Give me some more internet fads to check out!
August 4, 2006 7:50 AM   Subscribe

Give me some more internet fads to check out! I've got my hipster pda tucked into the pocket of my moleskine, I'm using brasso to clean my ipod, but I haven't yet bought a pair of Vibram fivefingers. What other stuff is there to make/buy that you wouldn't know about without the internet?
posted by mattholomew to Computers & Internet (31 answers total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 


You're not Internet-cool unless you've made some LED throwies!
posted by Robot Johnny at 8:13 AM on August 4, 2006


Anal bleaching? I certainly didn't know about it before the internet.
posted by boo_radley at 8:30 AM on August 4, 2006 [2 favorites]


Neighborhoodies. Represent, yo
posted by radioamy at 8:33 AM on August 4, 2006


The Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 vibrating broom toy.
posted by MegoSteve at 8:37 AM on August 4, 2006


The Ready Made Blog links to lots of neat DIY ideas. For example, the DIY digital frame, the bottle cap tripod or guitar picks from credit card junk mail.
posted by Alison at 8:38 AM on August 4, 2006


You may find something to your liking over at I-Hacked.
posted by caddis at 8:39 AM on August 4, 2006


Threadless makes me a hipster? Oh god.
posted by borkingchikapa at 8:42 AM on August 4, 2006


Oh yeah - brown shirts.
posted by borkingchikapa at 8:42 AM on August 4, 2006


Also, photo cupcakes and book bookshelves.
posted by Alison at 8:45 AM on August 4, 2006


Pretty much anything in Make Magazine fits into that whole scene.

Also, HDR Photography is pretty internet gimmicky.

The Optimus Keyboard is for me a kind of holy grail of things the internet made me want to have that I don't really need.

Also, carrying your portable apps (aka your digital life!!1) or even your TiddlyWiki on your USB Thumb Drive, especially some sort of wacky novelty-shaped thumb drive like you might see linked to on BoingBoing any day of the week.

Rolling your own CMS with Ruby on Rails (or even Django!) counts, but that's maybe a bit rarefied.
posted by Hildago at 8:54 AM on August 4, 2006


Here are some internet words that may contain trends:
  • Podcasting
  • Folksonomies
  • Social Networking Sites
  • AJAX
  • Blogs
  • Mashups
  • Lifehacking
  • Machinima
  • Flashmobs
Follow Cory Doctorow around with a notebook some week.
posted by Hildago at 9:03 AM on August 4, 2006 [1 favorite]


Stock firmware iPods, Brasso'd or not, are so last week. Rockbox is this week.
posted by meehawl at 9:04 AM on August 4, 2006 [1 favorite]


Das Keyboard.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:57 AM on August 4, 2006


You'll be needing a fixedgear bike....
posted by fixedgear at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2006


Response by poster: Hidalgo, I thought about following Cory around for a while but I was afraid he'd blog me as his 'wetware avatar/shadow mahsup'.
posted by mattholomew at 10:02 AM on August 4, 2006 [4 favorites]


Moleskines, of course, are not truly an internet fad. They've been de rigueur among artists, grad school poets, aspiring novelists, and well-to-do crazy folk for quite a while now.

Some writerly folk I know have sworn by them for nigh on a decade, and I was quite fond of the things (from afar - you'll never catch me paying that much for a notebook) until the GTD drones got ahold of them. Sucked all the faux-bohemian lifeblood right out.
posted by poweredbybeard at 11:10 AM on August 4, 2006


Buy a framed Goatse print. It meets the qualifications and I really think you might enjoy it.
posted by rob paxon at 12:45 PM on August 4, 2006 [1 favorite]


i heard about this one website where it's like a place for people to collect the best of the internet or something but I can't remember what it is right now srry k thx bye


but seriously, read the archives...
posted by LimePi at 12:51 PM on August 4, 2006


I bought one Moleskine notebook and realized the fundamental problem I had with them: they shift the focus of writing from what's on the paper to the paper itself. Now I content myself with Mead Composition notebooks that cost about $9.00 less than a comparable Moleskine and I'm so much more productive, because I never have to ask whether or not what I have to say or draw is worth using up a page of my beautiful notebook. I guess YMMV, many people certainly like them a lot.
posted by Hildago at 12:59 PM on August 4, 2006


Hidalgo, I thought about following Cory around for a while but I was afraid he'd blog me as his 'wetware avatar/shadow mahsup'.

Good point. Maybe you could interrogate him instead? We can set up a trap using a funny looking clock made out of junk as bait.
posted by Hildago at 1:03 PM on August 4, 2006 [1 favorite]


Become an influential Mac blogger, then switch to Ubuntu and write a long entry about why.
posted by evariste at 1:05 PM on August 4, 2006


Hahahah evariste. That blog exchange is sure to be a source of great shame for the internet in the years to come.
posted by rob paxon at 1:58 PM on August 4, 2006


Hidalgo, I thought about following Cory around for a while but I was afraid he'd blog me as his 'wetware avatar/shadow mahsup'.

Good point. Maybe you could interrogate him instead? We can set up a trap using a funny looking clock made out of junk as bait.


I hate jokes like this that send cola through my nose, yet I can't share them with any of my muggle friends.
posted by mecran01 at 3:25 PM on August 4, 2006


I blame Bruce Chatwyn for the Moleskine thing.

There's about fifty pages about the damn things in one of his books. "Songlines" maybe?

Some things you can do to be one of the cool kids:

* throw a digital camera up in the air with the shutter open and put the pictures up on Flickr

* find some fucked-up grainy footage of someone famous appearing on TV before they were famous and put it on YouTube

* "mash up" two disparate things (put the soundtrack from Scooby Doo together with video from Eraserhead!) and put the video on YouTube

* hunt around domains listed to Google and speculate about what they could possibly mean/imply -- "trees.google.com", hmm, makes you think, doesn't it?

* do some totally pointless thing with old/obsolete technology -- make a webserver that runs off a floppy; Install linux on an answering machine; Fit a walkman inside an iPod.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:36 PM on August 4, 2006


make a webserver that runs off a floppy

Well, there's the webserver that was implanted in a pickled frog's body. To my knowledge, nobody's done this yet with mammals. I suggest a kitten corpse, for the shock value.
posted by meehawl at 4:15 PM on August 5, 2006




OK, there is a somewhat well known site out there that teaches all sorts of DIY goodies along these lines but no one has posted it here. I was sure someone would, but neigh. If I could remember but one of their specific projects I could probably Google it but I can not. Based on this incredibly lame description does anyone know the site I am remembering?
posted by caddis at 6:37 PM on August 5, 2006


Hack a Day?
Instructables?
Cre.ations.net?
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:35 AM on August 6, 2006


Instructables, yes. Thank you Zed.
posted by caddis at 10:51 AM on August 6, 2006


Just keep an eye on digg, populicious, and lifehacker. That's how I keep my eye out for fads. Maybe add in gizmodo or edgadget.

Peace,
posted by gbinal at 7:51 AM on August 7, 2006


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