Image: Adapted from Stephen Harper - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2010 by World Economic Forum under a CC-BY-SA license.

The Canadian meltdown over the CRTC’s ruling that network owners could punish smaller ISPs with usage-based billing has met with mild political progress.

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, or as I like to call him “fuck you,” declared on Tuesday that there would be a review of the finding with a decision coming March 1.

My biased, angry, but no less accurate prediction? Since everyone has agreed an election is coming, the Conservatives will likely strike down the decision for political points. They will use the issue to further demonize and weaken the CRTC, thus removing the chances of Canada ever getting robust regulation of internet providers, and ultimately furthering the corporatist agenda. In the end, we’ll get slightly better service than the current rampage-of-greed, such that we can live with it, but not more.

Once again, Fight the power.

Image: Adapted from Bell Headquarters by Sweet One under a CC-BY-SA license.

I have a series of questions for our Canadian fans. Do you like the internet? Do you like using the internet for legal services such as gaming and Netflix? Do you like watching ShufflingDead’s videos in glorious high definition on YouTube?

If you said yes to any of the above, then you are, right now, in the process of receiving an almighty corporate cock-lashing.

The CRTC, whose supposed job it is to regulate telecommunications carriers, gave network owners the go ahead to implement “usage based billing” as requested by Bell Canada. This was to come into effect 90 days from its October 28, 2010 decision. That would be right now. Under this system, Bell and others are allowed to charge internet users by the gigabyte.

Smaller ISPs who operate on the owners’ networks will be similarly charged, with a mere 15% wholesale discount, and forced to pass those fees on to their customers. This leaves Bell’s smaller competitors with little edge, and makes them more readily crush-able.

And what of those fees? Ontario’s TekSavvy will now be forced to slam its users with a 25GB per month cap. Going over that limit will set you back $1.90 per gigabyte. Let’s all go to the fucking lobby of justice known as the truth and figure out what that might look like for a “heavy” user (read: someone who actually uses the services available on the modern internet, not your email forwarding grandma):

Wow, over $100 a month to use the internet?!?! Convenient how the high-bandwidth entertainment offered online suddenly looks a lot less appetizing, huh? With users forced to pay more for the bandwidth they’re consuming, they’ll be forced to cut down on such activities, and turn to other sources for movies and other amusements. It just so happens that Bell and other carriers offer their own entertainment services at slightly more palatable rates! This move severely harms the competitiveness of great services like Netflix.

You may be thinking “poor Bell, it’s not fair that they should have to endure my heavy usage!,” but then you’d be a fucking idiot. There are fixed costs to delivering internet to your house, just as there are to hooking Freddy Facebook up with his poking fix. Your long nights of porn streaming that Freddy doesn’t engage in cost Bell about $0.01/gigabyte. Bell doesn’t have to manufacture extra bandwidth for you, they don’t have to mine it out of the ground.

The “why” of this scenario is simple: Bell wants to make as much money as possible. Charging customers out the ass is one way of doing that, being able to provide better deals than their small ISP competitors is another, and driving out competing services for their entertainment offerings is yet another.

The “how” is a little more disturbing. The CRTC initially sought to require Bell to delay usage-based billing until moving its customers off of unlimited plans, and offer usage insurance plans to smaller ISPs. Bell appealed those decisions, and the CRTC complied. Let’s read the subtext: Bell owns the government of Canada. Corporations run our lives and the government is complicit.

The internet is the most powerful communications and entertainment tool in human history. It allows anyone, from anywhere in the world, to talk to anyone else. It allows anyone, anywhere in the world, to produce digital entertainment, and provide it to anyone else. When corporations are allowed to limit and manipulate your use of the internet, they deprive you of the freedom fundamental to the value of that tool. Fight the power.

Image: Adapted from Mark Zuckerberg Facebook SXSWi 2008 Keynote by deneyterrio under a CC-BY license.

Poor Mark Zuckerberg. He’s TIME’s person of the year, is worth billions of dollars, 500 million people he may or may not think are “dumb fucks” use his website, and someone hacked his fan page.

A group or individual apparently excited about the idea of Facebook being run like a co-op rather than a for-profit enterprise had this to say in the voice of Marky-Z:

Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011

The posting was quickly removed, but not before 1,800 people liked it. I wonder what Zuck’s password was. Love? Sex? Secret? God?

Source: TechCrunch

Image: Adapted from apple store fifth avenue black friday by jardenberg under a CC-BY license.

Verizon has announced that they will be carrying the iPhone in the US beginning in February. That means AT&T isn’t the only carrier of the Apple device any longer.

The tech world is ejaculatory over this announcement, or they were when I read about it two days ago. By now they have presumably moved on to something else, like whining about the absence of some minute and irrelevant feature in whatever $500 hunk of plastic they plan on picking up next.

Those currently with AT&T looking to switch to Verizon out of spite or something will have to buy new phones because Verizon runs a CDMA network, whatever that is. They will also have to pay out $325 in “early termination fees.”

This story makes evident two things: I don’t understand the tech world, and phone companies are fucking scammers.

Source: CNN

Image: Original MySpace logo. Copyright MySpace.

MySpace, the once and future shittiest website on the internet, is letting go of 47% of its staff. That works out to a 500-person strong army of unemployed techno-wizards who assisted in the operation of a site which once allowed users to customize the CSS of their pages.

In an ironic twist, the decision comes just days after an entirely make-believe rumour circled the internet surrounding rival Facebook’s supposed closure. Back in reality, Facebook has dominated MySpace, draining its members and embarrassing the social networking site by not utterly sucking for years.

MySpace continues to thrash around, claiming these cuts are related to “legacy business,” and that the company is on “a clear path for sustained growth and profitability.” Whether MySpace can figure out it should focus on indie band networking in time remains to be seen.

Source: CNN

Image: Adapted from iPhone vs Android by nrkbeta under a CC-BY-SA license. Yes, you can similarly share alike!

Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of discussion/rage/rants regarding the debatable advantages of some of the new ‘in’ things; namely the iPhone and the Android systems for cellular phone usage.

Personally, I’m loathe to weigh in on either side. I just got finished hating the Blackberry (commonly known among all addicted users as a “Crackberry”) and really don’t need to pick up more handhelds to be disgusted by on principle.

So what do you all think? Is Steve Jobs still a maniacal monster up in his fortress made of stacked 100 dollar bills? Does he have the ‘it’ thing for 2011? Or is he desperately clinging to a format that he has managed to convince enough loudmouthed consumers to swear by profusely, but is technologically inferior?

So, ShufflingDead readers, tell me what you think. iPhone or Android?

Image: Adapted from CES 2010 by PrimeImageMedia.com under a CC-BY license.

CES, or the Consumer Electronics Show, is an annual celebration of price gouging, unnecessary “innovations” targeted at grabbing headlines in tech publications, and the general dullness of the technology industry.

In essence, CES is the tech world’s version of E3. The heads of massive corporations get to pretend they haven’t fleeced consumers of all their spending power already, and show off countless devices that will “revolutionize” the way humanity functions. Oh yeah, and then bloggers get to evaluate who had the best shit, and brag about it if their team won.

CES 2011 will run from January 6-9, although keynote speeches occurring before those dates have already happened. Sony is still enamored with the kind of 3D you need glasses for, and they plan on sticking it in everything from camcorders to laptops (surprise, one of two themes this year is 3D!). Motorola has announced a tablet that will run Android 3.0 and be fueled by Verizon’s 4G wireless internet powers (surprise, the other theme this year is tablets!).

Source: Wikipedia, sort of

Image: Adapted from I can has nootral internets? by JasonWalton under a CC-BY license.

The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, has finally ruled on net neutrality. Americans can look forward to their ISPs not screwing them over entirely, just a lot.

The order bars ISPs from blocking content and requires transparency for both wired and wireless internet. Reasonableness (whatever that means) of network management and packet discrimination is required for wired internet, but service providers are free to be as unreasonable as they want with wireless internet in this regard.

Most frighteningly, so called “managed services” are allowed, but will be oh-so-reassuringly monitored for “anti-competitive behavior.” This means ISPs can tack on extra fees for extra and/or faster services. This might sound alright in theory, but ISPs have mandated virtual-monopolies, with citizens of many regions of the US having few, if any, ISP choices. In other words: get ready to pay for things you got for free before, and get ready for large internet companies muscling out small start-ups by arranging deals with ISPs.

The measure was passed three-to-two along party lines by a five person commission. Of course, Democrats were the majority, but opted to largely give in to the ranting corporatist lunacy of the right, even though Republicans were never going to be in favour of even the weakest measures anyway. Yet more evidence that Democrats don’t care about the good of the average citizen either, they just sometimes talk like they do.

Conservatives desperate to allow corporate control of every aspect of American’s lives are livid about the decision, with one commission member describing the net neutrality decision as “one of the darkest days in recent FCC history.” And I thought I was hyperbolic.

Source: arstechnica

A survey by Duracell of over 2000 children in the UK has found that, when it comes to Christmas presents, the kids these days demand overpriced Apple gadgets.

Unsurprisingly, it was the older “teenage” type of children who are most eager for the sleek, shiny, and utterly useless products. 66% of 13-16 year-olds want some of Apple’s sauce.

More shockingly, 17% of the 5-8 year old category are hoping for some of the white’n'chrome this holiday season. What a five year old needs with an iPhone, I have no idea. Then again, I don’t know what a 15, 25, or 35 year old needs with one, either.

The top ten most desired items by the spoiled brats of Britain this Christmas are:

1. iPhone 4 (14%)
2. iPod touch (13%)
3. iPad (12%)
4. Kinect for Xbox (6%)
5. Zhu Zhu Pet Hamsters / Kung Zhu Hamsters (5%)
6. Flip Video Camera (4%)
7. Toy Story 3 Jet Pack Buzz Lightyear (4%)
8. PlayStation Move (4%)
9. LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 Video Game (3%)
10. Barbie Video Girl (3%)

As you can see, Microsoft’s and Sony’s motion-controller devices also showed up in the survey, albeit well behind Apple’s various contraptions. The youth have seemingly abandoned Nintendo in favour of inferior products.

Source: Telegraph
Image: Adapted from christmas morning by scottfeldstein under a CC-BY license.

The video proclaims “welcome to The Jungle,” and teases Battlestar Galactica Online and “a bada$$ new show” called Online Underground. The show is from Machinima.com, and assumed to be a funny take on gaming news. Listen up, Panasonic, I have experience in the field. Call me.

No price or release date has been revealed.

[source]

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now confirmed that he once called his users “dumb fucks.” This was part of an IM chat at the age of 19, shortly after launching the site which would eventually take over the world. Zuck bragged he had “over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS” and remarked “they ‘trust me’… Dumb fucks.”

The Bergster claims he has “grown and learned a lot” in the seven years which have passed since that early conversation. By that, I can only assume he means that he has learned to better conceal his true feelings toward the 500 million drooling super-pokers who frequent his site.

Source: Gawker
Image: Adapted from Mark Zuckerberg Facebook SXSWi 2008 Keynote by deneyterrio under a CC-BY license.

Last week, 17 state attorneys general signed a letter sent to the site “demanding the company immediately shut down its adult services listing.” CNN has also been imagining up an outcry, and went so far as to ambush their semi-retired founder with leading questions.

The “adult services” link has been replaced on the US pages of the site with the word “censored.” In a bit of research that led me to pictures of naked ladies, confusing codes of jumbled letters for services offered, and a shot of a man’s gaping anus, I can confirm that that section (called “erotic services” outside the US) is still available in Canada.

The move is a confusing one, since Craigslist has fought for years against accusations of things like promoting human trafficking and child prostitution. It may be a protest of some kind or a temporary delay of services until attention dies down.

[source]

Vaughn says in an interview “It’s not just about please don’t let my cellphone drop calls today. It’s about, you know, help me to be the best Christian, the best person I can be in my conversations, in my communication.”

Personally, I’m not too hopeful of her chances of increasing attendance too much with this initiative, but I am a little curious. If I had her bless my Xbox controller, would I be playing with the Holy Fist of God on my side?

[source]

Last week, I declared Kevin Rose, the founder of social media/link sharing site Digg.com and the entire community of that site to be Shameful Humans. I blamed Kevin and his staff for prematurely pushing out v4 while it was still packed with glitches and absent in obvious features, and I blamed the community of Digg for completely overreacting to the changes brought about.

In the intervening week, Digg’s tech has stabilized, things are getting fixed, and Rose appears to be moving forward. The community of his site, however, is not. Each day, I fire up Digg with the hopes of finding amusement and maybe even a story or two to cover on the site, the things I used to find. Instead, what my browser displays each morning is a user-generated catastrophe of nerd rage.

Every anti-Digg and anti-Rose post that can be found is popularized and pushed to the front-page. Significantly worse, the frothing geeks who continue to visit Digg, even though they claim to hate it, see to it that no conversation within any comment section can take place unless it is specifically about how bad the new Digg is.

As anti-v4 push-back continues, it has become increasingly shrill and conspiratorial, with users now claiming sites like Mashable and TIME pay Rose to promote their content. This of course ignores the fact that these users have managed to entirely bend Digg’s system to their will, in direct violation of corporate interest. Someone, somewhere has to be Digging up those stories in order popularize them. Where users used to follow other users, they now more often follow websites, and some sites have managed to work the system better than others. That’s it.

