June 6, 2008
10 things I hate about web 2.0
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1. Reconciling the huge gap between how interesting and important you tell your clients it all is, versus how interesting and important you actually find it all yourself.
2. The endless train of online armchair quarterbacks endlessly trying to engage you with endless rounds of mental masturbation.
3. The same usual suspects whining endlessly on about the same usual suspects.
4. The idea that spouting endless hyperbole about the latest doohickey widget is actually an interesting, compelling and worthy way for a grown man to spend his free time.
5. The well-intentioned but misguided belief that anonymous loser douchebags are actually entitled to an opinion.
6. People at conference panels, pretending that the only reason they’re attending is to offer valuable insight to their fellow man, as opposed to just pimping their wares and/or scouting for consulting gigs.
7. The pervasive use of the term, “2.0″ to describe anything other than internet software e.g. “Love 2.0″, “Women 2.0″, “Breakup 2.0″, “Food 2.0″, “Religion 2.0″, “Music 2.0″, “Poetry 2.0″, yak yak yak…
8. Any blogger with higher traffic than my own.
9. The popular but mistaken belief that there is a vast, unstoppable army of people in the world who actually care about this shit.
10. The sophomoric conceit that “The Conversation” is two-way. To quote Fran Leibowitz, “The opposite of Talking is not Listening. The opposite of Talking is Waiting”.
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Wow. Somehow you managed to channel my exact mood as I sit listening to people trading bullshit on the train on this gray friday morning. Well done Hugh!
Hey Hugh, #1, #8 and #9 are my favourites.
How about this one: being pressured/tempted to join and experiment with all the latest social tools but realistically not having enough time.
Bravo. Of course, now you’ve given me insight into a place in my soul I don’t want to know about (“Soul 2.0″?) and I will probably die a little bit every time I find myself doing this stuff now.
Ahhh …
New York brings out the true negative human in you. It’s a big city thing.
@moses — How about this one: being pressured/tempted to join and experiment with all the latest social tools but realistically not *giving a shit*.
Fixed it for you
Number 9 is something I think every day of my life lately. Well stated.
So what are the top 10 things that you *like,* Mr. Lizards and Toads?
Great stuff, but kinda painful, man, kinda painful.
Nailed it Hugh.
Amen to Hugh and Amen to Moses…Amen to Zchamu…Amen to us all!
Still trying to figure out what makes an expert on all this…cause in the long run…who cares. But amazing that people will pay me for the “expertise.“
Got to admit, we live in the greatest place in the world if this is the case!
9. The popular but mistaken belief that there is a vast, unstoppable army of people in the world who actually care about this shit.
LOL you’re so right, if all the 2.0 nerds would get out from behind their laptops sometimes and mingle with the rest of humanity they might get a clue…
I smell a dose of small-town reality. God bless it.
Thanks Hugh! Negative yes but all true. Hoping this will all turn into more positives someday…soon.
#6 is why I rarely go to trade shows/conferences/conventions anymore.
> 2. The endless train of online armchair quarterbacks endlessly trying to engage you with endless rounds of mental masturbation.
Zing! I plead guilty, your honour.
Good to know it’s not just me thinking this!
Web 1.0 was e-commerce. Web 2.0 is content distribution and data mixing with lots of JavaScript doohickeys. What will 3.0 be? Will O’Reilly try to trademark it? Have they already done so?
@Daniel Hedrick: Now don’t blame Hugh… you were already dying a little bit every time you do this stuff. Hugh has just called your attention to it so now you *know* that you’re dying when you do these things.
Awareness of Web 2.0 incremental mortality
Oh thank you… as I pack for the Enterprise 2.0 conference next week…
can u say…“Hater 2.0″
Am reading my mind in your article and I go with your 8th and 9th point at 200%- i hate it.
Oh thank you… as I pack for the Enterprise 2.0 conference next week…
11. Scoble.
When it boils down to it, aren’t we all just anonymous loser douchebags?
I’m glad it’s Friday, because now I need a drink.
nunc est bibendum
convulsive laughter! needed to be said.
sfx: convulsive laughter.
that needed to be said. well done hugh!
don’t you think the fact that you posted this is contradicting your own point?
Hugh,
You say beautiful things and you say dark things and you somehow always manage to parenthetically explain life, the universe, and everything.
Thanks for that.
Signed,
Lifetime RSS subscriber, future print customer
I especially agree with #9.
