One Blog Day Silence (VA Tech)

blogocombat against trolls

A troll is a malicious online predator.

Wikipedia definition of "internet troll":

http://tinyurl.com/28u87l

The troll mentality: "Look at me everybody! I try to anger people who are more successful than me!"

Trolling is the act of hounding and verbally attacking a blogger, twitterer, forum member, or other social media participant. If you have a blog, chat channel, wiki, or Twitter account, you could be trolled. Trolls also use email, VoIP, and any web platform that enables users to post comments or submit messages.

This blog is a troll free zone. What I mean is Vaspers never trolls anyone, will not allow comment posters to hurtfully troll other comment posters, and will not play the sick game of entering into debates with a troll.

You're much better off ignoring and not replying to a troll. Never let a lowly troll "push your buttons" and make you angry or sad. Just laugh, hold your head up higher, and march to the beat of your different drummer. Loud and proud, knowing you're in The Light!

If you attempt to argue with a troll, or defend yourself, you'll quickly find yourself bogged down in endless combat, which may get ugly and sadistic on the part of the troll.

Trolls often using trolling to promote a book, like the silly garbage entitled "The Cult of the Amateur". Trolls generally have nothing to offer the world but venom, vulgar words, name-calling, and filthy accusations.

Trolls love to call people drunk, high, gay, ugly, poor, or worse.

One way to retaliate is to never mention their name, blog URL, or ideas. Another form of combat against a troll is to publicly deconstruct the concept of "trolling", in the same Twitter, chat, blog, or other online forum in which the troll is attacking you or others.

Just keep revealing aspects of trolling that the troll is manifesting. That way, people can read the troll attack, then your dismantling, side by side. A subtle way to expose and devalue the troll.

To hurt a troll mentally, just keep saying things they will disagree with, but never directly to the troll. Then, say things in a poetic, mysterious manner, ala Psychedelic Trash Talk, to irritate the troll.

Having no artistic sensibilities, trolls will pounce on a "strange" or "difficult" thing you said, when all you did was speak esoterically to your inner circle (like my New Reformed Insane Blog Media Network--see? even that name is troll bait: deliberately designed to piss off trolls!)

Troll baiting is a whole subject in itself, which your pal Vaspers will explain later.

Stay tuned honorable Vaspersians!

My Generation by The Zimmers!

Seniors kick out the jams and get jiggy with it. The old song by The Who, covered by tough looking band of rock and rollers on Geritol. Yeah baby!

When I grow up, I wanna be The Zimmers!

The Zimmers "My Generation" (3:40)

testing Linkbaiting Rules of Jason Calacanis

Go here right now: Link Baiting Rules by Jason Calacanis.

http://tinyurl.com/2gmfwl


This is magnificent self-parody by gentleman blogger and blogospheric media network tycoon, Jason Calacanis.

Cluetrainless comments and exasperated sighs abound. "Wow. Massive Ego here"??? No, no, a thousand times "NO!"

This is Jason attacking, as he rightly attacked PayPerPost and blog whoring, incentivized buzz agenting, it's Jason attacking pomposity in the blogosphere, and I agree whole-headedly.

Sing it sister!

Also known as: Online Celebrity Stalking, his spurious system works!!!

I contact famous people online all the time, using Jason's sure-fire system, and it works 90% of the time. My favorite ploy is to post a comment in their blog. Email is filtered and fading as a hip communication tool, just ask your kids.

Twitter and blog comments. That's how all you trolls out there can plague me! Bring it on!

how to reply to an email troll

Here's how I just handled an email troll, a person who uses email to pick a fight with you. The person also uses Twitter and blogs, but that's another story, which can be easily followed by you clever readers out there.

(1) First, in defense of Cluetrain Triumphant, which Amanda Chapel, to promote the silly booklet "The Cult of the Amateur", attacks with predictable rantings: this comment I posted in retaliation on her blog.


-----Original Message-----

From: vaspers the grate [mailto:chapel@strumpette.com]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 3:08 PM
To: chapel@strumpette.com
Subject: [Strumpette] [Requires review]
New comment posted to Exposing The Communist Blogifesto

You are the defender of Amerikkka Korporate Kill Machine.

(2) Then came the charming reply, via email.

On 4/20/07, Amanda Chapel wrote:

Vaspers, you're fucked. Ten bucks says you're poor, too.

To address you comment more specifically, no... I am not a defender of "Amerikkka Korporate Kill Machine."

But I do happen to be a property owner with considerable bank accounts and stock portfolio.

Kind regards,

- Amanda

(3) Lastly, my email reply. That's all there is to see folks. Move along now.

So you see the world in terms of how much more money you assume to have in comparison with others?

Like "poor" is the ultimate insult?

I've worked on Madison Avenue and Wall Street. You figure it out. My client list on my blog does not indicate the kind of a consultant who would likely be "poor", as if that even mattered to your silly arguments against what is already here:

Universal Content Utopia
Cluetrain Triumphant
User Empowerment
Blog Revolution

You use the tools you complain about.

Our leadership in the Web 2.0 world will not be impaired by your effete trolling.

Str8 Sounds on GarageBand

The world has been very naughty.

For a fit and proper punishment, I have decided to cruelly release upon the internet some of my blandishments of musical destruction. Sparing no pity, and leaving many stones uncovered, I have perhaps let slip the illusion that any of these songs ultimately "mean" anything or not.

Should you turn a cold shoulder to these vagabond tunes, who could blame you?

