Tag Archives: Internet

Do You Really Have A Voice?

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People claim that the Internet has given everyone a voice; a place to express themselves in any way they want to.  There is an inherent flaw with this philosophy though.  The reason why throughout human history, up until now, only a select few were given a platform in which to express their views and ideals.  Much like the yammering of a busy concert hall right before the lights go down, no one distinct person can be heard.  I’m sure they’ll all claim they have something important to say, but the truth of the matter is that while that may be true, what they are saying is lost in a sea of droning.

This translates well to the atmosphere of the Internet.  With billions and billions of websites and blogs (this one being no different), some may actually have something worthwhile to say, to express.  However, despite it’s legitimacy it will be buried and forgotten within the mess.  Quantity over quality devalues all ideas down to the lowest common denominator.  What you have to say is no more important than the next person’s regardless of legitimacy or validity.  So, does this mean that by being so plentiful with content that perhaps the Internet has no content at all?  Perhaps by being so saturated with voices, much like the concert hall, it becomes nothing more than a meaningless hum of complacency.  Even this post, being no different, will be lost within the mess of anonymity.

At the concert, the only voice that will be heard will be the person on the stage, but only once everyone else shuts up.  However, if everyone continues to talk, claiming their opinion carries the same weight or more than the person next to them and no one even bothers to take the time to listen, even the person on the stage will simply be part of the collective droning.  As humans we’ve mastered the ability to communicate.  What we’ve yet to master is the ability to listen.

Meaningless Messages

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spamI know I’ve mentioned this before so pardon me for repeating myself. I must comment on the ridiculousness of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the like. While all of these tools can present useful and helpful ways for groups of people to stay connected, I find that the power these sites offer is greatly overqualified for the people using them. It’s like using a bazooka to unlock a locked door. Sure, it’ll open the door, but the power of the tool being used far outweighs the need.

Sites like Twitter have amazing potential to be used as real-time connections to people and devices. It allows simple, short, and precise messages to be broadcast to groups of people or even a single recipient. The problem though is that while Twitter is a monumentally powerful tool, the people’s hands this tool is used in most frequently use it to broadcast nothing more interesting than the frequency of their bowel movements. I guess the biggest flaw with social networking sites isn’t the technology, but the people who are using said technology.

People feel the need to say anything, anytime, to anyone, regardless of importance, relevance, or even accuracy. They just type in anything. I don’t expect everyone to live an exciting life full of intrigue and drama, but be mindful of who you are sending these messages out to; the entire world.

“Well, my friends care!”

That is a statement I hear quite often when I bring up my complaints about social networking sites. Well, let’s focus on this for a moment. Let’s pretend for a moment that this is true and your friends really do have empty enough lives to hang on your every word in the hopes of living vicariously through you. What you don’t understand is, in respect to Twitter, if you are posting to the global timeline, more than just your friends are seeing this message. Effectively what you are doing is causing internet pollution with your senseless drivel to ~25 people. Not only is that horribly inefficient, it’s a misuse of the technology. A simple mass email to those ~25 people would be the appropriate action. You wouldn’t put up a billboard on a busy highway to let your friends know you got a new puppy, would you? Sure, you could if you so desired, but like above it would be a gross waste of resources and far too inefficient.

People should just start using the technology for what it is designed to do. Email, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, are all viable forms of technology each with their own use. Use them for what they were designed to do and stop polluting the Internet as if it was your own personal diary. Unless your fame rises to international status, every post you make will probably only be seen by <1% of your intended targets.

Facebook, a site designed around the notion of bringing people who might have lost contact with each other back into each others’ lives now has more to do with fire-and-forget posts than anything else; Post and ignore. Occasionally you might see a conversation going on a post someone made, but unless you are taking the time to praise someone’s pictures of their kids or “liking” their post, nothing much will come from it. Facebook, in a sense, is a massive waste of time with little to no output.

Social Networking means being social and networking with people. If neither of these things are a product of a site, it fails to meet any level of usefulness if that is what the site if trying to achieve. Oddly enough, one-on-one messaging is still far more effective and efficient than mass-messaging in the hopes your intended audience actually sees it.

The Internet Is a Ruined, Clogged, Horrid Version of Itself

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These days searching through the internet is a lot simpler than it used to be. A quick search in any of the more popular (and even some less popular) search engines will pull up a list of just about anything you’re looking for in a matter of seconds. However, if one was to look at the list these search engines pull up most of the time, a list of links to sites never heard of promising everything can be seen.

People like to refer to the early days of the Internet being the wild west of the Internet’s history. It was a time when only the most knowledgeable could get a website up and running, register a domain name, and manage the server to allow any kind of server side processing. It was a mystery, uncharted territory, and only the bravest of souls would dare peruse its dim lit back roads.

However, despite its unforgiving appearance and rough edges, there was something that could be said about it’s integrity. Due to the effort needed, and money required, to make anything public back then, it was a safer bet to trust what you were seeing online. It was a nerd’s paradise.

Now, fast-forward fifteen years, the marketing potential of the internet has long since been realized. The Internet Bubble phenom is long over, the lessons have been learned, and the internet is now a highly polished, regulated, smooth, and glossy version of itself; it’s terrible.

It takes absolutely no effort to publish a web site these days. Editing, manipulating, and sharing a site is as simple as just buying or downloading a prefabricated site and uploading it to a server and, bingo, in business.

People like to say that the Internet has evolved and become more efficient. On the contrary, the Internet has not improved one bit. Much like a fit and lean man gaining two hundred pounds, under all that fat, that lean and fit Internet can still be found. Who wants to cut through all that fat though to find what they’re looking for? More importantly, who can even know if what they found is what they were looking for and not just more fat?

Let’s presume someone wanted to download an mp3 of their favorite song. That person goes to their favorite search engine and types in the name of the song and tries to find a site to download from. Let’s just assume, for the sake of this article, that the person is looking for a completely legal means to download the song. Of course, first they check all the big boys; Amazon, iTunes, Napster. Despite their search of those sites, their song cannot be found there. So, they resort to searching the lesser known sites on the Internet.

The problem is about 99% of all mp3 download sites are complete scams. The Internet has become a cesspool of banner ads, scams, and misleading links.

  • We are NOT interested in getting that silly ringtone on our phones.
  • We will NOT download your silly game inundated with spyware.
  • We are NOT interested in finding out who’s searching for us.
  • We will NOT check our credit score on a site who’s lifespan is probably two weeks.
  • We are NOT interested in winning a free Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii.
  • We will NOT get that free laptop, iPod, or iPhone.
  • We will NOT work from home for $5000 a day.
SO STOP ASKING!

Anyone who falls for this should be ashamed of themselves.

Let’s clean this place up, or at least run a few laps around the track and burn off some of this fat we’ve gathered over the last fifteen years.