"It wasn't me" - Anon.

I dont have much to say on the subject of anonymity (but lets face it I rarely stay on topic so its hardly going to matter now is it?) but I will say this. While the Qian and Scott article 'Anonymity and Self-Disclosure on Weblogs' did have some interesting and valid points, my response to the overall concept of the article was a highly intellectual "well...yeah..."
It seems fairly obvious to me that if I didn't know who was reading this I would probably go ahead and write more about the consequences of the 'get a myspace' game and probably be not quite as enthusiastic about the word 'heck' (oh who am I kidding I'd be more enthusiastic about it). Actually I doubt I'd even pretend to be almost writing about new media communication. Actually i probably wouldn't be blogging at all.
One thing I realised I have been doing throughout my blogging is protecting the identities of everyone i have mentioned without even thinking about it. I can vaguely understand why i would refer to people as " a friend" etc, but the one that has me scratching my head is the notorious 'Fred'. Now why oh why would I protect the identity of somebody who's identity I don't actually know? My original thought was that i respected that since he's going for visual anonymity I subconciously offered him the courtesy of discursive anonymity (brownie points?) but deep down i know thats not true. Its an irrational paranoia that he will somehow stumble across my blog (who knows blog trawling could be one of his mysterious hobbies) and be highly offended that I've forgotten who he is after all those happy years we spent together at school.

Less chat more hat!

The Internet, it would appear, is on a mission to prevent me from getting anything done in my life. Its secret weapon? Chat. (oh...guess its not so secret, huh). Everywhere I look (or log in) there is chat! Facebook! Gmail! MSN messenger! (Okay so the last one might be kinda my own fault- but you get the idea).


I am constantly lured by little talking windows pretending to be my friends. And while yes, uni work and work-work are important, so is debating the pros and cons of having a jumping castle at my 21st (and subsequently attempting to think of a witty and hopefully rhyming name for the 'if you vomit on it you pay the deposit' policy - suprisingly difficult...yes I realise the name already rhymes a bit).

At least I feel that these uses of my many chat related possibilities will be somewhat less wasted than they were when I was 12 years old and spent many hours chatting to my "crush" on msn (wasted in the respect that these days I also use MSN to chat to his boyfriend Matthew).

Being someone that often feels envious of goldfish and their lengthy attention span (not an exaggeration, I have aimlessly wandered away from the computer no less than 10 times while writing the last 2 paragraphs), I tend to be relatively bad at chat. This is another thing that would not translate very well into real life - if I were to stop in the middle of a conversation and stare blankly at a person for 10 minutes and then say 'oh...i forgot about you' I think I would soon find myself in a 'nice facility'.

But chat does have its advantages. I have a friend that is not a fan of pausing for breath, but online she gets to breathe and I get to talk. Everybody wins.

I <3 txt msging

When I was a young whippersnapper in the early years of my highschool career, i met some new friends on holidays. When it was time to say goodbye, we swapped details such as email addresses, etc, but when I told them I had no mobile phone their faces fell. They stared at me with a mixture of fear and disbelief written across their horrified faces. "How do you live without a mobile?" one of them managed to stammer. I silently pitied them as I counted off the essentials for living in my head- food, water, air... nope, pretty sure phone isn't on the list.

Oh how wrong I was.

I no longer function without my shiny piece of plastic that allows me to send short pieces of text for a low low price of 25c per 160 characters. If I had to organise meeting places in advance...well lets just say my social life would suffer. Not to mention I might die. Like, of embarrassment or something...
I guess it really is an essential for living.

I guess I shouldn't feel too bad- I have it on good authority that there is a tribe in the Serengetti desert that dress in tribal clothing, and use cows as currency to buy spouses (my family could be 50 cows richer if my sister wasn't so darn picky) and yet they use mobile phones to communicate with other tribes. Globalisation at its best.

tell me honestly...does my blog look big in this?

Okay I admit it- blogging has been slightly more enjoyable than I expected. Mostly because it is a great distraction, and I am a great procrastinator- a match made in virtual heaven. "Oh I should do that important and quite heavily weighted essay...but my blog entries are important too..."

But being picky with what I publish (okay, you got me, not THAT picky) I have had to assign a lead investigator for the lame-patrol- the taskforce behind ensuring that what I write isn't so horrifically lame that I will be somehow deleted & smited by the blog-gods (this sentence probably bringing me one step closer to that happening). This truly was a job fit only for someone who has known me long enough to be able to say "yes, actually, those jeans make you look like a whale and if you buy them I will cut off your legs for your own good". This sounds drastic, but I have enough trouble writing a text message without outside input, let alone a whole blog.

