Your six favourite bits of social media

I’ve been dreading and looking forward to this one in equal measure...

Such a difficult call, with so many amazing yet fleeting phenomena which are gone and forgotten despite their popularity in a matter of weeks. And then there’s the “bits” equation. Are they blogs, twitter accounts, individual tweets, videos, random memes?

There is TOO MUCH CHOICE. But I’ve selected six items across various social media which have amused, amazed or titillated me, and despite the fact their popularity may have peaked and receded some time ago, they have stayed in mind and have been subject to the odd repeat viewing, for one reason or another. Here goes...

Batman slap:

It’s not even funny, but it has me in stitches. Something about the “deeeeaaaaaad” I think. I imagine him wailing in a Neil Stuke / Game On manner, and shaking his fist. It has spawned a million baby-meme parodies, some wonderful, others not so. I know it’s not funny, but even finding them to write this post had me in stitches.

“Deeeaaaaaaaad!!”

 

I’ll Eat A Shit
I don’t know how many times @superlative and I have listened to this, even ages after it rose and faded online, but I love it.  I love the actors, I love the delivery, I love the backing music and the seriousness of the whole enterprise. Especially: “And obviously not a Christian either!”.

Get’s me every time. I really want to know what JilianLovesTheBiebs has to say about it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxrWuE5qC5c 

Good AfterMornings
I have rhapsodised about this particular blog enough here, so I will not go into detail. I will say just this: I have laughed (and cried) at this particular story, and it is an ongoing saga, so many times. You will most definitely enjoy the story of this frustrated office employee and his unmistakably insane boss, I cannot recommend it enough and I implore you to read it.

Read from the very start here: http://goodaftermornings.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/introductions.html
You will be glad you did...

Missing Missy
This has been doing the rounds for years, and I’m sure you’ve read it, but it has diminished and gone into the west now, so maybe you’ll enjoy this reminder. A faffy, annoying, attention-hungry woman pesters a designer colleague to make her a poster, and he obliges with the most unhelpful series of passive-aggressive feints ever. Mean, but you’re so on his side.

And “No Reward”?  Sheer joy.
http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html

The Judd
This one is self-explanatory. I would literally let him do anything he wanted.  He could punch me in the face and I would still love him. So here, gentle reader, is The Judd at his best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4SDduJhtMo 

The Fail
Sadly, popularity killed this one. There is still the odd gem, but a quick flick through the blog now shows it is up to 4000 odd pages now.  The quality has dipped accordingly.

But those early days, before it was over-subscribed by millions of keenbeans saturating it with flimsy, ineffective parodies?  It was amazing, and had me in absolute hysterics. There are still some amazing ones, every now and then, but you might have to wade through some poor ones before you hit the jackpot. Same for autocorrect fails too... killed by success.  But for old times sake...

http://failblog.cheezburger.com/

Day 27: A letter to your readers (#BEDM).

Dear Internet

Please stop taking photographs of your cat or dog in the mornings, snuggled up on your bed, with cutesy captions like “someone doesn’t want to get up lol111.”

I could tolerate one or two.  But a daily update of your cat or dog, in the same position and the same place? It looks the same each day. You might as well save yourself time and battery power and just repost the first one over and over again.

And why don’t you? Because you think it’ll be boring. I’ve got news for you, I’m afraid. It is just as boring taking a fresh photograph of your dog in bed with you each morning as it is posting the same photograph of your dog in bed with you again and again. To the casual observer, it really is no different.

I’m really not totally convinced I understand what it is you’re trying to achieve.

Also, you may not realise, but you are not the only one doing this all over twitter and facebook. You are one of 15-20 obsessive dog-photographers taking multiple photographs of your dog from different angles in the same position, in the same place. And you may not realise that we can’t actually tell the difference between your dog in bed with you and the dog someone else posted in bed with them 3 minutes earlier.

Admittedly, I am not an animal lover. I don’t see the cutesy appeal. But it just seems so self-indulgent! Yes, I’m aware that half the internet is people taking ‘selfies’ now, and pictures of their child, or their dinner or their drink. The whole internet is self-indulgent, sure.

But the animal thing? I’m no fan of endless pictures or updates about children, but at least they are actual human beings. They still take precedence over animals on my sliding scale of interest. And food? At least you can vicariously think 'ooh, that looks tasty!' But animals?  In bed with fully-grown, functional adults? Every morning?

So do us all a favour, internet. Limit yourself to one picture of your dog a week.

You might love it to bits, but you probably wouldn’t be interested if I distributed a daily photograph of my verruca via social media each morning, would you?

I feel much the same about pictures of you in bed with your dog.