Operation Global Media Domination: The SurveyMagnet Edition

Total Information Awareness

Scientia est Potentia

Well, it’s been a bang-up start to the weekend what with all the pointless internet drama and all. There may only be three commenters, but they’re refreshing their screens like maniacs to see if I’ve replied yet. Well, if McDonalds can say “it’s all parts” I guess I can reconcile myself to “it’s all pageviews” but it’s still rather lowering the standard around here. At least the Albanian trolls were fun.

But this isn’t a post about that! Oh no! No indeedy! It is a post about my interview going live on SurveyMagnet. This was originally scheduled for weeks and weeks ago, but a two month medical leave rather puts a crimp in such self-promotional activities. Anyway, the interview is up, and I’m happy to promote it here, particularly because it’s all about Lolebrity, a blog I’m trying to pimp out to a positively JonBenet-ian level.

A snippet:

4) What is the craziest/most interesting exchange you’ve seen in your blog comments and why?

Well, there are very few comments on Lolebrity, except for the pervs looking for more Miley Cyrus boobs, but on another of my sites I did once get into a flamewar with the nation of Albania, and when it comes to the dialogue on the existence of fairies in Devonshire, well, I’ve got a corner on the market, with over 2000 comments on that particular raincoaster.com post.

Well, what are you still doing here? Go over there and read the damn thing; how am I supposed to get famous if you don’t? Eh?

 

Fandumb, Freedom, and Fanarchy

yes, this is they. they is us

yes, this is they. they is us

Well, you can see by the comments on the post below that pointless internet drama is the catalyst for ever-more-random explosions of other pointless internet drama. There’s some sort of magnetic effect going on, in which the drama calls out to drama queens, and so you have a post about a fanblog at WordPress.com being taken down generating a rather heated (or icy, depending on your point of view) and completely unrelated 24 comments about the infallible superiority of the Echo commenting system, my unspeakable rudeness at DARING to insult the commenting system, etc etc.

So I wonder what kind of comments this will generate. It’s a comment thread on Gawker in which the whole thing was discussed again. The Baroness and I have nothing whatsoever in common, but we’ve always gotten along pretty well because we respect one another and don’t believe the world needs to be filled with people who are identical. I mean, how do people who agree on everything even HAVE discussions?

I think Monet died before he really hit his stride artistically.

Yup, he sure did!

End of conversation.

Anyway, here it is for good or ill. By the time I wake up tomorrow, this post will probably have 789 comments about how it’s all my fault NASA cancelled the space shuttle program or something. It’d be typical. Putting it over the jump so this page doesn’t become endless, but all the good stuff is there, INCLUDING THE DEADLY ASSASSIN.

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Non-RebloggingNonSociety

Scaaaaary 404

Scaaaaary 404

Not “Non” as in “Nony” or “Non” as in “NonSociety” but “Non” as in poof, gone, doesn’t exist anymore.

The Website Formerly Known as Reblogging NonSociety is no more. It was suspended or deleted for a violation of WordPress‘s famous Terms of Service, and let’s just say that the self-hating Julia Allison fangirl community is taking it hard.

Some vague background, because really all I know is vague background here, and for that, I am deeply thankful. Having gone about as far into fandom as one can do without getting a restraining order, I know the level of passion involved, and it’ll be no stranger to anyone who saw that rather unfortunate DeNiro movie. No, not the Fockers, the other one.

Anyway, there’s this person, Julia Allison. She’s an actual person and a decent writer, but she behaves like a fame-seeking android at all times except when she is renouncing fame and talking about settling down with her Rich Geek Boyfriend Du Jour. Let’s call it 99.842% of her life that the android is dominant, and the remaining 0.158% of the time she’s really only link-baiting Gawker.

Nick Allison, by CVXN

Nick Allison, by CVXN

Gawker. Oh yes, Gawker. This was all their doing, actually, because long ago, in a city far, far away, they plucked an obscure little blossom from her mundanity and bestowed upon her that most current of currencies: fame.

Fame Whore

July 6, 2010 Urban Word of the Day

An individual who is willing to do anything, regardless of how humiliating or demeaning, to achieve notoriety.

More often than not, this involves appearing on multiple reality television shows and/or having “private” sex videos “leaked” to the press.

Behold the reason for Julia Allison’s first major coverage in Gawker:

Julia Allison dressed as the Condom Fairy, Halloween 2006. Oh, has it really been four and a half years?

Julia Allison dressed as the Condom Fairy, Halloween 2006. Oh, has it really been four and a half years?

