Guest columnist: From across the street

Garrison Keillor recently wrote in Time magazine that we are becoming a society of “18 million authors ... each with 14 readers ... and yearly income of $1.75.”  

But I think perhaps he underestimated the severity of this situation. With the rapid advent of social networking, I believe that number is becoming many times larger than what he predicted. Between Facebook, Twitter, whatever the hell Foursquare is and the ubiquity of blogging, we are becoming a society where it is the exception, not the norm, to merely take in and absorb information and try to apply independent thought to this.

I don’t know if you’ve read news online in the last five years, but nearly every online news article, from the mundane “Man saves cat from tree” stories to “U.S. bombs Yemen” columns all have the ability for you to leave a comment, and nearly all stories have multiple comments from people. Perhaps the true signal of the death of print magazines and newspapers is that there’s only maybe one page for letters to the editors and comments. Online you can finally have your voice be heard constantly and repeatedly.

And with the complete lack of censorship or grammar checks or even accuracy checks, it’s much easier to get the half thought-out ideas in your head onto the comment page.

There have been many articles about how schools and outside programs have tried to teach children about their own personal intrinsic value for society, that each child is a unique and beautiful snowflake. Yet the same people who decry this over-evaluation of self worth and importance are the same people who post links to their personal mommy blogs or political forum on other peoples’ news stories.

When I was younger, I had a strong attraction to the letters to the editor in newspapers and magazines, partially for comedic value, I think, and partially because I believed they were a barometer of crazy in our society. But if this truly is a barometer of anything in our society, the advent of the internet and social networking has set crazy and self important on a more rapid rise than I would have thought possible.

Just once, I’d like to read a column by someone I respect, who has spent years on the subject, and not look down and see someone pointing to their blog saying, “I have a discussion here on this issue.”

And that’s perhaps the greatest problem with social networking. Especially with Twitter, there’s this great sense that somehow every minutia of detail about your life is important and should be broadcast to the world when it shouldn’t.  There are generally only two things that happen in life — what no one should care about, and what no one should know.  

And as Doug Stanhope has commented, no one generally cares what you think.

We live in a world where the future is bleak if truth and knowledge is based more on how many Facebook likes and comments you get instead of actual analysis and thoughtful insight.  It does go a long way to explaining why creationism and Sarah Palin are still marketable, though.

E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu