-----Original Message-----
FROM: Helga The Help
SENT: Oct 15 2005 12:00AM
SUBJECT:Technocrap
I once programmed a computer to spank my ass and call me charlie -- and I'll do it again!
-- Helga
Dear Technical Hipsters,
I am Helga The Help and I want to take all your latest, greatest, cooler-than-thou wannabe techie toys and shove them so far up the output side of your large intestine, your bowels will be moving transistors for a week.
The truth is that your pathetic existence is satisfied by your gadgetry while your product awareness is pegged to the latest nine-figure marketing campaign. Here’s what I wish you’d realize: by the time you’ve heard of it, it’s no longer cool. Beat that with your mom’s tailpipe.
Here are 4 examples:
- iPods: I had an MP3 player in 1998. It weighed 10 pounds, had kick-ass battery life and the coolest interface software you’ve never seen. Yes it was my Pentium II Laptop with a copy of Winamp, what of it? At least when Steve Jobs released his Phillippe Starck-inspired turdlette I wasn’t shocked to learn that one can listen to digitized audio on the go. Especially since I had already owned a Nomad for years.
- Podcasts: Could someone please explain to me how this is any different from your OS’s sound recorder with an MP3 conversion thrown in? But now that it’s been nicely packaged for you, we have an army of schmucks recording their meaningless thoughts into MP3 format and strewing them all about the wasteland that hath become of the Internet. Why is it that you all think we give a rat’s ass about you or what you have to say?
- Blogs: There has never been a shortage of people who had much more to say than others had the desire to hear but this is perhaps the greatest enabler. Back in 1994, I had to at least learn HTML to share my web-based boredom with the world. And now? A chimpanzee could click over to Blogger.com and publish a better looking web page than anyone had 10 years ago. How do I know? I see Slippy do it every day.
- Macromedia Flash: Having your menu fly in from the side or having your page fade in with a grain filter may have been cool the first 10 thousand times I’ve seen it but now it’s just stealing precious time from whatever stupid thing I’ve come to your site to read. HINT: if you can drag and drop it in, there’s a good chance that another million people thought it was cool too and did the same. The web has become the same outlet for designers trying to flex their programming muscles that Power Point has always been for the sales geeks. In the end, both look like poseurs but at least sales guys get paid.
I could go on at nauseam but an exhaustive analysis is out of the scope of a weekly newsletter to say nothing of your Homo Erectus attention span. Whatever. Why don’t you put on your EMO glasses, go to your local WiFi caf, crack open your 17" PowerBook that you got for Kwanzaa from mommy and daddy and start forwarding me those funny videos that I’ve seen 4 years ago. I promise to keep track of them so when the time comes to declare a techie Jihad, I’ll know whom to get first.
Helga
AIDS Dodger/CSS Supremacist