Friday, February 5, 2010

Whuffle Envy

According to some random person who posted from somewhere in the world onto Wikipedia: 

Whuffie is the ephemeral, reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow's science fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. This book describes a post-scarcity economy: All the necessities (and most of the luxuries) of life are free for the taking. A person's current Whuffie is instantly viewable to anyone, as everybody has a brain-implant giving them an interface with the Net.

The term has since morphed into a synonym for social capital, including its use in the title of the Tara Hunt book The Whuffie Factor

Basically, what Wiki was trying to say is that Whuffle = your popularity factor. 

If you want to think this concept is still just a think of futuristic sci-fi fantasy, not applicable to today's capitalism, money-grubbing based global marketplace. Wrong! Whuffle is here, now and prevalent in our culture; you've seen it. Look to the left bar on your Facebook profile or better yet, fanpage, and look at that number of friends of fans. How many followers do you have on Twitter?

That's your whuffle. 

Do you not find yourself continually checking that number and rating your "worth" in the Twittersphere by said number? Gosh knows I do. 

Think about it: wanna get a message spread. The more friends/fans, increases the probability of your message getting seen and /or sent exponentially. I want people to know me so that they will spread my messages. I want to be as quick to the punch and as effective as those other people with 5000 +, 10,000 + or more followers. What am I doing wrong? Why is my whuffle so low? I'm suffering from severe Whuffle Envy. I long to gain more friends. I feel follower greed creeping inside of me, and realize that, like my father once said, "you can take money out of the picture, but you will always have currency and with it, always people greedy to make it all theirs." 

and then...

I realize that I'm worrying about a word called Whuffle, and I laugh. Twitter on fair Kelly, at least 118 people are listening somewhere, ooh just went up to 121. My stock's ah-rising. 

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Posted via email from Kellyfornia on the state of... well, things.

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