Narcissistic Blog Disorder and Other Conditions of Online Kookery
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The AMA suggests gaming addiction should be considered as a sub-category of internet addiction. But "internet addiction" doesn't begin to cover the realm of bizarre and pathological behaviors the internet inspires.
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In March 2002, I made a bet with Martin Nisenholtz about the relative importance of weblogs and the New York Times. I was and am a blogger, and Martin worked then, as he does now, for the Times. For the actual terms of the bet, read the piece on the LongNow site, and a story I wrote to announce the bet. A few comments.  1. It seems now is the time to decide who won the bet, if either of us did. 2. The world that I hoped would come about did not. While blogs have broken many stories, they have not, in general, turned into the authoritative sources I hoped they would in 2002. When the blogosphere resembles journalism it's often the tabloid kind.  3. I wouldn't mind losing the bet. That is, I wouldn't mind if the Times fully embraced the web, and I suspect Martin wouldn't mind if blogs rose to the quality of the Times. 4. If the bet had been held a year later, it seems there would be a pretty good chance that Martin would have won the bet because they recently took down the firewall at the Times, allowing search engines to index the full content. In the past, articles would remain visible for a couple of weeks then you'd have to pay money to access them. I believe they have a special deal with Google and other crawlers that allow them to get past the membership wall. For most of 2007 the Times articles were behind the firewall, and were less likely to be pointed to (which is how they rise in rank at Google). 5. It certainly is fun to speculate, but the decision about who won belongs exclusively to the Long Now Foundation. They have to decide who determines what the top stories of 2007 are, and imho they should consult with search experts to determine how to do the queries. Apparently it makes a difference how you do it.  But ultimately it's their decision. 6. Whether Wikipedia has more or less results seems to be a sidebar to the bet, which only talks about blogs and the Times. 7. Another interesting sidebar is rich media. In 2002, before podcasting had taken hold, before YouTube existed, it would have been hard to forsee the story of the South Carolina beauty queen, or the Don't Tase Me Bro guy. Questions about the future are always framed in the context of the past. Did the question Martin and I asked have any value in 2007, or did it just say something about the world of 2002?   Update: Paul Boutin who arranged the bet, apparently in conjunction with Google (I didn't know this) in 2002, weighs in.
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If you want people to think you're way cooler than you actually are, why not claim to be a guest blogger at one of the revered weblogs in the blogosphere? Here's a handy guide to crafting your horrible lies. Commentary by Lore SjÃ¶berg.
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Blogs, or Web logs, have become very popular, influencing even the mainstream media. Merriam-Webster defines a blog as: &quot;a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks.
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I found this news piece a bit interesting when sifting through the press wires this morning; Technorati Japan has worked on an amazing study which shows how Japanese bloggers are writing about and communicating with companies via their own personal blogs.  One fascinating aspect of the US and Japanese blogging markets is that there is [...]
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Readers remark on cybercrime and the power of pornography. Plus: Links to our most popular blog posts.
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I plead guilty to past transgressions. So, call me a hypocrite if you will. I don't care anymore. I refuse to get stuck in the past because the present and the near future is fun. Indulge if you will in recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images experienced as intrusive and distressing. The obsession with Microsoft in Open Software communities is excessive and unreasonable and a product of the mind. My only hope is that such thoughts, impulses, and, or images can be expunged by logic or reasoning, which is contrary to the notions in the psychiatric community. read more
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I asked for advice in reducing vitriol on this blog, and a couple of readers helpfully identified a source of the problem: me. They and many others didnât like my suggestion to require commenters to use their real name. Tartuffo wrote: âAs someone who has been on the Internet since 1981, from alt.flame to the [...].
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Private videos seem to be escaping to the internet in droves. Do we care? In Sex Drive Daily.
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This is really cool!  I finally get my own comment spam!  For some reason I felt left out of the party.  I just wasn't cool enough for the spammers to consider me worthy of their spam.  Anyway.  I implemented my own little turing test.  Now the comments say:  {{{  Turing Test: Are you a human? (required. Just type yes... this is for automated spam prevention)  }}}  While this wouldn't work for all blogs in the wild I'm sure it will work just fine here in my little corner of the blogosphere.  If spammers really want my blog enough then I'll deploy a captcha.  If they solve the captcha I'll deploy a sentient robot  which will traceroute packets back to the host and then terminate with prejudic ...
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By Randy Myers, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.  Jun. 10--In the no-holds-barred blogosphere, every voice can be raised.  But not everyone cares to listen.
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Decision: Blogs vs. New York Times. For the last couple of weeks I've been emailing with people from the LongNow Foundation and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times, to determine who won the bet.  Ultimately we asked the foundation to consider all the argument and make the decision. They published their decision today. It's well worth reading because it answers some of the questions raised by the bet, for example, what is a blog, and how does Wikipedia relate to blogging. I don't agree with everything in the decision, but I do like the result -- we won.  The beneficiary of the bet? The World Wide Web Consortium. I chose them as the charity to receive the proceeds if I won the bet because web standards are what make it all work and the W3C is central to standards on the web.
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Paul Abrahams' comparison of blogs with the CB radio fad may or may not prove to be right, but too many of us are missing the wider influence of user-generated media.   It is not just bloggers who are influencing corporate reputations online.
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In this article, we highlight some of the methodological issues that arise when conducting research into the prevalence of deliberate self-harm. We provide an overview of the literature, focusing on gender ...
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What happens in the online world can be a freeing experience. Sometimes too freeing, so be careful out there. Commentary by Gina Lynn.
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Beware the Internet's meat puppets. And sock puppets. And trolls and shills and astroturfing and other forms of dubious online marketing.
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In response to this recent article from the Hiveminds website, Marco Tabini has a few choice words about some of the topics they cover in the article, and cover incorrectly.   Over the last few years, I've made it a point of trying to respond to at least some of the "PHP is dead"-type articles that crop up on the Net from time to time. The latest one comes from Hiveminds and reveals a complete misunderstanding of almost every point it covers.   He notes that though the article seems to be a coherent whole for why PHP is dwindling, it's "based on nothing more than a string of misinformed concepts cobbled together to give the appearance that the author knows what he or she is talking about". Marco comes back against each of the points made in the article, setting things right and eliminating some of the FUD (fear, uncertainly, and doubt) that the Hiveminds article spreads.