Two Slashes

Congratulations to anyone who followed that link from my Facebook status.  You’re a shining example of a person who randomly and trustingly clicks links from friends without considering whether they’re spam or not.  Either that, or you already recognize that domain…that section of the post at the bottom is especially for you.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be posting about my experiments here, as they’re not at all related to the topics I regularly discuss.  However, together with a little help from a friend or two, I’ve tried to poke and pry at people’s online habits with my past few tests.  What did I find?

The Birthday

Ah yes, my birthday was last week.  (Any and all birthday comments will be deleted and/or edited.)  Of course, only a few people even bothered to remember or acknowledge it (alright, so perhaps even the majority of my family didn’t care, but that’s beside the point).  For this experiment, I spent the two months prior scrubbing almost every reference to my age or birthday I could find from the Internet, well ahead of any search engine bots that may want to cache it as my birthday drew nearer.  The test?  To see whether people really rely that much on notifications from web forums or social networking sites to keep track of trivial facts like birthdays.

Granted, a birthday is nothing to be excited about, and in its own right might be considered useless or trivial information, depending on how well you know the person (and it’s more or less useless in an online perspective, but I digress).  And just to make things interesting, even after all of the information I removed (and now need to remember to re-add), I decided that I would cough up a few subtle hints.  (Alright, maybe my definition of ’subtle’ is skewed, but I’m not going to argue that point here.)  Net results:  A single congratulatory tweet (and what probably would have amounted to a second had I qualified a number in one of my tweets), one response via Skype after making it almost painfully obvious (you know who you are), and absolutely no response from any of 269 Facebook users friended with me (which is, admittedly, just a little pathetic).  All in all, a quiet great birthday by my standards (I don’t want the attention, so perhaps my motives were a little flawed…)

Now that I’ve confused you enough, let’s try to take all of that and try and sum it up into something simpler:  Apparently people find Facebook (and other social networking sites) suitable replacements for a calendar.  Admittedly, there might be some benefit in having your friends make sure THEIR birthday is correct rather than have you transcribe it into your agenda a week early, but ultimately anyone who could and/or should have remembered (by my expectations) failed.

The Bait

With my birthday said and done, a friend of mine suggested that we play with some heads on Facebook by intentionally leading people to think that my birthday was a day later than it actually was by coughing up the appropriate status messages and wall posts.  Again, not a single person took the bait and left anything resembling a birthday greeting.

The thing to note about this, though, is that the friend I worked on this with only shares a portion of my friends mutually, and so comparatively there’s a much smaller pool of people to attempt to draw from.

Facebook Link Check

As you might have surmised from the leading line of this post, I decided to try one more test with Facebook simply to see if anyone was paying attention.  The action was simple:  click a link to visit this website.  No URL shrinking, mentions of rewards, or anything - just a link to Two Slashes.  And even though it’s been about an hour and a half since I posted that link, people have clicked it at least a few times, including while they were in the middle of searching through other peoples’ photo albums (actually, there are two referral links already).

Since this experiment is more or less still in progress, I’ll come back to edit this post if anything interesting or unusual comes out of it, but I don’t think there’s going to be anything all that exciting to discuss.

On the other hand, though, this eagerness for people to visit my site without too many hints that I even control it demonstrates once again that people are blind to what could happen should one of their friends get phished and start sending out some spammy URLs.  Not just on Facebook, but anywhere in general.

Conclusions

All of this makes me think of a single line from Men In Black:

Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

Well, from my experiences, I’d be willing to go so far as to say a single person is just as intelligent as the collective (and that’s stupid).  And that’s especially amusing to me following this short on why the Internet is making people more cognizant.

Over the past few days, some of the more popular postings that seem to appear on Digg end up having to do with Google’s search suggestion feature.  While the intentions of these suggestions are entirely noble, they can also be used both to prove the skewed nature of today’s society and the inherent “security” that people seem to derive from their use of the Internet nowadays.  Interested, I decided to do a few queries of my own and see what they resulted in (images linked so you can peruse them at your own leisure and discretion; they’re screen captures directly from Google):

• “Why shouldn’t…”
• “Is it possible for…”
• “Where in the world…” *
• “Who can…”
• “Is this a…” and “Is this an…”

I suppose, in a sense, this is a reasonable way to gauge the intimate levels with which we as a culture seem to have lifted from the Internet.  Some of the types of search queries that are suggested are of the same caliber as those one might ask privately to someone such as a counselor, and many are quite surprising.  Other queries also suggest what some of the common thoughts and concerns of the public are; given that the U.S. presidential elections have just ended, it’s not surprising to see that a few of my images mention the candidates, voting, or the current economic instability.

