A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Nirvana…

…This world has changed a lot in two years… that is evident in everything I see around me. For those just tuning in, I have recently woken from a long self-induced slumber and am reacquainting myself with modern life. My ‘keeper’, as it were, RG, is an interesting mortal… A bundle of self-righteousness and artistic isolation and also the closest I know of someone actually being a modern renaissance man.

Not that he’s Stephen Speilberg and Mahatma Ghandi rolled into one, mind you. And he definitely doesn’t look like Han Solo or anything. He’s actually a handsome, slightly-shorter-than-normal Hispanic man in his early forties. He comes from a Catholic background (can’t win em all, I guess) and is very intelligent and creative- and a complete victim to all the chaos and madness that that combination implies. He suffers from pretty standard symptoms, really… Delusions of grandeur, amplified libido, ADD, OCD, satellite Dish, a personal trainer… He’s a television and film director so is naturally predispositioned to being a total fuckstick. But what makes him different than the rest of the douchbags populating Dallas is his sensitivity. Seriously, this guy cried watching Snoopy Come Home. He’s almost embarrassing at times… The sensitive new-age man disguise. Hmmm… I wonder how much pussy he gets out of that…

Anyway, it’s not because I’m in love with him or anything that I go on. It’s that this last week he began a project that really fucking surprised the shit out of me. A little background: He’s currently orchestrating a consumer advocacy show called I Accuse (I TOTALLY approve of the name) that will be all about stamping out societal injustice. (Very cool. Look for it from Bobby Goldstein Productions, the makers of CHEATERS, in mid 2009) BUT he’s incorporating the viral video environment as well as social media sites as a way for the audience to keep up with cases, share information, etc.

ANYWAY, because of all that he has been a member of a site called PLURK for about 9 months or so. Over cocktails one evening he told me the people there are very intelligent, funny, and engaging. Which is the most frustrating thing about most web communities I have found- they’re usually very cliquey and many people are just not very communicative, especially to outsiders.

Not so on Plurk.

As he tells the story, this last weekend he was out-of-body ‘plurking’ and suddenly, while juggling 7 different threads involving up to 30 people at one time, he realized how many smart, feisty, and successful women were there talking about their lives, giving their opinions, sharing themselves with the world and therefore making said world a brighter place. Disneyesque? Perhaps, but it’s real, ladies and gentlemen. Though many people believe social sites are nothing but a substitute for real life I refer to a classic Johnny Cordovaism on the subject of fake breasts:

If I can touch them, they’re real.

And I got on-line to see for myself, lurking while RG was plurking… and I was completely blown away about the quality of people I saw interacting. I’ve NEVER seen that type of camaraderie between most childhood friends much less absolute strangers who are across the world from one another in an on-line society. These people were real. And you can touch them. They were not Stepford people. They laugh and cry and bitch and gloat and love and hate and fear and fight and desire just like real people… because they ARE REAL PEOPLE. With all the cattiness and friendship and jealousy that you would see anywhere. On-line at Plurk I witnessed more humanity and passion than I do currently walking the dark streets of Southern Babylon on a nightly basis… People who I only know by their screennames opened their mouths and their hearts to me (no, piglet, not like that… not yet, at least…) and in doing so have engrained their avatars on my brain for life… @Dirty_Snowflake, @Robyn, @MissRiss, @Prisqua, @Alexis, @JustJen, @ShimmerGeek, @lilyholiday, @amanda, @crystallynne, @sfgirl, @Cilithria, and so many others...

RG’s concept was simple yet effective:

Do a calendar of The Women of Plurk and give the proceeds to breast cancer research.

On a Sunday night he was drunk and half-kiddingly plurked it to a friend, @Dirty_Snowflake, who is recently pregnant. She loved the idea and immediately agreed to do the photo shoot in 6 months when she’s HUGE in a torn wedding dress… Brilliance! The next morning, in a haze of a hang-over, he actually remembered his great idea and did a public reveal on Plurk.

And the crowds went wild.

All his contacts began a chaotic frenzy of support and well-wishing. The most brilliant artists and technicians began offering their services pro-bono for the noble (and slightly randy) cause. The amazing @Roadhacker who is the IT genius behind the endeavor, @Alexis, the sensuous siren/graphics designer who not only will be designing the avatar, banners and graphic look but will also be the incredibly sexy FACE of Women of Plurk! (as well as a calendar girl…), @MissRiss, the sexy and amazing woman who will be the new voice of WOP and indispensable den mother to the girls, … it almost makes me want to offer to be the disciplinarian and walk around with a riding crop keeping everyone in line…

But that’s another post entirely…

The purity of it all makes these reptilian eyes mist over… if they could. Here, all of a sudden, was the candidate for Douche of the Decade orchestrating something he pulled out of his ass in a drunken stupor that will add years to his karmic life and help society as a whole. That fucking guy… what a total surprise. And a good one at that.


PLURK LIVES!!!!


It amazes me how something that began as an opportunistic guilty pleasure like a social web community could grow into a soft machine led by a most unlikely charismatic leader. And they were just fucking around. And if they could get this much accomplished by just fucking around imagine what they could do in the future if they get their shit together? ‘Men Of Plurk’ is already in the planning stages. If it catches on maybe we’ll see “Men and Women of Twitter? FaceBook? BrightKite?” The possibilities are endless. So by all means, people. Give up the schedules and the proposals. Tell your boss to fuck himself like @JustJen did. Let’s fuck around and really get some stuff done…


Till then,

Toodles…

♠ JC