twitter fail blog
sharing the good, and exposing the best of the worst on twitter
Save the internets!
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.
Be careful what you wish for
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.
This isn’t funny
We hate celebrities for lots of reasons, but we really hate them for pushing the US government to pass a bill that will censor the internet. This is serious business. If “Protect IP” passes, twitter would be shut down, because they would be responsible for everything everyone posts. So would YouTube, and Facebook, and Google+ and MySpace, okay, nobody really cares about MySpace any more, but still… All sharing sites could be shut down, so that Hollywood can protect their already over-inflated pocketbooks. In fact, any site that they think isn’t doing enough to insure they make enough money (read: even more money than they are worth) could be hit with lawsuits.
If you haven’t heard about this yet, watch this video.
Think we’re kidding? Look at the list of special interest groups behind this bill: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/money
If you haven’t contacted your Congressional Representative about this, please do so now. If you don’t, life on the internet will never be the same.
Quick! Get Alanis on the phone!
From Dictionary.com
i·ron·ic/i’ränik/
Adjective:
- Using or characterized by irony.
- Happening in the opposite way to what is expected, thus typically causing wry amusement.
The word “ironic” has been posted a lot today, when people talked about this tweet:
The horrible, hateful person who wrote it meant that tweet exactly the way it was written. The fact that it was written on an iPhone isn’t ironic. It is, however, pretty hypocritical. If there is a God, a heaven, and a hell, how surprised will all these haters be when their brief time in front of St. Peter is followed by a quick trip downstairs? Just saying…
We’re still scratching our collective brains to try to figure out exactly which sins Steve Jobs taught us. We must have missed that day in Computer Science class. The most important innovation he gave us was a user-friendly interface so that non-technical people could use computers. Although a lot of those people now use computers to view porn, we’re pretty sure Steve didn’t have to teach them that part. Pervs are pretty darned resourceful.
The next noteworthy misuse of “ironic” comes from Brand Link Communications:
BrandlinkComm sent Jenny (@thebloggess) the kind of pitch all bloggers get and hate. They thought she would be thrilled to write a blog post about an overexposed celebrity doing something that none of us care about. Jenny responded with her usual wit, by sending them a picture of Wil Wheaton collating, and “Jose” at BrandlinkComm called her an effing bitch when he hit “reply all.” (Go read the whole story here: The Bloggess & Jose – we’ll wait)
Technology did not fail Jose. Jose failed in the use of technology. The fact that this happened the same day Steve Jobs passed away is not ironic. It’s just coincidence. Nonetheless, for Jose, pretty unfortunate. Just like all the other unfortunate things in Alanis’ song
Even more unfortunate for Jose was that he lit a spark that started a PR firestorm when he said, “…maybe you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough to be pitched at all…”
We should all feel flattered to receive PR pitch spam? Many of us just hit the delete button and move on. Thankfully, Jenny takes the next step, and brings us along for the ride.
Oh, and Jose? By the end of the day, Jenny will have more comments on her blog post about this than you have followers on Twitter. That’s Relevance. You should be so lucky. (That’s ironic.)
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