The Internet — Enabler of Guilty Pleasures 206
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "'Sure, the Internet has revolutionized the spread of information and all that high-minded stuff, but its combination of reach and anonymity also makes it the greatest enabler of guilty pleasures ever invented,' Jason Fry writes in the Wall Street Journal. 'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.' For example: Fry, a rock snob, has a double secret life as a pop-music fan (secret no more, of course). From the article: 'If your secret love of "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" has caused it to creep into your iTunes list of 25 most-played songs, a simple right-click will let you reset the play count. If you want to hear Fall Out Boy, but would rather do so in secret, you can command Last.fm to ignore that the song was played — or delete it from your charts if you forget. Viewed from the standpoint of cool logic, this behavior is at least mildly insane. But who needs things that remind us of who we really are, as opposed to how we want others to see us — or how we'd like to see ourselves?'"
Oh so true (Score:4, Funny)
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Is this song...? (Score:2, Funny)
Hmm...is this song from the soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain?
No wonder he wanted to hide that one....
Re:Oh so true (Score:5, Informative)
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Probably my finest moment.
(I guess the point is that no everyone is afraid of what other people think.)
(Then again, I'm po
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i think the point is that you can be more secretive.. it doesn't take the kind of balls to do something online it might take to do in front of a store full of people (or even just one guy behind a counter)
Oh, I don't know about that.
Time's cruel weathering of the soul, an abundance of pre-middle-age cynicism, and maybe two or three pints of strong lager can permit (dare I say it, "encourage") a casual stroll into Harmony on London's Oxford street.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:how pop? (Score:5, Funny)
If God wants take issue with me he come on around and I'll mmmmmmmm bop 'im.
KFG
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and the internet is necessary for this how? waaay back in the days when the bbs ruled the earth you could still listen to dorky music in the privacy of your own home, away from the judgemental eyes of your peers. if anything, the internet makes this sort of clandestine pleasure harder. last.fm, filesharing &c make
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That one chick from Hanson is really hot! (Score:5, Funny)
Peter Griffin - If you could have any woman in the world, who would it be?
Quagmire - Taylor Hanson.
Joe Swanson - Taylor Hanson is a guy.
[Pause]
Quagmire - [Laughs] You guys are yankin' me. "Hey, let's put one over on old Quagmire."
Peter - No, he's actually a guy, Quagmire.
Quagmire - What? That's insane. That's impossible.
[Pause]
Quagmire - Oh god. Oh my god. I've got all these magazines. Oh god.
Re:That one chick from Hanson is really hot! (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, this is nice and dandy, except for:
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Guilty pleasures? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Guilty pleasures? (Score:5, Funny)
Speak for yourself. I visit Digg, too!
Wasn't it easier to do these things decades ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wasn't it easier to do these things decades ago (Score:2)
What is this "tape" you speak of? Are you into bondage? On the internet? With kids?
Re:Wasn't it easier to do these things decades ago (Score:5, Funny)
What is this "tape" you speak of?
He's posting from 1986.
Now is Creepy. (Score:2)
The only person who'd know is me and the record store guy, and he cares less than some server somewhere
Sure, now your non free software vendors know you better than you know yourself. That's one of the reasons I don't use non free software. When Fry pushes the counter reset, Apple takes note that something bothered you about yourself. What books I read, where I go on the internet and what I read there, how much I paid in taxes, all of these things I'd rather keep to myself.
Re:Wasn't it easier to do these things decades ago (Score:2)
Are you still in high school? I hope so, because having hidden tastes that you are ashamed of is pathetic. Who cares what the hell you like to listen to. They don't have to listen to it so screw them and anyone else that wants to judge you for such petty matters.
If you are a metallica fan and like new kids on the block and are
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pleasures! noo! (Score:3, Funny)
BUT! it's become the greatest enabler of pleasures ever invented.
horrible.
everybody get back to your miserable farmwork!
Guilty Pleasures (Score:3, Funny)
BSG Season 3 promo [youtube.com]
Some blogger far more witty than I commented that "The only show that could make them sound -good-". That's now my excuse. Yes, that's it.
Not just "mildly" insane (Score:5, Insightful)
But more to the point, who in the world has other people looking at their iTunes playlist? If someone is looking at my PC and browsing my iTunes library, I suspect that they probably know me well enough to know of my love of 50's car songs (Jan and Dean & The Beach Boys) and penchant for listening to Weird Al's Starwars songs.
I have to ask what type of paranoid thinks that the whole world is trying to ferret out their listening habits...
Re:Not just "mildly" insane (Score:5, Funny)
So, what you're saying is, "If you don't defy the herd, the herd should enforce herd defiance behavior!"
Welcome to the herd, bubba!
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I understand the remark was in jest, but honestly that wasn't what he was saying. He was saying like what you like without shame. It's a small subset of the larger "be yourself" point. Many people preach this shit without really believing it or doing it. If I liked the backstreet boys I'd ruin everyone else's ears with them by playing them loudly in my car as I drove pa
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Sure, he said that. He also said that if you don't do that you, "deserve disdain at every level." The purpose of disdain [reference.com] is to apply social pressure to conform to a desired behavior. In other words, "If you don't like what you like without shame, you should be ashamed of yourself."
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"We're all individuals!"
"Excuse me, I'm not!"
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I think that column is supposed to have a hefty tongue-in-cheek element that's gone over pretty much everyone's Furious Nerd head...
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Everyone cares what there friends think, it's just that there is a recent trend to cultivate the image that you don't care what people think - but it is still an image, and you are still trying.
Think about it this way, what are the odds that the emo kid shows up to his friends party wearing abercrombie, or the comp sci geek gets a Ryan Seacrest style suit?
The whole world doesn't care (I know I don't), but your friends might raise an eyebrow if they found Justin Timberlake's entire audio career (or s
Re:Not just "mildly" insane (Score:5, Insightful)
Slow down, tiger. To some extent, this sort of behaviour (especially at, say, the high-school-ish age level) is part of a search for belonging, and (some people more so than others) are unfortunate enough to be surrounded by a shallow sort of a society where the price of belonging is to maintain certain superficial things - tastes in music, for instance. Some people, if they were found out to like certain things, would be soundly ridiculed, and possibly alienated. Not everyone has the strength to stand up in the face of social isolation. Some people might already be somewhat ostracized. Do they "deserve disdain at every level" for seeking the approval - or even the begrudging acceptance - of peers? I don't think so. The search for belonging, approval, acceptance... that's a basic human impulse.
I'm not saying that it's spectacularly noble, or healthy, or The Thing To Do, but just... something as vehement as "disdain at every level" is too much.
Now, excuse me Slashdot, pop psychology mode off as I return to listening to Enya...
Sure (Score:2)
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Sorry, I agree with the grandparent, they do. If you don't even have enough courage to say what you believe you are a coddled baby. Should racists just keep it all inside? Fascists? Ace of base fans (OF WHICH I AM PROUD TO STAND AMONGST).
Be proud of everything that is you. Anything else and you won't lead a very happy life. It makes me sick to think that I should be responsibl
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<scribbles>
Eh? What? Oh, nothing...
Re:Not just "mildly" insane (Score:5, Insightful)
The "herd mentality" doesn't arise from simple moral weakness and the desire to be loved, it arises becuase we are social beings in a social world. You can build rapport with people and get better service, a better chance of being hired for the job, a better deal on your new car, a more beautiful wife...
That rapport consists in large part of sharing likes and dislikes or at the very least not radically contradicting the personal prejudices and preferences of those whose favor you hope to gain.
I'm not saying you should kiss ass always and pretend to love everything the boss loves in order to get a raise. Far from it, I'm more the type to speak my mind and suffer for it later, while watching someone else climb the ladder in my place, sometimes with regret, sometimes not. I don't make a value judgment about that or try to wear it like a badge of honor, my point is to say that the construction of personal cool isn't simply a neurosis that happens in a vacuum, it's a deliberate strategy based on the specific network of social relationships and interaction that surrounds a person, and each person would do better to consider it as such rather than to simply take a position in the "Either you're a member of the herd or you're a rebel!" dichotomy and stake it out like dogma, though of course your position on the "herd mentality" is also another such social marker that will endear you to some and not to others as well.
Welcome to the real world (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, let me rephrase that: it's also not about consciously deciding to tell a lie, or actually being paranoid that someone will rummage through your computer. It's that humans have their own ideal of "what I _should_ be like", and from there use selective confirmation to "filter" the real "I" into fitting that ideal. It's not even as much for the benefit of others, as for one's own benefit. People need to believe that they're, basically, better than they really are.
If you will, it's sorta how every good Christian believes that someone else will go to Hell, but noone believes that he'll personally go there. If someone defines himself as a good Christian, he will distort his perception and memories to see himself actually fitting that ideal. He'll remember the time when he did something good and in line with God's commandments, but conveniently forget the times when he did nasty stuff that goes right against those commandments.
And I'm not just picking on Christians there, as the same applies to everyone and everything else. Good citizen, upstanding pillar of the community, patriot, charitable, top-notch computer expert, l33t h4xxx0r, teen rebel, good parent, whatever. If you define yourself as X, you'll distort your perception and memory to see yourself fitting the X ideal more than you actually do.
And, just for your entertainment or enlightenment (whichever you choose), here are some RL examples picked by anthropologists:
E.g., when asked to define themeselves, most members of a tribal community all claimed to be hunters and warriors. In reality, they had in the meantime turned mostly into peaceful agricultors. (Civilization can creep up on someone like that.) Extremely had actually used a weapon in years, or even owned one any more. But their culture was so biased towards hunters/warriors, that everyone basically kept viewing themselves as one even long past the point where it had become a lie.