There are better things to worry about.…like the state of our economy.
gosh, if it were not for you, I would fly there and marry you today.….
love,
meredith
p.s. as long as we remember how to spell, that is even more important.….….thanks hugh.….……
what I wonder is why i don’t feel this way about web 1.0. Sure there were hypemeisters then too; but web 1.0, and web 1.x apps and online dbs, they all had a certain coherence, not the sliced and diced into excessive fragmentation and abstraction the way web 2.0 so far has too oft been. I do think we’ll eventually find our way to coherence, we just have to work our way through a bunch of babble, once those who think and spout and build lots of meaninglessness get exhausted, and good or better ideas can become more recognizable. imo, it’s fine to admit that real-world concerns deserve more attention than the more insular online– or web2.0 centric domains, even though it means dropping the illusion that the whole world of amazing and stunningly beautiful and brilliant people are hanging on your every twitter and remix. Now I’ve got to get back to a perfect Reuben sandwich that’s on my plate.
I can agree with what Josh said, though it often seems to be in spite of yourself. This is my first contact, but you have definitely been a source of ideas for me despite the potential of being one of the anonymous loser douchebags (Do I have to work up to that?) For me you are the world’s most optimistic curmudgeon. Its kinda Zen-like. If you are going to reference Fran Leibowitz, see what she says about wine.
spot on
Hugh
I disagree.
Anonymous
Indeed. You’re a couple of months behind some of us though:
http://visionthing.vagueware.com
Well done for catching up.
11. The irony of a self-proclaimed PROFESSIONAL BLOGGER and the anonymous loser douchebags who hero-worship him hating on web 2.0.
daniel, i can’t believe it took HMcL, but whatever gets you thinking, you’re right, you know,.
josh, get a life and read a real book,
meredith, you wouldn’t, really.
antiques nailed it. a circular exercise in self-loathing.
11. The enormous amount of time it takes in the day to log into all these services, try them all, put on and then remove all the widgets from my blog, and make useless decisions about whether these tools are useful or will even be around nexr year.
12. The enormous amount of time it takes to have 1500 online friends. And answer them,
If you don’t like how some people handle web 2.0, don’t pay attention to them. It does two things: 1.) helps you maintain your sanity and 2.) irritates them because it means they don’t have an audience. Two birds with one stone.
Hope all is well in NYC.
re:10
if we all thought the opposite of talking AND listening was doing would we get more done?
I can hear the voice of disgust in this post
but I like the list, especially point 7
Funny. Very, very funny. Love these opinions and perspectives. Bravo Hugh. Bravo.
especially like number 6 after recent attendance at Social Media Infleunce Conference — http://www.socialmediainfluence.com — in London last week — if you are reading this you know who you are
I might add another one:
the inflammatory conviction that they are onto something really really revolutionary by rehashing old and passing it as new, creating no new technology, researching for no novel knowledge, developing no new science, and more interestingly: no revenue.
Phil said, “what I wonder is why i don’t feel this way about web 1.0″
Maybe because for 1.0, (which wasn’t necessarily labeled as such at the time), even with all the hype most people were too busy building to over-hype. Now, Hype 2.0, (sorry, couldn’t help it), often overwhelms RealDeal 1 through a million point oh.
Also, a lot of what’s going on now isn’t really all that new conceptually. Yes, I know. People claim it is. But mostly it’s implementation and variations on a theme for concepts that in a lot of cases are pre 1.0. Even pre-consumer web.
Maybe you didn’t feel this way about 1.0 because even though the dreams were there, they didn’t have an over-hyped soundtrack constantly running alongside.
Scott
Web 2.0 — what does that actually MEAN?
Vague.
there are too many people with too much time on their hands
Wank 2.0
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Unfortunately the same can be said about “art” and twenty other subjects we try to ply our livings at.
Four through ten I get. I suspect the first three come with blog celebrity, to which I can’t relate.
7A) “my 2.0 approach to winemaking…”
Hope you are able to get out of the bubble for awhile and get some clean non-digital air, press some non-web 2.0 flesh, and eat some analog icecream.
Yep, have to agree totally with 7 and 9. Given that you cannot get 2 people to agree on what Web2.0 is, the others are even more fatuous.
I think there’s also a large body of people out there who are angst-ridden as they have been told to believe about this shit, but don’t know where to begin. Believing that is.
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