The mere fact that people are willing to accept the advice of complete strangers, without qualification or question and as found by a search engine with little more intelligence than a walnut, and trusting enough to ask these questions of a headless, emotionless entity in the first place suggests both that people are too insecure with themselves and their peers to confide their deepest secrets in other human beings and that they believe that the research they glean for their issue from the Internet is the best help they can get given this insecurity.

With all of this in mind, it’s not hard to connect that this blind trust, if you will, is perhaps one of the reasons such problems as spyware and phishing even exist.  If people were trained not to have this trust, but instead more of a distrust for machine and what comes out of it (and as a result of this training, develop an attraction to the warmth and individual attention that defines humanity), we would be able to eliminate a vast majority of the “evils” afoot.  Such training might even teach people enough about their privacy that they won’t turn their social networking profiles into flagrant and public advertisements of their misdeeds.  (If such training were to include the repeated usage of my favorite quote (”Trust is a weakness.”), I would be impressed.)

As kids, there’s no doubt that one of your mother/stepmother/grandmother/guardian’s favorite things to say was, “Don’t talk to strangers.”  The computer, although at this point a staple of nearly every technologically advanced household, may not be an intelligent and sentient being to talk to, but people forget that their computer has conversations of its own.  And, based on some of those Google suggestions, it’s telling everyone some of the things you might not want publicized at any cost.

* Alright, I added this one mostly as a joke.  Interestingly enough though, the top result is NOT what I was expecting.

Through some useless late-night meandering, I managed to come across this snarky blog post from AOL mocking Gmail’s latest addition to their popular e-mail/instant messaging platform, the ability to send SMS messages to cell phones (which has since been redacted so they can fix a few lingering bugs).  While it’s not ordinarily a big deal, some people without the appropriate plan and/or equipment might find it useful, as might someone overseas who doesn’t want to pay the “long distance text messaging” fees some wireless carriers seem to find all too important nowadays.

I find it interesting that AOL would attempt to play a humor card while they tout their own rusty horn, especially when you consider this is the same AOL that uses Google to power their search engine. Excuse me a second while I point out that this makes everyone at AOL look like a pack of three-year-olds without a babysitter and add myself to the numerous people who agree.

As someone who’s had rather interesting personal experiences with AOL over the past decade or so, I find their behavior here fairly lame.  Given those same experiences, though, I guess I can’t be too surprised.

I do have some words of advice for AOL, though (and I can think of a few others who can take something away from this as well, in a more generalized form, of course):

• When you’re trying to mock a company who may be trailing you in one area, it might be wise to consider whether you’re partners with them or not in another.  Nobody wants to do business when the only words you can say are, “I’m better than you,” especially when you seem to have forgotten that you’re not.
• Just because you’ve managed to beat someone to market with something as silly as an IM to SMS bridge doesn’t make you better.  I can’t exactly call most of Google’s offerings bloated, but I do suggest you go take a look at the whale you call your Internet portal and see how much fat you can trim out.  If it can’t function, I don’t care that it looks all glossy and shiny and can make little noises to notify me that somebody’s picking their nose.
• Perhaps there’s more to the Google branding than meets the eye, especially in professional terms.  Before you make a snide comment about Google only allowing users a Gmail domain, perhaps consider that nobody is going to use an address such as nicktabick@crazyforemail.com to conduct professional business.  (I find that address too stupid for personal use, either.  I also believe I’ve seen that address in my Spam folder before, but I digress…)
• If Halloween is a grand occasion to make fun of one of your partner/competitors, I wonder what Christmas is going to be like at the AOL offices this year.  However, for everyone’s sake, it might be better to ensure that the liquor, sugar, caffeine, and everything else that might get one of the press writers giddy is safely locked up lest someone posts a follow-up entry making fun of Time Warner.

Perhaps someone at AOL had a few too many candy bars before they came in for work (or, from the look of the timestamp on their post, on their lunch break).  Nice try, but next time around, use the sugar rush on something more productive - like decent software.

Technological advancement is great, isn’t it?  After all, it paves the way for an easier, more-enjoyable life, and it often does so in comfort.  It’s not every day, though, that said advancements are labeled terrorist tools by the U.S. Army.

