This year’s SXSW Interactive had 12,000 people attend. It was bigger than SXSW Music for the first time. It had 4,000 people more than the year before. Largely I heard two things from people:

• “This is a great event, I’m getting a lot out of it!”
• “Man oh man, I can’t seem to throw an iPhone without hitting a douchebag!”

Personally, SXSWi for me just isn’t compelling anymore, at least not as a conference. While the content may be perfectly suited for some, I found the sessions weak and beginner level. But that might be OK, since there was clearly an audience for that content. And yes, there were an insane amount of douchebaggery going on. This came in two forms:

• Social Media Expert Douchebaggery – There’s only one thing worst than a room full of “social media experts”… a room full of social media experts who’ve been making a living off that “expert” status for a couple of years. They’ve fashioned a career out of telling clients what to do and now they seem to think that they’ve been knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
• Starf**king Douchebaggery – I’m amazed at the sheer number of Foursquare shouts and twitter messages I saw from talented, experienced, mature social media people that sounded something like “OMG! I might get to meet Pete Cashmore at the Mashable party!”

Maybe my disillusionment comes from the fact that my SXSWi experience this year started off with one of the most insulting conversational exchanges I’ve had in my entire life, with a “social media expert”, who later (and totally separately) blogged on the topic of the problems with interpersonal exchanges at the conference. (No I’m not going to say who or what, other than to say that year ago we drank together as friends. Apparently I’m no longer worthy of respectful conversation…)

But that was my experience. I’ve been going to SXSWi since 1997, taking a few years off around the dot com bust. I remember when the conference was less than a thousand people. We were learning and struggling together through the Web 1.0 days. Then we were learning and struggling together through the Web 2.0 days. But as Gina Vakili said: “Aging Techies are the new Aging Hippies.”

As one of those aging techies, I remember a time when SXSWi was better than it was this year, and it wasn’t a smaller amount of douchebaggery. Here are the main three reasons I think SXSWi has gone off the rails:

Size
The organizers of the event have largely kept the formula of the event the same as it was 13 years ago when I attended my first event. Directly scaling a 500 person event to 12,000 simply doesn’t work. To put the 12k number in context, CES this year had 6,000 attendees, while GDC had 18,000. This is the big leagues as far as industry events go. At this point, SXSWi will never again be a 500 person event, and that’s OK. But it’s time to rethink what SXSWi is and what people are hoping to get out of it. The SXSWi team has to decide what they want the event to be and then redesign it according to those desires. If it’s going to be a size restricted event, so be it. If it’s going to be as large as they can sell tickets to event, that’s fine too. But those are both very different events, and that decision needs to be made.

Mass Audience Crowdsourced Panel Picker
The first year the Panel Picker was out, I thought it was a great idea. The content that came out of it was pretty solid. But as awareness of the tool grew, people figured out that the best way to get a panel selected was to come up with a sexy and often pointless session title. It’s time for the organizers to enlist a group of people to help find genius speakers we don’t know, to find topics we don’t know we need to know. The best session I’ve seen in years at any conference was Henry Jenkins at last year’s SXSWi. Henry is an absolute genius and an amazing speaker. I’ll bet you’ve never heard of him, and if you have, you probably haven’t read his blog or his books. Which is exactly why he was so much fun to hear from. Just because a metric ton of potential conference attendees vote up all the panels with “sex” in the titles, doesn’t mean you’re going to have a compelling content experience.

Do you know why TED has absolutely astounding content? Because they make it the very core of the program and they find people you’ve never heard of. Then they work with them to ensure insanely good presentation.

Grand Expectations
Good things do, in fact, come to an end. SXSWi isn’t the same because the world isn’t the same. For every SXSWi vet that I talked to who said the event sucked, I talked to two first timers who loved the event. Yes, SXSWi is “just another event”, but that’s actually a good sign. It means we’re onto the second (third? fourth?) generation of Web geeks. Those of us who were doing this stuff 10+ years ago dreamed of the day when the Web would be given the serious attention and credibility it deserves. We’re there. And that’s a great, great thing.

Despite the problems, I have to call out some awesomeness.

• Foursquare (the app): A truly useful service for the event. While I used Foursquare before SXSWi, I was never really that excited about it. Having a purpose and a network for people using it for the same purpose helped me get quickly excited. Now I want all my friends and local businesses on it. I’ve already talked to two neighborhood small businesses about how they should get on it. (Oh, and the updated app was a great improvement just in time for the conference)
• Foursquare (the company): From the fact that the service was rock solid stable, to the custom SXSWi content, these guys did great in running a Web app business.
• Chevy: The power bricks the Chevy team put out for people to plug their laptops into was an insanely good promotion for their Volt electric vehicle. I literally thanked the Volt girl standing next to the car for those power bricks. They could have just printed a bunch of pointless paper collateral to shove in the registration bag. Instead they solved a real need.
• AT&T (the network): It worked. Well. As TechCrunch asked, why can’t they do that every day?
• AT&T (the lockers): Like Chevy, AT&T solved an honest to god need with an unique and talkable solution. They created lockers where you could plug in your phone to get a recharge, then lock it up so you could hit a session while you rejuice. Genius.
• Inspiration: I didn’t realize quite how inspired I was from all the great work my incredible friends are doing until the first day back in the office. I literally filed a 4′x8′ whiteboard with ideas, tasks, and sketches.

So what did you think about the SXSWi 2010?

So with that, here’s some SXSW tips I’ve found over the years…

1. It’s casual, baby. Austin is one of the most laid back cities on Earth, and with it being a college town there’s not much need for the suit jacket. The event is pretty low key – upscale weekend wear. Don’t show up in your car wash shorts, but you’ll be fine in jeans and a t-shirt. Been dying to show off that new Threadless shirt? This is your opportunity. (And despite what you might have heard, not all of us Texans wear boots and cowboy hats, FYI.)

Oh, and wear comfortable shoes. Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the size of the convention center, and the distance to lunch. (See below about lunch)

Bonus tip: Watch the weather for Austin. This time of year in Texas has a wide range of climates, and you’ll want to pack right. This may well include bringing an umbrella. Or a snow shovel. Or a bikini. Or all of the above.

2. “Plan” your sessions. The sheer number of sessions is insane. Seriously crazy. And they’re all going to be great. Take a look at the schedule before you get on the plane, and then once you’re there and have seen the building layout, make up a game plan for what you want to see. The really cool sessions can often fill up to standing room only capacity, so the quicker you get from session to session the better. That said, don’t over plan either.

Be prepared, but go with the flow. I’ve passed up seemingly cool panels to hang in the hall and talk to people who’ve ended up being long term friends.

3. Learn the building/room layout. Along those lines, there are so many session rooms, the event is naturally spread across the Convention Center. Last year, there was a whole wing that nobody knew how to find. When you get there, take a walk around, learn where all the SXSWi rooms are. You’ll more quickly and easily move from session to session. And hell, your superior knowledge may impress those around you who are struggling for direction…. a great wa to meet new people!

4. Introduce yourself! SXSWi, like the city that hosts it, is an incredibly welcoming event. Don’t think twice about sticking your hand out and saying “Hi, my name is ______”. I’ve always been amazed at how easy it is to meet people at this event. The great thing about the event is the guy sitting on the floor in the hall charging his laptop may be the founder of your favorite web app!

Don’t forget to bring tons of business cards and a pen. (I always write details on the back of the cards I collect so I can remember who the heck the person was, including descriptive physical traits)

I actually make a list of the people I know who will be attending that I want to meet. This helps me ensure that I don’t forget anyone I’m dying to connect with. It’s nerdy, but hey, I take my networking seriously! Besides, when are this many people I’m dying to meet in person going to be in the same location again?

Bonus tip: Don’t spend all your time between sessions checking email. Do something more productive with your time… you can check your mail at home, and you’re going to be behind when you get home anyway.

2010 Bonus tip: Stop twittering and start talking. No, I’m not suffering from “Get Off My Lawn Syndrome”, I just think that with so many great people and great sessions, it’s time to look up from the screen and rejoin the world, at least for a few minutes. There’s a good chance that many of your twitter followers will be at SXSWi, so no need to tease the rest of them who aren’t with info they’re likely not going to understand without context.

5. Get out from behind the camera. Keep in mind that hundreds of people will be uploading thousands of photos to flickr and other photo sharing sites in the days of and after SXSWi. Don’t spend all your time behind your camera lens when you are just going to be taking photos of the same thing 432 other people will be posting online too. Save your “behind the camera” time for shots that are truly unique, or that are must-haves for you.

Bonus tip: Be sure to tag your photos when you post them to flickr! Something descriptive will work: sxsw2009 should work fine.

2010 Bonus tip: Ask someone to take YOUR picture with YOUR camera. You’ll enjoying having pictures of yourself for later.

6. Food is off-site. Plan on heading off-site for lunch, since the Convention Center doesn’t have much in this department. (One of my biggest beefs with the event for years now) There’s a number of places close by.

7. “Plan” your parties. A lot of great companies host a lot of great parties. So many, in fact, that if you don’t think about which ones you’re going to, you’ll miss something great.

And of course, same thing goes as planning your panels – go with the flow. Have fun, don’t stress your plan too much. You plan so that you have the knowledge to be flexible.

8. Dump your bag. Part of planning your parties is figuring out how to get back to your hotel room to drop of your bag before heading to the parties. Nothing worse than having to drag your laptop around all night, hoping nobody spills beer on it.

9. SMS is your friend. In the few days I spend at SXSWi, I send more SMS messages than I probably spend the entire rest of the year. It’s how I check with friends to see how our current sessions compare. It’s how I tell my friends where I’m at and how to hook up for lunch. It’s how I coordinate party going. If you’re not a big SMS person, figure out how it works on your particular phone before you get to Austin.

2010 Bonus tip: Here’s where using Twitter might be fantastic. Especially since the parties last year were ALL packed like mad. Prepare to setup your own parties, and start building your twitter following now so you can quickly switch gears when the line for the party you’re trying to get into is 500 people and the building fits 135.

10. Bring cab money. This is something I always forget, then find myself looking for an ATM at 2a or walking many blocks back to my hotel. Austin isn’t a real “cab city”, but downtown there’s usually plenty. As part of the point above, I try to go to the furthest party from my hotel first, then party/bar hop towards the hotel, which often eliminates the need for a cab all together.

SXSWi is a great event, so have fun! (It’s hard not to) Hope to see you there. Feel free to text me (214-566-5957) or drop me an email (jake AT communityguy DOT com). I’d love to meet you in person!

Need more tips? Check out the unofficial SXSW blog, or check out this collection of links from DailyIdea.tv. They’ve also put together a fun video that covers many of the same things I’ve outlined here.

When Sean and I started Ant’s Eye View almost exactly a year ago, we had a pretty clear dream. We wanted to build a company that was based on senior talent, doing in-depth work with clients who were rolling up their sleeves and diving into social media and customer engagement with force.

A year in, we’ve achieved exactly that. Our team is an amazing group of geniuses. Our clients list is amazing and we’re helping them develop and implement some impressive programs and internal changes. And we’ve grown to 11 people and 2 offices.
11 people and 2 offices.

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d reach such heights in a mere 12 months. But here we are about to celebrate again.

That’s right, we’re growing again. As you may have read on the AEV blog today, we are very excited to announce that we’re opening a Silicon Valley office. 3 offices!

Building out that office will be the newest Ant, Kira Wampler. Kira has been the Group Marketing Manager of Online Engagement with Intuit and will join as Managing Director. Here’s some background:

When it comes to being in the trenches with customer engagement , nobody has been deeper, or done more amazing work than Kira Wampler. Having had a chance to work with Kira when she was at Intuit, I was blown away by her depth of knowledge, amazing leadership, and of course her stunning use of BSG references. Kira has been named a Small Business Marketer of the Year not once, but twice (2008 and 2009), and her project Small Business United won the WOMMA 2009 Grand Prix Award. In short, she’s a rockstar.

As Kira joins the team, it’s a good, and proud reminder that our team is unique. We have built something that attracts amazingly talented practitioners that otherwise wouldn’t join an agency or consulting firm.

It was an amazing 2009, but 2010 is shaping up to be flat out stunning. With a team like this, how could it not be?!?

Remember widgets? In the early days of corporate social media (i.e. 2005 – 2006), widgets were all the rage. They were light and viral; the minimal effort to support them post-lauch made them more attractive to brands than blogs or podcasts.

What also made them attractive to brands was an ability to fairly easily reformat existing content. This meant they could “be social” without much additional work. Thing is, widgets were a pain in the ass. If you weren’t a fairly skilled nerd, and let’s face it, most people aren’t, you wouldn’t know what to do with widget installation code if you life depended on it.

The other issue with widgets is the platform. The iPhone or Facebook as the platform inherently allow vastly more people to use apps than widgets ever did. The difference between app success as a concept and widget success is almost entirely based on the platform(s) by which they are delivered.

Generally, Peter is absolutely correct when he says:

If you’ve been trying to figure out how to think about the new world of applications, look back at your resources on widgets and run a find-and-replace…it might get you up to speed sooner than you imagined.