Actually, the condom dress was the most awesome thing she ever did. That took audacity, even for a sex columnist in a gimme paper, and before you laugh reflect on the fact that upon some very flimsy corsets great empires have been built.

Thus, from Gawker to Wired: not just to an article in Wired, but to a COVER STORY in Wired, on how to become an internet fameball (the gender-neutral, sex-trade-worker-positive replacement for “famewhore” that Gawker favours). And, really, who better to explain/personify/demonstrate it? Five years ago she was bumming around New York looking for a gig, any gig in front of a camera or behind a keyboard and within three years she’s on the cover of a Conde Nast glossy, albeit the geekiest one. She even got some venture capital for her website/lifecast/whoknowswhatthehellitwasreally, NonSociety.

One does not rise so far, so fast, without attracting several things:

  1. attention (see all of the above for details)
  2. fans
  3. haters
  4. that very complicated, metamorphic and unstable substratum of people who hate themselves for loving you and express this by dogging you, as publicly and as frequently as they can.
Haters Gonna Hate!

Haters Gonna Hate! Hatters Gonna Hat!

It is of these last that Reblogging NonSociety was formed, back in the early days of the interwebs, say, January of 2009 on Tumblr and, after a short, sharp shock in the form of the blog being taken down by Tumblr, on Blogger. After awhile, they decided to move to the (obviously superior) WordPress platform.

So what happened today really shouldn’t come as any surprise.

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Letters to Santa

Santa's on the move

Reindeer are SO 20th Century!

So this may be a weird post, but nonetheless it’s a post that captures the Zeitgeist of right this very second: Kardashians and soul-seeking all on the same page. Actually, I think I’ve spared you Kardashians this time, as I’ve covered actual out-of-the-closet hookers instead.

First, Adult Letters to Santa:

Solitude doesn’t only afflict the elderly, however. “I’m 37 years old and I’ve been deeply unhappy for too long,” one woman wrote this year, in a letter excerpted last week in Montreal’s La Presse. “All I really want for Christmas is to find my soulmate.”

This week, a letter arrived from a soldier-in-training who will be a father for the first time – yes, there are Santa believers on the battlefield. “Dear Santa, I haven’t written to you for a long time. I hope you haven’t forgotten me,” he wrote. “This year for Christmas I ask you nothing more than to give health, happiness and love to my young family.”

Filtered through the missives is a hint that, at a time of shifting religious faith, something of the Christmas spirit exerts a powerful pull on at least some Canadians. Like the middle-aged mother who wrote to Santa to say she was broke, they’re looking for a bit of hope at Christmas.

“Dear Santa, I bet it is a rarity for you to receive a letter from a 50-year-old woman,” she wrote. “This is the first year in my life when I have been unable to give Christmas presents to my family. I am on unemployment this year and my son has not been able to find work. As a mother, it hurts to see my son fighting the frustration of not having work. That would be the gift I would give him if I could this year: A job so he would feel better about himself.”

She said oil in the furnace and saving up for winter tires would have to take priority over gifts. “It has made me rethink Christmas and what it really means to give from the heart.”

Santa, she added, “I am writing to you in the hopes of finding the little girl I lost. You see, no matter how old I get, I know she still exists just as you do. You represent the kindness of a soul who carries himself from home to home in the blink of one night to make wishes come true … most of all you represent the hope that anything is possible. How can I not believe in such magic?”

And now, back to our regular superficial programming:

where the HELL has raincoaster BEEN, man? (raincoaster)
Mr Depp, those clothes have to come off IMMEDIATELY (Ayyyy)
Jon Hamm has a suggestion for you (lolebrity)
Screw that! (ManoloFood)
The world’s greatest horror movie in the works (AgentBedhead)
Justin Timberlake is high-caliber (BusyBeeBlogger)
Mel Gibson sees MUCH younger woman (CelebDirtyLaundry)
Does Julian Assange make your wiki leak? (CeleBitchy)
First couple to fight over eyeliner custody in court (EvilBeet)
Liz Hurley gets the hell out of my way (GirlsTalkinSmack)
Yes, in fact, that IS So Wrong (HaveUHeard)
Look who got the Royal Snub! (INeedMyFix)
John Stamos, recovering nerd (SeriouslyOMG)

 

Blog o’ the day: Hungover Owls

hungover owl haz a kweschun

hungover owl haz a kweschun

An owl after my own heart. Go now, and check out the astonishingly and amusingly creative Hungover Owls blog.