Web 2.0, it’s so fucking bourgeois. Last.FM, MySpace, Facebook, WordPress, Technorati… look, listen, kneel, pray! Living off a feed, a personal metaphoric IV drip. Like heroin, it’s addictive but terrible for you.
Yes, you can prove you’re a beautiful unique snowflake, until a wall post comes out of the blue, In which Disdain is turned Inward, bringing together a superficial clusterfuck of existentialist dread. People gather information to quantify what they want people to think they are. Take a picture of themselves at a certain angle and in the right lighting conditions to reach the optimal quality of porcelain.
It’s odd how quickly information can now flow. I’m logged into MSN Messenger (now Windows Live Messenger, way to fuck up the branding) through Trillian. I have my Facebook account setup with a Hotmail e-mail address, so anytime someone on Facebook posts on my wall, comments on a picture of mine, or sends a friend’s request, I immediately get that notification at the bottom-right of my screen through Trillian. With two clicks I’m ingesting what was sent just seconds ago.
Meanwhile on my PC, Winamp is streaming out the current track playing to my Last.FM profile to update my own personal database of what songs I’ve listened to since signing up. That micro-database is merged into others to create a master database, whose information is sold off to the RIAA.
There are also Facebook conspiracy theorists (with an annoying voice) that believe your data helps manufacture terrorists in contemporary sexualized culture. I’ll have you know, I’m kind of a big deal. My friends and I get drunk, I post pictures, and we comment on them. For everyone to see. Of course these web sites will sell all this information to marketing organizations. Do you notice many ads on these sites? Why do you think they ask for your birth date? Did you read the terms and conditions when you signed up?
You can make claims that the current generation of the web is great for bringing people together. Instead, every jackass with an uninformed opinion formulates elongated banal rants about irrelevent topics. I’m trapped in a black hole of irony here, folks!
All in all, web 2.0 is pretty awesome for stalking.