But it’s important to be clear that while the underlying thinking of apps and widgets is extremely similar, don’t be convinced that we’re going through the same thing we did when widgets were the rage a few years back. Widgets, and the ensuing conversation, helped to get us to a point where small, inexpensive applications could be easily delivered. But today’s apps and yesterday’s widgets are absolutely not the same thing, anymore than the Model T and a Prius are the same thing.

The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’ve talked about how the Community Manager role is the “loneliest job in business” – it’s a job caught between customers and colleagues, where both expect that you’re on “the other side”. But the truth is, great community managers are great because they don’t choose a side, they understand, advocate, explain, and support both.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

- Antoine de Saint Exupery

A good Community Manager supports the activities a group of fans/customers are already doing. A great Community Manager has an ability to look at a situation and see below the surface. They find the people who are true leaders, not just talkers. They offer support that is more or different from what is being asked of them because it’s what matters. They constantly look at groups and social engagements and people who, to the execs on the 24th floor just look like “unwashed masses” and see something revolutionary.

Viva la Community Managers!

MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f*ck was going on when I first saw it.

How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

Was learning cursive really necessary?

Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

My brother’s Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, “Cuz we beat you, and you hate us.” Classy, bro.

Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’ examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an attorney and

said “Yes that’s G as in…(10 second lapse)..ummm…Goonies”

What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

Bad decisions make good stories.

Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem….

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damnit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…

As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

I think that, if years down the road when I’m trying to have a kid, I find out that I’m sterile, most of my disappointment will stem from the fact that I was not aware of my condition in college.

Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.

Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…

My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day “Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the hell do I respond to that?

I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

Q: You talk about linchpins being artists. What’s the difference between a conventional marketer and one who thinks like an artist? Can you give an example of a marketer who is an artist?

A: Art, by my definition, has nothing to do with painting and everything to do with connecting with people in a generous way and causing a change to take place. A movie director is making art when she makes you cry. A product designer creates art when the UI is better than it needs to be and it creates efficiency or even joy. Marketers can find plenty of Dummies books and manuals and insider PDFs that demonstrate, step by step, how to follow the rules. That’s easy and not particularly valuable. A marketer becomes an artist when she goes out on a limb, does the unexpected or the risky and makes a difference. I’d argue that you two do art when you stand up and give a talk about the 1%. Or Biz Stone was an artist when he figured out how to launch and scale Twitter’s marketing. Or Scott Monty at Ford when he does a car show rollout that bypasses the cocktail parties at AutoWeek in favor of individual interviews with social media mavens. The second time someone does something, it’s a copy. The first time, it’s art.

Social engagement/community building work is absolutely an art form. You’re taking complex, deep seated business practices and personal emotions and bending them into something new and amazing. As Seth mentions above, Scott Monty is doing something pure, unique, and quite amazing. Art doesn’t “just happen”. Art takes work, work that may not be obvious. I recently attended a lecture by a well-known art curator who talked about a number of projects that he had overseen. At first glance, the projects seemed obvious: create a theme, open a space, invite artists in to fill a theme. But as he explained the details that went into the creation of each project, it was obvious that there was years of skill, hours of thought, and months of preparation that each event was based on.

And nearly all of that time was impossible to track, much less apply an ROI calculation to. And that’s OK. Look at how Seth describes the idea of quantifying this art:

Q: We love this quote in the book: “The easier it is to quantify, the less it’s worth.” Can you tell us, and our MBA friends, why this is true?

A: If you can quantify it, then probably someone before you figured out a why to grind it out. And if you can grind it out, someone can grind it out cheaper than you can. On the other hand, the really valuable stuff, the stuff we pay a lot for, is unquantified. Things like creating joy or security or happiness. No easy measurements for those, thus they are art, and art is always worth more than the predicted. We measure the quantified because we can. But we should create the unquantified because it’s so rare.

To be clear, branding something “art” and therefore giving the artist an excuse to create junk is unacceptable. I went to design school, so I know that far too many artists get away with saying “You just don’t get it” when people rightly look at a lazy piece of junk and wonder “WTF??” Amazing art is the distillation of a complex concept into a unique and emotionally satisfying form. If I don’t “get it”, the artist has failed, not the viewer.

Community management is a tough gig because it’s primary function is to create art in the form of experiences, products, or relationships that satisfy an emotional need. Even though a customer might not understand their own emotional needs enough to ask for them, the Art of Community Management is understanding customers enough to distill that emotion into an amazing form. Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Alice.com, and many others understand this and have succeeded because of it.

As with truly great artists, community management is about way of thinking that allows you to find beauty in a variety of places. It doesn’t end when you walk out of the office, nor do you ever really stop thinking about projects (or relationships or programs or interactions) you’ve built in the past.

