What Plurk Has Taught Me: Part 1

Posted by Rammi | Filed under Internet, Plurk

Comments: Rene Guerrero, Kara, Chi-Chi, dotlizard, SwordMama, Lifecruiser, otherdeb (Deb Wunder), Lulu (loquacious), Caledonia, Gerard,

I joined Plurk some time during June 2008 during the general hype on Twitter, thinking it was just another website for me to use a couple of times before abandoning. It’s got nothing to do with the service, but my general laziness when it comes to adopting new things - my friends have a hard time convincing me to join anything, even when it comes to simple things as joining forums, and I can be a bitch if someone needs a referral credit for something. An example is shown below.

Person: “Can you do me a massive favour and sign up for [blah] using my referral code?”
Me: “No.”
Person: “But it’s a [blah] website with [blah blah blahs]!”
Me: “Still a no.”
Person: *expletive*

However, being a natural sheep, I followed the tweeting crowd - or should that be baaing ‘herd’? - and signed up for Plurk. Baa.

I soon found out that Plurk was more interesting than it appeared to be. Almost everyone I was following on Twitter seemed to be signing up also, and I soon found myself in a little community of people, all getting used to this new website.
To be honest, I didn’t exactly warm to Plurk at first, muttering about its’ “fugly colour scheme” via Brightkite on Twitter - confused yet? I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, brown and blue will never go together, no matter how much you try and dress it up.

Anyway, long story short, I eventually grew to love it, ‘fugly colour scheme’ and all (probably because I changed it as soon as I could). I began plurking more and tweeting less, loving all the conversation a random plurk could manage to generate. One of the most important things I found, however, was the amount of new things I was involuntarily learning every day from plurkers. Like Twitter, plurkers shared links, but the fact that you could embed images and videos in plurks made me, a fickle person, feel more inclined to click them. Aside from the fact that I was getting Rickrolled more than ever *glares at @Tenebrous*, I learnt many useless useful things that will be embedded in my memory forever, courtesy of plurkers.

Without further ado, and because this introduction that was meant to be short but has dragged on for several paragraphs has gone on for long enough, here is the list, in no particular order, of everything Plurk has taught me in the last few months. Hopefully, I’ve remembered to credit everyone who helped me to learn something new, but if I haven’t, please leave me a comment!
[Note the thinly-veiled "ZOMG! I want comments!!!111!oneoneone!!"]

  • One of the most important (and yet corny) things Plurk has taught me is that if I took the time to talk to my online acquaintances, I’d actually like them a lot! I’ve built better friendships with people I only knew vaguely before. - For example, hi @Lizziefrog! Lizzie’s someone I’ve had in my Vox neighbourhood for ages, but I never really talked much to her before I got her addicted to Plurk. Yes, I know I’m a lazy person who really should try harder to maintain friendships.
  • Another shocking discovery was that @Caledonia was/is human! Only kidding, Caledonia. @loquacious and I spent years before Plurk came along - she hosts me for free(!!) - thinking that she was way too intelligent to be human, and therefore had to be a bot (ah, tween thoughts). It’s a pleasant surprise indeed to find out she IS a real person, who hopefully won’t kill me after reading this! Feel free to go after @loquacious, though. I won’t stop you. ;)
  • I also learnt that things will spread like wildfire if you just plurk them. @doshdosh once asked people to replurk one of his plurks if you wanted new Plurk friends - try saying that in a hurry! - and I got wind of it. The next thing I know, I have about 500 Plurk friends.
    Another example of ‘Plurk power’ was me randomly making this image during the Gmail Fail and plurking it for the sake of Plurk. The next thing I knew, another plurker had found it, dugg it, and it suddenly had 30K views. Now, I don’t use Digg much, so basically, without Plurk, I wouldn’t have had my 5 seconds of internet fame. :D
  • Plurk also helped me learn more about a very important food: bacon! A geek’s dream food, but I still managed to miss out on a large amount of bacon-related things… That was until I friended @erinsap, who showed me the ways of bacon. *bows down* However, one of the things I won’t forgive him for is for plurking a bacon-shaped object that suspiciously looked like a tampon. *twitches* That image will stay in my memory forever, and not in a good way.
    Among the other bacon related stuff I found through Plurk was bacon chocolate and bacon salt. I haven’t tried them yet, but methinks that my family would NOT appreciate it if I gave them bacon chocolate/bacon ice-cream/bacon custard/bacon smoothies/put bacon flavouring into every single thing they ate… It’s better off that I don’t try them. The temptation would be too great, especially with relatives I dislike (so, all of them, then).
    In short, bacon is AMAZING. And Plurk helped me rediscover my love for it.
  • Oh, and this should’ve been obvious, but I’m too trusting for my own good. I learnt that I should never click links from anyone I trust (yes, trust), because they’ll probably rickroll me. *slaps @Tenebrous*
  • The ‘me too’ syndrome is contagious. For example, if someone plurks about food, you’ll find you’re suddenly hungry, even if you just ate. I blame @Farho for most of this. If he hadn’t posted so many pictures of mangoes and other delicacies… *drools*
  • One of the benefits of Plurk that I’ve found is ‘ask and ye shall receive’. I’ve found that if I ask a simple question, the Plurk community will respond, and help me with whatever my problem is. So far, I’ve had life-saving Science homework help from @maheshee11, a way to have page includes without PHP from @thetristan, general website and plugin advice from @Katharine and software suggestions from @dazzer67, @Kirako, @smashingred and @dropcase.
  • Plurkers are some of the kindest people I’ve ever known. To quote @Cylithria, Plurk has shown me that ‘people still have hearts and not ALL of the world is cold and callous’. @Cylithria, incidentally, is amazing. :) I got a handwritten letter (!!) from her, but that’s another story…
  • Finally, one of the most important things I’ve learnt is that no one should ask me to karma-sit for them (use @karma medic instead), because I’m lazy, and your karma will drop anyway. Also, I’ll add weird stuff to your account. @loquacious learnt the hard way when she went off to camp and came back to modifications of her page titles (”NOT Plurkalicious, Baby” and “I Suck Monkey” sound familiar?) and random plurks about stealing cookies.

