The Internet and its influence on the reality

I wrote this blog about a year ago. So the dates could be a little bit off.

The first time I logged into the Internet I just turned 14 and I used a 28,8k modem. It was a whole new experience and there had been unlimited opportunities. So many people to meet, infinite information flow, and fucking lot of porn, though it took an eternity to download one picture. I do not know if it is true but rumors say that Chuck Norris invented the Internet to store his Porn collection¹.

Nevertheless at this time, there was Internet or the so called Virtual Reality and Reality. I surfed the web, wrote some emails and wrote stupid comments on bulletin boards. Thats it, there had been no, or no significant influence in my life. It didn’t matter what I did on the Internet, the majority of people and friends around me wasn’t interested at all. I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but the interest of the people had changed significantly. They were suddenly talking about cyberspace, exchanged URLs and started to build their own websites. After a while, Google, Youtube, Facebook and other sites appeared in the consciousness of the people. Then World of Warcraft, flash-games and Ebay popped up. Trough those and other sites a second Reality had been shaped that did not deserve to be called Virtual reality anymore because the influence of it on our daily life is just too big. I will write about 3 examples of how the Internet and their Community influenced and interacted with the Real Life Environment. Though the 3rd is a little bit short because I didn’t had much time to finish this blog. Sorry for that.

Events

When we talk about the Internet, I actually mean the community and or sites that are related to humans, because we have not yet invented Skynet. Right at the moment Facebook with its 400 million users is maybe the biggest Community in the World but to be honest, the site itself is useful but not really exciting. But in terms of organizing a Flashmob or Events its exciting and influences not only the way of organization, but it also keeps the police and politicians busy, at last in France. There the Facebook Community uses FB for organizing so called apéro géant, which means massive aperitif, or to say it in other words, have some drinks with completely strangers in an open air environment. The phenomena emerged last November in the western city of Nantes where 9,000 people joined this event and it rapidly spread to other cities. ² In the last few month there had been 60 of those events and the organizations try to outreach each other by the numbers of participants.³

The biggest Event according to the newspaper will be at the Eiffel-tower in Paris, where 15,000 people already signed up for this Group on Facebook.⁴ But I have to admit that I couldn’t find the Group so maybe it was canceled.

You can Organize one event with 15,000 People, just by starting a Group and inviting your friends. I think thats awesome! But there are also security issues coming from the local authorities and and politicians. They say that in Nante 40 people were arrested because of drunkenness, drug possession or rampage. ⁵

The Home Secretary, Brice Hortefeux, said that those events should not be forbidden, but that they have to be properly registered to the local authorities, so they can guarantee the safety of the people. ⁶

Media

It all started out with a prank on 4chan, a image-board site in the worldwide web. There they posted a Link that should have redirected you to a trailer of the new Game GTA IV, but instead they were looking at a music video from 1987 called „Never Gona Give You Up“ from Rick Astley, which you have just seen. That prank, known as Rockrolling, became a phenomenon, not just inside 4chan, but also to the „outside world“. It is said that over 25 million People clicked on the several music videos available on Youtube. ⁷

And according to an poll by SurveyUSA in April 2008, 18 million American adults got Rickrolled.⁸ Then in the same year the MTV Europe Music Awards started and surprisingly, this music video won in the category for the BEST ACT EVER . But not without the help of the Internet Community and 4chan. They abused the fact that MTV allowed several votes and placed a manual for an VOTING MACRO in the net. It is said that Rick Astley got 900 million Votes, which had been at least 100 times the total amount of all votes, cast in the 2007 EMAs.⁹

Another poll hack occurred in the annual TIME 100 POLL last year. In this pole the Users had to vote for the Person which has the biggest influence on this world. Due to this Pole, the most influential Person in the world is moot. Spelled moot, the founder of 4chan. He got nearly 17 million votes, which is nearly as much votes as the TOP 10 has together and by the way much more than Barack Obama, Ophra Winfrey and Wladimir Putin. But they did not just manipulated the Pole trough voting him to the top, no! If you look closely you can see that the first Letters of the TOP 21finalists spell out „Marblecake, also the game“. (There is no porn of the game. If it exists there is porn of it, no exceptions. Therefore, the Game does not exist. Also, the game/ Marble is the IRC channel Moot uses often) Which is an clear indication that this whole Pole was a fake.¹⁰

