dandy life

Funny thing here.

It's sort of cool, if very weird, social software called Dandelife.

People post pictures/videos/texts recounting events in their lives that are associated with acertain day. The different posts get assembled into a giant timeline. Users can track the lives of people that they know, make their own accounts and add to the timeline, or simply wander from post to post.

Some of the entries:

--The first one that popped up when I arrived came from my birthday!
Sept 27, 1990: "One night, 13 years old, snuck out and lost my virginity.
Since then, it has not been found..."

Now that was something I didn't want to know!

--Or this recent one, that details rather mundane occurrences

3 September, 2006 1:42 PM: "Woke up with a cold. But it's nothing new. Everytime I sleep here, my allergy takes its course and I end up sniffing."

--Or this rather tragic story:
6 July, 1978 "My dad died on my 12th Birthday. Mum, my brother and my self had migrated to Australia the year before. Dad was working a transfer and was due in three weeks. On the eve of my birthday my family threw me a surprise party, my first ever. At 3am on my birthday we got the call. By mid morning we were on a plane back to Malaysia for the funeral."

I wonder, returning to our talk about voyeurism, if this counts as such? It's, after all, publicly available with the creator's full knowledge. But I definitely felt a bit intrusive reading some of these entries.

And then, I wonder, if all the posts are true? (Surely the answer is no.) Are there elaborately constructed lives and identities out there--fake people, with fake marriages, funerals, and children ... fake videos... fake photos ...?

Further, while I'm not going to post something anytime soon, I wonder what motivates people to put their lives, or at very least, personal information up for others to read--even if it can be done pseudononymously? Is this in some way cathartic? Or vain? It's definitely not the "for the betterment of general knowledge" motive that we ascribed to wiki editor-ship. Would you all be more inclined to post/to read/to totally avoid the site?