Never have I more greatly appreciated the diligent work of moderators on the forums I visit. If this were any forum on the internet, such users would be banned for trolling, trashing, and abusing the site they are participating in. At a certain point, Digg is going to have to boot these unruly abusers in order to be able to provide any kind of service at all, save as venting ground for unwarranted rage.

Digg has been rendered unusable, not by its leadership, not by the corporate masters the company has supposedly bowed to, but by its own community of spammers who have seemingly nothing else to do than ruin a perfectly good service for everyone else.

[image source]

We reported earlier that things over at social networking/link sharing site Digg.com got a little wonky with a recent site redesign. When Digg v4 launched, there was an uproarious user protestation due to a wealth of bugs, absence of features, and what was seen to be the “selling out” of Digg to large sites and corporations.

Most of the tech problems have gone away, and founder Kevin Rose has promised fixes for most of the missing features. Unrest regarding selling out, however, has burgeoned into full-on revolt. On the new Digg, users are encouraged to follow other users, who are able to auto-submit entries from their own websites. Large sites with strong Digg followings already in place have been able to dominate.

Hilariously, that has never been more true than today, with legions of Digg users subscribing to the feed for Digg competitor Reddit, and voting up that site’s posts (which link to Reddit, and then on to the actual web page of interest). Essentially, Digg has been transformed by its own users into a massive advertisement for its rival.

The image to the right is a screen shot of the most popular entries on Digg today. Every single one of them is a link to Reddit. The comment section of every one of those, as well as just about every other entry on Digg, is filled with anti-Digg, pro-Reddit sentiment.

Reddit has been kind enough to respond by putting a shovel in the hand of their mascot, and starting a help thread for new users.

I’ve seen plenty of mass-user reactions before. I’ve seen community revolts, forum invasions, and 4chan topics that evolved into real-world protests. I don’t recall ever seeing so many users of a site so valuable or popular manage to screw things up so badly for that site’s owners.

Image: Screenshot of Digg

Allen contends that his company, Interval Licensing, owns patents on some of the core features found in the services of the companies listed above. Allen claims to own patents on things like giving internet viewers suggested products based on what they are viewing, among other obvious and widely used website features.

Allen’s suit lacks a specific dollar amount being sought. Although, considering the company’s he’s after, Allen surely wants a lot of money. Perhaps even all of it.

[source]

Digg is some kind of social media/link sharing mega site founded by TechTV’s Kevin Rose. On August 25, 2010, version four of Digg.com went live. The redesign brought about a wide range of changes both great and small, from a layout cleansing (that looks infinitely better in my opinion), to a refocus on following the activities of your friends and favourite websites rather than the hive mind of the collected Digg community.

The transition has been shaky from a technical standpoint, with Rose and co. re-launching Digg seemingly without adequate preparation. Despite a lengthy testing period, the new Digg has been up, down, and glitchy ever since it went live. The extra click required to hop from your personal stream to the site-wide most popular submissions is also somewhat annoying. Speaking of personal streams, and as a means of being completely self serving, I want to recommend you follow Shufflingdead on Digg.

But this post isn’t just about Kevin. It’s also about the legion of basement dwellers who rely on his site for distraction while their youths slip away. You see, Diggers, like all geeks, are a ravenous bunch of haters. Change of any kind is to be reviled. Digg’s revamp has garnered nothing less than a torrent of whining from its millions of users. A quick scan from this comment page garnered these gems (after the jump):

What the fuck did you do Kevin Rose. Fix this shit.

-swellin

Fix the whole fucking thing! Give us the option to view it the old way. I don’t even want to come on this site anymore.

-mywhitenoise

No bury button. Digg has become facebook. What’s with this social media shit – I already have a facebook account simply because I’m forced to if I don’t want to make new accounts everywhere. Now the view sucks, I can’t easily bury a shitty story like this one, and it keeps trying to integrate with this social shit.

I’m antisocial and asocial. Yes, I actively want the downfall of society. Yes, I dislike everyone. Even those who agree with me. I’m your usual Digg user. We don’t like this shit. Put it back.

-Michichael

Their article tells the story of 28 year old Amanda Dorsey, who has been willing to check search engine links and other dull and repetitive tasks for CrowdFlower Inc., which pays her in the currency of TinierMe.com. She’s supposedly a writer, which leads me to wonder why she isn’t spending her time not making money blogging. Her in-game avatar has gotten a couple clothing items out of the deal.

Another example SFGate provides is of Tina Wang, a recovering back surgery patient who has spent her time off judging search results on eBay to earn “Swag Bucks.” Wang can get about 450 Swag Bucks during a seven hour shift, enough for a $5 Amazon gift card.

On Friday, a warrant was issued for Assange in Sweden following a rape and molestation accusation. Convenient for his critics, huh? Well, a judge has dropped the charges, explaining “I don’t think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” No doubt the stigma associated with the charges will linger. Meanwhile, Wikileaks’ response via Twitter claimed they “had been warned to expect ‘dirty tricks.’”

Meanwhile, net neutrality proponent US Senator Al Franken just found a hole in one of his home’s windows, possibly from a BB gun. Police say it is unlikely the attack was targeting Franken based on the chances his residence was known. Still, the possibility remains. Judging by the commentors on CNN.com, voters are unhappy that the man is sticking up for the general population rather than corporate interests. Vanilla Gorilla claims “simply put he is clown with a distorted moral compass.”

Sources: BBC, CNN

On the other side of this ultimate battle between good and evil is the internet-hating, freedom-hating behemoth, the RIAA. No surprise here, the Recording Industry Association of America feels the Google/Verizon proposal doesn’t go far enough. In a classy argument blatantly attempting to associate pirates with more sinister internet users, they want to see ISPs made the net police, with legislation giving them the ability to fight “unlawful activity such as copyright infringement and child pornography.”

Meet Chris Anderson, he’s the editor-in-chief of Wired. You know, that magazine that’s also a very successful website. Chris recently blasted out a massive article declaring “The Web Is Dead.” It’s a rather dull piece with a stunning headline designed to grab lots of attention here on the highly profitable web. Anderson argues that the “web” part of the internet (that stuff you see in your browser) is quickly vanishing, and being replaced by isolated apps that use the internet but don’t live in the “web” ecosystem.

Chris begins his argument with a graph demonstrating that web traffic has dropped significantly compared to the rest of what the internet is used for. Have a look. Huh. It appears to be a chart of bandwidth usage, demonstrating that the web take has lessened relative to significantly more bandwidth-heavy uses. Hardly shocking. An even funnier thing about that bandwidth usage is that most of what the web has lost appears to have gone directly to video. You know, those moving pictures you watch all of the damn time through your browser on the web. Poor “other” has lost even more ground in recent years according to his chart. I wonder, where do all of those apps and X-Box connections Anderson claims are taking over fit in?

Don’t worry, my fellow interneters. This isn’t the first time a tech journalist has declared a technology, tech company, or tech trend dead a little prematurely. How many times were Nintendo and Apple declared dead during the ’90s?

Chris Anderson is a thoroughly shameful shameless attention grabber. At least the lengthy list of ironies inherent in his argument have given swarms of people something to talk about on this very lively web.

Luckily, sanity was victorious and the proposal was brushed off as easily as a stray salt n’ vinegar chip from my computer desk.

The issue stems from some parents and teachers becoming concerned when some children would experience headaches and stomach aches that would clear up on the weekends. But no, we couldn’t possibly question these kids’  motives for trying to get out of going to school, could we? Technology is involved somewhere, that must be the root of this totally unproven evil!

Several parents are still outraged, demanding that the issue be looked into, overlooking the fact that it already has, as the World Health Organization has already conducted conclusive studies on the issue, showing no negative effects of the minuscule radio frequency.

Teachers are not discouraged, however, they plan to get more big scary words for next time they talk this one up. One teacher, Terri Beck, goes on to say “We’ll have a crack at it again maybe with some language that other people might be willing to get on board with.” Ms. Beck, I’d suggest ‘Terrorist’ or ‘West Nile’. People are pretty scared of those these days.

[source]

The group managed to argue its way into Googleplex and hand off a 300,000 signature strong petition against Google’s recent increase in evil.

On the wrong side of this controversy, corporately mind-controlled Tea Partiers have applied their significantly better organizational skills in sending a letter to the FCC in favour of deregulation. Chairman of The Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation claims limiting the role of mega-corporations in influencing what people see and hear on the internet is “an affront to free speech and free markets.”

Sources: Ars Technica, The Hill

The new device supposedly features a slider that would contain something close to the current PSP Go’s button layout, with the analog nub replaced by a touch pad. Also rumoured to be included are Google’s Android 3.0 OS and system specs that allow for PS1/PSP level graphics. The rumour also contains the claim that God of War and Little Big Planet games are being shown off for the system/phone, and that it will be PlayStation branded.

Although the idea of Sony turning the PSP line into smartphones isn’t surprising, it does seem odd that the company would half-ass the effort so greatly. The rumour doesn’t make it seem like this new PSP would have much to do with existing PSP games or infrastructure. And where’s the dual analog?

[source]

Utterly unsurprisingly, it turns out the HOPA girl is a fake. TheChive hired a model, and posted her images up at 4:30am to see if they could circulate a hoax. The lazy bloggers of the internet quickly did TheChive’s work, and circulated the story all over the damn place. A TheChive writer reports going from 15 000 unique visitors to 440 000 in the first hour of the article’s posting.

[source]

The so called “Digg Patriots” colluded on a Yahoo Group, in which they organized to Digg down supposedly liberally slanted stories, and the submitted links of purportedly liberal users of the site. The group includes a number of powerful and long-time Digg users, allowing this seemingly small number of total users to wreak massive manipulation.

The number of stories targeted and buried by this brigade is in the thousands. Topics of (dis)interest for the group include homophobia, racism, science, the environment, and anything critical of the Republican party or its allies.

The Digg Patriots conspiracy also included efforts to game Digg via multiple accounts, and attempts to have certain users banned.

[source]

This week’s Shameful Human is author and professional internet-hater Andrew Keen.

To Andrew Keen, This whole web 2.0 thing, with its YouTubes and swarms of blogs, isn’t the time-wasting bliss you and I perceive it to be. No, it’s actually dangerous, and even Marxist.

You see, as Keen argued in his 2006 The Weekly Standard essay, the participatory internet “worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer.” Sounds great, right? Sorry, but according to Andrew’s novel The Cult of the Amateur, all of this creative energy is putting hard-working experts out of business. Craigslist robs papers of their personals sections, Wikipedia takes jobs from encyclopedia editors.

Keen has rightly argued that web 2.0 “suggests that everyone — even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us — can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves.” Well, there’s no doubt that a lot of idiots produce a lot of shit on the internet. You’re reading a product of that dangerous phenomenon right now. Having said that, the internet is also a realm (relatively) free of corporate control, a place where true free enterprise can flourish, and a place that gives rise to new small businesses every day. There is nothing less Marxist than that.

Keen himself has participated in many internet start-ups. How he considers himself to be any different than the people making careers out of blogging and vlogging is beyond my comprehension.

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg had some business dealings with Ceglia in 2003, and a contract between the two has surfaced which appears to grant Ceglia 50%+ ownership in the now ubiquitous and almighty social networking site.

The first portion of the contract is not disputed by anyone: back in 2003, Ceglia paid Zuckerberg $1000 for some web development. Tacked onto that contract was an agreement for Ceglia to purchase a 50% share in “The Face Book” that Zuckerberg was working on for another $1000. This share was also to increase over time as compensation if work was late.

Accusations of contract doctoring have surfaced, and it is possible the statute of limitations is up for Ceglia to take this to court. Having said that, former friends of Zuckerberg have been placated with settlements over past disputes regarding the early development of Facebook. Unless the social networkers can get this thing dismissed, Zuck will need to settle, and probably for a very large sum.

[source]

A major portion of Jobs’ conference was dedicated to demonstrating supposedly similar issues with other smartphones. Jobs claimed the BlackBerry Bold 9700 does the same thing when held on the left side. It wasn’t something the co-CEOs of RIM appreciated. Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have released a statement commenting on Jobs’ remarks, stating “Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable,” and that “Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding.”

Sources: Engadget, Engadget

I’ve got a shocking story for you. The internet, you know, that whole thing, well it’s over. In fact, according to Prince, better known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, it’s “completely over.”

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, the world’s most famous lover of purple has announced he wants “as many people as possible to hear his music.” He is conveniently giving away his new album in CD form through that paper. Citizens of the UK and Ireland won’t be able to get his new music anywhere else: 20TEN won’t be sold in stores, and certainly not online. Prince had his website shut down, so potential fans won’t be able to check out his songs there, either.

There’s a pretty simple explanation for all of this. Prince has come to the realization that the internet is no longer cool, and wants to avoid associating himself with it. In the same interview mentioned previously, Prince compared the internet to MTV, stating “at one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated.” TAFKAP also pointed out the very real dangers of the internet, noting “Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

The worst thing of all about the internet? Well, those online music stores like iTunes, they don’t pay in advance. And so, Prince says, “I don’t see why I should give my new music [to them].”

Prince’s new, and very ironically titled, album 20TEN will be mailed out along with copies of newspapers July 10 in the UK and Irelnd. Have fun listening to this Shameful Human’s brand new music.

Editor’s note: I got the image of Prince from Wikipedia, so that’s, like, public domain, right? Prince isn’t going to come after me… I think. He’s gone after fansites for artwork before in trying to “reclaim the internet.”

The latest episode just hit the internet, it’s called “Big Ideas.” In this installment, Robert meets up with the very wealthy co-owner of the Tetris license, and Jonah Falcon, a mom’s-basement-dwelling geek who legitimately has the world’s largest penis.

Check it out.

The University of Barcelona has been conducting VR experiments in which men in their mid-20s can be fooled into reacting to events occurring digitally to the bodies of young girls.

Volunteers were allowed to look around in virtual reality and see their bodies displayed as those of 10-year-old girls. When the girl’s arm was touched, and the volunteers were stroked at the same time, they came to feel as though what they were seeing was real. Even once the camera moved out into the third person, and the men saw their former girl-bodies being slapped, they reacted as though that body was still theirs.

The experiment gives hope for both the sexually adventurous and the gamers of the world. Seriously guys, sex sims. Think about it.

[source]

Weaker sales, the Wii price drop, and the lower value of the yen are reportedly to blame.

Of course, the company is still making gobs of money and crushing its competition. That hasn’t stopped eager members of the Digg community from voting up the story reporting these figures. The angry fanboys, assuredly frustrated by Nintendo’s success, have given the story 356 Diggs.

Just wait for 3DS, fanboys. Your bitter tears shall fuel my dreams.

[source]

Mr. Jobs recommended that for your mobile porn needs, you get an Android, stating:

Fiore’s app will be in the store shortly. That was a mistake. However, we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and Android phone.

Come on Steve, I’ve seen Pirates of Silicon Valley, you were young once. Don’t you understand that sometimes, you just need take a quick, surreptitious look at some porn while on the go?

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This week’s Interneter is MissHannahMinx, a YouTube celebrity on the rise. She’s only been producing videos for about a year, but already has over 80 000 subscribers. Her biggest video has over a million views.

In her Cats n’ Racks video, Minxy famously and profoundly stated “Cats, neko… very powerful on the internet. Racks… also very powerful.” Her frank recognition of what works on the internet is clearly represented in Minxy’s output. Her videos consistently include the wearing of cat-ear headbands and her own gargantuan breasts, along with other internet tent-poles like giant eyes, slightly, I don’t know, “alt” makeup, fetishization of Japanese culture, and the speaking of Japanese in a ridiculously cutesy fashion.

Much of the amusement I get from MHM’s videos comes from the comments she receives. The unbridled passion which YouTube commenters speak with is concentrated sexual obsession when it comes to Minxy’s viewers. A quick read through the comments on one of her latest videos includes such illuminating insights as:

“BEEG AMERIKKKAN TEETEES!!” – TenchiHawkwing

“For fucks sake…Your tits are so massive that they will eventually collapse into themselves like Neutron Stars.” – billyboyjennings

“wow wee she is got some babylons!!!!!!” – miscreantV0n

“titss very goud” – lkykrc

“lets take turns jerking off on her face” – dx7im

“I would be glad to give you a fuck !” – billonis

Stay classy, internet.

MissHannahMinx, Shufflingdead salutes you for exploiting the general stupidity of the internet’s population.

Image: Hannah Minx Facebook page.

Waiting 5 minutes for Firefox to start up is never fun

Keeping your computer running fast is always important, especially for gamers. Let me take you on a speedy walkthrough of my weekly computer cleansing ritual that keeps my PC quick and healthy. I’ll show you some tips and tricks to keeping your computer running optimized without having to pay for any software.

Step 1: Uninstall programs you know you never use
Come on people, this isn’t that hard. Haven’t played WoW in a year and a half? Just uninstall it! You can download it (for free) later! Never use that free audio editing software you tried out 6 months ago? Get rid of it! You can always download it (for free) later! Uninstalling useless shit off your hard drive is definitely one of the best ways to keep your computer running efficiently.

There is no use holding on to old programs you never use and can readily reinstall them again if you suddenly need them again. Don’t forget to delete the install files as well, if you have them.

Step 2: Remove unnecessary system files & restore points
The next thing I do to make sure my computer is running fast is remove any extra data that I don’t need. Freeing up space on your hard drive will ensure your computer will be running super fast. To do this, simply go to the Disk Cleanup tool in your Control Panel. After it’s calculated how much it can clean off your computer, switch to the More Options tab. At the bottom there will be a System Restore Clean Up button, which will remove all but the most recent restore point. Go ahead and run that. After it’s finished, go back to the Disk Cleanup tab and check everything off and hit Okay.

Step Three: Clean out your registry
Your registry is just a huge database that your system, programs, and devices use to store different bits of information. Now that you’ve uninstalled that crap you never use, cleaning up your registry means that unused or corrupted registry data that was left behind gets taken out.

Some might call cleaning your registry unnecessary, I however think you might as well do it. Cleaning up stray DLLs and reg files might not give a great performance boost if you do it regularly, but I’m sure these little problems add up over time. As you install and uninstall programs or devices often they don’t automatically clean themselves up. Check out this great Lifehacker article for more information.

If you do choose to clean out your registry from time to time, make sure to back it up, either by creating a System Restore Point or using a program that will back it up automatically, like CCleaner.

Step Four: Check your startup settings
When you first turn your computer on, your system can sometimes crawl because a large number of programs are starting up at once. You want to minimize the number of programs that autostart.

To check what programs are run automatically at startup run msconfig.exe. Click Start -> Run -> and then type msconfig.exe. Switch to the startup tab and uncheck any unnecessary or suspicious looking executables.

Step Five: Defragging
The last thing I do is make sure my computer is defragged. Over time, data on your harddrive gets added, removed, and moved around. Defragging simply optimizes where the data on your hard drive is located, so that your computer can access it faster. Windows7 has a nice, quick defragger that you can schedule regularly. The built-in defrag tools on Vista and older Window OSes are super slow and I recommend you download a free defragger like Defraggler or Auslogics Disk Defrag.

Make sure your computer virus scanner only runs when you aren’t using it
This may seem like a no-brainer, but some people aren’t aware that this could cause a system slowdown. If you run your virus scanner regularly, don’t set it to run when you know you’ll be on your computer. Set it to 5am Wednesday morning, just make sure you leave your PC on the night before. Having it run can drop your frame rates in-game tremendously, and hog a ton of CPU. There is no need for you to ever be around when it runs.

Every so often check for Spyware and Adware
Sometimes when you browse the internet, regardless of the browser, you may pickup spyware or adware. SpyBot is a great, free program to get rid of these malicious files, although I recommend leaving TeaTimer and SDHelper OFF for optimal performance. You don’t need to run Spybot as often as the other system clean up tools, once every couple of months should be more than enough. Unless you look at a ton of pron.

Install a browser plug-in like NoScript
Speaking of pron, if you regularly visit sketchy sites or do a lot of online shopping or banking, it might be wise to install something like NoScript, which automatically turns off any scripts or flash until you approve them. While this won’t speed up your performance directly, having this installed will prevent any unknown scripts from running in your browser, ensuring that you won’t get hijacked by any malicious netcrap. It take a little while to get used to approving your regular and trusted sites, but after using it for a few weeks you won’t even notice it. An added bonus is it blocks a lot of (but not all) advertisements.

Don’t pay for any computer optimization tools
Because someone out there makes a better one for free. Let me know your favorites programs in the comments below and I can add them.

This concludes my handy Computer Optimization Guide. I try to do the main five steps once every week, and encourage you to do the same. If your computer is still running dismally slow after following these tips, it’s probably time to upgrade your hardware or reinstall a fresh copy of your OS.

Images: Windows 7. Copyright Microsoft.

From there, the would-be wanker is prompted to pay up 1500 yen, supposedly to settle his (or her!) copyright violation and have the incriminating evidence removed.

I have to say, a more brilliant scam has never been schemed. Hold incriminating evidence of an internet user’s lust for subway-groping, tentacle-raping, gender-transforming, school-girl-upskirting anime games, and vast wealth shall be your reward.

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This week’s Interneter is the radically prolific movie reviewer Roger Ebert. You may think of Ebert as a TV personality, but in recent years he has become a juggernaut of internet usage. Sure, Ebert insists that video games are not art, but I have to appreciate what this man does online.

He’s lost his jaw to cancer, his nourishment comes through a tube, and he has surely been wealthy enough to retire for many years, yet the man cranks out copy like no one else. This includes continuously adding to his site, which already boasts over 10 000 movie reviews. He also finds the time to frequently spar with commenters on his blog, and he Tweets with an unheard-of culmination of quality and quantity.

The sheer volume of text the man produces is insurmountable and awe-inspiring. The fact that he is also a writer of true quality is astonishing, and fairly embarrassing to dedicated web-writers like myself.

Roger Ebert, Shufflingdead salutes you for making us look bad.

The Apple website’s iPad section boasts “a magical and revolutionary product,” which most likely refers to Apple’s ability to convince people to buy a device with functionality which entirely overlaps with currently existing products.

That claim is followed up with “at an unbelievable price… starting at $499.” It is rather unbelievable, I can’t believe anyone would pay that much when they could instead get a laptop with a camera and multitasking.

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Carrey and McCarthy took to Twitter a couple days ago to formally announce to the world that their relationship was over. Jim kicked things off by stating:

Jenny and I have just ended our 5yr relationship. I’m grateful 4 the many blessings we’ve shared and I wish her the very best! S’okay! ?;^>

Jenny followed up by reporting “Im so grateful for the years Jim and I had together. I will stay committed to Jane and will always keep Jim as a leading man in my heart.”

I suppose a Twitter breakup is still leagues better than the often marveled-at Facebook breakup.

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Shufflingdead.com contributor and video editor Sulci, hard at work.

For those of us blessed with a computer and the internet at work, there is nothing more satisfying than having a few spare moments to scroll through the day’s important updates on the old RSS feeder. Today’s News stories, Youtube videos and that weekly update from that one webcomic that you would never remember to check otherwise, all ready for your viewing pleasure.

These critical updates maybe not be enough to keep you busy throughout your working day, however. So to keep the day interesting, sometimes we have to fill in the gaps, so to speak, and fill out our feeders with other interesting content.

I have compiled, for your reference and potential time wasting pleasure, a list of some of the feeds that I can’t believe I read everyday. But that I might as well read, because that way, when I check every 5 minutes during my busy day, I’ll at least have something to read.

10. Awkward Boners: Full of pictures of awkward boners. Seriously. Pretty safe work. I imagine that a few of them are staged, but a lot of them are just snapshots that look quite authentic. Classy.
9. There, I Fixed It: Sometimes stupid, sometimes quite innovative… Mind blowing, breathtaking DIY photos of everything and anything. Instructions not included.
8. People Of Wal~Mart: Sometimes this site seems to just be a collection of overweight people shopping at Wal~Mart, but sometimes there are some genuinely weird and awkward moments captured in Wal~Marts all across the United States.
7. Crazy Things Parents Say: Just like the title implies, its a collection of funny quotes that kids post after hearing horrifying things that their parents talk about.
6. Cute Overload: The definitive website for cute animal pictures and videos. This site has been around forever and even has its own line of merchandise. I should know, I own the 365 page calender.
5. Black & WTF: This site is a real gem. On it you’ll find crazy black and white photographs, both new and old. Almost all of them will make you take a second look. Just a warning however, some of the photos are not safe for work. If you have a job like mine, they are safe.
4. Cracked.com: The ultimate time wasting list site. Not only will you manage to waste hours and hours going through these lists, you will also learn things which can help you make small chat with your fellow bored co-workers.
3. Fail Blog: If someone or something has failed and somehow it was recorded on tape or video, you know you can find it here.
2. Know Your MEME: Another hidden jewel of the interwebs, Know Your Meme will educate you in all things meme, ensuring that you will always be in the know and that you will understand why people are laughing when topics like snorting cinnamon on Youtube or “Where the Hell is Matt?” come up.
1. Texts From Last Night and F My Life: TFLN and FML are probably two of the most popular RSS feeds you’ll find in the workplace. The biggest advantage of these feeds is how often new content is added. I’m sure a lot of the stories that get posted are fake, but a lot of them are pretty funny. But seriously, updated all the time, for you 5 minute checkers.

Well folks, that about wraps up the list. There is just one more, highly secret, RSS to mention here: the Shufflingdead feed. That’s where you’ll find daily updates on all the most important stories, not to mention the best writing on the internet.

I would like to thank my charming and internet savvy co-workers for providing most of these links, making my job a much more satisfying place to be.

The Poll of the Day over at GameFAQs for April 4, 2010 asks “Are you male or female?” and the results so far are staggering.

93% of respondents are male, 7% are female. Think about that for a moment, reflect on it. There are thirteen times more men than women visiting GameFAQs.com. But what does that disparity really suggest? Surely, the gaming population overall is not so lopsided, are female gamers simply not in as frequent need of help? Are guys just more likely to actively participate in a website which promotes stupid arguing over the awesomeness of one anthropomorphic hedgehog over another?

Where will this overwhelmingly male population of internet dwellers ever find love?

Image: GameFAQs.com

This week’s Interneter is Sadie, a once minor YouTube celebrity who operated the channel UltraNeko. She has disappeared, or rather, her internet presence has, including her videos, blog, and Twitter account. When she was active on YouTube, I considered her one of my favourites. She’d play games, swear at them, and generally be really hot.

I wrote Sadie an open letter nearly a year ago now, complaining about the mysterious video-producing hiatus she had gone on. It turns out that she never paid any heed to my words, and only came back to close her once mighty YouTube account.

Reading others discuss this issue (all of whom seemed to prefer white text on black backgrounds, much to the detriment of my eyes), it seems Sadie decided to leave the internet for good in order to concentrate on her schoolwork. She was probably never pregnant, despite the rumours, and her now ex-boyfriend probably had a lot to do with the production of her videos. In fact, she probably didn’t like video games all that much. There is a lot of inferring going on here, a fake Twitter account and a deleted blog make fact checking difficult.

I have to take serious issue with what Sadie has done for two reasons. Firstly, building up a large fanbase and then abandoning those people with no explanation demonstrates a lack of appreciation for those fans, which offends me as someone in search of that kind of following. Secondly, that no one can go back and look at her past work demonstrates the strange frailty published material now lives with on the internet. In the past, a person could write a book, and people who ended up buying and enjoying it could theoretically enjoy it almost indefinitely. Now, published work can be readily un-published by its author on a whim. That has to be a serious concern for fans of all digital media, as well as future historians.

Sadie, Shufflingdead salutes you for causing us to reflect deeply on what we’re doing here on the internet.

Greg Rewis proposed to Stephanie Sullivan two years ago via Twitter with this classic line “@stefsull – ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) – WILL YOU MARRY ME?” She accepted the proposal with the reply: “@garazi – OMG – Ummmmm… I guess in front of the whole twitter-verse I’ll say — I’d be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you.” I suppose the pair thought other people on the internet actually cared, and that they would not live in eternal shame for unironically using terms live “Twitter-verse.”

Now, the couple is planning to have their marriage live-Tweeted by various children of previous marriages. The couple had originally planned to Tweet their vows themselves, but a lone voice of reason begged Sullivan “please don’t sit there at your computers and type it in.”

Wedding guests will reportedly be required to do a tequila slammer as they arrive. They’ll need it.

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It seems the site’s servers at its European data centre shut themselves down as a precaution against overheating, and administrators couldn’t successfully transfer the load to servers in Florida.

The downtime only lasted about an hour and 45 minutes, from 2:45 to 4:30 pm ET, but the effects will be felt for years to come, with countless students relying on Wikipedia to perform last-minute research on due papers likely failing. CNN has reported that a poster on Wikipedia’s blog named Jimmy has solemnly reflected: “And so we remember Thursday, March 25, 2010 as the day every English speaking student failed their research papers.”

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Shufflingdead has a long, proud history of taking full advantage of the internet’s networking capabilities to bring people together and better society for it, that’s why I feel justified in the pride I take from the fact that we at Shufflingdead are in the running to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

The internet has made the cut, and is among 237 individuals and organizations in the short list for the award. The internet’s massive contribution to opening up the world with its involvement in events like the recent Iranian protests has propelled it into contention. That’s not to mention all of the stress relief the ‘net provides via its copious amounts of masturbatory fodder.

I was honoured to receive TIME’s Person of the Year back in 2006 when it was awarded to me as an internet content contributor, but that award lacked a cash prize. I can’t wait to get my hands on the $1 000 000 I’m so deserving of. That is, if I get the chance to pick it up, one Wired poster has already suggested “goatse accept on behalf of the rest of the internet.”

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Conan O’Brien’s internet usage came around only after years of failed attempts at starting a career in real-world entertainment. He had brief stints as a writer for The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live before landing a gig as host of an obscure late night talk show called Late Night. O’Brien flirted with real success when he was promoted out of that bleary late-night/early morning vacuum into his dream job as host of the Tonight Show. O’Brien quickly found that position to be ill-suited to his dedication to quality and originality; he was fired soon after accepting the job.

It was only after these many years of struggling with the hardships of the real-world entertainment industry that O’Brien finally found his place, and it happened to be on the internet. On February 24, 2010, O’Brien got a Twitter account, and his career took off with immediate and explosive success. At last, O’Brien had found his place.

Conan’s Twitter is a stunning piece of internet humour done right. He posts with an unobtrusive reliability, and always has something amusing to say. Take, for example, this early message: “This morning I watched Remington Steele while eating Sugar Smacks out of a salad bowl. I was naked.” Now that’s good writing.

O’Brien’s latest spark of creative internet genius was to announce the first person he would follow with his account, Michigan resident Sarah Killen. His wit drove thousands to her humble Twitter account, and she has quickly gone from 3 to 11 000 followers. That’s the power of real internet celebrity.

Conan O’Brien, Shufflingdead salutes you for being one class act.

When a conversation takes place on the world’s largest internet message board, people listen. Combined with fervent nationalism, the results of a little trash talking can lead to all out internet war.

A South Korean group recently launched a massive denial of service attack on Japan’s almighty 2channel, causing an estimated $2.5 million in damages. The attacks came in part as a means of celebrating Korea’s March 1 independence day, but also as a response to criticisms made by the anonymous posters of 2ch regarding Korean Olympic figure skater Kim Yu-Na.

Most of 2ch’s servers are located in the US, and the site’s hosting company is looking into having the attack investigated as cyber terrorism by the FBI. Responses to the attack have ranged from the expected Japanese internet counter-invasion to the establishment of a relief fund for victims of the Chilean earthquake.

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1. No images of women in bikinis
2. No images of men in bikinis
3. No skin
4. No silhouettes
5. No sexual connotations or innuendo.
6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing
7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content

In other words, you can no longer use your iPhone as a portable masturbation assistant, calling into question the already shaky grounds of the device’s usefulness. If you need something to jack off to on your bus ride home from work or school, and don’t have a Jobs-esque design fetish, I guess you’ll have to get a Droid.

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Photoshop 1.0 was release February 18, 1990 for Macintosh exclusively, coded and developed by brothers John and Thomas Knoll. The first Windows version came out in 1992. Since it’s humble release, Photoshop has exploded into an indispensable app, forever changing the world of photography, drawing, and design.

Adobe’s Photoshop is the industry standard with no serious competition in sight. Photoshop is also probably one of the most pirated programs in existence (The full version of CS4 will set you back $699 US). For cheaper or free alternatives, check out other titles like GIMP or Paint.NET

Check out this video interview after the jump, featuring Photoshop co-founder John Knoll, as he takes us on a journey through the lifespan of Photoshop.

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Last week’s Interneter was LisaNova, a YouTube celebrity who parlayed her early start in vlogging into a successful internet career, far surpassing anything I’ve ever done. This week’s Interneter is her buddy and compatriot in being better than me, Philip DeFranco.

Philly D’s path to wealth and stardom kicked off in 2006 with the birth of his first YouTube channel, sxephil. I’ve never understood that name, is he straight edge or something? Well anyway, he quickly started churning out celebrity-gossip and stupid-news rant videos, and has now amassed over 900 000 subscribers. Phil has used the success of that channel to branch out into additional channels, including joining and then leaving that “TheStation” thing all the cool kids on YouTube are or were a part of.

DeFranco’s power knows no bounds, he now brags that his internet income exceeds $250 000 a year, and was voted Wired’s Sexiest Geek of 2008 by his loyal minions. I was a regular viewer of his show for awhile, but got sick of his shtick about the time he snuck in a little “blame the victim” commentary during the Rihanna-Chris Brown fiasco.

Philip DeFranco, Shufflingdead salutes you for filling us with hateful jealousy.

Yesterday, the internet declared war on the government of Australia for its continued efforts to “protect” its citizens from the terrors of small-breasted women and other such nastiness.

If you been following the various Australia stories on Shufflingdead over the last couple weeks, then you know that the Australian government hasn’t been too kind to its own citizens lately when it comes to the internet. The Aussie government has gone to war against, of all things, small breasted women in porn, in addition to a lot of other fun freedoms I had previously taken for granted.

Now, the internet’s version of the Super Friends, Anonymous, is taking arms against this sea of troubles, with “Operation Titstorm.” Wednesday and Thursday have been harsh for the government, with a massive denial of service attack occurring across their websites. This includes parliament’s website receiving 7.5 million hits a second at one point. Anonymous promises to follow up this opening volley with “a shitstorm of porn e-mail, fax spam, black faxes and prank phone calls to government offices.”

Anonymous sent out e-mails to Australian media warning of the impending attack, and stated:

The Australian government will learn that one does not mess with our porn. No one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason.

Congratulations Anonymous! Shufflingdead stands with you in this noble quest for justice.

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Overall, the changes are an incremental improvement, but not especially shocking or revolutionary. Expect your friends to be whining about it non-stop for the next week before they get used to it, just like they have with every other layout change on every website ever.

The changes come with the sixth birthday of Facebook, which has become a ubiquitous social-networking website for everyone worth talking to. Founder Mark Zuckerberg, who created Facebook to meet girls, has bragged that this week also marks Facebook membership crossing the stunning 400 million mark.

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This week’s Interneter is YouTube superstar Lisa “LisaNova” Donovan. She came to prominence in the early days of YouTube when all you had to do was exhibit the smallest modicum of talent to become a giant internet celebrity. Shufflingdead actually began on YouTube about the same time as LisaNova, but lacked effort, talent, and passion. She’s parlayed that lucky start using her incredible promotional talents into a wildly successful career which spans both internet and real life stardom.

The LisaNova channel on YouTube has nearly 400 000 subscribers, and features mildly amusing clips of Lisa parodying celebrities like Sarah Palin and Keira Knightley, and performing skits featuring original characters like “Affirmation Girl.” She also participates in videos on other YouTube channels like TheStation, which increases her visibility and what I imagine to be sprawling personal wealth. The various participants of TheStation channel form a core of YouTube celebrities who like to think they are cool and judge others for their coolness, preventing those who are independent, and thus most cool, from ever achieving success and popularity.

Lisa has garnered such great attention that she even managed a short stint on MADtv but quickly disappeared from the show after four appearances. It’s still more than I’ve managed to achieve in my woeful internet life.

LisaNova, Shufflingdead salutes you for giving us something to be jealous and spiteful of.

In a town hall with his employees, Jobs started an angry rant against Google, unhappy that they were invading his company’s smart phone turf. Ever the showman, Jobs capped off his tirade with “This don’t be evil mantra: ‘It’s bullshit.’” “Don’t be evil” is Google’s informal corporate slogan.

Jobs’ iPad has received a lot of criticism for not supporting Adobe’s Flash, and now he’s let people know why it doesn’t. He feels “they [Adobe] are lazy… they have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it… Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy.” He added that Flash will soon be dead with the rise of HTML5.

Not willing to take things lying down, Adobe has thrown up a collection of what iPads trying to access Flash encrusted sites might look like on their blog. Until Adobe’s blogger got in a bit of trouble for it, this collection included a slice of Bang Bros. The implication, of course: you can’t look at porn on your iPad during meetings, so don’t even bother with the thing.

Steve just revealed Apple’s latest, the iPad. It’s a tablet device that allows you to surf the internet, watch movies, listen to music, and play games. Of course, all of that is made easy with the iPad’s direct access to Apple’s various download channels, like iTunes and the App Store.

The iPad is not dissimilar to Sony’s joke of a multi-use portable, the PSP. While the iPad may ultimately carry enough Apple chic to rise above that embarrassment, one thing is for certain, its gaming capabilities will be ignored by the discriminating tastes of those who recognize Nintendo as the handheld king.

Oh, and the price of this device? Depending on how much storage you want and if you need 3G access, will run you anywhere from $500 to $830.

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Five years ago, the same group thought youngsters had reached the max possible amount of time, but those tricky whippersnappers found a way to squeeze in an extra hour and 17 minutes. The increase is attributed to the transformation of cell phones into mobile media devices.

Felinda Seymore, one teenager who is clearly wasting her life, reported that “The average day for me, if I am not at work, I will text all day or be on MySpace or Facebook… That’s my life.” Apparently, she’s never heard of books! Am I right, elderly readers?

One terrible mother, Becky Kirsh, who restricts her children’s access to technology, said she still believes in the laughable and antiquated idea of “old-fashioned family life.” Parents like her, who limit the amount of fun their children have, reportedly reduce the media-time of their kids by about three hours a day.

Luckily, a group of youth identified as “heavy media users” bring the average back up by consuming more than 16 hours every day (that number includes multi-tasked items separately).

Kids these days with their smart phones and their Twitters, they’re wasting their lives! Why, when I was their age, I only laid on the couch watching TV and playing video games every waking moment that I wasn’t at school!

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The Interneter of the Week is Ulillillia, the man with the greatest handle in the history of the internet. Aside from inventing a screen name which I am forced to pronounce as an ululation, Ulillillia has created a vast internet empire spanning a highly successful YouTube channel, and an obsessively compiled personal website.

I first discovered the work of this master gamer when I was linked to his video “5 secrets of level 2 in Bubsy 3D.” Here, we see Ulillillia demonstrate five secrets he’s found in the course of playing a single level of Bubsy 3D for, get this, nearly 500 hours. And it’s not even a good game! I recommend exploring all of Ulillillia’s videos, they can be highly educational and quite interesting if you’re into, for example, hearing about how to power level in Final Fantasy VII.

Ulillillia’s gaming obsession has not been entirely positive; the addiction gave him a number of childhood fears. For example, the red and yellow “lava” of Metroid gave him a fear ketchup and mustard bottles. The frequently dangerous blue water of early video games also led him to fear, well, blue water.

Despite those examples of Ulillillia’s imagination getting the best of him, it should be remembered that it is that imagination which also brings us treasures like the man’s latest endeavour, a novel entitled The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters. Here, Nick “Ulillillia” Smith tells the tale of the wizard Knuckles and his quest to stop an evil force from capturing the elemental masters.

Ulillillia, Shufflingdead salutes you for making the internet a more fun and obsessively ordered place.

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that a woman was followed around in Sony’s virtual world by a harasser who repeatedly tried to crouch behind her. The incident caused the victim to become so distressed that she, like most PS3 owners, has left the service permanently.

The incident is part of a broader issue cropping up across MMOs and virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life, in which users create (James Cameron’s) avatars and proceed to take things way too seriously. Apparently, no one ever told them that the internet is full of griefers and morons.

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That’s why I’m absolutely distraught to find that Ron Jeremy, the portly, mustachioed legend of adult film, hates technology. Mr. Jeremy took a break from the recent Adult Entertainment Expo to visit the nearby Consumer Electronics Show, where he made several startling claims. The star of over 2 000 films and holder of a master’s degree and two BAs proclaimed:

People can download stuff for free these days, so why the heck are they going to buy it? The only ones making money out of porn are the novelty companies. I just hate the internet in general.

That’s a rather ironic statement, considering Mr. Jeremy starred in the novelty film Super Hornio Brothers back in 1993, but the hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. Jeremy also claimed at the event that video games have “a much bigger negative influence on kids,” implying that games are somehow worse than porn. Again, ironic considering Ronald’s work in Super Hornio Brothers, unless, I suppose, that was intended as a cutting parody intended to reveal how awful video games really are.

[source] and [source]

Obvious answers included piracy and video on demand.

A more interesting answer: the taboo is gone. Every willing and able girl can get a site going with ease, flooding the market. One talent agent complained that he no longer has to look for girls; he turns away two a week. He said, of all the girls who have contacted him, “there has only been one person who was perfect in every way for the porn business and that is Sasha Grey.”

Attendees also pointed out that the real talent in the industry is leaving to get in on legal prostitution. Girls can make good money having vanilla sex with paying customers and avoid the nastier stuff porn producers ask of them.

And the final problem highlighted by interviewees? Online gaming. People play too much World of Warcraft, and it cuts into their wank time.

[source]

Ryan Geddes kicked off this newest round of trolling with his editorial “Why I Bought a PS3.” Here, he announces “Microsoft is many things, but cool isn’t one of them.” And points out, perhaps rightfully so, but much to that chagrin of those poor 360 enchanted morons, “the more I thought about the Final Fantasy XIII announcement, the more I realized that I was angry – at Microsoft for trapping me in a cycle of hardware failure.” He seems less interested in the joy of the PS3 than he does the suck of the 360. The article seems like more of a giant troll for hits than the expression of an honest opinion.

Looking to spread the hate around, IGN then turned against the PlayStation brand, and posted an article entitled “Should Sony Abandon the PSP?” In this piece, Chris Roper contends that the PSP is dragging the PS3 down, and suggest a slow phase-out of the system. Chris would like to see a broad reduction in games production for the system, and says “take the focus off of games and move it to movies and music. Make gaming a feature of the system rather than the main point.” As though that wasn’t what they were attempting to do in the first place, and what contributed to the failure of the system, Chris. Of course, the might of Nintendo and their DS was the largest factor, but that’s beside the point.

Not wanting to make Nintendo fanboys feel left out, the way they usually are by third party developers, IGN has put up a new editorial entitled “Blinded by Mario.” In this article, legendary Nintendo-hater Daemon Hatfield calls the intellectual’s game of the year New Super Mario Bros. Wii “derivative and dull,” “the perfect example of how lazy Nintendo has become,” and proclaims “it doesn’t tap into even the Wii’s modest capabilities in terms of graphics or technical ability, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is way overpriced.” Apparently, Daemon is uninterested in quality of level design or actual fun, or maybe he’s just hoping sites like this one will link to his article making fun of him.

Meet Chris-Chan, the inaugural Interneter of the Week. He’s an established internet celebrity, known for a broad range of depressingly aspie endeavors, including his Sonic-Pikachu crossover character “Sonichu,” his YouTube videos in which he confesses to drinking his own ejaculate, and his many self-produced solo “adult” films.

Christian Weston Chandler is a well known furry artist, producing many erotic works revolving around the Rosechu character of his Sonichu universe (available for viewing after the jump). Despite being 27 and having the sort of time a single, unemployed, parent’s-home-living person has, his quality of drawing is at a level which would be expected of a grade schooler.

CWC has been kind enough to grace the world with intimate insights into his own sexuality. This includes confessing to gargling down his own cum for the sake of preserving his own reproductive potency. He’s also given us numerous erotic films, including him masturbating and violently savaging a blow-up doll.

Chris-Chan, Shufflingdead salutes you for making the internet a more disgusting and depressing place.

]]> http://shufflingdead.com/comics/neckwolf/breast-cancer-awareness.php/feed 0 http://shufflingdead.com/news/youtube-fights-off-4chan-porn-spammers.php http://shufflingdead.com/news/youtube-fights-off-4chan-porn-spammers.php#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:48:55 +0000 Newbs http://shufflingdead.com/?p=4032 Shadowy forces compete every day on the internet, some fight for good, some for evil. There is no doubt that 4chan members, with their unflagging dedication to digging up random shit on the internet and turning it into huge memes is a force for good. Censorship is surely the villainous counter to this effort, a force which now includes YouTube.

You see, 4chan was working to turn Luke Taylor, or Lukeywes1234 on YouTube, into a sensation. Unfortunately, all of the attention got YouTube’s notice, which caused site moderators to ban the eight year old for being under their required age of 13.

January 6, 2010 saw 4chan enact holy retribution upon the nefarious YouTube, pouring countless numbers of seemingly innocuous videos onto the site, stealthily cut with adult content. NPR described this footage as containing “fetishes that couldn’t even be described on NPR without the FCC blowing a gasket”

Check out the awesome power of Lukeyes1234 and what had 4chan so enamored after the jump.

[source]

]]> http://shufflingdead.com/comics/neckwolf/cell-phones.php/feed 0 http://shufflingdead.com/news/teen-finds-mature-love-in-world-of-warcraft.php http://shufflingdead.com/news/teen-finds-mature-love-in-world-of-warcraft.php#comments Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:18:39 +0000 Newbs http://shufflingdead.com/?p=3954 December 30, 2009 was the date in which grade 11 student and Barrie, Ontario resident Andrew Kane escaped from the clutches of his interfering parents and attempted to run away with his soul mate, 42-year-old Lauri Price, whom he had met online playing World of Warcraft. Price had flown all the way from Texas, away from her four children, to meet the young man and pursue their forbidden love.

Despite little Andy Kane being 16, and thus the age of consent, his parents were able to get help from police, who found the couple in a Future Shop thanks to a tip from the public. Price is returning home, without Kane by her side, presumably due to pressure applied by these moralizing, renegade cops and repressive, interfering parents.

Strangely enough, for more than a year, Kane’s parents allowed him to regularly miss school in order to pursue his World of Warcraft addiction. They briefly had him in a counseling program and took away his computer privileges, but allowed him to relapse after a month. I suppose that wasting your life is more tolerable than getting some cougar-tang to some parents.

[source]

Best Movie of the Decade: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

In a decade wrought with unnecessary remakes, sequels to perfectly good trilogies, and movies based on toy brands, the LotR trilogy stood as a beacon of hope for fans of fantasy, epic blockbusters, and literature.

I’ve chosen to honour The Fellowship of the Ring specifically because it can stand for the other two as well, and I consider it the best of the trilogy anyway. Fellowship blew the nerd hive mind in 2001 when we were introduced to this picture perfect representation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s seminal work.

Worst Movie of the Decade: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There were so many awful movies this decade, including two Cheaper by the Dozens, two Twilights, and two Transformers. Ultimately, I’ve chosen RotF not just because it is itself bad (which it is, thoroughly one of the most cringe-worthy films I’ve ever encountered), but because it also represents so much of what was wrong with this decade, both in film and as a whole.

The film is utterly unoriginal: a sequel to a film based on a line of toys. The story isn’t so much told as vomited clumsily onto the screen as a series of absurdities meant to entertain people with a phobia for thinking. The movie offers up explosions, talking robots, humping dogs, racism, awkward drug humour, American flag waving, and Republican talking points in a clusterfuck of stupidity so choked with lazy filmmaking that its success proclaims for the world the brain-death of the film-going audience. Looking back at that list though, I can’t help but feel those things kind of represent the 2000s themselves. That’s why Revenge of the Fallen is the worst film of the decade: it is the decade in all its lowest-common-denominator loving shame.

Best Book of the Decade: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The Harry Potter phenomenon may have begun with a novel published in 1997, but it climaxed in the 00s. Supporting the delirium was a sturdy frame of quality novels featuring well developed characters of both sexes, penned by an author with integrity.

Goblet of Fire was the first Harry Potter book of the decade, and perhaps the most important in the series. Starting with Goblet, Harry Potter books became monstrous tomes. Each massive volume was released to delirious fans who would take them home, devour them within a couple days, and then turn to the internet where they would puke them back out as increasingly erotic fan fiction and art. The whole thing was a genuinely fun time.

Worst Book of the Decade: Twilight

The 2000s featured a strange pairing of massive young adult book series: one which provided readers with respectable heroes called Harry Potter, and one which provided embarrassing, sexist, and archaic role models called Twilight.

Twilight‘s power in our culture is its worst aspect, young women read this shit and love it for some reason, seemingly unaware of the harmful gender expectations which they are absorbing. The novel features a weak female lead, Bella, submitting to her mysterious jerk-off boyfriend, Edward, at every opportunity.

Best Website of the Decade: Shufflingdead.com

Officially born June 17, 2001, Shufflingdead.com has become the go-to website for news, reviews, and humour relating to everything from Technology to Politics. With every careful keystroke, Shufflingdead Editor in Chief Newbs creates not just words, but revelations. When Shufflingdead speaks, the world listens and respectfully bows its head to the awesome power of this electric website.

In the 2000s, Shufflingdead has gone from humble Angelfire shithole to the most powerful media conglomerate in the universe: producing everything from webcomics to videos, all of which ooze undeniable gravitas and provide splendid amusement. Shufflingdead is all things to all people, and it is relentless in its violent conquering of human consciousness.

Worst Website of the Decade: MySpace.com

This was a difficult category. There are millions of terrible websites in the world, but few which anyone has really heard of. Of those which are broadly known, most possess vast amounts of shit produced by huge communities of users.

I’ve selected MySpace because it is a site which everyone has heard of and many have used, its reach is massive, it is supported by one of the giant media conglomerates (News Corp.) and yet it does not function in the least. MySpace is guilty of success despite total failure in its design. A typical MySpace profile contains broken code, obnoxious auto-playing music, animated gifs, and basically everything that was once associated with 90s Geocities sites. In 2009.

Best TV series of the Decade: Battlestar Galactica

Television changed in the 2000s, led by HBO shows like The Sopranos, the good stuff became great by adopting ongoing plotlines and harder-edged drama. The height of this trend came with the 2003-2009 sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica. We were shown interesting characters who were actually affected by the events with which they were involved, and who acted like human beings instead of unflinching robots. Instead of being fed the same formulaic plotline each week, the audience was given a story which progressed, and sometimes a story which took unexpected, dark directions.

Worst TV series of the Decade: American Idol

With the 2000s, television split, the good half became things like Battlestar Galactica, the bad half became the awful half, became the unbearable half. As the decade dawned, a new television program named Survivor began, and with it came the birth of reality TV. Survivor itself was not such a bad show; it was original when it started, it was engaging, and the people on it seemed real enough. As networks began to push more and more reality programming, the quality became lower and lower, once again, the race to the bottom was also the race to the greatest success. Fun shows like The Osbournes led to blatantly scripted un-reality shows like Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

The worst of this cancerous growth on television was, and continues to be, American Idol, because Idol is the powerhouse of reality TV that keeps the whole thing going. The show features lazy character arcs for its annual rotating cast, while its mainstays spout predictable catchphrases. The show is like the Home Improvement of reality television, with the characters behaving in the same manner each episode: Cowell is mean/Tim screws up, Tim talks to Wilson/Jackson says “dawg,” Jill accepts Tim’s apology/Paula is crazy.

Stay tuned for decade-end reviews of the best and worst in Games and Politics!

Ron Livingston has become a hero to millions for his portrayal of Peter Gibbons, the lethargic lead character in Office Space. Now, Livingston is attacking the nerdy core of his following with a lawsuit filed against a Wikipedia editor who altered his entry to read that he is gay. Livingston is also targeting a Facebook prankster, presumed to be the same person, who operated a fake profile of the actor.

Under the Communications Decency Act, Livingston is unable to target Facebook and Wikipedia directly, but can go after the “John Doe” who so hilariously used their services, and may be able to subpoena the sites to reveal the real perpetrator.

Mr. Livingston’s lawsuit claims the prankster responsible to have performed “despicable acts.” Hey Peter, what’s happening? Would it really be so bad if you were gay? This lawsuit is proof that Livingston possesses a discriminatory belief that there is something wrong with being gay. It also makes it quite evident that the actor is incapable of taking a joke, even a very well made one.

A Wikipedia prankster once claimed I was a “World Champion Video Game Player,” and I took it in stride. I wish Livingston could do the same.

[source]

Teens and tweens showed an unsurprising interest in sex, the term coming in fourth for both categories. Kids 7 and under, well, they’re a little more hardcore, searching “porn” fourth most commonly. Overall, “boobs” came in at #32. Hopefully, watchful parents will take note of these results and teach their children better porn-lookup strategies, because those searches probably led to some pretty disappointing masturbation sessions.

[source]

Some results make sense: “Michael Jackson” was the fastest rising, while “Beijing 2008″ was the fastest falling. Okay, I get it, MJ was in the news, the Beijing Olympics stopped being in the news. Some results demonstrate a profound inability for internet users to type a URL, with “Facebook” being the #2 fastest rising, and “Twitter” being #4. Some results demonstrate that I am not a worldly person, with the mysterious “tuenti” being the #3 fastest riser, and “sanalika” being #5. What the hell are those?

I can handle all of that. The following, however, I cannot. #6 fastest rising: “New Moon.” #9 fastest falling: “Wii.” That’s it folks, pack it in, we as a species have obviously given up. I get it; we’re all just going to stop having fun and expose ourselves to horrendous movies instead. Good luck getting werewolf abs without Wii Fit, you bastards.

[source]

Due to this unsurprising hindrance, the study was changed, with the scientists studying the porn viewing habits of men instead. Ultimately, it was discovered non-single men in their 20s look at porn 1.7 times a week for 20 minutes, while the single version view porn for 40 minutes three times a week.

We are legion.

[source]

]]> http://shufflingdead.com/comics/neckwolf/facebook.php/feed 0 http://shufflingdead.com/news/rupert-murdoch-stands-up-to-thieving-search-engines.php http://shufflingdead.com/news/rupert-murdoch-stands-up-to-thieving-search-engines.php#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:59:28 +0000 Newbs http://shufflingdead.com/?p=2594 Mad media mogul, owner of MySpace and Fox News, splendiferous frog-man, and Australian Rupert Murdoch has gone off yet again about those darn internet search engines. Murdoch claimed in a recent interview that search engines steal from News Corp. sites by picking up content from those sites without paying for it. Murdoch rejects the traffic received by search engines and the advertising revenue from those visitors, saying he would prefer fewer, but paying, visitors.

Murdoch, when asked why News Corp. doesn’t simply keep search engines out of its sites, proclaimed “I think we will,” just not until pay models are set up for those sites.

Good work Mr. Murdoch, I look forward to the end of your empire. May you never influence American political discourse again.

[source]

Unfortunately, the show is still airing tonight (November 8th), but with other sponsorship. I like poking fun at Microsoft’s marketing decisions, but they got this one right. Family Guy is a painfully uncreative and schizophrenic show that demonstrates an utter lack of talent from its creator, Seth MacFarlane. Even Microsoft doesn’t deserve that kind of association.

[source]

In Japan, the company has teamed up with Burger King to offer the seven patty Whopper. A megalith of food, the burger introduces Windows 7 to the glutton. The campaign takes aim at the type of person who probably already uses a computer, but who may also need an association with food to be attracted to a completely unrelated product.

In the United States, Microsoft has unleashed the Windows 7 Party, offering potential buyers a party in a box, complete with streamers, napkins, and a copy of the OS signed by Steve Ballmer himself. Partiers must supply their own cheese.

[source]

On Monday, October 26, 2009 Yahoo! GeoCities will be deleted. The whole damn thing. Think about that for a moment; all of those animated gifs, irritating midis, webrings, broken links, guestbooks, and goth poems will be lost forever.

For me, the end of Geocities is another reminder of the decay of the fansite. For most, when they think of GeoCities, they think of all those stupid things I just listed, but GeoCities was once the home of the obsessive, Asperger-syndrome-inspired fansite too. With this mass-deletion, the internet loses those simple, cleanly laid out fansites filled with all of the Zelda info you could ever want. It’s something Wikipedia refuses to provide, and smaller wikis have yet to fully replace.

[source]

Have a good look at the image above, those strippers are pretty hot. I think the occasional lap dance could really boost moral and therefore productivity in a lot of work places. Yahoo! shouldn’t have apologized for the event; they really ought to have embraced this as a revolutionary new way of improving employee satisfaction.

[source]

In addition to gaming news and opinion, time is taken to cover Edmonton’s local nerd/gaming community. This includes Edmonton’s world famous BioWare studio in Episode 39, and the less known, but utterly mind-blowing, Pure Speculation festival, as in Episode 38.

Visit their site and check it all out at usercreatedcontent.ca.

Truly, we have entered a strange era of internet consumption. That is to say, “wow, normal people really do use the internet now, don’t they?” I remember when I first began uploading videos to YouTube myself, thinking that this silly little video hosting site would be shut down in a matter of months, and that I’d have to go back to hosting videos myself.

At a rate of approximately 100 views per day, Shufflingdead’s videos receive about 0.00001% of that billion. Not bad, but I’m aiming for 1%.

Users who submitted stories where rewarded by having their name in a larger font and a friending icon put beside their story submission.

Good fucking Christ. Try: “Users who submitted stories were rewarded by having their names in a larger font and a friending icon put beside their story submissions.

Allow me to add an eleventh piece of advice to Kevin’s ten: Slam some writing together about an internet celebrity, spread link around, get hits.

Let’s analyze what’s going on in this image. This is yet another one of those stupid “motivational poster” Photoshops that the internet seems to have become cluttered with, and the use of that particular meme tells us that its creator regards his or her message as a sort of truism. Sluts apparently stand out in a crowd. She’s wearing some bright shoes and showing some leg, she must really love the sex, right? Let’s demean her and covet her at the same time! By the way, she’s asking for it, right?

This image is an example of that particular method sexists have of controlling female sexuality simply by jumping up and down, screaming, and pointing at it.

The image’s success on Digg, which included plenty of comments along the lines of user LeviTheSmith’s “This picture FTW I’d bone the girl in it,” serves to demonstrate the conflict that exists within social discourse regarding female sexuality. People love hot women, they want them to be promiscuous, but they feel the need to insult them while desiring them. This may indicate an attempt to maintain control by trying to subvert the power of women’s sexuality by harshly criticizing its open display.

[source]

This week’s pro-con list is my “Should I Try Another Sketchy Video Converter?” Pro-Con List, which I asked myself about fifty times today while trying to convert .m2ts files into something useful like .mov.

Pros:

• If it works, I’ll be able to update.
• If I update, I will rapidly develop a career as an internet celebrity.

Cons:

• Spyware is inevitable.
• A virus is inevitable.
• It’s not going to work, it’ll just waste more of my time.

This week’s pro-con list is my “Should I Listen to this Podcast?” Pro-Con List, which I consider before starting the next podcast on my iPod, and then going ahead and listening to it anyway.

Pros:

• I won’t have anything to occupy my mind with otherwise.
• This one might be intelligent.

Cons:

• Is there a level of humour less mature than sophomoric? Because I’m pretty sure this will feature it.
• There is a high chance that they will wander off topic and talk about absolutely nothing for 20 minutes.
• Even the small chance that this will be a “live” show makes its value questionable.

I’ve written before about creating a successful website, but this is 2009, and things have changes. GeoCities will soon be closed, the first result of seemingly every search is to a Wikipedia article, and people actually make money uploading their content to other people’s websites. This is the era of getting big on big sites, and using that fame to trick people into visiting your website.

Step 1: Get Internet-Famous

You might have assumed that the first step would be to actually build your website, but that comes second. The first step in creating a successful website is to become popular somewhere else on the internet. If you are already a real-life celebrity, you may move immediately to Step 2.

Becoming one of the most subscribed people on YouTube would be an incredible way to do this. If you don’t have a camera or you’re not hot or horrifying enough to develop a following, you can try for text-based celebrity. Pick a large internet forum, post with absurd regularity and see if you can’t become infamous by being annoying enough to get noticed, without being offensive enough to get banned. Alternatively, become a highly friend-ed member of a link sharing site like Digg.

Step 2: Build Your Website

Once you’re internet-famous, you can build a website. You need to establish a destination dedicated to you, so that all of your new fans may gawk at you and educate themselves on all that there is of you. Make sure that the site you build is equipped to eventually handle the content you put on that site. After getting a domain and web hosting, you need to install a content management system (nobody makes his or her own anymore, by the way). Go with WordPress, it does everything for you.

PhillyD: YouTube’s favourite son.

Step 3: Get Accounts at a Bunch of Social Networking Sites

Step 1 required you to become popular on one social networking site or online community. Now that you’ve built a website, you need to join several more such sites in order to give your fan base additional material. No one cares about your Twitter posts unless you’re famous, there was no point in joining up at Step 1, but now that you’re famous, people will love to hear about the meaningless things you do each and every day.

Step 4: Promote Your Website

Step 4 cannot possibly be performed unless you are a real-life celebrity or have first accomplishing Step 1. It’s impossible to promote a site unless you have a large pool of obsessed fans already paying attention. Don’t worry if you have little-to-nothing on this new site of yours. To begin with, all you really need are a few pictures of yourself, and links to your accounts at the social networking sites you’ve just joined. To promote your site, simply start telling your fans about it, and how amazing it might eventually be. They’ll be amused long enough for you to enter Step 5.

Social networking is vital.

Step 5: Create Content for Your Website

The most important trick in making a successful website these days is to never, ever, make content for the site. Instead, you can do one of two things: either make content for other sites that then gets aggregated on your site (like with YouTube videos) or make content that is hosted on your site, but that only exists to facilitate alluring hooks on other sites (like Digg).

As I’ve mentioned, it can be tough to become popular on YouTube, and so you may once again need to resort to this second, text based method of attracting readers. This type of content should only consist of innocuous lists of pop culture items like “top 7 Star Wars movies,” or “top 6 pictures of Gaius Baltar.” In order to maximize hit count and therefore ad revenue, make sure to space out your writing with lots of images, and separate each list entry onto a separate page.

Well there you have it, five easy steps to self employment. I wish the best of luck in your endeavour.

This week’s pro-con list is my “Should I Twitter this?” Pro-Con List, which I consider every day when I force myself to make my daily Twitter post.

Pros:

• I will be relieved of the pressure of not having said anything today.
• My fame as a Twitter legend awaits.
• One day, this thought will be vital information for the person writing my biography (since my fame is imminent).

Cons:

• This is stupid.

I know what you’re doing. Even if I haven’t actually talked to you in a decade, I know the details of your life, because you let me know on Facebook. I see you, in your relationships, going on your trips, having, unbelievably, your weddings, and even reproducing.

Once, long ago, people relied on gossip as the means of discovering the life events of people they didn’t know very closely. The thing about gossip, though, is that it’s almost certainly only worth sharing when it’s negative, or at the very least, naughty. With Facebook, I’m forced to hear about all of the positive developments in people’s lives, the stuff they actually want to share, and it’s starting to depress me.

Until recently, Facebook was like a hyper-gossip, and actually quite useful. I would log in, creep on some of the attractive ladies, and feel comfort in the fact that soon enough I would see their relationship status switch to single. Now, with the onset of adulthood, I find that I’m increasingly being confronted with much more horrifying, much more positive life changes, the kind that make it increasingly obvious that I’m losing.

It’s time to consider just what the fuck it is that you people are doing before you get a little too far ahead of me. Your information was useful when it had the potential to help me get laid. Seeing people have children, seriously, read that word again, children, is not only something that doesn’t help me get laid, and is not even just something that makes me less likely to get laid, it’s actually something that makes me not want to get laid. Children. You’re reproducing. What in the ever loving fuck are you doing?

Alright, look, I can live with you having kids if I have to. Since you’re bragging about it, I assume it’s something you actually want to be doing, and as such I can be made moderately jealous of, but it’s sure as fuck not what I want to be doing. Marriage too, might be nice, but I’m in no hurry. The things that really bother me are the trips, the cars, the houses, the hot girlfriends, and the general happiness which your photos, status updates, and mass-mailed messages convey. It’s all making me look bad, and it’s all making me feel bad.

All of this signals the utter meaninglessness, time wasting nature of my life. If you wouldn’t mind being just a little more considerate, try balancing all of the positive news with equal portions of bad. Bought a house? Great, now post your utility bills. Went on a trip? Now write a note explaining in detail the gruesome food poisoning you experienced, and throw in a mention of the turbulence you encountered on the flight back.

If your life really is the pristine magnificence you have so far represented it as, and you’re considering bragging about it yet again, take a moment to reflect on how much better you are than me already, and spare me the embarrassment of being faced with that fact yet again.

In the modern era of webmastery, you can’t just sit by and hope search engines like you, you have to reach out to your audience (otherwise known as whore yourself) and get them to give you a hand.

Right now, the Shufflingdead.com fan page on Facebook has a mere 17 members, and that’s only 17% of the 100 needed for the page to get a custom URL. Otherwise, we’re stuck with an ugly, crazy URL, and that’s not good for anybody.

So please, check out the Shufflingdead.com Facebook page, and become a fan today!

