Ceci n’est pas un Blog

It could be just the fact that I’m at MIT, but I am noticing a significant increase in nerds in media. Consider TV shows such as The IT Crowd, The Big Bang Theory, Beauty and the Geek, and Numb3rs. These shows have, to everyone’s surprise, grown widely popular. We all love to laugh at the socially dysfunctional theoretical physicist or the painfully naïve tech guy. Are nerds and geeks the new trend? Perhaps everyone harbors a little nerd inside, creating a soft spot for those awkward characters who just don’t quite fit in.

Taking a step back, however, I would argue that the trend hasn’t necessarily moved towards nerds, geeks, and techies, but towards socially unfit characters in general. Consider TV shows such as The Office and Arrested Development and movies such as Superbad, Napoleon Dynamite, and The 40-year-old-Virgin. It appears that people are just not as interested in those beautiful and popular high school kids. As much as I wish everyone would laugh at my science-based sexual innuendos, I think it’s not that we’re all a little nerdy inside, but that we’re all, in some ways, cultural misfits. No one is as charismatic as they wish they were and there’s nothing better than embracing the relatable characters and having a good laugh over it.

What do you think? Has awkward become the new cool?

I’ve made myself very visible on the web: blogs (many of them!), facebook, twitter, personal website, linked in, picasa web albums, myspace, etc. Especially since my name isn’t a common name, it has become very easy to find out my contact info and all of my struggles and secret thoughts since freshman year of high school. While this might freak some people out, it honestly hasn’t phased me all that much. I’ve always been pretty transparent and open. I generally don’t have anything online that I wouldn’t tell you in real life. As a matter of fact, there is very little (if anything at all) about me that I would hide. Privacy just doesn’t mean that much to me, I suppose.

(For example, at home I walk around naked and pee with the door open. I would do it now, if it wasn’t for the fact I live on an all-male floor of a dorm.)

Recently however, I’ve started wondering if this is something I should be more careful about. Most people out there seemed to be a lot more concerned about their visibility on the internet. I have friends who keep their tweet in private. Some who blog avoid more personal topics. Others untag every picture of them on facebook and limit their profile to only the bare minimum.

So, dear readers, I ask again for you to enlighten me with your wisdoms. How visible are you on the web? Does it bother you and why or why not? How you hold back your identity? Should I be more worried about my privacy?

I’ve decided to make this a new series on par with the Things That Annoy Me series/catagory. “What I think of” will be a series of my opinion on various popular things. Because my opinion is that important.

Up until  a few months ago, I despised texting (yes, all of my What I Think Of entries will probably start like this, because I like to prove to the internet that I at least used to be hipster and independent in thought, but have only recently slowly started selling my soul to what’s “in”). My reasons for despising it:

1. I didn’t have a plan, so it wrung my Asian heart with pain whenever someone texted me. That’s a good 10 cents wasted!
2. Texting someone on my old phone took forever. Totally time inefficient.
3. It’s taking impersonal to a whole new level. Not only are you avoiding talking to the person on the phone, but you won’t even write them a quick email that will allow for exchanges beyond 160 characters.

However, since I got my new, bulky, heavy, but free smartphone, I felt like I had to take advantage of its uses, particularly its QWERTY keyboard. I decided to sign up for a texting plan and off my fingers flew. I’m allowed 250 texts a month. 250! I’ve been working as hard as I possibly can to text so much by writing stupid things like “I’m on a motherfucking boat!” to a friend. This led to an exchange where we texted a certain portion of the lyrics to each other. That’s right. We texted LYRICS to each other. It wasn’t even a goddamn conversation! I can’t believe this is what I’ve come to.
And yet it was fun. Oh it was so much fun.

See, what I’m starting to like about texting is what I hated about it the most before. Texting is bred from the obsession to multi-task. I don’t like to just sit and eat anymore. I need to be watching TV while eating. Similarily, why should I just sit during rehearsal singing when I can also be texting?
While I’ve started texting a lot more, I still despise it a little. The problem comes when people text too much. I’m bothered when I’m out with friends and I see that every once in a while, everyone checks their phone for the latest hilarity through text messaging. Do we really have to be talking to another friend when already hanging out with one? It’s multi-tasking in a redundant manner and it makes me feel inadequate. Like I’m not quite fun enough, because there is always another friend who has another inside joke to share privately. Competing with a cell phone is just not fair.

The bottom line is:

1. You should text me funny or interesting things so I can use up my texting plan, and I can be the cool person at the party or lunch or dinner who has a lot of friends texting her.
2. Don’t be the person at the party or lunch or dinner texting people.

