Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

I’ve been critical of Facebook before. I’ve closed my account twice, and deleted all my friends and removed all my personal information, because I just got SICK of people being FAKE on it all the time. Much of my hate that I level at Twitter applies equally, or more so against Facebook. In particular, I hate when people post stupid, “socially aware” messages in their status. Your status is supposed to be just that – your status. Where you are, how you’re feeling and maybe what you’re doing (if it’s interesting enough to want to share).

It’s not meant to be a place where you can copy and paste bullshit Hallmark-style nonsense where you pretend to care. People post these pretentious, cheesy little messages about the importance of being a nice person, or a little message about being aware of mental illness that they saw on someone ELSE’S status, most likely with a message at the bottom that says “If you care about this, please post this as your status for at least one hour”, so that you feel like if you DON’T post it, you are an arsehole and you DON’T care.

Sometimes people just post garbage. I have a close friend who seriously abuses status messages to send meaningless messages to his girlfriend. He once updated his status to say “Honey, can you pour me another drink ?” as part of a dozen-update evening. It completely spams your homepage to the point where you have to consider ignoring certain friends’ updates. I like this person and I’d like to know what they do in life. I just don’t need to know when they pour a drink, have dinner, take a shit, or go to bed. I don’t care if you feel sleepy, or if you think it’s hot today. Not if you’re going to tell me shit like that a dozen times a day.

And I ESPECIALLY don’t want to know that you just attained level 53 in Frontierville and that you desperately need someone to give you a hammer. You can block games-related messages, but the very idea that you have to opt-out of this nonsense is absurd. Some people I know have over 600 apps installed, so I literally have to just tell Facebook “Block all app-related messages”, which is a shame because it is vaguely possible that those messages could serve a useful purpose. I’ve just never seen that happen.

I know people who keep Facebook open all day, and that’s ok. That’s fine. Keep it open so you can stay in contact with people if you want. But maybe don’t spend all day playing Farmville. Honestly, if you spent 4 hours a day playing World of Warcraft instead of taking care of your kids and cleaning the house, people would probably look down on you. But for some reason most people just ignore it when you spend that amount of time tending your virtual farm or playing a pet game that involves producing unusually shaped dog poo. NO I WILL NOT WATER YOUR LETTUCE CROP WHILE YOU’RE ON HOLIDAY !

Yes, I DID re-enable my Facebook account. I just don’t use it regularly. I make it send its email to an address that is no longer in use, and I might log in once a month just to make sure noone desperately needs me. This year I have made only one status update, and it’s almost mid-year. I don’t need to tell you that I’m sleepy or bored, because you probably have a lot of friends and if everyone did that you would be flooded with updates. Maybe I might let you know if I’m living in a foreign country and post you a video of where I live, just so that people I really care about can go “Oh, that’s what’s going on in pawz’s life.. he’s in Bangkok”. I’m just not going to announce what I had for fucking breakfast, nor am I going to pose and be pretentious by posting stupid feel-good messages about shit.

And I’m not going to tell you what I “like”. If you know me, then you know what I like, or we can chat and I’ll tell you. I don’t need to announce it to EVERY SINGLE PERSON I KONG. You’re not going to see the message “pawz likes Tiger beer” and go “Oh wow. I think I’ll have a Tiger because pawz likes it”. And it shouldn’t be a conversation starter. If you need me to tell you what sort of beer I drink in order to have a conversation with me, then we’re probably not really friends. If my beer preference mattered to you, you would just ask me. I don’t need to broadcast it. Get to know me by getting to know me, not by reading a stupid one-line pseudo-advertisement.

And I don’t care about your fucking causes either. Yes, it’s great that you’re a fan of the World Wildlife Fund. But are you REALLY ? Or did you just think that’d look good on your status. Do you donate ? Do you subscribe to their newsletter ? If it’s something we might share in common, there’s a good chance I already know you might be into that, and it’s something we’ve probably already had a conversation about. When I was at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, I noticed they have huge posters that stretch from the floor to the ceiling advertising the fight against people smuggling. At the bottom of every advert it invited people to “Like” the Facebook page the government had setup.

