Slackerninja's Freestyle Dojo

Something I wrote for T3 India. Now here and unedited for your viewing pleasure:

Commandments for 2011

Yesterday was last year. Your head’s stopped spinning, the hangover’s clearing and you have absolutely no idea as to why yourresolution for 2K11 is to save the world from boy bands. And that’s why we’re here. While we share an equally hateful disdain for manufactured sugar pop there’s a lot more worth resolving for. Read on to know what and most importantly why:

1.       Thou Shall Not Pirate: Ironic isn’t it? We use every possible excuse from high prices to Wikileaks to avoid paying for a copy of Windows 7 but would gladly sell off our firstborn to get our computer up and running after almost daily dalliances with illegal software. The same goes for games and apps. You wouldn’t like to be robbed for your hardwork so doing the same to others is criminal. Not to mention it leads to developers losing jobs and studios closing.  And if you don’t like spending a paisa then the internet always throws up a free, conscious-clean solution.

2.       Thou Shall Not Be an Echo on Twitter: This goes for a sizeable number of folk in the audience. It’s nice to show you’re all so Web 2.0 or whatever they’re calling it nowadays by having a Twitter account but if all you’re going to do is spam the damn re-tweet button 24/7/365 (366 in case of leap years) you’re just adding to the spam paradise we call the internet. Kindly cease and desist (unless you’re re-tweeting @t3_india that is, then you’re fine by us, godlike even).

3.       Thou Shall Not Be a Paying Beta Tester: Hype. It gets the better of us. Even more so when it comes to gadgets. So before you end up spending your hard-earned pennies on the latest “oPad Touch” do wait for the opinions of other guinea pigs before buying a ticket to board the hype train. With some interesting tech ahead of us and limitless updates (Nintendo’s DS line comes to mind) patience should be the virtue of saints and the gadget-obsessed.

4.       Thou Shall Not Showcase Your Lack of Literacy:  An old but perennial one this. ‘cuz typin lyk dis iz xtreemly irritatin 4 d rst of us. That and the fact that you’re not in pre-school anymore. Also your keyboard called, it’s about to euthanize your unused alphabet keys. On about the same level of vexation is the sort who TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPS, the virtual equivalent of shouting that’s made our virtual ears stone deaf.

5.       Thou Shall Photograph With Discretion:  No we don’t pictures of you getting sozzled or indulging in more than a fair bit of public displays of affection with your latest squeeze or bathroom mirror pics populating our Facebook news feed. And most of all adding a greyscale or monochrome filter to it does not make it look any better. It’s just unnecessary clutter we can all do without. Sure we can tweak our Facebook settings but that defeats the purpose of harmonious living and self-improvement doesn’t it?

6.       Thou Shall Pretend to be Tech Illiterate: “Wait, what? This is T3 isn’t it?!” asked our alert readers while turning this over to see if their favourite gadget wasn’t replaced by a copy of We Hate Machines Weekly. The fact is feigning ignorance is very useful when you have the sort of people in your life (usually relatives or friends) who have your number stored under “Tech Support” when they can’t get their “Interwebs” working or have ended up nuking their PC due to pirated software.

7.        Thou Shall Not Troll New Buyers: So your friend’s got a spanking new Android 2.1 only phone. While you’d be correct to rain on his parade by telling him that 2.2 is the new hotness it’s in pretty bad taste as not only is it impolite but it is obvious that he’s fallen prone to rant number 3 a point from which there is no redemption. That and self-realization does take its own sweet time to set in.