Monthly Archives: July 2008

SWPL – Facebook

I avoided reading it for a long time — Stuff White People Like — I was above that. Sure everyone talked about it, but there are so many internet fads these days, one can’t just run after every one and try to understand it. That’s a good way to get shoop-da-whooped.

However, at some point Maryana‘s references to SWPL convinced me to check it out.

Overall, I think the proper name for it would really be, “Stuff American Liberal Yuppies Like”, but I digress.

The point of this long-winded introduction is to lead to this statement: I have to say that the analysis of the social networking site progression in this SWPL post is spot on. I mean, can you argue with stuff like this?

For a brief period of time, MySpace was the site where everyone kept their profile and managed their friendships. But soon, the service began to attract fake profiles, the wrong kind of white people, and struggling musicians. In real world terms, these three developments would be equivalent to a check cashing store, a TGIFridays, and a housing project. All which strike fear in the hearts of white people.

(For the record, I only every created a MySpace profile to contact old friends.)

Old Habits Die Hard

I’m back in Baltimore until tomorrow. I had a course on research ethics (8 hours to say “don’t abuse human subjects…”), and have been shipping, selling, and giving away the remnants of my stuff that didn’t make it to MN on the first trip.

Today, I’m working in the lab, borrowing an empty desk. It’s in the room next-door to where my old desk was, a desk now occupied by someone else. Every time I get up to use the restroom or whatever, I walk into the wrong room (my old one) when I come back. This has happened at least three times, and several more times where I’ve stopped myself before actually opening the wrong door. I guess I can’t unlearn almost a year’s worth of habit forming in one day.