Some websites
A colleague walks into my office yesterday and introduces me to tiny little site called Stuff White People Like – with the proviso that he isn’t going to be responsible for any procrastination or large amounts of time lost as a result of this introduction.
I haven’t laughed that consistently since Tropic Thunder. Probably my favorite is the grad school entry:
Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!
This site also has the most comments/entry I’ve seen in awhile – with some posts clocking thousands of comments and trackbacks.
While I’m at it, I’ll also plug China Smack – it’s translated run-down of the hottest tabloid stories in China. It’s complete news trash (but strangely interesting), however the translated comments provide good a different angle into another aspect of life on the Mainland.
06 Nov 2008 10:47 am Bryan 7 comments
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I love China SMACK!!!! It’s really one of my favorite blogs about China. :)
Yeah, there are some very bizarre stories on that website. I do admit that I am partial to the comments…
Talk Talk China still reigns as the funniest blog regarding that country though – shame it is down.
And I haven’t even been to Talk Talk China. :(
I’ve been thinking about doing something like China SMACK but then many forums in my country don’t need much translating. Or not really that interesting content. (Or rather bizarre like China SMACK’s) :P
Unfortunately it shut down in 2006 – it only ran for about 1.5 years but nothing has come close to the sheer hilarity and originality of the writing. At times it was very un-PC and as you can imagine, really got the fenqing rolling. I’m surprised there wasn’t a human-flesh hunt for the authors (maybe there was…I don’t know).
Canada doesn’t seem to have much of an internet sphere or a good general portal site – there are one or two that cater to specific cities (Toronto, Vancouver etc) and there are a number of partisan political forums, but nothing really like sina or xici or other giant portals that ‘everyone’ goes to. There are heavy comments on the big national newspaper site (The Globe and Mail) but it is set up in comment fashion, rather than in forum/thread/post form.
Generally speaking, I don’t find Canadians to be a very wired or digital population. A lot of time is spent on Facebook (but usually within your existing circle), but not too many people blog and Twittering (I never really got into that) is almost non-existent outside IT and Tech circles. Mobile phone costs are astronomical and severely limit that mediums full potential.
People have definetly tried to make an attempt to fill these gaps, however plethora of cobwebs floating around the Canadian internet world are testament to their level of success – I think we just dont’ have the population and are too diverse/divided to really come together on a big portal.
I could just be old too – forums and portals are kind of 90’s and I haven’t dived into and used Facebook to it’s full potential.
I really don’t like Facebook that much. Everyone’s into it. >_<
Really? I’m surprised (about Canada). I thought people in North America and Europe are into the internet.
That’s what’s really great about China. It’s like people are just starting to open up to the WWW, and everyone wants to try it out.
We are somewhat web-savy in Canada, but it isn’t as a widespread phenomenon like Asia. People just don’t organize and exchange through the web on the same scale…the ‘human-flesh’ searches in China come to mind…not that I want to see that kind of thing in Canada, but it is an example of how closely the web is used by so many people.
I’ve always felt that the Chinese culture aspect of guanxi and building massive networks full of hundreds of people – many of whom you don’t even really know, dovetails perfectly with the concept of the internet.
You know, that’s a really interesting point you have there (about guanxi).