The US Congress is considering America’s first system for censoring the Internet.
Despite public outcry, the Internet Censorship bill could pass at any time.
If it does, the Internet and free speech will never be the same

If celebrities and special interest groups get their way, the internet we we know and love will cease to exist. The government and large corporations will rule the net, and decide what you can see, hear, read, write, share, and enjoy. Sharing sites like twitter could be gone forever, forcing many of us to resort to doing actual work.

Hollywood says they need the Protect IP Act to protect their copyrights. (Celebrities are behind this, because they haven’t yet bought everything in the entire world.) This Act won’t stop copyright infringement, and is actually more far-reaching than that. It will kill legal sharing sites, like twitter, Facebook, and all those other places where you post kitty pictures and repeat quotes we’ve all heard before. It will kill jobs, at a time when so many people are looking for one, and will encourage other countries to follow suit and censor their own citizens.

To be absolutely serious for just a moment, the bill being pushed through the Senate is a very scary form of censorship that needs to be stopped. They may vote on this bill this week. Please call your Senator(s) and tell them to vote against the Protect IP Act.

We find it especially telling that Hollywood is pushing so hard for this bill, so they can further pad their expanding wallets, yet the problems of child pornography, spam, viruses, and other internet evils don’t show up in their radar. They claim this bill is “a major step to make the Internet safer and protect consumers from the dangers of rogue sites in the online marketplace.” We’re calling shenanigans. They don’t care about protecting consumers from anything that really matters. What matters to them is money, and they don’t care what freedoms you lose in order for them to make more of it.

Celebrities live for the moment their name trends on Twitter. It gives them a sense of, as Sally Fields would say, “You like me. You really like me!” How awkward it must be, then, when that treasured moment arrives, and they find themselves trending because everyone is talking about how much they hate them.

Bands, celebrities,and  artists of all types have sucked while performing at professional sporting events for nearly as long as there have been professional sporting events. Who will ever forget Christina Aguilara and her mangled Star-Spangled Banner, the Black Eyed Peas dreadful halftime performance, and the pathetic attempts by Carl Lewis, Roseanne Barr, and Cuba Godding Jr. to sing our national anthem?

We weren’t surprised that Nickelback got the same audience response from their lackluster halftime performance during the Detroit Lions – Green Bay Packers football game. Because twitter is Twitter, plenty of people were more than happy to share their views.

The Packers’ Pat Lee was ejected in the first half after being involved in a scuffle while covering a punt. Evidently, the Nickelback performance drew plenty of flags, itself.

Ndamukong Suh stomped one guy. Nickelback injured thousands, both in the stadium, and the television audience. Fortunately for all who watched at home, we had plenty of avenues of escape.


Why the NFL chose to hire Nickelback, instead of a legedary Motown band was the subject of controversy in the weeks leading up to today’s game. Over 50,000 Detroit fans signed petition in an attempt to convince them to hire someone else. The NFL should have listened; evidently, once the band got on the field, there was no getting them back off.

Actually, we think Texas A&M deserves the apology.


Ouch. After that performance, and all the backlash, we’re wondering who is cringing more: Nickelback, or everyone who suffered through today’s performance. One thing is guaranteed: No one is laughing with them.

It doesn’t hurt to go through the list of people you’re following every now and then, to see who is still worth it, and who is wasting your attention. We’re reminded of this policy when we notice that people we initially followed because we thought they might be interesting, turn into social media douche-canoes.

Example of social media douche-canoe activity: Filling their timeline with ads. Sometimes, you don’t realize they’re doing it, until you innocently click a link to what you think might be an interesting story, and you get directed to somewhere completely different.

Like this:

Every one of the short urls in this timeline goes a product he’s selling. After clicking on one, we remembered why we like the “short url preview” feature. It saves a lot of aggravation – hover over a short url, and it shows you the real destination. We won’t fall for that trick again. (Disclaimer: We don’t know him. He may be a nice guy, but we really hate bait and switch tactics. That’s not very social.)

And, another thing: The words “internet marketer,” “social media marketer,” and other such terms make us cringe. They’re titles often latched onto by people who are selling you a system to make you look more popular on social media, or automate your online marketing, which they guarantee will get you first page ranking for any keywords you want, or some other “make money by giving me yours” program that usually has an affiliate program attached so that other people will do their marketing for them.

Here’s the news: Social media works by making connections, and having conversations with others. Automate your social media, and you miss the whole point. And, nobody can guarantee you first page ranking for any keyword you want. Correct that.. they can guarantee anything, they just can’t deliver. (Read what Google says about such guarantees: Scroll down to: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

We’re going to take the advice of @jackassletters and lighten our load. We’re going to look through our list and see who isn’t really social anymore. Following fewer people, and having fewer followers will help us keep the “social” in our twitter social media experience.

You know, on the Ghost Whisperer, how Jennifer Love-Hewitt hears ghosts, and nobody else does, and they’re pretty sure she’s nutty, and maybe the creepy things are really her fault, because, hello, she’s the one hearing voices, so what do you think? Okay, in real life, she sparkles her vajayjay, so she definitely is pretty nutty, but that’s not the point. The point is, she talks to people who technically don’t exist.

That’s kind of like all those people on twitter who protect their tweets.

When your tweets are protected, using #hashtags is worthless, because your tweets don’t show up anywhere outside your twitter vault. It’s kind of like voting for Ralph Nader. Nice try, but it doesn’t mean anything.

Nobody wants to apply to be your friend. Just saying.

We try to keep things fresh. Interact with new people, share new stories, mix things up a bit. If you’re active on twitter, you run the risk that at some point you’re going to repeat yourself. It could be a joke that you tell more than once, or a habit of saying the same greeting every morning or night.

Some people just don’t even try.

Yes, we get it. Ha ha. But 7,137 times? It’s time to try something new. Oh, yeah, the link in your bio that loops endlessly until the browser times out? That’s not particularly funny, either.

We’ve got to admit we’re really stymied by this one. It’s not just that @FluffytheCat has wasted bandwidth by tweeting “Meow” 177 times, but that 15,550 are following so they don’t miss a single one.

Is it possible that ol’ Fluffy has been catting around, gaming the system just to get a bunch of followers who aren’t necessarily interested in what she has to say? Hard to imagine, since she’s such a fantastic conversationalist.

Bill the Cat could teach Fang and Fluff a thing or two about interesting commentary. Go ahead guys, try hacking up a hairball and see if it expands your vocabulary. We’ll wait.

Over there.