Tay Zonday is NOT New

For all those who seem to be blogging about this Tay Zonday and his cherry “Chocolate Rain” like mad, just a reminder. Welcome to the internet, he’s been here since the 11th of July. He just sold out on November the 28th so don’t get too excited!

“As of Wednesday, November 28th 2007 Tay Zonday has sold out and has become a corporate whore. But he is yet to face the unfettered wrath of Anonymous, the very force that propelled him to e-fame.”

Therapeuthical Milk

When I become… well, something, I will launch a brand of milk and position it as the drink for healing your addictions and follies.

• Mister Brooks

• The Aviator

• A Clockwork Orange

New Camera

I finally decided and bought a Sony W-55. It’s pink. And it’s pretty. I wanted a T200 but I didn’t feel like spending £300 on something I will never use to its full extent. And my previous Canon cameras were rubbish so an IXUS was out of the question.

So meh. Too much pink and girly, let’s get back to depressing stuff.

Trends

I said it’d be a blog about trends. You know what I noticed?

• Ugg boots seem to be everywhere. Girls obviously. The short ones were really fashionable about one year ago when people like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton were sporting them, they went out of fashion, now they’re back again for the second winter in a row and my god I would never pay £170 for something I could walk my dog in. If I had a dog. Shoewawa had a post about these ‘new season‘ ugg boots which are hideous if you ask me (but you’re not and this is not a blog about fashion). I can call them what Facebook calls crocs: “No matter how comfortable crocs uggs are, you still look like a dumbass”. Not to offend anyone I know because they do look good on some girls but they’re just not my thing. Except everyone seems to be wearing them. You can tell originals from fakes by the fact that original Ugg from Australia have a tag somewhere near your heel that says ‘UGG’ in block capitals. If I have insulted someone’s wife I apologise for this, it’s a matter of choice, you know.

Latte is mandatory. 

• Saggy berets and slouched beanies. Both guys and girls. 1920s all over again.

• Some strange belts that say ‘Jesus Rocks‘. I always thought ‘ASOS’ stands for ‘All Sorts Of Shit’ which is my some of my folders are called ASOS at random. But I do buy from them…occasionally! But £60 to say ‘Jesus Rocks’ is a bit too much.

• Sainsbury’s always runs out of Double Decker chocolate bars by the end of the day where I live. Also it’s about 35p in Tesco, 45p in Sainsbury’s, 65p at WHSmith and 50pat uni. Except you can make it £1 or kick the machine to blurb out your god-forsaken chocolate bar because it didn’t work the first time.

• When 1.25l Coke bottles are half the price (64p) they sell twice as fast!
• Houmous is almost non-existent in stores at late hours when all the furious commuters are done with shopping.
• Students drink a lot of Glenfiddich 12-year-old (here). 15 and 18 are pricey, you know.
• At Tesco they never have Marmite. If you ask why there’s none on the shelves they’ll say “well, no one’s ever asked for it specifically”. Shame! Yes, I’m one of them.
• Everyone thinks that if you drink more than 5 pints in one night you’re a binge drinker.

Make The Dragon Bigger

Dragon to sit on Union Jack?

“Oi, lads, I knew we forgot something”

“What?”

“Wales!”

“Oh…I see what you did there”

Creative Review Blog says that “culture minister Margaret Hodge pledged to consider a redesign of the union flag to incorporate the Welsh dragon“. I bet there’ll be a competition called “Submit your flag design” or something too!

I Miss Work

Yes, I miss working. How sad is that. I hate being at home because I have weird nightmares and thoughts about ending up as an account executive. I feel miserable because I probably won’t be entitled to work as a copywriter when I’m done with uni, not having followed a literature and whateverelse course. I’ll be shit with words and ideas. I feel sad!

I shudder at the thought of being an acc executive still.

Protecting Intimacy on Facebook

…in a few easy steps.

1. Never add anyone you’ve never seen in your life, it’s as easy as that. “oh hey I just see you walk home every day from my window, can we be facebook friends so I can rape you and take your money?” – “yeah, sure, how r u?”
2. Upper right corner, there’s a ‘privacy’ button. Click it and it shall do ye good!
3. Explore the many contents of this feature and return to its main menu
4. Tick ‘Only Friends’, ‘No One’/'Only me’ where applicable, save and profit.
5. Before you whine that it invaded your privacy, read 1 to 3 again and stick a fork in your eye.

In pictures, with arrows and stuff:
Speaking of things about facebook earlier, you CAN prevent websites from publishing information about all the filthy things you did on the internet:

Yes, both on Facebook and wherever you may shop.

You can control who sees your profile.

No, I don’t want people to see photos, videos of me or if I’m online or not

Or random people finding out where I live, what my MSN and phone number are. If they are my friends and not acquaintances they will know these details anyway.

If say, a company or an advertiser finds me using the friend finder they can’t send me offers, messages, add me to their friends list or see other people so they can exploit them as well and see who I relate to and how.

“Your friends, and everyone from Manchester Metropolitan University can see you in search results if they search for “andrea nastase” or any part of your name. People who can’t see your profile can see your profile picture and poke you from your search listing. ”

(short summary)

And no, I don’t want my teachers to see my drunken pictures, thank you!
It’s not rocket science, is it?