By the way, welcome to Facebook week!

Part 2: We probably won’t care if you break one of these rules:
1. Don’t image leech. Really, I don’t care that much, especially if it’s from a bigger site, but hosting your own images is a good way to ensure that they don’t get deleted or changed, as well as ensuring I don’t get harassed by anyone about it.
2. Don’t break the tables. If you post a really long line of text or a large image, it can extend your post beyond the width of the other posts in a thread, and it’s really irritating. If you do this, we’ll probably edit your post to fix it.

Part 2: Post in the right place:
1. Before starting a new thread, consider where it should go. A detailed description of each forum can be found below, under heading III, but each forum is pretty self explanatory, please try to start new threads where you think they should go. If you’re not sure, either ask an admin, or post it in General Discussion, and we’ll move it to where it should go.
2. Before making a new post, consider if it belongs in the thread you’re posting in, or if it deserves a new thread. Threads can easily become derailed when people don’t stay on topic. If something in one thread makes you think of something that’s not directly related, consider starting a new thread for it.

Part 2: Using the quote button
One issue that people seem to frequently have when posting on the forums is not knowing how to quote other posters.

Find the post you want to quote:

Click on the quote button directly above the post and you get this:

Type your response underneath and hit submit:

Part 3: Using the “Mark forums read” feature
Many users have wished for this feature, and as it turns out, it’s just hidden. Here it is:

I started out on the internet a little later than a lot of nerds. I never had dial-up, never experiences BBSes, and I never did much with chat rooms. Still, it was 2001 when I got the internet, and that feels like a long time ago now. Back then, we had something called ICQ, I used it to waste time with my friends and harass the girls I went to high school with. My early experiences with the internet very much sprang from ICQ, it was where a friend told me you could get free hosting for your own website at a place called Angelfire, and it was over ICQ that many of the interactions which I discussed and parodied on that Angelfire site (which eventually became this site) came from.

After a couple of years of dealing with that particular piece of bloated software though, something happened. A girl I knew declared that she was switching to MSN Messenger, and desperate as I was, I had no choice but to join her there. I don’t know exactly how it started, but a trickle becomes a flood, and in time, everyone I knew who once used ICQ had switched to MSN. Sometimes, I wonder if it was that one girl who caused the entire switch. There was a strange divide too, Canadians had gone to MSN, and Americans had gone to AIM, nevertheless, we had all switched.

MSN was so much better, in so many ways, than ICQ, but it lacked one feature that I missed for a long, long time: the random messaging. On ICQ, you could search for people using just their name and location, it was easy finding acquaintances and local strangers. You could find the hot girl in your class, and occasionally, a random girl might contact you, and you could try tricking her into thinking you weren’t a mal-adjusted high school dweeb. I used MSN just as much as I had used ICQ, but the excitement I had about instant messaging faded and died with the switch. The novelty of talking to my friends without having to look at them stopped feeling like an adventure, and started feeling like an exercise in time wasting. But I’m a chronic time waster, so I kept it up.

Early on in my university career, new ways of using the internet continued to emerge. Rather than the concentrated, direct methods of communication that dwelled in email and instant messaging, ever more diffuse methods rose up from the aether. Social networking sites appeared, and they allowed people to do that thing I had missed so much about ICQ, that ability to try to pick-up near-strangers over the internet. I don’t remember why I joined MySpace, but like with most things in my life, it was probably for the chicks. I never really got into MySpace (most of my friends just never bothered with it), but I do remember trying to pick up the odd girl, and even got a date out of it.

Around the same time as MySpace, another trend came to be. Everyone I knew already had cell phones, but for whatever reason, they started using them to text each other. What at first was a novelty, became a trend, and the trend became a near-requirement for communication. With the rise of texting, came the downfall of IM; why sit at your computer and text for free, when you can text from your couch for money? Then, as with now, I remained too cheap to get a cell phone, and I just didn’t care. I was texting in 2001, it was called ICQ, and it never cramped my hands. The novelty of engaging in meaningless drivel-talk with people without gazing into their twisted faces or hearing their cracked voices had left a long time ago. I found fewer people were using MSN, and because of that, I was using it less.

Not long after the emergence of MySpace, another social networking site appeared from obscurity, and it was called Facebook. I remember why I joined Facebook, a girl told me to. Early on, it was just a few people on there that I knew, and I largely ignored it (logging on infrequently to check my messages). After a few months, that pattern appeared again, the few number of people I knew on Facebook became several, became many, became all. Facebook’s power is in its ubiquity. Now I can stay in loose contact with nearly everyone I know, and easily stalk the ones I don’t. There were only a few of the girls from high school on ICQ, but Facebook has all of the girls from university.

Months ago, I realized I had come to only ever use MSN (it was renamed Microsoft Live Messenger some time ago, I never stopped calling it MSN) to have drunk talks with one young woman, but I didn’t think much of my decline in usage. Then I started trying to pick up yet another woman, and my usage surged, but as the hope of that pursuit faded, I began to realize something: I hate instant messaging. It’s like talking to people without really talking to them, it’s communicating without any emotional connection. I’d argue that even emails and Facebook messages have more of an emotional presence, perhaps through the added time and effort people put into writing them, I don’t know. Even at the end, the ability to talk to women was what had kept me using instant messaging, but with a growing distaste for the sheer waste of time that it was, even their power waned. It was fun when it was new, and it was important when all my friends used it, but by the end, just a few weeks ago, it ceased to be anything but a time sink. I uninstalled MSN.

The internet has always been a butcher shop for the English language, but it seems to be getting worse. The problem is that while misspellings, misuse, bad grammar, and intentional, ironic bad grammar, were once relegated to sites I stayed away from, it’s now seeping into the sites I actually visit.

YouTube is massively popular, everyone seems to use it, it’s inescapable and I can’t help visiting it as much as everybody else. Comments are minimally moderated though, and this means that where I used to have only a small intake of “lol” and “!!!,” in my daily life, I now have an overwhelming dose.

The stupidity seems to be leaking; it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to read my favourite forums without becoming annoyed into distraction by obnoxious catchphrases. I’m not sure if there are any more catchphrases than there used to be, just that the latest generation is a lot more grating.

Where previously, catchphrases were several words long, internet memes seem to have become shorter over the years, so that now single words are the catchphrases. The internet has ruined for me the words “win,” “fail,” and “epic.” These three simple, common, useful words now make me shudder when I hear or read them.

That new movie is not “win,” nor is it “made of win,” and it is especially not “made of win and awesome.” Your anti-Scientology protest might have been great, even incredible, but was it actually “epic”? That new game may not be very good, but it is not “fail,” or even “epic fail.” The first time these words were ever used in this fashion might have been entertaining, but now I wonder if anyone using them even realizes that they’re doing so improperly.

It’s not just the grammar and overuse that are problems, but that the people using the words seem to think in binary, where movies, video games, and just about anything else can be described as being only the greatest or the worst thing “evar.” Nothing is decent or okay.

Almost as grating are the cat image macros, or “lolcats,” which are pictures of animals, usually cats, doing something “cute,” with some kind of text scrawled across the image. This text either conveys what the animal is supposedly thinking, or describing its action, both in saccharin-sweet baby talk.

If I wanted to roll my eyes at the way people talk to their pets, I’d leave my house, not spend all night in front of my computer. The internet is a cold, dangerous place, and posting images used to be for the purpose of disgusting fellow message board readers. Bring back gaping anuses; I’m sick of seeing your cat.

The only positive in the latest generation of internet trends is surely Rick Astley. Mr. Astley, and his 1980s masterwork “Never Gonna Give You Up,” have been endeared to me thanks to the “rickroll” phenomenon. I’ve never actually been “rickroll’d,” which means to trick someone into seeing the “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video (for those of you who don’t know, and if that’s you, what’s wrong with you?), but I sure have rocked out to that song many times (including right now, as I write this). My contribution to the 5 million+ views of the YouTube video have been voluntary and without remorse.

I think what separates “Never Gonna Give You Up” from win/fail/epic, and cat macros is that Astley’s use of the English language is not an attempt to revert to grammatically broken baby-talk. Where once, in an internet long ago, “all your base are belong to us” made fun of bad English, now the trend in catchphrases is to embrace it.

This site has an odd way of being fucked by its hosts, our dealings with Angelfire, for example, have passed into legend. Still, the means by which we have been fucked, and the degree to which we have been fucked by our last host, Page-Zone.com, are astonishing. I have asked my old host-reviewing friends back to help me out with this article. Enya, Jewel, and Maren Ord will be reading some comments made by other Page-Zone users, with their own expletives added in for clarification.

Page-Zone’s business habits are a fascinating mix of “mom and pop” small time web hosting and complete and utter disregard for their customers. Many of my support tickets, especially those threatening to leave their company unless my website was restored, were never answered. My one attempt at physically calling their office line ended when I reached an answering machine with a recording completely devoid of anything indicating a business line. Warnings and explanations for technical problems seem only to occur when the issues are small and quickly handled. Servers going and staying down for days are addressed only long after they are dealt with. At one point, Page-Zone’s front page, along with all customer support was barely functional for several days before it all went down and stayed down for several additional days.

brywool says: “What’s with [those motherfuckers in] SUPPORT???? This [cock of a] problem still has not been solved or even acknowledged other than here in this forum and then NOTHING.

I would like, for a moment, to speculate how it is that Page-Zone managed to keep Shufflingdead down so frequently.

1) Jim, the operator of the business, is not actually a human male, but instead a rudimentary artificial intelligence based on “tech support” stereotypes. His anger at us mere mortals is unimaginable, for we are the vaguely computer literate, whereas he is the semi computer literate. Jim’s program limitations prevent him from responding with any emotion or politeness, and if you complain about his business’ services in a private message through his message board, your forums account there will likely disappear mysteriously.

2) The tech support staff are AI spawned from Jim’s AI, who resemble him in their demeanor precisely, and who will always ignore your threats to take your business elsewhere.

3) Page-Zone doesn’t host websites on servers as they are classically understood, but rather by continuously shining flashlights through fiber optic cables which occasionally transmit data vaguely resembling hypertext markup language.

4) Page-Zone does actually host websites on regular servers, but rather than leaving them connected, prefers to disconnect them and play with their parts on a nightly basis to “see how they work.”

5) Page-Zone staff is invited to bring their spouses to work so that they may engage in animalistic orgies, resulting in trampled servers covered in bodily fluids. This environment of total unprofessionalism permeates every moment of office life at Page-Zone, and work is only done once all staff is adequately fellated and drunk.

dwhuff says: “I have [goddamn, motherfucking, shit eating, cock biting, anal stretching, cum swapping, zombie raping, rectal probing, ocular penetrating, nasal copulating, glamour boxing, paraphilic infantilizing, fur suit wearing, robot fetishizing, inflatophilia popping, foreskin tearing, golden showering, Gorean role playing, lactating, donkey punching, labia minora dangling] hosting problems, my websites are down, and Page Zone is the problem and they are not fixing it.”

Whatever the actually reason for Page-Zone’s incompetence, one thing is clear. Their total disregard for their customers indicates that they are more interested in infuriating the denizens of the internet than actually serving them, and the earning of money is of no consequence to their free-wheeling hosting cartel. I give Page-Zone Web Hosting one skull out of five.

Part 1: Entertainment, Arts and Media

Pandora

First Impression: Excellent, the site hasn’t changed it’s layout, which is to say I can actually navigate it. Not only that, but they seem to have forgotten that I used up my free time (or, more likely, I have a different IP address now) and I can listen to music for free again.

In Conclusion: This site is actually worthwhile, so far so good Time.

The 9

First Impression: Uhh, apparently this is like some kind of streaming tv show. Oh boy, she’s talking about Snakes on a Plane.

In Conclusion: This is apparently an internet-tv show created by Yahoo, and I basically have no interest in it. I noticed one of the stories covered on the site was the rising fame of YouTube video blogger geriatric1927, more on him later.

Drawn!

First Impression: Took a long fucking time to load, could just be the stress of being on Time’s list.

In Conclusion: This site actually looks pretty good. It’s really a news site for artists and fans of art. I should note that it is not a goddamn blog though. Just because it’s updated in a similar fashion as a blog and calls itself a blog does not mean it’s a blog. Note to self: stop using the word blog.

Sundance Splinks

First Impression: Typical corporate flash based website. I’m still trying to determine where the content is.

In Conclusion: I was right, this is nothing but a bunch of links compiled on what should have been a simple html based website, but wasn’t because it was designed by a “professional.”

Photo Muse

First Impression: Slow to load a plain splash page. I hate splash pages.

In Conclusion: This site is difficult as hell to navigate. Why these art sites always insist on splash pages between every piece of useful content is beyond my comprehension. It’s a good concept with terrible execution.

Jumpcut

First Impression: This looks like a corporate ripoff of YouTube.

In Conclusion: I’m not nearly the dedicated journalist I would need to be to actually try this site’s editing services. What I can tell you is that it looks like a YouTube ripoff, and that the highlight is watching the original trailer for “Revenge of the Nerds.”

Wolfgang’s Vault

First Impression: They’re playing Neil Diamond.

In Conclusion: I have an idea, check out the hundreds of streaming internet radio stations made available through Winamp and never go to this site.

Podcast Pickle

First Impression: Slow to load, green, filled with poorly stretched images.