Although this post has turned into an essay now (this is only Part 1!), you can see how much Plurk has influenced me these last few months. TRANSLATION: I spend way too much time on Plurk. There’s a lot more that Plurk has taught me, which I’ll write about in Part 2. ;)

If you aren’t there already, what are you waiting for? JOIN ME! Btw, this post was not sponsored in any way. Not enough people read this little blog. :lol:

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Permalink | August 23rd, 2008

11 Responses to “What Plurk Has Taught Me: Part 1”

  1. Rene Guerrero Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 10:28 pm

    Please visit my site, Women of Plurk. I am putting together a 40’s style pin-up calendar from submissions from women who are active Plurkers. We intend to sell the product on-line and give the proceeds to breast cancer research. If you are plugged into a community and after seeing the site feel that this is a worthy effort I would love you to consider spreading the word. All the info is at: http://plurkcalendar.wordpress.com/

    Also feel free to check out my own work. http://casanovashrugged.blogspot.com/ (it’s not for the faint of heart. And is totally independent of the WOP project.)

    Thanks.

    RG

  2. Kara Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    Loved your reflection-I’ve learned alot from plurk too and felt the same way about the color scheme at first..the most fun part has been feeling like you actually get to know people. No other social networking/micro-blogging site has really done that for me in the same way!

  3. Chi-Chi Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    *nodnod* I completely agree. I have met some of the nicest people on Plurk (surprisingly) and it’s a lot of fun to be part of that community.

    …BACON.

    And the ridiculous amount of food-based plurks everyday make me go OM NOM NOM NOM.

    :D Yay! Part 1.

    By the way…I’m also endlesseternity on plurk. Nice blog entry.

  4. dotlizard Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 10:52 pm

    dotlizard agrees with @Kara, it’s definitely the relationships of Plurk, there are so many cool and caring people there, and you can follow conversations much more easily than you can on any other microblog with the exception possibly of Jaiku, but Jaiku lacks the compelling user interface of Plurk - the timeline, the “new plurks/new responses” automatic AJAX update that keeps you clicking for more. Also I totally agree about the easy embedding of video and images, it makes it SO easy when you find something way cool you want to share.

  5. SwordMama Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    Hey @Rammie! Your Part I is a perfect explanation of Plurk. I’ve learned a couple things from your post, and I just asked to be befriended by @karma medic. :cool:

  6. Lifecruiser Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 11:19 pm

    I totally agree. Plurk is a very friendly and fun community. It’s more like group chatting, almost.

    Regarding bacon: wrap bacon around figs - a simply delicious mix…

  7. otherdeb (Deb Wunder) Says:
    August 24th, 2008 at 1:03 am

    @Lifecruiser: Bacon around figs? Will have to try that. Sounds excellent!

    @Rammi: And you have done your share of teaching and sharing, too, hon. :smile:

  8. Lulu (loquacious) Says:
    August 24th, 2008 at 3:32 am

    Yes, I do hope Caledonia doesn’t mind… Sorry, dear, we’ve always held a strong belief you aren’t really. :oops: Please don’t come after me…

    Also, deary, I will insist you karma-sit for me every time. I do hope you won’t vandalise my page this time. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

  9. Caledonia Says:
    September 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm

    Some days, I really wish I was a bot flowing through cyberspace….

    *pets Rammi and Lulu - her cyberchildren*

  10. Gerard Says:
    October 15th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    You know what I like about Plurk? That it’s a very select crowd, and seems to be extremely low on spammers right now.

    On Twitter, you’ve got your Scobles and whatnots and all the wannabes who follow them religiously. On Plurk, there’s a greater diversity of people, and a better system for viewing threaded conversations.

    Now, I hedge my bets by using ping.fm to cross post to both sites, but most of my time (and affection) goes to Plurk

  11. Gerard Says:
    October 15th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    Oh, by the way, I’m @unrealitytv on Plurk

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