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Dead Wrong

August 9, 2010 Agent X 1 Comment

This comic was inspired by one type of hoax that has greatly benefited from the rise of the internet – hoaxes about celebrity “deaths”.
These hoaxes were around long before the internet existed, but they can now be spread far more easily spread and faster than ever before in the history of mankind.

In fact, more celebrity death hoaxes have been posted online in the past 3 years, than in all the entire history of the internet previously.*

At least every month, another celebrity will suddenly be taken long before their time, thanks to internet pranksters.
Luckily, nearly all of them are actually around to hear about it and have a good laugh at it.

Jeff Goldblum has actually been “net-killed” twice now. The most famous of these was the version announced as actual news by Richard Wilkins.
Just a few celebrities that also shuffled off the mortal coil – if you had believed Twitter & Facebook at the time – were Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Miley Cyrus and P Diddy. As well, Harrison Ford was killed on a yacht, George Clooney died in a plane crash and Rick Astley was found dead in a hotel room.

These reports are often submitted in such convincing ways, that they are picked up by the mainstream press and run as real news.
People believe them and react grief-stricken until somebody in the media decides to actually check the source….

I think these hoaxes actually serve a purpose, as they make us stop and think before we take what the media is reporting for granted.
This can only be a good thing.

*Statistics sourced for the National Internet Bureau of Agent-X Stats and Make Believe factoids that can be put into posts. They are not real.

Facebook Policy Maker

May 25, 2010 Agent X 4 Comments

The really sad thing is that this comic could easily be mistaken for fact.

It is old news now that facebook is in real trouble and whomever it is over there making the decisions on website changes & policy direction, is in serious need of an old school kick in the ass.
Facebook needs to decide very soon what they are going to do to address the unrest and mistrust that they themselves, have created within their user base.
Perhaps the entire business of facebook has just been one big scam to get data to onsell to advertisers? (or as they phrase it “create the open graph protocol for the web”)

Either that, or we are about to see the most the start of the new way that things work on the web, with facebook blazing the path for others to undoubtedly follow. THEY will tell you what you want, rather than listening to your requests?
Many would argue that some corporations and/or industries have been working this way for many years already.

Personally, I am just waiting to see what happens on May 31st, which is “Quit Facebook Day”. Sites such as QuitFacebookDay.com are encouraging you to Delete Facebook accounts on 31 May 2010, if you are fed up of Facebook and its privacy issues.

Facebook has already announced that their privacy settings system will be overhauled some time in the next few weeks, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg more recently admitting in an email exchange to “a bunch of mistakes”. Will these overhauls actually happen?
Possibly, but I think it will not be in the way that the general public are expecting.

Will the mass deletion of accounts really occur?
Yes, I believe some people will make a display of deleting their facebook accounts, but the QuitFacebookDay site shows only around 15,000 committed to this at the time of writing this post. This is not about 0.03% of the total number of facebook users.
If I were a betting man, I would say that I expect at least 45% of the users that delete their accounts on facebook to be back there again in less than 3 months.

So, I look forward to seeing what will occur. Let’s hope it is truly memorable and positive.

We need this tech!

May 9, 2010 Agent X 2 Comments

There is no escape!

Whoever can make the software described in this comic, will become the new ruler of the world.
Throw in the options to block people who listen to Nickleback, and I will happily purchase anything you make from that point forward, for all eternity.

Heck, you can even start a social network and I’ll gladly let you quietly screw me over in the background just like Zuckerberg is doing, and I will never post a negative blog or tweet about it. Guaranteed!

Social Media Guru

March 14, 2010 Agent X 11 Comments

G-U-R-U is the new way to spell “Clueless”

Everyone has heard all about the huge amounts of people self-proclaiming themselves as “Social Media Gurus” over the past few years.
And I bet everyone has met one of these people in real life too.

Almost without exception, these “gurus” are clueless, unimpressive self-promoters who have grabbed on to the latest thing that they think will get them some attention, respect and acclaim.
So many people added this title to their twitter profiles, in 2009, that it became hard to find someone without the word “guru”.
This fairly recent post from BL Ochman talks about the number of people still doing this. You can go to tweepsearch.com and confirm this for yourself too.

It is all so sad and it has created a situation that the word “guru” has lost the reverence that it once had.
The definition of the word shows it was once an honorable title. But no longer. It now draws ridicule, mistrust and scorn in the western world and online.

The odd thing is that a majority of these so called “gurus” have chosen this title for themselves.
This is the reason it has lost it’s former meaning, as the title is one that needs to be placed on you by others, who value your worth and the contribution you can make.

Because these titles were self-bestowed, the wielders of this awesome new rank often made some fantastically stupid mistakes due to their own lack of knowledge. For a great list of some of these, check out this post from mashable

Thankfully, rise of the social media gurus seems to have reached its peak, because there’s a new, contrary, position gaining momentum. It’s the “who the hell are these people to call themselves experts” movement. Posts like this one and this reflect that sentiment.

But the term is forever tarnished, in my opinion.
That’s OK though, because I like the word “sensei” better anyway.

I am also lurking on the internet in places other than here. (and in a VERY non-guru kind of way).
You can check out these places:


FB Fan page	Twitter	Flickr	Google Buzz

*Statistics sourced for the National Internet Bureau of Agent-X Stats and Make Believe factoids that can be put into posts. They are not real.

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