One thing I love about facebook and this whole social medium thing which has infected the internet until it has become the internet, in much the same way that the internet sort of evolved out of nothing, with a bit of help from Al Gore, to give meaning to the existence of computers, is that not only does it provide an environment in which we can circulate great art, music, and writing (and some pretty hideous art, music, and writing because if you are anything at all like me, some of your friends are going to have truly lame taste, it’s human nature), but it also provides an environment in which entirely different concepts in art, music, and writing can be tried out, disseminated, and some of them may evolve into something great.
…and then there are the poorly drawn cartoons. They’re not all xkcd, but a lost of them are funny.
Flash mobs would never have existed without social media, and flash mobs are awesome. Earlier today I was watching an awesome performance, a large crowd of people sitting on the floor of a gymnasium, it looked like, banging cups in accompaniment to a pretty awesome singer, in Gaelic, I think. It was impressive, not just because of the music, but also because of the co-ordination of that large group of people. Of course, similar things have been done before, there are marching bands and drill teams and flash card sections at football stadiums, but it’s cool to watch and it comes to me via facebook.
A couple of months ago I saw a woman who made an art form out of decorating her room. I haven’t seen that copied yet, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be, and improved upon. There’s a lot that can be said with the space inside 4 walls.
I also saw, just today, a female photographer who digitally inserted herself into her childhood photos, creating a fantasy world where the little girl could see what she’d grown up to be. It was kind of cool, but totally replicable, and I expect to see lots of people doing that now, with varying results.
Then there were these two geezers, who call themselves Dead Parrot, I guess because it’s funny to name your comedy team after a famously funny routine by a much more famous and more funny comedy group. The concept is cool, although I thought their execution of it was totally lame. They take actual comment threads and re-enact them, which would be much funnier if they would start with interesting threads, but it winds up being a couple of old guys saying “fuck you” a lot in deadpan voices.
Somebody could do better. Not necessarily me, but somebody.
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