Really ? You want me to “Like” not liking people smuggling ? Apart from that being a double negative, so what ? Where’s the button where I can say that I DO like people smuggling. I want to press it just to make you question my announcement. Who the fuck would actually LIKE people smuggling. Why don’t you just announce “I LIKE not killing babies with an axe”. Really ? Wow, coz I thought everyone DID like killing babies with an axe. Way to state the fucking obvious. Do you really think that clicking a button is a form of positive action ? Do you think that people smugglers, smuggling child prostitutes into Australia are going to go “Oh shit. 1,843,857 people DON’T like people smuggling ? I had no idea. I should find a new line of work !”

No you dolt, it means NOTHING. It is NOT affirmative action. It does NOT change anyone else’s viewpoint, or send aid to the needy. Not liking people smuggling by hitting a button is precisely as effective as saying “Pray for Japan” on Twitter after a quake, a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown. IT MAKES NO GODDAMN DIFFERENCE ! You are contributing nothing to the world except creating more spam. So don’t do it.

I get the argument people make when they say “I don’t want to be on Facebook… but I have to be. Even my GRANDMOTHER is on Facebook”. Yes, I understand that. I have friends in foreign countries that I don’t want to lose touch with if they change their phone number or their email address and forget to inform me. That’s why I’m on Facebook. Because it’s a good way of connecting with people. But I only have 12 friends on Facebook. And one of them is a cat. No, seriously. A cat.

But being on Facebook to stay in touch with granny doesn’t excuse you if you use it to announce that you hate broccoli, or that you just harvested your corn on Farmville, or that it’s hot today. I don’t care. If we were chatting, I’d be happy for you to tell me that stuff (well, apart from the Farmville thing), so if we are chatting, tell me. Tell me something because you have a REASON to tell me it. Not because you just want to announce it to your 848 friends.

More friends is just more people you don’t really care about. You don’t really need to stay in contact with that smelly kid from grade 4 who you spoke to once in the cafeteria. It really won’t help your life, and in fact, all it’s going to do is make you judge him or yourself. Life is a game, but you don’t need to be constantly comparing yourself to people you really don’t know. Sure, stay in contact with the people truly important to you. But that doesn’t mean you have to literally “friend” every single person you meet in your life. If they are not someone you would accept an invitation to dinner with, then they’re not your friend, so stop pretending they are.

A kid called Ross Gardiner who is an English teacher in South Korea made a great little video back in late 2010 that was featured in a recent documentary on Facebook. I’m not saying you have to follow his advice and delete your Facebook account. But just think about what he says in this video and ask yourself: “Do I really need to tell EVERYONE everything and have 848 friends ? Or would it be better if I just had a few friends that I really care about and actually have the time to give a fuck about ?”

Think about it before you make that next status update or confirm that next friend request from some idiot you never really liked anyway. Now, I’ll let Ross say it even more eloquently and without speaking a single word. I especially recommend you turn out the lights, turn up the sound, and view this video fullscreen for maximum effect. It’s well done.

I got into a bit of a debate about Elenin last night before I went out. I’d just like to clarify my point of view, because people were tending to shout me down before I had a chance to explain properly and people who hadn’t even heard of Elenin or bothered to research it were dismissing it by just saying “You can’t prove that. That’s just some crackpot bullshit”.

Which I think is really stupid. People sometimes expect these ridiculous and unreasonable standards of proof for things before they will believe they are even plausible, but sometimes that’s just not possible. We’ve never had a gigantic comet of this magnitude come so close to our planet and cause the sort of destruction that people are predicting, nor have we observed it up close on another planet so we just don’t know and it’s impossible for any discussion of Elenin to be anything more than speculation and educated guesses.

People say “Well NASA isn’t talking about it and the government isn’t warning us so therefore it can’t possibly be true”. Oh what faith ye have in your wonderful government. I bet you don’t think 9/11 was a false flag operation either, right ? Anyway, I’d just like to clarify where I stand on this issue.

Firstly I want to define some terms such as this word “belief” that’s bandied about all the time. Now to me, there’s four levels of understanding. There’s “knowing”, which represent an absolute certainty in something. I “know” that gravity exists. It doesn’t mean I can’t possibly be wrong, but it’s something I believe in with absolute certainty. “Belief” in something to me means, and this is hard to explain without using the word “belief” or “believe”, but to me it means that I think something is very plasuble and most likely to be fact. I don’t know it with 100% certainty, but I think I know enough about it that to me it is an as-yet non proven but most likely true assertation that I put creedence and trust in.

