Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
In order to really take podcasting to the next level, the natural social habits of people needs to be included in how they are found, downloaded, listened to, and discussed afterwards. New approaches, new software, and a new frame of mind will be required to do it. What follows are a bunch of ideas on how each anti-social aspect of podcasting could be improved.
File under “Not Read Fully Yet, So Don’t Consider This An Endorsement, More A Reminder To Myself To Check It Out Later.”
I am far more amused than I should be that the first two tracks of Madonna’s new album are apparently called “Unapologetic Bitch” and “Bitch, I’m Madonna.” Jealousy and the sudden realization that you’re entirely outside of the zeitgeist, thy name is Madge.
The realization that I have little-to-no interest in responding to someone’s fandom for something I have little interest in by saying “[X] is terrible, you should like [Y] instead!” has made me consider whether or not I truly “get” Internet 3.7 or whatever we’re on right now.
(This comment brought to you by “Why have I looked into the MoffatHate tag, am I an idiot?”)
We’ve deployed additional officers throughout Ferguson in order to make absolutely certain that residents feel sufficiently harassed and intimidated,” said St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar, assuring locals that officers in full riot gear will be on hand to inflame members of the community for as long as is necessary. “It’s absolutely essential that the people of Ferguson have full confidence that law enforcement is committed to antagonizing them every step of the way.
(It’s The Onion, of course; few other things would be so truthful right now.)
Competing on The Voice is notoriously dehumanizing and exploitative experience. A copy of a contract leaked last year that revealed the show tells its contestants they must agree to be portrayed in ways that are “disparaging, defamatory, embarrassing (and) may expose [them] to public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation.”
They also have to agree to allow producers to portray them in a “false light.”
Are some people really so desperate to be “discovered” that they’d sign a contract that demands that of them? Really? (Looks around, realizes the answer is definitely “yes.”)
(Quote above from here.)
Several years ago I began asking my friends and family to tell me their passwords. I had come to believe that these tiny personalized codes get a bum rap. Yes, I understand why passwords are universally despised: the strains they put on our memory, the endless demand to update them, their sheer number. I hate them, too. But there is more to passwords than their annoyance. In our authorship of them, in the fact that we construct them so that we (and only we) will remember them, they take on secret lives. Many of our passwords are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry. Often they have rich back stories. A motivational mantra, a swipe at the boss, a hidden shrine to a lost love, an inside joke with ourselves, a defining emotional scar — these keepsake passwords, as I came to call them, are like tchotchkes of our inner lives. They derive from anything: Scripture, horoscopes, nicknames, lyrics, book passages. Like a tattoo on a private part of the body, they tend to be intimate, compact and expressive.
First, maybe the head of the police union would like me to stop pointing altogether for the safety of the community. If that were truly his concern, that my pointing constitutes gang activity, then his outrage would have been sparked long, long ago. Because as the internet has documented in great detail, I point. I point a lot. Lots of people point. The President. Bill Clinton. Stephen Colbert. Babies. It is the earliest form of human communication.* I’m not going to stop pointing.
That option doesn’t make sense.