barrettchase.com

barrettchase.com
obey the rules. often enter. organize your material.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012

First, I just want to talk about how much I hate the word "make" when artists and crafters use it as an intransitive verb, as in, "I spent the afternoon making." I always ignore this, but inside I'm screaming, when used in this way, "making" means taking a shit! I wonder if these people are aware of that and are just trying to "take the word back" or if they're ignorant to its primary connotation. I'll never know because I don't want to have that conversation. It's one of my goals not to come across as the kind of guy who interrupts your story about scrapbooking to talk about defecation slang, even though I am exactly that kind of guy.

I also hate it because it's lazy and unclear, and because it is obviously some kind of setup for the question, "What did you make?" Well, I'm not falling for it crafters! I demand an object for that verb. Any object will do.

"I spent the afternoon making THINGS."
"I spent the afternoon making TURQUOISE AND SILVER MOUTHGUARDS."
"I spent the afternoon making HORRIBLE CHOICES."
"I spent the afternoon making UP FOR THE FACT THAT MY GRANDMOTHER HATED ME."

It isn't that difficult.

That said, I have a few ideas for some technological things I'd like to make, and by "I'd like to make" I actually mean, "I'd like to see someone else make," by which I mean I wouldn't actually care one way or the other whether someone else made them, because I'm not going to make them or even use them. I just want to write about them succinctly and fluently, as I am doing right now.

One is an idea that I call "Facebook for Narcissists," which seems redundant at first, but isn't. The normal Facebook is fine for entry-level narcissists, but if you're extremely narcissistic, you're going to need something more. This is a Facebook client that allows you to post status updates, post photos, view and respond to comments on your status updates and photos, and approve friend requests. Basically, it lets you do anything that relates directly to you. What it doesn't do is allow you to look at anyone else's activity. It's a completely self-centered Facebook experience where you can simply pretend that no one else is interested in anything except for your life.

The second is in the same vein, but relates more directly to my actual tastes. I kind of miss link blogs. I know there are still a few superstar link blogs out there, and that there are massive community link blogs like Reddit and Metafilter. But I miss the small, eclectic linkers. There used to be people who threw a couple of links in at the end of their blog posts, or wrote entire posts about the weird junk they found online. It was really fun.

Some people still do this now and then, but not very much. Some people only link on social networks, where the links tend to drown in the sea of everything else. Plus, a lot of other people post links on those networks that are either boring or politically ridiculous. What I want is a new, link-based community blog or social network, where the membership is made up of the 10-15 people whose links I'm actually interested in following, because right now they're scattered all over the place. I want them all in the same place, doing a special monkey dance just for me.

Google+ would be a great place for all of this to happen, and I suppose that's the whole idea behind it, but it just hasn't come together yet. Maybe I should start practicing what I preach over there. Yeah, I guess I should.

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