Desperate Freelancer

Have you ever wonder why top sites are always the most dumb, crappy, lousy, idiotic ones ?

I 've just discovered that tool named Alexa that ranks websites according to their popularity. And I was staggered to see that top sites ranked there were the most creepy and stoopid websites I know.

Yes, most of them are well-known and established websites. But, all things considered, I find them dull, ugly and definitely useless. They do not offer high value service, they have poor design, they are basically boring.

At this stage, you might think I am completely nuts (which is surely true, but for others reasons, you can't even suspect). Before you definitively settle your judgment on me, let me try to demonstrate to you how right I am saying that the most popular websites are the most crappy ones.

I will focus on the top ten sites in United States, because I find them more representatives of what people look for on the web, and I don't want my point to be polluted by some Chinese unintelligible webstuff, or by European's usual misunderstandings of what things really are. (As a French myself, I am pretty well-informed about our huge capacity of misunderstanding we have as Europeans)

I want to see the truth of what interests people on Internet in the country that invented Internet.

Here are Alexa top ten sites in USA :

1. Google

Google is my friend. I am sure it deserves to be number one.

But it intrigues me that Google is the most used website in the world.

Is the web so messy we need a robot to search for us ?

What are people looking for they cannot find by themselves. Let's have a look at Google Zeitgeist for 2007

It's amazing to see that among the 10 fastest Rising requests, you have at least 8 you just need to put a dotcom in the end on the top of browser to get to..

What the point of typing "Facebook" or "Youtube" in google in you already know their name ?

As for the Iphone, I am sure that if you think 10 seconds, you can easily guess where you could find it.

2. Yahoo

There is all you need, on Yahoo : mail, chat, search engine, news, answers, videos, shopping, horoscope, weather...and a pretty loud amount of advertising.

I wonder why people on Yahoo need to go elsewhere. With all this stuff, you don't need no other website anymore.

So I guess Yahoo get so much traffic because it retains the early-adopters of Internet, who had never managed to quit the site since the beginning of the web, and keep on trying new services and new services...till they die.

3.Myspace

I just can't figure out why people spend so much time on a website so ugly and so much in a shambles.

There is more than 200 billions users on Myspace, who can you find there in such a mess of stinky design and musician wannabes ?

No real friend for sure.

4. Youtube

Ok. People are fed up with TV boring broadcast. They want to watch real stuff on the Internet. Something new, something real, something deep, something fun...

Here is the more viewed video on Youtube : Evolution of Dance

This is the evidence they should go back to TV. At least, it creates jobs : scriptwriters get paid for this.

5. Facebook

Someone posted on your Superwall. You have 1890 friends request. Someone tagged a photo of you naked. Sally poked you, poke back ? You have 46 "hug me hard" invitations. You have 4 "what stupid lamer are you" test invitations ? Someone kissed you, want to know who it is ? You have been invited to "fed up with facebook, claim it to the world" group. Jack sent you a snowball. Dick Tracy bited your werewolf, bite back ? Georges Bush accepted your friend request. Joe di Maggio challenged you in "Strip poker and apple pie" ...

Do I need to say more ?

6. Windows Live

Sincerely I don't understand what this website is about. It just look like a big download center for MS products.

I can't believe people need to download this kind of stuff. Wake up, guys, they are all included on every PC you buy !!

7. Ebay

I have an old and filthy floor cloth my mother gave me, when I first moved in my own flat. I want to get rid of it, but I can't resolve to throw it to the bin because I fear it can damage environment with all bacterial miasma it contains.

So I paint it red, I tell people it has been used to clean blood in one of Charles Manson's slaughters and suddenly it's worth 1500 bucks and I have fun during 7 days to look at fools bidding on that old floor cloth.

That's ebay.

Unfortunately, the last bidder offers 4 308 $ but "forgets" to pay, and here we are for five months of Ebay's dispute process.

So I agree there is no better thing to sell crap or to get scammed by Chinese Hustler, but what else can you do seriously with Ebay ?