E.g., a community defined itself as a shiny-happy model of cooperation where people help each other all the time, even help each other build a house and work together in the fields and everything. And everyone would cheefully tell you that they're still like that, and help each other all the time. The only problem is that the last time anyone helped another build a house was IIRC in the 50's, and they weren't helping each other work the fields any more either. But somehow kept believing that they do.
E.g., during a crisis where meat prices went up, they polled the people in some communities about what will they do. And everyone said basically "screw this, I'm not paying this much. I'll eat less meat until prices come back down to normal." The problem? According to both the sales data _and_ sifting through people's thrash to see what packaging they're throwing away (yes, they actually did that), people were buying _more_ meat than before. Go figure.
It may seem illogical to you (and maybe even is), but that's what humans do and how human society functions. In other words, welcome to the real world.
not exactly (Score:2)
>believes that someone else will go to Hell, but
>noone believes that he'll personally go there.
Slightly OT, but no. A good Christian believes that
he does indeed *fully deserve* to go to hell (as do all
sinful, fallen men, like himself), but through the
miracle of God's grace in Christ he will not.
But more interestingly to most, probably, is to ponder this phenomenon you describe. People do indeed feel that there is a standard to be lived up to. Peop
Yes and no (Score:2)
Yes and no. The point is that everyoe basically has a different standard and judges himself. There is no one standard that everyone strives for. Some people want to be a teenage rebel, some people want to be a l33t h4ck3r, some people want to be a warrior, some people want to be an insidi
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Because I think it's stupid to discriminate against people based on tastes, I convinced myself that I shouldn't care about what the other, stupider people think about me. Problem is, I cannot help but caring. The fish live with the fish, humans
You don't own sanity, dude (Score:2)
Oh please. Our economy and culture are built on the assumption that people care about what others think. There are a zillion words for it: fashion, trends, branding, making a statement, memes, peer pressure...
Not that I'm endorsing all the cultural trends that strike me as pointless and lemminglike. But I'm not arrogant enough about my own lifestyl
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Clerks 2 (Score:5, Funny)
"What's the point of having an internet connection if you're not using it to look up weird fucked up pictures of dirty sex you'd never have yourself?"
Anonymity? (Score:5, Funny)
Tell that to those AOL users.
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There's a bigger discussion to be had here (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't "Beastiality" (Score:2)
I'm not quite sure why, but it might have something to do with the first four letters of the word.
Oh wait - crap - that was supposed to be an 'anonymous guilty pleasure'...
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As to the "dirty porn" question, my personal feeling is that the cost to society of censoring certain types of content are greater than the questionable benefits of not having it out there. I've never seen any really good analysis showing (with some proof of causation, not just corellation) that the availiability of internet porn has caused more real-world cri
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I can tell you from personal experience that this is true. I was deviant way before I saw and pictures, videos, text, etc.; Before I even had access to the Internet.
That said, I can tell you that the Internet has allowed me to find others like myself and come to terms with how I am and accept it. I know that a lot of people would consider me to be an immoral person, and I used to as well until I was able to do resear
ah yes preverts (Score:2)
Guano: Colonel! Colonel, I must know what you think has been going on here!
Colonel: You wanna know what I think?
Colonel: I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. And I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.
Re:There's a bigger discussion to be had here (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest effect of the 'Net hasn't been as an enabler of guilty pleasures, but as a means for the rest of us to know just how weird we all are.
There were a number of mid-20th-century artistic movements, like the Dadaists, that claimed to be exposing the absurdity, hypocrisy, and perversity of the bourgois, but none of them came close to the sort of thing you can find apparently ordinary people doing on the 'Net. The imagination of the writers and artists fell far, far short of the reality.
For example, type "* fetish" into Google, where * is any word, and you'll find the most remarkable array of strangeness. Presumably all of this has been going on since time immemorial, but now anyone can find out about it. I just tried it for "slashdot fetish" and got a hit on a site that defined it as "the desire to be publicly flogged for multiple posts of a news item." How guilty a pleasure is that?
pr0n (Score:4, Insightful)
So actually it seems to me that the opposite is true, the internet makes it harder to keep your guilty pleasures secret. Reductio ad absurdum, before the net, sure the guy in the shop might know you bought a Britney album, but the rest of the world would have no chance of finding out. With the net, however, you have to try to hide it.
Yeah (Score:4, Funny)
Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
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They haven't released anything this year because one of them was caught smoking at age 18, and the legal smoking age in Japan is 20. They work for "Hello! Project", and their boss is also their songwriter, so he can suspend/punish them like that.
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(I acutally don't really like Morning Musume or any of the Hello Project stuff...but I'm sure I enjoy equally wacky things).
