***WARNING, CONTENT MAY OFFEND, BEST NOT TO BE READ BY THE OVERLY SENSITIVE OR THOSE WHO PRETEND CERTAIN PHRASES DON'T EXIST...WHEN THEY REALLY DO, HARDCORE EXIST....ALL THE TIME***
**ALSO THIS IS NOT WRITTEN TO ANYONE IN SPECIFIC...SO RESERVE YOUR OFFENDEDNESS...IF THAT IS IN FACT A WORD, WHICH IT IS NOT....TECHNICALLY...BUT I JUST USED IT, SO IT IS A WORD... KIND OF**
*POINTLESS THIRD WARNING*
As you may already know, blog-hosting giant Blogger.com just dropped its latest feature allowing internet users everywhere to creep like they've never crept before. Play Blogger allows users and the general public alike the chance to actually watch images being uploaded to the sites database in real-time. What does this mean you ask? Well since you're too incompetent to click the link I just provided, allow me to retort: it means you can sit there and watch a consistently updated slide show of images from bloggers across the globe.
So if like me you have your blog settings jacked on open, Jane Watson down in Memphis, TX can be setting your overexposed face as her background. AWESOME! Not only can people save the images you have up on your blog, (to doctor in amusing and incriminated ways) but they can also click your photo of you and your friend Carlos (who they will later claim is your migrant slave) and be taken directly to your blog.
The privacy perks that arise with this new tool are too numerous to mention. Actually they aren't really...here's a list of possibilities in case you were wondering:
1. Upside: People can sit and watch other peoples lives like some sort of television show that lacks any sort of continuity - instead of actually living out their own lives!
Downside: The people on television meet some sort of standard aesthetic requirements, the people on Blogger Play do not. Also some images are less interesting than the carpet in my apartment. Actually they just really fucking suck.
2. Upside: People can save your face and print it on t-shirts with amusing slogans like "I fought a bear and lost"
Downside: A lot of people are crazy
3. Upside: Even more randoms can find your blog
Downside: Some people you don't want finding your blog (i.e. Billy the-crazy-hobo-with-a-laptop....who may or may not exist....or your boss when you talk some smack after a terrible day of work...or your mom.... "well then why don't you just keep that stuff off your blog?" because I don't, smartass.)
What are people saying about this new cross cultural mosaic? I don't know, I haven't really read up, nor will I. However I feel that this wondertastic feature, though jammin at first, is really just another attempt to capture the fleeting attention of the online community in general. It is interesting to feel for a moment that you really are a part of something greater and that we are all connected....but then again, who cares?
Do I really give a fuck about what Larry the shoe salesman ate for breakfast this morning? No, I actually want to punch him in the face and my computer screen for displaying the image. Then again no one really has a gun to my head forcing me to creep, creep, creep.
The truth is, like so many previous online fads, this is bound to get old fast. Destined to be one of those crowning achievements that everyone will forget about by tomorrow, if they even know what it is today, Blogger Play will go down in history as yet another superfluous waste of life, just like myspace, and soon to be facebook.
Like television, the web was built to educate. Luckily, just like the cancerous box in every living room, it too has deteriorated to just another means to a lifetime of uselessness.
Though aesthetically speaking (not on behalf of the photos themselves but...) the setup is well done. It's sleek, streamlined and functional (though the point of which has already been dissolved). And while were on the actually upsides of the feature, Blogger Play is an interesting idea. To be fair to its designers, this technology was never sold as something life altering, but simply something that is "fun, often beautiful, but above all, compelling."
HMMM, compelling? Perhaps that's a little too ambitious...unless they mean in the sense that it compels people to upload more crappy photos (some are interesting). To be honest, my time on Blogger Play made me doublethink about what photos I'll ever upload to this blog....temporarily....not that I really care (don't judge me cause I'm awesome). Also, I saw a total of about 20 photos (about 30 seconds) before I got bored and started writing this. Perhaps that says a lot because that is 30 seconds of my life that I'll never get back... kudos Blogger.com Staff, kudos. (Now get back to the drawing board for some other way to compete with real life!)
If I had to give some sort of arbitrary grade I'd give Blogger Play an E for effort, but a D for staying power. They've created a service that is so far from functional, yet is able to draw the attention of someone so utterly amazing as myself for the amount of time it would take me to steal a bowl from Tim Horton's (I'm not saying I necessarily stole a Tim Horton's bowl, I'm not necessarily saying I did not....possibly).
Maybe you agree, maybe you don't. But we can all agree that Eva Longoria looks better now than she did 15 years ago, and after all....isn't that what we're really thinking about?
Time it takes a blogger staff member to read this: 45564939494949493 minutes.
Time it takes a giant tool to calculate how long that is in rational terms: GO GET LAID
*IF YOU ARE OFFENDED, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE READ THIS FAR*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment