Monday, November 19, 2007

And Now An Anachronistic Word From An Old, Crotchety Guy

There are two kinds of people, those who do/will like the new Duke City Fix layout and those that do/will not. It is with a reluctant, quavering blog voice that I admit I do not. I say this even though we bloggers should all stick together and one should especially be nice to the McDonalds (as in big, not reprehensible) of Albuquerque blogs. More importantly, I reluctantly say this because I can just tell from looking at the new DCF that by stating my dislike of its new look I am:
  • Old
  • Unhip
  • A Web dinosaur destined for extinction and eventual placement in an Internet museum as a relic of a distant unhip past
  • Really old
I guess it all boils down to my general desire for the Internet to go in a time machine and return to the year 2002 or so. I want my Internet pre-video, but with today's bandwidth (and yes I realize I posted three THREE separate YouTube vids on one post last Friday...but I can tell you it felt...kinda creepy).

I do not like "avatars". I do not like even typing the word "avatar". I do not like MySpace or Facebook or whatever new, hip site exists now for people to express themselves through "avatars". I make it a point to avoid MySpace sites, not because of any concerns about safety for its millions of teenage members, but because I can't stand being bombarded with crude "avatars", horrible backgrounds and cloying music that bring back all the horrible memories of those 1990s-era vanity webpages (here's an example), (oh, and here's another) but with tons more "avatars" from "friends" and other misuses of our increased bandwidth.

More than anything else, I detest the use of the Internet for "social networking". Okay, I detest the use of anything for "social networking". More to the point...I detest "social networking". I prefer my Internet video, avatar and "social networking" free. I like my Internet information-rich and visually poor.

I guess I like the 'Net more for its Wild West libertarianism than its High-Tech Socialism. Last week I showed part of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" to my film class. I freely admit it was the single least popular movie I've ever shown to a class (Westerns unpopular..whoulda thunk it?) Anyway, as you may recall that movie is all about the idea of the vanishing West, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford's lawless characters eventually forced out by the steady creep of "civilization".

Looking at the new Duke City Fix I feel a bit like Paul Newman's character (but without the beautiful blue eyes). Maybe I need to move, as Butch and Sundance did, to the Internet version of Bolivia. Or maybe even, dare I say it, read a book.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Movie math. Cowboy plus anachronism equals Lonely are the Brave.

Signed: Another old, crotchety guy.

Nora said...

There are some good parts that you may not see within the layout: we can do more with our posts more easily now, guest posts are going to be far more common because it's so much easier to "feature" items, and forcing people to register for accounts is hopefully going to cut down on trolling (as well as, hopefully, making trolls who do sign up easier to control).

The layout's pretty new and might take some getting used to for all of us, but I think that this will lead to genuinely better content as well as less frazzled administrators.

You'll be getting a lot more content, though, and you don't have to compulsively look at the new users page in order to look at people's avatars/icons (as I do).

Maggie said...

Scot, I adore this post... 1990s-era vanity webpages? Brilliant! Gotta admit that I don't like the new DCF either... but mostly because my corporate office internet access has decided that it's now a "Personals and Dating" site and blocks it. Grrrr... damn social networkers! Fortunately, 'Burque Babble is no such thing. :-)

marjorie said...

Read a book...ha!!

Anonymous said...

Nope. Don't like it either. Crammed with a bunch of stuff I don't particularly want, hard to find the stuff I do. Rather read trolls than new users.