Unsubscribe

I’ve been unsubscribing to lots of things lately- boring RSS feeds, spammy Facebook groups, email newsletters. Kind of like a toddler who just learned the word “NO”.

Today I tried to unsubscribe from this one newsletter, and the site redirected me to this page:

Hmm.
Is that my email address?
Well how the f*** am I s******* to k***?
Sh**sh.

Craigslist TV

Craigslist TV is a brilliantly simple idea: pick interesting Craigslist listings and document the responses.

Here’s one where a woman has an accordian to give away, and chooses three respondents to come play at her dinner party. Her guests’ favourite accordianist will win the free squeezebox. The footage is a bit jumpy, but it’s quite nicely put together nonetheless; surprisingly fun to watch.

Via Kottke.

Chatroulette piano improv

Here’s the best guy on Chatroulette. You could click around all week on there and not be so lucky.

Thanks to Rebecca and Jennifer for the tip.

UPDATE:

So yeah, a lot of people speculated that Merton is actually Ben Folds. But then Ben Folds did a tribute to Merton at a show in NC, which would seem to suggest that he’s not the guy? Watch and decide. Ben Folds is pretty awesome, that’s what I decided.

GoogleMail Group Chat FTW

You guys, I don’t want to blow your minds or anything, but now you can have group chats on Gmail.

We used our collective chatting ability to solve important problems, like where to eat dinner tonight.

Is this what the kids are doing these days?

I get a friend request on Facebook from “Peter Banks”, a guy I’ve never met. We do have one mutual friend, but to be honest I don’t know that guy very well either; he’s a friend’s brother and I’ve only met him once. A name like Peter Banks is so common it’s unGoogle-able, so no help there. Peter’s profile is pretty bare. There is one photo of a twenty-something male model- which could be an actual photo of Peter, I guess, since our one mutual friend does a little modelling too. And his profile says he’s “in a relationship”, so maybe he’s not just trying to flirt with random girls, which would have been my first guess.

ME: Hey Peter, thanks for the friend request. Have we met in real life?

PETER: Hey Nicole, never had the pleasure of meeting you in real life. I signed up for FB mainly for netwoking, but making a few friends along the way would be an added bonus. If you only accept people you know then no worries & sorry to trouble you.
Keep well.

I do not at all understand. How is it networking (excuse me, “netwoking”) to randomly friend people with no preamble? That’s not networking, that’s just… weird. It’s like coming to a party and just staring at someone for an hour instead of saying hi. What, am I going to friend a complete stranger and then somehow we’re in some sort of viable network together, sharing, what, tips? Is it like, if you stare at another person at a party long enough they might give you a job reference or something? I’m no expert but I do not think that’s how this works. Is it? Why am I asking this? *head explodes*

So I just hit “Accept friend request” and we’ll see what happens. Oh no wait, I did not do that.

OKCupid blog – dispatches from the field of online dating

The OKCupid blog, you guys (OKC is an online dating site). Off the hook. A really interesting, statistically-supported, and very modern look at human sexual psychology.

Older women are very attractive, put-together, GGG, and overall dateable.
What types of photos are most compelling?.
How race affects success in online dating (ouch)

Man, this blog is fascinating.

UPDATE:
Atlantic blogger extraordinaire Ta-Nehisi Coates rebuts OKC’s conclusions about black women being treated as undesirable in online dating.

Julia Dales did a web commercial

This is a good idea- a promotions company that claims to be new-media savvy highlighted its new-media mad skillz by getting the world beatboxing champion Julia Dales (previously seen on [pageslap] here) to do a low-budget YouTube video promoting them. 18-year old Dales is, as you’d guess, a bit of an interweb celebrity, and the vid is likely to go viral, so that’s pretty good evidence that the company has ideas about how to get your product out there, too. Smrt.

Thanks to a reader named Samm for the tip.

Anonymous Facebook Employee

A Facebook employee dishes about what it’s like:

“We did have a master password at one point where you could type in any user’s user ID, and then the password. I’m not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,’ more or less. It was pretty fantastic.”

More here.
Via Kottke.

Moff’s Law

On how critical thinking about art and pop culture is often stifled by idiots hollering “Caintchoo jus’ stop all this thinkin’ and jus’ ENJOY it??!!” (OMG U GUYZ REMEMBR WHEN DAT HAPPIND ON MAH BLOOG HEER? DAT SUKED SO HARD!!1!!!)

Well, here comes an excellent rant by an io9 contributor named Mott, responding to some turd who tried to shut down a pretty interesting critical conversation about Avatar. The rant is reproduced under the jump here. It’s the best. I’m excited that this has been written.

Via Racialicious.

Lamebook: The Fresh Prince of not really getting into a hot air balloon.

Lamebook is a compendium of lame (anonymized) stuff from Facebook. I like the poetically epic nature of the following exchange about a little balloon boy named Falcon Heene, whose parents (somewhat recognizable from their appearances on a reality show called Wife Swap) seem to have asked him to hide in the attic while they alarmed the nation with tales that he’d drifted away in a giant hot air balloon, a balloon they’d made by hand because they’re storm chasers who believe in the end times.

Sheesh. Some people will do anything for a little attention. Hey Heene family, your dignity called. Oh wait you don’t have any. Let me give you guys a little advice. The best way to get attention is to write about your recent weight gain or post uggers photos of yourself without any makeup or tell jumbled stories about being peed on and then put it on the internet using your real name. Duh.

Hey crap, I just drooled on my jacket. I should take a picture of that and tweet about it a few times. Sorry, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Lamebook. Here:

(From Lamebook)

Click the image to read it a little bigger.
And click here to read more Lamebook.
Thanks to Van Dine for the tip.