Created a few syndications, most of which you can see on the userinfo (many of them are from different groups at yahoo, or at least the ones which allow for RSS feeds and stuff), so feel free to subscribe to them if they apply to you in any way.
Also, thought about telephony and the Internet (and was talking to hypertwolf and aragorn_wolf about it, too). I figured out that VoIP, while it is still in beta-stage development at the present, is obviously not made for the mostly-text-based Internet (i.e., IM, IRC, TELNET, POP3, etc.), and would thus have to form the basis for a separate, audio-based Internet in which people can call or voicemail each other, among other things.
Then, I figured even further: ours is the “silent generation”, the one in which our peer-to-peer communication is strictly text-based. I mean, if you think about it, people in general (but especially furs in specific) can talk for the rest of their lives with each other, but never have to see each other’s faces on the street.
But, then again, that may change with the advent of VoIP, SecondLife, and other such recentities. As developments continue forward for the next decade, it is possible that some of us will no longer have to straddle the dividing fence between the physical and the digital.
Think of Digimon, Serial Experiments Lain, and .Hack, all sans the psychothriller niceties.
I mean, look at us from the digital perspective, be we fur, therian, Warcraft freak, anything like that. Online, we exude and project this image that is markedly different from the one which we know as being “real” and “physical”. I’ve found out, in my sojourns, that, indeed, “truth is stranger than fiction”, since, when one compares a fursona with the being that resides as that fursona’s breath and blood (like, through pictures and so forth), one may see a marked, surprising, and often times disappointing difference.
Thus, as the physical world is becoming evertheless conducive to our existence, while social interaction and communication online has grown rather exponentially in our lifetime, maybe….I dunno. Maybe we should start to assert, in the canonical sense, our digital existences alot more.
Maybe we should start to live our lives over IP.
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Plus, an old treatise that I could correlate to our world today.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/aando/patriotism.html
And, to top it all off, I’ll be observing Halloween for the first time since 1993. Yay!…..well, I think…..>_>
I half agree.
I agree because mass instant communication is insanely useful, and even has boosted the world from the old Mail and Telephone crap. I can find things I never could around my area, like music I never even heard about.
I disagree, because while we’re friending with people on the other side of the planet, we’re not knowing the people around our own neighborhood. Your friends online wouldn’t drive 3000 miles to save you when you’re hurt or something, but that person across the street can get the medics as soon as (s)he can.
Actually, that’s what I was saying when I said (not a direct quote) “We could live out whole lives and friendships online, but not ever have to come across each other’s face in the street”.
With the appeal of online networking and sociality these days, one finds it easier to communicate, interact, or just plain **be** around with someone on a digital basis, even to the point that (and I’m guilty of this one, I’m sure) we hold the images or digital “fursonas” which they possess (**especially** if they’re an artist) in often HIGHER levels of esteem, value, or acceptance than pictures of them IRL.
Not that its bad or good, just that….well, that’s how far we’re going these days.
even to the point that (and I’m guilty of this one, I’m sure) we hold the images or digital “fursonas” which they possess (**especially** if they’re an artist) in often HIGHER levels of esteem, value, or acceptance than pictures of them IRL.
lol it’s so true! The better the artist, the more revered the person.
Exactly.
I used to be at DeviantArt as a writer (in the primary sense), and although they have some of the snottiest people that one could ever come across (avoid the Forums, in which drama of the more personally-direct, incendiary type can ensue in a hot second…or New York minute, whichever you may prefer), but whenever I had a chance, I simply sat awestruck at their artwork.
I wrote something about my (rather-unhealthy) fascination with the artwork of such people as Strype and a few other unmentionables: http://www.livejournal.com/community/straightfur/29483.html?thread=167723#t167723
Well, that only links to the journal post. Wishfully, Livejournal should have comment edits.
http://raynenamibia.deviantart.com/journal/5921664/
But yeah, you’re right. If the person is an especially good artist, and has fleshed out his or her own particular fursona within the framework of his or her artistic style, then its more than likely that the fursona, rather than the artist behind it, will take precedence over that same artist in terms of the popular-minded association between the artist and his/her artwork.
That also happens when someone who isn’t an artist in the strictest sense of the word develops a fursona through, say, RPing on a regular basis (hi! I’m Rainfyre DragonWing! and so on…). Others may not be inclined to RP or artistry, but are fursuiters by hobby-ish orientation; or webmasters and administrators for MU*s, websites, IRC servers, and so forth; or could simply be bloggers, IRCers, IMers, or even something similar to the stereotypical “forum whore”. They could be anything and/or everything, to put it in the most general perspective.
The common thread in all this is that, on a digital basis, 9 out of 10 times (although you may not want to test the verity of my statistical sum-up, lol), most of these people are exhuding a certain image about themselves, and on the same length, that image may not be any truer to physical life than “apples growing on orange trees” (who HASN’T heard that one before?).
However, that’s what most people accept, albeit on an often-times subconscious level. They tend to think of the fursonas which the artists, RPers, Muckers, and others use of themselves most of the time (and its relatively rare to come across photos of these same people, anyway) as being fully representative and equatable with the people in question; they tend to think that the fursonas are the REAL them.
And that, my friend, is the tipping point between two planes of existence.
You haven’t observed it since 93??
Nope. That was the last Halloween I remember observing (I believe that I dressed up as Batman…..I think).
I blame that on the church to which we went beginning in the fall of 1994, the same one I just departed from only over a month ago.
They have such beef with the holiday, as they do with everything else that is of supposed “Pagan” or “Satanic” origin, such as Pokemon (and, by extension, Digimon…..”well, that’s the same thing!”), Dragonball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh!, etc.
They had less beef with Santa Claus, though.
I remember the first few Halloweens I spent there: each year they had service, and then showed the full length of this episode from the series “PAGAN INVASION”. Had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Lindsey in it, as well as a few grown dudes who were cruelly abducted by some “Druids” in the woods when they were younger.
Ahh, cruel fall-season nostalgia of mine….why do ye bedevil me so?