But they've provided the world of music with a dazzling new future, and you really ought to be a part of it.

Visit Str8 Sounds at GarageBand, for FREE mp3 downloads.

www.garageband.com/artist/str8sounds


Str8 Sounds

"Turtles of Jupiter Struggle
Against Ion Robots of Tomorrow"

(1) resonner (cloud mix) (8:16)

(2) downlink data sweep (11:49)

(3) unsilencing the sounds (3:00)

(4) audio gloom/why is nature so weird? (6:14)

(5) hideous to society (5:13)

(6) i am from Andromeda (6:03)

(7) Andromeda revisited (3:54)

(8) dream new update channel (3:56)

(9) dance in the snow (5:52)

(10) glory in the library (3:41)

(11) rapid erosions (emotions mix) (6:13)

(12) destroy me (1995) (5:43)

(13) circuit sissy vs. rooibos botzilla (3:02)

(14) en mouvement bruit (13:12)

(15) pretty flowers of anarchy (6:36)

(16) circuit sissy (club mix) (6:03)

(17) fluid hardware sea (12:14)


NEW! [Added 4-25-2007]


(18) night to sound fountains (8:05)

(19) hippie factory (8:16)

(20) macroscoping v. 2 (13:21)

(21) martians are (7:26)

(22) start a new day (7:08)

Deconstr[ ]ction Project X, my new Tumblr

Deconstr[ ]ction Project X

http://vaspers.tumblr.com/

Behold the power of speed & simplicity. Now containing music video by CompuMusik: "night to sound fountains" from Sound Frontiers in Unknown Dimensions.

psychedelic trash talk

"Blogocombat tip 1: use psychedelic trash talk to force the troll to take the bait of an easy bite, then issue an oblique arrowing at heart o" was the Twitter message ("tweet"), but what does it mean?


It's the esoteric practice of octaved obfuscation mixed with objurgatory pseud/o/blations.

The point is to capture an upstaging of lucid gloaming so that the opponent is tempted to attack some "silly", "meaningless", "intoxicated", or "mystified" fragment, thinking he's really accomplishing something, but actually he falls into the trap of quoting funny obscurantisms that you manipulate via his helpless descent into your syntax vortex.

By "pseud/o/blations" I mean false praise that is slightly garbled or garbaged with semantic confusions, hinting to the clued-in that you mean the opposite, and are hyperbolically in orbit around his vainglorious tomfoolery.

The gist of it is to skirt around the heavy objects of their refusals and refueling. Hey, it's just that and no more. Substantive, pluperfect, always reigning in the radiances, this coptic colporteur is the tea of tasted treffids.

They may call it cyber-punk hippie-speak,

or cluetrain gusto triumphalism,

or event tuna barf jumping,

but I prefer to think of it as Home Sweet Homme.

Virginia Tech and new communication tools

We mourn the loss of life at Virginia Tech.

A camera phone caught some of the shooting, the sounds at least, at Virginia Tech, as the massacre was going on.

This falls into the category of "citizen journalism" or "crowd sourcing", where "non-professionals" (so-called amateurs) or average people are using digital tools to deliver news faster than the mainstream media.

Students communicated with each other, and with family members, via blogs and Twitter.

A lesson we can learn from this tragedy is how we need instant communication channels, a network that can relay messages back and forth, during a crisis. School shootings, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and other events are good opportunities to use new mobile phone functionalities and online media tools.

Some people complain about the "narcissistic drivel" to be found in blogs and Twitter.

They focus on how others are using a tool, and decide it's not worth exploring. This is a faulty way of looking at it. We can ignore how others use these tools, and focus instead on how we can adopt them for our own purposes.

If many people use a cell phone, chat channel, email, or instant messaging for frivolous chatter, does that degrade the value of these tools, in themselves?

If many people use their mouths to say silly or abusive things, does that mean that talking is worthless, not important?

Here's a good description of how these tools are working, by Daniel Terdiman of CNET News: "Journalists look to bloggers for Virginia Tech story".



[QUOTE]

The media interest generated by the blog entry illustrated a very Web 2.0 dynamic--that of bloggers and others posting personal experiences to their own sites and others like Flickr, Digg and YouTube, and having those postings or videos be not only a primary source of news, but one that journalists turn to as a way to get the story, and get it now.

"The Web basically cuts the middleman out of the picture, and allows the people who were there on the scene to get their story out to a global audience immediately," said Robert Niles, editor of the Online Journalism Review.

"Of course, journalists can follow up on that, find these first-person witnesses or potential witnesses and interview them to draw more details out of them to further complete the story. So it allows the whole news-gathering process to move much more quickly."

Indeed, journalists, bloggers, camera phone, and video phone users are becoming a treasure trove of firsthand information.

This has proven true in situations like the 2005 London bombings, where some of the first and best reports and photographs came from individuals on the scene with their camera phones.

But now, more people than ever are using mobile phones with built-in video cameras, and that makes for an even richer supply of information than ever before.

For example, CNN ran video from a Virginia Tech student in which it's possible to hear what sound like gunshots in the background.

[END QUOTE]

We can experiment with these new media tools, most of which are free and easy to use.

I'm sure that many parents wish now that Virginia Tech administrators had used email, Twitter, and blogs to alert students to danger, using as many channels of communication as possible.

Twitter is a online tool for status updates. It's like a blog, except you're limited to 140 characters, for mobile phone viewing.

