Hello all, I trust we are feeling well. Indeed certainly you are at least well enough to access the internet and find your way to this blog, but then again with the ease at which one can do just that these days, it's not really a sure indicator of general health.
Well, what did I do this week. Well, the deadline for us returning our University applications is drawing ever closer and I'm starting to grow slightly on edge about the entire experience. I went to see a very well performed rendition of William Shakespeare's As You Like It performed at the West Yorkshire Playhouse along with the rest of my drama group. Speaking of which my Drama work appears to be going well, but I'm still struggling to understand what my character should be like. In English Language I'm desperately searching for someone sufficiently interesting to conduct an interview with. In Biology I've just received my commented-on coursework that I need to redo. And in English Literature, we've just gotten into the swing of properly buckling down with this coursework now.
Right then, now that that's out of the way, I can get on with the meat of the discussion. But, that's the problem. There isn't any. I don't really have anything to talk about.
I suppose I could tell you about something that happened last week that I intended to write about before it got completely overshadowed by my AQA related minor emotional breakdown.
You see, the story goes that I like Stumbleupon. I think it's fantastic and amazing. It has always gelled with that part of me that was so utterly concerned with trivia. Next to TVTropes, it is one of the largest eaters of my time when sat at a computer, which considering my lifestyle is practically all the time. Hell, I'm stumbling as I write this, in fact, I have two tabs dedicated to it right now.
But you see, the other day I Stumbled Upon something, something terrible, something very, very, very disturbing. I can't show you what it was as when I first laid eyes upon it, I stared at it for 5 minutes then calmly logged off Stumbleupon, removed its toolbar from Firefox, turned off Firefox, shut down my computer and went to sit in a chair and think about the Universe and my place in it for half an hour, all meaning that I can no longer find the page even if I wanted to.
I've built this up quite a lot now, but you must understand how thoroughly creeped out I was. What was on this page you ask? Well I'll tell you.
It was a plain white screen, unremarkable in every respect except that in its upper left hand corner, written in Times New Roman, as I recall, was the following words, or thereabouts:
You are a male teenager.
You have above average intelligence.
You don't often get things done.
You are middle class.
You are slightly racist.
What. The. F*ck.
What sort of sick perverted freak would infect Stumbleupon with a meme of such terrible magnitude. Here it was, me, laid out. My demographic. My pigeon hole. I like to think of myself as being someone impossible to categorise, but there were my categories. They might not all be correct (Slightly racist!? When have I ever been even remotely racist!? And for that matter, I'm in denial about my middle class-ness, thank you very much), but enough of them were to shock me to my core.
It's strange, I thought incapable of being disturbed any more. The internet has numbed me to practically any and all forms of sexual content, acts of violence or terrible injustices. I thought myself above all that. But on that day, the internet presented me with the last thing that could disturb me: myself.
Not only did it creep me out in being a direct confrontation of my flaws, but also it made me aware of the disturbing surveillance aspect of Stumbleupon, that as while I observed it, it observed me. I had somehow thought that the Stumbleupon engine worked via individual tailored choices as opposed to working via demographics. I don't know why I thought this, as it would be a hell of a lot more difficult a program to write and would in fact be much creepier, implying as it does that they have your entire personality on record.
So there you have it. I stopped using Stumbleupon for about a week, but, hell, I thought, it's basically harmless. So now it's back to saying to myself "Just one more stumble..." the only difference now being that I don'e "Like" the pages that even remotely hint at racism.
Good night.
Well, what did I do this week. Well, the deadline for us returning our University applications is drawing ever closer and I'm starting to grow slightly on edge about the entire experience. I went to see a very well performed rendition of William Shakespeare's As You Like It performed at the West Yorkshire Playhouse along with the rest of my drama group. Speaking of which my Drama work appears to be going well, but I'm still struggling to understand what my character should be like. In English Language I'm desperately searching for someone sufficiently interesting to conduct an interview with. In Biology I've just received my commented-on coursework that I need to redo. And in English Literature, we've just gotten into the swing of properly buckling down with this coursework now.
Right then, now that that's out of the way, I can get on with the meat of the discussion. But, that's the problem. There isn't any. I don't really have anything to talk about.
I suppose I could tell you about something that happened last week that I intended to write about before it got completely overshadowed by my AQA related minor emotional breakdown.
You see, the story goes that I like Stumbleupon. I think it's fantastic and amazing. It has always gelled with that part of me that was so utterly concerned with trivia. Next to TVTropes, it is one of the largest eaters of my time when sat at a computer, which considering my lifestyle is practically all the time. Hell, I'm stumbling as I write this, in fact, I have two tabs dedicated to it right now.
But you see, the other day I Stumbled Upon something, something terrible, something very, very, very disturbing. I can't show you what it was as when I first laid eyes upon it, I stared at it for 5 minutes then calmly logged off Stumbleupon, removed its toolbar from Firefox, turned off Firefox, shut down my computer and went to sit in a chair and think about the Universe and my place in it for half an hour, all meaning that I can no longer find the page even if I wanted to.
I've built this up quite a lot now, but you must understand how thoroughly creeped out I was. What was on this page you ask? Well I'll tell you.
It was a plain white screen, unremarkable in every respect except that in its upper left hand corner, written in Times New Roman, as I recall, was the following words, or thereabouts:
You are a male teenager.
You have above average intelligence.
You don't often get things done.
You are middle class.
You are slightly racist.
What. The. F*ck.
What sort of sick perverted freak would infect Stumbleupon with a meme of such terrible magnitude. Here it was, me, laid out. My demographic. My pigeon hole. I like to think of myself as being someone impossible to categorise, but there were my categories. They might not all be correct (Slightly racist!? When have I ever been even remotely racist!? And for that matter, I'm in denial about my middle class-ness, thank you very much), but enough of them were to shock me to my core.
It's strange, I thought incapable of being disturbed any more. The internet has numbed me to practically any and all forms of sexual content, acts of violence or terrible injustices. I thought myself above all that. But on that day, the internet presented me with the last thing that could disturb me: myself.
Not only did it creep me out in being a direct confrontation of my flaws, but also it made me aware of the disturbing surveillance aspect of Stumbleupon, that as while I observed it, it observed me. I had somehow thought that the Stumbleupon engine worked via individual tailored choices as opposed to working via demographics. I don't know why I thought this, as it would be a hell of a lot more difficult a program to write and would in fact be much creepier, implying as it does that they have your entire personality on record.
So there you have it. I stopped using Stumbleupon for about a week, but, hell, I thought, it's basically harmless. So now it's back to saying to myself "Just one more stumble..." the only difference now being that I don'e "Like" the pages that even remotely hint at racism.
Good night.
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