourself is typing a ten word
thought on your “wall” that other people will then respond to with
ten words of their own. The
venue simply does not allow for anything interesting to go on.
It is the rotary engine of social websites…a great idea until
you try to customize it. There is no real
exchange of ideas, emotion, or mood, it’s as dry as missionary sex
with you’re your wife of ten years when your both sober.
HO HUM. And like I
say I tried to make it interesting. it’s one advantage is that the
“wall posts” lend themselves to updating an event as it goes along
more so that myspaces “posts” or “blogs”.
But there is no way of knowing how many people are reading it and
if you have 7 different posts about what’s going on you will more than
likely just be confusing people who don’t realize they need to scroll
down to ten am when you started it.
Which brings us to
myspaces real advantages and what we’re really there for.
We are there to spy on each other, act like a bunch of juveniles,
and search for companions while being pissed at the world for how
miserable we are AND/OR to let everyone know we are cooler and hipper
then the next person. That’s what social networks are for PERIOD.
They are not online diaries…”had
a great day with the family!” that’s
something you put in the diary, not on a social network wasting an
obscene amount of technology. Actually, now that I think about it, if “had
a great day with the family” is all you
have to write down you don’t even need to put it in a diary.
What if anne franks diary went like that “hid
from the Nazis today L
“.
Boring right?…give us something to read or don’t bother. Myspace Cleary shows
the last time the person logged on so if you want to contact that person
but they haven’t logged on in three months…you know to try some
other route. Myspace shows
“read” or “unread” on the mail you sent.
So if you sent a letter to your ex boyfriend telling him you are
pregnant and you see him getting on an airplane…well you can simply go
to your “sent” mail and see if he read the letter and will not be
returning or if it is “unread” and he’s probably just going out of
town for the holidays. Myspace tells you how
many people are going to your page and how many people read your blog…which
for someone in my position is very helpful.
AND it’s helpful for the other 98% of myspace that thinks they
are going to be famous artists, musicians, actors, ect.
(but Doug those people drive you
nuts!)
yes...they do drive me crazy, using basically a science fiction
amount of technology that is the world wide web to push their petty
ridiculous dreams…BUT not as much as people using that same amount of
technology to post pictures of their kids playing soccer. at least
those other people realize the possibilities of the world wide web. Facebook is merely a
glorified office e-mail. My friend posted a pic of his kid the other
day…now if facebook didn’t exist…I would have gotten that pic
anyway because he has my regular e-mail.
So facebook serves no real purpose there. Myspace is easier to
use to find someone. If I
have a friend named Joe Smith…and I type in Joe Smith on either page
I’ll likely get 2000000 Joe Smiths.
But on myspace I can type Joe Smith Milwaukee Johnny Cash (cause
I know he’s a big Johnny cash fan and probably mentioned it in his
page) and the search will narrow significantly. the vast majority of
facebook pages are set to private (it’s default setting is private) so
on facebook I would have to send an e-mail to all 200000 joe smiths
asking them if they are the right Joe Smith…where as on myspace I
would just click on a page and when my computer froze up because he has
16 johnny cash videos posted at once I know I have the right guy.
In the time it takes to reboot my computer I will still have
contacted him sooner than if I was still typing out e-mails to random
joe smiths on facebook. And the people on
facebook seem to be oblivious to the fact that social websites are for
lonely bitter people. You
putting up wall posts saying “my husband
is awesome! Bought me flowers today!”
or “cuddleing with hubby…ya!”
is really narcissistic and out of
place. Would you send an actual e-mail to all of your friends that
said that? Of course not
because you seem a-insane b- like you are trying to cover up the fact
that your about to get a divorce or c-like an asshole.
So…why post it on your facebook page?
I boils down to - why are you here.
These sites are outlets for self expression and if the best you
can come up with is “joe blow is tired at
work”
how about you save yourself the trouble and just tell your wife
when you get home…you know the one you love so much?
maybe it's just
me, maybe this just isn't my game and i should take my ball and go
home. So…bottom line, I won’t be on facebook anymore other than to
post links and I’ll be back on myspace more and I’m going to finally
figure out how to allow people to comment on my blogs on the arsenic
lullaby website. By the way…if you didn’t hear we have been putting podcasts up on the website. Haven’t really plugged them much because we’re just sort of getting the hang of it. But the recent ones are decent enough now that I think anyone who reads the blog will get some laughs out of them. also we have stuff up on ebay right now, clothes, artwork (voodoo joe eating a mermaid) and
don't forget the happy drunk x-mas party in new jersey dec 12th...www.angrydrunkgraphics.com
(i'll get you a link for buying tickets in a day or two.)
comments? concerns? myspace.com/douglasarseniclullaby www.arseniclullabies.com
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