Techno-Elitism (1): Triggering Events

I started to write this entry 4 days ago, and it has turned out to be incredibly long, more like a paper than a blog entry. Thus, I've decided to break it out into shorter chunks and put it out over a period of days, backdating each entry to the approximate day when it was written so that relative date terms like "yesterday" will still make sense.

The Email
About two weeks ago, Carol sent out an email to 23 of her friends (including myself) with a list of fun personal questions like "Favorite drink?" or "What do you do to vent anger?" and the following instructions:

Welcome to the new edition of getting to know your friends. Okay here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be lame and spoil the fun! Just copy (not forward) this entire e-mail and paste into a new e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you.

Three people I know replied to this. I did not. Carol has sent this kind of thing out before; I didn't reply to those either. Two of those who did respond, Greg and Lillian, listed me as the response to the question "Who is the least likely to respond?" It's not because they're not my friends, or becuase the questions are too personal, or because I'm too lazy. It's because one particular phrase in the email triggered an almost conditioned response. More on that later, the story continues.

The Blog
Yesterday, Catherine IMs me about starting a blog. The general requirements boil down to a diary-type (like Ben's) rather than a topical (like Lawrence's or mine) structure. The candidates that come up are Blogger, LiveJournal, and Xanga. While I love Blogger, it wasn't a good fit (more on this later). Between LJ and Xanga, my recommendation was LJ because it was ad-free (especially since Xanga's ads are of the particularly dubious flashing "free iPod" sell-out-your-friends pyramid scheme variety) and also because something about Xanga triggered an almost conditioned response that rubs me the wrong way. About 9 hours later, a decision was made.

turns out i got a xanga site because i know a lot of people on xanga

No problem, it's certainly not uncommon for people to not follow my recommendation. Especially in online media, the power of network effects is well known. Social proof is one of Robert Cialdini's six weapons of influence. Xanga has certain (and some dubious) features that take advantage of this. Still, my sense of disappointment was profound. It felt like one of my friends had just walked willingly into the jaws of an evil beast.

Why am I such a party pooper? I happen to be afflicted with a particuarly acute form of techno-elitism.

Tomorrow: An attempt to describe what this techno-elitism is.