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Up Your Game, Stalk Like a Pro!

So you’re creepy. Okay. You’ve been pining for Mary Beth ever since the second grade when she threw a grape popsicle at your shirt and it got stuck there all through recess. You then went home and hid your popsicle-stuck shirt under your bed so you can revisit it, not much, just every once in awhile when you’re feeling really low. That’s not really weird. It’s just a thing you do.

It’s so frustrating that Mary Beth doesn’t even know you’re alive. It makes you feel all squirrelly in the head, really. You went through junior high with braces and acne, and that rash that made you look like the underside of an avocado — but just seeing Mary Beth’s face got you through the day. Now she’s married to fucking Josh. Of course she’s married to fucking ass-chapper, car dealer, gum-popping, dickfaced Josh. But she should really be married to you, and deep down she knows it. Little does she know, but she friended you on Facebook and you’ve been trading comments about pot pie recipes for weeks now. She probably doesn’t really remember you from high school what with the reduced inflammation and proliferation of the avocado’s ass rash. Lucky for you, you think her marriage to jackal-dicked Josh is on the skids, but how will you know when to make your move? You can’t just ask her when you smell her hair in the grocery store every Sunday.


Dan Loewenherz has designed the answer. The Facebook Breakup Notifier.

This app has one purpose, and one purpose only — to let the user know when the relationship status of those of their choosing has changed. That’s right. Now you no longer have to stumble upon the information by chance. Now you can spin merrily in front of your freaky bedroom shrines once you immediately find out that the, ahem, object of your desire is a single ready to mingle. What will you do? Congratulate them? Offer sympathy? Put that doll away and ask for a phone number? All of them!

The Breakup Notifier lets you log in, check off the friends you’re interested in, and then emails you once they’re no longer taken.

As reported in an interview with the Huffington Post, here’s what Lowenherz had to say about the new app’s genesis.

I got the idea on Friday night when my fiancee and her mom were talking about a guy to set up with my fiancee’s sister. Unfortunately, said guy was taken…so I asked them if they would want to get notified when he broke up. It was kind of a joke actually, but they loved it, and so on Saturday I spent about 4 hours building it out. I didn’t really tell anyone until yesterday.

I hope that people use it for good and not evil – it’s merely practical. If you’re going to check someone’s profile every day [to stalk them], you might as well get rid of the tedium and have the changes get delivered right to your inbox instead. When people don’t list their relationship status, Breakup Notifier reads it as “Unknown”. So if someone changes, you’ll get an email like the following:

“Hi Shirley,
Joe Shmoe has changed his relationship status to “Single” from “In a relationship”. Get on it!
Best,
The Breakup Notifier”

We totally needed something like this, because surely the internet and the Fooozebooks doesn’t already give out enough personal information. I suspect in the near future the advent of the “Maybe You Need a Pap Smear,” and the “You Fuck Like King Kong” apps are in the offing.

We can’t wait.

If you’re really interested [I won’t judge you, but I will check your trunk for skulls], here’s more information on the thing: Breakupnotifier.com

Happy hunting!

Lessons in Competitive Parenting: Digital Life

Life takes dedication. As we all know, second best is really the first worst. To succeed in our uber-competitive world, where only the strongest survive to get into a decent preschool, it is never too soon to set the standards that others will follow. Thus begins our lessons in competitive parenting.

If you are expecting, or expecting to be expecting some day, you are lucky to gestate in the modern era. Thanks to social media, today’s expectant parents no longer have to suffer through months of anxiety and anticipation in silence. You can gain immediate validation and affirmation online, any time, for your literal navel gazing. Here are some guidelines for making social media work for you during your pregnancy.

Facebook is a must. If you are not currently on Facebook, or quit in disgust when all of your friends posted preggo updates all day, every day, now is the time to activate your account and enact your revenge! Be sure to friend everyone you know, however tangentially. And your professional colleagues want in on this, too. Trust me, everyone wants to share in your joy by watching your burgeoning belly expand, almost in real time. (Hey! There’s an idea…time-lapsed pregnancy videos!)