Demonstrations

Nevertheless those guys from 4chan must be really bored, because before they made a move at the Pole they started a campaign against The Church of Scientology. That was about 2 years ago and they did everything from DDoS distributed denial of service attacks against the servers of Scientology, made prank calls, send black faxes in order to disrupt the operation of the church.¹¹ But they didn’t just stayed online, they organized several Demonstration in real life around the world. On February 10, 2008, about 7,000 people protested in at least 100 cities, worldwide. Within 24 hours of the first protest, a search for "Scientology" and "protest" on Google Blog Search returned more than 4,000 results and more than 2,000 pictures on the image-sharing site Flickr. There had been protests in Sydney, Toronto, London, Dublin, Dallas and New York. The Protests went on till November 2009. After that the situation cooled down.

In conclusion we can say, that the movement from Cyberspace towards and into the real life is getting bigger. I know that this article is not really scientific, but from my point of view and my experience this influence is much bigger than 15 years ago and is still getting bigger. The Internet is breaking down the barriers which stands between the Internet itself and the reality. And with the spreading of wireless LAN and other technologies which allow us to access the Internet from every possible point, those realities will became one. Not only can the Digital Community interact with the real world, they are shaping it like never before. There had been demonstrations, Media had been manipulated and influenced, and new ways of organizing things and people, are being discovered. Facebook can mobilize thousands of people, so can Twitter, as you have seen during the last years riots in Iran and also during the students protest in vienna last year.

1 http://www.chucknorrislegend.com/index.php/2006/04/10/encyclopedia_of_chuck_facts_5_science_aa

2 http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/TechandScience/Story/STIStory_527545.html

3 http://www.stern.de/digital/online/phaenomen-apero-geant-frankreich-fuerchtet-facebook-saufgelage-1568265.html

4 http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/TechandScience/Story/STIStory_527545.html

5 http://www.n-tv.de/panorama/dossier/Frankreich-fuerchtet-Massen-Trinkereien-article883411.html

6 http://www.haz.de/Nachrichten/Medien/Uebersicht/Riesige-Facebook-Treffen-bereiten-Politikern-Sorge

7 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352010,00.html

8 http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/04/09/you-wouldnt-get-this-from-any-other-pollster/

9 http://encyclopediadramatica.com/The_Rolling_:_MTV_Gets_Rickroll%27d

10 http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/

11 http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141839-c,hackers/article.html

Thank you Disney

As you may know I have visited Disney Land and was really amazed about the whole styling, the rides (especially the tower of horror) and the food. I admit that it is a little bit expensive but the feeling you get and the fun is really worth the money. Besides the money I was really annoyed by the waiting lines in front of the rides. The waiting line in Disneyland is like an open-air torture chamber. The sun is burning your skin and you can’t get any water. The torturer do not allow you to go to the toilet or else the torture is starting all over again. The only thing you have hope for is that somehow you will survive that whole procedure to get out alive to have one last ride and then can die happily. But some people can not stand it. 5% of the people who survived the torture longer than 1,23 hours kill themselves because they are just freaking desperate. The scholars of this study invented a word for that. It is called the Disney-waiting-line-syndrom. But there is hope! When I was climbing up the fence to high-five the forthcoming rolercoaster the God of Mice appeared in front of me. He told me to lead his people out of the line. "Yes," I said, "but how should I do that?" and he answered with a high pitched voice. "Lead them into the mighty net! There you should google around till you find myspace." "Oh mighty Mouse. But the service fee we have to pay for that is too high and only the rich can afford such a journey." God then said "Build up a WLAN Network so everyone who believes in my son, the mighty Gadget, can wander the net. Everyone except those who tasted the forbidden apple" So after this encounter with the God of Mice, I contacted the CEO also known as M. Mouse. 2 month later they answered my email. The only thing he told me was that they don’t do business with outsiders and they are going to delete my email. Maybe I should have said that God had send me to do some good and maybe get more detailed about the idea. But nevertheless here it is.

Build up a fucking WLAN Network. Sell Disney Movies over that thing. Build up a page where the waiting time is displayed. Let me read some awesome Disney Comics. Let me Chat with Goofy!! Display the items you can buy at the shops and if you are really really awesome then ad an shopping cart so I can shop online while I am waiting. May I have a peak into the dressing room of Tinkerbell? Or let me at least control a real life WALL-E Robot over the network.

