Core objects on the internet, individually addressable, that are a platform that can be annotated, described and connected, making a web much more exciting and navigable and powerful than it could possibly be otherwise – all illustrated through a wonderful little story about Cheese illustrated on Flickr. Here is a picture of some cheese from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London which I’ve raved about before:
So I’m looking at this picture and I’m thinking how much fun it would be to tag it up with all the names of the cheese which are so gloriously evocative like baylesford, gubbeen, ogleshield, spenwood and kilcummin. No one will have used those tags before, I think to myself. And then I type in Linconshire Poacher and suddenly I can almost taste the cheese in my mouth. It’s like this particularly pungent and strong hard cheddary cheese, only much more powerful and delectable.
And so I click on the link to see if anyone else has tagged it lincolnshirepoacher. And not only is there an awesome picture, but it’s available under a Creative Commons license requiring only attribution and non-commercial usage. And it’s actually a picture of the guy who makes the cheese! And his name is Simon Jones. The whole arc is complete and beautiful and I’ve got an insight into the production of this cheese and a story behind the whole thing and it’s all awesome and gorgeous. And because it’s all Creative Commons, I can post it here without any anxieties:
Of course these things go both ways, and while I can state with total confidence that my impression of the Lincolnshire Poacher people has gone massively up, the same can’t necessarily be said for the crew behind Naked Juice who have a Flickr account under the user name Juiceguys, which included rather too many disturbing pictures of their entirely freaky Halloween office party. Shudder.
5 replies on “The tiniest Flickr cheese story…”
Guess it’s my own fault, but it seems I can’t do anything without feeling anxiety for insulting someone any more! Not even Creative Commons..
Yes, I’m an ass. Yes, I deserve it. I just wish people didn’t take offense when I didn’t mean to offend them.
Sigh. Apparently, I don’t have a social disorder – I am one..
I’m sorry (the flickr staff / moderators) deleted my link. Here’s another. How many seconds before they delete that too?
flickr.com/groups/flickrhythmix/discuss/72057594100649213/
PS. It’s kinda ironic that when you think you’re basically back on your feet – feeling you’re doing something potentially good – someone always pushes you back in the mud, and you’re sad again. That’s public web in a nutshell to me, and I really should quit it – wish I could.
Just wait till you try the fantastically good stinking bishop. It makes poacher taste like mild cheddar…
We have a fantastic cheese shop here in Manchester called the Cheese Hamlet (someone has a picture of the outside on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/20839124@N00/70432938/ ). Unfortunately, none of the inside or of the owners, but I shall try to rectify that!
You can even view their full range of cheese here!
Semirelated, I feel, I dump this here.. Plus if – against all odds – anyone’s interested in the details of my comments above. (And Tom approves of it? Nudge.)
“So what happened exactly?”
Well, maybe I’m just delusional, but here’s my version – I hope it’s not too dull and boring..
It started with the simple thought that I wanted to have a new remix subproject. 100cc was good – it was instant, and spontaneous – but I wanted some variation. Plus, I wanted to celebrate my beloved flickr favorites in some way – just experimenting a bit more with this commons idea, really.
So I looked at my favorites and saw a few possibilities to creates some rather personal portraits. Nothing exciting perhaps, but kind of interesting I thought. So I fiddled up a new substation for my pet project..
[Faveicon]
Anyway – one of the ideas that popped up was to create a kind of Mona Lisa / “Picasso face” from my two first favorites at flickr. There were similarites and I had a feeling the angles and styles could mix really well with some tweaking. So I tried and was quite satisfied wih the result. Thought it was cute, while challenging societal norms somewhat. (A good thing to me.)
[Mona Lisa]
Soon after I posted it – I hit my first wall..
I was checking back on the comments I do to thank the originator and nod to my commons work, but one of them was just blank. Funny I thought – “I could’ve sworn..” – until I realized the person had blocked me! A wave of anxiety and concern that I’d offended the person grabbed me, so I checked for an angry comment in my inbox and in the pool forums, but couldn’t find any.
As if this hadn’t made me frustrated enough, I tried to find a way to contact the person in question – an email address – anything – but no. Ashamed and annoyed, I posted this comment in the flickr help forum – wondering what to do, basically:
“It’s.. interesting.. when people block you without telling you shit!
So tell me, are these photomanipulations offensive, or what? ‘Cause they were meant as a compliment or something, really! So if he’d only told me “no, didn’t like that”, I had removed them.
Now I only feel annoyed I don’t know what to think, and a little ashamed if I insulted someone unintentionally..
Sigh.”
A few minutes later I got a reply from a random guy that I should be careful when I reuse other peoples content, cause the one I’d used was apparently NoDerivs. Puzzled, I replied that I was quite sure that it wasn’t when I downloaded it. For one, because I pretty much only browse by-nc-sa ones. Plus, I checked quickly before I downloaded it – though I could’ve made a simple mistake, of course.
Still, I claimed that “he could’ve just told me anyway, couldn’t he?!” By then – sitting up in the middle of the night, trying to sort out the mess I’d made, while apparently having to defend my actions – I was sick of the cracking creative commons idea. Which I also said.
About 5 minutes later the flickr staff (read: moderators) killed my thread. Once again, without being offered a mere explanation. Then – I was done there..
I can take “fair enough” moderation – hell, even bad treatment! – really bad.. but treating me like I’m nothing! Not even worthy of a try to reason with, or a simple explanation?! That’s about the most disrespectful behavior I can think of (being non-physical)!
[Thank you, Tom]
Final words – phew. When a technology I once believed was meant for (at least trying) socializing gives me the feeling of talking to a wall, and not feeling welcome – I tend to wanna leave. That’s why I quit flickr – good feelings gone, really.
The end.
PS. Sorry for my poor English. I’m working on it, but I never were good with words..