According to a draft of one of the Army’s latest reports, Twitter, GPS, and voice-changing software are among the newest and hippest tools in a terrorist’s arsenal.  Yes, that’s right, things you probably wouldn’t find your neighborhood technophile without.  (Alright, maybe the voice changer is a stretch…)  Given this, the typical “terrorist profile” must include compulsive tweeters who have a tendency to get lost and then use one of those toy voice-changing bullhorns to ask directions of random strangers.

Considering the ridicule the U.S. Armed Forces is probably facing for a lack of their common sense, I’ve decided to list off a few of my own believed “terrorist tools.”  These are things that probably should have made that list as well for the sake of completeness.

• Just as Twitter allows one to follow to-the-minute updates of what their friends are saying and doing, why couldn’t RSS FEEDS function in a similar manner?  After all, they’re more or less the same thing (without the social aspect).  Subscribed to a feed put forth by their superior, your terrorist can act on whatever orders he’s been sent in seconds.
• For things that aren’t text or would be better consumed client-side, BITTORRENT would be a plausible option.  WIth the BitTorrent protocol now featuring encryption, the ability to run through Tor (and other anonymous proxies), the infinite file size limit, and the lower distribution costs resulting from its use, it’s already a great method for distributing intelligence.  Combine that with the RSS feeds I mentioned above, and BitTorrent becomes the ultimate way to keep your undercover operatives fully informed.
• To prevent any information from being leaked to the world at large, a private virtual network would be a great way to make sure information stays “in the family.”  Therefore, tools like HAMACHI are terrorist tools as well.  In addition to allowing remote support or remote LAN matches in your favorite video game, Hamachi provides a great end-to-end encrypted virtual network perfect for those building blueprints.
• There’s nothing like immersive training to make sure the trainee knows what things are going to be like in the field.  The NINTENDO WII provides a reasonable platform for combat training, given that it’s a cheap motion-sensitive platform with plenty of combat-oriented accessories available from your local GameStop.  Who said the Wii was just for kids?

Considering I use Twitter, RSS feeds, BitTorrent, Hamachi, I’ve messed with GPS systems, and I’ve played the Nintendo Wii, I should probably be looking behind my back everywhere I go at this point, as should at least three-quarters of the company I keep, lest we be mistaken for some terrorist cell and wake up in a detention center for questioning.

@bomb Countdown 5 minutes.

This morning, my friend Tyler over at TechSpansion announced that he’s dropping their entire product line and closing up shop.

Normally I wouldn’t care, but TechSpansion is a notable exception for their iSquint, VisualHub, and AudialHub applications for OS X, which are considered by many to be the best and easiest way to convert video and audio on the Mac platform and the inspiration for my previously-halted h.26easy project.

I wish Tyler the best, and hope that his future pursuits are fruitful.  And as for iSquint, VisualHub, and AudialHub, they will be missed.

One of the side effects of the open-source movement is that it allows unprecedented access to what were once privately-used development builds and “test-level” software not traditionally fit for or distributed in hopes of public use.

I myself have taken advantage of this situation, adding the latest builds of Firefox, Thunderbird, Witty, and other products (some well-known, some off the beaten path) to my arsenal.  And I haven’t done this out of hopes that there won’t be problems, or simply because the new versions are “expected to fix outstanding bugs” (that’s a fringe benefit, people), but more so because the latest builds are increasingly and surprisingly mature and well-tested.  (And besides that, who could resist getting all of those new features ahead of the curve? )

At one point, the words “alpha”, “beta”, “testing”, and “development” (stop me anytime) scared people away from software and service simply because the connotation those words carried was one of buggy, incomplete, untested software.  While to some people, the meaning of these words has not changed (and I can think of “a few good reasons”™), these words are being turned into extraneous, meaningless descriptors of the applications everyone uses and loves, tacked into the name much in the same way Web 2.0 “dictates” misspelled words and dropped vowels.  (Flickr anyone?)

As Justin Cox so eagerly pointed out at the end of August, G-Mail has been in beta since it was announced, and Google doesn’t seem ready to remove the label just yet, either.  My point here is that even though the concept and implementation of G-Mail is littered with reminders of its perpetual development, it is still one of the most popular web-mail platforms available today in direct contradiction to the connotations of the “beta” label.

Google is not the only company riding the “always-in-development” bandwagon, either, but they’re definitely one of the most notable, given that they’ve taken beta software to an extreme.  According to this article, almost half of the projects they have their finger in are in some non-finalized state.

While many popular applications apply the “always-updating, always-improving” philosophy, it would be great to one day leave the computer running every night, and come back to find that my operating system has updated itself and made the experience better than it was the day before, with new features and bug fixes provided in a sort of seamless transition.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to happen anytime soon because it doesn’t work too well with either of Microsoft or Apple’s business models, and I don’t see them changing their behavior anytime this decade.