Now I have to *shudder* comment on other blogs and encourage them to *shudder shudder* read mine. So hopefully she has done her job.

I seem to remember introducing this blog with some overly optimistic ideas about how this blog might contain intellectual thoughts and references to the readings. Apparently thats not going to happen.

Its my blog and I'll lie if I want to.

The Joys of Facebook Applications

Parking your car. A fun filled activity that you can enjoy with family and friends, right? Wrong. The only time I have ever 'invited' somebody to join me in parking was as a new P-plater, when reverse parking required some steering input from a more experienced friend. And yet I'm inexplicably addicted to the 'parking wars' application. Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that I am rewarded with new cars- in fact, I was given an ambulance just this morning. But then, ambulances are also not fun. I could have taken the convertible but I already have two green cars and that's just not good strategy. Shame really.
Gifts however, are fun in real life. Unfortunately, being free on Facebook means they are somewhat more frequent than in real life. Why, just the other day I was sent a talking eggplant. Gee, just what I always wanted. Almost as good as the dancing alien I got last week...
Recently, while Facestalking the previously mentioned "Fred", I discovered he had the 'addicted to Dexter' application. Having wasted - no thats not right- having awesomed my day off away by streaming no less than 7 episodes of Dexter (season 2) from surfthechannel.com, I felt that this was the application for me. Not only am I one step closer to knowing who 'Fred' is, but whoever is gathering my information is one step closer to knowing what to sell to me (don't tell them, but if it involves Dexter I'll probably buy it- novelty serial killer paraphernalia, anyone?) The best part? Knowing that Dexter is now in its third season in the U.S., I have actively avoided looking at it, in case it gives away the ending of season two. But I can't delete it- I'm a Dex addict.

Social Networking Wars (Video)

This pretty much sums it up...

(Not my own work [wish I was that cool] - just found it on Youtube and liked it)

Face it...

Hello, my name's Melissa and I'm a Facebookaholic...

words I thought I would never say #379. Yes, I also tried to resist Facebook. Yes, once again, i failed miserably.

I do not know what makes Facebook so appealing - its not the colours, the design, it sure as heck isn't the fact that 'the new Facebook is here!' (to paraphrase a friend's status update "I hate the new facebook and hope George Orwell writes a book about it"). It's also probably not the fact that it reports my every move- who is Facestalking me today?
And speaking of reporting, do I really want my liberal acceptance of friend-requests leading to my family friend's mother's news feed informing her that I commented on her daughter's photo, and if she'd care to read on she can find out the details of last Saturday night's adventure in Kings Cross? (although one would hope that she has neither the desire nor the time on her hands to find out). Hamish (of Hamish and Andy fame) has this to say about mothers on Facebook: "Its one of those things where Facebook is an online party, basically. Theres all the photos, all the in-jokes, and whilst everyone loves their mums, mums aren't invited to everything. Thats not what being a mum is. Its not an access all areas pass. I moved out of home so you wouldn't find out all my dirty secrets..."
But dirty secrets are certainly abundant on Facebook- whether posted by you or not, they're up there, for all 358 of your closest friends to read. Which brings me to my next point- being fairly new to Facebook I am still ignorant as to the etiquette (if there is one) of friend requesting & accepting. Having accepted several requests from people from school that I am pretty sure I have never had an actual conversation with I now wonder- how far does it go? Do I have a moral obligation to invite every acquaintance I have to access my personal information? Does the guy I sat next to on a bus 3 years ago have a right to know that my favourite colour is purple and I'm enthusiastic about cheese?
As a Facebook newbie I accepted a friend request from someone I didn't know (lets call him 'Fred'), on the basis that we had a lot of mutual friends. As these friends were mostly from school, I assumed it was someone that I knew, but somehow had temporarily forgotten. Unfortunately, his display picture is a car. I am at least 96.3% sure that he is not, in fact, a car. But beyond that I, along several of our 'mutual friends' am at a complete loss as to who this guy actually is, and how to go about finding out. Do I ask him? Do I Facestalk him? Do I create a Facebook group with the title 'Does anyone actually know who the heck this 'Fred' guy is anyway', and craft an extensive discussion about display picture etiquette as part of an elaborate plan to make him eventually be added to the group and learn his lesson? Or do I simply wait and hope that he- like many before him- takes a photo of himself that he deems deceptively attractive enough to trick people that have known him offline for years into thinking that he is ridiculously good looking and they just never noticed before?