Know Thyselfie

Somewhere during my career as a writer (if, indeed, having a couple of blogs and a few minor published works can actually be considered a “career”), I missed the part where you learn to write posts or columns or anything under 500 words. Brevity, concision, or succinctness — whatever it is, I don’t have it…heck even at the beginning of this sentence I used three fancy words where one normal word probably would’ve sufficed. I think the two reasons for this are that 1) I really only write things that I am passionate about, and am therefore more likely to have lengthy, thought-out opinions on; and 2) I am constantly anxious about being misinterpreted in my writings —especially on the internet — so I go out of my way to add clarity even if it means being superfluously descriptive.

But I digress.

So anyway what’s the deal with the selfie? Is there anything more simultaneously loved and loathed than the selfie?

classic selfie example

 

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19 Reasons Buzzfeed Sucks

Buzzfeed sucks. If that statement offends you, you’re what’s wrong with America. If you don’t know what buzzfeed is (count yourself one of the lucky few), it’s a self-described “snapshot of the viral web in real time.” Basically what that translates into is a bunch of ADHD, zero-thought-required, pandering bulls*** (asterisks make it classy). It takes statements so generic and effortlessly digestible that they barely qualify as original thoughts, wraps them up in some easily google-able pics, tosses in some cat .gifs and voila, one internet. At best it’s a topic statement without the accompanying paragraph, at worst it’s an endless stream of tabloid-magazine cover headlines with even less intellectual content. If mental stimuli were diagrammed like the food pyramid, buzzfeed would be the “fats and sugars” section way at the top that’s supposed to make up only the tiniest fraction of your daily food intake…but just like the actual food pyramid, Americans refuse to exert even the smallest amount of willpower and instead consume as much as they can (“What if we put ice cream IN the rootbeer so I don’t lose those precious seconds between taking bites of dessert and slurping down soda! What do you mean diabetes is a thing?”) and as a result our mental obesity is almost as out of control as our country’s physical obesity (though less immediately outwardly visible).

such buzz, very feed

Buzzfeed capitalizes on all the worst traits of modern quantity-over-quality internet culture and contributes nothing of its own. This is evidenced by the fact that the most popular posts on buzzfeed’s site are their arbitrarily-numbered lists. Lists of what, you ask? Of everything (the 15 most ridiculous world leaders of all time). Of anything (20 reasons why going to the gym is a huge waste of time). Of nothing (20 doodles that show what we’re all thinking during business meetings). Essentially buzzfeed thinks so little of its readership that not only does it acknowledge the shallowness of its audience, it actually highlights it and throws it back in the face of that selfsame audience…and they don’t care! If a real life person condescended to you like that, you’d punch them in the genitals, but because a website has the audacity to publish the “51 Colorful and Delicious Ways to Eat Spring Vegetables” (I’m sorry, do you mean SALAD? Are you just describing what a salad is in 51 variations? Look man, I am a tax-paying adult, you can just say SALAD, ok?), you’re all like “Wow my three favorite flavors: spring, delicious AND colorful; and because it has vegetables in the title this counts as my workout for the day! More Ovaltine please!”

The Advent of @ocdustino: A History

the face of @ocdustino…look how pretty he is when he’s not talking.

People  almost never  always ask me about my preferred social media handle — which is @ocdustino for those of you who neglected to read the title of this post — where it came from, what it means, why I have it tattooed on my left ass cheek, etc. And with it being my twitterversary week (yes, that’s a thing; no, I’m not dating anyone. I fail to see the connection) it seemed like a good time to explore the legend of @ocdustino. Buckle in, cadets, you’re in for the sort of history lesson they don’t give you in school. Except maybe homeschool if I homeschool my future kids and I’m really hungover/scrambling for some filler topics that day.

The year was 1867, I was a freshman in college, and the lightbulb had just recently been invented, which meant that we could use our computers indoors, any time of the day or night! This quickly led to the invention of something called AOL Instant Messenger (or AIM for short, because you know if your acronym needs an acronym, you’re doing it right). AIM was primarily invented as a means for people to post their favorite Brand New/Something Corporate lyrics or disparaging passive-aggressive comments about their boy/girlfriend, but quickly evolved into a sort of instant messaging service that was kind of like a two-person internet chatroom, but somehow not as creepy as an actual internet chatroom. Meeting and then getting captured/raped/killed by strangers from the internet wasn’t a thing at the time (craigslist hadn’t been invented yet), but because superheroes/secret identities were still really popular (our Batman was Michael Keaton — ha! Can you believe that? Michael Keaton!) everyone used pseudonyms (known as “screen names”) to effectively hide their true identities from strangers, while also expressing their interests to those same strangers. Screen names like “CheerKick44”, “Platypussy02”, “ExtraExtraSloppy”, “GoldfishDanzer”, “Star19Catcher”, “DivaQueen02” were the norm (fun fact: I only made two of those up). Pretty rad nicknames right? Your screen name said a lot about who you were, and you wanted it to be cool, concise, and clever. With some numbers at the end like the year you graduated or your jersey number from high school athletics because someone probably already had the version of the screen name you wanted that didn’t have numbers.

The Gras is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Mardi

I was perusing the internet for…does it even matter? At this point in our society does one even need to qualify why one was exploring the internet? Isn’t it just a given 70% of the time (which is probably a lowball percentage)? Anyway it wasn’t porn and let’s leave it at that.

I was perusing the internet and came across a list of “funny words to help you write funnier stories” and I got about as far as the first three (in case you wondered: bamboozled, bevy, and bazinga —worth noting that the last one isn’t even an actual word) before I stopped reading and thought to myself: this is what people are using to create humor? No wonder Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men and Castle are in the top ten highest rated comedies of 2012 (via imdb). For that matter, NCIS (which for God knows why is listed as a comedy) is rated six spots higher than one of my favorite TV comedies, the late 30 Rock — which people tell me is just an NYC-inside-joke heavy, fast-talking “smart” non-comedy for pretentious assholes — but I suppose that’s what I get for letting my waiter make conversation with me when he should be in the back figuring out how to not mess up my drink a second time and what the hell he’s gonna do with a liberal arts degree in communication.

I’m hardly an expert on the matter, but to me using a list of funny words to help “funny-up” your writings is the equivalent of using a fart to open up your stand-up comedy routine — it probably gets a bit of a chuckle initially, but then people are just left with the stench of your actual content (both figuratively and literally in that example). Also, “fart” was shockingly absent from the aforementioned list of funny words, which makes me question the legitimacy of the entire thing.

How I Lost All My Followers

Special disclaimer for attractive girls: good news, none of what I’m about to say applies to you, so you can just skip ahead to the end or read another of my posts or go back to taking selfies or whatever it is you do between getting hit on and tanning.

Everyone else, buckle in, because you need to hear this. I might’ve just unfollowed you on Twitter or Instagram or Google+ (ha just kidding about that last one, I don’t even know how to activate Google+…unless wait, is this it? Are we on Google+ right now? Is me typing this going to be in one of their sad commercials?).

I love you.

(I figure if they do use this in a Google+ commercial, me typing “I love you” is the part they’ll wanna use, for the strong emotional context it provides. I don’t really love you, but I do like you, and I’m glad we’re friends. Unless we’re strangers, but that’s cool too because it’s the internet and nothing bad ever happens from meeting strangers on the internet)

But I digress.