Robert W. Gehl @robertwgehl@scholar.social

yes, debate night, deliver my eyeballs to advertisers on CNN. We all know who wins these debates: marketers

ooh! ooh! If anyone on Mastodon sees this in the next hour, feel free to comment with your thoughts and I might bring them to the class.

trying an experiment in class right now: asking the class to compare early radio (1910s, 20s, 30s) to the Internet right now. What debates were they having in the early 20th C that anticipate debates we've had about the Internet since the 1980s on?

watching "Birthright, part 1"

Worf, to everyone in earshot, all episode: "A Klingon warrior would rather die in battle than be captured and bring dishonor upon his sons and his sons' sons!"

Romulan guard: holds disruptor on Worf.

Worf: puts his hands up

At this point in my life, I probably have seen a million faces, but I have rocked maybe 20 of them.

changes *everything*

trying to promote Mastodon at the Association of Internet Researchers #aoir2019 conference... any other Mastodon users here?

there is so much I do not understand

I really do not like this town

working up a keynote talk for Deakin University's "Dark Social Spaces" workshop. My talk will be titled "Truth in Dark Web Advertising" and will explore the world of ads on Tor onion services.

It erodes trust, one of the influencers says.

What erodes trust? This scam, or the fact that you shill products in an underhanded manner?

boo hoo. Influencers, who build up 'authentic' relationships with followers by pretending to care about them, use that influence to get free products and money from brands. They then pretend to 'organically' like the products in their social media posts.

Now the poor influencers and brands are being scammed... by people pretending to be the influencers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/style/instagram-influencer-fraud.html

It's really getting tough for consumers out there. So many scams!

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/dark-web-hitmen-hire-service-7988693

[not a new headline, but something that came up during research for a talk I'm giving]

I think Trudeau is about my age. I do not recall it ever being ok to do brownface or blackface when I was younger. Ridiculous.

browser: a web page is slowing down your browser. What would you like to do?

me: KILL IT WITH FIRE