Insert thought provoking status here

            The professor for my Classics and Cinema class always goes off on the strangest tangents. It is not uncommon for him to lead a discussion in class about some topic that has nothing to do with what is actually going on in class. In the third week of the semester we were watching a very cheesy made-for-TV miniseries, The Odyssey. There was some discussion about the movie and the original story that it was based on and then somehow (the processes of his mind makes no sense to me) he segued into a discussion about Facebook. He wanted to know our thoughts on how social networking sites will affect the intelligence of my generation and generations to come. Are we smarter because of it or is facebook contributing to the “dumbing down” of society? This has nothing to do with The Odyssey, but it is an interesting question and each time I log onto the site I think about it and I make more of an effort to pay attention to the way that I express myself. I write more now than I ever have before. It’s true that what I’m writing isn’t the next great American novel or all that significant, but I feel that if you get into the habit of lazy writing the only writing you will ever do will be lazy. I see it everyday; prolly in place of probably, def over definitely, all the LOL’s, LMAO’s, BFF’s and more take the place of actual words in our fast-paced society. We no longer have to spell words correctly because the computer’s spell check will do that for us. We don’t even spell the words out. There is no editor reading status updates or comments to correct every misplaced comma and deleting every excess word (much like this blog). At the same time though there are more people writing and reading and more people actively engaging in discussions that, some of the time, actually matter. Facebook can be used as a forum for debate. I have many friends who engage in debates every day regarding religion and politics. Everyday I do feel like I learn something new, or get introduced to something that I never knew existed. Sure, the new thing is often some web site that deals with drunken texts or the sadly unfashionable people who go to Walmart not realizing that anyone with a camera phone is liable to snap a picture of them and post it on the internet for people to chuckle at on their work breaks… that’s beside the point. It’s new! It’s different! And it fills me in on not only what I shouldn’t wear, but what I shouldn’t do while drinking…cough, cough…like texting. When will I learn?!

I believe that facebook and other sites like it can make people smarter, depending on how they use it. I feel smarter already and thanks to the hours spent typing all those LOL’s and LMAO’s I’ve increased my typing speed by 30% (rough guesstimate that makes my point). I write every day, and though what I write is never going to be turned into a novel, the words I put on the page entertain the people who read them. They might even inform them as well. It’s a nice thought.