Andy Laub

I like the concept of comments on blogs. While I don’t see too many comments here, I like that the few people that follow my bouts of incoherence have the option for feedback. Of course the occasional spam seeps through, but Akismet is pretty effective in catching that sort of thing.

But I woke up this morning to a comment on a post I wrote months ago about video games, in which the commentor basically just called me biased and said I was a fanboy. While the bias accusation just leaves me stupefied (in terms of bias, that particular article ranked pretty low – you may be more interested in this one or this one or this one) but as a whole I’m not sure how I’m even supposed to react to a comment like this. I could write a real rebuttal or offer a slightly less mature response (the PS3 sucks and so does your face), but both of those would be based on the assumption the commentor is going to show up again, which seems unlikely – they took their shots, why would they come back?

So the only option left is to ignore it, which just irritates me. I just can’t figure out what compels someone to Google “MS NXE vs PS3 XMB” and leave a half-baked comment on the first site they find about how M$ sucks and Sony r000lz. It’s sad, because I love discussing this sort of thing and would be totally willing to have this conversation with a total stranger regardless of bias, yet these are the sort of people who share this hobby.

Oh look – option four is whine about it. I can do that!

Lately I’ve been thinking long and hard about the internet. It’s amazing to be living in an era when knowledge is essentially instantly accessible.

But at the same time, I’ve been thinking about lines that have to be drawn when it comes to the types of knowledge and content that are available. It’s the golden age of Web 2.0, where a typical person is probably subscribe to at least 2 or more social websites. I know that holds true for me.

And there are so many of them. And a lot of them are good and interesting and have neat technology behind them. But I’m reaching a point where it’s all just overload. Dino and I were talking yesterday and he said that he’s been observing an exodus of sorts from Twitter to Plurk. Great.

I’ve been trying hard to only subscribe to a service when I feel it can genuinely be a benefit to me. Flickr is a no-brainer; it’s the best in the biz when it comes to photo sharing. Facebook is excellent for shooting a quick note or comment to somebody, since a huge percentage of my social circle resides there. LinkedIn seemed like a good idea at the time, but I really haven’t reaped any benefits from it. Twitter, for what it is, is decent. When it works.

The services that I’ve given my attention to have typically been of the more mature, widely-used variety. Call it peer pressure, but why use a social service that none of your friends are using?

But when I started using WordPress three years ago, blogging was the standard fare. The question wasn’t “do I want a blog?”; it was “which blogging software do I want?”. Now with services like Plurk, Pownce, and Tumblr it’s not the de facto choice any more. So then what should I do? If nobody reads my writing on andylaub.com, how much do I care? Should I go somewhere else? Do I want to go somewhere else?

And that’s where Web 3.0 comes in. I predict that very shortly, people are going to get tired of all this sharing. Tired of signing up to the service of the month, finding people they know, and then abandoning it when something new (notice I didn’t say “better”) comes along. Tired of reporting on every little experience they have and calling it “content”. I’ll wager that we’ve all had the feeling – that little, niggling impulse that says “Record this! Photograph this! Twitter this!” And that twinge of guilt when you opt not to do so.

I guess it’s because we want to acquire a sort of tangible catalog of experiences and not rely strictly on memories. I respect that. But if you’re too busy documenting something for posterity’s sake to actually experience it, that’s just crazy.

The experts say that the internet is serious business. I’m inclined to probably agree with them. Well, at least the business part. I mean, anything that makes money is probably a business by definition, so no argument there. Serious, though… that depends. When I’m working, of course. Work is serious. Mostly.

But when I sit down and start to write a post here, I just don’t feel like being serious anymore. I tried. For a long time. And that worries me, because this blog reflects who I am as a person, and somebody wondering if I’m “hire-able” is likely to be turned off by ridiculous content. Or will they? Honestly, blogs websites that take themselves to seriously are generally boring. That’s fine if you’re a bank or the gooberment but not if you want your site to be enjoyable.

I don’t really know or remember where this was meant to go. I saved a line as a draft yesterday as a reminder, but apparently that was not enough to inspire anything vaguely coherent.