Until 3 days ago, I was a Twitter-hater. I thought it was stupid. How is it different from google chat or facebook statuses? But then I decided to try it out and answer those questions myself. Here are what I think the Pros and Cons are:

Pros

1. I can update through texts. Translation: gives me something to do when I’m really bored and not by a computer.
2. It’s impersonal enough that I don’t feel weird following people tweets. On the other hand, I would feel weird adding someone on facebook or commenting on their blog.
3. I can follow “famous” people/my favorite bloggers. It’s like receiving multiple blog posts a day from people who have legitimately interesting or funny or important things to say.
4. Checking up on people’s newest tweets is a better time sink than playing freecell.

Cons

1. It’s not a post-and-respond thing, so you feel like you’re posting for no reason. Who knows if anyone’s even reading it?
2. 140 characters is a great limit for reading tweets, but annoying to adhere to.
3. It shouldn’t exist. People should just write short posts on blogs.
4. By joining the newest “it” thing, my hipster cred has just plummeted massively.

Bottom line: the fact that Twitter is so frequently connected to mobile phones makes a lot more sense. Nevertheless, I’m still surprised/puzzled at how big it’s gotten. I would prefer if everyone had a blog that I could subscribe to, and I could just read the short and insightful updates on my google reader, instead of continually refreshing a new website.

How do you feel about Twitter?

It feels as though everything has come to a halt, even at MIT. People have stopped doing their work and closed down entire offices for the next hour or two. Staff, faculty, and students are running down the hallways to the nearest lecture hall to watch live broadcasts. News stations have been on site reporting since early morning.

What for? The inauguration of our 44^th (and 1^st Black) President of course! Hip hip hooray!

You might be wondering why I’m not watching the highly anticipated (an understatement) inauguration right now, seeing as it is 11:55am. Well, in short, I think this is all a stupid fucking hype.

Don’t get me wrong – I support Obama. I think he is an excellent speaker and I’m sure this speech will fill the hearts of citizens with hope and patriotism. I am glad that optimism has finally graced this country and that people have found something to believe in, even during a time of severe economic depression.

But walking by a lecture hall and seeing it full of people staring at a large projection of hundreds of thousands of swarming people chanting “O-BA-MA O-BA-MA” makes me a little sick. I mean, seriously? Chants? How much different is this from the Chinese people chanting Mao Zhu Xi, Wan Sui! (Long live Chairman Mao) during the cultural revolution? How can Americans shake their heads at the Chinese for being brainwashed during that era without looking at their own history, nay, at their current events?

Before you click that “comment” link and start yelling at me for being an American-hating chink (which is something that I actually welcome), I want to make the disclaimer that I honestly don’t care that much about politics. I keep up with it in the sense that I glimpse at the headlines on the New York Times, flip through channels on the TV to catch a few seconds of CNN, and, every once in a while, watch the first 10 minutes of the Daily Show. I am not a citizen, I don’t vote, and I don’t particularly feel a patriotic attachment to this country. So yes, I don’t have much of a say in all this and I sure as hell can’t defend anything I say. So if you comment, I will probably just say “That makes sense, you’re right.”

Regardless, I do believe that democracy is sort of a joke sometimes, especially when the media plays such a large role in people’s thinking. Yes, hope is wonderful. But it’s all just being fueled by the Bandwagon Effect.

In short, we are all sheep. But we all knew that already.

Enjoy the inauguration.

A recent article in the New York Times said that “46 percent of women and 30 percent of men would opt to forgo sex for two weeks rather than give up access to their precious Internet for the same period.”

This got me thinking. Would I? After a thinking about this long and hard (teehee) I decided, no, I wouldn’t. Because sometimes being without the internet is a wonderful feeling. It’s liberating. No longer will Internet be around, beggining for attention. It’s almost like being single, without having to sacrifice your relationship.

So the question now is, would you? How long would you be willing to go without the Internet?

I have recently discovered RSS feeds, and I have to say: I don’t get it. All website design is gone! Also, don’t RSS feeds do the opposite of what internet wants? Which is for you to see as many ads as possible?

I don’t get it.

In other news: mymomisafob.com may be one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.

When I see someone with an iPhone, iPod touch (or as I like to call it, the iTouch), or a MacBook Air, I immediately judge them. And this is what I think:

“Stupid richass, ungrateful, show-off cunt. Your parents still treat you like a baby because all you care about is following a retarded materialistic trend.”

Since my birthday, however, I have become that person. It’s not fair. I don’t want to be a stupid richass ungrateful cunt. In fact, I really don’t want to be called cunt at all. And here I am, with parents who spoil me waaaaay too much just because I’m an only child:

an the free iTouch that came with it:

I gotta say, the iTouch really isn’t that useful though. I have yet to really find the need for (vaguely slow) internet on my iPod. Still, I definitely feel like the world’s biggest spoiled ‘tard now. I don’t deserve to live…

P.S. The only reason why I’m doing this post is because I like these pictures. It makes me feel sheek (sp?!) I also like hating on myself.