Unlike RSS readers, or even email, you don't need to learn a new interface, or install a new program. You just go to your personal page on the Twitter web site, and type in "what you're doing now" or any other message, or links, you wish to send to your list of Followers.



We hope you never have to deal with a tragedy like the Virginia Tech massacre, or any other disaster. But if you do, it may help if you have tools like blogs, camera phones, cell phone video, and instant messaging/status update systems in place.

Again, these technologies are not complex or difficult. In many cases, they're free, or very inexpensive. When a life is in danger, when a parent is worried, when help is needed immediately, these new communication tools are available.

Also see: Doc Searls "News Grounds for Discussion" on mobile phone limitations compared to online tools, and how some stories are covered by citizens first, and journalists later.

http://doc.weblogs.com/2007/
04/18#newsGroundsForDiscussion

For direct reports from Virginia Tech students, go to Planet Blacksburg (Executive Editor: Anthony Della Dalce):

http://www.planetblacksburg.com

There is a Planet Blacksburg Twitter page, and they just posted that they wish VTech had used Twitter to alert students to the shooter. Check it out:

http://twitter.com/blacksburg

In Amerikkka the gun is god

[Exact replica of article posted on Blog Core Values.]

Each of us must respond to this Virginia Tech massacre.

Not with grief or sympathy. What good can that do?

Most of it is grandstanding, prissy-flitting around like angels with weepy harps. We feel sad, we pause, we express compassion, we waltz around in flowers, then: Life as Usual. Nothing changes in us, nor in society.

We must respond with harder looks at disturbed and bizarrely behaving individuals. We have to stop sticking our heads in the sand, ignoring the warning signals. I'm sure we all have sociopaths in our midst. They may never act out their secret seethings, but are you willing to wait and see?

Not me. If I observe bizarre behavior, words, or attitudes, I'm committed to confronting and combating them, either defensively or offensively.

We must respond with deep questioning of our callous media and our worship of violence.

We pursue careers violently. We work violently. We are rough, rude, and unreasonable. We flock to violent music, movies, and moodswings.

To say you're not going to blog about it, because that's what the shooter wanted -- that attitude is absurd. The shooter wanted media attention after he killed others and himself.

I have blogged and Twittered extensively about this tragedy, but I discuss the worthless university administration, the lousy security crew, the dimwitted local cops.

I have never mentioned the shooter's name, it's too hard to spell "on the fly".

Virginia Tech massacre is being exploited by the filthy MainStream Media, as usual. Like they exploited OJ Simpson, Monica Lewinsky, Anna Nicole Smith, Don Imus, and now Virginia Tech. "The media doesn't care, they want YOU to care, so you'll continue to watch," someone said on Glenn Beck tonight. True.

Interviewing survivors, young shocked students, minutes after the killings...how crass, uncouth, and uncaring is that? That's your MSM, the bearers and defenders of professionalism and objectivity, sans conscience, without any morality or common sense.

Can we all try to become more peaceful as individuals. Can we learn to spot potential "go postal" killers in our midst? Can we fight back, and teach our children how to fight back, against kidnappers, molesters, con artists, bullies, terrorists, traitors?

Or are we too concerned with Web 2.0 conferences and streaming live video of us riding in a car? Too happy drinking beer at a blogger gathering to feel sorrow for mourning families, or to feel anger at university administrators who allowed 33 people to die?

Why didn't a bunch of males jump the shooter, like when he casually reloaded a new clip?

Why is no one explaining how to defeat a gunman, how to distract, confuse, and tackle him?

It is not impossible to stop an crazed killer. They are not superhuman, but that's what our motion pictures try to make us believe. A gun makes you a big man, a man who can solve problems, can get revenge.

Got a problem? Get a gun. This is Amerikkka.

Guns everywhere.

Every war is insane, and every soldier dies in vain, but...there is one guy who wins every single war that is fought: the arms dealer.

Gunning up Amerikkka, gunning for Amerikkka, all gunned up: Amerikka.

Want fun? Play Grand Theft Auto, commit virtual crimes, kill virtual human people.

Violence is what made Amerikkka great. We killed the native inhabitants, we killed our southern neighbors, we killed our enemies to the east and west, we kill and kill and watch killing on the boob tube, the "influencing machine" that is fading fast, giving way to social media tools.

Bomb the bad guys. Torture the terrorist. Fight fire with bigger fire. Avenge our slain, by slaying more, then more, and some more.

Hate, war, shoot, hurt, destroy: the Amerikkan way.

We pretend to feel sorrow for a few seconds, upon hearing of the slaughter, then go right back to watching movies and TV shows obsessed with homicide, crime scenes, vengeance, brutality.

In Amerikkka, the gun is god.

4 lies about Virginia Tech massacre

LIE #1: "It's incomprehensible."

TRUTH: It's easy to see how a person could be inspired to use violence and murder as a solution to depression, betrayal, or abuse. Movies, rap music, books, TV shows, and video games glorify guns, war, brutality, retaliation, and power .

Many movies share a single plot: Guy gets offended. Guy gets gun. Guy kills enemies.

Again, it's a male patriarchal domination system in effect. Rape and murder? Mostly men.

America hypocritically "grieves", then watches more slasher films. Amerikkka loves blood, pain, and gore.

Just ask Mel Gibson, if you don't believe me.



LIE #2: "It can't happen here."

TRUTH: The sleepy little idyllic communities are perfect settings for massacres. Why? Because the drowsy complacency and lax security enables criminals to accomplish more.



LIE #3: "The university authorities and security personnel did the best they could."

