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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 2003)
Friends display identities through Web community By Helen Schumacher Pulse Columnist It all starts innocently enough. An e-mail sent by an acquaintance that reads: "Invitation to Join Friendster." But it is only a week or two before that innocuous-sound ing subject line has you hooked on the best fad to come out of the Inter net since the pairing of the colon and end parenthesis. As Spin maga zine recently put it, "Friendster is more addictive than crack." For those of you who have been liv ing in a black hole the past few months, Friendster is a Web site. Its home page describes it as "an online community that connects people through networks of friends for dat ing or making new friends. Create your own personal and private com munity, where you can interact with people who are connected to you through networks of mutual friends." Yes, I realize it sounds like a cheesy dating service, and I suppose it could be if that's what you're looking for. But for most people, Friendster is part message board, part popularity contest. It's like fantasy football, except it's for hipsters. To join, you are either invited by a friend or sign yourself up. Then you fill out a profile, consisting of your age, location, occupation, interests, favorite books, movies, music, whether you're interest ed in meeting people for dating, look ing for activity partners or "just here to help." Then, you begin collecting friends and writing testimonials. When 1 joined last July 1 had no idea what to make of the whole thing. At first it felt like I was part of some secret cult. Then, 1 discovered that half of the people I knew were already members. Helen Schumacher Notes from the underground They all had the witty profiles filled with obscure rock references, self-dep recating humor and listings of "Donnie Darko" as their favorite movie. Oh, the hours 1 spent perfecting my profile. 1 labored over every word, ask ing myself "Does my liking Joy Divi sion make me more attractive?" and "Will people think I'm a hippie if 1 say that 'On the Road' is my favorite book?" A big part of Friendster is prov ing, through the profile or testimonials, just how clever you are to everyone else. Every time I got on the Internet I was tempted to check my account. My heart would leap every time I got an e-mail announcing that my friend re quest had been accepted or that 1 had a new testimonial to approve. Even though I haven't met anyone new because of Friendster, I have been able to view my old friends in a differ ent light. 1 now know that some of them are really bad spellers, and that I'm not alone in my love of die movie "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai." In the beginning, I thought Friend ster was the kind of thing that couldn't be talked about in public places — that it was only meant to be discussed in hushed tones with no one around. However, the addiction soon got the best of everyone, and by September 1 couldn't get through a conversation without someone bringing it up. The power of Friendster became so great that a whole new way of commu nication between us developed. As peo ple scrambled to outdo each other, a hybrid language, based on who could use the least vowels and who would be the first to quote OutKast, was created. The buzz surrounding Friendster has died down since the school year began. I'm already friendsters with most peo ple 1 know, and I've run out of ways to tell them, in testimonial form, how great I think they are. I Iowever, I still check my account almost daily, just in case there's a party I need to know about, to see if someone new joined and, also, because despite its shallow exterior, I <3 Friendster. Contact the Pulse columnist at helenschumacher@dailyemerald.com. Her opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Emerald. Visual brilliance of‘Dark City’ underlines quest for humanity Filmmaker Alex Proyas creates a masterpiece that is being hailed as one of the best films of the 1990s By Ryan Nyburg Senior Pulse Reporter Of all the dark, disturbed visions of urban decay, Alex Proyas' "Dark City" has to stand as one of the greatest. With its sad, mys FORGOTTEN FILMS t e r 1 o u s streets and rotting structures, it could stand as a monu ment to art direction for its twisted dis tillation of German expressionism and every crime film of the 1950s. Much like "Blade Runner," "Dark City" cre ates an entire world out of abandon ment and decay — an urban society ruled by fear and distrust. When the film came out in 1998, it got some critical acclaim but was passed over by audiences and quickly forgotten. It has since gained some popularity on video and DVD, and a few critics, notably Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert, have called it one of the best films of the 1990s. The film could certainly defend that title. The story concerns John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), who wakes up one night in a bathtub with no memory of his past. Me also finds he is suspected of multiple murders and is being hunted down by police. After numerous close calls, he ends up wandering the streets. All of this is merely a pretext to the film's true plot, which concerns a grand experiment being performed on the denizens of the city by a race called The Strangers. They control the city — move buildings, change the memories of the people and re fine the entire system — while trying to find what makes humans the way they are. Images of the black-clad Strangers wandering the streets are some of the most memorable in the film, not to mention one incredible set of special effects. As Murdoch comes to realize what is really going on and who he really is (or is sup posed to be), the film really takes off, with the Strangers chasing him through the city as it reorganizes it self like a living entity. This story, while compelling, is al most buried under the visual appeal of the film. The movie's tone and in tensity are set entirely by the visual style, with the acting serving only as a functional piece of the whole. This style is so ingrained into the film that it's often easy to miss some of things the director does. For instance, notice how there are very few tracking shots. Instead, the camera stays in place for a moment, then cuts to a new angle of the same image, moving forward in a subtle but awkward fashion, like pieces of a puzzle being put together but nev er quite fitting. That this style plays into the themes of the film is a won derfully sly example of technical and artistic ability being combined. 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