YES

Just don’t, kids. It’s not good to “want a voice,” and you shouldn’t be tempted by quizzes about flirtation. Plus, idle words are evil. Fortunately I am a professional and a specialist so I get to have one if I want.

About a third of what this guy says is dead on, of course. Blogs are blather, the “current mood” is ridiculous, and posting quizzes and babbling about nothing is in fact a huge waste of time. Point taken. He allows email and instant messaging, though. You’d think that recent events would have given him pause especially about IMing. My favorite paragraph:

Then there is the language itself. Here is a mild example: “If your a hater then whateva i dont have time 4 your negativity in my positive world.” Phrases such as “screwed up,” “I dunno,” and every type of swear word are commonly used. One blog by a young twentysomething in a splinter used the acronym “OMG,” which is a shorthand way to take God’s name in vain.

Wasn’t Tyre incinerated because they kept saying “I dunno”?

This year Tamara and I traded wet rags.

trick or treat

No.

The world is falling apart at the seams. Find something important to protest. It shouldn’t be hard.
“Fans of the novel and/or the movie are, obviously, at a greater advantage because they already know what “Remember, remember the 5th of November” means.” So will all residents of Great Britain and the Commonwealth and anyone literate in English. Put down the Gameboy and read a book without pictures someday.
Shut up shut up shut up!

TWO SUBCULTURES RULE STILL NOT BROKEN

There’s always a place where they meet. Today’s examples:

: http://community.livejournal.com/atheism_x/profile

: http://community.livejournal.com/cf_christians/profile

LJ stalkeriffic security things they maybe should change

Poking around my account while logged out, I notice:

1. You can always see when someone has updated via the “mode=full” version of the LJ profile, whether you’re entitled to see the entry or not.

2. In the archive/calendar view you can see how many entries were made per day whether you have to access to the entries or not. If you click the number of entries for a day on which no posts are accessible to you, you’ll get an error that says there aren’t any posts that day, but you already know that’s not true.

and that’s enough stalking myself, i’ll go blind etc.

didja hear didja hear didja hear

There should be a word for news items which you know, the moment you see them, will be all over your LiveJournal and blogroll and feeds for the next 48-72 hours and will then become part of the permanent library of events referred to in these media.

Not “meme” but something that is more specifically limited to stories reported in mass media. Examples have varied in real-world importance from gigantic world-changing disasters or triumphs of good over evil down to pointless “oddly enough,” but there’s some characteristic quality that I can’t identify here that makes me say “well, I’ll be seeing this shit on my friends page for a while now” when I see it.

My guess at the moment is that certain stories flick a switch that makes us say “I must tell others about this and talk about it” that is independent of any judgment about the importance of the story or the likelihood that you’ll be the first to tell anyone about it. I bet if they ever localize this thing in the brain it’ll be in the same nerve bundle as whatever makes us talk about the weather.

The item that sparked this line of thought was of course today’s death of a minor celebrity, which is almost entirely at the trivial end of the scale, only escaping the “oddly enough” silliness because it involves one actual death of a human.