| poeTV | Submit | Login   |

Reddit Digg Stumble Facebook

Help keep poeTV running


And please consider not blocking ads here. They help pay for the server. Pennies at a time. Literally.

Comment count is 40
Lef - 2016-05-08

Serious, where is Infinite Zest, I miss that guy.


Bort - 2016-05-08

Maybe real life has gotten in the way of his online time-killing. THE NERVE!!

Just so long as he's not trapped in an abandoned mine, desperately texting Louis CK for help.


gravelstudios - 2016-05-08

I miss him too.


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

He got married in April and moved to Uganda. He said he'll be back this summer, after the rainy season ends, and his wife's family no longer needs help on the taro plantation.


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

Honestly, he was sick for a little while and I haven't heard from him in a couple months, but I'm 98% sure he's still alive and still in Portland. If you guys want to ask him anything, let me know and I can relay it.


Old_Zircon - 2016-05-08

He posted on here a couple weeks ago, either the week of the Brooklyn democratic debate or the week after (I know because one of the first movie streaming experiments included a fair amount of speculation over what had happened to him, but then he posted the next day).

I hope he isn't the next Hooper X.


Bort - 2016-05-08

What happened to Hooper X?


Old_Zircon - 2016-05-08

He got a life.


Bort - 2016-05-08

::removes hat, looks downward solemnly::


posertom - 2016-05-08

I'll check the usual bars.


Nominal - 2016-05-08

From Lucky Louie to Lecture Louie.


Bort - 2016-05-08

Cool, this means we can talk behind Louis CK's back online. Let's plan a surprise party for him.


Bort - 2016-05-08

Though I do get his point, social media can be a brain sucker. It's probably not so much the specific electronic device as whether you make yourself a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

I am old enough that I learned my Internet lessons 20 years ago -- yeah, 1996 or so -- and the biggest problem is letting yourself get sucked into the medium. When being away from your online haunts makes you irritable because you don't know what's happening, that's when you need to learn how to detach yourself, pull yourself back in.

Imagine yourself like a tape measure that has been stretched out to its full length; now imagine pulling yourself back in until you're properly wound up. Or if you prefer, think or yourself as Plastic Man pulling yourself back into normal human shape. Once you've done it, there's this delightful feeling of clarity, like "Why would I even care about what people are saying on Facebook? It's just 1's and 0's on a hard drive somewhere."


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

But it's not just 1s and 0s on a harddrive! 1s and 0s on a harddrive are the medium of communication, but the messages themselves come from real, living human beings, people whom you wish to fulfill your social needs with. It's like saying, "Why do I need to talk to anyone? It's just waves of pressure floating back and forth through the air."


Nominal - 2016-05-08

That metaphor didn't help at all.


BillLumbergh - 2016-05-08

EvilHomer, you shouldn't underestimate the importance of real human interaction like that. Sure the internet is a mostly social phenomenon, but most behavioural scientists will agree that real, physical human connection is very important for your well-being, especially among young, still mentally and physically developing people.


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

I'm not saying "real" human interaction isn't important ("real" in this context meaning interaction being done face-to-face, in person; I submit that all online interaction is technically real, but more on that later), or that online communication is necessarily a healthy substitute for ALL meatspace interfacing. Hell, I myself actually have a HARDER time talking to people via social media platforms than I do in person, which is a bit weird, given that I've got really bad social anxiety, and in my experience, people like that generally find it easy to Facebook. In fact, just the other night I spent *forty minutes* agonizing over a three-line Facebook message to a friend of mine - someone who, in person and much to my great surprise, I have absolutely no social anxiety around - so it's not like I'm a FB apologist. (she has not replied; I am trying to cope as best I can)

My point is simply that, as mentioned above, I believe that all online interaction is technically real. We're real people, who are really coming up with ideas to share and emotions to convey (well, most of us. A couple of us might be chatbots). I'll happily concede that online interactions follow different rules from meatspace interfacing (such as the way that online privacy allow us to be less inhibited etc etc), but Bort's 1s and 0s are still communication, still products of an actual human being who may or may not be an actual friend of yours!


Old_Zircon - 2016-05-08

GET FF MY GOD DAMN LAWN YOU TRANSHUMANIST SONS A BITCHES


Bort - 2016-05-08

I'm not trying to diminish the fact that communication and society happen, in some fashion, across the Internet. But I am saying that it's helpful to occasionally put it in perspective. There are friendships I have made across the Internet (some dating back to the 1990s), and there are a very few select places on the Internet I consider to be a community of sorts (this place being one, FEEL HONORED). And that can be fine.

But then there is this phenomenon where people get sucked into Facebook, Twitter, or whatever the kids are using, and that is too far. It's easy to reach a place where the fact that some random unknown person on the Internet is a shithead, is enough to affect your mood. And that's when it's time to step back and remember it's just 1's and 0's.

