Megan Stielstra's Blog

My students told me about a game you play with Wikipedia. You throw out two seemingly random things (say, "peanut butter" and "Batmobile") and then you see who can get from one to the other in the fewest links possible. The great encyclopedia race. So, Christopher and I raced the other night, and, granted, it was a hoot, we learned loads of useless information, proved the Oh-so philosophical concept that everything in life is connected (re: six degrees of Kevin Bacon) and killed a couple of hours reading the encyclopedia instead of watching our Firefly boxset AGAIN, BUT, in hindsight, we were sitting together in a room, both on our laptops, instead of, I don't know, TALKING TO EACH OTHER. And I can't get the image out of my head of like twenty of my students at some college party and instead of playing Truth or Dare over Everclear and Koolaid like I did, they are all sitting around, together, in the same physical proximity, all staring at their computers instead of communicating ("But Megan," you say. 'Perhaps they are communicating! Perhaps they're IM'ing!" And I say, "While I enjoy playing with the English language and advocate using one's individual voice, I am uncomfortable with abbreviations being used as verbs." I have similar unease with text messages [so many people getting into fights because of something "tex-ted." Again, as verb. As in, "He text-ed me that he didn't care and I was like, What the fuck do you mean you don't care?" or, "You could've tex-ted me if you weren't going to show up, God, you're so inconsiderate!"]. There is also the new trend towards using computer abbreviations--OMG, WTF, LOL et all--in standard speech, such as, "OMG, Megan, I love your sweater!" or "WTF do you mean by that?" They don't say, 'What the fuck do you mean by that," they actually use the letters: W-T-F. For some reason, I'm less alarmed by this [probably because it still necessitates TALKING to someone] and more amused. So amused, in fact, that I did it myself, in a mocking sort of way, and after a few weeks of such mocking, O-M-G and W-T-F have become part of my own vocabulary. Hypocrisy, anyone? And, speaking of hypocrisy, have we noticed I'm sitting here bitching about technology ON MY BLOG?).

Give me a face-to-face conversation any old day of the week. I had a kickass time last week playing Apples to Apples at a party, which involved lots of people sitting around a table drinking wine and throwing cards at each other and explaining why "roadkill" didn't represent "Nature."

In conclusion: don't text/IM/google me anymore, people. Call me up, and we'll figure out when we can get together for coffee.

(and I got from "peanut butter" to "Batmobile" in three links. Any takers?)