Brazilian Invasion

Our friend Alan just left. He was here visiting for the afternoon and evening, which was great because we haven’t seen him in a while. I love when we have him over because he’s British, so I can speak English without having to make sure to speak extra clearly etc. Not all Dutch people need that but most do. We get together with him every so often, have dinner, gab, watch some movies or whatever. He’s really easy to have around so he’s not one of those people that I get totally wound up about when they’re coming over. Some people I have absolutely no idea what to talk to them about. Xander made dinner, some kind of noodle stir fry thing. It was really good! I love that my husband loves to cook because he’s SO much better at it than I am.

Oh yeah! I’M FAMOUS!… err, sorta.

Today was kind of an interesting day for me on the internet. I’ve mentioned Orkut in some posts in the past, it’s sort of a social networking site run by Google where you chat with people about a variety of different things. When I first joined I started a Piercing Community and since February 4, 2004 it has grown to almost 2500 members.

When Orkut first opened it was like many other online communities. Made up mostly of Americans but consisting of many different nationalities. It took a strange twist this time as masses of Brazilians have joined and currently are 43% of the population of Orkut with the US coming in 2nd at 22%.

When creating a community on Orkut you are given the option to choose the community language. Most will choose their own language as that’s what they prefer to read and it’s hard to moderate threads you don’t understand. My community was neutral to start, until the numbers of Brazilians really started to grow. Suddenly the community (and many others) were flooded with posts in Portuguese and the English speakers started to complain. To make a long story short I asked the people of the community their thoughts on making it English only. The English speakers mostly said they preferred English or just didn’t care, the Brazilians got up in arms calling me xenophobic, a nazi and many other things I didn’t bother to translate. They caused so much problem in the community I decided to set a firm rule (as other community creaters did in the start) to have the community be English only.

I got a lot of flack from the Brazilians, even though they had their own Piercing Brazil community that they could have discussions in their own language. I was getting nasty emails from them, etc and finally got frustrated and looked for somewhere to vent. I found a community titled WTF A CRAZY BRAZILIAN INVASION and started a thread explaining my experience with the Brazilians and their attitudes on Orkut. Ironically, the Brazilians in that community who responded were quite nice and rather apologetic about the actions of the other Brazilians.

About a week or two after making the thread I got an email from a man named Alberto Alerigi from Reuters asking for my permission to quote me in an article he was writing about Brazilians on the internet. I figured yeah sure whatever, thinking it was going to be some little article in some little paper in Brazil somewhere and I’d never see it.

This morning I came online to find my friend Karl asking for my autograph. I just ignored him at first as I was half asleep and didn’t know what he was talking about. Then people started messaging me telling me I was famous and making other comments. Still, I was lost! Then they explained that I was quoted in an article on Yahoo which they found being discussed on Slashdot. I couldn’t believe all these people knew about it and had read it, that it was such a big deal to be quoted on Yahoo or have the issue discussed on this Slashdot website. Go figure! Anyhow, people have been commenting on it most of the day and it’s been interesting

Oh, for those of you who don’t belong to Orkut, sorry for all the links that don’t work for you. You need to be a member to be able to view it. If you’re a friend of mine and would like to join, send me a mail and I’ll invite you, otherwise.. err I dunno, you’re on your own.