I Hate Livejournal

anonymous flaming

2006-06-22T01:22:00.000-07:00

Although this blog has sat dormant for a small time, we recently recieved a comment on an old entry. This comment is an exemplary example of a phenomenom almost uniquely enabled by the internet - anonymous criticism. This special phenomenom, sometimes called flamming, ranges anywhere from playful slander to death threats by taking advantage of the very concept of an avatar. This egomanical notion is enabled by the kind of empowerment the internet can offer to the individual, but the object of an anonymous flame is to escape the consequences of offering a criticism.
IT is important to consider that the comment in question is not so much a criticism as much as an insult. Someone, who we are now assured is not the author of the wesbite their name is linked to, obviously has enough time to lay out blanket commentary on websites; but does not feel responsible to offer any insight from their summary judgement. Should it be any suprise to anyone making these kind of blanket, self-important, accusatory flames were attached to a LiveJournal user?

Naturally, any good flame stokes another to burn. Here's how we originally broke down the comment by commenting on the link offered by their OpenID (the self-identified link to a LiveJournal):

"I'm willing to bet you parse comments like this in what i will loosely refer to as your "blog", so i would suggest deleting this post before you are caused but a single moment of introspection.

now then because someone was smart enough to link me here, without the courtesy of explaining their blanket statement by means of writting comparison, i will just have to make a few presumptions.
1.) it's really easy to criticize the work of somebody else without offering your own work up for criticism.
2.) whereas my blog is a public, open, communal blog availible for any number for contributors, your blog is a friends only livejournal
3.) i can only assume that your work is of a self-indulgent nature, designed by someone who feels self important enough to talk about themself above all other matters in the world
4.) i have a live journal. and i'm not afraid of commiting thought crimes in it. i'm also not a lurker
5.) who has enough time to read random blogs on the internet anyway?
6.) Oh wait, this is LiveJournal. The place where everyone is in a clusterfuck of egomaniacal naval gazing. I know your life is so hard sitting behind the doors of class-priviledge (internet connection), what with other people's blogs like mine to read. Sorry to disturb you from your usual brooding and trying to grab people like me to pay attention to you.

in summary, A.) who the hell are you? B.) what crawled up your ass? and C.) to be fair i published your comment, because I can take criticism. of course, i am commenting back because i have no idea what i was supposed to learn or improve through this given criticism."

Maybe we were giving the troll exactly what they wanted, but it was far more of a criticism than the one offered...

How to Quit Myspace week - Day 3

2006-05-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

Cancel your account

Did you see what I did last? I gave at least a week's notice that I was leaving MySpace! Now that I've let everyone know that I'm leaving and how to get in touch with me (BTW a few comments wouldn't kill ya), I can safely proceed in doing the dirty work of cancelling my account on MySpace.
According to the MySpace FAQ (question number #69 appropriately), canceling your account is a simple process. In practice, MySpace has made finding the right set of links difficult - after all, they need you to stay and bring in still others yet into the community. Now that you're committed to canceling, i'm gonna tell you how to the leap.

You actually need to be logged in to MySpace to cancel your account (practicly ironic). Take a last inventory of messages if you want, and re-post your final e-viction notice through appropriate channels. It will take 2 days for their server to process your cancel request, so your friends will know. Stay on your "home" page, the one you are sent to when you sign in.
Look at the top of your home page, and in the settings table (in the top left corner, underneath the navigation bar) click on your Account Settings. On that page ("Change Account Settings") there should be a link that says Cancel Account, found just above the "My Account Settings" area. Click that and we're on our way.

The Cancel My Account Page Will look like this:

They'll try to sucker you in one last time to stay on. DO NOT follow the notification link - it is only there as an excuse to keep you because you know all the e-mail you get from myspace notices is running your life.

All that is left before the next step is to click the Red Button that says "Cancel My Account". The button is directly under the text box offering you to explain why you are leaving - this is your chance to give them a piece of your mind.

If you're interested, here's what I had to tell them in the cancellation comments box:

Now that you've pushed past all urges to turn back by pushing the Red Button that to begin cancelling your MySpace account, you will have to wait for the next step. Congrats on your decision to become MySpace free; sobriety will make a man do much stranger things than sobriety...You've almost quit!

