2006: The Best of Online
This year I’m adding a few new departments to the usual best ofs. After six instalments I figure it’s about time to add an online category, given how large the net looms in my day-to-day life (and, because you’re reading this, I’m guessing yours as well). So, outside of work and my own contributions to the ethereal swamp, what’s occupied my attention online in 2006?
10. Second Life
It’s at the bottom of the list this year, but can only go up, because we’re using this actualization of a Snow Crash-like avatar world in our masters programme. Outside of work, though, I’ve resisted its siren song, because of the enormous time-sink potential—apart from messing around with my avatar, who at the moment alternates between a goateed Tharg in zebra-print trousers and a blonde bombshell in knee-high boots. If I start talking about rezzing and primming here, send for help.
9. MySpace
Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to control the web has been one of the phenomena of the year, and I eventually joined in, despite misgivings about its design limitations. After adding as friends a bunch of bands and comedians and a few actual friends, there wasn’t much to do there. But it was fun using it to get in touch with a couple of old (actual) friends, and to think that some comedians and musicians I admire have spent thirty seconds looking at something I made—assuming that they’re the ones looking after their MySpace pages. When some of them have 160,000 friends, you have to wonder. That’s what I tell myself, anyway, when I’m feeling bitter about the fact that MUSE DECLINED MY ADD, presumably because a 38-year-old with cartoon mammoth doesn’t fit their minders’ ideas about the right kind of fan.
8. YouTube
But who needs MySpace when you have YouTube. I signed up to MySpace as a place to post some animal poem videos, but ended up hosting them on YouTube, which had the side-effect of making it easy to compare their effectiveness at luring in the punters. After four months, the verdict is 445 views for the MySpace profile versus 3100 for the YouTube videos. This may be because they yanked tens of thousands of Japanese TV clips after the Google purchase, leaving nothing for anyone to watch except thirty-second riffs on sloths, but hey.
7. Blogs
Only number seven? Yep. Blog-reading is still a regular habit, but half of my reading list went into hibernation this year, which has to be a sign that we’ve all been doing it too long. Still, some good new ones cropped up, not least of which was...
6. Cute Overload
Cute Overload’s exponential growth in readers and reader submissions threatens to melt not just their servers but our collective sanity. The cuteness levels seem to have dropped as the cutesiness increases, but even the meanest ol’ meanie would have to admit that the hamster with a grape stuffed in its cheeks was hilarious. As blog reading goes, it’s certainly more fun than five years of watching political flamewars (not that those ickle warbloggers aren’t cute too when they’re throwing a tanty). Even better when it sits in a bookmarked tab group alongside its natural complement, Ugly Overload.
5. The Ricky Gervais Show
As well as MySpace, 2006 was the year of the podcast, which must be bittersweet for those who’ve been doing it for ages. Gervais’s ramblings played a large part in this popularity, and were compulsory listening during the first half of the year, especially when Karl Pilkington—Baldrick to his Blackadder—started his diary. After a couple of subsequent pay-only series they’ve rounded out the year with three more Guardian-hosted podcasts, which contain... more of the same, really.
4. Michael Kelly’s Journal of Distraction
I suppose this could be included under blogs, but given its restricted three-week timespan it’s best read as a complete work. If it were in bound covers I’d be calling it one of the funniest books of the year, so there’s no question that it (and he) deserves every bit of attention that comes its/his way. Go there now.
3. The Get This Podcast
Tony Martin needs no introduction for fans of Australian comedy (and won’t make much sense to those who aren’t); I couldn’t resist the gazillion podcasts culled from his Triple M radio show, even if half the topical references were lost on me now that I’m an expat. New sidekick Ed Kavalee was a great discovery, too. Favourite bit: Tony’s game of Montalban, mispronouncing English words as if they’re from another language. Ik-kek-ree-ahm...
2. The Adam and Joe Xfm Podcast
Yes, another podcast; they took over my ears this year. Adam and Joe hosted a cult UK TV show in the late nineties, and for the past few years have been doing a cult radio show. Presumably, the next step is an actual cult. To sample the Kool-Aid, listen to the best of their 2006 podcasts, then download all twenty because my two favourite bits aren’t in it. (If you download the best-of track-by-track, you’ll need to use this link for track 15.)
1. The OEDILF
Hard to believe it’s two and a half years old already. Our workshopping process has become more streamlined and efficient this year, which is good, because it was eating my brain before; now it only gets a lobe.
You may wonder why I devote energy to helping produce a reference work in such a frivolous form, rather than something more serious, like Wikipedia. Consider, then, this passage from Wikipedia on linguistic prescription, which I read during an OEDILF forum discussion:
A descriptive linguist working in English would describe the word ain’t in terms of usage, distribution, and history, observing both the growth in its popularity but also the resistance to it in some parts of the language community. Prescription, on the other hand, would consider whether it met criteria of rationality, historical grammatical usage, or conformity to a contemporary standard dialect. When a form does not conform—as is the case for ain’t—the prescriptivist will recommend avoiding it in formal contexts. Obviously these two approaches are not incompatible, and most people thinking about language see a place for both; they attempt different tasks for different purposes.
Clearly, this edit was begging to be made:
Obviously these two approaches ain’t incompatible.
That’ll be a good test of Wikipedians’ sense of humour, I thought; let’s see how long it lasts. Answer: twelve hours. Can’t risk anyone laughing at a serious subject like linguistic prescription.
But it wasn’t the reversion that irked me so much as the comment that accompanied it:
rv so-called “joke”
No wonder they end up in edit wars.