Then there are two other levels. There’s “faith”, which isn’t really relevant to this discussion but is where you believe in something regardless of there being any significant evidence, but you want it to be true anyway. And the final category is “interest” where you are interested in something and you think there are aspects about it that make it worth further investigation but that you haven’t made up your mind yet, but that you think it warrants further investigation at least.

Now, I “know” Elenin exists. It’s been seen and well documented by many scientists and there’s no reason to assume that it’s not true.

What do I think about these claims that it’s going to wreak havoc on the Earth ? Well, I “believe” that it’s going to have some effect on us. I tend to believe (See ? There are many varying levels of belief) that the recent spate of earthquakes around the world are probably related. I’m not completely convinced, but I think it’s plausible and there has been scientific theory going back half a century suggesting that certain alignments of heavenly bodies can cause seismic disruptions on a planet. I can’t say for sure that it’s the case, but I believe there’s a very good chance that is the case.

Do I believe that it’s going to tear our planet to bits and half the population is going to be decimated ? No. I am “interested” in that concept, but I am certainly not willing to say I “believe” in it, because there’s just not enough evidence to suggest that will happen. We have had comets pass by before, and that hasn’t happened in the past, but obviously there are many factors involved that I don’t understand and due to the nature of this one and its long orbit and many other factors that I can’t fully appreciate not being an astrophysicist, I just think it’s an interesting concept and I’d like to research it further to see if I think there’s more to it. Also, like most people, I don’t really want to believe that this could happen to our fragile little blue ball of mud and water, so like many people I have a tendency to doubt that which I don’t want to believe is true, but I am at least more open to the idea than some.

To say “There’s no PROOF !” is a bit silly. Noone’s claiming they have ultimate proof but there are learned scientists who think that it is gong to have a big effect on us and they have published papers on the subject. Other people have said “Hey, I can poke some holes in that theory and some of your assertions are a bit wrong” and the naysayers jump on this and say “See ! People think that guy’s wrong, therefore he is and it’s just crackpot pseudoscience”.

People think many things like string theory is bollocks, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possibly true and I hate the way people stick the label “pseudoscience” onto things they say haven’t been 100% proven. I’d like to direct the person who insisted that talk of Elenin was pseudoscience by directing them to the Wikipedia definition of the word.

Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. Pseudoscience is often characterized by the use of vague, exaggerated or unprovable claims, an over-reliance on confirmation rather than rigorous attempts at refutation, a lack of openness to evaluation by other experts, and a general absence of systematic processes to rationally develop theories.

A field, practice, or body of knowledge can reasonably be called pseudoscientific when it is presented as consistent with the norms of scientific research; but it demonstrably fails to meet these norms.

Clearly Elenin theories are not pseudoscience because they are simply as yet unproven, they are not unprovable, which is the requirement for something to be classified as pseudoscience. Astrology is pseudoscience. Trying to understand the seismic repercussions of planetary alignments is not. If you went around sticking the label “pseudoscience” on everything we don’t understand fully, all of a sudden half the known world be under that category. There are many things we don’t understand about how the brain works, but that does that mean that study of the brain is pseudoscience ? Of course not, and anyone trying to stick the label pseudoscience onto a serious field of scientific research such as this is not being rational and merely trying to justify their skepticism with emotive terms like “pseudoscience” and “crackpot theories”.

It offended me that I was trying to link to valid scientific studies about Elenin and this person was saying “That’s just crackpot nonsense with no proof”. Well, where’s your proof that it’s not true ? Ok, I admit I won’t try and make you prove a negative, but that doesn’t mean that you can go around saying everything you don’t think is true is a “crackpot theory”. Many religious people consider that psychiatry is an abomination and a completely invalid field of study, but I guarantee you that every person with schizophrenia or bipolar or depression who has been effectively treated for their disorder wouldn’t think that.

Just because you personally don’t believe in something, doesn’t make it a “crackpot theory” and if you’re going to go around saying that and then call yourself a “scientist” in the same breath, well, frankly I don’t consider you much of an objective scientist.

Someone said “It sounds like you want to believe this stuff”. No. Not true. When my cousin first brought Elenin to my attention a few months ago, I went online and the first theories I read were by people with dubious backgrounds. People who’d written books on UFO’s and crop circles. And I don’t want to say that those things aren’t true, but most people would tend to consider those people a bit wacky and crazy. I said this to Andrew when I first looked into it, “I think the people who are being outspoken about this seem a bit nuts and I am reluctant to believe what they say, so I tend to think this is just nonsense, but I want to keep looking and see if I can find any better evidence”.

