An odd thing happened last week: A large technology company (nearly universally known and widely respected and loved) released a new social networking aggregator, free, to users of its (also free, and widely used) email service.

That they did this is not the odd part.

That users and the “blogosphere” at large reacted swiftly and overwhelmingly in the negative isn’t even the odd part.

The odd part, the thing that made me take pause, was how familiar this reaction has become.

Think about it: in the past 2 years, how many times have we seen this? How many new product launches have been met with this type of derision, this collective “meh”? Google Buzz, the iPad, President Obama. All have felt the swift sea change from media darlings to pariahs. The Facebook Redesign Backlash has become as reliable as Death and Taxes. But why?

I asked some folks on Twitter their opinions, to varied response. One user, @majormoore, chimed in with the succinct “uhh because the products don’t live up to the hype.” And maybe that is true. But whose fault is that? Who created that hype to begin with?

The answer is us. We did. Increasingly, we build hype and then complain when the product fails to live up to our own inflated expectations.

The Internet and society at large has undergone this subtle shift, this increasing fragmentation. When we started this whole thing, message boards were filled with passionate, niche fanboys, and each small community had its own critics, and its own defenders. The rise of blogs gave a more public voice to the user, letting them curate a voice and identity that could have shades of grey.

But with the advent of microblogging on Twitter and Facebook alike, the pieces of the collective attention pie are growing exponentially thin. The combination of a steadily growing online user base along with a far more public and homogenized forum means that we react not with many voices, but a chorus. And increasingly it’s a chorus of boos.

Why? Because as someone once noted, everyone’s a critic, especially on the Internet. Our culture has steadily moved towards one of critical thought; a culture where every experience, whether it be culinary, cinematic, or emotional, needs to be analyzed, ranked and rated. 5 stars. Two thumbs up. Hot or not. And the easiest way to be a critic is to be negative, to come up with some complaint about why you dislike something, to point out a flaw, is the easiest most base form of critical thinking. Folks think that by coming out and saying “the iPad is just a big iPhone with a shitty name!” they are somehow defining their personal online brand as a Technological Analyst. They are trying, in vain, to rise above the crowd by shouting the same message.

This is troubling because, increasingly, our opinions and reactions are directly tied to the financial success of the companies we both love and deride. Say what you want about Apple’s secrecy– imagine the technological landscape without them. Imagine the mobile OS landscape without the iPhone. But with every new product launch, those achievements are quickly forgotten. We set the bar higher, and then are shocked when they fail.

Hopefully this is an adolescent trend in the puberty of the Internet. Hopefully we’re in that obnoxious “I know everything and I will tell you whether you like it or not” phase. Hopefully we’ll grow up, get laid, and start listening to better music (metaphorically speaking). Because right now, all this negativity is making the Internet a drag.

(Twitter user @deanjanssen pointed me to this great post, which says what I just did, but far more entertainingly: here)

(Also, comedian Louis CK’s Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy is also about this, but WAY funnier)

So, The L Magazine, bastion of Brooklyn culture, recently had a contest where patrons could nominate their bodegas for Best Bodega in NYC. For those of you outside the NYC area, a bodega is a corner store that carries the essentials: coffee, egg and cheese sandwiches, some dusty cans of goya, and most importantly, beer (here in NYC, you can only buy beer outside of a liquor store, you know, because it’s still the 1400s?)

So I nominated the guys at On The Corner, which not only is the closest bodega to my house, but is literally the best one I’ve been to – they’re just really interested in making it the hub of the neighborhood.

And L Magazine agreed, so they gave them the award.

And then they gave me a prize: A week’s supply (7 six-packs) of whatever beer I wanted.

We all win.

Have you ever sat and wondered: “Just how do they make all that Internet? And how do I get me some?” Well, you are not alone. Plenty of folks have struggled with these very questions since the dawn of time, which is why The Barbarian Group has teamed up with Aquent, America’s best talent sourcing agency, to create InternetOnlineWebsite.com.

“What is InternetOnlineWebsite.com,” you may ask yourself, “besides a catchy URL?”

InternetOnlineWebsite.com is a website ABOUT websites. It’s been specially formulated to educate, enlighten, and delight those who are looking to add to their online presence and marketing initiatives.

Does this sound familiar? “I want this thing on my website, but I don’t know how to get it, or even what it’s called! THERE’S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY!”

Well, fret no more. InternetOnlineWebsite.com knows what it’s called. InternetOnlineWebsite.com is designed with the features of today’s most popular websites, and lets YOU discover more about these features, like what they’re called, why they’re awesome, and who you need to make them.

