You're so vain.

[reddragdiva]

• This thing really stretches my tolerance. I wonder if they have an entry. (courtesy xandraius)

Life is domesticity. Is good.

Down the pub with pndc on Friday. First some Soho wanker pub with off Old Peculier, then one of the zillion Sam Smiths thereabouts, then the Kings' Arms, a bear pub. We felt odd being clean-shaven. Probably the only gay pub you'll find them giving two hoots about the real ale.

arkady has gone to Wales for the week, so Freda can meet her sisters.

My mother Helen is visiting London for a fortnight. She visited Antarctica at Christmas and showed us photos. THOUSANDS OF PENGUINS.

MySpace fills the vast consumer demand for the opportunity to make home pages that look like a smurf on acid threw up. Its core audience is the same people who twenty years ago got a Mac and used nineteen fonts in every document.

Comments

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

WANT THOUSANDS OF PENGUINS

I reckon you have MySpace wrong. Teenage girls aren't really a key Mac demographic. Teenagers are MySpace.

I always see Mac users like middle class liberals. It's a fashion thing - being different and more intelligent and generally all round better people than the Hoi Polloi who use windows. They use Macs because they CARE dammit. The next generation of Macs will come with a free tree to hug, if the fashion hasn't moved on in the meantime.

[reddragdiva]

I'm talking about the '80s-'90s, when Mac = DTP. And certainly the teenage girls I saw near Macs at that time (typically at university student papers) went hog fuckin' wild with the font vomit.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

I certainly remember the thing that allowed people to put text on a curve etc. Nasty.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

And/or the Geocities rotating skulls/dripping logo demographic. Powerful demographic that, the colourblind mexicans on acid(/Sayle). That's a smart move on Murdoch's part. Plenty of consumer dollars in the design-free teenage rebellion market. Big market sector there.(/Hicks)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Actual Latin Americans think the colour sense of those people is laughable. My Spanish teacher thought it was hilarious.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

You may imagine my absolute surprise.

When Geocities was properly popular, I could about stand to view most of the less vom-worthy pages.

These days I have to be very careful - MySpace and migraines are not a cheerful combination. I'm having to adblock certain animated LJ icons now - it's all getting a bit depressing.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ooohhh ow. I will try and remember not to use my flashy icon if I am replying to you.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Don't worry overmuch - I'm getting good at stabbing `esc` w/o having to think, and if it were a serious problem I'd hack up an icon-free custom style.

(Why yes, I don't like having to admit I'm getting on a bit...)

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Geocities: The Next Generation

That's all I'm gonna say...

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I agree. Even when Macs where all about the DTP by hideous amateurs with no taste, it was mostly small business people and such - they were too pricy for teenagers.

Myspace is the virtual equivalent of covering the walls of your room with posters torn out of Smash Hits, playing heavy metal music loudly, and painting the walls ugly colours because it annoys your mum.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

"Teenagers are MySpace"

In passing, I note that "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" turned up on today's reading list...

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. It's not even a proper academic article - it's just a random essay. You have very lazy teachers..

We had a whinge about it yesterday. Twas all over the news..

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

Not so much lazy teachers as indiscriminate ones...

In my defence, yesterday was a day of power outages and internet outages and chavs-coming-through-the-back-door-to-find-a-laptop-and-taking-it, er, out-ages. I think I missed the interesting stuff.

[skulks away]

[barakta]

The only time I had 19+ fonts to a document was when I made a printout of all the fonts for my mum...

Then again I must have been an anomaly because two years later upon accessing the Internet regularly I always got mistaken for being in my 30s because I could write and spell (typos notwithstanding) and use punctuation without smilies.

I think a lot of people think you have to have something which looks like MySpace because everyone else has a MySpace... Peer pressure.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

MySpace fills the vast consumer demand for the opportunity to make home pages that look like a smurf on acid threw up. Its core audience is the same people who twenty years ago got a Mac and used nineteen fonts in every document.
Would you mind terribly if I sigged this?

[reddragdiva]

Feel free!

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't compliment MySpace like that. MySpace's core audience consists of the scions of those who bought a Mac fifteen years ago so they could pump out a piece of derivative crap just as unreadable as anything they say in Wired or Mondo 2000. In many ways, I'm glad that the MySpace archipelago is there, because this way they aren't trying to crank out zines.

(By the way, a bit unrelated: I take it the package hasn't arrived yet?)

[reddragdiva]

Not yet ...

[richgoth.livejournal.com]

MySpace fills the vast consumer demand for the opportunity to make home pages that look like a smurf on acid threw up. Its core audience is the same people who twenty years ago got a Mac and used nineteen fonts in every document.

Priceless :-)
Don't forget the potential for spyware and buggy scripts as well

[phelyan.livejournal.com]

All these new "community" sites are nothing more but an excuse for old, sexually frustrated gits to get glimpses of jailbait. Oh, and of course for jailbait to pose for old, sexually frustrated gits.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yes. I can contribute something here. Mac Users and teenage girls are unrelated groups with almost no overlap. I draw your attention to the Jargon File (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/index.html) entry for 'Ponytail':

1. A hairstyle in which long hair is held back so as to hang down like a pony's tail.

2. A descriptive term for a man having a ponytail hairstyle, or such character traits as might be associated with having a ponytail, eg: effeminacy, narcissism, undue concern with fashion etc.

3. A general term used by hackers for 'creatives': advertising copywriters, graphic designers, video compositors, users characterised by a preference for the Macintosh, recreational drug use, and better sex lives than programmers.

4. A derogatory term for web designers and other persons peripherally associated with IT projects, devoid of programming skills and dismissed as being concerned with visual presentation to the exclusion of technical reality.

Ahem.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Wales is wet but good, and Freda and her sisters seem to have formed a Mutual Appreciation Society between them. ;-)

Alas, I am crap and forgot my mobile phone charger, so my phone is now dead which is why I couldn't return your call. :-/

Love and miss you. :-*

[reddragdiva]

Call me from the house phone and I'll call you back!

(Despite a certain complete lack of reception at work ...)

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Actually I've done a bit of a Google and found that with the right driver, I can recharge it via USB from the PC. I just need to sort out a USB-B cable. If I get it working, I'll let you know. ;-)