Check out this doll house version of the antique Steampunk keyboard.
I was going through a handful of tiny watch parts I purchased on Ebay and a few of the bitz reminded me of a certain infamous keyboard. With much appreciation to Jake Von Slatt for the original, I present the Steampunk Dollhouse “Von Slatt” Inspired Keyboard…
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Gmail come up with a way to help people stop sending inadvisable emails when drunk. Sheer genius. Now we just need someone to invent something similar for Facebook, and a breathalyser for mobile ‘phones to prevent drunken texting, and the world will be a much better place.
Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
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One of the most disturbing thing I’ve seen since the screaming mutant foetus in Eraserhead.
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Posted by Frederic
The other day, I posted on another blog regarding dating sites such as Plentyoffish I had emails of men complaining that it was hard for men to contact women online and that was the reason why there was fake profiles…. Fake profiles? I replied. I was told that there are a lot of men pretending to be women on dating sites. Are there any women pretending to be men? Apparently not!
Why some guys out there feel the urge to change sex online? What would be their reasoning? How on earth would they imagine their “feminine self” online? How do they build their profile? Are they looking for other men? Are they closeted? Or are they trying to uncover some of women’s secrets while they are off guards?
1. There are a lot of different reasons
I noted 4 types of reasons why men do this. On gay web sites some men pretend to be lesbian women to live their fantasy of being a “woman with another woman”.
On heterosexual sites that type of fake profile allows you to have friendly contact with other women and the selection of partners is easier with a girl profile. Which results in a competitive advantage. If one wanted to make some sort of a “sociological” experiment that would be one of the better ways to do it without being discovered.
Recently, a 31-year-old Vancouver artist named Max created many women’s profiles on several dating sites. He also started online relationships, which lasted for months. He says: “I wanted to see how things were on the women side. I wanted to understand why we as men receive only a few responses to our emails. When you realize the harassment that exist on the women side, for example, a website like Plentyoffish, a woman receive would receive up to 60 emails an hour, then you understand why men’s emails are not answered.”
The “sociological” experiment of being a woman is enlightening, to say the least. “You can see how men approach women, their different personalities and how they can be predictable, or not. I would also like to point out that women’s profile on dating sites are rarely genuine and original.
The most important was to let my feminine side speak and let myself be seduced. That was a real acting job.”
A 36 years old Montrealer named Alex had a different approach.
“I built an online profile on dating site with a view to gather material for a book I am currently writing. While questioning my own attraction for red headed women, I wanted to know how a sexually excited male was reacting before a flamboyant and hypersexual red headed female.”
2. Caricatured or Credible Profiles
Alex took the role of an imaginary red headed woman on Plentyoffish. She was looking for sexual excitement. He made a very explicit profile (no time for romanticism, I am in need of a man tonight type of thing). When he was asked for a picture he was sending the picture of a red haired pubis.
At the opposite, Max made an effort to create a coherent character, with a minimum of stories to tell, a temperament, qualities and character faults.
“I did not want to create a character too far from what I really am, because I wanted to keep my natural reactions and my knowledge to keep feeding my female identity, a projection of my feminine side.”
The picture used on the profile was that of his girlfriend living abroad.
3. Masculine and Feminine: No Common Ground
Max is exasperated when his woman profile is harassed and “unmanageable”. As woman, he was chatting simultaneously with 15 different persons. He confides he “met someone” when someone was becoming too close.
Max says, “With his real male profile he has a lot less contacts”. In his profile, he is looking for 28-32 year old women and on his chosen dating site, the female population is 5 to 10 years younger than the male population.
The conversations are far more interesting when using his female profile than with his masculine one. He can discuss with 50 men in 3 weeks and he could not meet as many women in one year. “I had a lot longer conversations with men”
On the other hand, Alex, with his woman profile, was attracting a lot of men interested only in sex and did not care if the woman was blonde, red or brunette, as long as she was average looking. These men were not useful for the purpose of his book.
Alex added, “ The speech of sexually excited men is absolutely the same each time, to the point where I could guess most of the answers in advance. The conversations I had with women were surprising and much more interesting.”
Alex rarely met relevant persons to his book. “On five occasions, I met real rookies who made me realize that I was not the only one to I like red headed women the way I was. It was humbling. On two occasions, the conversations went so far that I revealed my real identity (that I was not a woman), and after the frustration had passed, the conversation continued. I even remained in contact with one of them”. Alex took advantage of his 2 years on Plentyoffish and other dating sites to have many happy moments and 20 sex lives within approximately 20 months. (BTW None of this was real sex!)
4. What type of relationship to have with men?
What you have to know is that Alex and Max also met a lot of “fake girls”. Alex recalls a girl online asking tons of questions (as doggedly as he was). He suddenly asked himself: and if “she is a man”? After insisting a lot he got her phone number. When he called, “a guy named Gary answered”.
Max had different kinds of problems. While he was on Lavalife his boss flirted with him (With the girl he was pretending to be). He was “amused to see his boss flirting with a women 15 years younger”.
Another time a man fell in love with him. “I didn’t cut him to the chase and I played the game. At the end I was feeling bad to abuse of that situation so I revealed to him the deception. The man was very angry”. Now, Max is more aware of other people’s feelings.
Why stop now?
Some major sites now have full time employees working on removing artificial profiles, by noticing fake pictures.
Why stop now? Max says, “I want to stop because receiving an email each hour, 24 hours a day, is impossible to manage”
Alex said, “ I stopped going on Plentyoffish under a girl profile because I did not need anymore information for my book and I also stopped because I met a woman that made me want to stop”.
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