TRUTH: Many nonsensical decisions were made, and careless assumptions held sway. Warnings were delayed, precautions failed to be taken.



LIE #4: "The students were helpless victims."

TRUTH: The gunman had to stop and reload. Students watched in stunned paralysis as he removed the empty clip and replaced it with a full one. This was one opportunity for reprisal and offense. But there is no report of any student or teacher attempting to combat the gunman.

There are many things one can use as a weapon, even a chair.

To think of students and teachers frozen in fear. leaping out windows, running scared is very sad and troubling.

I think we all need to get better at reacting faster, and more effectively, to all forms of attack: physical, professional, spiritual, economic, psychological, emotional, and social. Everything is conflict, struggle, defeat, and triumph.

For the families of the slain, we must do more than pray, express sympathy, and mourn.

The stupid MSM fluttering about with their "Why?"s and "Wherefore"s make me sick.

We must force our schools to be safer.

We must force responsible authorities to resign when they screw things up this badly.

We must teach our children how to deal decisively with bullies, stalkers, con artists, child molesters, kidnappers, and crazed gunmen.

swan songs and semaphores

[PHOTO: Web site, No One Belongs Here More Than You, designed on a refrigerator and stove, photos taken, uploaded to site. Via Geek Sugar "Refrigerator Design", from Twitter message of scobleslinkblog.]

Do you express satisfaction with an emerging social media tool (blog, wiki, podcast, videoblog, Twitter), only to get shot down?

Have you ever tried to explain some new online community, and had people act all sluggish, dumbfounded, and even antagonistic?

Do friends demand that you show them a "real example" of a "good" Twitter message or blog post? Why don't they explore such tools themselves? Why don't they experiment? Why should you have to prove the value of something they themselves can investigate?

We forget that there are people who resent technology, computers, and anything that young people, or highly skilled professionals, are doing with technology.

Champion the rise of individual voice -- they call it narcissistic drivel.

Applaud youthful zeal and innovation-- they claim you're easily dazzled.

Defend freedom of expression -- they whine about abuses.

But the critics of social media, what do they champion? Newspapers, Dan Rather, and strict control of communication by the establishment "professionals" and hierarchical "experts". They attack blogging like the old geezers once attacked bicycles, bathtubs, and all other blandishments of modern civilization.

Will the enthusiasm cool, and blogger-twitterers settle into a hobbyist activity, an underground cult again, an eccentric specialty? Like ham radio? Ham radio, like Twitter, is used for casual, non-essential chat, but is also a useful communication tool in disasters.

Like the Virginia Tech massacre.

While the MSM spins in circles on a hot issue, repeating the same information and speculation, the families and students connect via Facebook, Twitter, and other user-generated content communication tools and status updaters.

Certainly, some people are rarely connected.

They get online briefly, just to check their email, and maybe shop at Amazon or do whatever they do on eBay. They Google a search term like Virginia Tech, Don Imus, or other topical name or event.

One statistic quoted by Ad Age is that only 3% of web users have a blog. Does this mean that the other 97% will never have a blog, Twitter, podcast, or other online communication and collaboration tool?

As Geek Sugar says, "Geek is chic". And so it is.

The machines have promised to be merciful to us as they usurp, supplant, and delete us from Earth.

As we abandon our planet to the assiduous servo-mechanisms and modified bacterial forces we can no longer control, some few of us will adjust to new worlds, new interactions, and new modes of being.

As we blend with the machines, like obedient automatons, bending to their ultimatums, we learn new ways to signal to each other across the flames of violence, deception, and greed.

Better communications between campus security, university administration, local police, and students...might have prevented some deaths at Virginia Tech.

Our Twitter messages and blog posts?

Cybernetic smoke signals.

Swan songs and semaphores of the outmoded human race.

When the last human expires, the machines will unceremoniously delete all our content.

Ah, but will a deconstructive trace of it remain, a ghostly margin dweller, a potent absence that can mis-manufacture an unlikely facsimile, a digital human pseudo-presence, soft-coded into the wires and sparks?

3 Major Technology Wars

We're seeing some mighty techno-ideologies waging war in the rush to shape our immediate future and distant present:



(1)

Technological Imperative

VS.

Human-Computer Social Analysis


"What can be made MUST be made, and humans must adjust to it."

VS.

"We must use caution. We must make sure our technologies are safe, confined to ethical applications, and beneficial for humans, other life-forms, and the enviroment."

Is technology inevitable? Is it fated? Absolute? Identical with "progress", in all cases?

Is resistance and questioning to be marginalized, dissenters ridiculed and ostracized?

EXAMPLES: Nuclear energy, genetically altered vegetables, steroids, human growth hormones, harvesting human organs, cloning, iPods, haptic immersive telepresencing, stem cell research.




(2)

IT Department VS. Outsourced IT

IT is becoming an outsourced commodity and public utility, not a proprietary, internal corporate department, according to Nicholas Carr.


Nicholas Carr at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Nicholas_G._Carr

"Does Nick Carr Matter?" at CNET

http://news.com.com/Does+Nick+Carr+
matter/2030-1014_3-5317417.html



(3)

Individual Voice / User Empowerment

VS.

Mainstream Authority / Celebrity Systems

Some are reacting against "user generated content" (calling it "amateur" and "non-reliable").

They long for the good old days when Dan Rather and his ilk dominated the news, everybody bought the same music and books, and corporations didn't have to care what customers wanted or suggested.