How to Quit Myspace week - Day 2

2006-05-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

Serving E-viction Notice

Since the main factor drawing people into using MySpace is keeping in touch with or possibly making new friends, its also the momentum that keeps you from being able to cancel your account. Once you've discovered the hell whole that myspace has become, you become reluctant to quit only after considering what it would be like to cut off communication with so many of your "friends".
The solution to this problem is to serve a period of notice, in which you can provide your friends information in where else to get in touch with you. I took a period of two weeks serving my e-viction notice to my friends, but you might not even need that long. The important thing is to let your MySpace friends know that you are leaving the MySpace community, and giving them the information on where to find you either online or off.

To give them notice, you can actually take advantage of the tools MySpace provides. For instance, you can use the bulletin system to post multiple notices throughout your notice period (if your friends are sure to see it there). Alternately, you could post a final entry in your blog there with the same information. If you only need to give this information to your personal friends or some select group, you could leave comments on their page to the effect of your leaving.

As a precaution, I served notices to more outlets than just MySpace with the same message. Here is what my notice looked like as an example of a good e-viciton notice:

(click image to enlarge)

I think my message is a good example. I provide all online outlets on where to keep in touch with me, an e-mail address (carefully formatted so spam bots won't be able to copy it), and most important an urge to message me in system about how to get in contact. This last part is probably the most important, so that people get to contact you immediately after reading the message. In this way you can still take advantage of the MySpace system.

Don't forget to give your friends notice first before just taking down your MySpace - you wouldn't be using it if they weren't.

How to Quit Myspace week - Day 1

2006-05-14T21:54:00.000-07:00

I have recently kicked the little friending game called MySpace. I believe there are many good reasons to quit MySpace, but many people haven't even thought how they might escape from this bottomless well of communication. I am one of those people.

This week I have prepared a short guide to quitting MySpace in the hope that you might join me in the liberty only canceling your myspace can provide you. Remember that just because any system is pervasive in it's reach does not necessarily make it a good system (see also: Live Journal). You will keep the friends who really care about your life, even if they can't "friend" you anymore.

Save the Internet

2006-05-14T18:21:00.000-07:00

even more about Net Neutrality

i don't think i could have said this any better. YOUR REPRESENTATIVE WILL VOTE TOMMOROW ON THIS BILL IF THEY HAVEN'T ALREADY, SO LET THEM KNOW YOU EXPECT ISPs & TELCOMS TO KEEP TREATING EVERY SITE EQUAL TONIGHT!

http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet

Net Neutrality

2006-05-11T23:41:00.000-07:00

What is "net neutrality" you ask?

This is a problem for all of us, not just bloggers looking to find an audience or spread their ideas. By rewarding the sites that can afford to pay fees to the telcoms/ISPs, we discourage the spread of information from the individual and prevent future innovation by putting the burden on the upstart. We're talking about a fundamental shift on what makes the net so great - free and open communication.

For example, what would happen to important links you'd like to make - like if I were to cross-post with a LiveJournal entry. Wouldn't you get discouraged (like you do with all things LiveJournal) with the slowdown, and maybe give up on viewing what the blog thinks is relevant (nay, necessary) information?

Contacting your representative is the least you can do. In just a minute you can do just that, and find out about what else you can do by clicking the link below.

The mood system

2006-05-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

One of the aspects that seperates LiveJournal from more formal blogs is it's focus on personal disposition. To augment this individual focus, LiveJournal has a "mood" system; every entry can be attached with a prefabricated emotion (from a pull-down list), or users can describe their mood in their own words. It looks like this:

As you might imagine, the mood system is a popular feature.

Enter MoodViews.com. The website database combines the mood data of some 10 million LJ users (they say 80% of posts attach moods) to form emotional trends. Much like Technorati uses blog tags to uncover the subconcious collective disposition of bloggers, MoodViews reveals correlations between world events in a socio-emotional context. Every ten minutes MoodViews is able to publish the new pervasive mood amoung new LJ posts as a continuously updated image file. For instance, here's what's cooking right now on LJ:

As a result, some collective moods have revealed cyclic behavior. In addition, LJ users show many of the same reactions to world events as other bloggers, albeit through their moods rather than some measurable content. By logging the data in MoodView, the creators can predict the mood over a period within some general accuracy.

For more interesting graphic analysis of LiveJournal's "mood", please visit our friends at MoodViews.com

More About Consumating

2006-05-06T18:25:00.000-07:00

Internet Rockstar, the founder of Consumating, found this entry, and sent me a message about it on Consumating. I have no idea how he found my profile, but since he's too shy to say it himself I'll say it for him:

"Glad you liked the IFC thing. hehe. It aires tomorrow on the network.

