10. Brett Favre's Ball Pass - Okay I know it's hard to believe that a professional athlete and overall good guy could get so raunchy via technology right? Especially directed toward a hot, scantily clad brunette with hair extensions and too much lipliner. If you missed the full story just rewind to 2009, insert Favre and Jenn Sterger for Tiger Woods and Rachel Uchitel and upgrade the technology from texts to video.9. Netflix Scorned Lover's Hack - I love web trolls. Especially when they are smart enough to hack into the Netflix account of their unfaithful partners and scare them straight by ordering months full of psycho-dramas delivered to their door. Afterall, there's nothing like watching Richard Gere smash that hot French guy's face in with a snow globe to inspire chastity.
8. Facebook Faceoff: Catfish & Social Network - Nothing made me happier than seeing these two techromance tales play out on the big screen. Their presence elevated the importance of social networks -- showing how life online can effect the real thing and that no matter how desperate you are to attract "friends" there are really only a few you'll ever get to poke. And fewer than that if you continue to wear a GAP sweatshirt.
7. The Rise & Fall of ChatRoulette - Like all great Russian things, ChatRoulette had an epic rise and a tragic fall. At first it seemed like a brilliant idea -- the perfect antedote to the overly sanitized rules of Facebook -- that is until the only people that were attracted to the site were the ones seeking unsanitzed rules and roaming their basements in white tshirt, no underwear.
6. Iphone 4 G-rated Video Chats - You gotta love the innocence of Apple, they are all cute French songs in their commercials and even pick racially unidentifiable actors to shill their products. That's why when they promoted their video chat feature on the Iphone 4 as a way for hipster girls to show off their new pixie shags to their Williamsburg boyfriends instead of admitting the feature would be more likely to show videos of people shagging themselves, I didn't even roll my eyes.
5. Ashton's Kutcher's
4. OK Cupid Stats in the City - In a smart and hilarious marketing move, the dating website OK Cupid launched OK Trends--a blog that shares insights from the data they collect from their user base. Funny stats like "people are 20% poorer and 2 inches shorter than they say they are" reminded us that maybe there is a reason why we don't want to hold up a mirror to our digital dating self.
3. Charles Manson's Cell Phone in His Cell - Earlier this winter Charles Manson was busted for sneaking a cell phone into his prison cell and using it to place calls and texts. Though this was his most minor offense to date there is something particularly disturbing about finding a phone in the cell of a person who is notorious for mind-manipulation and convincing people to kill other people. Almost as creepifying were stats released from the prison stating that his phone was one of 8,675 cell phones confiscated in California prisons this year.
2. Getting Checked Out & Checked In - The adoption of FourSqaure this year helped take stalking to a new level. Serving as a polar opposite strategy to HTG (hard to get) this technology made coincidental run-ins a little more common and turned people on to our daily rituals, sometimes provoking unflattering questions like "how is her ass that big if she checks in to the gym everyday?"
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Thanks for reading guys! Here's to a happy and romanTECH 2011!