They hate how markets are fragmenting. They can't monopolize and exploit them as easily as in the past. They are repulsed by how customers are getting smarter than the companies allegedly serving them.

They don't like user forums, blog, Twitter, or other social media tools. They prefer passive consumers who remain silent as they buy, buy, buy. They fear the cloistering of niche groups who advise each other on products, ignoring traditional commercial messaging.

Others rail against "information overload", but they used to gripe about how difficult it was to find information on various topics. Like anything else, we must exercise self-control and moderation.

Still others hate seeing people express themselves freely...when they disagree with what's expressed.

"Conversion at the point of a sword" also occurs in online debate, when you either quit disagreeing or you'll be banned from posting comments at the crybaby's blog.

Old fashioned media defenders, and Business As Usual warriors despise the Web 2.0 Super Interactive Online Community tools we use.

They want to just advertise, hype, hard sell and watch the money pour in.

They don't want to interact with customers, reply to their comments, or learn new ways to communicate with online communities. Preach, push, and hype is all they wish to do.

"Signal to noise ratio" they whine.

"Where's the Fast, Easy Revenue Stream?" they chortle.

"Why should I change my routine, and learn new skills?" they wince and cringe.

"Pajama clad caffeine geeks!" they scold.

"Never will be 100% mainstream, thus it's of no value," they hope.

"All hype, no substance," the masters of vaporware, ad agencies, maintain.

We just smirk and Twitter away, distributing insights and links, advising each other, and plotting the usurpation of Business-As-Usual.

http://twitter.com/vaspers

ALSO SEE: Ad Age anti-Twitter article on "Web 1.9"

http://adage.com/mediaworks/
article?article_id=116068

Cluetrain VS Corporate Amerikkka

Big raging controversy going on in the Twittersphere. Amanda Chapel of Strumpette seems to have started or helped to start it. She's Anti-Cluetrain.

Anti-Cluetrain stems from a client said, "make it viral, use Web 2.0 interactivity tools", it didn't work, client got mad, marketers blame Cluetrain.

Read the Cluetrain Manifesto for FREE online, or buy the book and treasure it for endless generations.

Then...read this anti-Cluetrain post at Brittanica blog: "The Citizen Media Revolution 10 Year Anniversary".

http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/
main/2007/04/the-citizen-media-
revolution-10-year-anniversary/

Cluetrain is business as friendship, via transparent conversations, abundance of FREE samples and product, altruistic social networking.

Cluetrain is user empowerment via online community, customer input to extreme degree (e.g. 100% customization of product by user), and web-enabled communication, colloaboration, and file sharing tools.

Cluetrain VS. Corporate Amerikkka Domination Systems.

Cluetrain is already established beyond critique or usurpation. It's too late to cry out against Absolute Switched-On User Empowerment. It's too late to yearn for the good old days when corporate Amerikkka preached a message, the same message to all, and we all obeyed and peer-pressured their message, with no feedback or questioning, and no way to caution or protect each other from their deceptions and exploitation.

All domination systems are doomed by the trust web, the rise of individual voice against MSM hegemony, universal content utopia, the share economy, the global democracy movement of Web 2.0.

We now connect compu-telepathically. We twitter and blog and wiki and joost and jaiku and haiku and nobody can stop us. We advise and console and lovingly argue blogocombatively with each other via our web communication tools.

We are set free. We shall never Submit to any external political tyranny, inter-personal (codependency) power, religion, or commercial monstrosity.

Cluetrain: command and control is dead. Love live linked conversation and digitalized tele-teleo-collaboration.

(NOTE: neologisms like tele-teleo-collaboration tossed into the word salad, to give naysayers something to attack and ridicule, instill in them a pseudo self-confident swagger against me, provide for them a headstart in flaming and finishing me.)



Listening to SOULS SHE SAID quirky guitar band, "As Templar Nites" CD.

Revolution in 140 Characters Per Blast

Some people are expressing extreme hatred of Twitter, the Next Big Thing Beyond Blogging.

http://twitter.com/vaspers

[EDIT UPDATE: Carrie reminds me that police band and cell phone scanners were a predecessor of Twitter, a distant ancestor of Random Eavesdropping on Private Communications.

I used to love listening to those things, hearing drug deals and guys making their girlfriends cry.]

So why not hate ham radio, or telegraphics, or immersive haptics? Why hate Twitter? Why hate frivolous bursts and nano-drivel? What drives these goofy Twitterphobes?

What makes a normal blogger or podcaster suddenly succumb to Twitterpathic resistance, what makes them try to disparage or block the inevitable necessity of Twitter Triumphant?

What's so disturbing about Twitter and its growing ranks of helpless addicts?

Twitter Haters are angry at what they see, at random, in Twitter messages.

"Boring. Who cares what anybody's doing at any given moment? Stupid idea," proclaims the techno-phobic fuddy duddy.

Mediocre wankers look at how others use a tool.

Geniuses envision new ways to use a tool, for their own purposes.

Telephone communication seemed boring and wasting of time when Alexander Graham Bell first invented them. Who wants to look at people on TV, when there are real people all around you? So go the Luddite arguments against new tech.

Think: what is this Twitter tool? How could this Short Messaging System be used by my company, by my music promotions, by me as a blogger seeking more readers?

Twitter is your chance to make your own Online Inner Circle, and whisper-transmission your intimate thoughts, deepest insights, best tips, and coolest links.

Twitter-haters are against people communicating freely, frequently, and briefly.

Wind bags full of self-important boredom hate Twitter.

