The public nuisance that is TikTok

There are, hundreds of thousands of people publicly embarrassing themselves on TikTok. In the mad race to gaining 'likes' and 'followers', it is amazing how many people are willing to be the laughing stock of the word.

It is actually pathetic. And in a way, sad.

Why are they doing this ? Is it for money ? Does the playform pay ?

I looked it up. The answer, it turns out, is a humongous NO.

The service itself makes money, by placing ads. But the poor actors/dancers/jokers on them, can only gain virtual hearts.

Unless they are able to get sponsorship from brands, or move their subscribers over to a paying platform like youtube, it is just virtual fan worship.

There are a few, a handful of creators on the site, who have some originality. Are able to approach a challenge in a new , or different way.

But most of them are just ape-shit copy cats. And not even very good copy cats. The site, and its actors are just public nuisance.

I wonder if it is worth it all, becoming the butt of jokes that is the internet, all to enjoy that 10 second hall of fame.

People vs Facebook

 

First there was fake news on facebook. Now there is bad news. The fact that the tirade agains facebook has been trending for weeks now is sheer irony. Educated, literate, smart, intelligent facebook users just woke up theo the fact that everything they shared on the social media site was shared with countless companies without their ‘consent’ or knowledge. Bah, humbug !

Look at all the articles popping up on and around this topic. Each word in this last sentence points to a new, trending article.

All of these people blaming facebook still do not realize that the ultimate fault lies with they themselves. How can these people be so naive ? Facebook was always sharing user data, this was known for at least a decade now. That was their business model all the way. That one sentence on their banner “It's free and always will be.”, should have looked creepy, but people embraced it. The thought of a free for life service to manage your social life was too good to be true.

And so the revolt against one of the big-tech continues now, spilling over to India’s already  complicated political battlefield.

I have never been on facebook. Everytime I move jobs, or make new friends, one of the first questions people ask me is ‘what is your facebook id ?’. And everytime I say I am NOT on the network, I get this puzzled look. At work, in any social gathering, once even on a train. They find it uneasy that can stay away from this ponzi scheme of data.

I have always been wary of sharing personal information on the internet. Because I spend so much of my time building internet and integration applications, I know how unsecure the whole system is. I am also wary that I am sharing a tonne of information on google, but I am already dependent on them. The least I could do is to stay away from other networks. Everytime I have thought of getting on facebook, I read another article about a privacy breakdown, or data leak. Not being on the network meant sometimes I missed out on some friends and events, mostly in personal life. The upside was that I could sleep peacefully knowing that nobody knows my first pet’s name, or the name of my first school. (Back in 2005, a celebrity’s account was hacked because she shared too much information the wrong way.)

 

So, what next ? The problem with leaving facebook is that people still like facebook. And so people will still stay. We also have a short attention span, so everything will be forgotten. Facebook will get back its billions, and will also get a billion more users. And all will be fine …until the next bad news.

Hello from Orkut

 

Remember Orkut ? That nice little fast and simple social network from Google ? The creator of that social network has now created a new social network. Its called Hello. Orkut Buyukkokten announced the creation of his new social network on Orkut, where he gave a simple introduction and the reason for starting the new social network.

 

His original creation was much loved, until google decided to kill it. Will have to wait and see how the new venture is going to turn out. Personally, I am shocked to know that that simple domain hello.com was even available !

History of the Internet

 

Yes. We have finally reached there. The internet is now that old, that it’s history now has to be documented. Generation Z today take the internet and all its services for granted, that they have no idea how it began and how far it has come since the dial-up days.

The good folks at Internet History Podcast have put up podcasts detailing the birth and evolution of the internet to it’s current state. Its all there, everything from the creation of Netscape (remember Netscape ?) and AOL to the first search engines (Yahoo.) to all its numeous media sites. I specially found the episode on Yahoo interesting, given their current state of turmoil.

Its turning me nostalgic again. You will have to spend hours through this site to get the full picture. Happy browsing.

SNL: The Usual Suspects sketch . This is awesome !!

 

 

The Google-Doodle reporters

 

Google is now releasing more of their doodles, more frequently now. And this has opened up a few job openings, at traditional news agencies ! I couldn't help noticing that every time a new doodle comes out, all of the nations dailies put aside a separate article about it.

Here's some from a few days back. Google released a doodle on Hedy Lamarr's birthday.

And it can be seen that every paper in the world is covering it.

The individual articles are examples of worst news reporting. They are nothing more than content from the subject's Wikipedia article.

The NDTV article was written by a Aditya, and it seems all this person does is cover Google doodles.

Pathetic.

Pencil Sharpening is a Serious Business

 

Its amazing what you run into on the internet. Today I found out that somebody has opened up a very active business on the internet with the sole intention of sharpening…you guessed it, pencils ! I still don't recall how I landed there, but one thing led to another, and I was on David Rees's website: http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com/

Here is a guy who sharpens pencils for a living. And he dead serious about it. You can mail him your pencils, and he will mail you back the sharpened pencils as well as the shavings !

Check out this video.

 

Here's another one.