Community management and interaction, like art, doesn’t have to always be “good” or immediately understandable. It doesn’t always have to have a specific objective beyond the process of creation. And it most certainly doesn’t discount passion in the face of measurement difficulty. Community management, like art, is simply the process of showing enthusiasm for giving joy where you can and explaining the process you attempted when you can’t. Most importantly, it’s about picking up the brush and giving it a shot.

Former Community Manager Jeremiah Owyang calls out a few more challenges to being a Community Manager:

• Many challenges are internal: Most companies want to hide customer issues, and shuffle them into existing support systems. Additionally, measuring ROI in new media when a company wants to keep the kimono shut, increasingly becomes a challenge.
• Seemingly never ending job: Customers never stop having problems, and with the global internet, the questions, complains, and inquires never stop.
• Emotional drain impacts lifestyle: The sheer emotional strain of dealing with a hundreds of yelling customers and the occasional trouble maker will take a strain on anyone.
• Privacy risks in the world of transparency: In an effort to build trust with customers, they expose their real name exposing their personal –and family– privacy forever on.

These last two really stick out to me. I’ve been trying to dial back my public data access for a number of reasons, not least of which is general concerns around my 3 year old daughter. It’s nearly impossible. When I signed up to do community work in 2000, I had no idea that it would be a permanent state that I’d basically never be able to quit.

But perhaps the most challenge aspect of the job for me was the sheer time involved. When do fans and customers tend to actually do stuff related to their communities of interest? Evenings and weekends… i.e. when they’re not at work. When do they put on events? Holidays, when there’s plenty of time off to enjoy them. When I was at LEGO, I rarely had a holiday weekend at home – most of them were spent on the road, attending and supporting fan events. I’m not complaining, but I’d bet my family certainly would have.

When I was considering leaving LEGO, I had lunch with the always genius Guy Kawasaki. We were talking about my general confusion about leaving a company as great as LEGO and a job as amazingly fun as a LEGO Community Manager. When I asked how long someone can be productive as a CM, and his answer was brilliant and spot on: “If you make it to 3 years, you’re good. If you make it 4 years, you’re amazing. If you make it to 5 years, you’re stupid.” Guy was rightly pointing out that that much stress, 24 hours a day, being caught in between two parties who never truly believe you’re looking out for their interests has a shelf life.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job and I’d do it all over again without thinking twice.

As a way to celebrate this vastly underrated job, Jeremiah has kicked off a novel concept: Community Manager Appreciation Day #CMAD – a day focused on recognizing those in our companies, communities, or daily contacts that have done great work at keeping positive in the face of a very tough job.

So head over to Jeremiah’s site and call out someone you think is doing great community management work. Or use the comments here. Or post on twitter. Or send a postcard. Just thank a Community Manager. It really does help.

The internet is a great tool for helping to remind us that we’re all going to hell for laughing at said misery. Here’s a few of my favorite tools for fast forwarding that journey to the fire-filled great beyond.

• Post Secret – The original “put raw emotion on display” site. People send in postcards anonymously with some sort of information about themselves, often sad.
• Texts from last night – a running display of text messages sent to people who then share with the world. If even have of this hilarity is real, I’m saddened by our place in the evolutionary cycle. I’m laughing, and it’s funny, but it’s also a bit sad. But funny. Really, really funny.
• It was over when – a collection of stories about when people knew their relationships were over.
• FMyLife – If you’ve seen tweets or status messages that include “FML”, you now what it’s about. It’s short for: F*** My Life and is basically a collection of reasons people claim that’s true.
• Passive Aggressive Notes – We’ve all seen those notes people put up in front of cash registers or on the fridge at work. They’re annoying when they’re in our own workspaces, but hilarious when viewed out of context.
• People of Walmart – Photos of the craziest people that shop at Walmart. Ouch.
• Lamebook – A collection of amusement from facebook status updates and conversations.
• Tweeting too hard – “Where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve”
• The “blog” of “unnecessary” quotes – When quotes go wrong.

While these things might seem pointless, or even cruel, they’re anything but. Well, at least partially so, anyway.

These sites provide amusement in the mundane, the every day, the stories that we can identify with. The humor isn’t just that we look at other people’s lives and say “oh geez, at least I’m not that bad!” We’re also seeing ourselves reflected back by these mini-stories. Whether we like it or not, the snark provides a connection to the world around us. Whether we laugh at it or feel better by it, it’s the world we live in.

And damn, are some of these funny….