Facebook Art 'Twere It Done by Great Masters

Back in the early days, when Facebook, though evil, could still be fun. Facebook Graffiti was one of my favourite features, and Sean and I and others sent some terrible drawings back and forth.

As you can see here, Jeff and Andrea also contributed. 

I asked Gemini to "reinterpret these works as if they were oil paintings created by great masters." 

The results: 

My Facebook Graffiti Archive: The Rebuttals

Here are drawings other, more talented, people posted on my Facebook wall with the Graffiti application. I can identify art by Sean, Andrea and/or Greg, and Jeff, posted by his wife Susan. My sentimental favourite is the wedding postcard, and I adore both "Who...SHAVING CREAM?!?" and the jaws laughing at my grave, but clearly Jeff's "Earl in S.T. uniform attacked by cute hamsters with blood-soaked weapons" is the most accomplished in terms of technique and irony.

Here's an idea: assuming Graffiti still works, maybe I should use it to post something on the wall of each and every one of my Facebook friends, even those I haven't met in person. Hmmm...

My Facebook Graffiti Archive

Back when I first joined Facebook, I was quite tickled by the Graffiti application. As you can see, I'm a terrible artist, but I am nonetheless pleased by the sheer depth of ineptitude displayed here. My favourite sequence runs through the middle row, starting with "NAES WAS HERE." 

Cypress Hills Pelican

When I posted a photo similar to this one on Facebook, I misidentified the bird as a heron. It is, apparently, a pelican, as my friend Bruce immediately pointed out. Well, I'm no biologist, I just take pictures and write stuff. In any event, I photographed this fine pelican as it was floating on Reesor Lake in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park - a gorgeous place. I'd planned to visit the official dark sky preserve on the Saskatchewan side of the park to try my hand at astrophotography, but the sky was too cloudy. Still, I'm pretty happy with the snaps I wound up with.

Welcome to www.earljwoods.com

A few days ago I noted that Facebook has started blocking blogspot.ca, preventing me from sharing this blog with my Facebook friends. I tried a variety of solutions - and thanks to all the folks who made suggestions - but in the end the solution was to take Google up on its offer to register a custom domain for me. So now My Name is Earl (J. Woods) is hosted at www.earljwoods.com. To be honest it feels a little grandiose to assign a custom domain to a blog, but I suppose the new URL is, at least, less cumbersome than the old blogspot address. Other blogspot users affected by Facebook's new spam policy should try this solution; it seems to have worked for me, and registering a custom domain through Google costs only US$10 annually.

Facebook Blocks Blogspot.ca

Yesterday I discovered that Facebook will no longer allow me to share links to this blog. Naturally I'm disappointed, since much of my readership comes from folks who follow those daily links.

Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I wonder if Facebook has categorized blogspot as "spammy" because blogspot is owned by arch-rival Google. If that's the case, then this seems to be a case of money-motivated censorship.

Many will argue that because Facebook is a business they have the right to censor what they will, but this action certainly seems to fly in the face of their business model, which urges users to share as much detail of their private lives as possible. Besides, if I'm going to be used by Facebook as a source of marketing data, then I think I have the right to complain about Facebook's decisions.

Maybe this is just a glitch, one that Facebook will correct today or the next day. But even if they reverse course, those of us trying to build an audience and a personal brand on the web should remember that we are very much at the mercy of the large corporations that seek to control the web. Blogspot is a wonderful service, but it could disappear tomorrow at the whim of a CEO. All the more reason to save your work offline...