Like Dolly Parton, I love tackiness. In interviews Dolly often tells the story of being a little girl and admiring this ‘pretty lady’ in town. The lady had crimson lipstick, glittering clothes and platinum hair. She fashioned herself after this lady and it wasn’t until she was grown that she realized the lady was the town whore.

I relate to Dolly. Only I admired a place, not a person.

Growing up I dreamed of Las Vegas. Not a day went by when I didn’t imagine myself in the most beautiful place on earth: The Vegas Strip. As a child I dressed as though I was headed there (just in case). I wore gold lamé, faux-leather mini-dresses, and I stuck sparkles to my face.

It wasn’t until I was grown that I realized Paris, France, was supposed to be a far more desirable destination than Paris, Las Vegas. All the spitballs and Baby-soft perfume bombs suddenly made sense. (Note: I still haven’t made it to France).

But neither Dolly nor I changed our ways. I still prefer electric-green polyester paint-suits and neon to cotton and sunlight; likewise, Dolly never took off her wigs, nails, or boobs.

My favourite websites are similarly tacky. I love clickless sites—ones heavy with dirty code and ridiculous architecture that infuriate click-hungry marketers. Sites I can watch like television. Not video, but rather, speedy data streams that throw more at me than I can ever catch. Websites that punish my sluggish brain, battering me with my inability to comprehend. Forcing me to submit to the gorgeous torture of information domination. These sites are rare and often experimental, so they go down a lot. And they all need to move faster, faster, faster.

WARNING: THESE SITES MAY OVERWHELM YOU. VISIT AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Second Runner Up: Through style socialnet site ThisNext, I discovered Watch People Shop. The title is self-explanatory. Geo-located speech bubbles pop up and show you an image of the item being shopped for and which ThisNext user is doing the shopping. The items accumulate at the bottom. It doesn’t move at all fast enough but I can see the potential. For example: I’ve concluded that people in Bucharest are obsessed with cleaning supplies, and that something called “dryer balls” are sweeping the globe.

First Runner Up: Blazing like a fireball out of Digg Labs is Digg Swarm. I use it as my screensaver. Dugg stories hover like bees on your screen as Digg users (the yellow dots) attach themselves to the stories by voting for them. You can click to digg a story or visit a users page. But I don’t bother clicking; I like to try to read every story before it disappears. This site also needs to move faster.

The Winner: It will come as no surprise to my regular readers that my favourite is a Twitter stream called Firehose. It isn’t just any old Twhirl or Spaz - it is realtime! Or it least it claims to be. Since around three million tweets are sent each day you can imagine the volume. I dare you to try to read the tweets. It’s actually obscene.

HONOURABLE MENTION: Twittearth could be called Watch People Twitter. It is a similar mashup to the ThisNext product. But the arbitrary assignation of icons insulted me repeatedly because three times in a row I appeared as a snaggle-toothed green monster-head and I’m still sensitive about crooked teeth: It’s only been a few years since my adult braces repaired my misaligned smile. My $7,000 orthodontist bill didn’t cover therapy.

Tags: social network sites, Twitter

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Posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.