On the topic of Facebook...

...I found this little comic strip over at UserFriendly.

Facebook is a virus

I got in contact with Facebook just a little more than a month ago thanks to a guild friend in World of Warcraft (thanks a bunch Aggro). At first I wasn't really impressed, and could hardly find anyone there I recognized. A week later it all just exploded and goddamn acquaintances and old friends were everywhere int hat place. I was intrigued and for a week or two I enjoyed the freshness of the community a lot. Until I realised what it really was: A disease.

Now, before I get started, I should point out that Facebook has a lot of things that older/earlier communities lacked, such as MySpace or LiveJournal and the likes. All those were based on profile focuse where the profile was all about marketing you. Older communities are all about what you are, what you do and think, and reflects the world through your visions. That made them quite limited in the sense that it was harder to create networks in them than in Facebook. You had to wade through thousand upon thousand of individuals (that more or less served as their own ads for themselves) and figure out who's who. If you added someone it was usually because you were already networked through some other means first.

Facebook changes that entirely, because Facebook changes focus totally. Facebook isn't about you anymore, Facebook is ALL about who and what you are in the context of who you know. It is in fact perfect for networking. Finding friends and people is way easier and it expands with you as your profile and network grows. You share your applications with your friends and you are instantly compared to anyone else you know if you happen to use the same applications.

But still Facebook is just a facade for a much more deceiving principle; that of disease. For every contact you get you expose him or her for other contacts, that add them to their network to expand their own community and further define themselves by who they know. And as such it is the perfect place for contamination. Everyone knows everyone and is but a click or two away. If you add an application, you will expose others for this "disease", leaving them a risk to be "contaminated". Those who get contaminated they expose their contacts in the same way, and plagues are literally born on Facebook every day.


It is totally genius. But it is also in the end boring, trivial and lacks of personality. You are deleted from your own context as you define yourself by others. And, to be honest, how fun are those small applications, really?

I mean, REALLY?!

No. I thought so. They aren't.

I'm back

After having this blog lying dormant for almost a year I've decided to return and start blogging again. Maybe not as actively as when I started it, but at least a few times a month.

It's a real shame though I haven't been able to post here. I've had tons of ideas, thoughts and stuff over the past year I have thought of writing about here. Such as my view on what elements that make a good mmo, well, good. Rants about Mutant Chronicles... you know that old swedish sci-fi/horror-rpg that's about to become a b-movie, and worries of what Paradox will do with the game-license.

(Actually they almost wasted it on a crapgame some years past.. I did some research and came up with some scary facts about that embarassing project.. good thing they pulled the plug tho. Hmm.. might actually still write that rant.)

What else.. oh yeah. I thought of making a long comment on Neil Strauss 'The Game - Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists', and all the theories in that book about male and female interaction, and of the whole pick-up artist society. (Yeah made some research into that too.. morbidly fascinating I might tell you. There's a lot of that stuff on Youtube actually.. try searching on terms like "PUA". "Style", "Mystery" and "Juggler" and you might find some of it at least).

One of the reasons I never got down to write the stuff down here is because I really didn't give myself the time. And much of my writing-time gets spent on Gameplayer and the newschronicles I prepare for every friday there. Of course they aren't as personal or interesting as a real blog. But they somehow drain the blog-energy out of me. Which somewhat is related to my return here. I need to start write more for myself, and not only others as of late.

Anyway, I'll be back in a couple of days with a more proper update. This is just a small headsup. And I promise, this time I'll be back for sure.

About time...

...I update this blog. I haven't written in it for about half a year. Oh, well that isn't absolutely true, I do have written maybe 20 posts for it, all in my head. Things I thought of while walking with my dog or riding the bus or working. But I haven't really had the time nor the spirits to actually write all those thougths down. So now they are gone... well most of them at least...

Anyway, aiming to get back and blog some more from now onwards again... but it's a bit weird keeping up two blogs at the same time, one in swedish and this one. I'll ponder on how to solve that.

Anyway, this is just a heads up to show I still live and breathe.

Oh, and I got my Wii this week. Only got Wii Sports for it yet, and Mikaelas been occupying it most of the time, but it's fun. And a damn good exercise too.