Saturday, October 13, 2007

Adventures in Web Nerdiness

People who don't websurf often wonder what gets me so addicted to the web.

Usually I get online to check email, Flickr, and Facebook. That, combined with my general curiosity to find out more, is usually enough to lead me onto 20+ other webpages that I didn't expect to get to that day. And if not, I end up checking the usual blogs of my friends and influencers.

So in a potentially embarrassing exposé of my web-nerdiness, I will share an example of what happened this morning (after a 14-hour night of sleep, to recover from my weekly all-nighter for school):

From Facebook:

I get notified that John threw a sheep at me, and Gary's pet has beat my pet, Squiggy, in a race.

For those who don't know Facebook, this sounds probably much more exciting and insane than it actually does. It's all virtual. There are no real animals involved.

Newsflash: Full-grown adults are online, playing pretend!!!!

"Throwing a sheep" is part of the "Super Poke" feature on Facebook. You can send a message to a friend's profile page that says they have hugged, petted, pinched you. There are an array of actions you can choose from, and one of them, of course, is throwing a sheep. The point of this "poking" thing is generally a mystery to people, but it seems like an amusing way to say "hello," express affection, or to maybe nudge someone that he/she hasn't heard from in awhile.

So, in an attempt to try and "Super Poke" a friend on Facebook from my own profile page, I accidentally "petted myself," thanks to the confusing interface of Facebook apps.

I actually had to delete the action displayed on my page, that said "[Misocrazy] just petted herself." Afterwards, I thought maybe I should have left it there, to be funny. But then I thought that might be a little rude among my ex-coworkers, but then again I am a student again, so why should I be so concerned?

Generally, though, I try to somewhat cautious about posting vaguely inappropriate things online, even if it's seemingly harmless. It's very easy to get stuff passed around, taken out of context and have it come back to bite you in the ass. I know it's happened to my friends. I call it the Lindsay-Lohan effect.

Anyway, it fascinates me, as an ex-web designer, that despite the confusing Facebook UI, I still enjoy using it. I think there is a sense of exploration and surprise combined with all the changing, updated content of my friends and favorite things all on one page that makes me enjoy it.

So then I checked my Facebook virtual pet, which is a squirrel named "Squiggy." I can see pics of the 3 most recent people who have "petted" him. Petting other people's pets earns you virtual "munny", which you can use toward buying food for your pet, which then increases your pet's mood and potential racing speed.

I noticed that they updated the user interface for the pets, so that each pet has its own page of stats, and you can easily see the pets of all your friends. At this point, I notice that, according to the stats on its profile page, Squiggy has supposedly been in 137 races???

I had no idea that my pet was living such an exciting life. So then I start exploring my friends' pets' profile pages to see what their stats are like. And of course I have to go and pet them all, to get money to buy Squiggy a cupcake, and a pumpkin (a new food for the season!) which apparently he thinks is "exquisitely delicious."

I then noticed the samples of favorite songs shown on my Facebook profile, and then I decided to update that with some new selections. So I searched for Architecture in Helsinki and The Bird and the Bee and added some of their songs to my profile.

When I found "Bird and the Bee," it was labelled with "local show," which meant there was a show coming up for them in New York! So I clicked on that and marked it as "Want to go." Then I realized you could post this on your profile, so I set that up, in case one of my Facebook friends likes them and wants to see it with me.

See? Sometimes online nerdiness leads to getting out of the house and meeting real friends. Really! --except, unfortunately, nobody I know in New York uses Dodgeball, which is useful or that.. (--Not that I even have time outside of school to be running into friends at bars and events.) I do still use Upcoming and iConcertCal to keep track of concerts and events, like tonight's Tokidoki party, but again, none of my New York friends are as e-nerdy as I am.

I did find a couple hipster/e-nerdy New Yorkers on iminlikewithyou last month, when I made an online "game" to get some ideas for Robot drawings (for homework inspiration). But again, school is destroying any time I have for a decent social life, so I haven't met them in person yet. (If anybody would like access to the invite-only iminlikewithyou site, I can send you an invitation.)

From Yahoo! Mail:

Then I check my email. LuckyKT sent me a link about the new Murakami skateboard decks, which led me to this really fun blog by Josh Spear. I decide to bookmark that (in which I discover that Yahoo's "My Web" service is getting migrated to Yahoo! Bookmarks??) and browse his other blog entries. One of them is about the new Play-doh bunny ad for Sony's Bravia, which I hadn't seen.

That of course, reminds me of the other cool Sony Bravia commercial, with the bouncy balls in San Francisco. Then I saw the other one I hadn't seen, with the awesome paint explosions. So of course I had to look those up and post all of these to my Facebook group for my FIT classmates, for inspiration.

Then I saw another entry on Josh Spear's blog about a nifty, hand-sized vacuum sealer, which I then email to my brother, because he's a big foodie and has every cooking device ever made. I decide that I kind of want one of these, so I check Amazon to see if I can put it on my wishlist. Sadly they don't carry the device, but it is sold at Sharper Image and Linens 'n' Things.

Then I was browsing my endless Amazon Wishlist, on which I had an import album by the 5.6.7.8.'s. I wondered if they had it on iTunes, so I checked that out and found a compilation album that features the band. I was browsing the user reviews and really enjoyed this one review that was titled, "what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (with mispellings retained from the original entry):
"It sounds so retarted but yet cool if you like the origanals get out if you like messed up songs stay in"
I decided not to buy the album, but I did end up buying a song called "Woo hoo" by the band, which I recognized being used in some commercial, probably for a car.

I could go on all day looking up stuff like this. One thing leads to another, which I end up having to share with friends, and my friends send me interesting stuff, and then I chat on IM, play Scrabble on Facebook, and then I decide to blog, and then I realize that I need to get out of the house. Like now.

But it's cold now! Maybe I'll go back to bed. After I check Flickr.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

I skimmed it but you sound just like me in your surfing habits. I've been having one of those kinds of days today. One thing that's helped me lately is this list of a bunch of the most popular social networks on Anil Dash's blog here.

10:54 PM  

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