Marvin hates PhotoSwap
Brownlee was just so impressed with his little iPhone app, PhotoSwap. You should have seen him bouncing around the BBG offices, squealing and micturating in excitement like a vertiginous lemonade junkie strapped to a carnival Brain Scrambler.
"Look, Marvin!" he literally ejaculated. I hate this guy. "I just sent a photo of an insipid cartoon feline omnibus transformer to a random stranger, her face obscured, whom I hope might — through an implausible chain of events and a way slippery slope — somehow be persuaded to absorb my genetic filth by repeated exposure to my frankly embarrassing stuffed animal collection."
No matter how many times I drop to my knees and deliver a resounding haymaker to Brownlee's groin, he always seems surprised, even though it's a documented provision of the BBG human resources manual. But the deed was done. Then, I took his iPhone, hit reply to his mystery girl, took a picture of his fetally trembling gelatin mass and then went to take a four hour angry nap.
But my beak was wet. I admit, a lot of it was homesickness. Ever since being plucked from the dimensionally veiny navel of the timestream's pregnant belly like so much cybernetically-enhanced smegma, I have missed the marvels of the 29th century. For me, watching you guys with your iPhones is like watching a bunch of obelisk-licking cave monkeys communicate by smashing out brain-splattered morse code to one another with sharp rocks administered to the skull.
Still, PhotoSwap is an intriguing app.
Where I'm from, we share every joy of our blissful day-to-day lives by willing open our empathic sluices, where our thoughts and emotions and sensations are slurped up by the populace at large. For example, I know what the exact sensation of making love to Beschizza's great-great-great-great-great243-granddaughter feels like: as it turns out, flabbily similar to the sensation of making love to a drunk, unconscious Beschizza, but then again, they're both British.
I digress. The point is that PhotoSwap, however Luditically, afforded me the opportunity to share the random sensations of my life with the biomass. When I woke up, I was determined to experiment.
I decided to take baby steps. While there was no doubt in my mind that my PhotoSwap account would one day usher in a new era of mankind — the equivalent of Martin Luther charging bravely up the cathedral steps and nailing several Polaroids of his wondrously engorged scrotum to the momentous maple doors — I have had sadly negative experiences ushering in such eras in the past. This time I would be more careful.
The first photo I took was simple: a walrus with a cat's head I'd grown in a pickle jar, using its flippers to sign "LOL" in American Sign Language. My walcat was a birthday present for Xeni, so don't tell her about it: I'd like her to be surprised. The response: a zoomed-in shot of Katy Perry's pixelated left elbow from a YouTube bootleg of her "Ur So Gay" video... a song, incidentally, which will one day usher in a Wyld Stallyn's like era of Greco-Roman homonarchy. I was pleased. I had initiated anonymous contact with a prophetic cave man.
Galvanized, I decided to take it up a notch: a photo of what death looks like (spoiler alert: a thousand parakeets licking your eyeballs forever). But here my troubles began. The photograph that I got in response was of an anonymous goiter... not even sentient, as near as I could tell.
Undeterred, I took another shot, this time of a chemical formula I'd jotted off describing the mechanism of human limb regeneration. Response: a soggy bowl of what appear to be Urkel-Os.
Next photo: my rubber band, easily aped prototype for a working perpetual motion machine. The karana mudra framing a monumental excremental log.
I was getting pissed. Any one of my PhotoSwap photos could have initiated a halcyon era of human enlightenment. Instead, each was wasted upon the anacephalic brain cavities of lazy cretins. Does it surprise you that Wall Street needs a $700 billion bail out? It shouldn't: each of these images was geo-positioned to the palatial mansion of a Fortune 500 CEO, which is exactly why you'll all be having your babies over barbecue grills soon enough... and which is why, incidentally, China — I know, right? — will finally decide to march into Detroit to provide humanitarian aid. Upside: the nascent genesis of the 'Verse.
I was pissed. If a vast legion of creatively bereft idiots was going to seed me with nothing but the blinking glimpses of their bovines existences, I would return the favor a millionfold. I am still tied into the timestream. I can not go back, nor forward, but I can afford glimpses into things no one wants to see. And luckily, the omphalos to space time is USB compatible. Brownlee's iPhone, which I've stolen? Jailbroken.
Into PhotoSwap, slurped: an image of a cross. My response: Jesus Christ being decapitated as a Dracula by Pontius Pilate. A blurry glimpse of a cat; an explicit glimpse of Feline Apartheid in the 22nd Century's irradiated South Africa, in which brain pans are supped upon like milk bowls. A screen capture of a Digg, in which it is revealed John McCain owns VoteForTheMILF.com; Sarah Palin's scatological octogenarian debut, filmed with Angela Menkel in the Oval Office.
And so on. But I toss up my hands: if you people do not wish to seat yourselves upon the loop-de-loop roller coaster of beatific enlightenment, I can hardly hurl you under the wheels. All I will say is that as a sociological experiment, PhotoSwap is an embarrassment. Even Brownlee agrees: while at Oktoberfest, he snagged a once-in-a-lifetime shot of a New Zealand drunk vomiting down the bodice of a freshly minted Bavarian beer wench. The image he received in return: an ingrown toe nail.
"What's the point of sharing the best moments of your own life with strangers if all you get is mundanity in return?" It's the wisest thing Brownlee has ever said... unfortunately for him, the BBG human resource handbook dictates a policy for that as well.
Marvin Battelle is Boing Boing Gadgets' band manager. Like you, he thinks "cultural engineers" are douche bags.
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I'm similarly frustrated. While I lack your mastery of time and space, I send out interestingly composed shots of antique cameras and receive blurry "out the window" shots of traffic in return.
I've noticed that things get slightly better during evening hours - that's when shots of trees and cubicle walls give way to the rumpled sheets and (in one notable instance) hot tubs of lonely gentlemen hoping to inspire a long distance pornographic exchange.
Hilarious as always Marvin. And even as a dumb, primitive pleb I know it offends you when I dismiss your attempts to usher in a new era of enlightenment as comedic novelty.
Wait - was that a Firefly reference?
Marvin, how about a SPOILER ALERT for me next time, bub.
"band manager"? Isnt that title played out by now?
Anyway, I giggled. If I ever get an iPhone I'll be sure to sign up for this and send forth a stream of shots of my cats' exit valves.
I'm still finding Photoswap to be addictive fun, although the proportion of interesting pictures compared to guys looking to show me their wang seems to be declining. Also, the dreadfully dull picture of computer screens with words in large text on them, usually requesting tits, are incessant.
Hmm...I think I just got an idea for the Next Big Thing. Please, somebody tell me if it's already been done:
A mashup of Photoswap and Twitter, where you send a photo to a "pwitter" (gotta work on the name) account, and anybody subscribed recieves. No text will go through, as with Photoswap (I'm assuming, I don't own an iPhone).
Once you recieve a photo, you're invited to reply with your own, either to all of the original recipients, or just to the original sender.
Still need to work it out a bit, but I think I know what my project's going to be for the next week or two.
#7 Can I suggest that you add a user rating system into that somehow, to have the community screen out the the wang swappers? Give each user the ability to not accept photos from someone who has a rating lower than what's set in the user preferences, or something along those lines.
Though you would have to watch out for people trying to artificially inflate their rating, like on other sites with similar systems.
My god. What the hell are you monkeys even TALKING about? I read this post twice and I'm still not sure.