Be sure to post pictures of your belly each week. If you want to be cool yet servicey, give a nod to Dylan by holding a hand-numbered sign showing your gestational week in each shot.

People will notice if you skip a week, so do not let them down! Added bonus: shortly after each picture posts, your ego and hormones can be boosted with strings of compliments like, “You look great, Mama!” or “Even preggo, you are adorbs!” or “Love the new outtie! Your bellybutton looks so cute poking through your shirt!

While uploading pictures, be sure to update your status. Today, people enjoy sharing their medical records! You’ll get plenty of quality medical advice about how to deal with swollen ankles and constipation from your friends and family and that girl from junior high who got a hot dog stuck in her hoo-hoo.

Don’t hesitate to crowd-source Facebook for product recommendations. Mobilize the armies of mommies online, poised at the ready to share their experiences with the least smothering sling or the crib painted with acceptable levels of lead paint. Uber-parents must get the best of everything and have it all before the baby arrives. Yes, people used to let their babies sleep in dresser drawers, but they also used to change their own oil and talk on phones with cords. This is now!

Start a blog. A blog is imperative. A pregnancy blog is the perfect place to expand in long form on your daily trials and tribulations while waiting anxiously for your uterus to explode. Really, you should have created one before you got pregnant to chart your attempts at conception, but it isn’t too late to start now. Use it to coordinate your multi-state, multi-event baby showers, guest lists, and gift registries. And while there are no limits to what you write about, keep in mind that most pregnancy blogs take one of two thematic approaches:

OMG! What is happening to my body and my life?!, or
I am so blessed to have the perfect family, spouse, job, house, life, and soon-to-be baby.

Twitter is perfect for pre-borns. Just because they aren’t free of the womb, babies should not be restricted from tweeting. Do sign up for a Twitter account in the baby’s name or come up with something really cute and creative, like BabyDouche. That way, your baby can tweet delightful missives from the womb: “Gross! I may need therapy. It was kind of dark and mostly muffled, but I’m pretty sure I felt ‘it.’” If you tweet as yourself, you should give a daily pregnancy update, two or three on sonogram days. Remember: moderation is out! There is no such thing as over-sharing.

Email is not totally over yet. It may be a dying art, but there is some value in securing an email account for your pending spawn ASAP. If your top choice of name is not available at Gmail, you can tweak the spelling of the child’s name or use another middle initial to get the right email address. Your child will have to live with this email address for life – it is important to lock it down now.

YouTube. Make a channel for your pregnancy videos. While you can’t upload actual birth videos, you can start making a digital scrapbook of clips of You! Being Pregnant! If you’re lucky, you’ll go viral with a hilarious video of your water breaking during your prenatal tap dancing class. Shuffle-toe-tap-swoosh!

Our lives will be lived out loud and online! Dive in, pre-parents! What could possibly go wrong?


Join the Ministry of Propaganda

Attention fellow patriots: Crasstalk needs you. It is time to spread the word to the masses about the glorious Crasstalk Revolution.

I think we want to start first by collecting the refugees from the Gawker media meltdown. We need to spread the word on all the sites and try to find those who have yet to migrate. Got an I09 or Dead Spin account? Pimp us out. Notice one of your fave commenters isn’t here? Try to hit them up to join us.

So far we have a twitter and a fancy new FaceBook (thanks BBK). We can also be Stumbled Upon thanks to Muppet Baby. However I am sure we can think of a few more ways to spread the word.

First, we need a nice logo. Anyone got a flair for design? I can also open us a YouTube if we want to make some videos, which could be fun.

Anyway, I am opening this post to see who can help, and what kinds of ideas other people have for getting the word out.

Together we can win the Internet.

UPDATE: So I think we got some good ideas. I will open a YouTube and a Drop Box over the weekend. Let’s keep getting the word out in the Gawkerverse so our friends can find us. I will post a new thread to check in over the weekend. I also just want to say thanks to all of you guys, this has been a lot of fun for me. Please email crasstalk at gmail dot com if you have questions and/or suggestions.

Night, nite.