Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
It’s been described as “a bastard child of Skype and Stumble Upon.“ I’ll admit it. My curiosity got the best of me and I had to try Chatroulette. I mean, if John Stewart is doing it, that makes it ok. Right?
As funny as John Stewart’s “first-hand” account is, the best article I’ve seen on the subject is The Human Shuffle, by Sam Anderson.
“I entered the fray on a bright Wednesday afternoon, with an open mind and an eager soul, ready to sound my barbaric yawp through the webcams of the world. I left absolutely crushed. It turns out that ChatRoulette, in practice, is brutal. The first eighteen people who saw me disconnected immediately. They appeared, one by one, in a box at the top of my screen—a young Asian man, a high-school-age girl, a guy lying on his side in bed—and, every time, I’d feel a little flare of excitement. Every time, they’d leave without saying a word. Sometimes I could even watch them reach down, in horrifying real-time, and click “next.” It was devastating. My first even semi-successful interaction was with a guy with a blanket draped over his lap who asked if I wanted to “jack of” with him. I declined; he disconnected. Over the course of an hour, I was rejected by what felt like a cast of thousands: a teenage girl talking on her cell phone, a close-up of an eyeball. It started to feel like a social-anxiety nightmare. One guy just stared into the camera and flipped me off. Another stood in front of his computer making wave motions with his hands, refusing to respond to anything I typed. One person had the courtesy to give me, before disconnecting, a little advice: “too old.” (I’m 32.) A girl with heavy makeup looked terrified when my image popped up on her screen—I actually felt guilty, a few rounds later, when the engine of randomness threw us back together and she had to look at my face for another excruciating half-second. My longest exchange was with a guy who seemed to be wearing one of those protective cones you put on a dog after surgery. “LICK YOU ELBOW,” he typed. “Why?” I asked. He disconnected.” [read whole article here]
Probably due to the fact that I’m a girl, and the ratio of men to women on Chatroulette is overwhelming, my experience was a little different than Anderson’s. In fact, I was the one doing the nexting. I was connected to all guys who, thank god, were fully clothed. I didn’t end up talking to anyone for more than a few minutes since I was just trying to get the lay of the land and, honestly, was afraid the conversations might take a turn for the pervy.
Although everyone remanded clothed and things were PG, I still was uncomfortable. One of the first questions everyone asked me, “You got a boyfriend.” Umm, yes. But why does that matter? What did they think was going to happen? We’re going to fall in love over Chatroulette? We’re going to meet up for a casual encounter? No thank you. If I want an internet love connection I’ll go to eHarmony. At least those people always look happy in the commercials and aren’t visually assaulted by male genitalia =D
As it is, I don’t see the value in it. It’s definitely not how I would choose to spend my time. But what if Google got it’s hands on the site? Anderson proposes the idea of filters – picking the type of person you want to talk to based on demographics, geography, interests. I would even go as far as to dream of a day where you could pick to connect to people in your industry or extended Linkedin network. Helllloooo networking opportunity!
One of my favorite Michael Jackson songs is “You Are Not Alone.” It’s almost tragically poetic that he could write such a beautiful song but not be able to hear his own lyrics. Isolated from the outside world after decades of controversy, it took his death for the country to really show how much they still loved and embraced Michael. But I’m straying from the real topic of this post, as I often do. The point is that everyone needs to be reminded that they are connected. As alone as they feel, there are people out there going through the same thing.
A while ago I stumbled onto this website called “We Feel Fine.” The system searches out blog entries that include the words “I feel (insert emotion),” or “I’m feeling…” When found, it records the full sentence and categorizes it according to the feeling expressed. It then organizes it into an interface with floating tons of particles, each representing a feeling posted in the blogosphere. Things like color, size or shape of the particle indicate the nature of the feeling. When you click on a particle it reveals the full sentence and any information it has about the author. You can also filter the particles by feeling, author’s sex, age, weather or location.
