#12 (23 Things)

Q: Review the widget you selected. Are you getting comfortable with embedding code?

A: Yes. It is surprisingly easy. I even figured out how to 'close' a bad line of html from YouTube!

Q: Do you belong to other online communities?

A: No. I am a private person who makes friends slowly and carefully. As a result, I have few friends in number, but the greatest friends in the world!

Q: Are relationships formed online as meaningful as face-to-face relationships?

A: No. There are no real consequences of failure in online relationships. There is also minimal stress. I think that, at best, they are a pale and insignificant way of amusing oneself and imagining a 'real life' with 'real friends', when neither is the case.

Q: Why do you think MySpace and other social networking sites are so popular with kids today?

A: The incredible yearning of the young to be included, regarded and popular is the stuff of legend and those wretched, cloying, bittersweet, ABC 'After-School Specials'.

These kids are unfinished, near-adults, trying desperately to move up into the 'real world' and are seeking approval for their every breath. Throw in a raging hormone monster and questionable parenting, and you have the potential for axe murderers and lunatics running amok! (Ok. A bit of hyperbole, there. It's not always that extreme).

Stupidly, these kids turn to their peers. Children who are no smarter, have no more experience, worldliness, or luck than they have. But that's their support and advice group.

Great.

The internet provides them with these peers and their influence on a continuous basis.

Is this a good thing? I'm sure I don't know.