Social Chameleon

Get out of my head!

REDWOOD CITY, CA— Bob Trabert, 26, a web designer laid off from Cybercepts last month, has channeled his energies into the creation of NoJobBob.com, a website about his experiences being laid off. “Visitors can read my online job-hunt diary, watch Flash animation of me sitting around in my underwear watching TV, or Paypal me a ‘donation,’” Trabert said. “It’s mostly for fun, but I figure, hey, maybe someone out there who needs a web designer will see it and be impressed.”

Laid-Off Website Designer Designs Website About Being Laid Off

I stole this from 4chan, but that doesn’t make it any less fun:

Step One: Go to Wikipedia and click on random article. This is your band name.
Step Two: Go To Flickr and on the “last seven day page” choose the 3rd pic. This is your album cover.
Step Three: Go to Wikiquote and click on random article. Go to the last quote and copy the last 3-7 words in the sentence. This is your album name.
Step Four: Assemble and post.

Give it a try, more often than not it works nicely. Check it out:

Continue reading ‘Create a band in three easy steps’ »

*Sigh* Oh rednecks, is there nothing you won’t attach to your trailer hitch?

Hitch Hands – Middle Finger for your Trailer Hitch

via Strange New Products

Photoshop Disasters has quickly become my new favorite blog. In newspapers, digitally manipulating an image can amount to a blacklist-able offense; in advertising, however, it’s par for the course. We all know that beauty magazines airbrush the hell out of their subjects, but when it’s done right, the changes are imperceptible. Images can only be taken to a certain degree before they start tumbling into the uncanny valley. What Photoshop Disasters does is compiles some of the laziest, most egregious uses of image manipulation ever to be unleashed on the general public.

This is what bugs me when people ask if I “know” Photoshop. Yes I do… technically. I know what all the tools are, what they do and how to switch between them, how to select certain parts of a picture and stack things using layers. Does that mean I know what do do with those tools? Partially. I have a laundry list of parlor tricks I can perform with reasonable accuracy (so long as you’re not looking for anything sharper than 180 dpi reproduced on newsprint). Am I any good at it? Not really. But I’m learning.

At least I know not to play fast and loose with perspective and bizarre limb-lengthening.

The goons over at Something Awful are onto something here regarding the effects of the pace of technology on humor …

[I]f Seinfeld episodes like “The Soup Nazi” had aired ten years later, think of how much more grating the reaction would have been. Millions of images of Jason Alexander emblazoned with the caption “I LIEK SOUPS.” Millions more pictures of the Soup Nazi, posted in retaliation: “NO MOAR SOUPS.” Naruto music videos based on the joke. Soup references in every webcomic. Soup Nazi cosplay. Peak Oil reached. Ron Paul elected President. The world’s volcanoes erupt in unison. All because the Internet ruins everything.

How to Ruin a Joke

Oh man, where the heck have I been? How am I just now finding out about ROFLcon? Where some of the greatest internet memes and leaders of the LOLosphere gathered to discuss the future of internet culture. Half my bookmark list was there: Homestar Runner, xkcd, Cyanide and Happiness, Drew Curtis, Stuff White People Like, Diesel Sweeties. The list goes on.

So why is this so great? It’s and acknowledgment that all these seemingly light humor pieces floating around the tubes are actually powerful tools which can rapidly forge bonds between people around the globe. Randall Munroe put it more succinctly than I ever could:

XKCD: There is a mindset that people share, but aren’t aware they share. XKCD helps them discover each other.

I collect lolcats. I even went as one for Halloween. Being plugged into these memes will one day help me in my career. The best way to talk to geeks (heck, any group) is to speak their language, get inside their heads and show that you’re one of them. Genuinely.  We know what missing the mark can look like. Whether through direct references or via the same channels of communications, this is the way advertisers can most quickly reach Gen-Y.

I will know that I have made it in this industry when I’m pulling down mad money to slap Impact cutlines over photos of cute animals. Just you wait.

JONESVILLE, S.C. — The sign in front of a small church in a small town is causing a big controversy in Jonesville, S.C.

Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God.

It reads: “Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?”

Byrd said that the message wasn’t meant to be racial or political.”It’s simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ,” he said.

Welcome to South Carolina billboard. The jury’s still out on whether it’s a ’shop or not

A little person picking up some fast food in a South Carolina McDonald’s has filed a complaint saying his server shrieked and ran away at the sight of him. Ethan Wade, who suffers from a form of dwarfism, retained a lawyer after claiming the clerk at the Greenville County restaurant threw up her hands, started screaming and ran away upon seeing him, WYFF4.com reports.

Complaint Filed Against South Carolina McDonald’s Claiming Clerk Screamed, Ran From Little Person