Ah well, I can dream*, can’t I?

*Dreaming is in beta, with an anticipated final release date of <undetermined>.

Even with the Olympics having come to a close about a week ago, the only name people seem to have stuck in their heads at the moment is Michael Phelps, the Olympian swimmer who walked away with eight gold medals and set numerous world records in his run for those medals.

While Phelps was standing on a podium getting the reward for his efforts, a different kind of Olympic-style test of strength has been brewing here in the United States, a contest with plenty of records lining up to be broken of its own accord.  (And I really need to quit doing *#$&ty post introductions like this one.)

I don’t typically pay attention to politics; I don’t really care who’s President, Senator, Governor, or any one of the tens of other elected positions as long as there isn’t a significant impact to my life.  To me, one candidate is as good as another, especially if things work transparently and their actions (and misactions) don’t change the way I go about my daily business, and I have a reasonable expectation that whoever ends up elected is at least as well-qualified as I am for the office they’ve been elected into.

Take Bush for example; everyone (alright, myself included) has bashed him time and time again for the state of affairs in the Middle East.  I have no idea whether I would pretend nothing was happening or send in the troops, launch a few missiles, and have the entire Armed Forces deployed before lunch, and it’s my inability to make a knowledgeable and fair decision that makes him a better candidate for that office than I am.  If it weren’t for the fact that the media constantly bombards you with claims of his failure as a leader of this country (or the war stuff), he might never have even been seen.

This election year has things playing out a little differently than normal, however.  We have an African-American running for President (having nearly squeezed a nomination over the wife of a previous - and notorious - office-holder), and a female vice-presidential candidate, neither of which (to my knowledge) has ever won their respective seats in government.  (I don’t see any ladies on this list, do you?)

What this sounds like to me is not a vote merely for the sake of “exercising our right as Americans” but a popularity contest in the sense of which candidate you’d rather see being awarded a Guiness World Record and which “invisible barrier” will be broken for future elections, if they all haven’t already been shattered by the current candidates.

I would have taken the time here to analyze the scenarios of what would happen should a woman become President (either by vote or incapacitation), but the concepts of a “Presidentess” or the “First Gentleman” are too humorous for me to discuss seriously.

Don’t take me wrong when I mention that, once again, I don’t have enough information to say that either Obama or McCain is superior to the other, but someone has to have noticed that this is bigger than just a four-year vacation at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it’s a chance for the prospective record-breakers to get more material for those bestselling autobiographies that are due to be released any day now (and will no doubt become required reading for at least one high school class due to their lessons in perseverance, dedication, or some other related but meaningless literary tripe).

Unless something motivates me to get off my sorry backside and register to vote (and then actually convince me to go to the polls on Election Day), I’m not going to have any more involvement in this election than retaining my right to the occasional rant.  That aside, it’s up to (the registered voters of) America to choose which recordmaker President/Vice-President they want to take office.

And by the way, someone can remove the parentheses from my keyboard now.  I won’t be needing them for a while.

Last weekend, Justin decided to award me with one of the “Kickass Blogger” awards that seem to be making their rounds like a particularly bland chain letter.  (I would have posted sooner, but I’ve been getting ready for school and it’s been hard to get some free time while I’m still unpacking.)

Not to demean the award or anything, but I’m of two minds about the concept (neither probably what the people who came up with the award are looking for, sadly), and I might as well get everyone else’s opinion.

As you might have guessed, I can see similarities between this award making its rounds and the chain letters my mother ever-so-happily forwards (directly into my Spam folder, mind you ) or the tripe you might find on MySpace, sans the “death penalty” for not forwarding it to anyone.  (I hope Justin doesn’t have to stab me with a spork under a blue moon in the middle of November for not passing this on.)

I also think it’s a little ridiculous to single out just a few people when there are probably a ton who deserve recognition.  (Of course, the exact number is up to the post authors, but all the same it seems like people are going for two or three at a time.  Interestingly, though, the original site requests that you suggest five blogs.)  Favorites games never work out well, though, so why should people be asked to put them into the spotlight?

I add blogs (and other sites) to my blogroll if I think they’re worth your attention, not because I need a “finalists” list for games like this.  Also, I realize that my blogroll is a little on the longer side, but rest assured that just about everything on that list finds its way into my browsing a few times a day.  (And people say they have problems…)

People shouldn’t need to write up posts suggesting where their readers should check up next; that’s the role of the blogroll (or whatever they happen to call their links section, if they have one), and I think that’s a start as far as recognition is concerned.  (Response posts would be another form of recognition, but that’s a different animal for a different day.)

