I suck at titles and always have.

What arrested me in the Johnson article is the idea of creating virtual worlds where there might be "little virtual poetry readings," and such. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Well. Au contraire: I have reason to believe this may actually happen and have an outrageously negative impact upon human life. Read on.

I have a friend who, in sophomore year, was so enthralled by his World of Warcraft game and so unwilling to suspend it (even for the moment it might take to call a helpful friend who'd volunteer to help him in a time of need) that he refrained from handing in a twelve page final paper he actually wrote, and consequently failed his class. He needed this class for his major and is taking it again this year. The worst part? He thinks it's funny. Yes, ladies and gents--this is in no way fabular. The sacrifice of reality for cyber-reality terrifies me and makes me wonder where the value once placed upon genuine human contact has really gone. No wonder, I say, so many of us are overworked, depressed, and feel isolated. Direct result of too many hours spent in solitary amusement in darkened rooms with layers and layers of grease-stained pizza boxes, sulking over a W.O.W lose ? Maybe.

...Then again, I myself have been known to disappear to my lair and IM for hours at a time and into the wee hours of the morning, rambling about many sundry inanities and confiding secrets I wouldn't tell people face to face. I'm just as guilty as my friend who failed his class, just perhaps not quite as much of an isolationist nerd. (Hey. Watch it. I said quite.)

From onewordforeskimo's post I particularly enjoyed this question:
"Do blogs disseminate information in a clear and direct way? What sort of information? What sort of blogs?"

Ah. Clear and direct. What IS clear and direct, really? Jenn says that blogs are like literature in that they are suggestions of perceptions of experiences once had. Now if that isn't tangled, I really don't know what is. Also, "clearness" and "directness" also really depends upon what one's intent is in writing a blog or even a specific post. For political blogs such as the Lamont machines, perhaps information IS indeed disseminated in a clear and direct manner, but clear and direct only means readily readable and seemingly straightforward--this is certainly not to imply that whatever you might encounter in a blog isn't hand selected to produce an effect and fraught with personal biases and perceptions (and also agendas! gasp! not those!).

And I'm a tired old woman with a cold, so I suppose now I'll do creative writing homework and then go to bed. :)

Next topic: YouTube! For which I intend to post at least something YouTube. (Hey, Coffee--look. I endorse it, too). ;)