mental manifestations

The web has hit another dot-com bubble. This time, everyone is giving it the fancy name of “Web 2.0” and placing the focus of it on the user. Power to the people, in a manner of speaking. It was alright when I first heard about it a year ago. Then, an enormous amount of sites started to pop up. Most of the sites had the same feature. A lot of them tried to replicate what other people were doing or what had already been done.

A year later, I am completely tired and sick of it all. The more and more I hear about Web 2.0, the more and more I am getting apathetic about where the Web is going right now. My disdain for it just grows larger. It’s fine to have all sorts of sites, but too many is way too much to handle. Information overload has not been good for me in the past. The sheer quantity has pushed my tolerance to critical mass, and now I have given up on it.

It is much easier to not care at all than it is to try and manage everything. Managing that microcosm of sites is becoming more and more increasingly difficult. My attention span has dwindled to the point where I won’t even bother clicking things anymore. I barely read through all my feeds these days. I’ve become extremely picky about what I do decide to click and read. It has to be meaningful in some way or have some lasting impact.

With Web 2.0, anyone can create anything. Unfortunately, this adds up to a lot of crap I don’t want to filter. I thought Digg was an amazing site at first. But then as more and more users joined, the percentage of things worth looking at became much, much smaller. I had decided to drop their feed and switch back to Slashdot (because they have a filtering process and don’t incessantly post insignificant topics). Web 2.0 sites have given everyone more ways to connect with each other, but it hasn’t worked for me at all.

I don’t interact with enough people online. It wouldn’t be worth it registering billions of accounts and then later finding them all to be useless. I’m not discounting the power of collectiveness. For some people, it works. Those kinds of people usually tend to be celebrity geeks of some kind. For me, I’ve found what I’ve needed, and I’ll just stick with that. I’m also not discounting the sites out there. There are sites that I love (e.g. Flickr) that work well for me. I just think there is an oversaturation of the market right now. It is a market I would like to join, but I want to be sure that I join the right one. Everyone can jump on the bandwagon, but it’s not a wise decision without having the foresight to see where you’re going.

Frankly, I just don’t see the point of them.

In the past, I have signed up for Friendster, Orkut, and Facebook, and I have ditched all of them. The only reason why I signed up for those sites originally was because everyone else was literally doing it. I wanted to be a part of it all, but I ditched them once I found out there was nothing attractive to me. I didn’t understand social networks at the time when I signed up for Friendster and immediately left. Orkut was amusing for a while, but I just couldn’t continue aimlessly wandering through random groups and having online conversations with strangers especially when there wasn’t that much to talk about to begin with.

Facebook was was a great way to keep in touch with lots of people (and stalk others). I grew tired of Facebook for the same reasons why I left Orkut. I figure if people want to stay in touch with me, the effort would be mutual. I don’t understand why I have to “friend” everyone I knew back in high school. Maybe it was the camaraderie. Maybe it’s high school and not college. Whatever the reason, I just moved on. There just wasn’t any point to Facebook anymore. Even with the features Facebook added, it wasn’t enough for me to stay with it. That fact that Facebook was just a college social network made it appealing when I first signed up for it. It has since moved on to high schools and now the entire world. What makes Facebook any different than other online social sites?

My biggest problem is that I have no desire to explore these online social networks. I can’t care enough to randomly look up people. Sites like Flickr are great at what they do. They’re designed for one thing instead of trying to do everything. I’m more inclined to explore and talk with people on Flickr than randomly on Friendster. I enjoy looking at various photos because I’ll never know what I’ll stumble across. Online social networks don’t feel special like that. They’re just like phone books to me. I’ll look through once and not care.

I’ve already carved out my interests online through sites like Broken Saints, Flickr, Rooster Teeth, and UruLive. I may not actively participate often in such outlets (I do have a real life I must tend to outside this virtual world), but there is a common ground that attracted me there in the first place where I could share that with others. It is because those sites have purpose to connect us, to bind us, to drive us, and to pull us together.

I flew to San Diego a little over a week ago to attend Comic-Con. It was quite the experience as it was my first time going to an event of its kind not to mention that it is a really big event too. My primary reason for going was to see Broken Saints and its related upcoming news. Part of that reason includes meeting up with some of the regular posters on the Broken Saints forums that I frequent. Aside from those two reasons, Comic-Con was also a chance to see everything that was there, all the different panels, vendors, cosplay, and so on.