So, given that little rant, instead of me rolling the dice and having to choose from that expansive published list in my sidebar, how about you try visiting a few of the glorious links in my blogroll of your own accord.  They’re all winners in my book, and they may very well be in yours as well.

(On the other hand, though, there are some great opportunities for a “Six Degrees” game here.  I’m just not motivated enough to follow through with it, though.)

I don’t mean to sound rabid with this post, so I apologize if you’re offended or otherwise put off by what I’ve said, but I’m standing by it.

As I’ve mentioned on several occasions, I try to be easily and openly accessible to everyone, be it via an instant messaging service such as AIM, IRC, e-mail, my Grand Central number, forums, and various other means that all but ensure the people I want to can get in touch with me.

Of course, this modus operandi comes with its own problems, mainly in the form of spam.  Normally I’m not one to complain about spam - heck, I go through the 900+ spam messages I get a day when I’m bored; if I had a quarter for every time I picked up an ‘herbal Viagara’ e-mail, my school tuition would be paid for - but over the past week, I’ve gone from entertained to thoroughly annoyed.

The problem itself is pretty fishy, and I’m at a loss for any explanation beyond what Google seems to be yielding, but in short, I’ve been plagued by plenty of instant messages from screen names starting with an adjective and ending in “trout.”  So far, I’ve been contacted by MindlessTrout, AssociatedTrout, and most recently RationedTrout, but there have been plenty of others in the mix.

Typically, these screen names will send one message, then tend to not respond to anything I say.  The exceptions, however, are those few that will respond with a simple greeting and nothing else.  In only one instance have I had any form of intelligent conversation, and that’s not saying much.  I’ve included the conversation below:

RationedTrout: Dennis Kucinich? Do you like Dennis Kucinich?
Nick Tabick: who are you
RationedTrout: I dont really care
RationedTrout: …..
RationedTrout: who is this?
RationedTrout: hmmmm??HMMM????!!!!!!
Nick Tabick: first you
RationedTrout: katy
RationedTrout: .
Nick Tabick: katy what
RationedTrout: ….first let me ask you this what state/country r u from ?
RationedTrout: u nameless person u
Nick Tabick: not sure i want to give that information to you until you answer my question
Nick Tabick: you first
RationedTrout: i dont like givong out my last name
RationedTrout: paranioa issues ya know?
RationedTrout: whats your FIRST name buddy?
Nick Tabick: could i ask you why all of my personal information is relevant to you?
RationedTrout: with your random barrack things
RationedTrout: cuz you asked me what my name was
RationedTrout: oh and i dont know you
RationedTrout: and you aked me random things
Nick Tabick: then why are you instant messaging me?
RationedTrout: so i thought “do i know this person?
RationedTrout: so the nI asked
RationedTrout: and im bored
RationedTrout: so thats why
Nick Tabick: and you have other screen names that end in “trout?”
RationedTrout: me? no I dont
RationedTrout: oh yeah and you asked me a question first so I answered
RationedTrout: and it progresssed from there
RationedTrout: yep
Nick Tabick: how did you get this screen name?
RationedTrout: i dont have this screen name
RationedTrout: how did YOU get mine?
RationedTrout: this is a little awkward
Nick Tabick: you messaged me first
RationedTrout: when?
Nick Tabick: six minutes ago
RationedTrout: what did I say?
Nick Tabick: RationedTrout: Dennis Kucinich? Do you like Dennis Kucinich?
Nick Tabick: did you type that?
RationedTrout: …thats not my screen name though
RationedTrout: this is odd
RationedTrout: cough c
Nick Tabick: what’s my screen name showing up as, then
RationedTrout: whos dennis kucinich?
RationedTrout: columnizedTrout
Nick Tabick: that’s not my screen name either
RationedTrout: ………okay
Nick Tabick: something tells me there’s something fishy (no pun intended) going on here
RationedTrout: lol same here
RationedTrout: hmmmm

From what I can gather as the result of this conversation, either these “trout” are semi-intelligent bots, or they’re randomly IMing people then connecting you with someone else, using some random discussion topic to confuse the two people they’re linking, which is just about everything Wikipedia has to say on the subject.  (I haven’t gathered too much additional information, other than that they all seem to be IMing just one of my screen names as opposed to two or more of the five I actively have attached to Trillian, so however they ended up with my username, it wasn’t scraped from here.)