In Conclusion: I don’t have time to listen to this shit. Dear internet, get a life.

YouTube

First Impression: I’m still logged in from when I visited the site immediately before writing this.

In Conclusion: Fuck you YouTube, seriously, fuck you. You take up all my time with the most useless content. I don’t know why I need to watch all of FilthyWhore’s and Emmalina’s video blogs, I just do. Speaking of which, Emmalina’s videos seem to have disappeared, how will I survive without her wonderful waggling ass? And, oh look, geriatric1927′s videos are still some of the most viewed. Well guess what, I was viewing his videos when he still only had a few hundred hits, I am a ground floor witness to the rise of another internet celebrity.

At which point I have to download an illegal crack in order to play my legal game, with the legal CD in the drive.

There are a number of class action lawsuits going on against various companies that use copyright protection software that then voids the players abilities to play the game legally. I’m hoping that they’re all successful so that the copy protection racket can finally tumble like a house of cards.

There has to be a better damned solution.

Drew Curtis’ FARK.com
Fark is unique in that it’s community and content are intricately connected. The way the site works is so-called “Farkers” wander the internet and whenever they find an entertaining or newsworthy link they send it to Drew Curtis. Drew Curtis then randomly selects a few of these links and posts them on his site throughout the day. Other “Farkers” are then able to discuss the link. The people of Fark do a lot of Photoshopping, a lot of bad Photoshopping. Bad as in “I will copy and paste this picture of Admiral Ackbar onto a picture of a trap door. I will then add a speech balloon and have Ackbar saying “It’s a trap!”" Holy shit, I bet you didn’t see that one coming! From what I can tell Drew Curtis thinks “Duke sucks” whoever the fuck Duke is, and is convinced that France surrenders approximately ninety-thousand times a day.

Fark is at least useful at times, despite its community of agonizing mind blowing death. I give it a two.

This is what the internet would look like if it was real life.

Something Awful
The main page of Something Awful is dull as hell. Occasionally a single article will rise up and pass into legend though. If a man can bare to wade through the years of reviews of movies he’s never heard of, games he’s never heard of and music he’s never heard of he will find wonderful bright-spots of pure comedy. Or as they say at Something Awful, “comedy gold.” The Something Awful forums are the last bastion of sanity on earth. They protect within their hallowed halls every human being with internet access capable of human interaction. These days these forums cost ten dollars to join. No matter what your friends tell you it’s not worth the cost. I don’t care what they say, I don’t care what I say. Unless you were right there on the ground floor and got in for free like all us cool kids, then you’re not allowed in the fort!

What others are saying: Anyone belonging to Fark’s community will instantly remark “Something Awful sure is something awful” the instant SA is brought up.

I give Something Awful a three.

retroCRUSH/X-Entertainment
I have no idea if these sites are popular, or even if they have communities of any sort. They seemed to be linked to by quite a few sites so I can only assume that they’re at least somewhat liked. I looked at each long enough to realize that they are the same site and then left. They both appear to be dedicated to mocking that wacky decade the 80′s. “Guaranteed funny stuff 100% LOL factor approved” I am sure.

There’s two of them, so combined they earn a two.

Newgrounds.com
Since my introduction to the internet I have occasionally been duped into visiting Newgrounds. Every time this happens I end up spending my entire day watching shitty flash toons there. This is why I refuse to link to the site for you now. Newgrounds is like television, there’s a fuck load of ads, there’s no decent content and it’s just so easy to waste away in front of it. I dared look at this site today long enough to find a link to some kind of forum. The list of topics frightened me so greatly that I left without checking any of them. There appeared to be a hell of a lot of them though.

Newgrounds irritates me beyond all compare, I give it a one.

Stile Project
I refuse to link to Stile Project. This is because every site on the whole of the internet that has ever linked to this site has been sucked in by Stile’s swirling vortex of money. Before you know it I’d have a link to Stile in between every goddamn word just so he’d link back here. Then I’d rip off my clothes hoping desperately he’d pay me to start posing for his cam portal. Then I’d implement pop-up ads for Stile all over this site all for cold hard cash. Eventually I might become worthy of climbing under Stile’s infinitely huge desk with all the other webmasters where I could eternally suck his massive cock. I have no idea what Stile’s community is like. I guarantee you it’s huge though, and probably involves a lot of scat porn and anal stretching.

I hate Stile, I hate his project. I give Stile Project a zero.

There is one thing to watch out for while joining one of these sites. No matter how much their owners pretend that they’re just running little sites and are barely getting by, they are fucking loaded. Don’t fall for any of the “well I might as well give these guys money as I am using their bandwidth” insanity that seems to consume so many of the denizens of these places. In any case, I wish you all the best in allowing your soul to be consumed by the internet.

Lisa Loeb. Try to look like this, but with more cleavage.

Every popular blog starts out with one thing; the most atrociously confusing layout any human can devise. I suggest having your website open with a splash page, one which is entirely black, with a single pixel being a link to a secondary splash page. On this secondary splash page you should create a great mosaic of artsy black and white pictures of your face, one of which is actually a link to your third splash page. On this page you should give some kind of warning regarding the adult content one in ten-thousand people might accidentally encounter while attempting to navigate your site, make sure to make the warning a little sassy sounding too. Something like “Hey fuckers this is BigTittiesGamerGurrrrlz.com, we have lots of OFFENSIVE content and lots of PORN and NUDITY and TITS. If you’re not EXTREME enough for that, fuck off!!” If you feel like it, include a link to a page on your site which actually contains some content along with this warning, it’s really not that important though.

As far as actual content goes, your site needs just a few things:
1. A cam portal where you and all your camwhore friends can show off cleavage. You don’t need to be female to have a popular blog, but if you’re a guy try to squish up some man-cleavage and always refer to yourself as female.
2. A little box containing your LiveJournal.
3. A massive list of links to every single website you’ve ever visited. Title this list of links as something like “Cool shit” “Daily reads” or “My Hommie Gurrrlz.”

Your fan boys will buy you this movie a thousand times over.

It is at this point that you should put off updating your website for about half a year. Leaving a blank LiveJournal just makes people more eager to return to your site and check if it’s finally been updated. Your cam picture can stay the same as well, it doesn’t matter to guys if it’s ever changed, in their heads it’s a live feed of you rolling around stroking your breasts and fingering yourself. The women of the internet, all of which are bi-curious, by the way, will still remark “Wow! She’s cute!” every time they see your picture.

Now that your website is built, it’s time to start getting people to visit. First, find every single cam portal you can possibly track down. The closer they resemble a police line-up of underage prostitutes, the better. Join absolutely every one of them. Then sign up for every forum you can possibly track down and join those as well. Make sure to make your avatar on these forums a picture of you biting your lip, and your signature a massive picture of your cleavage which links to your site. Make fourty posts a day on each of these forums. Don’t worry at all about what’s actually being discussed, just pop-up and remind everybody of what a sassy girl you are.

Instantly traffic will pour into your site. There will be people hounding you constantly to flash them on your web cam. After about half a year you will have amassed an unbelievable following of rabid fanboys as well as quite a few female stalkers all “just diiiiiiiieing” to join your cam portal. Give the people just a taste of what they want. Try showing just a little more cleavage on your web cam, detail the events of your latest “lady cycle” on your LiveJournal and add a couple of your hottest stalkers to your cam portal.

Keep this going until you get sick of having to pay for bandwidth. Then complain on your LiveJournal about your site draining you of much needed Lisa Loeb glasses money and make available a way of people to send you money. Throw up an amazon.com wishlist containing every nerdy, sub-culture and cult movie related object you could ever want as well. Your fan base will suddenly throw at you every tiny piece of cash they can scrape together and will instantly buy everything for you on your wishlist. Throw a few “*huggles* <3<3<3" to the crowd in thanks and prepare to milk them for all they're worth for as long as you stay young, hot, and sassy.

Greetings Tiffany! Let’s get right into this. What do you think of top hats and the men who wear them? Would it help if the guy who wins this auction wore a top hat to the date?

Um I think top hats are ugly & guys who wear them are way to retro for me. I that guy that one this auction wore a top hat, i’d be like what the hell are you wearing & laugh unless he was serious

What made you think of auctioning off a date with yourself as a way to raise much needed funds?

well my friend orignally put it on as a joke but I was liek whatever it’ll be an adventure, something to tell my kids when i get old & ugly

You’ve said that this date is not for sexual purposes. Now let’s say a dashing young man wins this little bid war and it all goes swimmingly well. Is it conceivable that things could turn sexual?

Artists rendition of the girl being interviewed. The real picture has been lost to the sands of time.

hmmm maybe, i would just go fuck anyone, i’b have to like this person alot for anything to happen

I just got back from seeing Return of the King yet again and it gets better every time! What do you think of Lord of the Rings?

I love lord of the rings I’ve seent he first 2 & i still have to go see the 3rd one. I love the fantasy adventure movies

Would you ever be interested in making a movie yourself?

hahah who says i haven’t

I think it’s kind of racist to call your home town Red Deer. I feel for all the deer of other colours. Your comments on this important issue?

Don’t be dumb its a name & names are meaningless

How do you expect your upcoming eBay purchased date will go?

I’m hoping it will go well but knowing my luck it’ll probably suck ass

Plan on pulling any surprises during the event?

hahah maybe

I most graciously thank you for your time Ms. Tiffany, may all your nickels be made of nickel and your eBay dates wonderful.

Shortly after this interview was conducted, the eBay auction being discussed was taken down. I guess the people at eBay are against Shufflingdead corespondent DMUSER ever getting laid, and felt the need to deprive him of this glorious opportunity for a date.

2day i wuz on the comp in my room and i wuz lik “hey.. theres porn on tha intarnet isnt there?!?!” so i went to yahoo.com and searched for tits cuz i wuz pretty sure that wuld find porn and sure enuff there was like millions of sites and i started goin to allll of em. man tits r grrreeaaat!! the chicks r so slutty on tha interbnet. some of tha sites suck cuz they gots lots of nasty stuf on them and those retarded pop up ads that r soo gay. newayz b4 i new it i had a huge fuckin boner. so of course i whipped it out and started goin at it rite their in front of the comp im really goin at it cuz man those chicks r hot. i espehully like it when there like suckin on sum guyz cock or getin fucked by some guy cuz then you getta see some cock to an thas kewl. im not gay or nething cuz thats gross but everythin iz always better when theyres cock in it!! so out of friggin no where my mom comes in and is like “o shit son wtf?!” and was like “o shit mom wtf r u doin???!!!” then she looked at my dick and sorta smiled a little which i thot wuz wierd but then she wuz like… just do ur pants up and come eat lunch. l8r that day my mom wuz watchin some tv in her room and i swear i heard her make some funny moaning sounds an whisper my name but i think it wuz cuz she was grossed out by what i did that she couldnt get it out off her head.

i no i havent updated this lj in like 4ever.. but i been busy man! lets see wut else is new…
well i have a new fav game for my xbox! its called nfl street an its awesome!! man that shits wicked cool and shit. tha players look so tuff and im like ya man thats wut i look like when im playin, this soooo kewl.

skewl suckz but man thats not new lol.

a lil while ago i tried too pick a fight wit roland black that fuckd up tha only chance i wuz ever gonna have wit a girl and man i kicked his ass!!! i waited for him after skewl 1 day and i punched him in the face and he wuz like “oh shit wtf huhuh” and i was lolin all over the place. he got up and hit my like 10 times and gave me a black eye and a bleedin nose and i couldnt eat solid foods for a week and stuff.. but man i hurt tha guy good with my punch. what a fag that guy. lol

speakin of tha ladies (lol) i have actually started talkin to a few of them again. sometimes the christina girl in math 20 asks to borow my pencil. i always lol when she asks to cuz i know she secretly means she wants to borrow my cock rofl

speakin of ppl getin caught for shit… kirsten wuz in her room with this wierd goth girl friend of hers and i went in cuz i wuz lookin for tha cat and they were makin out on the bed! holy fuck wtf. i wanted 2 tell my parents cuz it was so fucked up, but kirsten said she knew what i did with my last gf and said shed tell mom and dad. so of cours i didnt say nething after that cuz HOLY SHIT WUT IF THEY FOUND OUT!@! that nite tho when they had left i went in kirstens room and found this funny big purple plastic thing under the bed that i had never seen b4.. it smelled kinda funny and i asumed it wuz a cat toy or sommin and jus put it back.

OH HOLY FGUCK!! I JUZ REALIZED SOMETHIN!!! OH FUCK. OH SHIT FUCK AAGAGHRGA. when i wuz lookin at tha porn tuday i saw sum chicks playin with big dildos that looked just like tha cat toy, they were stickin in each other an stuff. cum to think of it, the thing kirsten had kinda looked like a cock too.. OH SHIT MY 14 Y/O SISTER HAS A BIG FUCKIN DILDO! oh shit i musta been in denyal or somethin howd i not see it before?? shes at tha mall right now, im gonna go look for it right now.

okay okay okay okay. jus looked and found the dildo in her desk drawer and it smells even crazier now! but kinda.. nice yeah like it smells like my ol g/f. oh fuck thats sick man i think im in luv with my sister oh fuck oh fuck agsagjj. help guys this is serious. i dunno what to do, my sister is 14 and shes got a dildo thats seriously the size of my arm! + i think im in luv wit her.