Tag: MySpace

Keep your friends list close, your blocked list even closer

Have you ever wondered what a “social media guru” or “expert” does? As far as we can tell, they follow random people on Twitter and post links to buzzspeak essays by other (presumably) unemployed “SEO managers.”

Or … they could be The Fuzz!

Police, FBI, Secret Service and even the IRS are infiltrating the MySpace, Facebook and–in extreme cases–the Friendster to find the goods on you. To bypass your security settings, they’re setting up undercover identities, asking to become part of your online menagerie of familiar screen names.

Once they’re in, you’ll probably forget all about them, like that guy you met that one time at that place with the shots served in test tubes. (Quickest abortion turnaround time, yet!) And then they watch for any pictures of illegal activity or status changes that conflict with your alibis.

So, next time you get a friend request, ask them, “Are you a cop?” If they say no, then they’re probably lying because they’re undercover, so you should destroy your computer.

One spammer down, 200 million to go

Dick Nibbler is a jerk.Facebook won a $711 million lawsuit against Sanford Wallace, a man estimated at causing over $7 billion in damage through phishing.

For the unfamiliar with Facebook (yeah, right; and you don’t watch television either, right?), phishing is when a hacker creates a link and sends it to enough people, and at least half of those morons will click it. This submits their login information to Wallace, who can then send the link to their friends under that idiot’s name.

So, in order for this to work, multiple people had to originally click a suspect link from a complete stranger. But, doesn’t that mean the subsequent victims are off the hook?

No. This is what happens when you send stupid link after stupid link of quizzes and pirate/vampire/care bear wars: everyone becomes accustomed to receiving meaningless apps with poorly written introductions.

So, congratulations, Facebook. You’ve managed to sue one above-average user of your site while the rest continue to ruin it.

Hope they signed up for the intergalactic media package

In surely the greatest waste of money we’ve seen in a long time, an Australian website is allowing people that visit their site to text Gliese 581d. No, that’s not cool new code for Johnny Number Five, gliese 581d is the closest Earth-like planet outside of our solar system. The texts, about as long as tweets (we’re pretty sure Gliese has only advanced to MySpace as of yet) are being sent from www.hellofromearth.net. But we’ll remind you, as well as the stellar observation from MSNBC did, “there is no guarantee of a response.”

Fail whale takes up residence

Mother of god, it happened. We never thought it would happen, but it really did. Twitter was down for an extended period of time! The nightmare happened on Thursday. Mercifully, I was away, but I hear tell of the horrifying experience.

Not only was Twitter down–Facebook and LiveJournal had some glitches! My god, it sounds like, it sounds like, a normal day on the Internet!

Nevertheless, it left the addicted to social media questioning their existence and wondering how they operated only a couple years ago, when they were only on MySpace and Friendster.

“It’s like, ‘I can’t update! I can’t update!’ It’s just one of those bugs that gets in you.”

The horror. The horror.

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Four Years Too Late: because MySpace could be cool again … right, Rupert Murdoch?

The McBournie Minute: Act like the media establishment you’re supposed to be

I’m a journalist in the real world. Professionally, I’ve been one for about three and a half years, before that, I had over four years in college and real world journalism experience–I just wasn’t getting paid anything you could live on. That being said, I hate television news media.

There’s nothing that gets me screaming at my TV than turning on CNN, FOX News or, yes, even MSNBC. I don’t think journalism is about looking good. I don’t believe you can get the story in frame and edited in time for your scheduled satellite uplink in the truck. I don’t believe flashy graphics and scare tactics are forms of information or public service. Most of all, I don’t believe the pundits do anything but tell you how you should think.

Nevertheless, it’s always hilarious to watch them copy each other. Over a year ago, CNN introduced iReport. For those of you unfamiliar, it lets you upload pictures, videos, and on occasion, text unedited for others to view and CNN to harvest when it needs something to kill some time. You don’t get paid, you don’t really get famous, but you do get something on the air. It sounds good in theory, but lately it’s devolved into something like YouTube, only with original content (OH SNAP!). Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Act like the media establishment you’re supposed to be

The McBournie Minute: Social media makes my life worth it

Oh my god, I just checked my Facebook page and you’ll never believe who’s “It’s Complicated” now! Also, I totally just added the magical egg app to my profile, so now you can give me eggs and we can see what they hatch into!

For those of you who have no idea what just happened, you can probably turn off your computer now, but I’m guessing the vast majority of people reading this (seven) know exactly what that means, but cannot for the life of them translate it into English. This is what happens when a fad comes around. Social media is not a fad. It is a genre of fad that is new this decade and will probably not go away until we can find something to replace it. It has to be something even newer. (Sorry, Tamagochi.)

Social media really sucks, folks. I know, SG has a MySpace page, a Facebook page, heck, we even have a Twitter profile, and I am no exception, (you like how I worked those in?) but really, what does any of this do? I will admit, I enjoy stalking high school girls as much as the next average Internet user, but haven’t we become a little self-involved? Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Social media makes my life worth it

Take it from Snee: My friends are emotionally needy

Or, 25 Things About Me

I’ve been successfully ignoring Facebook for nigh-on three months when I start getting emails about friends tagging me in notes. As an Internet celebrity, that makes me nervous: who knows what my friends are saying about me when writing 25 things about themselves?

Imagine my surprise to find they had written not a got-milked thing about me! (Are you angry? Good imagining!)

So, as a service to you readers (especially the angry ones), here are 25 things about me: Continue reading Take it from Snee: My friends are emotionally needy

GWI: Googling while intoxicated

Remember drunk dialing? It used to be so much harder when you didn’t have a phone in your pocket with your boss’ or ex-girlfriend’s number programmed into it. But really, drunk dialing is so 2003. It was replaced by drunken MySpacing, Facebooking, etc. (So what do kids these days, drunken YouTubing, Twittering or whatever it is they do?)

One thing that has not gotten passé is e-mailing under the influence. Good news, Gmail users, you don’t have to wake up in the morning wondering if you really did send that rambling manifesto to boss the night before. Yes, the developers at Google are taking a stand against inebriated e-mail with Mail Goggles.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it turns on only on weekends late at night. When you try to send something during this time, a screen pops up asking you if you really want to send it. More so, it does its own Google sobriety check, asking you to answer some math questions in a limited amount of time. Answer incorrectly and say goodbye to drunken e-mail message.

Now if they can find a way to keep me from drunkenly IMing my sister random advice, that’s something I could use.