This is just too funny! New ANTI-Social websites with plug-ins for Facebook! Snubster and Enemybook!

[Up2Late]

Snubster

<http://snubster.com/>
(the anti-Friendster), complete with "On Notice" lists and "Dead to Me" lists...

And

Enemybook

<http://www.enemybook.info/>
"Enemybook is an anti-social utility that disconnects you to the so-called friends around you."

I heard about it on NPR on Friday: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16579431>

These are the first two I've heard of, but if anyone know of any others, please post them.:evilgrin:

[AlertLurker]

1. Incredible! Too funny (and sad at the same time).

I predict "Enemybook" will be particularly popular around here for the next few months...

[WorseBeforeBetter]

2. Bwahaha!

*no hugs * *you aren't special!*

[Lisa]

3. this is hilarious! Lately I've been swamped with demands that I join up ...

Some folks have even said that they don't want to be "friends" with me unless I'm on Myspace, Facebook, etc. -- which kind of goes against the whole notion of "bringing people together", doesn't it.

[Up2Late]

4. Yup, and I bet those so-called "friends" will try to tell you they know all 500 of...

...their MySpace Friends too. :eyes:

I personally know 2 of my nearly 300 MySpace Friends and have exchanged messages or comments with about another 10 or 15 of them, it's such crap, but kind of fun once you get the hang of deleting the Spammers that request your "friendship." :evilgrin:

[Lisa]

5. I have to admit that none of the people I hang out with are on MySpace ...

And yet we somehow figure out a way to interact, regardless. (I also have a number of pen (keyboard?) pals whom I haven't actually met yet, so I'd like to think that I'm not a total Luddite ... and most of them don't seem to be on those social networking sites either.)

I'm becoming concerned that there's a kind of fragmentation happening -- two people in my office had a shouting match last week, over whether it was better to get an account on MySpace or Facebook. They only stopped bickering when another colleague chimed in with "they're both pretty lame" -- whereupon they both started arguing with him instead!

Am I the only one who thinks that the concept of ranking one's favorite friends is reminiscent of high school (not the fun parts, either)? I was lucky to get through those years relatively unscathed (a couple of my friends actually attempted suicide, partly as a result of being rejected by cliques). So I find the whole concept of "add requests" to be a veritable social minefield.

Most of the people who have been urging me to join these sites also seem to have a lot of criticisms about things ranging from security, to the amount of time it takes to cull out the spammers, to how lame the pages of some "friends" are. So this doesn't really inspire me to want to jump in.

When people I contact via the Internet say they want to know more about me, I direct them to my DU journal (and my Photobucket pics). I set those things up, partly as an attempt to show that I was willing to meet folks halfway, if they were concerned about the fact that I don't have much of an Web presence and are worried that I might be a practical joke of some kind. (I guess people do make up phony personas as pranks or outright frauds, though I can't imagine having enough time for something like that!)

[Up2Late]

6. Yup, they are both kind of lame, but if I had to quit one, I'm not sure which I'd chose.

See, Facebook is REALLY boring, but it's a much better place to "network" with real (non-faker) people. I actually use my real name there.

I think MySpace was probably more fun back in early 2006, and it's still more fun than Facebook because it's a lot easier to customize your page and add things like your favorite embedded video and/or music play lists and photos or slide shows, but the daily assault of porn-spammers has taken a lot of the fun out of it.

If I was going to sum it up I'd say, keep your serious Political talk here, do any actual business networking at Facebook and get creative at and with creative people at MySpace.

Btw, the main reason I joined MySpace was to try to figure out if my old best friend (who I hadn't been in touch with for several years) had written anything on his newly created MySpace page that would explain his sudden and hard to explain death and even though I didn't find anything outright suicidal, I could tell that he was not in a good mental state when I read the blog posts he left there. Lot's of talk about going out and getting drunk, mostly alone, and it all just felt like a sort of last ditch effort to find happiness or else.

It took about 6 months of confused searching, but I eventually did figure out that his death was suicide even though he didn't leave a note saying so. He mixed drinking with high doses of Acetaminophen (Tylenol and Vicodin), a very deadly combo and a horrible way to die. I had another friend kill himself in 2001 via self-inflicted gunshot after years of futility as a member of my churches singles group (MySpace wasn't involved) so you never know what will set people off.

I'm glad to hear your friends didn't go though with it, those kind of attempts that are more a cry for help, the successful ones you don't hear about in advance.

[Lisa]

9. the election campaign I'm supposed to be helping with ...

.... is apparently running a Facebook site. But one of the reasons why I like the candidate (JW) is that he didn't insist that I join up and start ostracizing me when I hesitated. (Funny thing -- I actually suggested a "Politicians Without Cars" Facebook group in a moment of silliness, and he thought it was a great idea, so that might happen even if I'm not around for it.)

I did learn something interesting ... apparently if one joins as a politician, the Facebook options are much more limited than if one is a regular person. JW explained that there have been so many complaints that Facebook is changing this, as of next month.

Very sorry to hear about your friend. (I remember visiting one of my friends in hospital after his suicide attempt, and as you say, it was a cry for help ... but the thing is, he did it in an isolated location, and it was so long before anyone found him that it very nearly did succeed.)

Thanks for your advice regarding those specific sites. Definitely something I will keep in mind.

One of the reasons why I have decided to put off joining MySpace is because I looked at some of the pages run by the "MySpace friends" of a person who has been pressing me to join, and a lot of them seemed rather despondent and isolated ... I realize that everyone goes through down times, and that it's not always possible for others to help, but I started to wonder why, if this person was so keen on my connecting with her in MySpace, that she didn't seem to be keeping in touch with the people she already "knew", even though they'd sent her repeated messages. Perhaps she was keeping them private, but still -- it did make me think, a bit. I had visions of it turning into the kind of thing where I ended up with a site account that I didn't really want, and after all that I never hear from her again anyway.

The other thing is -- I'm having problems with internet access. The machines at work can't load many MySpace pages (seems to be the graphics and animation-intense ones), my landlady promised me home service in 2001 but still hasn't gotten around to it, and the place where I'd normally surf is out on strike (and I only would get an hour or so each day). So it really wouldn't make sense for me to spend my limited online time at a site where I can't read most of the stuff anyway!

If it's a case of people wanting some reciprocity when it comes to sharing information -- and this seems reasonable to me -- I can point them to what I've already got, or just e-mail specific responses to questions. My feeling is that there's so much boring stuff on the Web already that I don't really see what adding more mundane details about my own life would contribute! But if the issue is "we want Lisa to get on Social Networking Site X, and we won't be happy until she does this" -- that's a whole different type of question, and one I'd much rather tackle over hot chocolate, face to face, at a real-life hangout somewhere.

[bemildred]

7. Hmmmmm. An ignore feature for the internet.

That could have possibilities.

[shadowknows69]

8. Ok then, we eat the TV anchors first says I.

Station executives for dessert.