Lord knows I've got my buttons; any time there's a run-up to any election, I am likely to be on a hair trigger where politics is concerned. And I probably owe one or two of you an apology for snapping.


Old_Zircon - 2016-05-08

My current rule of thumb is that if there is a system of upvotes/likes/karma/whatever and the visibility of any given post is pegged to a score derived from that, then the site is to be treated with EXTREME skepticism, because that kind of design philosophy is inherently broken from the standpoint of actually fostering open communication, much less "community" with or without quotes. I'm not going to get started on why because the last thing I want to do today is bitch about meritocracy and social Darwinism and Silicon Valley so Instead I'm going to post this mostly unrelated but completely great article about the cryogenics and life extension movement and its long history of ideological support for genocide:

http://thebaffler.com/salvos/everybody-freeze-pein

It's not directly relevant but it's not totally irrelevant because many of the people who are involved with this stuff are the same techno-Randians who are behind the social media industry. Also plenty of slapstick.

"
9:45 a.m.: Cephalon placed in holding ring of cephalic enclosure.

[Translation: They put Suozzi’s head in a box.]

9:51 a.m.: Cephalon fell out of holding ring.

[Translation: Her head fell out.]
"


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

Well, Bort, what if the people you're communicating with transhumanly happen to be people you've developed friends with organically? Again, using myself as an example, I generally only use Facebook to keep in touch with meatspace friends. I don't have phone service, as I don't call enough people to justify the expense, but I do have a tablet, Skype, and a Facebook account - so that's usually the way I "call" people. My friends list is tiny compared to most people's, and honestly there are only like two or three people on there I know "from the internet" - everyone else, including Galpal-Stressing-Me-Out, Fled-to-Mexico-Last-Month, Boiling-Ponies-Alive, and Beer-Plus-GoT, they are people I know from work, from school, or even from childhood.

I guess we are not in disagreement. I certainly wouldn't want to encourage anyone to get "sucked into" Facebook, and I have noticed some of my friends (like Lette and Guitar-Wife) seem to be very enthusiastic about posting stuff to my wall (Guitar-Husband even quit Facebook over this). But I also don't think you MEAN that 1s and 0s are unimportant, at least not on an intrinsic level! They are a medium, nothing more, and they can be used for positive ends, or for maladaptive ones.


For me, I think my biggest problem is this idea of being... I guess for lack of a better term I'll call it "meatspace straightedge". What I mean is, I've got problems with people like Louis CK, people who are very much against online/social-media interactions, and make it a personal crusade of theirs to lecture the world about the dangers of Internet! I'm pretty straightedge IRL, in that I've never done drugs, I don't go to wild sex parties (shocking!), and I rarely ever drink (aside from the odd flagon of mead now and again, if only to work up the nerve to send people emails). But despite my straightedge habits, I don't really associate with "politically straightedge" people, such as AA members, sXe punks, hardcore Christians, or what have you. Those kinds of people are, in my experience, usually *precisely* the kind of jerks who DO have problems with drugs, only now they are trying to maintain their commitment to clean living by being jerks about not doing drugs.

So too with meatspace straightedgers.

Yes, some people are better off without the internet. No, I don't care to hear your political manifesto. Shut up. (note: I am not accusing you, Mr Bort, nor anyone else here, of being a meatspace sXer. I AM, however, so accusing Louis CK, big bald-o jerkbag that he his)


Bort - 2016-05-08

EH - I think you're more in disagreement with Louis CK than you are with me. I say that, if you're having trouble emotionally dealing with the Internet, you should learn to detach, and either stay away or limit yourself to activities that don't suck you in. Louis CK seems to be more saying that, because HE doesn't manage the Internet well, the healthiest thing is to keep him off altogether and everyone else should consider it too.

The Internet is a tool; it's up to you to make sure you're using this tool constructively.


Old_Zircon - 2016-05-08

"The Internet is a tool; it's up to you to make sure you're using this tool constructively."


Not entirely accurate.


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2016-05-10

What I mean is, I've got problems with people like Louis CK, people who are very much against online/social-media interactions, and make it a personal crusade of theirs to lecture the world about the dangers of Internet!

I don't see that at all. He talks about staying offline"for now" as a choice that he made, and why he made that choice.

I'm just not sure everybody has that choice. And I think everybody should,. even as I take the road more traveled.


BillLumbergh - 2016-05-08

I thought infinite zest was Prince.


Born in the RSR - 2016-05-08

This site is the closest thing to social media I use.


Hooker - 2016-05-08

I post on a hockey message board and lurk some other, non-hockey forums, but otherwise yup. Facebook is clearly a carcinogen and I can't understand why people let themselves get wrapped up in its talons.