And I did that. I spent a few months researching it, on and off, sometimes spending all day reading up on it so that I could discuss it with him. And the thing is, I did find reputable scientists who had PhD’s in astrophysics who were talking about it very seriously. That doesn’t mean I think they are 100% correct, but there were enough of them talking about that I put some credence in it and I looked up a few of the details they were talking about so that I could understand the concepts better and yes, I think they have a point and it’s plausible that what they’re saying is true.

Will it happen like they’re saying ? I’d like to say “No”. Could it happen ? Yes, I believe it could. I think maybe they are overreacting, but personally, I am glad they are. Better that than to sit around going “MMMM, this is interesting but that’ll never happen so why bother telling people what I think”.

People say “If this were true, everyone would be talking about it. People in power and official people would be talking about it”. Well, I don’t think everyone is eager to rush out and start predicting the end of the world (other than religious people who seem to have no shame). It tends to make you look a bit silly when it doesn’t happen like you predicted. And as to the official people, is it not possible they may have a vested interest in not wanting you to know ?

A large percentage of people in the world who have looked into 9/11 are unequivocally convinced that it was an inside job. I mean, tower number 7 falling, and the massive amounts of thermite found in the rubble. How you can hear about that and not believe it was deliberate is beyond me, yet people will blithely shake their heads and say “No, that couldn’t possibly happen”, but it does. Look up Wikipedia and read the section on false flag operations being used a pretext for war. It doesn’t have as many as I think it should. This page details a few such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the Bali Bombing. I’m not positive I believe in the Port Arthur one, but I haven’t researched it so I don’t know. A lot of people right now are saying the recent Oslo “terror” attacks were a false flag operation. I haven’t read into that one either, but the fact is, many times, terrorist attacks are perpetuated by the government on its own people to further a certain political agenda.

To say that you trust your government to tell you the truth in light of all this is downright naive and this whole “If we were really going to be wiped out, NASA would tell us” opinion is nonsense. Could you imagine what would happen if NASA came out and said “Yep, we’re going to be totally fucked up by this comet. Most of you are gonna die” ? There’d be terror and riots and mayhem. Sure, half the stupid ignorant people in the world would just go “Nawwwww, the world hasn’t been destroyed so far, so why would it happen now ?” but lots more would run amok and society would be seriously messed up.

The governments of the world don’t want that. If they did believe this was going to happen, they wouldn’t care about Joe Bloggs who works for $5 an hour at Walmart. They would care about themselves and their families and be secretly making plans to survive this and continue the human race. Hell, that’s probably what I’d be doing too if I was in their position.

So look, I’ve told you what I believe. I believe there is some evidence to suggest that Elenin could be dangerous to us and that while I don’t want to believe it’s going to happen like people like Dr Omerbashich are predicting, I think it’s not unfeasible they could be right. Ultimately it doesn’t matter because there’s little I can do about it and I’m really not inclined to build an underground bunker or anything. If it’s possible, I may well head off into the hills or the outback during late September so that if it does happen, I can at least increase my chances of surviving, but I’m not going to make a big deal out of it, and most likely I’ll be too lazy to do that and I’ll just sit at home and wait to see what happens.

But if you don’t want to believe in it, and I’m certainly not going to force you or do any more than give you a few vague pointers to what people have said and suggest you do your own research, then that’s fine. But don’t label it “pseudoscience” or a “crackpot theory” or “without any evidence”, because frankly if it does happen, I sorta reckon you’re going to look a lot more stupid than me, than I will if it doesn’t happen.

It doesn’t hurt to take an interest in this and research what people are saying and if you want to take steps to avoid it, by all means. My cousin Andrew went so far as moving up into the Adelaide ranges because he thinks it’ll be safer up there. I’m not ready to do that yet, but I may take some simple steps to reduce my risk of getting fucked up by a big earthquake or tsunami or whatever. At the very least, I’m going to make sure I have a charged camera and empty memory cards come late September so that if the shit goes down, I can photograph it.