8.Wikipedia

Wikipedia could be a great thing, a wonderful web encyclopedia, a new Babylon library, something huge which offers unlimited knowledge to anyone and for free.

But on Wikipedia knowledge is a fluctuating thing. Articles on a topic changes version everyday. So called Experts spend their time arguing about the color of Henri IV horse and there is often more content related to an article than in the article itself.

Too bad.

For your information, the color of Henri IV horse is white. No. gray. No blue with dots. Well, it may be red but this article is subject to caution.

9. Craiglist

Come on. Isn't all the success of this site due to the "casual encounter" section ?

I can't believe people spend so much time reading classified ads to delight themselves for other's lacks.

10.Microsoft Network

It's Microsoft second site on the top ten. Doesn't it look like the beginning of a monopole ?

Why didn't they put all their spying tools on the same website ?

Maybe it's a bug.

Well, to conclude with the desperate analysis of Alexa Us top ten websites, I could say there are only two options :
- First option : Alexa is not reliable
- Second option : People are dumb

We are now living in a world of copy and paste. You would say that I am an old grumbling old-timer resistant to every technical progress, but I sincerely believe that despite the huge increase in information quantity, we are creating less and less original content. The reason is that we are constantly duplicating the very same stuff all the way round.

Let me give you a few examples :

1. Journalists copy and paste press releases

Press agents are doing a good job providing information about their companies, products, managers and so on. Famous press agencies are doing a good job providing news to feed the newspapers press-rooms all around the world.

Journalists are doing a great job rewriting all that feeds in articles you would be able to read... everywhere. Because they are all writing upon the same basis : press releases from major companies or news feeds from press agencies. No surprise everyone seems to say the same stuff at the same time.

Moreover, in a second step, journalists are copying and pasting each others. The first article on a subject will be soon copied and replicated in all competitors magazines within a month. It's acceptable because noone wants to be left aside in the scoop industry.

Yes, it's not pure copy, Yes they rewrite, but in the beginning there is only one unique source with original content.

We are surrounded by the same information replicated, cloned and passed by from a media to another.

2. Bloggers copy and paste information from one another

If you start investigating deeply the blogs' world, you would notice that few a really creating unique, personal, significant content. Most of them are duplicating the content they found in others blogs, usually big and famous ones. They settle for analysis, review, video that everyone has already (or is going to) relay.

Yes everyone is bringing ones little touch, but (I am not going to make friends here) it's mainly the same content. In my opinion, 10% of the blogs really produce something new.

3. Students copy and paste Wikipedia

Why bother writing something from scratch using your own brain and thinking abilities while you have on the Internet all the materials you need to write down this essay or composition that should be done for tomorrow ? Why not just watch baseball on TV and copy and paste Wikipedia or whatever ?

I met several teachers that actually complain that students are confusing "research on internet" with "copying what's on internet". I met others who say it's good enough if the work is done.

Is that necessary to go deeply into a subject while it's admitted that you just need to organize others' production in something readable for the teacher (who is anyway copy and pasting his own appreciations from one year to another) ?

4. Consultants copy and paste their own production

Within 10 years of existence, the average consulting firm has produced enough content for all its lifetime.

Strategies, concept, analysis, matrix, spreadsheets... consultants can spew enough contents in a few years to convince any client to reorganize its firm according to their universal credo : do less with more (or the contrary I can't ever remember)

You just have to changes the client's name, move the slides positions and here you are with a brand new recommendation able to generate sufficient fees for ten more years of copy and paste.

Next to the office I rent, there are some guys doing sort of "consulting" jobs. They are acting this way : Any new prospection job to do ? No trouble.. let's look at our archives. I can spit it's true. They may not be good consultants, I dunno, but I guess they are not the only ones to do so.

5. People copy and paste their own opinion from the press

Have you never heard a friend's point of view about a movie or a book, thought it was brilliantly expressed and read a few days later the very same analysis in your favorite magazine ?

