Category: rants

Some years ago I met a girl in a coffee shop in downtown Chicago. She asked me if I was on Friendster. I had no idea what that was and I didn’t really care, but I found out as she gratuitously explained. The idea of a social network had all sorts of wrong feelings about it. Everything from conspiracy theories about government and commercialization to the ill-feeling of the dramatic increase of Internet SPAM in my inbox.

Despite my reservations, I plunged into the new vast world of the social network. To my surprise, my fears were not realized, but that was only because I wasn’t fearing the right things. What I should have been afraid of was the fact that one place to “keep track of your friends” is not good enough. This is understandable, just like you need at least 2 malls in every area even though they both have the same stores.

The Friendster notion begat MySpace, which is where the social network began expanding rapidly to the point of critical mass. Then the suits had to get involved with LinkedIn. Then Facebook… Things were already crowded enough. I have plenty of places to surf around to and update my current status, or what I’m thinking, or how I’m feeling, talk about my favorite color… whatever. You know who cares about your Friendster/MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn profile? Just you. Well, Ok… I guess there is always room for one more. I guess it *does* stand to reason that you have to graduate MySpace (For high-schoolers and bands (who are in, or act like they never left high school anyway)) and move to Facebook (for you college kids). Then, when you graduate, you get to move on and be a professional “friend” on LinkedIn.

“Facebook helps you connect and share with people in your life”. Facebook should just put a bullet in my head and put me out of my misery. Honest to God, never before has having friends been such a burden.

LinkedIn could have been great. The idea behind it, much like the ideas for social networks in general (and the Internet for that matter) was initially pure. Now the problem is that every link made more or less dilutes the believability of the system. People don’t just link in to people that they think are worth a shit. There is some sort of unspoken obligation that if we’ve met in a work environment, that we should “link”. You don’t know me. So what is this really? It is just a huge network of people who have met other people for whatever reason. At the current trajectory, LinkedIn will contain 0.001% useful information by…. right about… now.

The Internet is exactly why America doesn’t get any work done.

Thank God for the digital camera. Through technological advancements made in the past 20 years we have eliminated the need for film, which costs money, and getting the film developed (aka processed), which also costs money. These costs limited people to trying to take good pictures. Without the digital camera, otherwise talentless, non-artistic people would have never “discovered” (made up) their “hidden” (non-existent) “talent” (not talent).

Nowadays anyone with $200 and a surplus of time can be a professional photographer – which means that they take scads of trite pictures and force-feed them to unsuspecting friends, family, coworkers, etc. For no real reason, all of these “professional” photographers feel like they need to build a “portfolio” so that they can “get their work out there”. By “portfolio” I don’t mean a real portfolio, I mean some canned website software that lets them have an image gallery with their own stupid banner at the top of the page. The less intelligent, less driven, less savvy, lower commitment “professional” that doesn’t have their own website, can turn to flickr. If are unaware, flickr is the the internet’s landfill for worthless images. Getting your work “out there” may lead to someone buying a picture (since not just anyone can take a picture of a pile of rocks), or getting hired to “shoot” a wedding or a local band, or maybe even have your work put on display (we’ll get to galleries soon enough).

On the artistic tip it gets better. Thanks to the power of photoshop, the hapless hacks (read “professionals”) “tweak” the photos and take them to new heights, fully unleashing their raw creativity and artistic talent. Most of these “priceless” collections of “art” will include pictures with the following gems:

– a black and white picture with one specific area or object that is in color. How profound.

– a close up of the most beautiful flower anyone has ever seen from an aspect seldom thought of. (NOTE: the flower documentation project is over, we have close-ups of all of them, and you’re not going to do any better.)

– a sunset, a beach, someone’s shadow, landmarks, roads, paths in a wooded area, abstract close-ups of random objects, a sad girl with a plain stare… fuck off.

Fortunately, since flash cards can hold about 42 billion high-resolution pictures now, the “artist” can literally take thousands of photos a day and sort it all out later (and use photoshop! yay!). There is nothing more inspiring than quantity. Why capture the moment when you can just capture everything? Then, put everything up on the web and make sure that everyone can see it. In fact, send out links to your masterpieces!

The real clincher is this: “Come to my gallery opening!” People want you to go to these piece of shit galleries and act like it is some sort of privilege to get to drink three-buck chuck and look at bad art. The “artists” also find it pretty facsinating that someone (obviously someone very, very important) could have a gallery. I’ve done a lot of research into this because I found it pretty hard to believe myself. What a gallery seems to be around here is an otherwise empty room with crap tacked to the wall. I can see why it is so astonishing – all the work and dedication someone spent to rent out a crappy space and put a few turds on the wall. Signing that lease really took some courage. Bravo! You are truly contributing to the artistic world!