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April 12th, 2012 12:17 ami was thinking of changing to a different blogging website around a month ago. may be cross post from there to here, but having two blogs wouldn't work, especially if i'm not very good at maintaining this.
one of the blogging websites i was looking at was Tumblr. there's too much art or arty kind of stuff there. there's lots and lots of cool photographs (lots of bad ones too). but when you have so many cool things, especially when there's millions of Tumblr blogs where each post consists of one cool/amazing image after another, everything just starts to look a bit crap. i think this is the result of having multiple interesting images back to back on each Tumblr blog, and the ability of the brain and the to fatigue seeing so many images with so much contrast in colour and content.
the manner in which these photos are presented, back to back and millions of them, not one of those images in my eyes hold much artistic value. context means a lot, as Warhol and and the Brillo boxes displayed in the museum showed us, and the context in which these images are shown leave nothing to be desired. no one image ever gets the attention desired, despite the fact they're probably the work of some photographer or artist somewhere, these images are presented one after another. like: here's one cool image, and another, and another, here's another, oh look another.
i use Tumblr because this cool image porn started with it. since then, there's so many minimalist themed blogs with a clusterfuck of random photos that i find it hard to appreciate any image on the internet.
the problem here is partially my own. i've seen a lot of awesome images and artwork on the internet, so much that i find it hard to be impressed with much. on the other hand, these photo bloggers post a lot of images with no context for the sole fact that they look 'cool', these two things result in myself not giving the time and attention i'd like to give something i like since there's so many things i like to look at and have time to too.
this leads me on to something else. being part of a blogging community, or more accurately, wanting to be play an active part in a blogging community naturally leads self-censoring. i know this because i used to do the same with a different blogging website a long time ago.
what i mean by self-censoring may not be that at all. it's when you see a lot of people for example write about food and music or things which fall into a narrow range of categories, and being part of the community you see these people or specific posts garner a lot of attention. naturally, you start to do the same for example, the topics you talk about within your posts, the things you focus less on, the things you do't even think about writing anymore, the language you start to use. the result is the homogenizing of individuals within a community, a blogging community in which the individual blogger deems a post with 75 comments more worthy than his. i think this is what Tumblr has become and i also think this site and others suffer from the same thing but not nearly as bad.
thinking about internet communities, there's a tendency with any website that has any form of user interaction, that as the user/reader base grows, the decrease in the quality of material posted by the users. i used to read a lot of tech news on Engadget and the posts with the greatest number of comments, usually ones relating to new Apple products, the conversation turns infantile and petty arguments between Google, Apple and Microsoft enthusiasts. well, Reddit has grown significantly over the past couple of years. i've only been visiting the website for about 8 months and even within that time, the level of comments as well as comments which employ such significantly low level of reasoning yet still end up as as the top voted comment makes me especially disillusioned with visiting the website at all. the number of times i end up having to explain to people why such and such thing is racist or having to explain to them why they can't make the judgement on whether something is offensive or not if they're not the target of the intentional or unintentional prejudice. or some cleverly thought out comment which makes it to the top using faulty logic explaining why we shouldn't care about homeless people. it's not that i'm surprised that these comments exist, i'm surprised the majority of people upvote this kind of stuff without really thinking it out for themselves.though Reddit does have redeeming features, such as sub-reddits dedicated to very specific things, where the number of visitors are low and the level of conversation generally high.
on a completely different note, i've started to become much more ethically conscious. i'm trying not to buy things i don't need, and trying to be much more careful if whether the things i do buy are environmentally friendly and not made by some kid is Cambodia working 70 hour weeks. just trying to be that bit careful about my actions and trying to make sure it's not having an overall negative impact on the planet including the people. i hear the argument get made (A LOT) that for example, by purchasing ethically made jeans made in USA or the UK, if a lot of people were to do that then the factory owners in China would pay the workers less because the factories don't make as much money or that they might lose their jobs because i'm not buying from them. these same people find it too difficult to think in the opposite manner, that by not purchasing from them, western corporations realize the market in ethically made clothes and so improving the conditions within these factories. as for the 'they might lose their jobs because i'm not buying from them' argument, i'm wondering why i'm being asked to either choose between a worker being exploited, or losing their job. i suppose the ethical way around this is, if i purchase a similar product made in another poor country, i'm actually helping create jobs in the same field but with much better working conditions.
what i've been upto lately....i've been trying to get employed to volunteer abroad, but it's looking quite unlikely. of course, my other option is to volunteer for some organisation that helps poor people in third world or war-torn countries or may be within this country, or volunteer in an area where i feel i'm having a positive impact on the world.
i've been thinking of learning to program Python. the idea of making simple programs seems quite intriguing as well as making and sharing software with other people. there isn't much for me to say about this because i haven't thought about it a lot, but it is something i might do and i'll let you know here if i do and what i like about it.