But more that just the random particles careening across the screen, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar have created six different movements (Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds) to categorize and display the information in real time. Basically it’s an infographic paradise.
During his TED talk, Harris said, “”I think people are very similar, but I also think we have trouble seeing that. As I look around the world, I see a lot of gaps, and I think we all see a lot of gaps. We define ourselves by our gaps: language gaps, ethnicity gaps, age gaps, gender gaps, sexuality gaps, wealth and money gaps, education gaps, religious gaps…but I think that actually despite our gaps, we really have a lot in common.”
As my foray into social media continues, I have created a Twitter account at the behest of my Research Methods professor @gHarsha <— see, I’m learning! My inital opinion on the microblogging site was, what is the point?? Isn’t it just the same as Facebook status update? And what was worse, none of my friends are on it. Why would I use this?
It wasn’t until said professor had us do an assignment where we were supposed to explore the reasons that Twitter could be the “next big thing” and what it would have to overcome to get there. After doing some seriously in depth research considering the topic, I started to see why people have embraced it.
Five ways in which Twitter could change our world:
1. It’s a way that people can connect to friends, neighbors, coworkers, people across the world, celebrities, ect.
2. Minute-by-minute updates useful for trend watching, emergency alerts and sporting events among other things. For example, social media has been more effective in alerting people about emergencies, like the Virginia Tech shooting, than the traditional university alert system. Some universities already have new alert systems incorporating social media.
3. Effective in mobilizing efforts and gathering eyewitness accounts during a disaster such as the attacks on Mumbai. People “tweeted” about what they saw, help lines and contact numbers for those who had friends involved in the attacks, as well as pleas for blood donors at specific hospitals that were low on supplies.
4. It can be used as an effective campaign tool. Whereas campaign emails get lost in inboxes and spam, tweets cut through the noise with a short and to-the-point message.
5. Users can receive the messages anywhere they are through a variety of outlets – text messages, instant messages and RSS news feeds.
Five hurdles to becoming the next big thing:
1. Twitter doesn’t generate revenue and exists on funding alone which limits its long-term viability. It will likely have to adopt an ad supported business model.
2. Some users complain about feeling “too connected.” Many users tweet all day about mundane things like what they are having for lunch or everyday annoyances making it hard to separate valuable content from the noise.
3. They have had a lot of security problems. Hacking the main system has compromised several high profile accounts.
4. Due to the exponential growth over a short time, Twitter has experienced several outages.
5. Rumor mill. Unsubstantiated rumors quickly snowball through tweets that are re-tweeted over and over again.
So after some time, I have conceded my previous stance on the triviality of Twitter and am not afraid to admit that I usually check Twitter before I log onto Facebook… in fact I’m starting to find myself thinking in 140 characters or less. Tweet me @egavette
I first heard about the Post Secret project in a magazine, Cosmo or Allure or some such girlie magazine. It was just a short little burb but intriguing non-the-less. What I found upon further investigation was an ongoing community art project where people anonymously send in postcards with secrets on them. It started in 2005 when Frank Warren began handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places – asking people to write down a secret. It could be anything. His only request is that it is something true and something you have never told anyone before. The response was incredible. People sent in works of art with everything from accounts of criminal activity, secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams.
There are a couple of aspects of this project that I find interesting. First the idea of submitting your secrets anonymously is very reminiscent of Catholic confession. For a generation that is lacking in religious affiliation, we seem to have forged our own version of confession through a platform that we are most familiar with – the internet.
Secondly is the idea of voyeurism that is inherent in the construction of a public forum for secrets. What drives so many people to look at website that contains other people’s deepest secrets or fears or insecurities? Warren says that there is security in it. By reading other people’s secrets, individuals realize secrets they never knew they had or find that they are not the only ones with that secret. It’s comforting to know that other people are worried about the same thing or share the same experience.
So every Sunday, Warren posts fifteen to twenty new secrets on the blog and I go every week - you could almost say religiously – to check them out.
