I’ve got a bunch of really heavy essays I’m working on, but here’s some light reading to get you started.
Recently, after having been on Twitter just shy of a year, I passed 2000 followers. That may not seem like much when you consider that some celebrities and power users have followings in the hundreds of thousands, but for an ordinary person, that’s pretty cool. One thing I’ve learned from using Twitter is that building a network of people who read and like your stuff invites a lot of right and wrong ways to do it. The wrong way includes things like writing batch scripts to automatically follow thousands of people, then unfollowing all of them once they’ve followed you back. Other wrong ways include the “optimization method” (I’ve seen a bunch of right-wingers do this to me), plus the various flat-out scams, spammers, and marketing creeps that make the service a pain in the ass to use at times.
So what are some right ways to build a following on Twitter, or any kind of social media? The rules are deceptively simple, common, and easy, so I’ll give ‘em to you without charging you thousands of dollars or making you buy some stupid book that’ll be outdated the moment it hits the printer. My tips after the jump.
When I was kicking around ideas for a book, one of them was a manifesto of how the opening of information and democratization of technology could contribute to innovation in multiple arenas–from the financial sector to the auto industry, from the real-estate market to the public education system. I didn’t intuit that Google would be the avatar of this new age, but looking back, it makes perfect sense. Google’s deceptively simple advancements to Web search triggered the “link economy” that led to a host of new creations, new technologies, and new ideas.
Although the new VNV Nation album dropped early this week, I knew I’d be seeing them live as well, so I decided to wait and bless you with a combined review of both the new song collection and their kickoff tour concert at Los Angeles’ Club Nokia. Read the rest of this entry →
I thought I had nothing to say about Michael Jackson’s death that has not already been said, but it turns out that I do.
My friend and colleague Nate Wilcox posted this moving tribute on Thursday to MJ, and said that Jackson’s sad decline was emblematic of America’s psychic rot. In a private email exchange, he elaborated on this concept, saying that MJ’s (de)volution from brilliant, world-changing pop star to pedophile, drug addict, and sideshow freak symbolized our own travels from the bright promise of innocence to cynical, heartbroken middle age. He said MJ was the latest in a long line of artists, geniuses, and heroes that we destroy through our love of building up idols and tearing them down, and that his achievements made him the most important icon of a generation.
Last evening I ventured out with my friend Heathervescent and a few others to watch “We Live In Public,” a fascinating documentary of the wild, wild Web in the 90s that morphs into a sobering look at how we (de)value privacy and intimacy in an age where everyone is desperate to be famous, and we have the tools to ensure a million people notice us–yet no one knows who we are. Read the rest of this entry →
In a world (apologies to the late, great Don LaFontaine) where every sci-fi movie seems determined to top the other with loud crashes, louder music, and extremely active use of CGI, it’s nice to come across a small-scale story with big-time ambitions. Such is the case with “Moon,” a thoughtful and interesting flick from Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie), and starring Sam Rockwell in a bravura performance that challenges the viewer even as he challenges himself (literally and figuratively).
So by now you’ve probably heard the news, but just in case you haven’t: Steve Rogers, the original (Isaiah Bradley notwithstanding) Captain America is coming back to life after a two-year sojourn in limbo.
For months now, in the face of ever-mounting evidence that the financial industry is engaged in wholesale looting and pillaging of the country, we’ve heard calls for reeducation, oversight, protests, recalls, firings, and if all else fails, violent mobs of revolution. In fact, it may be the overwhelming love for Obama (as he himself has said) that’s keeping the angry wolves from the door.
Today is D-Day, when Allied forces stormed the beach at Normandy one cloudy day in June 1944 and signaled the death knell of the Axis powers, the beginning of the end of the worst war that our world has ever seen. 65 years ago today, we stood up to evil, looked it in the eye, and it blinked.
It’s important you have this context as we address something that’s bothered me for years, and came up again this Memorial Day–we talk a lot about “supporting our troops,” and we venerate their sacrifices, but that’s the problem. We spend too much time lionizing dead martyrs, and not enough time caring for live heroes.
I’ve got a bunch of really heavy essays I’m working on, but here’s some light reading to get you started.