If you don’t want to believe, and you don’t want to even research it or consider the possibility, that’s fine. But don’t be a dick and call me a raging lunatic or a crackpot just because I think what they’re saying is plausible. Frankly, I am fairly sure that bugger all provable is going to happen and that in a bit over a month’s time I’m going to have to shrug and say “Oh well, I guess I got that wrong” because ultimately, people predict terrible things happening to the world all the time that don’t end up happening.

But sometimes terrible things do happen, and even when people did predict them we shrug it off and say “that’s a coincidence”. You just can’t win with some people. Even when you say “Look, don’t take my word for it, go and research it yourself” they say “Bah, that’s what religious crackpots always say”. So you’re basically damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Apparently having an unpopular theory or belief just opens you up to ridicule.

I’m not resorting to personal insults and calling you names in order to convince you it is true, so you shouldn’t use them to convince me it isn’t true. If you don’t want to believe, then don’t believe. But you don’t have to be a fucking DICK about it. You get what I’m saying ?

I feel uncomfortable talking about this subject because I am not a perfect person. I have done the wrong thing in my life before. I have done things that hurt others in some way due to my own personal hangups and personality problems, so I feel guilty trying to talk about this subject and acting like I am some sort of moral person. But who’s perfect ? Who hasn’t ever committed some sort of crime or done something that you later regret and made you think “I wish I hadn’t done that. I hope that person isn’t really hurt by that” ? Not many of us. The ones who can claim that are probably just lying to themselves.

But following on from my previous discussion about the idiots rioting in England right now, someone posted a blog link from earlier this year about deindividuation and dehumanisation and mob mentality. It’s a fascinating subject and one I’ve always had an interest in. Unlike how as we, due to our “selfish genes” sometimes put ourselves first at the expense which makes sense at least, sometimes we do things that are bizarre and we would later consider reprehensible just because we got caught up in the moment of it.

The author of this blog post discusses how often, when a person is standing on the ledge of a building that people will start chanting “Jump. Jump. Jump”. Individually, on our own, few of us would exhibit this behaviour, but in a group, we shed our individuality and we become a hive mind. But the question is, why is the “hive mind” such an asshole ? Why is that when we gather in a group we turn into horrible people ? Why don’t we all chant out “Don’t jump ! You’re a wonderful person ! You have so much to live for” ?

I don’t know. It bothers me though. There is a famous quote by an anonymous person who said “Because None of Us are as Cruel as All of Us” which means to say that when we gather in groups, we are far more cruel than we are as individuals. I won’t bore you with the studies and research that have shown that when people are anonymous they will be crueller or more dishonest. You’ll just be like “Well duh. Everyone knows that”. Besides, I’ll link to the original post at the end and you can read them yourself.

But there’s a difference between just stealing candy or giving someone an electric shock for lulz and encouraging to someone to jump to their death or rioting and burning down people’s houses or smashing up their shops or beating people. Sometimes we have reasons, even if they are vague. When people rioted at the G8 summit, they wanted to pretend they were jaded with globalisation and the government, and they probably were. Was it just an excuse to misbehave, or a representation of an inner frustration that they couldn’t really identify or express properly ?

I think it’s partly both. The English riots though are a bit absurd. People from all over the country just saw others on TV rioting and went “Let’s do that too !” Large mobs donned balaclavas and burned things down and smashed things up for no reason whatsoever. I guess they were angry about something in their lives and this was just an outlet. Just like how we sometimes get so frustrated we need to go outside and scream or go and punch a punching bag, we sometimes just need to let out the multitude of frustrations that we bottle up every day.

But do we need to do it like that ? What makes people decide to take part or not take part in these behaviours ? I think it’s a sense of identify. You are either comfortable with who you are as a person, or you are not. You either know yourself, or you don’t. The people who know themselves and are introspective and always questioning themselves; those people don’t do those things. They look at the mob of people chanting “Jump” at the person on the ledge and they are disgusted. They might be too afraid to go against the mob, but they at least don’t take part. Others just get caught up in the craziness and the “lulz” and just do it like everyone else and later excuse it by saying “I don’t know what came over me”.

When the Brazilian guy wanted to kill the cat live on the internet a couple of weeks ago, millions of people allegedly voted to kill the cat. We know it was a scam, but even if it wasn’t, I’m confident that many people would have voted this way anyway. We all think “Awww it’ll never happen. But it would be funny to watch if it did”. But when it does happen – when the man does kill the cat, or the person does jump from the ledge, we are horrified. We cannot believe we went along with this. But at least it wasn’t “our fault” right ? We aren’t the one who caused it to happen even though we may have voted or called out like everyone else ? It’s not like MY voice made the difference ? Did it ?