If there is one word that I would use to describe Comic-Con, “overwhelming” would be that word. There is so much to see. There are panels going on from the start of the convention until the end. There are screening of films in the late evening. There are many, many, many booths ranging from big company names to comic writers, artists, and vendors. Anything you can imagine (related to comics) is probably there. And then there is the sheer number of attendees that I hear grows larger and larger every year. That is why the convention was moved to the San Diego Convention Center many years ago.

There are some things that could be better about it though. The first night I arrived in San Diego, I met up with Brooke Burgess, the creator of Broken Saints. He gave me some pointers about what to see at the convention — to check out the smaller panels, take lots of breaks, go outside, and basically just have fun. The next day I talked to him again after spending much time wandering around. He told me about the later days to just pick quadrants and check out the stuff in each area like the artwork section. He also mentioned to stay away from the center floor. I was taking all of this in for the first time, but I didn’t really understand it until I really opened my eyes.

One thing I said to Brooke was that the middle floor was just one big advertisement. I didn’t elaborate on that point, but he understood. In the center floor were big name, top brand companies who probably paid big amounts of money to have enormous amounts of floor space. With all the fancy big displays, flashy lights, and high traffic area, it’s not surprising to see everyone crowd and concentrate in one area. I remember walking around all these people and asking myself, “What is so special about this stuff?” You can play video games any time of the year. You can basically find all the merchandise on the Internet.

At the Broken Saints panel, Brooke mentioned how a lot of things out there are crap and praised everyone attending the panel. He condemned people waiting in the Hasbro booth line, and that you shouldn’t feed consumerism to these companies because they will continue to produce crap. Even some of the panels were like that. It’s too bad that the majority of panels I attended were for big media productions like LOST, Family Guy and American Dad, Sony (for Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3), TV Funhouse, the Blade TV series, and Warner Bros. I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy them. I probably could have spent my time looking at the things no one else is looking at. I could have made my experience more educational than entertaning.

There were vendors on end of the convention center, and artists and illustrators on the other end. In between were numerous comics booths. Some were from webcomics, some were independent, others were larger reputable publishers. I started to go around and just take my time to look at things and occasionally strike up a conversation. Everybody’s main reason for being at Comic-Con is to basically sell something. During one of my random conversations with a random comic I had never heard of, I ended up buying the first issue. The comic is called The Descendants. I should have bought the second issue while I was there. Comics are an investment and you have to pay in order to keep up with the story. Aside from that, there was a letter at the end of Issue 1 from the creator of The Descendants, Joe Andrade. He described his passion for comics and why he does what he loves. After reading that letter, I realized that it epitomizes everyone’s reason for being at Comic-Con. It is a place for people who love comics to convene and share their love with fellow nerds.

Retrospectively, all I knew about comics was Marvel and DC. These two giants overshadowed everyone else. In a way, it sparked a small interest in comics in me, to seek something new and interesting. Even if comics can cost a little money and even if the story or art may not be all that great, that is a risk one would have to be willing to take. That was one factor stopping me from investing in other comics. I had no idea what they were about, and I had to pay to find out. Most of the independent, smaller comics writers and artists seemed shy and introverted. They would give me glances, but most wouldn’t necessarily talk to me unless I made the initiative. I feel like I should have taken some more risks, and dived into the world and culture of comics.

Every time that I pick up an interest in the latest hardware — mice, keyboards, motherboards, graphics cards — I always browse around the Internet and find reviews of the product. Every review I read always has the same setup: introduction, specifications, comparisons, testing, benchmarks, and conclusions. I’ve decided to stop reading any kind of review. The hardware review format has become so banal that every review (and reviewer too) loses all meaning. There is no point. If you read one, then you have read them all.

Isn’t it obvious that new hardware will always outperform other hardware? This is so commonly done with graphics cards that it’s just a waste of time to benchmark them. Of course the new hardware is going to be fantastic! Anyone with a lick of hardware sense can just pick up on it immediately. I know I’m being overly general here (not all new hardware is the greatest), but the basic idea is just too prevalent.

A new, faster processor is coming out? Wowza!

What I propose is that hardware reviewers post a review after using the hardware for an extended period of time. Nearly all reviews out there are too immediate. You could test a product in a day, write a quickie review, and then forget about it. Reviews are nothing more than advertisements to make a profit for the manufacturer. The problem with testing hardware over time is that the planned obsolescence will come in and take over.

So back in March 2006, I purchased a Razer Copperhead gaming mouse since my old Logitech MX1000 died (the battery reached the end of its charging life). I was happy for a while until my mouse died only two months after use. I’ve contacted Razer tech support three times about the issue and they have not contacted me back at all. It’s not exactly fair to say that my hardware failure is a result of bad hardware reviews, but I want something more than fanboy enthusiasm full of hypothetical claims.