Last time around we looked at how Mozambique is really like youtube, google, twitter, and ebay. This time we’re going to look at the rest of some of the most popular uses for the internet (no, not porn).
ILLEGAL MUSIC / MOVIE DOWNLOADING
Similarities: I've found that many people listen to music on demand via youtube, using it like a magical digital jukebox. Youtube is great if you only want to listen to, like, every song that has ever been recorded. But as soon as you want to slap that song on your iPod and have it portable you’re going to need to download those sweet rhythms to your hard drive.
But never fear. Go ahead and download that, because you aren’t going to pay for a whole CD worth of the one or two songs you really want.
Movies are kind of the same thing. Places free internet video sites are okay, but don’t have a ton of stuff.
Luckily, you live in Mozambique, so there are plenty of options, For music, I’ll have to refer you back to the principle of Youtube. You can just ask anybody to sing anything and they’ll do it, even if they don't know the song. For movies, as much fun as it was to watch the kids act out all 4 hours of “Lawrence of Arabia”, you need to be a little more brazen. Brazen enough to walk to literally any street corner and pay about 30¢ per title. Thanks to illegal movies coming in from China, I have access to a library of titles big enough to make Netflix jealous. About a month ago I got my hands on every Pixar film, all four Indiana Jones movies, about 9 Will Smith action movies, and every Jack Ryan/ Tom Clancy movie ever. There were a total of 29 movies. The sum I paid for them? A whopping $8.60. And the kids love the Pixar films. Well, anything would be better than the alternative.
3.5 hours of wandering around and 30 minutes of fighting wasn’t that hard to direct. Finding eyeliner, now that was hard
Differences: Every now and then I get a movie that has these “English” closed-captions that often make the movie much more complicated and sometimes change the entire plot of the movie.
“Luke, I had sex with your mother!”
Similarities: Just like the real facebook, there are people you can’t trust because it turns out they claim to be somebody they’re not. Like the shocking amount of 45 year-old guys with facebook’s pretending to be in high-school going after young girls. And if somebody pokes you nobody knows what it means.
Differences: Unlike America, when a 45 year-old guy is chasing a 15 year-old girl it frequently results in marriage. And here, if somebody pokes you that person is likely to get punched. Maybe facebook should invent a punch button…
There is one more significant difference. Farmville is not a game, it’s real life here. When Mutihlima sends me a message asking him to come and help look for his runaway goat he’s being serious.
Our hopes were dashed when we realized this was not his goat, it was a sheep.
WIKIPEDIA
Similarities: The web’s reference library contains everything from a list of history’s deadliest hail storms to a page for every character that has ever appeared on TV’s The Simpsons. People here are likewise equally versed in all information about everything, and are many times just as wrong. Because people can say anything they want on wikipedia and people have to take their word for it they are automatically right. In fact I just made a page for “Hanes brand crew cut socks with the reinforced heel” where I say the heel is not reinforced at all, its just a different color so I doesn’t get dirty as fast, thus reinforcing it against stains.
But I didn’t say it, the internet did. It must be true.
Anybody is an authority on anything. Here, I routinely get people saying to me, “No, let me explain to you how America is.” And then go on to say something ridiculous like the government gives every American a car when they get married as a gift or that there’s no such thing as homelessness in America because it’s rains to much for people to want to be homeless. Seriously, I have had people tell me these things. As facts. People that have never been to America and would have no idea what to do if they ever got there.
Pretty much like this.
Differences: There aren’t any. If you’re first, you can make up whatever you want to. I have far to many examples of things here that I either shake my head at in disbelief or run at full speed shouting for somebody to stop before they kill themselves.
BLOGS
Similarities: Unless you read a print out of my website (Hi Grandma! And hi other Grandma! I’ll let you two figure out which one is which) the concept of a blog/personal web page should be something that all but two of my readers should be familiar with. Here the same concept applies to recounting just about anything, except people don’t keep diaries of everything they do (but its because they don’t read or write), they just orally tell it.
Our night guard was hanging around the otherday during his time off. Why anybody goes to their workplace on their day off is beyond me (Hi Grandpa). He was telling about how he dropped his phone in water and it was all messed up and didn’t work for two days and now everything works just fine except for the part of the phone that plays music/mp3s and so now the phone is pretty much useless because it doesn't play music and he’s going to trade it in for a new one that plays music. The story, which took me one long sentence, and was not all it cracked up to be, needed 25 minutes for him to tell.
At least it didn’t cost me 12 dollars and absolutely waste 3 hours of my life.
Differences: Here, people are too polite and will NEVER walk away from any story you’re telling even if they’re giving out free new cars down at the dealership. They’re just polite like that. Thus, its hard to know how many people are engaged what you have to say because culturally they have no choice but to just sit there and listen. On your blog, you can tell exactly how many people are NOT interested to find out that you recently switched to soy in your morning latte because it fits in your new diet. If you look at how many people are viewing your website you shouldn’t be surprised to find that the only one reading your reaction to last night’s episode of
Even Sir Cat-rick Stewart noticed how many spelling mistakes you had. And he thought the character development was a worthy part of the story arc.
thanks for the shout out to Lawrence of Arabia. I will always remember that as the most boring time we hung out.
ReplyDeleteYes, Jeff, but we remember it, and well.
ReplyDeleteTJ, I was thinking how interesting it would be to visit Mozambique but now I know it's just like the internet!
Also, what's a blog?
Seriously, you would not believe how many people poke me here.
ReplyDelete