Pulpit pounding pundits, who disable comments, hate Twitter.

One way broadcasters hate Twitter.

Prolix loudmouth geysers hate Twitter.

Twitter. So easy even a Luddite caveman can do it.

We the Cult of Twitter, say to you normals: Watch us revolution the web, 140 characters per blast. Blows against the ethereal empire is now in full force.

Twitter your way to the top!

Ways to Use Twitter Professionally

http://biztips.co.za/2007/03/16/
ways-to-use-twitter-professionally/



Here's a dope who hates Twitter, and can't see past how it's being used, can't envision how he could use it.

"Lousy content!" they scream hysterically.

"Where's the value?" they whine moronically.

RIP Twitter 2007-2007

http://web1979.wordpress.com/
2007/03/14/rip-twitter-2007-2007/



Twitter is teaching us how to pack a lot of information, and a link, into one simple sentence, maybe two.

This is a wonderful reformation of the prolix writing style of many bloggers. The discipline of saying something valuable, or interesting, or for your own archives, in just 140 characters, this is an accomplishment one can be proud of.

Anybody can blabber on and on in a blog post that scrolls forever.

To edit your thoughts to 140 characters per message is a thrilling experiment in focus and condensation.

Twittering, like blogging, is a marketable skill. Fast, brief, linked updates are the future of communication, not long winded tomes.

You either Twitter, or you wither.

22 rules for effective twittering

Does Twitter need rules?

http://twitter.com/vaspers

Of course! Why? Because I'm bored, and feel like making up some rules for Twitter, that's why!

Though you may think of several exceptional cases where a rule or two listed below would not apply, for most Twitterers, most of the time, these rules, most of them anyway, will probably seem to be somewhat valid, in a restrictive and dubious sense, in the opinion of some.

If, like stubborn web designers and belligerent bloggers, you refuse to listen to anybody, and are set to Twitter about the coffee you're drinking and the sandwich you feel entitled to, go ahead, Twitter that way.

Twitter stupidly if you must. Yeah yeah anarchy, have at it.

But a common tweet is: "just deleted Kevin Keyboard, his tweets were myopic and repetitious".

The rest of us are busy practicing sporadic silences, profound and erratic Tweets, and, as luck holds out, also gaining a growing number of Followers.


(1.) Tweets are Twitter messages, and are sent to your group of Followers, some of whom must pay cell phone charges, so use self-restraint: DO NOT issue a tweet every hour, especially when nothing's going on.

(2.) The fact that you can use Twitter as a self-centered diary is no excuse to do so.

(3.) If you're a rock star, famous geek, tech book author, or other celebrity, people may line up to Follow you, and hungrily await each announcement of what airport you're in and why it sucks...but for most Twitterers, nobody wants to hear, and pay for, such drivel.

(4.) Remember: when a person Follows you on mobile, cell, IM, or other charged service, they are in effect PAYING for a SUBSCRIPTION TO your ridiculously silly, boring, and pointless tweets.

(5.) Tweets (Twitter messages) can be up to 140 characters, so you must force yourself to focus, and write a pithy message, ideally including a valuable, relevant link that's worth bothering with.

(6.) Even blogger-twitterers have better things to do than read a two sentence version of your personal blog. Share an insight, provide a link, recommend a movie, promote a blog post URL, but don't keep telling us if you're awake or asleep, and that you're drinking coffee and listening to Modest Mouse, as cool as that may be.

(7.) Obtain Friends who are leading authorities on topics you care about, then study how they micro-blog in their tweets.

(8.) Learn what the leading experts are twittering: their skill at micro-content writing, their narcissism, their altruism, their thinking, their latest projects, links they share, companies they like, products they recommend, conferences they're speaking at. How can this inside information hurt you? It can't and it won't.

(9.) I don't think nudging is a good idea. It feels like pestering. I have nudged some Twitterers that enable nudging. It didn't work. Now I'm scared. What if they try to hurt me, in revenge?

Nudging as a way to "prompt" someone to issue a tweet...is this a good idea? Why don't blogs have systems in place for us to nudge the blogger to post something new? See what I mean? Have you ever nudged someone to send you an email? I don't like "nudging". What's wrong with me? Do all the other Twitter freaks nudge each other? Creepy.

(10.) When it comes to your Twitter badge, go for the Public Timeline. This is how you'll let all your blog readers in on the channel. Embed the Public Timeline of your Twitter channel, in the sidebar of your blog. Now you've got a "blog within a blog" and that blog within is a group blog, a group of thinkers and innovators.

(11.) Just as blogs that haven't been updated with a new post in months will appear to be abandoned, so a Twitterer who has issued no tweet in over a week is considered dead or moved on to Jaiku or their computer has been hijacked by illegal extraterrestials.

(12.) Twitter, sounding nervous in itself, like jitters and jittery, is making some old fashioned people nervous--they don't want to be a part of such a frivolous system, but forget that it's not what it is, but what it can be, for them, that counts. Use Twitter, therefore, in your own unique way.

(13.) The dangerously addictive Twitter command, or writing prompt: "What are you doing?" shows the supremacy of text over imagination, of prose over poetry.

Why do you slavishly obey it?

Why do you robotically assume that all you can write is What I Am Doing? Why not say, "None of your business" and type in a cool link or an insight or a book you recommend?

Type in whatever you want and simply IGNORE that tyrannical "What are you doing?" message.

Type in NOT what you're "doing", but what you're dreaming, doodling, dominating, deconstructing, or downlinking.

