I got the lousy idea two nights ago to re-install Zenwalk 4.4 at eleven o’clock in the evening. Why? On the original install I for some reason had the urge to set the locale to Norwegian UTF-8 with numlock enabled on boot. This meant that I could not enter the password to my user account, OR access root after the initial reboot.
To spell it out; I technically locked myself out of my own machine.
Elegant, I know.
But instead of trying to figure it out I re-installed. It was one o’clock in the morning and still going, and considering the laptop had a TFT screen I didn’t want to keep it on all night because it could burn. So what to do in the middle of the night, having checked out all the regular blogs and feeds, with one laptop installing linux and the other backing up over USB1?
I utube.
YouTube is primarily a procrastination tool, but it’s also a channel of self-promotion and community with some kind of weak twist. I stumbled over a very popular thread of user videos entitled "Ten Random facts about YOU". I skipped to the browser page and went from one gal to another, listening to their facts while playing solitaire.
It seemed like most of them had a more boring time making them than I had watching them. But in other cases I was amazed at the amount of effort they had put into editing, with music and crossfades, some of them very creative. Youtube is the perfect pastime for a generation in which everyone wants to be on TV. As a society we are bringing forth ‘being on TV’ as a token of recognition and acceptance. Celebrity is our new nobility, with all that comes with it. ‘Tis what drives most of the user videos on youtube. Hardly a good thing.
I quit after about fifteen flicks around four minutes each, when I got to one that was called "The Point of Life". I can’t handle pseudo-philosophical emo outbreaks in the early morning. Who does? Who watches these videos except their friends and predatory adults, and their predatory adult friends? And if I want to get into pseudo-philosophy all I need to do is open one of my notebooks and start reading. No predatory adults required.
On the other hand, what about blogs? Are my hands dirty? (Checking out my hands to see..) Nope! I would do what I do in some form anyway, living on the north pole or in the 17th century. Take Jim Carrey for instance. As a young boy he entertained the factory workers during lunches by using a couple of shoes in the men’s room. He didn’t need TV, or blogs, or Youtube. They are all just tools and without an independent purpose as such. I wrote logs before the blog term had hit the surface, so to speak. Some of them are still available online. Not that I identify with Jim Carrey.
It is very interesting how people can use the Freedom of Speech as an excuse to rant about pointless things. And how people defend it when they feel their personal integrity is threatened. That reveals some confused idea of said human right. The Freedom of Speech is the freedom to Not be arrested, persecuted or shot dead for your expressed opinions. That’s all it is. As basic as Habeas Corpus. It is not a guarantee that anyone will listen to your dumb ass. You see, the Freedom of Speech is always accompanied with the Freedom to Disregard. This is the real world. I will not defend anyone’s right to be superficial and ignorant. Why? Because that isn’t a right. It’s a handicap.
Oh, and by the way.. What’s up with Technocrati these days?
«Nothing in the known universe tagged Sigg3»
Seems like they missed five years that Google and Archive.org didn’t.