People are stealing others' judgments and thoughts all the time. Ok it's not new, but as the copy and paste strategy is spreading among the population, we care less about covering our tracks.

6. And so on

Please do copy and paste here other examples you found on your own or on other blogs dealing with the same subject. I am sure that if you start thinking to some examples on your own, according to your personal environment you would find lots of examples of this copy and paste invasion

You may not agree with all what I am telling above, which is I admit slightly exaggerated for the purpose of the demonstration, but you have to recognize that we are faced with more and more cloned information and less and less thinking.

A ultimate example, if need be, to convince you I may have a point : I am sure you can name at least ten celebrities or stars about whom you have just heard about some rumors, news or gossips, but can you name only one living great thinker, philosopher or writer that is responsible from a major improvement in the way we understand mankind ?

So ?

Where is all the original content gone ? Aren't we able to produce some anymore ? Or is it hidden in the furious mass of bullshits we heard everyday ?

Aren't we going into a black hole of information, where all true pertinent content is aspirated and ground into a vacuum of never-ending echos ?

Where are we going with these "copy and paste habits" this society of speed, mass information and standardization has rooted into us ?

I dunno. It's not my time anymore. It's yours. So, for once, I will let you do all the thinking...

Happy Easter.

Life is wonderful. Every time I feel myself in need for something, it suddenly appears (except for money of course).

I started going round in circles in my rented office with all my "colleagues" all around getting fed up with my outdated and silly pranks. They had had hard times suffering my schoolboy tricks. So I felt myself desperately in need of new ones and here they come...

I just found out that videos communities such as Youtube were gorged with silly office pranks, jokes, hoax and gags. So I made this week-end a good harvest of shitty gimmicks that are clearly worth the try. A good week in perspective in my shared office. Not for my coworkers of course.

Pretty filthy, isn't it ?

Watch for this one then :

This one is very good also, but you need a whole team to set it up :

And If I start being short of office pranks, I have Forbes Online Magazine to refurnish my mind with great ideas.

Every generation has had its own dance or musical movement. Something strange and hallucinating that grown ups just identify as silly and useless. There had been rock. There had been punk. There had been hip hop. And many others, some of very little interest. All them vary in intensity about their revolutionary power or their acrobatic creativity. But they all are bred in the same source : the youth determination to spend their money in childish disguises associated with the movement, in order to stop their sure progression towards the adult age. I could barely see any other reason.

Nowadays, in France, country I live in, we have such a movement, beginning to spread widely among the youngsters. It's named Tecktonik. Even to an old man like me, who has seen lots and lots of weird identification crap, it's look like a large escape from asylum. To me, it seems as if the people following this movement were attacked by the mad cow disease. They practice a kind of physical mumbo jumbo that is hardly decodable by the human eye.

It can't be explained fully with words, so the better I can do, is to let you see what it looks like on Youtube :

Please do notice by the way that this video has 7 millions views. If this is not insane youth behavior, I don't know what insanity is.

So what's new here ? In comparison to the same gregarious sociopath's movement I cited previously ?

First, Tecktonik is a registered trademark. Yep. Sounds crazy, doesn't it ? It means that if you want to use the word Tecktonik as a reference for any public use (such as danse events, CDS, and so on..), you have to pay. It's not a free movement.

Secondly, it's total vacuum when you dig about the ideas that the movement conveys. I am not asking for something as deep as the "Peace and Love" of the Hippie stuff, but just a little bit of sense in this "I am an electrical hamster dancing movement".

Thirdly, Internet is the main contagion vector. Through this media, the tecktonik disciples are enrolling other people with videos such as the one I showed you. There are even tutorial videos like this one, where you can learn how to do the epileptic thing the proper way :

I guess Scientology has something to learn from it.

In the end, I feel very concerned about the emerging of this movement and its spreading to the world. We are building here a generation with huge elbow damages that social insurance won't be able to cope with.

