They Are My Peeves And I Will Pet Them As I See Fit.
Irradiated by Stingray
There is no good goddamn reason for every single article/how-to/hey-look-at-this link on the internet these days to include an embedded video. 99 times out of 100, the information or joke would’ve been just as good, if not better, as text only, if only for the simple fact that the last time I had to wait for text to buffer, I was able to whistle the connection string to the modem on the far end of the line and leave it confused when I didn’t continue the conversation. If there’s an ad in front of the text, I can look below it and start reading without having to sit through 30 seconds of What’s Gonna Suck At The Theater Next, or some damn middle aged fuck’s idea of what is hip and edgy in graphics and styling assaulting my eyes to sell shoes or phones.
And speaking of phones, let me just throw this out into the wild: I don’t give two flying shits at a rolling donut how you got your message to my eyeballs. I think it really is nifty as all get-out that you can use your idroidberry to communicate with more power than they fucking had on Star Trek TNG in a smaller form factor. I get that the tech is cool. But again, I don’t fucking care that you posted using shovepress for your ipeen (omg there’s a new one that has VERY SLIGHT CHANGES coming out soon, and it’ll only be $500!). Great. That really added to what you were trying to communicate to me. Unfortunately it added the exclamation point that you’re either too dumb to turn off the default advertising, or you just HAVE to make sure everybody knows JUST HOW COOL your communicator is, or you just get down with giving free advertising to whoever makes the damn thing. Stoppit. Odds are if you’re reading this you’re a grown adult, now stop waving your little silicone chubby at me every time you want to communicate.
Paper based books are not dead. Kindle is not evil and without the soul of paper. If you’re reading, good. Full stop. If you just want to jihad on about how you just can’t stand ebooks because you don’t physically turn a page and can’t flip to just the right spot, stop it. Either go read something, or join in fighting with the people who argue that chili must/must never have beans in it. If you’re going on about how archaic paper is and it’s stupid to have 1000lbs of books when you can fit the same amount in one device, you get to go play with the glock vs. 1911 crowd. And yes, I’m sending you off to separate arguments for a reason. Think hard, you’ll get it.
Now go laugh at this video, check out this book for kindle or paper, and please note:
-Posted using a Zephyr Vibroplex Telegraph Key US Patent No. 767,303
(Update: Go watch this one too. Poor lady must not be very popular if she’s digging for links here. 
)
April 28th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
One question.
Did you borrow the Telegraph Key from Roberta X?
April 28th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
I’ve never liked video, or even audio, instead of text.
Interestingly, I had a similar thought two days ago while reading slate.com - the comments on an article alluded to the fact that these days, voice mail is pretty inefficient, and it makes a lot more sense to send the pertinent info via text message.
I don’t know what the article actually said, as it was not text, but an audio podcast.
*faceplant*
April 28th, 2011 at 5:51 pm
(I wrote that poorly. To clarify: the comments strongly implied that *the article itself* pointed out the validity of using text over audio to convey information!)
April 28th, 2011 at 6:07 pm
“you’re either too dumb to turn off the default advertising, or you just HAVE to make sure everybody knows JUST HOW COOL your communicator is”
You wouldn’t happen to know how to turn off the “posted from my iphone” messages on facebook, etc. would you? It annoys the snot out of me, too, but I’m an end user, not a total geek and haven’t managed to figure it out yet. (Being a total geek is NOT a bad thing - my son’s one, and he’ll make more goddam money than I ever did. *sigh*)
Thanks….
April 28th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Gimme plain text any day.
- Posted from my spleen
April 28th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Sorry, anon, I can’t help you myself. I don’t have a smart phone, and it’s rare I remember where my plain ‘ol cell phone is anyway. But we’ve got some of the various fanbois what read here, hopefully one of them can help.
April 28th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Now that was a world class fuckin’ rant, right there.
April 28th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
The video thing is especally fun for me as my filter gives me the “We won’t let you see this so Nyaaa!:P” message.
*Sent via well trained homing pigeons*
April 28th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
I know it’s one of them newfangled vidjos, but you really should watch the “Keynes v. Hayek” one that that Tamara chick embedded n a post this morning… :p
April 28th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
I’d love to Tam, but I’m now getting the “Oh, you want to watch this, don’t you?… WELL TOO BAD!” error message.
*Sent via Jungledrum*
April 28th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
That patent number is actually for a paperclip.
http://www.pat2pdf.org
April 28th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Well that would be because I typo’d. DAMN YOU AUTOCORRECT! Fixed now.
April 29th, 2011 at 3:43 am
So full of win. Says exactly what I feel, pisses off Breda, gives Roberta X a new idea, and starts a meme in PNG, all in one post.
April 29th, 2011 at 8:45 am
I couldn’t agree more. My company has piles of required training programs that are basically Flash slide shows with 10 lines of text per, with some barely literate reading it to you at 2 words a minute. The infuriating thing is that you can not hit “Next” until the fucknuckle gets done reading to you, so what could be a 10 minute training blurb turns into 40 minutes of background noise while you stop paying any attention and do something else until the bitch stops talking and you can proceed to the next slide.
April 29th, 2011 at 9:38 am
Those would be a lot less objectionable, Eric, if you got achievements. [Drool Bucket] - you sat through three powerpoints!
Can you tell I’m dealing with the exact same problem currently?
April 29th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Re videos: Firefox + Adblock Plus + Flashblock = video if you want it, or not.
Noscript, Ghostery, Better Privacy and Nosquint make life a lot nicer, too.
Jim
April 30th, 2011 at 8:42 pm
…And daggone it, I was beaten to be the first to post with a semiauto key….
May 2nd, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Fuck me, guys — I think my company uses the same training firm as Jim and Eric Hammer.
Just bloody well send me a friggin’ PDF of the compliance regs, training materials, whatever. You can even tell me to log in and take a test. Just LET ME DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE!!! (He posts, while waiting for another animated slide of meaningless mumbling to finish, so he can flip back and spend 10 seconds reading the complate transcript that pops up after the voice drone shuts up.)
May 9th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
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