But we are rubbernecks and we love a spectacle. It’s not like we enjoy human suffering, but we crave new experiences and when we see something unusual, we are fascinated and we can’t stop looking. I remember once as a child in school, I was with a friend watching a motorcycle race in the streets of my home town and his father was there who was a psychologist.

I was filming it with my parent’s video camera and I commented “Gee, I wish one of them would have an accident so I could catch it on film” and my friend’s dad turned to me and said “You should never wish for something horrible like that to happen. How would you feel if it did happen and someone died and you saw their child crying over their dead father ?” and my jaw dropped and I was speechless. He shamed me into retracting my comments instantly and saying “Oh no. I don’t want that to happen. I just wish I could film an interesting event. I definitely don’t want anyone to get hurt”. That moment stuck with my for my entire life. I remember so clearly that shame that I felt when he said that to me and made me truly think about the consequences of what I’d said.

I am a complex person. I don’t understand a lot of things about myself. I don’t like everything about myself. But I am comfortable with myself. I have made mistakes, but I learn from them and I try not to repeat them. I identify my flaws and I take steps to make sure they don’t affect me or others as much as possible. Even were I anonymous, I know that I would never chant for someone to jump off a building.

Sure, everyone says that, but examples of sickening human behaviour like that disgust me. I don’t really get involved with groups in that way. Maybe because I grew up on my own for many years without that sort of peer pressure I don’t succumb to it as easily. I didn’t spend my formative years being forced to follow social norms and “fit in” because I had noone to fit in with.

But I’ve been in public street protests before, and maybe there are some things I would do. Would I beat a police officer if everyone else was doing it ? Yeah, it’s possible I would, even though I know he’s just an individual doing his job. But that tends to come from years of seeing police officers act unfairly towards others. Noone loves the cops, right ? Would I beat a foreign person just because they were from a different religious or ethnic background and everyone else was doing it ? Fuck no. I probably wouldn’t intervene, because I’m not a hero and I don’t like to put myself against a mob of people, but I certainly wouldn’t take part.

“Hating” and “griefing” is a big part of the internet these days. The anonymity that the internet provides allows people to express the darkest side of their personality and the darkest side of humanity as a whole. Many times the people doing this “griefing” or “trolling” don’t believe what they’re saying. They’re just doing it “for the lulz” and reflecting a dark side they know exists in humanity. They don’t really hate muslims or support the Klu Klux Klan. They just think it’s funny to illustrate that that side of humanity exists.

They are holding a mirror up to society and saying “Look. Look how fucked up we all are that this shit exists in our society. I’m going to pretend I support it because I think it’s funny that we are like this”. It’s an odd behaviour and many of these trolls are actually very intelligent people and in a bizarre way, they are actually sending a complex social message that isn’t always obvious from what they’re saying.

I never used to get “trolling”. In its simplest form it’s basically people who go onto chat rooms or forums and put forward a deliberately retarded or ignorant point of view in the hope of inflaming people into being offended or getting them worked up. When they see someone ranting and raving in anger they sit behind their computer laughing and they say the person is “butthurt”. It’s funny to see people get worked up and obsessive about shit, and I get that. But it’s also mean and pointless and makes you look like a bit of a retard.

But trolling can be a laugh if it’s harmless. I have a pastime that amuses me no end. I troll people in my anime channel with bukkake pictures. I had never even looked at a bukkake picture in my life until a couple of months ago even though I was aware what it was, but someone mentioned it as a joke and I went onto Google Images to find a picture of it to make a visual gag about something. People laughed and went “ewwww” and I got a reaction out of it, so I kept doing it.

I had to get really, really creative though because people quickly learnt that every time I pasted a URL, be it an image or a video or a web page, it probably contained bukkake. So I would tell people long, elaborate stories which were normally completely true and very interesting, and then just when I thought people were completely hooked, I would find a way to say “And here is a photo of that”, and if my story was good enough and people were fascinated enough and hanging on the edge of their seats, even the most seasoned IRC’ers who knew me well would get suckered in and say “Oh you asshole pawz. I should have known you were going to do that” and I would fucking crack up laughing and go “Gotchya !”

