Some people call Myspace a "social networking site." I guess this is technically accurate since people can network on Myspace, but I think that's an overestimation of Myspace's value to our society.
I'm sure that some people use Myspace to network. They can meet new people who can help them in life (or at least "leave some love on their new pics"). But I think that most people who use it just enjoy personalizing their pages, making them veritable pig troughs of HTML. Seriously, when I used to browse Myspace, I saw enough falling glitter, custom cursors, and crappy slideshows to last a lifetime.
Now don't get me wrong, I think that Myspace is great fun most of the time. If you can filter out all the idiocy and obnoxious chain bulletins, it's a nice form of communication. Lots of people that I know don't use email or AIM so I can't contact them that way, but I can leave them a Myspace comment (or call them, but who does actual voice to voice communication anymore?).
On Friday I noticed another positive aspect of Myspace. I think that it teaches a certain level of internet savvy and computer proficiency that might not be taught otherwise. I was sitting in the library at my school, and two girls sat down to use the computers. It caught my interest because, through pure, unethical stereotyping, I couldn't imagine them being computer savvy, and I wanted to know what havoc they were going to wreak on the poor library computers. They both typed in the url for Myspace, found that it was indeed still blocked on school computers, then paused a second. Then, much to my surprise, they both typed in the url of a proxy site, then accessed Myspace through a proxy. Once they got to Myspace, they were pretty quick at using keyboard shortcuts to browse faster, and they could type surprisingly fast.
I guess it doesn't matter how you learn it, as long as it gets learned. Who cares if they're practicing typing by writing inane comments to their BFFs? So what if they learned how to bypass network security so they could check out the sweet pics of the party on Friday? What matters is that these two girls are in many ways more computer literate than some people who take classes in computers. Now they just have to apply their newfound skills to something that isn't web design diarrhea.
-Keenan
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About Me
- Keenan
- Ithaca, New York, United States
- Sports Editor at the Cornell Daily Sun. Government major at Cornell University, class of 2011.
2 comments:
I can tell that you've got a keen eye for observation, but you falter when it comes to transferring your observations to others. For example, in that story, you should have emphasized the girls, they were your subjects so you should have spent some time on their characterizations. What were they wearing, how did they move, what did their voices sound like? These are all questions the reader wants to know. Also, if you want to get published avoid using the word diarrhea; it makes editors uncomfortable.
Thanks for the advice. That's a pretty insightful thing for you to notice. A lot of times when it comes to transferring my observations, I get bored writing it all out and just want to get to the real meat of the story. Thanks very much for pointing that out; I'll definitely work on it.
Who are you by the way?
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