Brazilians on Orkut
I’ve read this article sometime ago and I had given little or no interest at all. Time passes by, things change and I find this now the most untainted (albeit sad) truth. Worth reading.
written by Ricardo Bánffy, Web Insider (Brazil)
I hate the annoying Brazilians on Orkut. I mean it. I really hate them.
Brazilians have this passion for thinking that Americans don’t give a damn about us and that this is wrong of them. Do you know the capital of Albania? No? Well there you have it. We Brazilians don’t give a damn about Albanians. If I ever make any friends there, I will try to educate myself a little more. (Before I finish this article, in fact, I will probably sneak a peek at an encyclopedia to find out what the capital of Albania is).
In the last few days I have witnessed a significant increase in the stupidity index of the Internet. Sure, people are stupid in general — I have had no illusions about that fact since adolescence. But my problem is that the stupider they are, the louder they get — the more communities they create, the more messages they post, the more noise they make. And with every stupid noisy idiot I come across, my faith in humanity dies a little more. This I cannot forgive.
And the more noise that the stupid Brazilians make, the less people (including me) think of Brazilians in general.
That goes for any nationality, by the way. Some other time I will translate this article into English so that noisy idiots the world over can read it.
Orkut Sucks
The other day I ran across some imbecile (no other adjective will do) complaining that Orkut statistics on Brazil are not broken down by state. Give me a break.
I don’t know the departments of Argentina by heart (I think I know plenty just knowing that that’s what they call their “states”) and half of my car was manufactured there. The only thing I remember about Japan is two of the islands, Hondo and Hokkaido. I couldn’t name ten U.S. states (and I keep in touch with a lot of people who live there). Why the hell do they need to know the names of the Brazilian states. Who besides Brazilians care?
Ah, but we are Orkut’s second largest community.
So what? It’s nice that we are — it’s a sign that we have lots of friends (or that we’re less selective), that we are a healthy people, that we cultivate the virtues of friendship and courtesy, and that we really do love our neighbor. Good for us.
What I can’t take is the constant demand for a free service (fed by user data) to double in size just to accomodate the needs of a specific population. Orkut (the site) belongs to Orkut (the person) and he can do whatever he wants to with it. He and his corporate sponsors (the Google people) are doing plenty just by keeping the thing going.
Orkutese
What is the official language of Orkut? On first inspection, I would say English. The interfaces are written in English, the buttons are in English — everything except the messages in my inbox are in English.
Some of the Americans like to complain about the number of communities and messages in Portuguese. When I go looking for information, I look for it in a language I understand. Most of us (the ones who can read, at any rate) understand at least a little English. It is the second language of just about every nation. Fair or unfair, for good or ill, that’s the way things are. I’m not bothered by the fact that there are German-language communities on Orkut, although I am about as fluent in German as an orangutan. I respect the fact that Germans prefer to write in German, as is only natural. I am writing this article in Portuguese, for example, which, although it is not my native language, is the one in which I express myself best.
In any case, the fact that there is a language that we can all use to communicate is extremely important and a big step in the right direction. I don’t care if it’s English, Esperanto, or Klingon. Language is a tool. If I want to talk to people in several countries at the same time, I use English — my chances of being understood will be better, and that’s what I want. If I need to talk to a bunch of Star Trek fans, for example, Klingon might be a viable alternative.
Communities
Brazilians seem to love creating communities. That sucks. Somebody invites the guy to Orkut (you ought to be able to find out who let these bastards in in the first place), he signs up for “Brasil” or declares himself a friend of one of those needy people — “I want to have a million friends — and then sends a message to everyone in the community, or even worse, to all 100,000 of his friends of friends, notifying everyone about the crucial and unique community dedicated to the subject that fascinates him and only him.
After which the guy calls me rude (or fascist) when I tell what should not be news to anybody at this point — that he is the only soul in the world who cares and, fortunately, the only human being wasting his time on it.
Xenophobia and Resentement
I have no idea what Bush has to do with all this. It’s weird how Bush or his misbehaving soldiers always wind up in the middle of this dispute. The man is an imbecile. This is not to say that the entire population of the U.S. is also an imbecile, though the fact that they let him get elected doesn’t speak too well of them. Accidents happen, and Bush is one of them. I have yet to decide whether he is a well-meaning imbecile or an imbecile being manipulated by someone very evil. I have taken the liberty of discounting beforehand the possibility that he is not an idiot. I just can’t bring myself to believe it.
A lot of Americans seem to be afraid of the rest of the world. As well they might — they know nothing about it. As far as they are concerned we are a backwards people, a peculiar people, a populist people, a socialistic people, a bunch of banana republics stuck in the jungle. The best way of fighting fear is with information. But we are not helping matters any.
Not longer after finishing this article, my Orkut inbox was flooded with a chain-letter. I think I ought to let you know: I am not going to grab any random book from any random shelf, I am not going to open it to page 34, I am not going to transcribe the fourth paragraph, and I am certainly not going to ask my 418,272 “friends of friends” to do so. The annoying Brazilian (especially annoying, this one) that came up with this nonsense should not have cut so many math classes, and learned what “exponential growth” means.
Editor’s note: Orkut makes it possible not to receive messages from friends of friends, unclogging your inbox. Go to your profile, choose Settings and deselect the option “messages to friends of friends.” That should do it.