I saw your links to Consumating from your blog. I like how you described it - the only dating site you can use with your partner. heh. We are trying to move away from the dating site thing, but that's a great way to describe it. good job!"

Be sure to look for him on the SXSW news doc over on IFC this weekend. Here's a link if you'd like to watch it online.
Otherwise, feel free to join the party already!

Social Networking Alternatives

2006-05-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

Are you lonely, but feel like you're perving around MySpace? Wipe away your stain encrusted soul and join the party over at Consumating. Home to the young, the hip, and the geeky, Cosumating is the dating site even couples can enjoy together. With questions, contests, conversations, and pictures all over you'll find no shortness of socialibility. Not mention a streamlined tagging system and interface, so you'll never see those cracked out page designs ever again.

I've already been around (See below), but see for yourself!

LJ Hatin'

2006-05-05T03:25:00.000-07:00

It's not just LiveJournal users who complain about LiveJournal, but legitimate bloggers and people who still use HTML for their blogs.

LiveJournal's In-house, old school developers agree - LiveJournal's code was unnecesarily difficult to modify from the begining.

Likely Former users agree that LiveJournal leaves them emotional crippled and plagued with a constant flow of posting remorse.

This site offers more non-scientific graphs (like your humble narrator) to prove a (straw-man) point - MORE PEOPLE HATE LJ THAN BUSH.

But really its the user experience that tells us LJ puts them in a bad "Mood". This story tells us that LJ users drink their weekend away by their computer, Harry Potter livens their moods collectively, and their blog probably lowers their sperm count.

Myspace update.

2006-05-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

I spoke too soon. It seems MySpace has updated their Terms of Service to give them the same authorization SOLELY for use on MySpace.com . This obviously changes the whole ownership of Intellectual Property question for the social networking site. In the previous case, MySpace had re-written the TOS (as you consent to no matter when you sign) to include sweeping ownership of user submitted content.

This is a retraction (though MySpace is still a dangerous system).

scientific method

2006-05-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

using the latest in computing/interweb database technology, we have generated this graph of the job market for those interested:

if you really want to feel eviserated, try adding "student" to the search criteria. otherwise, the whole site tool is a blast to use (click chart above to do so), and feel free to send me your favorite results
I am a professional journal(blogger)-ist.

in other social networking blog news...

2006-05-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

From the Myspace terms of service:

"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license..."

Overcompensating has more on the question, and will actually make you laugh out loud (or else)

Life Little Triumphs week

2005-09-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

Over on my livejournal, I'm trying a little experiment called "life's little triumphs". I want people to think about what they're thankful for, instead of being motivated by misery and confusion. Even through the power of blogging, you will never find solutions to sadness on the internet. The internet is a psychadelic drug of CIA crack ring proportions.

But anyway, people have to remember something seemingly insignificant that made them feel better when it happened. awesome things. It is a sneaky way of getting some positive action on elJay, instead of the usual emo fest.

Problem is, people are dragging their feet over this proposal. And you'd think people would want to see write something positive every once in awhile. If they can't get through to saturday, with little story everyday until then, then all bets are off. sucks for them - i don't get to share my story if that happens.

Well, new and unknown Blogger Friends, you are needed to save the LJ from itself. Only you can save a generation of cyberpunks...
let me know

I really do hate Live Journal, but

2005-09-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

This blog was created for one purpose. I project I have abandonned.

I was going to have a "blog war" between a live journal called "ILoveBlooger" and this blogger called "IHateLiveJournal". it was to be a relationship break-up in cyberspace. Both blogs would assume the stereotypes of their respective blog choices. LJ would talk about how sad they were, and get jealous, and wonder why it didn't work out. Blogger was going to talk about the futility of continuing this arguement, attack the maturity level of LJ, and generally be as cold hearted as possible.
Would have been fun to read, i know. i even had plans that they would (gasp) discover each other's blog, and a fake flame war would begin!

but alas, my own writing took presidence. i even had trouble doing that.

so, here i am with a blogger account, and the charade is nearly impossible to maintain without starting over again (the cycle of time in said performance art would be shattered).

i hope to double post my good writing that doesn't belong in LJ here. And just maybe if you play nice, I'll make original posts as well.

Live Journal is so immature

2005-05-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

words cannot how much i loathe live journal. i'm just too old for this, you know?