"Mama! Those ideas are really awesome! I want to do all those things because they are fun and they keep me from killing myself!!"

"STFU. Disney want you to die so the waiting line is getting smaller."

Thank you Disney, thank you very much for the awesome time in the waiting line!

Disney Land and Gated Communities PART I

It was about 15 years ago when I first heard about Disney Land. The Land of Dreams and Magic where I can meet my favorite characters from Duckburg and play with them. I wanted to be a part of that beautiful Kingdom of happiness. But that never happened. Disney was too far away and so I had to wait patiently. 15 years later the waiting had ended. I went to Japan as an exchange student and finally one of my childhood dreams was going to become true: spending one day in magic dreamland where everything was possible. I walked trough the Gates of Disney Sea into a parallel Dimension where vomit is being called Protein Spill, and happiness is being fixed in the contract of employment (that was the impression I got when I looked at the faces of the entertainer). It was possible to travel trough Arabia, Italy, Atlantis and South America within 12 hours. But I also climbed up some magic rope, flied into an Tornado and survived an elevator crash in the Tower of Terror. I met my favorite character Goofy and took a picture with Indiana Jones, though he would not let me took his hat. There had been popcorn in 1000 different flavors and Ice with the shape of Mickey Mouse, the first and most important character in the world of Walt Disney. I had a lot of fun and and behaved almost like a child. But it was different than the image inside my head. The reason for that is simple. I, to some extent, overgrew my own naive imagination. I knew that Disney is a hardcore multibillion Entertainment Company and the the Boss of the Company is not a cute talking Mouse, but rather a big fat Rat in a (chief executive) chair. Ok that is maybe a little exaggerated, but after waching the Southpark Episode(The Ring, S13E01) where Mickey Mouse made an appearance the Wonderland Image of Disney got another huge crack. And the Episode of Family Guy called "Road to the Multiverse"(S08E01, Timeline 9:30-11:36) didn't help, to restore it either. Nevertheless some interesting thoughts came to my mind while fooling around in the Dimension of Brute Happiness. One of this idea was that Disney Land theme parks are a new form of Gated Communities.

At this time I had been tired from walking around and had several adrenalin rushes from the roller coaster, so there is the possibility my brain had an fallout. That’s the reason why I want to examine this topic a little bit further. Starting point will be an citation of McMullen. After this base had been set I will give a short definition of the term communities and describe how it can be altered to fit this particularly situation. On top of that the term of Gated Communities will be discussed within the context of Disney’s theme parks.

"A gated community is any residential area which physically restricts the entrance of nonresidents. Every hotel or apartment building with a doorman or a fence controls the flow of residents and nonresidents alike. Homeowners associations, meant to influence the appearance, population, and social character of the community, also have been used to restrict access. Although each gated community and each neighborhood charter differs, most share a few common characteristics: physical barriers to entry and movement, the privatization and communal control of public spaces, and privatization of public services such as trash removal and police forces." (McMullan) This citation describes both the word Gated Community and the parties involved with the term. Above that it gives an general idea of the size of those GCs. It could be a huge residential area or just one building. So generally the term does describe a physical space but the characteristics of it are more important.

There is Origami on the Toilet.

Origami, the art of paper-folding. It’s a realy beautifull and fascinating activity. Also there are intersting but sometimes sad stories which are conected to Origami, like the one of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Or the fact that the folding technique of solar panels in satellites had been invented by an japanese Origami Master. But it wouldn’t be Japan if there is not a curious thing releated to that fascinating art, that makes you laugh. That thing is called Toilet Paper Origami. Yes! Toilet Paper Origami! They fold the head of the role so the next person can grab the paper more easyly and be entertained at the same time. Personaly I prefer a comedian standing next to me who is telling me jokes while passing me a paper, but that’s a matter of taste. So what kind of shapes do they fold with toilet paper? There are a lot of forms, from simple to extraordinary. The most complicated thing i have seen, which uses nerarly the half of the paperrole, is the phoenix you see in the picture. But my all time favorite is the Valentine Heart. The message behind it: Take my heart and wipe your ass.