"Those morons at CNN/FoxNews have screwed it up again. They report that the Republicans/Democrats are trying to enact a spending cap on congress, but we all know that the Republicans/Democrats are idiots and the FoxNews/CNN has it right when they say that the Democrats/Republicans are always right...stay tuned..."
This person is an unpaid spin doctor for their political party and, as far as they are concerned, social networking exists so that they can beat you over the head with their ideas. (Mind you, everyone talks about politics, from time to time, this only refers to certain extreme types.) This can be a very difficult sort of person to deal with. My wife and I once met an interesting person at a party and we both got to know her on Facebook. I quickly got rid of her, because her nice facade turned into scathing political rants aimed against me when she found out who I was voting for. I don't miss her. Lately, your "pundit-ish" freinds have either been telling you that the Tea Party is full of crazy circus freaks, or that the Democratic party is full of Joseph Stalin clones.
It's nothing like this.
2 - The Exibitionist
"brkfst - creal/mlk hav2hrrytday #breakfastinahurry"
"drove in2 mailbx lol"
"tking shower #imintheshower"
When Twitter became popular it brought us many forgettable trends (that, unfortunately, found their way onto my Facebook wall). This involved uploaded pictures of breakfast foods and documenting the length of one's facial hair every day. All day. Sometimes forty pictures a day of nothing but what the person ate and the state of their desk at work. Boring. The worst part is that my friends with interesting things to say were being covered up by posts about what show someone was watching every half hour. (Until I cleaned house.)
These days, tweets (I cringe at saying that) are followed by hash tags like "#ihatehashtages" or "#pleasepayattentiontome." This is done so that someone can filter messages out and find messages that appeal to them. But do people really go to Twitter and search for tweets labeled "BoredAtTheAirport" or "FastFoodDilemma?"
3 - The Builder
It's not certain what compels them. It's not money, or fame, but something more intrinsic that awakens in certain people a desire to contribute something creative and unique to the world through the internet. Bloggers, website builders, and wiki contributors are building the internet that the rest of us are using. When you google "Goths in Heat" you find this website about kids wearing goth clothes in the summer. Why? Because someone decided that there should be a place for this sort of data on the internet. The person who writes about Sawyer on Lostpedia may not benefit from doing so in any real sense, but now we all know that Sawyer was the only character to have his picture on the back of all six of the LOST DVD cases. Is this information important? Not really.
Thankfully, the baby is too young to be scarred by season 6...
Will future generations laud our internet writing as we do the literature of Hugo and Thoreau? Probably not. But the internet is there because of the builders.
Of course, I identify with this group. And, for my trouble, it's brought me a whopping $6.00 in revenue and hardly any visitors. (Not to mention, quite a lot of death threats from an old post that I had to delete.) Why do I waste my time? Why do cats purr? We may never know.
Even my cats know that I'm lame (and aren't afraid to let me know).
4 - The Spectator
This person isn't writing a blog, they rarely update their Facebook status (to the dismay of those who are addicted to social networking...er, or so I'm told), and they don't know how to contribute to a wiki. However, they do know your Facebook status, they read your blog, and they've seen all of the pictures that you have uploaded. The people aren't stalkers (unless they are) because this is the sort of data you put on there for people to see. However, they're not interacting - they're just on the sidelines. If it were up to them, the internet would be empty, but, thankfully, the other groups are here to create an experience for them. This is good; it takes all kinds, and without the spectators in the stands there wouldn't be any room on the field.
5 - The Mime
According to the dictionary, a meme is a "cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation)." It's not a word I had to know before the internet. However, not long after social networking became a big thing, some genius found a picture of a goofy looking cat and wrote the words "I can haz cheezeburger" over it.
I don't get it, but it spawned a trend of captioning cat pictures with adorable phrases. Some of these pictures are clumsy attempts that have no humor in them, but others are well done.
Anyway, just like some kids at school run around finding out "what's cool" and mimicking it, some internet users only live to imitate the latest memes. Sometimes a new meme pops up and everyone rushes to claim that they were the first person to draw Robocop on a unicorn or caption sad pictures of Keanu Reeves. It's a race to see who can influence the underside of the internet the most. Many internet users never see these things. They are the lucky ones.
Who did I leave out? And who are you?
4 comments:
There's a 4th type, I'm afraid I'm one of them. These people can't help correcting your spelling. "Hugo and Thorough"? Er, the 2nd name is spelled "Thoreau".
You could call these pests Editors. But fortunately there aren't many of them around any more.
Thanks for the help. I've fixed the spelling on Thoreau. Of course, I can't help but correct you; I think you meant to say that there's a sixth type, since I already listed a fourth.
What about Stalin circus clones on both sides? That might be more enjoyable than the current folks in power. If not, surely they would all assassinate each other with confetti buckets in a short span and we could try something new.
Brilliant!
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