It's Clay Shirky's Internet, We Just Live In It

How is stackoverflow.com going to get me laid?

Instead of struggling all night long with a problem, you visit stackoverflow.com and find the solution to your problem and can go home early, to work on the “get laid”-part of your life.

I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

No way! That is the problem with social networking, nobody sits around and tries to figure out whether Betty Rubble is just cute, or if Wilma is a filthy bitch in bed. Go to the pub and you will (if you’re a red-blooded male) have a conversation just like that! (ok, and which of two opposing sides will kick who’s ass, whether that’s sports teams or generally incompatible creatures - eg Godzilla v a transformer).

OK, it is pretty sad if you’re in your basement by yourself comparing Allison Cameron or Meredith Gray for hot babeness.

On the computer, via a ‘network’ things are different than when you’re with other people. Consider the kind of posts you see all the time from people who consider themselves alone and anonymous (and so free to say any old inflammatory guff). I think this is an important, but relatively overlooked fact. So all that social software… its really just electronic masturbation, and will not help anyone get laid. Quite the opposite.

I never knew why Orkut is so insanely popular in Brazil (you can even notice from the amount of news in slashdot with Brazil and Orkut in the title)

“How will this software get him laid?”

Now I know. Everbody with a internet connection here has an Orkut profile, for almost half the people here internet IS orkut, the other half is orkut+youtube. Seriously, google praticaly owns Brazil internet.

Micropayments seem to be working well for the XBox 360’s downloadable content. Although most things cost about $10 a piece, so maybe these are more like centipayments.

Super quoter strikes again.

We’ll see what happens to computing, internet and otherwise, when the median per capita energy budget drops to what it was in 1920. In about 5 years.

How is stackoverflow.com going to get me laid?

Easy, if you visit SOF, you’ll get smarter , then if you’re smarter you’ll get a better job, with a better job, you’ll make more money and everybody knows that women like rich guys… CQFD

In Germany you can get the book a little bit cheaper than at Amazon here:
http://www.bookya.de/isbn/9781594201530/

We may love code, but sadly, our code does not seem to reciprocate.

Well, mine doesn’t anyway.

Jeff,

Thanks for every thing you do. People like you make this place a better world.

On the down side, stackoverflow is blocked at work, with the tag “social networking site.” :frowning:

It’s not all roses: stackoverflow.com is blocked here at work, with the tag “social networking site.”

I’m not a big fan boy of social networking, but that YouTube video was the most informative 42 minutes I’ve spent today.

Thanks for sharing.

Your web filter is blocking it before it even really exists? Wow, now that’s proactive.

Great article. I’ve been on the fence about whether I should read “Here comes Everybody” or not, but this just put me firmly on the side of “must read”.

Thanks!

YouTube video from the post was removed. Anyone have a new link?

Great find Jeff! Thanks. I gotta pick up that book.

I’m your typical anti-social geek and I would not be interested in social networking were it not for the YouTube community which is highly effective at forming friendships between strangers. Much as I prefer to express myself in writing, I acknowledge the power of video. Facebook and even Twitter are clearly not the future of social networking if they do not incorporate video. Seesmic deserves more of the hysteria.

Facebook and even Twitter are clearly not the future of social networking if they do not incorporate video.
Considering the ease at which you can link to or embed YouTube video, I don’t really see why they need to!

If that’s the UK version of the book cover, how come “organizing” and “organizations” are spelled with a zed?