Comments on: You Are Fuel

By: pjm

pjm — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:37:00 +0000

Oh, yes – I used to say, when I ran websites for a national magazine, that my job was to capture people’s attention and hold it as long as possible, so we could sell it. That’s the business model. It’s the most cynical way possible to phrase it, but it captures the facts.

By: sclozza

sclozza — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 04:18:04 +0000

Has anyone else been following the tales from the ex-admin here: http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com/ ?

By: Rob "Flack" O'Hara

Rob "Flack" O'Hara — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:41:06 +0000

People tend to forget that the Internet is, you know, global. Every time I post a blog entry I try to imagine who in the world I would least like to read that post, and then I think about the repercussions of that before posting. I don’t know how it works for you, but there seems to be some undocumented Internet magnetic pull that draws that person directly to that blog post. A couple of months ago I wrote a blog entry commenting on a friend’s co-worker that committed suicide; a week or so later, I was getting e-mails and comments from the deceased’s fiance. I’ve made anti-smoking comments in my blog before, only to get chastized later by smoking relatives. I’m not recommending people not post those posts, but I am saying that by talking about people in your blog you are drawing them closer to you in some cosmic way.

If you don’t believe me, check out this post from Penny Arcade earlier this week. After posting a sarcastic “letter to the parents” of a 15-year-old kid who killed a homeless person and said “it reminded him of playing violent video games,” it only took a day or two for the step-mother of said 15-year-old to contact the site and write them a letter.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/02/21

Anyway, as for being fuel, I’m surprised that it takes people that long to figure it out. I learned that lesson as a college journalism student, interning at a local newspaper. The staff consisted of 1 editor/writer, 1 photographer, myself, and a sales/ad staff of 20+. The ad people layed out the paper based on what ads had sold, and then told us to “fill the remaining white space.”

By: Stacia

Stacia — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 13:37:31 +0000

I recently went on a lengthy LiveJournal rant (classy!) about the entertainment media, and how those complaining about certain celebrities were fueling the entertainment media because they were consuming the product. They were viewing pages, watching shows, then blogging about it, and even if their blogging was disparaging, they were still part of the money-making process for the entertainment shows. That the media was misrepresenting or exaggerating things for attention and effect was obvious to me; it’s how they make their money.

No one got it, and no one agreed with me. I think a couple people stopped reading my blog because of it, as well. Very disheartening.

As for the schoolteacher… yeah. I used to be an assistant teacher, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit that she wrote that asinine post. However, I’m somewhat pleased to see she could construct a viable sentence and could spell. Lord knows half the English teachers I worked with couldn’t spell the word “grammar”.

Not that her post makes much sense. If she was in a class on blogging, shouldn’t she have learned that “hacking on an internet site” doesn’t make any sense? Her comments about nerds and Pokemon are tired old yarns straight from a Leno monologue.

The cracks about your GPA and prom dates, though, are key to understanding her complaints. She’s stuck in school, probably high school. Everything around her is judged in terms of what’s important in high school because, at her high school, she’s authority. Of course someone’s GPA is of great importance to her: she’s the one who gives students their GPA. It doesn’t matter that one hasn’t actually had a GPA for many years, or that a GPA is often no indication of a student’s abilities. It’s the fact that over 15 years ago you once had a “low” GPA, which goes on your permanent record, and determines the path your whole life takes. At least, she’d like to think that’s the way it is. Sad.

By: Jason Scott

Jason Scott — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:12:28 +0000

For the moment, I’m not comfortable putting it online, because I didn’t ask permission for people to be recorded, and it may not have been clear to all parties that that thing in front of me was a digital recorder (it’s quiet, has no moving parts and from a distance may seem like a laptop). I suppose, if things came down to it, I could excerpt parts of it to prove a point, but as it stands it’s in my records and nowhere else.