Day: 8 February 2014

The sick and twisted people looking for a date, avoid & report them!

This is the kind of person people imagine talking to when first joining a online dating site.

I’m generally not shocked at the kind of things men (generally its men but I have been on the receiving side from some crazy women) say to the women to get a date or more. However I’ve never ever seen anything so graphic and aggressively racist as this before.

Massive warning if you are easily offended don’t look, as it will wind you up no end. The language and subject matter is combined is so wrong on quite a few levels…! Its sick, twisted and this guy is trying to convince this women to consider him (ffs!)

Thanks to Tom for highlighting the reddit thread, which is full of crazy private dating conversations. I really hope the women in question reported the man in question, although most people don’t!

I have some conversations saved from the past with some insane women I have spoken to on instant messenger but I have saved them for my ebook. But to give you a taster of whats to come…

Her: I12 lic yr ear :-)
Me: Oh hello?
Me: My ear?
Her: I12 lic u
Her: I wanna lic yr ear
Me: Thats pretty forward
Her: &?

And thats only the very start of a weird instant messaging conversation…

Built in Filter and Algorthm failure

I enjoyed Jon Udell’s thoughts on Filter Failure.

The problem isn’t information overload, Clay Shirky famously said, it’s filter failure. Lately, though, I’m more worried about filter success. Increasingly my filters are being defined for me by systems that watch my behavior and suggest More Like This. More things to read, people to follow, songs to hear. These filters do a great job of hiding things that are dissimilar and surprising. But that’s the very definition of information! Formally it’s the one thing that’s not like the others, the one that surprises you.

One of the questions people have when they think about Perceptive Media is the Filter bubble.

A filter bubble is a result state in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history) and, as a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. Prime examples are Google‘s personalised search results and Facebook‘s personalised news stream. The term was coined by internet activist Eli Pariser in his book by the same name; according to Pariser, users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble.

The filter bubble is still being heavily debated to if its real or not but the idea of filters which get things wrong to add a level of serendipity sounds good. But I do wonder if people will be happy with a level of fuzziness in the algorithms they become dependable on?

I’m always on the lookout for ways to defeat the filters and see things through lenses other than my own. On Facebook, for example, I stay connected to people with whom I profoundly disagree. As a tourist of other people’s echo chambers I gain perspective on my native echo chamber. Facebook doesn’t discourage this tourism, but it doesn’t actively encourage it either.

The way Jon Udell is defeating the filters, he retains some kind of control. Its a nice way to get a balance, but as someone who only follows 200ish people on Twitter and don’t look at Facebook much, I actively like to remove the noise from my bubble.

As I think back on the evolution of social media I recall a few moments when my filters did “fail” in ways that delivered the kinds of surprises I value. Napster was the first. When you found a tune on Napster you could also explore the library of the person who shared that tune. That person had no idea who I was or what I’d like. By way of a tune we randomly shared in common I found many delightful surprises. I don’t have that experience on Pandora today.

Likewise the early blogosophere. I built my echo chamber there by following people whose lenses on the world complemented mine. For us the common thread was Net tech. But anything could and did appear in the feeds we shared directly with one another. Again there were many delightful surprises.

Oh yes I remember spending hours in Easy Everything internet cafes after work or going out checking out users library’s, not really recognizing the name and listening to see if I liked it. Jon may not admit it but I found the dark net provides some very interesting parallels with this. Looking through what else someone shared can be a real delight when you strike upon something unheard of.

And likewise the blogosphere can lead you down some interesting paths. Take my blog for example, some people read it because of my interest in Technology, but the next post may be something to do with dating or life experience.

I do want some filter failure but I want to be in control of when really… And I think thats the point Jon is getting at…

I want my filters to fail, and I want dials that control the degrees and kinds of failures.

Where that statement leaves the concept of pure Perceptive Media, who knows…? But its certainly something I’ve been considering for a long while.

Reminds me of that old saying… Its not a bug, its a feature…

Animatrix the dark world?

If you have not seen Thor2, avoid reading as there is small spoilers in this post….

I don’t know if its by pure chance or the Animatrix’s Beyond was inspiration for a section of Thor2 the dark world? When I watched it at the cinema, I couldn’t help but feel something was very familiar about the first section.

From Wikipedia, Thor 2

In London, astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster and her intern Darcy Lewis travel to an abandoned factory where such portals have appeared, disrupting the laws of physics around them. Separating from the group, Jane is teleported to another world, where she is infected by the Aether. Heimdallalerts Thor that Jane has moved beyond his near omnipotent sight, leading Thor to Earth. When Thor finds Jane, she inadvertently releases an unearthly force, and Thor returns with her to Asgard. Odin, recognizing the Aether, warns that the Aether will not only kill Jane, but that its return heralds a catastrophic prophecy.

And from Wikipedia Animatrix’s Beyond

The children have stumbled across an amalgamation of anomalies within an old, dilapidated building. They have learned to exploit this glitch in the Matrix for their own enjoyment, through several areas which seem to defy real-world physics: glass bottles reassemble after being shattered, rain falls from a sunny sky, broken lightbulbs flicker briefly (during which they seem intact), a door which opens into an endless dark void, shadows which do not align with their physical origins, and a dove’s feather that rotates rapidly in place in mid-air. There is a large open space in the middle of the run-down building where they take turns jumping off a high point and falling towards the ground, yet somehow stopping inches before impact. This proves amusing and they do not seem to be bothered by the inherent strangeness of the place.

If you seen both parts you will know what bits I’m talking about.

The kids playing in a dilapidated building, messing with what they think is anti-gravity but its actually parallel universes and time. Some objects disappear, most end up disappearing and then appearing again. I believe even the make up of the kids playing is similar (2 boys and one girl?) and hovering truck anyone?

That instant spark of chemisty, lets hack it?

Lets be honest for a moment. There are certain things which humans like and don’t like, react to and don’t react to. Understanding these lifehacks, mindhacks, theories  or even techniques can help greatly. It all depends on how you apply it… Understanding not ignorance is my new justification for this type of stuff.

Single black male have recently posted a number of intriguing posts including How A Man Can Avoid The Friend-Zone, and Don’t be Thirsty, be Hard to Impress.

They center around that feeling when you see someone for the very first time. So called the spark of attraction or as I prefer the spark of chemistry.

In technical terms, this spark is simply a spike in adrenaline that most people get when they connect eyes with someone that they’re physically attracted to. In our initial interactions with a new potential love interest, some women attempt to control that spark by being flirtatiously elusive and playing hard to get. Men can perform an equally effective technique: playing hard to impress.

This can come across as being a bit of a bastard, and theres many posts suggesting most women subconsciously prefer this.

The secret behind the “hard to impress” approach is that after getting that initial, reflexive adrenaline spike out of her, you find a way to keep the intensity and duration of that spike heightened. By doing this, you’re pretty much guaranteeing yourself a spot far away from the friend zone.

I imagine this is where the keep them keen comes from. Stretching out this period of attraction can greatly improve your chances of the other person being interested. Or in this case, keep you out of the friend zone.

This isn’t anything mind blowing, people have been doing it naturally for millenniums but its interesting to understand the science behind it. Those butterflies in your stomach are addictive like going over the top of a rollercoaster hill (in my case) who wouldn’t want more of that?

We’re all junkies to the buzz… and combining this with the Social objects idea, who knows what you can achieve? Maybe one day I’ll combine all these things together and actually do something meaningful with them.

Question is, what are you going to do to get more of what you love/need/want? I’m hoping it doesn’t involve being a total cock like the guys from the previous post…