Charlie Brooker news report video on how to report the news. Marvelous on how he uses the format itself to deconstruct it. One reason I love this video is that after you watch it, you can never watch a TV news report the same way. Even funnier is the “literal” youtube comment:
This is a hastily formulated comment poorly expressing righteous indignation, utterly failing to appreciate the potential irony and humour of the exchange and instead retaliating in kind.
Here are hilarious cartoons by Oatmeal.com: How to Suck at Facebook , why I’d rather be punched in the testicles than call customer service, how a web design goes straight to hell, why I believe printers were sent from hell to make you miserable, and things bears love. The comic genius behind all this is Matthew Inman, a Seattle web designer and SEO whiz.
It’s interesting: although the links for this particular post are basically ok (with the exception of a few cuss words here and there and the random offcolor detail), over the years I am growing a lot more puritanical about the kinds of things I link to. It started with facebook and the knowledge that friends and my mother (and even a priest friend) could conceivably be viewing it. I really don’t care about other people’s opinions; I just tire of having to deal with complaints. But even on my blog (which no one ever reads – that is, except for suckers like you), I am feeling puritanical pangs; maybe I should just pass on providing the vulgar link just this once.
It’s not vulgarity itself that bothers me (especially if it’s artfully done), it’s the fear that I may unwittingly be helping to legitimize vulgarity for its own sake. I am not a parent, but I understand the parent’s inclination to keep vulgar language and violence from young people; there’s so much time in life to enjoy vulgarity and crudeness; if your self-appointed role is to highlight remarkable things on the web, shouldn’t you be spending more time seeking out things which are not vulgar? Shouldn’t I be trying to bring an elevated tone to my blog?
Oh, you disagree with me? Well, fuck off!
I’ve noticed that chronic oversharers finally reach a point where they pull back and hide those small little embarrassing things they put on the web. (I’m more of an egoist than exhibitionist, but luckily nobody really cares about the stuff I put online—if I did a sex tape and released it online, I have a feeling no one would bother to download it). consider myself more of an egotist than an exhibitionist, but my feeling is that no one one really cares about anything I post online. After they achieve a certain level of fame or importance, they inevitably hide those little embarrassing things they put on the net. I have published a lot out there – including a small bit of semi-scandalous stuff. The great thing about blogging is that if you haven’t blogged about it in the last 4 days, nobody will know about it unless you call attention to it. Often you forget about these things yourself – and it can be a shock when you stumble randomly upon it 5 years later.
I worry less about losing control of my identity than having an identity which is completely unnoticeable.
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