Two Things About Facebook

Since I’ve been working a lot on an essay I didn’t really have time to catch up with the news and ended up having about 30 to 40 open tabs in Firefox, reading, gathering information and mulling things over in the few hours during which I sleep.

Two articles were of interest, particularly because there’s this sort of panic going around and yesterday a third one, in teens2 from The Times just added to the list.

A few days ago there was an article in The Times saying that facebook is giving out unwanted informations about users when they purchase things online on facebook partner sites.

“Matt in New York already knows what his girlfriend got him for Christmas, because a new Facebook feature automatically shares books, movies, or gifts you buy online with everyone you know on Facebook. Without your consent, it pops up in your News Feed – a huge invasion of privacy.“

This will make people panic and think “Oh my God, no way, I’ll never buy from them!” but it’s a bit of a lie if you actually bother to read it till the end. Both facebook and the website you purchase things from will ask you if you want this data to be published. If people want to lie about it and say they were never asked, it’s just like when you don’t want to see the tiny mentions on posters that say “Milla is wearing <some make-up> and fake hair extensions“. There will always be someone stupid enough to overlook it and then start throwing shit at them saying it was never there. It is true they will keep evidence of your transactions but they’ll never publish them so all your friends can see you listen to Take That along with Avenged Sevenfold and Atreyu or something. Your data is being collected everywhere at anytime, using it to send personalised ads in what they call “the recommendation era” wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I’m not necessarily a fan of giving out all my data but I found a restaurant and a hair stylist close to me because I put in my post code in my account details. Even amazon keeps track of all my orders, when they were shipped, when I signed for them yadda yadda and I’m not bothered, what I ordered, what I looked at and gives out recommendations. Facebook can have all the music I listen to because I already own most of it (otherwise why would I call myself a fan) or what I want will never be found in stores, not theirs or anyone else in the near future. Because they’re vinyls and they only sell in selected stores. If only they’d help me find those quicker, it would make my life easier. Please have all my information and tell me where these records are. Please?

The second article is not only about Facebook but MySpace and Bebo too, both somewhere around clinical death. When I say death I mean it’s pretty damn stupid as a marketer to even do things with MySpace. So passé! Users are still there but they’re not logging in 15 times a day anymore, more like 15 times a month, especially those over 18. If you do want to talk to kids in the UK/US, they’re your thing. “MySpace Isn’t Private. OMG!“ they say.

• 70% of those between 14 and 21 said they don’t want employers to find out information about them
• 60% don’t think information could come up in a search
• 2/3 do not know who they added as a friend
• 70% don’t care if strangers can see their info.

Well excuse me but that’s dumb. It’s very, very dumb actually. If you’re this stupid not to care then serves you right to be screwed by life later on. The Times also made a list of what teens think is uncool: Windows XP, the iPhone, Facebook, the Wii and everything else adults seem to enjoy, pretty damn obvious. They like the iPod touch, the MacBooks, the 40GB PS3 and the Xbox 360. Quote:

“I hate Facebook and can’t think of any reason why a teenager would like it, yet so many people use it! It is too simple and boring. It’s suited to a 50-year-old, not a 15-year-old. It’s like a watered-down MySpace. Except MySpace is like having your own blog, and Facebook is only like having a high-tech email address – you’re better off with MSN/Hotmail Messenger. It’s so bad and boring it makes Bebo look half-decent – and I’ve seen maths teachers using that. Facebook: It’s five years too late”

Wyatt Conneely, 13, aspires to be a supercar test driver

He’ll be 18 soon enough and wondering what’s behind it unless something better than facebook comes out.

 

Strange Apple Nostalgia

I found a picture of my first ever iPod. I’m keeping this as I seem to have deleted about all the other pictures for some stupid reason and no one has a clue what I’m talking about when I say ‘mini iPod’ even if this was about four years ago. Or maybe less.

This is Bob. 

Not Enough Empathy

Originally uploaded by ed100

I noticed this post on the Influx Insights blog. The picture speaks for itself but it made me think a bit of one of my essay topics on what motivates people to buy things. We’ve tapped into contemporary issues in consumer behaviour (choice paralysis being one of them, being faced with too many choices and not being able to pick something) but we seem to be forgetting that the world needs better customers as well. Those people that don’t take everything for granted and still have a bit of respect for things. It always makes someone’s day better and it could be you anytime. I went into an Apple store today to buy myself some new accessories and asked a guy about the iPhone, if he thinks it’s worth the money now. He first answered “It would be a good investment as it has these features…” bla bla since he was trying to sell it.

I grinned and said he looks like the kind of person that would own an iPhone but I was ready to bet £100 he had not purchased one. He said he didn’t. Not because it’s expensive but because it’s a sort of first generation thing, just like with iPods. They are cool but you still want to wait a bit before getting one as the second generation might bring in features that you wanted but the first never had. And so and so on. You would recommend it because you’re a brand evangelist, but… iPod shuffle came out when Apple segmented the market with their first products and discovered lots of interesting new uses for their products.

He did laugh then and said I was right about the iPhone and said it’s unusual of customers to say that since most of them consider Apple stores to be a sort of mecca, yet they rarely buy anything. And that it’s unusual for customers to ask them about what they do or think.