But there’s some things you do for the lulz, and some things you do because deep down, you are a horrible fucking person and all you are doing every day of your life is putting up a charade and pretending you’re a normal, well adjusted citizen of the world. But if you’re the sort of person who riots for no reason, or tells suicidal people to jump of a building, or you post disgusting shock images on the facebook pages of children who have been murdered, you’re not engaging in group mentality. You’re just a fuckhead.

Here are links to two of the articles that inspired this post:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/02/10/deindividuation/

http://andrewlloydgoodman.com/documents/griefers.pdf

Twitter is funny isn’t it ? Not because it’s trying to be. Just because it so often IS. I was on Twitter, posting something (yeah, I know, that’s rare for me) and I thought I’d see what people were saying about Norway, so I searched for #prayfornorway, because you all know how I feel about that stupid #prayfor… hashtag. But I guess it’s become so institutionalised that now it’s the way to bring disaster to people’s attention.

Anyway, many of the tweeters are horrified that #sorryjustin, a series of tweets about Justin Bieber is trending, while news of Norway is not. Twitter is just so fucked up like that. They say they have this super advanced algorithm. Yeah ? You know what we all call it ? The Bieber Algorithm. Because Bieber is the only thing that ever trends. World war three could break out and Bieber would still out-trend it. I suspect Twitter only exists as a marketing machine for Justin Bieber. They admitted once that Bieber tweets account for the resources of three entire racks of servers. Here’s what some people are saying about Bieber today.

But there’s another interesting Twitigeous phenomenon I observed today. (That’s my own word btw. I have copyright on that and Google will back me up on that. I made it up to describe people who are only religious on Twitter) Celebrity prayer. You know how everyone says they are praying for stuff on Twitter ? Well it seems that while a twayer (A Twitter Prayer of course ! I own that one too) can you know, save lives and stuff, apparently a celebrity twayer can move mountains ! What do I mean ? Well, people around the world are begging Justin Bieber to tweet a prayer for Norway.

Yeah. I don’t know what will happen if Bieber prays for Norway. Maybe the dead will rise up from their graves and … no nevermind. Too soon to be making jokes like that. Anyway, this girl said it best:

Well, you’re actually half right there _Ashleeiigh. Technically I think that if you are religious, you should probably be ACTUALLY praying to your god over Norway, but apparently that’s what constitutes a prayer in the 21st century. The internet has reduced our prayers to 140 character messages including the all important #prayfor… hashtag. In today’s busy society we don’t have time to actually PRAY. We just say we pray. We tway (Yes, I obviously own that too, that’s the present tense verb of the noun twayer).

But, I personally (like my good friend Nick Cave, who said it in his great song “Into My Arms”) do not believe in a god that accepts prayers and alters the fabric of causality in the universe based on what people desire and ask him for. I would love that the world worked that way and just praying could make things happen, but in my opinion it doesn’t and If you do believe that, I feel a little sorry for your naivety, no offence. But anyway, what I wanted to say is that twaying (mine also) does have positive benefit. I’m not sure if god has Twitter (Yes, I capitalise Twitter but not god. Does that piss you off ?), but everyone else on the planet does.

And when you tway for Norway (haha, don’t you love accidental alliteration ?) online, people see it. It puts the disaster in people’s minds. It creates awareness. What good does awareness do ? Well. It couldn’t do harm, that’s for sure. It’s difficult to quantify exactly how this awareness is better for us, because I’m not a sociology professor, but in my opinion it causes us to break stride and think for a moment.

Even if that awareness does no good for the people of Norway, it does good for the people who read that twayer. It elevates the consciousness. It puts our shitty lives in perspective and it makes our own problems seem a little less dramatic. I’d even like to think that maybe someone else who is on the verge of snapping and doing something crazy takes a step back and sees the pain this event caused and thinks twice.

So go on, tway. I know I’ve previously been heavily critical of people twaying, (praying on Twitter), but on reflection, I think it’s a good thing. Don’t be under the illusion that you are doing anything religious, that’s for sure. But I think the concept of prayer is evolving in this internet age and is become something else. It doesn’t involve actual prayer to a god. It’s just about sharing with others that you’re thinking about a person or a group of people.

And we all like to know that someone is thinking about us, right ?