the wellingtonista

The following is based on an early morning email conversation between various members of the Wellingtonista crew (names removed to protect the guilty). To make things a little clearer I have added little explanations as well. X: "Ok, who is going to blog the Great Blend? Or should we all just chip in on a single post?" Y: "I bags not me. I'm too hungover. Note to self: Not cool to ask Sam Morgan for a light. Not cool." X: "Why not? He can afford one. Should've just asked him for money, at least he would've had that." Z: "Given that I sat at the back snickering going "really? teenagers use the interweb? whoda thunk it?" I suspect I might not be the best person to paint the event in a good light. On a more wellington-related note though, the boatshed is beautiful and I'm totally going to get married there. Unless I manage to snag myself a Bresolini, of course." A: "I think we could use this email thread as the basis for a post." X: "Yeah, that'd be easier than actually thinking" Y: "Noooooooooooooo, I have a clean living image to maintain." A: "So did anyone other than me change their top 8 MySpace friends this morning?"

danah boyd's talk centred on social site MySpace and teenage interaction dynamics on it. One of the things that came up was the way MySpace forces you to pubicly say who your 8 best friends are and the repercussions of this.

Z: "I have a top 24. Without having to befriend the X Men. I suppose this makes me far more down with the kids than even Russell. Heh."

MySpace offered people who had Xmen ( a promotion for the last movie) as a "friend" a Top 16 Friends instead of the default 8.

A: "You have a top 24 and I'm not on it!!!! You are so off my top 8 sista." Z: "You've never left me a comment! B*tch!" A: "oh right, the 'initiating conversation for reciprocal appreciation' phase. I'd forgotten about that bit*. "Yo, thanks for the ad!"**

*This is the technical term for fishing for friends on MySpace. **MySpacese for "Thank you, for adding my to your list of friends"

B: "And so what's the deal with changing your top eight friends? I think I've only got that one guy who seems to be everyone's friend."

Your first friend in MySpace is co-creator Tom Anderson. It was revealed that he recieves daily emails from angry mothers who want to know why he is friends with their daughters

Z: "Tom [Anderson]'s not actually 29." C: "Some of Tom [Anderson]'s photos are quite cute." Y: "Almonds, bread, cheese and free Karajoz coffee and i'm still about 3 minutes from dying of this hangover..." D: "I was interested in danah's talk, especially when she connected the rise of online social spaces with the loss of real social spaces in American (& increasingly worldwide) cities. The panel discussion started well, but I got sick of the one person dominating the questions." X: "On the way home I realised that the title of danah's (note the lowercase d) talk should've been (to quote Monty Python): "Sit on MySpace and tell me that you love me!"" D: "But I'm probably not the best one to review the Bunnies [on Ponies], as it's not the sort of music that does it for me. Let's just say that they were loud enough to get in the way of some very interesting celebrity stalking opportunities down the other end of the shed." Z: "The Bunnies were great! Shame there was hardly anyone paying attention to them. And I was drunk and wanted to call out "Play Nest Egg!" and had to fight to restrain myself. Craig Terris has awesome drummer-face. And someone was playing a double bass! That's just grand." Z: "Who were the interesting celebrities?" D: "It was the stalking that was interesting, rather than the celebrities. At the very least, it involved cigarettes, a tycoon, a drummer and someone who had drunk a lot of red wine."