Socialising mp3-based music listening There is this rather strange trend of listening to your mp3s and a web site automatically updates which tracks you listened to. You'd probably end up defending or trashing whatever you have listened to which would simultaneously increase or decrease your social rating.
Well , it gets a lot more freaky.
Leaving aside the patterns in other people's 'scrobbling for a moment, as my Audioscrobbler page developed over time I started observing my listening. And now my obsession has got to the stage where I've been 'teaching' it, 'seeding' the system with a fair representation of what I'm into by leaving a 'Top Rated' playlist running overnight in iTunes' party shuffle mode. This is quite odd behaviour if you think about it - playing music not to listen to, but to ensure that Audioscrobbler has a decent understanding of who I am, musically. As Tom Coates astutely pointed out, it's another aspect of presentation of self. Which means it's quite important (as well as being not a little self-regarding, obviously
I can see this happening with books read , videos watched.