Thank You. (Score:2)
We All Have Our Little Secrets (Score:3, Funny)
Easy in Firefox... (Score:2)
How in Firefox? (Score:2)
I'm using FF 1.0.7 on Windows (woe is me) and that option doesn't exist in the Tools menu, nor does that key combination do anything.
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The Clear Private Data menu command was added in FF 1.5.
I know what they mean (Score:4, Funny)
*cries*
Except ... (Score:2)
Quite true (Score:2)
Anything on the internet that has your real name on it is probably fair game, and because this is not limited to the internet we all self-censor all the time at home and at work. It's part of being an effective human being - if you always
i have no shame. (Score:2)
Why not be honest? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that doesn't mean that I haven't let a friend of mine live down that he once said he really liked Hanson.
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http://last.fm/user/ahsile_ii/ [last.fm]
I made a comment this morning about not liking the dixie chicks, but it's all a farce. Ever since I heard their rendition of landslide, I've been hooked.
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Last.fm comparisons (Score:2)
Fear not upright moral citizen!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
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So the new weapon for terrorist would be to use steganography [wikipedia.org] on pr0n sites. That way all your traffic would put you in the pr0n addict bucket instead of suspected terrorist.
The internet lets the stupid out (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you believe we never landed on the moon? Do you think horse-fucking is A-OK? Would you like to find someone to kill (with mutual consent) via erotic asphyxiation?... or worse, do you think sexually abusing little kids is acceptable behavior? No problem! The Internet has a message board or newsgroup just for you, that way you never need to think about your thoughts, actions, or obsessions.
There is no such thing as deviant behavior on the internet!
Nice list. (Score:2)
Do you believe we never landed on the moon? Do you think horse-fucking is A-OK? Would you like to find someone to kill (with mutual consent) via erotic asphyxiation?... or worse, do you think sexually abusing little kids is acceptable behavior? No problem!
You forgot money laundering and drug dealing, but the rest of the things you think about are interesting. Who put those ideas into your head? What is a circle jerk? What does this really have to do with an electronic network?
No-So-Divine Intervention (Score:4, Funny)
"The internet made me do it."
Guess this means the devil can resume his duties as President of the United States now.
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An amusing flash apropos (Score:2)
"The Internet Is For Porn"
(very funny)
Dumb joke comes to mind... (Score:2)
A: A Pornograph!
Euphemism (Score:3, Funny)
Greased up garbage bag? (Score:2)
Dustbuster with corner attachment.
I didn't understand the question!
It's not the stuff on my machine that bothers me (Score:2)
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Grow some Huevos (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, if TFA was focused on ministers that surf hotjapanesetenticlerape.co.jp every night, that would be a different story.
If we can't even admit what music we listen to... (Score:3, Interesting)
Example from my own life: Most of my friends listen to metal, some of them to old-school hip hop, with random bits of jazz, world music and electronica thrown in in some cases. Basically things which don't get in the mainstream charts all that much (or only in watered down form), and carry certain associations of snobbism with them. Now, although I enjoy most of these styles of music myself and listen to them once in a while, I also listen to lots of stuff a lot of people would automatically turn their nose up at because they'd consider it so extremely mainstream. For example, I'm a reasonably big fan of Phil Collins.
But tell me - why should I be hiding that? When I like something, I like something. Why should I be having hour-long conversations about the virtues of metal and jazz when I'm among people and only be listening to my copy of Face Value [wikipedia.org] secretly?
All my friends are roughly aware of what music I listen to, the bits they approve of as well as the bits they don't. And you know what? Although they largely detest Phil Collins, I still get respect from them, just for being the person I am, doing the things I do, saying the things I say, treating people the way I do. MY FRIENDS JUDGE ME ON THE BASIS OF WHAT SORT OF PERSON I AM, AND NOT ON THE BASIS OF HOW HIP I AM AND HOW ALTERNATIVE THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO IS.
That doesn't just go for friends - I don't try to hide myself before people I've only just met, either. Because frankly, people that would only be interested in me as a person if I listened to The Mars Volta but not if I listen to Genesis are not the sort of people I want to be around.
End of rant.
Me personally... (Score:3, Funny)
Internet lets us forget that we have "standards" (Score:2)
When I grew up, everyone listened to either punk and metal, or hippie music and reggae, and not too much overlap between the groups. There were several people who listened to other things, but we all worked at a radio station, listened to each other's shows, but for the most part music was segregated by who you hung out with. Sure there was "fitting in" and such that other comments talk about but for the most part, music was homogeonous.
Napster rocked my world. I got into raver music--something I halfhea
Three Words... (Score:2)
You ain't seen nothing yet. Great mate.
I admit it! (Score:2)
Re:The internet is really really rad! (Score:5, Funny)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eMs_OjoBRcY [youtube.com]
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