global romantic blogger pain

February 15, 2006 4:41 PM

The Dumpster is "an interactive online visualization that attempts to depict a slice through the romantic lives of American teenagers. Using real postings extracted from millions of online blogs, visitors to the project can surf through tens of thousands of specific romantic relationships in which one person has "dumped" another." Launched yesterday at the Whitney. Frenetic social data browser with voyeuristic blog-sniffer available here
posted by jessamyn (14 comments total)

wow. a horrible interface collecting contentless posts from 14 year old's blogs. I've never seen so many bad ideas come together in one place. This is truly an accomplishment.
posted by blacklite at 4:55 PM on February 15, 2006

This makes my head hurt.
posted by Meredith at 5:04 PM on February 15, 2006

Do all 14 year-olds spell this poorly?
posted by brundlefly at 5:05 PM on February 15, 2006

Anybody have any clues regarding what needs to be enabled to see more than just a grey rectangle?
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:08 PM on February 15, 2006

Isn't this morally wrong to steal from all these kids' writings? Not to mention exploiting them.
posted by BobsterLobster at 6:12 PM on February 15, 2006

Isn't this morally wrong to steal from all these kids' writings? Not to mention exploiting them.

It appears that the artists borrowed only a few sentences, at most, per blog, for a non-commercial (artistic) purpose; seems like fair use to me.
posted by jayder at 6:25 PM on February 15, 2006

Sorry, BobsterLobster, I read and replied to your comment too quickly. It just occurred to me that whether or not it is fair use doesn't really address the moral aspect of what the artists did.
posted by jayder at 6:26 PM on February 15, 2006

I don't understand this at all.

Is that the point?
posted by ph00dz at 6:45 PM on February 15, 2006

Were we really this dimwitted when we were teenagers? Adults get accused of not remembering what it's like to be young. Maybe that's a good thing.
posted by slatternus at 7:53 PM on February 15, 2006

i love this--it's so random, yet similar. : >
posted by amberglow at 8:38 PM on February 15, 2006

It seems that they're collecting blog entries with the phrase 'broke up' in them -- which means that it's narrowing the database down to a particular subset of people comfortable enough to use it, or even write about it...
posted by provolot at 9:33 PM on February 15, 2006

You're all so cynical. It's interesting, fun to use, pretty to look at. Why not?
posted by yevge at 1:30 AM on February 16, 2006

Metafilter loves to hate.
posted by erebora at 8:23 AM on February 16, 2006

I give it 2 days max before Google or Yahoo make these guys job offers as interface artists. Cause, you know... RSS just isn't *fun* enough, dammit!
posted by idontlikewords at 10:19 AM on February 16, 2006