BoxDog wrote:

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Psych Lit wrote:

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lol and oh, btw, dar is looking lovely tonight.

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 BTW, she is showing a significant change of "status" recently. From married to single. Whoa. Big change, if true of course, it's "just" the internet, but really, changing a public status like that just recently provoked that nutjob in England to kill his ex wife. At any rate, it's a huge change. Dontcha think?

wow. now that i hadnt heard. will she be selling cds afterward? if so thats a chance to mingle;)


"But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother,
We dont like to make our passions other peoples concern,
And we walk in the world of safe people, and at night we walk into our houses and burn".

 

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The newspaper reported that police paraded the goat before journalists, and published a picture of the animal.

Police in the state couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Belief in black magic is widespread in Nigeria, particularly in far-flung rural areas.

Psych Lit wrote:

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CULTURE

No Laughing Matter

A critic for The New Yorker explains how serious public conversation is being ruined by sarcastic, snide remarks.

Critic David Denby was sick of the insidious, sarcastic discourse that he found online. So he did what any other New Yorker writer might do (see Malcolm Gladwell) and wrote a book with a vague, one-word title. "Snark" (Simon and Schuster), an extended essay that analyzes our conversations and all the insults buried within them, builds a timeline that spans from the Roman poet Juvenal up through the gossip Web site Gawker.com and finds Denby arguing that the need to be seen as funny or clever is ruining our conversation. He sat down with NEWSWEEK's Kurt Soller to discuss his theory. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What drew you to writing about snark?
David Denby: I'm a journalist, and with so many print publications starting to subside, there's this aggression where sarcastic, low, teasing, undermining remarks were driving out more sensible kinds of writing. Snark is becoming the universal, and older people are afraid they're going to be left out of the party.

As a man of a certain age, are you afraid?
I'm not going to be hurt at my age at what anyone says about me. I'm 65. But if you're young and you sleep around or do some cocaine at a party in college, it's going to show up on Google 10 years later. I'm sure these snarky insults have an inhibiting effect on people's behavior.

So the Internet is ruining all the fun.
This book isn't an attack on the Internet. But a lot of people have become snoopy busybodies and the vehicle of that is snark. You don't go on JuicyCampus or other Web sites to solemnly complain, you try to make a joke. Somebody who used to be stuck muttering to himself can now shout out loud.

How does this affect our right to privacy?
Privacy is one of the great triumphs of bourgeoisie, where one can have a space where he can act responsibly, or irresponsibly. If we can't go somewhere without someone taking our pictures, then we're inviting ourselves to be snarked.

That's even worse if you're already in the public eye. Can we talk about Obama?
In the book, I discuss how when people spoke about him during the campaign, I felt like much of the conversation was in coded racist insults. When people said he was Muslim, people were really talking about race. But racial prejudice is not something anyone can openly admit anymore. Snark is the antidote for "We don't want black people here, but we're not going to say that." I was worried he wouldn't win, and it turned out I was wrong. So many people protected our Democratic prince.

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i have to say that theres a part of this article that feels..well..snarky. lol
however i do agree with what hes saying to a large extent. im surprised that anyone wants to be in the public eye in these days where the line between tmz and the cable news outlets is so blurred. how much of what is talked about these days is gossip and how much has real news value?

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"Privacy is one of the great triumphs of bourgeoisie"

I find this irrelevant and unfounded. Like he created some chest puffing quote du jour. Pretentious. It's simply untrue. By definition triumphant privacy would veil the flaws, evils, embarrassments of the bourgeoise. As long as there's class distinction, human curiousity and someone to capture the photo that someone else wishes to purchase the bourgeoise are no more capable of privacy, rather less so than the common or lower class. As unpalatable as that reads, it's true. As long as there's class distinction the upper class will always be allowed to run from first straight to third as long as they fill the stands with their peers.  Maybe that's one reason they're making it so difficult for common folks to access channels, networks, news media. Who knows.

All I know is I laughed out loud when he immediately responded with "I'm a journalist"! It's so typical of a whiny "critic".  That's the irony I find to his offering of "Snark".