Alice Liang

Trending

How do trends go from simply being trendy to being completely viral? Throw it on the interweb. Make it accessible. We share a plethora of ideas, interests and thoughts because at the end of the day, it means something to us. We’ll share ideas because we hope they mean something to someone else as well. The current trend going viral on the web right now is the series of “Shit ___ Says” videos. They’re created by professionals, semi-professionals and complete amateurs. Well-recognized companies have also hopped on the bandwagon and produced such videos [see more below]. So I was wonder, why hasn’t someone made one about tech geeks yet? Well today’s your lucky day. I stumbled upon “Shit Silicon Valley Says” and it’s hilariously true. Enjoy!

Some phrases worth mentioned:

-          “Is the internet down?”

-          “I already reblogged that. I reblogged it and re-tweed it. I re-tweeted it, reblogged it and checked into it.”

-          “Ashton Invested”

-          “Are you gonna get the new iPhone?”

-          “ I don’t really get Tumblr”

-          “How is this different from Facebook?”

-          “It’s like Airbnb for Facebook Games”

-          “A Netflix for YouTube”

-          “I check in on Path and then send I it to Foursquare. I also send it to Tumblr and Tumblr auto posts to Twitter and Facebook”

These short bits of utter truth and honesty is exactly why we laugh. The following videos are pretty amusing as well:

Young and Free

It hit me like a ton of bricks. We went on a spontaneous drive to Pittsford, NY to visit my cousin. We walked along railroad tracks and wandered into the forest. He jumped into the freezing Erie Canal in the middle of the night. We sat on the docks. The moon was beautiful that night.  He knows what it means to be young and free and he embodies it. I hope I don’t lose sight of that spirit. 

Digital Housekeeping

I’m taking a break from studying to unfriend people on Facebook. Not enough people give enough thought to what information is shared/available though their social networking platforms. Facebook tried to address this issue by implementing privacy settings to give users more control over who sees what. But the average user has 130 friends. Is a user really going to sift through their X number of friends and make X number of decisions based on each individuals degree of friendship? I wouldn’t. So it’s a double-edged sword. Have few friends and be comfortable sharing all your information. Or have many friends and share nothing. Facebook is banking on a happy medium between the two but that will never exists. The more we use these social networking platforms and the more information we share, the more complex this issue will get. Users will ultimately have to choose from both ends of the spectrum.

As I’m going through my list of friends, I realize how the mystery is gone. The casual exchange of “How are you” and “What are you up to” is meaningless when I can just look them up. I want the mystery back.

Sucks To Be Us

As soon as I got my hands on the New York Magazine piece (link), I began reading it feverishly. I was quite disappointed by the lack of conclusiveness in the piece but there were a few interesting points worth mentioning.

The concept of a locus of control, or being in control of your destiny, intrigued me. Is our generation jaded by believing that if we follow the steps of traditional education, we are guaranteed success? Are we over confident hyper-achievers (or at least our parents would like to think so) who feel entitled to success? After all, we worked so hard. We endured much distress over grade point averages and final examination. Don’t we deserve success? What about a consolation prize?

I strongly believe in the locus of control, but to a certain extent. Yes, you work hard by traditional means but the world thrives on a survival-of-the-fittest mentality. Therefore, we cannot all achieve success and become a part of the one-percent. Instead our generation will sit and squander over being the a part of the 99%, play the blame game and simultaneously percieve the 1% as “lucky”. I’ve been feeling this way ever since I recieved that fateful e-mail. But maybe I wasn’t “lucky”. What if I worked hard and made the right moves? The grass is not always on the greener-side but I should stop thinking as if luck played any role in me getting there. In retrospect, the first “right move” I made was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Interestingly enough, learning the concept of being rich and how to attain it wasn’t my biggest takeaway from that book. I learned the survival of the fittest mentality exists and it’s very important to differentiate yourself. Let me stop myself before I go off on this tangent.

Food for thought: Is our generation comprised of marginal-achievers jaded by the idea that we could all be a part of the successful one percent?

Sign Me Up

Lately, I’ve been trying to increase my web presence aka scooping up all the “aliceliang” usernames I can get! Check out my about.me and flavors.me page.

With all the websites I visit regularly on a daily basis, I’m starting to notice a trend in graphics/web design. For example, take a look at AirBnb, TaskRabbit, Bizzy and Naked Apartments. It’s all so visual. Barely any text for navigation, besides the standard “log in” and “sign up”. Somewhere along the way, someone decided that visual representations of standard website navigation would be better represented in the form of a small icon. But every website has a different set of navigation icons. Where is the logic in that?

You’re young. It’s your time to suck.

David Sedaris just gave a talk at Syracuse University and never have I ever been so motivated to read and write. He recommended Peter Hessler’s River Town, which I’ll have to pick up from the bookstore asap. Sedaris’ talk helped me realize that writing is the key self-awareness and awareness of the life around you. Everyone has things to talk about, stories to tell and opinions to share. It’s the courage to use a pen and paper, that sets us apart. 

I should start gathering all my favorite quotes somewhere.

Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. It’s the reason I don’t surround myself with the likes of them. #endrant

I signed up for Twitter

The world wide web is full of options. There exist many outlets that allow you to create and alter your web persona. I am intrigued by how our society jumps from one outlet to another. Sconex. Myspace. Xanga. LiveJournal. Facebook. Google+. Twitter. Tumblr. If we are constantly creating new personas, will a standard for official identification ever be possible? For the sake of cyber security, is that what we need? If a little bit of us lies in all the nooks and crannies of this virtual realm, who are we as individuals and as a collective web community? Food for thought. Follow me on twitter.com/alice_liang.

Optimization

54 hours of weekend time. 34 hours of sleep. 64 hours of work and work related activities. 16 hours of miscellaneous time.

Gnonstop Gnomes

Addicted.