funny after 5: i can haz bailot?

it's new, but i'm sure it will get even funnier. keep your eye on icanhazbailout.com, because as their banner says, "we're fucked, and it's funny." i'm not sure i agree.

but for moment to moment feelings surrounding the bailout and the economy, look at twistori's election aggregator here. and if for some reason you have absolutely no idea what's going on, there's always The Economic Collapse for Hipsters, a For-Dummies-esque look at whatthefuck is going on.

while you're at it, get your sassy, savvy, snarky hipster on with two of my fave non-ad-related blogs, Public School Intelligentsia and Hipster Runoff.

plurkers, plurking, and plurk you.

plurk.
what does this evoke for you? lurking pigs? fluorescent pork? frat boy puke?
something unspeedy and possibly the antithesis of a bird, say... twitter?

some are pointing this new platform as the answer to our twitter addiction problems. it's new--that means more uptime, right? and it has to be better, if it's new. new and improved, or something.

well, i'm going to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly on plurk.

THE GOOD:
for visual learners, this is a plus. it's a flash reminiscent timeline that enables users to scroll through the day, with most recent plurks on the left, and a pull of the mouse enabling you to view back previous plurks (do i really have to say that?).

it's more visually engaging, offering different emoticon sets for those with different levels of Karma (which is earned via participation and recruitment), as well as personalized "plurk user mascots" to better express your plurkiness on your plurk profile. case in point:

[this winged thing best represents the digital plurk me]

to boot, when you respond to a plurk, it's like a little mini comment feed, enabling you to keep track of conversations in a neatly organized way. the following system is set up very similarly to Ning. you can have friends (mutual followers) and fans (those who you don't follow back) all plain to see (for some this may be a bad thing!) however, you can select what group (clique) sees a particular plurk, which i know some folks have been wanting (though i personally don't).

lastly, my personal favourite aspect is the Twistori effect, wherein my plurks are fed through tags like "loves," "likes," "shares," "feels," "thinks," and "asks." i'm sure i'm just associating my zen in its use, but it is, i find, a fun aspect.

THE BAD
it's closer to a mini social network than a micro blog feed. for those looking for direct comparisons, i don't also see any way for it to feed into your phones the way that twitter does, but i haven't looked that far because i'm a primary web-based twitter user and new to plurk. (as i assumed, i lied: "contrary to the official FAQ, there’s a mobile version of the site located at http://plurk.com/m which works just fine. SMS support is nowhere to be found, though." found here.)

it's really, painfully slow. i can add a friend, and they can add me back, and i won't know for twenty minutes at best. my karma doesn't update. it takes awhile for others' plurks to show up. it doesn't auto-refresh (so there's still that problem). the alerts are always "late" (ie, an alert was still there to add a friend, even after i'd added him ten minutes ago). as we speak, i have 3 plurk "responses" but the feed only clocks me at 1. statistics = fail.

also, it's not intuitive and somewhat confusing. it's certainly going to be more difficult for "easy adopter" types to stick with it. your mom won't be following your plurks anytime soon. the layout is a little clunky--i can't type a response and view my timeline comfortably at the same time. direct messages don't technically exist; instead, you plurk to a particular person and set it to private. clunky. it's hard to get a sense of who is saying what when. also difficult to figure out where someone "replied" to something you said--requires a lot of back-scrolling.

not to mention, it's difficult to find anyone else, though not impossible. you can go through your friends' friends myspace style. you can invite friends. you can search for existing friends via their emails. but it's so convoluted that it's a little hard to be bothered. all in all, it's very much "twitter 2.0" with all the web graphics and complicated nonsense. in some regards, it's cool, but it takes some getting used to with all the "noise." i don't think i'll be switching over fully anytime soon.

but, in case you want to find me, i'm here: user/thegirlriot or use this link, which automatically makes you friends with me, and you can skip that annoying part of the show where you have to locate me: make friends with Riot

