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May
28
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Today, the Inquirer’s Karen Heller writes a column clearly not intended for my demographic. It’s about how Facebook, um, exists, and kids use it more than adults. (GG on Karen Heller: “It’s almost too easy to make fun of because she doesn’t really make a coherent argument most of the time…. I feel like she probably has a lot of devoted middle-aged women readers though.” Just like Philadelphia Will Do!)
Her point at the end of this column appears to be: “Now, we’ve entered into a whole new world of Facedroppers, people who will tell you they have so many more friends than you do.” I really don’t know anyone who cares about their number of Facebook friends; perhaps “Google Analytics Analysts” bragging about their blog’s traffic would have fit better here. There’s also this:
Facebook turns out to be as slow as America Onhold once was.
Now let’s all add Karen Heller on Facebook now. Her and I already have eight mutual friends, after all.
Karen Heller: Beware strangers asking to be friends [Inquirer]
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dmac | 9:41 AM | 3 Comments
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Jan
24
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Someone — sorry, I can’t find who — sent this to me a while back and I rediscovered it now. I mean, obviously, why else would Mark B. Cohen be on Facebook besides friendship and networking?
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dmac | 4:09 PM | 2 Comments
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Dec
7
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Let us begin this week as it began, by pontificating on the fate of one Jocelyn Kirsch (and Edward Anderton). Now that the pair could face federal identity fraud charges, it’s time to look at the actual moral implications of delighting in a person’s trip to jail.
“The part of me that was friends with her knows she’s sad and that’s why she does the things that she does,” [a friend from high school] said. “The part of me that’s a little bit vindictive is not sad to see her getting hers, but hopefully some good will come of it and she’ll straighten herself out.”
Ha ha, just kidding, this is the Internet, what are morals, etc., etc. I do like that quote, though, because it totally helps prove my point that Drexel girls are just so ridiculously mean. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Anyway, that comes from today’s Daily News article, which talks about how Kirsch pretended to be an Olympic pole vaulter, which is pretty much the greatest thing ever.
Another classmate said Kirsch posted a photo of herself on her Facebook page - don’t bother looking for it, she took down the page over the weekend - pole vaulting “some ridiculous height that only an Olympian could do,” said the former bud, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The face in the photo was too dark to discern, the classmate said, adding that “it was clearly taken from another site.”
Some of Kirsch’s Drexel classmates never really bought the notion, including one Facebook user who posted a photo on one of two Facebook pages dedicated to Kirsch, titled “SHE GOIN’ TO JAAAAAAAAIL!!!! (and THAT’S hilarious).” The image features a pole vaulter with Kirsch’s police mug shot as the head and two cops behind her on Segways. The caption reads, “Can’t catch me, I’m a gold medalist!!!”
Photo after the jump
More »
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dmac | 4:52 PM | 7 Comments
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Dec
7
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A reader emailed me to complain I was spending too much time focusing on the media’s obsession with Jocelyn “Bonnie” Kirsch of the 2007 Bloodless Bonnie & Clyde duo (which also features Edward Anderton, who nobody knows anything about).
Yesterday, the pair both left the city to return to their home states. Anderton (who?) is home on the west coast in Washington, while Kirsch is back home in North Carolina.
But back to the actual crime: Police allege Kirsch and Anderton stole the identities of several people — five so far, according to NBC 10 — banking at least $100,000. Police say they may have installed spyware on their neighbors’ computers; a discussion I had with not one but two separate Foodery clerks came to the conclusion they totally made a ton of amateurish mistakes.
When police raided their Rittenhouse apartment, they allegedly found a ton of fake IDs and, most hilariously, a 2005 Daily Pennsylvanian article about how bouncers spot fake IDs. The cops also found Kirsch’s iPhoto directory (or whatever) and released a ton of photos to the press to make the story sexier.
More on this later today — hopefully I can dump everything in “bonnieandclyde.txt” on my desktop on the blog today — but the main story is definitely that Facebook group “SHE GOIN’ TO JAAAAAAAAIL!!!! (and THAT’S hilarious)” is back up. Wow, Drexel girls are way mean. Rawr.
Oh, yeah, and that other Jocelyn Kirsch Facebook group has photos of her from elementary school. Ahh, okay.
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dmac | 10:31 AM | 2 Comments
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Nov
29
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New Jersey’s parole board yesterday voted unanimously to bar those convicted of sex crimes from using the Internet to network. That this will do very little to help public safety means nothing; N.J. could pass a law requiring registered sex offenders to chop off their own hands and the majority of the public would probably cheer.
There are some questions, of course; where does the law stop? It’s targetd at Facebook and Myspace, of course, but what about YouTube, which has commenting and community? Are registered sex offenders allowed to comment here? Are the New Jersey police going to ask me for the server logs so they can comb through for sex offenders? (Okay: No, but you see where I’m going with this.)
Apparently, the rule is you can’t post a profile. And sex offenders can still use email. Hey, a feel-good solution that does nothing to actually prevent underage sex solicitation online!
But I think my hypothetical pales in comparison to that of a poster on the always incredible Courier-Post forums.
This is like saying you accosted a Orange once; now you’re forbidden from buying oranges. So are you going to have a cop at every venue that may sell oranges?
Please, won’t someone think of the oranges?
N.J. bans sex offenders from networking sites [Courier-Post]
N.J. to sex parolees: Keep off MySpace [The Star-Ledger]
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dmac | 8:45 AM | 3 Comments
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Nov
17
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The Daily Pennsylvanian reported yesterday on an alum’s service that will let you know where your scandalous photos are online and attempt to get them taken down, if you pay an extra fee.
ReputationDefender.com was founded by 2004 Penn alum Ross Chanin and “compiles monthly reports detailing the clients’ presence in blogs, social networks like MySpace.com and Facebook.com, online news sources and photo- or video-sharing sites like Flickr.com and YouTube.com.” It costs $10 a month, and another $30 for ReputationDefender.com to attempt to get the offending material removed. (Which, in the case of a legit news article, is impossible.)
So why would people use this service instead of just not taking scandalous pictures? Chanin explains:
“What were dealing with here is ‘micro celebrity,” Chanin said.
Yeah. Micro celebrities can never get those damn citizen paparazzi off their backs.
Scandalous pics online? No worries, service says [Daily Pennsylvanian]
Nov. 30, 2005: Phantastic Photo!
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dmac | 11:45 AM | 1 Comment
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