A joke. Ostensibly about science.

I used to call myself an astrophysicist cause I spent a lot of time studying how A-list celebrities move. Then I realised that's not astrophysics, its astrokinesiology. Then I stopped calling myself that cause it isn't a real thing.

Do you ever feel like you've been cheated?

Johnny Rotten said that. Appropriate.

The Most Honest Chain Letter In History

YOU MUST SEND THIS LETTER TO 10 PEOPLE WITHIN 10 DAYS OR THE MATHEMATICAL AND STATISTICAL PRINCIPLE KNOWN AS “THE LAW OF AVERAGES” STATES THAT SOMETHING BAD MAY OR MAY NOT HAPPEN TO YOU.

In 2007 this letter surfaced for the first time, and has since been passed around the world numerous times. In fact, due to the decentralised nature of the internet, it was probably routed around the world at least once between the gmail server and you. (Obviously, this statement makes the assumption that you are using gmail, which is a statistical probability, given the advances in corporate servers’ anti-spam software since the introduction of Server 7 and its generational equivalents.)

In that time, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people have read this message and sent it on. Or not, as the case may be. Carl Wilkinson, 49, of Boise, Indiana, USA, received this message, but did not pass it on to the required 10 people in the required 10 days, and less than a week later he died of a heart attack. Medical experts mistakenly believed this was due to his poor diet and lack of exercise. However, they had no way of knowing that he had failed to continue this chain, as his inbox, spam AND trash folders contained no evidence of it, it being so thouroughly deleted, and therefore the true cause of death was never revealed.

Just a few short months later, Miss Qui Qon Jhinn, 32, of Shanghai, Germany, successfully continued the chain, sending this letter on to 10 people in just 10 seconds, thanks to her mailing list settings, and was rewarded by winning 100 Rupees on a lottery scratch card.

One of her mailing list recipients, a Mr. Rajesh Stankowitz, of Jerusalem, Argentina, also sent the letter on, and was rewarded nothing for his efforts. However, he also lost nothing, bringing the score to 1-1-1.

Based on the above evidence, and with the karmic mojo associated with the words “chain mail”, do you dare NOT send this message on? Something bad may or may not happen if you don’t, and something equally good may or may not happen if you do. Are you willing to take that chance?

The Internet is a weird place

That title bears repeating, The Internet IS a weird place. And yes, before you say anything, I realise that the internet is a decentralised computer network. I watched the Terminator movies. Many times. But that’s not the point. And neither is the fact that you can find the most stomach-churning pornography at the click of a button. That goes without saying. The reason I make that statement is that months after I wrote a disparaging post on this very blog about musician Mike Peralta, I’m still getting the occasional disgusted email about it.

Now, to clarify, the “feud” between Mike and I was completely manufactured. Logical would dictate that a musician from California and a part-time stand-up comedian from South Africa who’ve never met wouldn’t have all that much to feud about. What happened was, Mike and I “met” on twitter, and got to talking. We had a joke between ourselves that the two of us would create a fake “beef” between us, which would eventually be settled in a wrestling match on one of America’s many fine independent-circuit promotions. Mike and I would face each other in a match to end the feud, but would be attacked by two of the real wrestlers during the match, making us put aside our differences and join together as a tag team to face our new “enemies”. And, as is often the case, we jokingly decided to put our little plan into action. I posted two blogs about how much I hated Mike, and made several jokes at his expense on Twitter.

It was at this point that things got weird. Mike’s fans began to comment and/or email very insulting things to me. That was to be expected. But when I mentioned to Mike that I had more than 200 hits on those posts in less than a week, he told me that it takes him AGES to hit those numbers, if he hits them at all. That seems very strange to me. If you’re a Mike Peralta fan, surely you’d be more interested in what he has to say than what some random South African hater says about him? Apparently not. It seems that pro-wrestling promoter Eric Bischoff was right when he said “Controversy equals Cash”. It seems to be a strange quirk of human nature that people get personally offended when you insult not just them personally, but also the things/people they like.

For the record, I am a Mike Peralta fan, and I’ve even introduced his music to some of my friends. The fact that I didn’t mind playing the bad guy in this particular little game shouldn’t give random strangers the right to email me threats to my personal safety (I’m genuinely surprised that everyone steered clear of actual death threats- Mike must have the most chilled out fans ever) and hopefully this post will serve to shed some light on the subject.

 Actually, I take it back, the internet isn’t weird, but the people who use it are a strange, defensive bunch...

That is (hopefully) all.

300 Followers? Fool's Gold!

I’ve been a twitter user for six and a half months now, and I’ve gotten pretty good at using not too badly. It’s taken me this long to get up to 240 followers (at time of going to print, or whatever the internet equivalent of print is) and some of those are companies/spammers, so the actual number of people who actively read my tweets is debatable. My opinion, however, is that having just 10 or 20 followers who read and appreciate what I have to say is infinitely preferable to having a million followers who don’t actually give a shit.

I’ve always believed in quality versus quantity, which is why I only follow 170 people (and some of them only tweet once or twice a week) and I really don’t understand how anyone could possibly follow more than 200, 250 people and ever hope to be able to keep up with all of them. The whole #teamfollowback thing mystifies me. I am truly vexed at this behaviour. Recently I encountered someone (who will remain anonymous 'cause I didn’t bother to memorise their name) who has the following stats:

Following: 2,511

Followers: 2,511

Tweets: 15

Additionally, this person’s bio contained the tags #followback, #teamfollowback, and #autofollow. Talk about self-esteem issues. These people’s standard tactic is to follow you for a few days, then unfollow if you don’t follow them back. Now, as I said earlier, I don’t see how or why anyone (aside from a company like DStv or MTN) would be able to, or even want to follow that many people. It amounts to standing in the middle of a soccer stadium and trying to listen to EVERYBODY’S conversation. At the same time. But the thing that gets to me more is that a person who’s only sent 15 tweets is being followed by so many people. What could they have possibly said or done in 140 characters or less that would have evoked such loyalty? Oh, that’s right, nothing. Cause the 2000+ people following you are most likely following the same amount of people (or more), and can’t possibly notice your monthly “I had bacon with syrup for breakfast #rebel” tweet.

I’ll admit, my Following list contains a large number of celebrities, both Hollywood and local (as does just about everyone’s, I imagine) but I’ll follow anyone whose tweets I find interesting and/or informative, and/or contains borderline pornographic twitpic links. And I’ll retweet anything I find funny/awesome/cool-in-some-way from anyone, and I expect nothing less from the people I follow. But I’m sure as hell not gonna followback anyone who follows me just cause they did follow me. And I’m not gonna bitch about my best one-liners not getting retweeted, or beg for others to retweet my best jokes, and I’m sure as hell not gonna beg celebrities for retweets, cause my self-esteem just isn’t that low (OK, I did ask Jonah Hill for an RT once, but that was a joke based on a previous user who begged for an RT, and it was funny at the time, damnit.) Sure, I occasionally check my Klout score, cause its amusing to me to see how I “influence” local celebrities (today I have a +6 influence on Model/Actress/Lawyer Jenna Dover... How? Why? Whatever) but that’s more out of curiosity than a burning desire to feel like what I have to say is really, REALLY important.

I’m totally bamboozled at the mindset that compulsively gathers a large following but doesn’t use it for any particular purpose. You want your voice to be heard? Use the damn thing. As for me, I’ll continue shouting into the darkness. Even if no-one’s listening, at least I’m saying something instead of sitting in the corner, waiting for someone to notice me.

That is all.

PS. please follow me, I'm lonely.