there's been so many more things i would've wanted to write here, but i'm kind of tired now and i'll save the rest for a later date. forgive any spelling and grammar mistakes because i tend not to read anything through.
one of the blogging websites i was looking at was Tumblr. there's too much art or arty kind of stuff there. there's lots and lots of cool photographs (lots of bad ones too). but when you have so many cool things, especially when there's millions of Tumblr blogs where each post consists of one cool/amazing image after another, everything just starts to look a bit crap. i think this is the result of having multiple interesting images back to back on each Tumblr blog, and the ability of the brain and the to fatigue seeing so many images with so much contrast in colour and content.
the manner in which these photos are presented, back to back and millions of them, not one of those images in my eyes hold much artistic value. context means a lot, as Warhol and and the Brillo boxes displayed in the museum showed us, and the context in which these images are shown leave nothing to be desired. no one image ever gets the attention desired, despite the fact they're probably the work of some photographer or artist somewhere, these images are presented one after another. like: here's one cool image, and another, and another, here's another, oh look another.
i use Tumblr because this cool image porn started with it. since then, there's so many minimalist themed blogs with a clusterfuck of random photos that i find it hard to appreciate any image on the internet.
the problem here is partially my own. i've seen a lot of awesome images and artwork on the internet, so much that i find it hard to be impressed with much. on the other hand, these photo bloggers post a lot of images with no context for the sole fact that they look 'cool', these two things result in myself not giving the time and attention i'd like to give something i like since there's so many things i like to look at and have time to too.
this leads me on to something else. being part of a blogging community, or more accurately, wanting to be play an active part in a blogging community naturally leads self-censoring. i know this because i used to do the same with a different blogging website a long time ago.
what i mean by self-censoring may not be that at all. it's when you see a lot of people for example write about food and music or things which fall into a narrow range of categories, and being part of the community you see these people or specific posts garner a lot of attention. naturally, you start to do the same for example, the topics you talk about within your posts, the things you focus less on, the things you do't even think about writing anymore, the language you start to use. the result is the homogenizing of individuals within a community, a blogging community in which the individual blogger deems a post with 75 comments more worthy than his. i think this is what Tumblr has become and i also think this site and others suffer from the same thing but not nearly as bad.
thinking about internet communities, there's a tendency with any website that has any form of user interaction, that as the user/reader base grows, the decrease in the quality of material posted by the users. i used to read a lot of tech news on Engadget and the posts with the greatest number of comments, usually ones relating to new Apple products, the conversation turns infantile and petty arguments between Google, Apple and Microsoft enthusiasts. well, Reddit has grown significantly over the past couple of years. i've only been visiting the website for about 8 months and even within that time, the level of comments as well as comments which employ such significantly low level of reasoning yet still end up as as the top voted comment makes me especially disillusioned with visiting the website at all. the number of times i end up having to explain to people why such and such thing is racist or having to explain to them why they can't make the judgement on whether something is offensive or not if they're not the target of the intentional or unintentional prejudice. or some cleverly thought out comment which makes it to the top using faulty logic explaining why we shouldn't care about homeless people. it's not that i'm surprised that these comments exist, i'm surprised the majority of people upvote this kind of stuff without really thinking it out for themselves.though Reddit does have redeeming features, such as sub-reddits dedicated to very specific things, where the number of visitors are low and the level of conversation generally high.
on a completely different note, i've started to become much more ethically conscious. i'm trying not to buy things i don't need, and trying to be much more careful if whether the things i do buy are environmentally friendly and not made by some kid is Cambodia working 70 hour weeks. just trying to be that bit careful about my actions and trying to make sure it's not having an overall negative impact on the planet including the people. i hear the argument get made (A LOT) that for example, by purchasing ethically made jeans made in USA or the UK, if a lot of people were to do that then the factory owners in China would pay the workers less because the factories don't make as much money or that they might lose their jobs because i'm not buying from them. these same people find it too difficult to think in the opposite manner, that by not purchasing from them, western corporations realize the market in ethically made clothes and so improving the conditions within these factories. as for the 'they might lose their jobs because i'm not buying from them' argument, i'm wondering why i'm being asked to either choose between a worker being exploited, or losing their job. i suppose the ethical way around this is, if i purchase a similar product made in another poor country, i'm actually helping create jobs in the same field but with much better working conditions.
what i've been upto lately....i've been trying to get employed to volunteer abroad, but it's looking quite unlikely. of course, my other option is to volunteer for some organisation that helps poor people in third world or war-torn countries or may be within this country, or volunteer in an area where i feel i'm having a positive impact on the world.
i've been thinking of learning to program Python. the idea of making simple programs seems quite intriguing as well as making and sharing software with other people. there isn't much for me to say about this because i haven't thought about it a lot, but it is something i might do and i'll let you know here if i do and what i like about it.
there's been so many more things i would've wanted to write here, but i'm kind of tired now and i'll save the rest for a later date. forgive any spelling and grammar mistakes because i tend not to read anything through.