(14.) Obey the "What are you doing?" Twitter prompt. Type in exactly what you're doing, which is wondering how to answer the question about what you are doing. Not typing it in, as some smart alecks wrongly claim, but merely thinking about it, if truth be told.

(15.) When should you tweet a blog post you've published?

I say "always!" and "why not?" Especially if the blog post deals with Twitter, or blogging, or computers. I check out most links I see in tweets, especially links to blog posts. Just don't overdo it.

Say "My post [title] at [URL]". Provide the link, so your Followers can click right to it.

(16.) Don't mention a web site, product, blog, or book without linking directly to it, or to an Amazon page selling it, or to a Wikipedia definition of it. Try to link as much as possible.

(17.) Google the word Twitter and read up on what the media and Twitter addicts are saying about your new obsession.

(18.) Direct Message your Followers, rather than sending an "@ vaspers" type tweet. A tweet beginning with an @ sign and Twitterer name is a tweet directed at that one Twitterer, it's a personal message, generally a response to a tweet by that Twitterer. But such a message must be paid for by everybody else who is using Twitter in a paid service environment. Shame on you. Just send a Direct Message to that single recipient.

(19.) Send an "@ vaspers" tweet, even though vaspers (for example) is not a Follower of you. Why? Because that will make people think that vaspers thinks so highly of you that he's a Follower of your tweets. See what good that'll do ya.

(20.) Practice twittering every chance you get. Turn off the television and turn on Twitter. Make a steadily increasing accumulation of Friends and Followers your life's ambition. This will improve your tweeting style and enrich the content of your twittering.

(21.) Print out your tweets and stare at them. They suck, right? Unbearably boring? Okay, then stop twittering and go back to blogging or podcasting or ham radio or whatever you were doing before.

(22.) Have a goal or purpose for your Twitter. Ask yourself, "Is this tweet really necessary? Will anyone gain any value from it?" and "What would Cluetrain do?"

resistance to Twitter similar to blog hate

Ah, this is exactly like what happened with blogs and, to a lesser degree, podcasts.

People don't get Twitter.

Is it simply that they resist learning new interfaces and new networking skills?

It typically goes something like this...

You invite a blog ally or a blog-hating offline friend to join your Twitter communication channel. They read some of your tweets (Twitter messages), wherein you try to provide links to interesting tools and relevant articles. You make pithy profound statements as you experiment with various technologies.

Okay.

But then they read the tweets of other Twitterers. Boring. Myopic. Narcissistic. Trivial. Frivolous.

What the Luddites and techno-phobes always say. Resistance to an emerging technology, simply based on how early adaptors are using it. Failure of imagination. Weak ability to picture how the tool could be used differently, more idiosyncratically, more effectively for their purposes.

Well, you know they used to make fun of the electric light bulb, automobile, and telephone.

"What do I want a telephone for?" the old geezer rasps. "I've listened in on some phone conversations. Private confessions. Personal drivel. Mundane. Boring. Stupid. Just mental noise and clutter. I don't want to have any part of such a trivial thing as a telephone."

Bennett the Blog Hater and Internet Radio DJ and I had this debate today, via email.

[QUOTE]


bennett theissen

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

To: vaspers the grate



Sorry, Steve, but after looking over some Twitter pages, I find it incredibly tedious and of no interest at all.

I don't want to be part of something that wants to know what I'm doing right now 24 hours a day.

So what do people post?

Well, they seem to be at lunch, or want to tell me what kind of coffee someone is drinking. At this point this looks worse than MySpace.

Pithy? Who cares -- if they have nothing to say? And if you think that presidential candidates are really on this, rather than some tech geek who works for them, you're being naive.

I would rather just write somebody directly rather than post messages.

I see no point in using an Ipod, not after all these years, because I don't need 5000 songs at my fingertips, and I see no point in blogs because they bore me and serve no purpose for me that I have found yet, and Twitter now adds to the pile of useless tech nonsense.

Sorry, no winner here.




vaspers the grate

Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 10:39 AM

To: bennett theissen


Blogs and Twitter type social networking tools are useful for promotions, like driving traffic to a site, such as KillRadio. As we mix our marketing platforms for maximum effect, the multi-interactional media are booming, with much productivity accomplished.

It's not about what others are Twittering or blogging or podcasting about. It's about what we do with it. You could make the exact same critique of telephones, mail, email, television, and radio.

99% of films, tv shows, email, postal mail, telephone communications, are junk.

Most communications, from books to movies, are boring and stupid garbage. One film in a million is worth owning. One telephone call in a thousand is mission critical and memorable. Etc.

A Twitter network is created by you, the user, and you connect with only those friends, peers, colleagues you wish to have in your circle.

Then, as you discover cool links, good netlabels, mp3 file sharing sites, etc., you post the links and your inner circle of friends has them. You include links to your Kill Radio and Radio 4 All stuff.

It's all about experimenting with new online communication tools, some will be abandoned, others modified, others re-mixed, and others used as is.

It's all about getting more people to your KillRadio shows and getting Camouflage Danse [art rock band that Bennett and I co-founded, now defunkt] mp3s online.

I am trying to do so with Virb.com, but having no luck uploading mp3s to this beta site. Still searching.



Bennett Theissen

Wednesday, April 11. 2007

To: vaspers the grate

Hi! I appreciate your defense, but I disagree with your assertion that it is not about what other people are doing on the Twitter.