Old_Zircon - 2016-05-08

Yeah, same here. I was on Facebook for a few years but it was reluctant. I changed cities and Providence didn't have any kind of vital local art-and-music-hipsters message board like Boston and Brooklyn did at the time, so I thought maybe actually using the Facebook account I'd started a few years earlier and mostly ignored until then would be a good way to keep up with what was going on around town. It wasn't, but I kept using it for a while. A couple years ago, after a bunch of my friends all left ton in the space of a couple months and my social circle was suddenly really small, I caught myself caring about whether things I posted got likes and I quit that shit.

I've had a Twitter account for 6 or 7 years but I only logged in half a dozen times, and I only started it to begin with as a possible way to organize a party since the previous one had all been done by SMS and that was back when not everyone had unlimited texting, so having a SMS discussion with 40 or more people was a huge pain back then, I figured we could just text to Twitter rather than to a direct list. Didn't work, haven't logged in since, don't miss it.

I have a Tumblr that I haven't used in years.

But yeah, I'm a minor participant in a couple of forums and that's about it at this point. Still manage to waste a ton of time on the Internet though.


Raggamuffin - 2016-05-08

That's one thing that's interesting about Rhode Island, if you want to know about someone or something cool going on you pretty much have to go out and find it. There is almost no online/social media presence.

I call it I.R.L.R.I


memedumpster - 2016-05-08

I watch movies online with this group on Mondays, but I think they might be serial killers or furries. So far I've only had to sign up to one newsletter.


Crab Mentality - 2016-05-08

Memedumpster, can I join your group? Or if you want, you can join my group that's definitely serial killer furries.


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

Well, shit. I was going to link to the /fur/ board on Gurochan, but apparently the whole website is offline now.

Happy Mother's Day, I guess?


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

Incidentally, I tried the watching the films, but I kept getting a "Flash: file not found" error message. I'd ask Cayla Wood for help, but the furry serial killers ran her out of town.


Old_Zircon - 2016-05-08

"if you want to know about someone or something cool going on you pretty much have to go out and find it"

The flip side is "a handful of mostly aging hipsters just keep doing the same shit over and over and defend their social turf to the death, and the place is small enough that there's not really a lot of room for something fresh to start up so not much new seems to happen."


It's a bit of both, really. Providence is REALLY Cliquey and slow to change, more than any other place I've spent time in. Plus it's a practice city, so as soon as anyone starts to do something really interesting, they move to New York and the ones who can't or won't tend to be on the defensive, which brings us back to the cliqueyness. I have it on the authority of a professional art historian that it has been this way for at least 175 years, especially the "practice city" part.


memedumpster - 2016-05-08

Crab Mentality, of course!
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/poetv-monday-night-mov ies

Homie, are you another victim of the Mac? It seems to be a thing. I'm considering waiting for the next Rich and Jack Play Vidya Games Twitch (probably one tonight) and grilling the chat about their connection woes and how to work around them.


EvilHomer - 2016-05-08

What Mac?


memedumpster - 2016-05-08

If I do a search for common stream problems with your particular thrown gang sign, the problems are numerous and disheartening.

Do you have the mp4 codec installed on your media shovel device? I have read that HTML5 will throw this gang signs at you if you don't have that perfect.

Uless it's the Flowplayer (did we keep using flowplayer?) which is also known to throw that one.

Unless it's your ISP not allowing the streaming of .FLV files at all, which also causes that error.

Unless it's the mime type on the streamer's server not including FLV, which will mimic exactly the ISP not allowing it.

Unless somehow the file is being seen as from a different server than another aspect of the stream in which case it will also look like every single other problem I listed.

I am learning that standardization exists even less in streaming than in web based video games.


EvilHomer - 2016-05-09

Shovel device is my Win 7 desktop. mp4 codec is, I believe, from the K-Lite pack. The site being used to stream was apparently using Flowplayer, which I have zero experience with (positive or negative). ISP lets me stream FLV, and I've got the porn history to prove it. Streamer server probably isn't the issue, since the other furries were watching the stream just fine. And fuck if I know which server the file's being seen from.

I will reboot my computer and try again tonight.


dairyqueenlatifah - 2016-05-08

"Now I just find someone and ask them"

You mean like you could have found out in five seconds had you punched it into your phone?

"And I started reading books again, I read Pride and Prejudice"

You mean like you could have in a few clicks on any one of a few dozen different apps on your phone?

Technophobia is stupid.


Hooker - 2016-05-08

That's what everyone is doing when they're buried in the phones! They're reading Pride and Prejudice!


Register or login To Post a Comment







Video content copyright the respective clip/station owners please see hosting site for more information.
Privacy Statement