Blog Archives

Sometime last year, I wrote about the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in the context of John Suler’s online disinhibition effect thesis.  Today, there is growing interest in adding the conceptual form of Internet addiction in DSM-V, mostly because of real social problems brought about by translations of real-world behavior online.

The sociologist William Isaac Thomas, in his statement on the definition of the situation, sets it out clearly: if people define their situations as real, they are real in their consequences.  For the longest time, we’ve considered the “online universe” as something disjoint from society: in reality, all our actions online, no matter how anonymous, have a direct effect on our offline lives when it has a consequence.

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WordCamp Philippines 2010 was nothing short of awesome.  And yes, this is a very belated entry.

This year’s WordCamp Philippines found me babbling about WordPress statistics at the Advanced Track for the breakaway sessions – talking more about bananas and the tumbok shape of normal distributions more than anything else relevant – but I’m writing this post for the benefit of those who:

• Were not able to attend my WordCamp breakaway;
• Agreed with Bariles’ opinion of me being a rockstar at night (although the rockstar should still be Matt Mullenweg), or;
• Attended my WordCamp breakaway but just weirded out by my incoherent mumbling, and making suggestive gestures with a bottle of drinking water.

Here goes.

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Nowadays, anyone who writes an entry critical – or skeptical – of social media would be looked down upon with such contempt, especially if it is done within the context of social media.  Well, here goes.

In his latest commentary for The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell takes a critical view of social media:

In other words, Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro.

Can the revolution be tweeted?  Of course it can; participants of the revolution can tag each other in Twitter conversations, check in to the revolution venue in Foursquare, or have a pulse of the public through Facebook fan pages about the revolution.  Surely the status quo can fall under the mighty brunt of blogger power.  Yes, it will be tweeted, but will the revolutionaries be tweeting?

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It’s fairly easy to put together compelling, impressive statements about stuff on the Web.  There’s “capitalizing on social currency as a prime motivator for influencer engagement,” or “exploring new modes of amplifying brand messaging for viral effects,” and my favorite, “leveraging conversational assets through engaging content-driven creative initiatives.”

Then there’s the tried-and-tested tactic for the impressionable (if not the gullible): defining a cachet by an entire mess of clichés, followed by a motivational “x is the new y” pronouncement, the “join in the conversation” mantra, and so on and so forth.

It’s like the big Matroyshka doll: buzzwords moving into progressively bigger buzzwords, with nothing more than an empty hollow in the middle.

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Mark your calendars.  iBlog 6: The 6th Philippine Blogging Summit, is on April 16 and April 17, 2010, at the Malcolm Theater, UP College of Law, UP Diliman, Quezon City.

It’s going to be a two-day affair: the first day is for business people and entrepreneurs who want to maximize blogging for promotions, and the second day is for blogging 101.

Oh, and I’m also going to be one of two speakers on political blogging, online commentary, and social media.  That’s on Day Two.  So if you see a dorky guy in black with long hair and glasses, that’s probably me.

Hope to see you there, ladies and gentlemen!

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Yes, my friends: I, Marocharim, am asking for your permission, dear reader, to write in The Marocharim Experiment.

It sounds ridiculous because it is: I pay for the dues of this blog, I maintain it, and I write for it.  Still, because free speech is stifled so much in the Internet these days, I am asking for your permission – which you have implicitly given me – to write.  In my view, if this blog applies comment moderation, I might as well ask for your permission to publish this entry, and since I’m in control of this blog anyway, I might as well publish this as soon as I’m done instead of waiting for the webmaster (in this case, me) to approve this blog entry anyway.

My entry, as usual, will be full of immature and (mostly) scatological references for me to drive my point, but again, I am asking for your permission to write and to read.  In the interest of the fair and responsible practice of free speech, please click that “Read More” link if you want to hear me out.

(Chances are you probably won’t, because I’m not even that important anyway.)

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