If anyone else has had some random messages from the fish, I’d love to hear about it.  Maybe we can come up with some consistencies in who/what they target?

Addendum (8/19/2008): A bit of creative searching and some help from the commenters (Thank you, Colin!) has turned up what might be a solution to the trout troubles.  According to this link, responding to the bot with “$optout” should stop them from bothering you.  I just tried it out myself, so we’ll have to see if I get any more fishy instant messages.

And while I’m at it, I’m pretty amazed at the number of responses, both here and on sites like Twitter en masse.

For anyone who intends to be building something like this in the future, even if it’s an experiment, it would be cool to get a little bit of a heads-up explaining what it is, and getting my permission before letting the cat out of the bag.  Is a little etiquette too much to ask?

Addendum 2 (8/19/2008): I think it’s safe to call responding with “$optout” a permanent working solution as long as this response from the bot speaks the truth:

HornedTrout: Are you going to die?
Nick Tabick: $optout
HornedTrout: OPERATOR: Are you sure you want to opt-out? If you do, you will *never* be contacted again on the account “NickTabick”. There is *no way* to opt back in and undo this.
If you are sure, type “$optout 2DF2″. Remember, this is permanent and irreversible!
Nick Tabick: $optout 2DF2
HornedTrout: OPERATOR: You have opted out. The account “NickTabick” will *never* be contacted again. Good bye!

Note:  The “2DF2″ is probably a randomly-generated string so you can’t automate the response, the equivalent to a rudimentary (but copy/paste-able) captcha.

If you are waiting for the next IM, you can speed up the process by adding yourself to the queue with the request page here.  (At least, that’s what I did.)  I would also consider submitting yourself to that page to be a reasonable test of whether you are indeed blacklisted, as I have tried a few times and not heard a peep.

This also brings up a fork in the road as far as preventative measures; you can either hope your screen name doesn’t get IMs, or you can trust that the bot’s creator(s) will be true to their word when they say that they will never contact you again, queue your screen name with the request page, and respond with “$optout” as soon as the bot gets around to you.

I think it’s safe to call this issue closed.

Listen to emo?  Perhaps you’re an emotionally-sensitive wrist-slitter.  How about rap?  Well, the bets are on that you’ve been having boatloads of sex and been drunk enough to make Lindsay Lohan look like a model citizen.  And jazz?  Oh, you’re probably hiding in the closet, too much of a loner to do anything social (like comment?).

I don’t mean to offend anyone there, as it’s not actually me saying any of that.  Nope, those would be (more or less) the words of Felicity Baker, who has all but attached every genre of music with some insane mental or social health diagnosis.  No offense to her, but I find it extremely ridiculous that any person who so much as turns on a radio could be diagnosed as suicidal or a drug addict.

I also say that none of this is revolutionary due to the fact that all of the “diagnoses” seem to be common themes in that genre.  For example, in a genre that (at this point in time) prides itself on “banging dem hoes” and getting “crunk,” it’s a miracle at all that someone could suggest that people who listen to rap are following along without someone having already noticed the obvious similarity. And while I can’t call H.I.M. “heavy metal”, there are enough mentions of drug use throughout metal and rock to give me credit when I point out one of the (pardon me) “documented types” of groupie.  I am, however, having a hard time picturing the corellation between techno and suicide.

The point I’m trying to make here is that this “research” isn’t really research so much as a “medically-relevant” way to stereotype people based upon the genres of music they listen to.  Think about it:  I know quite a few people who listen to those types of music, and I think the worst habit any of them have is a cigarette habit, hardly self-destructive nature at the level Baker (and the according article there) seem to imply.

Not every genre has been accounted for (at least judging by the article I linked to), but enough are mentioned to account for almost every person I’ve ever met.  And with the multifaceted nature of music, most music may actually end up classified at least partially under a genre that this article ties with “bad connotations,” or (to what probably would be a mixture of horror and ridicule) multiple “bad” genres.

I guess I’ll go back to listening to my vast library, and quit putting fuel on the fire.  Call me a depressed, drug-addicted loner with suicidal tendencies and questionable sexuality if you want, but I’m in perfectly good health and I’m not going to let something as harebrained as an amateur diagnosis of my social and mental capacities ruin my listening pleasure.  So go on then.  Ensure your path to drug addiction, wrist-cutting, and wallflower behavior today.

Side note:  I’d love to know the researcher’s medical opinion to songs like this one.  Aside from the flagrant disregard for authority, of course.