Web 2.0 responsible for killing sprees?

Over at Throwing Sheep there’s an interesting post on the role of Web 2.0 in anti-social behaviour.  Unsurprisingly, given the tendency of people to respond to headlines rather that the copy, it’s sparked a number of netizens to defend the utopia of user-generated-content, and interaction that is Web 2.0.

But, that’s actually doing the authors a real disservice, and doesn’t really address their point. They are not arguing that YouTube causes mass murders, rather that YouTube, to some extent normalises mass murders, making the unthinkable, slightly more thinkable to people who may have been on the edge in the first place.  They also point out this is not a new phenomenon.

…this phenomenon is called the “Werther Effect”, after Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther. In Goethe’s 18^th century sturm und drang novel, the melancholic hero Werther shoots himself in the head over his unrequited love for a girl called Lotte. When the book first appeared in 1774, it triggered an epidemic of similar acts of despair – the first known examples of “copycat suicides” in modern history.

Web 2.0 is not more responsible for killing sprees, than Kurt Cobain and Kate Moss are for glamourising drug use, than tiny models are responsible for anorexia, than the mass media is responsible for the early sexualisation of girls…

The word you are looking for is cofactors people.

Somethings are too complicated to be caused by a single thing..

I couldn’t make this stuff up

e-MANcipate! is a project to accelerate the acceptance of male pantyhose as a regular clothing item…

It’s a weird world..

That sinking feeling…

The sinking feeling when you realise you’ve just clicked “OK” and you *really* should have picked “Cancel”…

On Tuesday I was (as usual) doing half-a-dozen things at once, when I was prompted to update something. Now, with the apple, I pretty much always update everything immediately – it’s easy, and keeps the machine running nicely. So, without really reading the dialogue box properly I clicked “yeah go ahead” and carried on with what I was doing…

About 30 minutes later a new dialogue popped up saying “restarting your iPhone – do not disconnect”

That’s when I got that sinking feeling. In fact I got the feeling that can best be summed up by bomberman “MISTAKE!!!”

But, by then, it was too late, my iPhone had been upgraded to a non-jailbroken version of the 2.1 firmware – which meant I was locked out, and no longer had a functioning phone.

<sigh> that will teach me to *read* the fricking dialogues before I make a choice.

All was not lost however, thanks to the fantastic work of the iPhone Dev Team I was able to get the phone unlocked and activated again.

It only took me 2 hours – mostly because I had a bitch of a time getting the phone to go into DFU mode. 

And I’m never making a choice without carefully reading the options again.

You know you’re a communicator when….

1. You have this silly little grin on your face when you hear people say on the elevator: “that was an AWESOME speech (or e-mail) from the CEO”—because more than likely, you or one of your colleagues wrote it.
2. You’re willing to put your marriage on the line by continually correcting your spouse’s grammar.
3. After 10 years in the profession, your family and friends still don’t understand what you do.
4. Although they don’t understand what you do – they come to you to get complaint letters written, grant proposals checked, and theses proof-read.
5. There’s nothing better in the morning than your coffee and getting your news fix for the day.
6. You ponder for hours the irony of the phrase “elevator speech,” given that most of the time in and around elevators, no one says a word or make a sound.
7. You still get nervous anytime you have to launch a company-wide e-mail.
8. You know no-one ever reads the whole annual report but you.
9. The press releases your boss likes best are the ones you wrote as a joke to show him how awful all those cliches are…
10. You ponder for hours the fact that although you are a communicator – you don’t appear to be able to communicate what you do.

Some of these come from the Communicators Social Network myragan.com and some of them are my own observations…

People+Common Interest+Tools=Successful Social network

Laurel Papworth recently wrote about a new social networking site for film makers. In that post she makes the excellent point that you need more than just cool tools for a Social Networking site to work. You need an active community.

I’d add to that it really helps if your community has a common interest – ideally in something more than just “catching up with old friends”. I have a Facebook account (who doesnt?) but I’d check it once a week at most; there just ins’t enough there for me to care any more than that.

But I’m not against “Social Networking” per se – far from it. I’m very active in a variety of fora – where the members and I have more in common than just our members.

For example, I’m pretty active over on the MobileRead sites – I’m passionate about my Sony Reader (as you may know), and I enjoy interacting with the other e-book enthisiasts, Whether it’s helping new users, sharing tips and tricks, or even getting into the nuts and bolts of hacking the hardware – I’m there.

But MobileRead is pretty old fashioned by today’s standards – it’s just a place for people to communicate – nothing fancier than that.

My pick for “Best Social Networking Site Ever” is Ravelry. It’s a community for Knitters and Crocheters (Common interest – Check) You have to be invited to join (slightly exclusive – cool) but you can register for an invitation, and it only takes a couple of days (not too exclusive – nice) Once you are a member – the tools are perfect for the needs of the users.

In my Ravelry profile I can display my current knitting project and get help with it (and help others). I can keep a record of what yarn I have in my stash, and which needles I have – and then find out from other members what sorts of projects I can do with the things I already own. There’s a facility to draw my blog rss feed straight to my profile – so I don’t have to create content in multiple places.  And it’s easy to share patterns, tips, tricks and information with other members. And, because we’re all knitters/crocheters we have a common interest to build our relationships around

It’s seriously great – and if you knit or crochet you should think about joining – and if you do You’ll find me here.

The beauty of GraphJam

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