A 21st Century Grouch

Tue, 18 May 2010 06:54:49 GMT

Signs I am not going to drown in my own phlegm and die: I am filled with irritation by minor impediments, and shaving all the hair off my head doesn't sound like the worst idea ever. (R. thinks the raspy phlegm voice is hilarious. I am pleased I can entertain people between bouts of self-doubt and tea.)

I'm doing some copy and style editing for an acquaintance taking a web 2.0 course. I started compiling a list of blogs I consider high quality, and noticed a trend. Other than a heavy geek slant, what do Making Light, Bad Astronomy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Whatever have in common? I see

significant moderator presence

blogger/mod regulars have been through at least one flamewar

"personal" content (kids, spouses, opinions)

entries tend to be long.

And that's when I realized: I hate 90% of social networking sites. I am not tight with the Twitter and Tumblr model, and I don't care enough to get up to speed in the near future.

Look at that list again. Many of those blogs include short posts, but also include multiparagraph entries. Twitter, facebook, mini news updates: why should I click through ten pages to get ten sentences? Stuff that hasn't even the promise of the Mighty Modly Banhammer, should commenters get hot-blooded? The house internet likes work slowdowns and dropped packets too often for 100% smooth internet, so excessive clickthrough is inefficient and makes me grouchy. (This is a known problem, relating to either the ISP or the lines. Anyway!) Long format is my natural milieu. I am unhappy at two paragraphs or less, unless there's a witty punchline. If I understand correctly, web 2.0 includes about user-added content and social networking as major tenants, but what I actually see is mostly recycled content, or comments without context, or links to third party sources. Forget that noise. If I've gone to the effort of finding and reading your blog, I want to read something relevant to my life: the personal experiences of friends (LJ/DW), what's going on locally (SF Chronicle) and elsewhere (Washington Post, Nature and Science news blurbs), op-ed on what's going on in the world (all of the above and others) and random meta that may improve my life. Lousy content-to-junk ratio may not be intrinsic to Twitter and Facebook, but it's pretty endemic when I try to wade in. If web 2.0 looks like twits and FB updates, I'm going to be getting curmudgeonly sooner than I think. It's a bummer for this copy-editing gig, because they're trying to do a minimum-effort school project, and I'm going to give them feedback demanding actual paragraphs, but it's soothing for me to discover there's a shiny toy I really don't regret leaving on the shelf. (For now.)

Okay, one unmitigated good thing, because today should close on a high note: I didn't thoroughly check the Asian Art Museum's reciprocal admission benefits when I bought a discounted "me + 1" membership. Please note that several San Francisco institutes of fine arts are listed, most of which I have not yet explored. Go me!

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The Terrible Tuesdays

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:09:03 GMT

Why on Earth do people bring their babies in strollers to a crowded art event? Are they trying for an accident? In case you're not divining the source of my frustration from the aether, today was a free admission day at SFMOMA. Crowds everywhere. Self-ambulatory kids weren't a problem (other than being yet another person getting between me and the art) but parents had brought their babies in the high-riding SUVs of babymobiles. After backing into an unattended but occupied stroller, I decided I was done with free Tuesday. Then I had misadventures with MUNI and vegan cookies, and eventually wound up in Golden Gate Park with The Queen of Attolia before going home to laundry and job hunting (no good leads on Craigslist). I think I've reached the end of my vacation / settling-in period, and now I want to go back to work! I want more structure in my day; self-motivation really works best for me when I have a goal and a deadline (ie, be at work on time, or be toast). Today's attempt at goal-oriented self-organization got the basics done, but that's about it. I'm taking away some lessons about the value of paying to get into museums and waiting until my hypothetical future children have reached the age of reason in kindness to everyone else in the museum. Oh yeah, and the value of SFMOMA's cafe setup: self-serve water, everything else overpriced, outdoor tables available. Figure out how I rehydrated.

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