People Who Love Their Dogs as Much as They Love Their Human Loved Ones
[/div:image-left-wrap]
This may be self-explanatory, but it still merits a rigorous and shattering account of these people, the people who love their dogs as much as they love their human loved ones, many of whom I have found on Facebook and Twitter. They are easy to find. Their profile photos on Facebook, obviously, involve their dog. Most of the photos in their albums show the person and the dog together, which is bad, but still socially acceptable if the dog is at a certain level of indisputable, objective cuteness. But many of their albums contain photos of only the dog, alone. Worse, the person is often tagged as the dog. In their “about me” info on Facebook, the people who love their dogs as much as they love their loved ones have descriptive diatribes that announce things like “Dogs can’t find it in their hearts to hate or be mean [understood point: unlike you terrible people], dogs are our best friends, dogs lead our hearts down paths to other worlds.” On Twitter, people who love their dogs as much as they love their loved ones tweet their mundane activities, but remind us that their dog is also present, of course, or around the house, i.e. “I’m home folding the laundry. Boopsie growls whenever the dryer buzzes! hehe!” or, “Just chillin on the couch watching the Westminster show with Snappy, our vote is for the toy poodle!”
via Daniel Roberts
People Who Promote Christianity on Their Facebook
At first glance, their Facebook profiles seem normal. They have photos of smiling friends on ski trips, introspective Mac photobooth pictures. But then you read the “About Me” and shit gets real weird. It reads, “I want to tell you about a guy I know whose name is Jesus Christ. He died for our sins and if you want to know more, you should e-mail me.” Ugh. There is, like, nothing worse than a weird Christian on Facebook. Their quotes are always pulled from the Bible, they have photos of their friends drinking hot chocolate and playing party games that should only be played while wasted. Their drug of choice is an Oreo dunked in milk. They’re horrible in general but on Facebook, they reach a whole new level of gross. Their Facebook statuses usually say some variation of “God told me to just breathe today and I’ll make it through. Thanks, God. LOL!” or “Going to meet the girls at Chilli’s in a sec. Molten lava chocolate cake? Talk about a sin!” Normally, you can avoid Christians by becoming a homosexual and moving to a big city like New York but Facebook makes them unavoidable. They’re here, they’re Christian and we need to blog about it.
via Ryan O'Connell
People Who Are Infatuated With Los Angeles Socialites
[/div:image]
I don’t live in Los Angeles or affiliate with socialites, but somewhere along the way I was mistaken for someone who does. I rarely interact with fans of ‘Cobrasnake culture’ formally, but anonymous questions from said types appear in my Formspring inbox from time to time. Most of the inquiries come from girls in unremarkable American suburbs who wish to grow up and be ‘on the A-list.’ They add everyone in Hollywood on Facebook. They wear Doc Marten boots, shredded crop tops, and use words like ‘cray’ and ‘DGAF’ in an attempt to blend in with their Californian idols. They almost never solicit me to chat with them – instead they observe from afar. They’re the types of people who believe that a hipster is anyone who owns a Tumblr account and a sideways cross ring from Forever 21. They may or may not get hammered over the weekends and create YouTube videos in which they declare that they ‘run LA.’
via Bebe Zeva
People Who Use Internet Words In Real Life
[/div:image]
These are the people that you first met online through some messageboard or artistic collaboration and have since that time developed a specific, internet-vocabulary. This vocabulary has come about as the result of specific topics of conversation you both usually riff off as well as the website-environment you both inhabit. When you finally meet this person in real life, they attempt to reference words and language you use in your chatting and when they do this they make eye contact with you trying to get you to participate and reinforce the bond of an inside joke – but really it just feels awkward. Hearing someone say “lolcats” or “teh kitteh” out loud just sounds fucked up and weird. They keep using internet words, and it keeps sounding very unlike how you say it in your head, and very unlike normal sounds that you want to hear. When you try to reciprocate and speak internet language with your mouth, it sounds just as bad. You realize that internet words must remain typed and never spoken and force yourself not to acknowledge your well-meaning internet/now-IRL friend’s vies for inside-joke internet-speak bonding.
via Sari Moon
People Who Play Online Poker/ Fantasy Football
[/div:image]
These people are usually male, 20-30, and not talented enough to play either sport IRL. They majored in business and gain a sense of relevance by complaining loudly about the bad beat they took on the river or how their starting running back suffered from a high ankle sprain. They are extremely serious about the numbers associated with their sport and can recite from memory the winning percentage of a pocket pair versus an ace king/ how many touchdowns Adrian Peterson scored last season. They enjoy talking shit to their opponents and ruining a perfectly good game of football by constantly mentioning their fantasy team. These people wear backwards hats while at their computer to stay in “the zone.”
via Ben Saucier
People Who are Former Digg Libertarians (Now reddit Libertarians)
[/div:image]
No, you weren’t a part of the Digg Patriots. You were far more pervasive: a breed of “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” Digg users who believed the government should keep its fat, inefficient nose out of everything. And even though you’d never taken an economics class, the efficiency of market forces just seemed so obvious. People just didn’t get it. Had they ever read anything on the internet?
And on Digg, your influence was strong. During the 2008 election, thanks to you, Ron Paul made up 20% of the “upcoming” articles — not just in the politics section, but on the entire site. That’s a lot for a guy who received less than 3% of the country’s vote.
But what you didn’t realize was that Ron Paul’s popularity on Digg had less to do with what he stood for and more to do with Digg users trying to validate themselves. You just wanted to prove that Digg wielded a power greater than sending massive amounts of traffic to Mashable articles. Thanks to you and your commenting cohorts, Digg was going to put Ron Paul in the White House. It wasn’t about Ron Paul, it was about you — which makes sense, because everything Libertarianism stands for motivated by self-interest.
And now that Digg has caved to pressure from its investors to become a largely paid sponsorship shit show (instead of a nerdy, democratic shit show), you feel betrayed. So you migrated to your formal rival: reddit.
It’s chaos over there. It’s an ugly site full of ugly people, like the format of the original Digg combined with the immaturity and disorder of 4chan. But it’ll have to do, for now… RON PAUL 2012!
via Kevin Nguyen