Ok, ok. Kids have the right to have fun. And yeah they can pollute Youtube with their insanities. But please let's pass to another movement. This one is too weirdy and boring for me. At least, Gansta Rap had gunfights you can watch on the news.

Sometimes I just feel like a foreign reporter in my own country. I guess all senior dudes feel the same. Except that they can't be suffering from it, since their brain is fading away in the milky way of their memories.

Unemployment is one of the modern plague of our society. It's common nowadays to pass by a jobless period at least once or twice in one's life. That the way things goes in this unsteady economy. Yep, it sucks but what can you do about it ? Nothing but search for a new job.

As for me, I had never been out of job for more than a week. I changed jobs more than often (some would say more than necessary) but I always had the opportunity to get hired very quick after I quit while screaming hell or after I had been sacked with things being thrown at me.

Let me tell you how I can do this whereas some people stay for years unemployed.

I have a five days method that always work. Let's have a look at it.

Day one : Seek for jobs other people don't look for

That's a paradox of our system. There are in the same time, many people desperately searching for jobs and many jobs that can't find people to do them. It should match, but it doesn't. Because, the job busters are all looking in the same direction.

Everyone wants to be marketing assistant or accounting manager. They want a boring but clean and warm position in the middle of the open space of a big famous and trustworthy company. But there is not enough room for everybody in such places, whereas there is plenty in other fields people don't look for.

I don't tell you to look for the creepy jobs such as public toilet cleaner or rats hunter in the sewers.

But you can find interesting and well-paid jobs in fields that noone search for. For example, I occupied positions such as waiter in a restaurant (good tips), night watchman (funny and security bonuses), cleaner in a cold store (bonuses again for "climate" conditions), pet's baby-sitter (nice income if you choose well your patrons), or phone boxes tester.

Okay, with such jobs you can't show off with girls in night clubs and you can't afford to buy a car every two months. But the pay is fair enough for a living and these jobs are not much stressful.

When it piss you off, you can always quit because you are sure to find a new position.

So investigate in newspapers, and job centers where the real demand is, and make your shopping according to your taste.

Day Two : Discover what qualifications it needs

Most of them don't need any, so you can skip to point 4, and take one day off in your employment hunting.

Some need real diplomas, so avoid them, but some can be done just with a little experience in the field.

Generally ads say you need some knowledge and few skills that are compulsory. But they do say that to avoid complete dumbass to turn up.

Come on, you don't need a PhD to drive a crane or to cut hairs. You don't need to come from Harvard to say hello to customers in a store. You don't need 25 years of experience to put books in shelves or to sell insurances to grannies.

But bosses do think so, which leads us to step 3.

Day Three : Acquire theses qualifications

Generally, you don't have any experience in the field. But don't bother : you can make yourself an expert in one day.

Read some about the job, on the web or in your neighbourhood's public library. Get an intelligence on the subject, so that you could talk as if you have done it all your life long.

Go to forums, ask questions, eventually call someone, acquire the jargon and the ruses of the job. Imagine yourself doing it, focus on what would be the difficulties and the success factors.

Ask friends to be referrers if the employer ask for ex-bosses to speak to. Write down a few anecdotes you will use in the interview. That will make do. One day is enough to be pretty ready.

Day Four : Go to the interviews

Call the companies that put ads for the positions you are looking at. They are generally longing for just one serious answer. Tell them your are available now for an interview. Be convincing and you will soon find yourself in the manager's office for an interview where he would sell you the job rather than you sell him your so-called experience.

Day Five : Call back

Phone back the employer, pretending someone just made you an offer and you have to answer quick. Of course, would you have the choice you'd prefer to go to his place, and that's the reason of your call, but you don't have the choice.. yet. Don't you ?

Statistically, it works every 3 times you do this trick.

Sure, you will start the next monday a job you've never learnt or trained for.. but that won't be so difficult believe me.. and that's better than stay unemployed facing your TV and eating crap like a doomed yokel.