Some Sunday links
I’ve been on a much-needed mini vacation for the last four days and this is my first time on the internet since Wednesday. If you’ve commented on one of my posts in that time period and the comment got eaten, I apologize. I moderate all comments and whenever I’m gone for an extended period of time I’m unable to gather the motivation to read through 800 spam comments to pick out a few legitimate ones.
Anyway, here are some media-related links
1. This is pretty scary. Someone placed a hoax craigslist ad announcing an everything-must-go giveaway at a house. The only problem? It wasn’t placed by the owner — and he returned to his house to find people literally looting it. And when he tried to stop them from taking his possessions, the people showed him print-outs from the craiglist ad and refused to give anything back. I smell a pending sociological experiment that could come out of this; something based on the effects of advertising and a level of entitlement that accompanies any sort of ad.
2. We’ve seen a number of incidents recently in which some brutal crime or tragedy occurred that involved a social networking site in some way. The most recent example is a teen male who killed his father because his Myspace account had been deleted.
3. The New Yorker has a long feature article about the demise of the print newspaper industry and what its online future may entail. Scarily enough, the reporter picked The Huffington Post as the example of the future of newspapers. Why is this scary? Because The Huffington Post doesn’t pay many of its star writers. I’m not talking about user-generated content, I’m talking about professional writers who write for the site for free while it soaks of millions in advertising dollars.
4. Ever wonder what bloggers who write for Gawker websites pull in for salaries? We’ve known for some time that they’re paid in part based on the number of page views they attract. Now we have some sense of the actual figures in their pay checks.
a similar craigslist ad caused a woman’s house in tacoma to also be ransacked in march 2007. it was traced to her niece who placed the ad in retaliation for her mother being evicted from the house. the ad was online for less than two hours before it was flagged and removed, yet that was enough time for people to notice it.
everything was gone. windows, kitchen sink, light fixtures, etc. the house was simply trashed. from what i can tell, the damages were not covered by insurance and the owner had to pay out of pocket for repairs.
the concept of someone placing such an ad, and the people responding boggles the mind.
Yeah, we’re seeing more and more examples of abusive ads being placed on Craigslist. I wouldn’t be surprised if people started posting real phone numbers in fake sex ads in the chance encounters section in the hope of breaking up marriages.