Net Culture Talk

RIP Megaupload

Government takes down illegal download site

The online seizure of streaming website Megaupload wasn't the result of the SOPA/PIPA legislation or its protests, but its timing certainly makes it seem as though it's a warning of sorts. The feds are already starting to take away bits of our internet whether we like it or not.

Granted, MU was a very illegal and rather shady little slice of the web. Its servers were home to streaming service MegaVideo, which allowed you to watch streaming content, like copyrighted movies and television shows, for free--but not without the cost of sketchy border ads and a stream time limit. Despite being a little rough around the edges, MegaVideo was an extraordinarily popular under-the-radar alternative to paid streaming services like Netflix or Hulu Plus. It had such a high profile that the people in charge took note and worked very hard to make sure it was wiped from the face of the net, with nothing but a 404 crater left where it once stood.

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Listening With Friends Shares Music Via Facebook

Soon you'll be able to stream your buddies' playlists

Turntable.fm was one of those websites that I signed up for and then promptly forgot about within a week. I'm sure I have tens, maybe even hundreds of empty shells of accounts hanging around the internet at sites like these. They seem really neat for about two to four days, then you realize there isn't much to them and go off to do more important things, like play platformers on Kongregate for approximately 20 hours straight. Or, you know, go to work or sleep or what have you.

But Turntable evidently got enough attention for Facebook to start mimicking it. Seems sort of posthumous--I feel like Turntable lost its novelty a while back when all the internet hipsters turned to Spotify on Facebook for their shared listening experiences. Nevertheless, Facebook will soon be introducing a new level of social music, uncreatively entitled Listening With Friends.

New Study Shows Millenial Facebookers Too Readily Posting Incriminating Info

With the average Millenial friending 16 coworkers, it's not just a "social" networking site, but professional as well.

Facebook and social-networking has been around long enough now that we all intuitively understand that anything posted, dropped, tagged, or otherwise submitted in cyber-space is essentially public domain and irretrievable from the ether. However, a new study has now put hard numbers to an issue that has been commonly understood to be true; Millenials tend to consider social-networking sites a purely social space. This gets one into a lot of trouble, which is also a finding in the recent study. Although there may come a time when the personal and professional lives of individuals can no longer be separated, that time is not now. Keep your drunk face off the internet. Read more about New Study Shows Millenial Facebookers Too Readily Posting Incriminating Info

3eanuts and Garfield Minus Garfield

Have your existential crisis with cartoon support.

Existential crises belong to out-of-work businessmen, recent college graduates, dying grandmothers, New York City psychiatrists, glasses-wearing Jews, but they do not usually belong to cartoon characters. When they do, the results are hysterical glimpses into our own mortality and how we all need a lasagna-eating, fat cat to save us from these realizations. The newest addition to the existential crises cartoons is 3eanuts, which removes the final panel from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts strips because, according to its creator, “with the final panel omitted, despair pervades all.” Read more about 3eanuts and Garfield Minus Garfield

Razib Khan and Shoring Up Stereotypes With Statistics

Promoting stereotypes through the careful application of "statistical" evidence.

Razib Khan’s treatment of vocabulary variance by region and ethnicity is, as many of his articles go, academic for academia’s sake. In other words, there’s little practical purpose or insight to be gained, other than to provide some conversational fodder to the statistically minded. That said, it’s also just a little insulting. These two characteristics seem to align closely with much of Khan’s work, who is a regular contributor to Discovery Magazine’s Gene Expression blog. If anything, these displays of attempting to quantify people, culture, and society (I envision a world of constantly scrolling numbers a la The Matrix) simply narrowly objectifies the human experience; a frontal lobe circle jerk for relationally disinclined. Read more about Razib Khan and Shoring Up Stereotypes With Statistics

Israeli Entrepreneur Changes Name to Mark Zuckerberg, Gets Sued

Facebook objects to name change and "Like Store"

If the Social Network taught us anything, it's that one Mark Zuckerberg in the world is plenty. But one intrepid Israeli businessman didn't quite see things that way. Wishing to take advantage of a kind of capital that doesn't quite exist in solid terms yet, Rotem Guez set out on a journey to become the next Mark Zuckerberg--literally. As in, he legally changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg in the hopes that it would offer him a little more credibility in his online business. We live in a world where people do this stuff, kids. It's getting pretty weird out there.

Geek Apparel Gifts

How to outfit your friends in nerd culture

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No geek's wardrobe is complete without a splendid array of geeky t-shirts. Whether sourced from Threadless or ShirtWoot, most of the nerd persuasion has plenty of novelty tees to call their own. But that doesn't mean they're not always on the lookout for more. Thankfully, the internet is an endless engine of geek culture and there's always more apparel to collect. If you've got a beloved geek in your life who would be delighted with just a few extra additions to their apparel collection, here are a few gift ideas for them as we creep up on the end of the holiday season.

Teen Name-drops Anonymous in YouTube Threat

Strange video doesn't quite work as probably hoped

Social movements, no matter how noble their original direction, easily lose power when their language and aesthetic are co-opted for alternate purposes. And one of the dangers of a movement with no discernible members is that it can all too readily be subverted, some of its momentum siphoned away to an irrelevant or contrary channel. Anonymous has been seen frequently in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street protests, and many of their recent feats of activism had almost painted them in a constructive light in the eyes of the media. Then you get jerks like this one, who hijack the name of Anonymous for juvenile purposes--like making vague threats to destroy their high school.

The best tumblrs of 2011

Kim Jong Il, Retrogasm and I'm Remembering.

Tumblrs are a really sweet invention. You can look like a genius by captioning somebody else’s really epic photograph. Truly, it’s minimal work for everyone involved because a tumblr only takes off when somebody looking at the tumblr reposts it. Which really isn’t much work at all. Let’s take a look at the reign of the lazy with some of the most awesome tumblrs of 2011: Read more about The best tumblrs of 2011

Facebook Users 4.74 Degrees Of Separation From Anybody

Facebook proves that the old "6 degrees" is actually a little more distant than reality.

In 1967, Psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a study that, he said, proved that any two people on the planet were separated by 6 acquaintances. He did this by having 296 volunteers mail a postcard to friends, and their friends and so on, to a specific person living in a Boston suburb. With this study, “6 degrees of separation” became a phenomenon in pop psychology and culture. However, more recently, Facebook and the University of Milan partnered to conduct a study with a slightly higher sample population: 751 million Facebook users. On Monday, they announced that the real factor of separation between any two people is closer to 4.74 (in the U.S., it’s 4.37). Read more about Facebook Users 4.74 Degrees Of Separation From Anybody