You just KNOW Jane Austen, were she alive today, would be one of those irritating people on Facebook with five hundred friends, all of whom she PMs regularly, curating groups, Superpoking with the best of them, and annoying the HELL out of everyone who knows her.
Behold:
What’s more, it UPDATES, so keep clicking on that News Feed pic!
Stolen from CasaAz
cross-posted from FearlessCity, just so you know what I’ve been doing with all my copious spare time recently. And a damn good thing, too, because with all the extra exposure that site is up and down like a toilet seat.
As most of our readers know, Fearless City Mobile was all over the Heart of the City Festival this past weekend, streaming live video interviews and interacting with people all over the Downtown Eastside, incorporating their texted questions into the interviews as they came in.
As some of you also know, interest in our coverage of the closing gala was so intense that it temporarily overwhelmed our servers and our site had to go for a little “time out.” While that’s flattering, it’s also a bit of a problem.
Fortunately, because the internet IS, in fact, a web and not just a series of straight lines, we were able to work around it.
I was at home on Twitter, bouncing between the FearlessCity account and my own (because I have no life) and Irwin was in Ottawa and on Facebook when the site went down.
Irwin had used his phone to take a video of OUR streaming videos on his laptop, and he posted it to Facebook and put that news out on his Twitter stream.
I saw that and immediately emailed him, telling him to put it on YouTube (yes, I know the quality sucks, but at least YouTube is wide open to the public, whereas Facebook is restricted). He did, and once it was posted I put the news out on the Fearless City Twitter stream. Then I signed out, signed into my raincoaster Twitter stream, and re-tweeted it (don’t laugh, that’s what it’s called!) and Irwin put the news out on his stream as well. That makes a total of about 400 people who got the news within a half-hour of the whole thing happening.
The video became, if memory serves, the 68th most viewed Canadian video in the Arts & Activism category, but it only has two comments, so what are you waiting for?
And here it is:
Three scenes captured with Nokia N77 mobile devices streaming to the Mobile Muse 3 platform and projected on a live screen at the Closing Gala of the Heart of the City Festival in the Downtown Eastside. Also streamed to http://live.fearlessmedia.ca/ and archived on fearlesscity.ca.
At the live screen people were able to send txt msgs to the 3 interviewed subjects.
(The audio on this video switches between all three channels.)
Nov 9, 2008
Faceless on Facebook, faceless on Twitter, faceless on WordPress, on Gravatar, on OpenID (which, it must be said, I’ve never gotten to work anyway) in fact, faceless anywhere is a powerful statement, especially in an increasingly-overpopulated world where everyone wears their MySpace pruneface at all times, lest they be caught on CCTV looking humdrum.
Just ask Anonymous.
With that in mind, here’s your chance to make a powerful statement and reflect on the importance of cultural expression and how much a part of your life it is, whether you think of yourself as a cultural creative or not.
From NativeEarth.ca:
It only took 2 days for our “Faceless” facebook group to reach close to 2000 members.
Here’s what it’s all about:
This is a roll call to all people who believe that Arts and Culture is a part of their lives and is important outside of the political spectrum. This is for artists, families, parents, friends, co-workers, relatives, enemies, neighbors, acquaintances, to all people who enjoy the arts and culture of this country and feel that it must be nurtured and cultivated. We need to send out a message to our politicians to let them know that there are more of us than they think and congruently that we are not going to vote for any person or party that plans to cut funding to arts and culture in the impending election. This is for all of us; people from all sides of the political landscape. This is not about what party you belong to, but how you feel about arts and culture in this country.
So on Monday September 15th (the first day of Parliament) we want you to do one thing. It’s very simple. It will only take a small amount of your time. About the same amount of time it will take to cast your vote for the candidate you feel best represents what you want.
This is it: We would like you to leave your profile picture blank for the day. Use your faceless profile picture as a symbol of the loss of identity Canadians will experience if funding to the arts is cut.
Be a catalyst for change and put your best face forward on election day, but on Monday September 15th leave it blank and send a message so that we can count how many people have joined the fight.
signed
Well, I’ve never been one to dip a toe in when I could plunge over the cliff taking an entire bus with me instead.
So…Facebook.
MistressCowfish suggested I start a group, because after Friending people, Grouping is teh hawtness on Facebook, which sounds to my elderly ears like a rave gotten completely out of control, but whatever.
I have Grouped.
If you’re on Facebook, you’ll find me at The Deadbeat Club (cue Metro‘s bitter humour…).
Inspired by glorious deadbeats throughout history such as the authors of Frugal Indulgents, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Quentin Crisp, Vincent Van Gogh, and that guy … you know … that guy whose name I can’t remember, who destroyed his priceless collections and then killed himself rather than let the collection fall into Ceasar’s hands. See, if Boris would join the group he could tell us who that was.
Yes, surely in a Deadbeat Club there’s some room for rich, sore losers. Especially if they’re buying.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Undecided, please raise your glasses, mugs, or sippy cups to our anthem:
The Deadbeat Club by The B 52’s
I was good, I could talk A mile a minute, On this caffeine buzz I was on We were really hummin' We would talk every day for hours We belong to the deadbeat club Anyway we can, We're gonna find something We'll dance in the garden In torn sheets in the rain We're the deadbeat club We're the deadbeat club Going down to Allen's for A twenty-five cent beer And the jukebox playing real loud, "Ninety-six tears" We're wild girls walkin' down the street Wild girls and boys going out for a big time Let's go crash that party down In Normaltown tonight Then we'll go skinny-dippin' In the moonlight We're wild girls walkin' down the street Wild girls and boys going out for a big time Anyway we can We're gonna find something We'll dance in the garden In torn sheets in the rain Chorus Oh no! Here they come The members of the deadbeat club
raincoaster 