500 Million Friends

Social networking sites aren't limited to the internet anymore, they're now the basis for a number of films as well. When I say "social networking sites", what I really mean is Facebook. Apparently the site is about to reach 500 Million users, a figure that's somewhat shocking and hard to believe, but when you consider that number, it's really no surprise that filmakers are seeing the potential in making a film about a website that half a billion people use.

The two films couldn't be more different in their approach, but they do both show very interesting aspects of the phenomenal site. The first is a documentary by two New York filmakers called Catfish. And I really don't want to give too much away because I don't want to ruin the experience for any one, but basically a guy falls for a girl on facebook, he decides to go and meet her and then things get really weird. It's a timely reminder that the internet is not the same as real life and there are privacy and safety concerns that come with it.



The second film is based on Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale About Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, about Mark Zuckerberg, the website's founder.



According to the official Facebook page on Facebook their mission is "...to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." However, this raises a number of questions as to whether or not making the world more open and connected is infact a good thing.

Bella 2.0

You might have thought it wasn't possible, but you were wrong - Stephanie Meyer has written something even worse than the Twilight series.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner  is written as a new, vampire perspective on the same story, aiming to show another, more monstrous side to the hugely popular saga. Or, in other words, Meyer is using the Twilight franchise for absolutely all she can. The protagonist is 15 year old Bree Tanner who is turned into a vampire after running away from home. The by-line 'There are two sides to every story" implies that this "novella" might be a less sookie version of events, as instead of being from the point-of-view of the nauseatingly in love Bella its the perspective of a supposed killer, but I had far too high expectations. Meyer basically uses the exact same character as Bella Swan, but gives her fangs (Wait a second, she doesn't even do that - Meyer's vamps don't have fangs!). The two girls are equally clueless and utterly dependent on their male counterparts and Bree knows her "boyfriend" for only one day before she's willing to die rather than be without him. It's disgustingly familiar. At least Bella was stalked by Edward for a little while before she was completely infatuated with him, but both know barely anything about their respective vampire suitors before being totally "in love" with them. Uhhh, and don't even get me started on the oh-so-repetitive and not-so-subtle Mormon references (only "bad" people like prostitutes and bums get attacked by vampires?).

I'm glad this is a free e-book, because it's definately not worth money. And I'm also glad that I'm not the only person in the entire world who finds the whole thing really off-putting. This makes me feel so much better:

Coooool

Distoring someone's face in Photo Booth is fun for pretty much anyone - quite possibly because the photos it creates are just so repulsively ugly. New York artist Matic, has taken the idea of those ugly faces and made it really, really cool by turning the squished photo into a functional mask.

"Using Apple's Photo Booth application as inspiration, the idea was to take the 2D image that it manipulated and create a tangible face in a real environment, then in turn bring it back into a 2D image. Using Photo Booth on the mask itself may create some sort of paradoxal shift where I cease to exist." Matic.

Who the fuck is Justin Bieber?

Clearly I am already way out of touch with what teenage girls find appealing today. According to this morning's news they like baby-faced, fluffy-haired, sixteen year-olds, with particularly feminine singing abilties called Justin Bieber.

This kid was found on Youtube a couple of years ago and now has millions of twitter followers and a no.1 album. What is going on in the world? Things like Youtube and Twitter seem to have made the whole concept of celebrity and fans explode into craziness. It appears Bieber's "Beliebers" (primarily females under the age of fifteen) have too much access to their lover-boy, what with him tweeting all day, every day and billions of photos of him all over the internet - the whole fan thing has been taken to a new, scary level.

Teenage girls with broken knee-caps? What the hell?

We're Sad To Lose You

I found this on the side of the road outside a primary school. It's pretty cute.

Heart of Darkness

I just read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for one of my classes at uni and the more I think about it the more I like it. When I first read it I was a little let down because I was expecting something quite different. The title 'Heart of Darkness' made me think it was going to be a dramatic, gothic novel which, of course, it isn't! It's typical Modernism in the way that the deeper you delve the more there is to discover and I just keep discovering more themes and ideas that it's almost overwhelming.

The thing that really stood out to me though was the narrative framing. It begins with a seaman on a boat with three other people, one of which begins telling a story about an expedition he was a part of on the Congo River in Africa and the majority of the remaining novel is this retelling. Numerous critcs have labelled Conrad as racist for his depiction of the native Africans in the novel, but I think the subjectivity of the story being told far overrides these suggestions. Heart of Darkness is a story about the unknown and the difficulty in ascertaining truth in a world of such vast knowledge that it is impossible to unconver it all.

I suggest you read it. And then read it again.