THE UGLY
............PLURK?! really? wtf name is that?

what does "plurk" mean to you?
if you heard this on the street and had to define it, what would you say "plurk" is? noun, adjective, verb?

honestly. at least "twitter" and "tweet" is an actual word. "plurk" is like lurk with a superfluous "p" for flair, or pork with a random "l" injected. i keep typing plork instead of plurk. ick.

my contribution is that "plurk" is a noun, slang, for that person who sits in their office plunking away at their keyboards, lurking on extracurricular stuff, and only pretending to do work. heh.

virtual connections, intangible hope

[updated fact adjustment]

i'm beginning premature analysis and first impressions of thoughts surrounding Twistori, a project by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs inspired by the previous We Feel Fine applet. i began using it the other day.

[/updated fact adjustment]

i am in love with these sites. i think i find them reassuring in a personal way without feeling intrusive. when i read "#I believe that the secrets of life are at the bottom of my coffee mug. I must investigate," i don't need to know who wrote it, how old they are, where they're from, or how they identify.

i find connection because it is a familiar thought consideration (belief) in a familiar sentiment (in unexpected places) with a personal addition ('i must investigate'). the phrase offers me comfort. i can commiserate and appreciate it. in the same way that i can appreciate, "#I love grapefruit...it tastes like Summer" and "#I HATE YOU STAPLER, HATE HATE."

simple phrases (i love, i hate, i think, i believe, i feel, i wish) are some of the most intrinsic building blocks for opening communication between two people because it at once shows a vulnerability (telling something about oneself) at the same time as offering it up for empathy (chances are you can relate to most of what appears).

but what does this mean?

it means i can reach out to people and find reassurance without their knowing it. without having to consider how they might feel about how i feel about their words. it's a selfish act of self-therapy, to, at its basest, simply know i'm not alone. i can know that i share so many things with so many people i've never met, and moreover, never have to meet.

i don't need to share my life story with them on Facebook chat. i can take it at face value and appreciate the common threads of human existence, which make me feel small and part of a larger whole, but in a reassuring way rather than a depressing one. it's not complex enough that i have to start asking myself deeper analytical questions about the nature of the statements.

i can just watch the world unfold around me in this faux sense of digital peace. it's pixelated zen. connection without judgment or responsibility. i'm not saying it forgoes human interaction, but it helps as a mental supplement. i don't know if this is the product of an internet disconnected generation, finding connections without faces, or if this is a human instinct to want to feel.

"#I believe this week is killing me."
and i just think we can all use a little zen.

[this will likely be considered again the more i dwell on and use Twistori.]

lines of intrigue. things to think about.

1] Facebook helps raise a revolt, inadvertently of course. "Egyptians are using the online social networking tool Facebook to defy the government's attempt to muzzle the media and hush recent incidents of police brutality during a strike by workers in a town in the Nile Delta." rock on. one more positive aspect, right up there with the kid who used Twitter to get out of a foreign jail by tweeting "arrested"--and, more personally, when a kid went missing at my alma mater last weekend and the cops wouldn't do anything about it for 72 hours, the kids organized search parties and raised awareness via Facebook.

2] in other news, New York doesn't need any more bloody taxes, give me a break. i hope the bill goes down in flames.

3] also, i can't decide, at all. what book would you save? if you could reinvent the canon, decide that for the future THESE were the books that would matter, what would your canon look like?

some of my choices:
- to kill a mockingbird
- fight club
- house of leaves
- written on the body
- the great gatsby
- lord of the flies
- brave new world
- alice's adventures in wonderland

will revisit this when i get home and look at my bookshelf. i am not including works of poetry, plays, or anthologies. because then it would be even longer, as i love poetry and drama. like copenhagen and arcadia.

4] i love this. i love it i love it i love it. i love it so much that i can't even readily articulate why exactly i love it so much. i'm sure i will analyze and get back to you. must sit and ponder and draw connections and relate and commiserate. yes.