Social Not-working Sites
by on March 5th, 2010
filed under Well that's what I think any way...
Just about everyone I know is on some kind of social networking site including both my parents & my mother-in-law. They’re a great way to find long lost friends, reconnect with former coworkers, look up classmates and meet new people.
You can have whole conversations with people you’ve never met (and likely won’t), network, get the latest news or celebrity gossip, and even play DJ blipping your favorite songs. (http://blip.fm)
But as one family discovered the immediacy of these sites can be way too immediate.
Twins Angela & Maryanne woke up on their 20th birthday and signed onto theirFacebook profiles anxious to see who remembered their birthdays. Instead they were greeted with messages of “RIP Bobby” (their brother) and “RIP Chris” (a friend of their brother’s) all over their newsfeeds.
As you can imagine the girls were shocked and confused. Right away they called their brother but he didn’t answer his phone.
Then they called their mother who hadn’t received any notice from the police but she did confirm that Bobby had been with his friend Chris the night before. When their mother phoned the police, she was informed that her son, Bobby, had died in a car accident which also took the life of his friend, Chris and a third teenage passenger.
You can read more about this tragedy here- http://mashable.com/2010/02/08/facebook-brother-death/
I’ve had similar experiences although not to such a tragic degree and it makes me wonder, have these sites changed the way we communicate with each other? Instead of a personal phone call or formal invitation people are delivering their news in 140-character tweets, changing their Facebook status, sending e-vites and answering the innocent question ‘What’s on your mind?’ with bombshell announcements.
Have these sites helped or hindered social communication? And does everybody who friends you really need to know what you had for breakfast? What do you think?
My condolences to the families on the loss of their loved ones. No one should have to hear news like this in such a graphically public way.
So Much Snark So Little Discretion
by on August 19th, 2009
filed under Well that's what I think any way...
I’ve been lost in Twitterland low these past few weeks and sadly I have nearly forgotten about blogging. And I love blogging especially when I come across articles such as the one posted by the New York Times last week called Playing to the Middle written by Cintra Wilson about a JC Penney store daring to open its doors in the Carrie Bradshaw, I’d-buy-couture-before-I’d-pay-my-rent city of New York. And the nerve Penny’s had to drop their store on the unsuspecting, better than middle America shoppers who frequent Herald Square.
I am so rolling up my sleeves and putting on my snark hat to tackle this one!
In her article Ms Wilson laments the lack of size 2′s available for her to try on at Penney’s and not half a page later she describes fashionable New Yorkers as (and I am quoting here because there is nothing I love better than to use other people’s words against them)- “This niche has been almost wholly neglected on our snobby, self-obsessed little island. New York boutiques tend to cater to the stress-thin, morbidly workaholic, Pilates-tortured Manhattan ectomorph.”
I’m sure Ms Wilson got to be a size 2 by eating whatever she wants and keeping her naturally high motabalism at its most efficient with minimal, if any excersize.
She goes on to accuse Penny’s of inaccurate sizing (You’re gonna love this quote)- “My escort, Dr. Redacto, bought a T-shirt. He ordinarily wears a large. I advised him: ‘Get the medium. I guarantee, a large is going to be five times larger than any large you’ve ever seen.’ While modeling it for me later, we discovered that even a Penney’s medium is five times larger than any large T-shirt either of us had ever seen: The sleeves came down to the elbow, and there was enough room in front for eight months of unborn twins. And that will probably make some guy feel pretty svelte.”
Oh yes she did!
Let me tell you something… Penney’s is not the first to fiddle around with sizing and I’m guessing that your size 2 butt in designer speak is really more like a size 4 or 5. Designers practically invented vanity sizing.
Ms Wilson also accuses Penney’s of ‘sinisterly’ ruining the careers and names of some of great designers ‘since the 1970s’. (Yeah, cause they have that kind of power)- “Halston, a top designer of the 1970s, who, after dressing first ladies and the gilded habitués of Studio 54, created the Halston II line for J. C. Penney, which tragically diluted Halston’s reputation unto ridiculousness, whilst Penney’s remained imperturbably clunky.”
Funny how she then goes on to list current designers who don’t seem to be suffering the same “sinister” (I love that) fate in the hands of Penny’s today-”Penney’s now carries I ? Ronson by Charlotte Ronson, and Fabulosity, an off-the-belly-chain line of clothing and extremely complicated metallic blood-on-the-dance-floor pumps by Kimora Lee Simmons, which look as if they’d emit sounds of heavy panting if you held them to your ear. There are collections by other designers who insist on going by their first names (perhaps because Penney’s is a friendly, homey place, like Oprah’s couch). Behold: Nicole by Nicole Miller; Allen B. by Allen Schwartz (who the heck is Allen Schwartz?); Joe by Joseph Abboud in the men’s section, with sweater-vests for Dad; and — drum-roll please — Liz & Co., an offshoot of Liz Claiborne, key provider of looks that say ‘I have been in a senior management position at this D.M.V. for 34 years’.”
Oh honey, really? In two paragraphs you managed to disparage top designers and the people who are buying their designs. I’m thinking your goody bag might be a little light the next time you go to one of their fashion shows. If you manage to get yourself a seat at all.
She not only attacked the shoppers, inventory, and employees of Penny’s for thinking of their jobs as serious careers, she just couldn’t leave the poor inanimate mannequins alone- “To this end, it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of Roseanne.”
Wow. Someone with that amount of snark at their disposal should really learn to use it wisely and not on those who use their hard earned, work-a-day-to-get-a-dollar cash on clothing they can afford AND ALSO pay the rent, utilities, food and use what little is left over to buy a copy of The New York Times.
They Grow Them Big in Alaska-Cajones That Is
by on July 13th, 2009
filed under Undecided, Well that's what I think any way...
I took a moment to enjoy a little TV in bed this morning and switched on The Today Show. I don’t even know why I watch it, Ann Curry drives me up a wall when she interviews people. She takes brown-nosing to new heights (anyone see her Cannes interview with Brad Pitt? Horr-i-fic.).
This morning she interviewed Levi Johnston. Who the bleep is Levi Johnston you ask? He’s the 19 year-old who turned a teenage tumble in the backseat with Bristol Palin and her subsequent pregnancy into a career for himself. And some brilliant Today Show producer thought him newsworthy and knowledgeable enough to fly him all the way from Alaska to give his take on why Sarah Palin quit as governor of Alaska.
Really, the guy who let himself be used as a politcal tool and paraded across stage at the Republican convention waving and smiling is an expert on politics now? The guy who went along with a fake engagement for some national TV face time turning it into a photo shoot for GQ and an acting gig is suddenly a politcal pundit?
Okay, I’ve been pretty vocal about my feelings about Sarah Palin and it’s no secret that I think she’s the female version of George Bush only not as beady-eyed and sneaky, but no one deserves to have the snot nosed kid who knocked up your daughter go on national TV and criticize your judgement and decisions.
Really Levi? You want to judge the woman who is finacially and physically supporting your son and your baby-mama? You want to talk about money grubbing and using people for your own gain? You want to talk about motives, self-aggrandizement and ambition? Really?
Really.
