Cyber Bullying Comes to Mayberry

Small-Town Social Media: Word spreads fast in a small town; and now it spreads even faster, and the effects are more devastating thanks to the Internet. Rural America is a bit behind when it comes to the Web, but it seems that one thing small-town folks have taken to is gossiping online, and they aren’t playing nice — at all. The defamation and low blows are being exchanged not so much on mainstream social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, but on lesser known, localized sites and forums like Topix. It seems that it is this insular aspect of local forums that appeals to small-town communities. Also, the cloak of anonymity that the Web provides seems to have emboldened people to take small-town gossip to a darker place of vicious personal attacks and rumor spreading. It’s upsetting when children and adolescents use social media for online bullying; but when it’s grown men and women, that’s just sad. NYT

Video of the Day: Like so many things on the Web, this is pretty weird but pretty cool. Apparently there is such a thing as real-time “face-swapping” technology, and Arturo Castro, a developer at openframeworks.cc, has put it to use in this video he made. Watch as Castro shows his face with other people’s pictures, from Paris Hilton to Mao, superimposed over it. Castro says he intends to use the technology for future art projects but posted this sample video first to see people’s reactions to the technology. Commenters on vimeo have offered some other possibilities that this technology could be used for besides art (depending on how you define art): chatroulette and porn. Probably not what Castro had in mind. The Daily Dot

Tumblr of the Day: Speaking of porn, here’s a porn site. For cats. Barely Feral