Clicking on almost anything on InternetOnlineWebsite.com will bring up Aquent’s helpful orange box, describing what the thing is for, why you need it, and who you need to hire on to accomplish it. At the bottom of the box, a direct line to those experts at Aquent, who have these people at their disposal and can get you started right away. No fuss, no muss!

But wait! There’s more!

InternetOnlineWebsite.com isn’t JUST about websites! It also addresses other helpful aspects of anyone’s successful marketing campaign, including:

No more struggling with technical jargon. No more having to explain to your uncle what SEO is. No more Internet Anxiety Disorder. Best of all, InternetOnlineWebsite.com is 100% free, satisfaction guaranteed.

So go on! Visit InternetOnlineWebsite.com and start living the dream TODAY.

“The Red Sox seemed impenetrable to me then – a locals club that I had not earned the right to be a part of. Having grown up a Mets fan, I possessed the required disdain of the Yankees, but other than that, I was an outsider. A tourist. And those who know me know there’s nothing I hate more than being a tourist.”

Many years from now (let’s say, 2033), the world will be a much sexier place. All of this strife and conflict and spam and Twitter outages will have been resolved, replaced by a wonderful, vodka-filled nonstop party. And SVEDKA is the uncontested president of that party. And everyone who’s anyone has given up their bodies and gone Bot.

Well, you don’t have to wait. The SVEDKA Bot Builder lets you create a perfect, silicone simulacrum of your sexy self, one that is more perfect than you could ever hope to be. Your Bot won’t age, won’t rust, and certainly won’t be hailing a cab at midnight because it has a 9 am meeting.

Building on the svelte SVEDKA.com, The Barbarian Group combined like Voltron with OddCast to create the SVEDKA Bot Builder, utilizing their way-futuristic character generation to make sure the Bots were as sexy as possible.

You can upgrade your new Bot bod with all sorts of useful tools, like rollerskate feet, wings, and an arm that’s an always-full martini. You can paint it, pose it, and even add some sick lowrider flames if you’re feeling fancy.

Once you’ve got your Bot perfected, you can make it do your bidding: say marginally titillating things with a voice-synthesized e-card, show off your shiny new physique on your Facebook profile, or save out some snapshots to use as profile pics on Twitter, AIM, or Friendster.com.

So go on! Get your Bot on – the future isn’t going to wait.

Other People’s Problems: Introduction

I feel like I need to give back to y’all. I feel like I just project myself out into the void, but I never take the time to listen to YOUR feelings, YOUR problems.

SO! Other People’s Problems. You can hit me up on Twitter (tag it #OPP) or email me directly (ryan (at) barbariangroup dot com) and tell me the problem you need solved, and I will do my best to solve it for you, with words, in a timely manner, for free.

Let’s do this.

Kids are dumb today, huh? They don’t even know how to search for things on the Internet, much less read or memorize. And yet, we have all of these things online that are age-restricted: porn sites, booze sites, the good redband movie trailers. So we put up these ridiculous Age Verification pages, which ask you your birthday and hope you’re honest. (It’s amazing how many people were born in January of a random year…)They’re a legal shield – nothing more.

So can’t we combine the two? Instead of asking someone their age, ask them a question they should KNOW at 18 or 21, like historical facts or math problems or things like that. We have all these standardized tests that say what we should know at a given time – let’s capitalize on it!

This would be awesome for websites, but would rule harder on things like Video Games, Apps, Movies – anything that has a tiered access structure. That way, kids who want to watch a PG-13 movie would have to answer 13 year old aptitude questions, where as 16+ kids would have to know, you know, what the Holocaust is. (I say this because a 16 year old once asked me what the Holocaust was.)

And hell, if they’re not 18, well at least they’re smarter, right? If they don’t know the answer, at least they’ll get better at looking it up, or answering multiple choice tests or whatever. And instead of just selecting a random birthday, maybe they’ll learn something. Call it Intellicaptcha.

But what if I’m over 18 and STILL don’t know the answer?, I hear you asking. Well, then, LOOK IT UP! Honestly, you people.

MoMA has launched this excellent service (that’s a little bit gimmick, but 90% utility) called My Day at MoMA.

Essentially, the site asks you when you plan to visit, and then scans your Facebook profile to determine what the best day to visit would be, and creates an editable itinerary.

Having worked on another major Art Museum site, this addresses a very real and major aspect of what a Museum’s site should do – prepare the person for their visit, and get them excited about it. That might seem obvious, but you would be amazed at just how many Museum sites fail at this.

It’s a nice execution using existing social networks to provide a jumping off point, if not a solution.

Now if they could work on improving modern art.