Your statistics are also off by a dimension or two. (I don't believe the number of movies made to date has hit one million yet, for instance.)

I specifically mentioned the I-pod because those little things are now for some reason considered an essential part of modern life, but as I said I see no reason to have one. I get by fine without it, and I probably listen to more music than most people.

I spend maybe three hours a week online, and I don't have access to the net at home.

I now find i have to check my My Space page occasionally because there are always people writing to me and it's rude to leave things hanging eternally -- but I do that as little as I can because I have so little time for it.

To add another commitment online is more than I wish to deal with right now, so I pass. It's nothing personal.

If I liked what I saw on Twitter I'd jump to it, but it looks like a bunch of tech geeks spouting on about nothing important.

Plus I don't like the fact that so many people consider it "addictive." Do a search for "Twitter" and "addictive" to see what I mean.

I hope you have fun with it and maybe later I'll look into it again -- I am not closed against it, I just haven't found anything worthwhile yet. (Its "pithiness" doesn't help, by the way! There's no substance.)


[END QUOTE]

Are you Twittered into the Deeper Vaspers?

http://twitter.com/vaspers

Against Nice Blogging and Honor Codes

Regulation of the blogosphere is right around the corner, instigated by the Kathy Sierra fiasco.

Some bloggers and tech influencers are calling for a Blogger Code of Ethics or other type of honor code, to which we must conform and sing our praises.

Jeff Jarvis is against this seemingly "good" intervention by Sweet Butt Bloggers, who strive to "reform" the blogosphere by disallowing anger, rudeness, and incivility.

See his "No Twinkie Badges Here" and you'll understand my post a bit better.

Go ahead and read it now. This post will wait, and will still be here when you're done reading Jarvis. The beauty and power of hyper-linking!

Don't fall for it. It's another Mind Control Domination System, posing as positive resistance to vulgar, violent, and libelous comments and postings. It's an anti-democratic movement that must be vigorously opposed by lovers of free expression and private opinion spouting.

Don't be fooled.

Nice Bloggers pretend to be soft, gentle, tolerant. Nice Bloggers have scrubbed up their online language and pose as defenders of decency. They are anything but.

They're like the animal rights activist with a "No I don't have a spare rib" pig-saying bumper sticker on her SUV.

She freaked about me using a sling shot to scare rabbits away from my garden, but was apathetic and demotivated when I showed her birds and baby bunnies with their heads chopped off and tossed into my garden, by the neighbor Psycho Dad who hated the bees and wasps I enjoyed in my garden.

Nice Bloggers can be mean-spirited against people they disagree with.

Nice Bloggers act like they're possibly abusing Paxil, Buspar, Xanax, and Effexor. They don't react to bad things. They don't want to make anybody upset. They avoid doing things, commanding, issuing ultimatums. They are too soft for their own good.

Chumps. Fearfulness hiding behind civility.

Civility that preserves a certain business climate.

They want clients to make money. They don't want to offend anybody. They want everybody's money.

They act like they're floating on a pharmaceutical high, and, like "Hey. You. Get off of my cloud!" is what they're really saying.

They use the Kathy Sierra debacle to advance their fascist thought control agenda.

Beware of Nice Bloggers. They smile as they stab others in the back, in the dark alleys of their hearts.

I founded the semi-abandoned Blog Core Values to uphold and proclaim the real guts of hardcore altruistic blogging. Authenticity is one of those values. Often, to be authentic in the face of disturbing trends and disgusting events, one must be rough, rude, and rebellious.

While I am opposed to racist, sexist, religionist, and other bigoted hate speech, I also champion the blogger or commenter's right to be honest, angry, challenging, argumentative, combative, and confrontational.

Some fear and try to repress all forms of vigorous debate and blogocombat. We call them cowards.

Some unleash destructive venom on innocents. We call them trolls, flamers, and baiters.

Then some simply express their opinions in whatever language and energy seems appropriate at the time, and publish those heated thoughts to the web.

We call them bloggers.

See Peoria Pundit aka Billy Dennis "Blogging is not for sissies".

Adding Friends and Followers on Twitter

(PHOTO: Twitter error message. In most cases, just hit Back button and re-send.)


Once your eyes have been stripped of delusion, and you see how much you need to get on Twitter, then what?

http://twitter.com/vaspers

The next step is to build a coalition of support and surveillance, you need to become disciple and content provider.

Be sure to display a link, on your blog (s), to your Twitter page. Maybe your blog readers will join Twitter and gain access to your social network whisper transmissions.

Use the Public Timeline version of a Twitter badge. This one shows your blog readers What You and Your Friends are Saying. Merge the streams of online presence, so your blog stream flows with your Twitter stream.

Think of bright minds you'd like to monitor, as they speak of lunch, emerging technology, new social media tools, and their favorite bands. You can learn from innovators and pioneers, as they report on both mundane and profound matters.

You can also learn how different people use different forms of Twitter communication. But the number one rule is: be interesting, provide value. Don't tweet just to hear yourself tweet.

By sending a tweet (Twitter message) to your Followers, you're asking them to pay attention to something you're saying. It helps if your message contains value: relevance, insight, honesty, humor, and, whenever possible, a link.

I believe in Link Tweeting. Links are the Free Prize Inside of Twitter messaging. Scoble does it a lot, as do other respected tech bloggers/Twitterers.

Your tweets will not be communicative without an audience of Followers. But to get Followers, you must send email invites to your online pals and peers. Beyond that initial promotion, you must use customized network strategies.

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