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MySpace
Sept 23, 2006 23:40:36 GMT -5
Post by beefmonger on Sept 23, 2006 23:40:36 GMT -5
Basically brought to you by heyyou, I thought I might should get a discussion going about this teen crap that's infected so many kids in this nation. I know the thread is entitled MySpace, but I want it to encompass more than that. A great friend of mine quoted a Christian speaker when he was giving me a ride home and the speaker said (paraphrasing, of course)'30 million people are dying of hunger and you don't give a s**t. None of you even paid attention to what I said first because you're all obsessing over the fact that I just said "s**t" .' Now, this isn't supposed to impose that I want this thread to deal with people obsessing over language (I'll probably be making a new thread about that later) but I just wanted to use it to illustrate the way teens are acting these days. Think about it. The largest topic on a typical teen's mind is which boy/girl at school would go out with them or who's the "cutest." I'm not trying to say all teens are like this--that would be a massive generalization which I am very, very against--so don't take any of this personally if you are bewtween the ages of 12 and 20. Back to the point, don't you think it's just pitiful that people can be so self-absorbed that they don't even pay any mind to troubled people or even God Himself? If that sounds bad, just think about what they're putting over the huge problems of other people. Sure, we've already established that it's themselves, but all they care about is this teen crap. In a typical teen's mind: I totally freakin' made that in MS for this topic xD Anyways, I guess I just wanted ta rant about this and see what you guys think about it. If you're this way, I'd like to hear your defence, if not, I'd like to hear whatever you have to say. And to clear things up from the beginning, no, I'm not toally innocent of this fault, but I do intend to clean my act up a bit and am making progress currently. Oh, and in the quote above, sorry for the language, I just feel very strongly about this issue and didn't want to take anything away from the power of his words aside from the change between his words and my paraphrase. If you really truly have a problem with my language, please inform me, and I'll try to use more clean language on this forum. Now...discuss!
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MySpace
Sept 24, 2006 8:32:03 GMT -5
Post by Alameth of the Iron Fist on Sept 24, 2006 8:32:03 GMT -5
They don't care. And they are encouraged not to care. This seems to tie in closely with "Murder of the Mind". Teens are short-sighted. Especially the ones on the younger end of the spectrum.
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MySpace
Sept 24, 2006 9:31:12 GMT -5
Post by heyyou on Sept 24, 2006 9:31:12 GMT -5
Instant Gratification. That's what many teens are about it seems. Our world is rapidly becoming more and more "on demand."
Within the next ten years, check out counters with staff behind them will be gone, replaced by the more efficient self checkout lanes, which also require less labor and less employees. How about
Drive-thrus? There are so many activities to be doing and bustling to and from, who has time to sit down and eat? Who has time to dine out without making part of an elaborate and expensive evening of perhaps shopping or watching a movie after?
Movie theatres, shopping, again, being made more efficient. Less waiting, less time spent having to communicate with others in society.
Television, love it. Cherish it. Worship it. Everything thing the media says is real right? And if it's not real for you, isn't that how it should be? Isn't what you see there what you deserve and what is right? Aren't the media's "In's' and "styles" and "ways of living" what we should all be striving for? If everybody did, how long do you think it would take before our world was "utopian"? How many people do think would try trying to reach that? And don't you think we'd end up just as those people we watch on the screen? That being, plastic, superficial and with very dramatic lives of selfishness and unreality that make a mess of the natural way of existance in society.
If everyone wanted everything instant...time? What would happen to time? And social lives would be all drama and superficiality. Passion, love, for and about anything except oneself, would die.
What about the bible? It tells us how we are to try to live. It tells right from wrong. So what when the bible conflicts with the media? What when the bible is no longer at "right" as society should be "right"? Sickening thought, no?
The internet? Interesting thoughts here. I'm an addict. I'm so bad that I can't do focus on homework outside of school unless I'm doing something online at the same time. But again, it's instant. Does not teach patience. If used well, it can increase a person's intelligence, and, as it is often used for, is a way of communication. I'm for the internet. But I do think that it is equally, if not more, important, to have a life beyond it too. Be active in something, have some purposefulness beyond ranting aimlessly like this.
How about Cell Phones now? For a long time I thought, 'cell phones are alright, they are for safety. ' But at that point, I as young and ignorant and thought people actually carried them only to use in an emergency where another phone wasn't available. Truth is, the vast majority of cellular costumers are using them for recreation. Who in this demanding world and past paced society could take the time to sit down, in a particular place, with a phone, and call. Not public places, unless it was a quick call for a real purpose, like times being changed, or finding a ride. Not calling to get the latest gossip while in public. I hate that people can't make time for communication personal anymore. It's become a public affair.
*Deviously laughs* Anyone else ever wanted to join in on someone's phone conversation in public? Like, been in a restuarant or line and heard about who slept with who, and wanted to go "Oh! I know her! Wow, she's with him now? God hunny, never thought that would happen. So, how about you? I want hear the gossip about you now!"
Ok, enough of that.
I lied. One more.
Computers aren't at all stationary. AIM, the internet, games? Carry them with you! And often on a traveling verbal and auditory communication device! (Cell phone.) That bothers me. Technology taking over time, space and minds. Anywhere, everywhere. We aren't safe, new inventions, more efficient modela and gadgets, come out so often. You can't run, you can't hide. It's everywhere. Commercialism, private business made public, the media, it's everywhere now.
So then, I should probably connect all that to myspace now. Umm...yeah. Myspace. Dangerous, foolish and idiotic in my opinion. People want to know you, you want people to know you, talk to them!!! If you want them to see these cool pictures, or hear this awesome song, maybe you should see this person visibly! Or, at least, just email.
The comment space? Breeding grounds for conflict. That's like an endless chatroom. Anyone can join. Anyone can say anything. Depending on where you vist an what you find, and what you say or post , the whole thing is disastrous. It makes life messy. Soo dramatic. It also takes away prviacy. You live in New Mexico, your boyfriend is abusive and finally dumps you. I up here in New York can find out by clicking stuff. And so can your ex-boyfriend, who is angered by your confessions of his abusiveness. So can your friends, or enemies, at the school. Whether you want them to know or not. Anybody who wants to, can find out. It's the perfect way to make a big mess and virtually "ruin your life" for months or a few years or so. The possibilities are endless.
And if people better communicated, maybe, I don't know, personally, there might not be as much drama or messiness in some schools amongst teenagers. And teachers too (Don't ask, at my school we've had problems with student making myspaces for teachers and bashing them there.)
Yeah, sorry, that was very logn rant...and it doesn't end yet in my head. My apologies to nay who disagree, and please, argue, make your points. I like to hear opinions and new ideas.
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MySpace
Sept 24, 2006 14:00:23 GMT -5
Post by beefmonger on Sept 24, 2006 14:00:23 GMT -5
I think MySpace is alright. It can be a good tool, but the way people use it is just crap. I think I saw it in Murder of the Mind, "I'm responsible for me." If you think about it, you can avoid all of these said catastrophes by just being discrete and using the message button as opposed to the comment button. If people would just be responsible for themselves, maybe they'd think about it first and actually choose the correct form of messaging for the correct discussion. Granted, when you have to use the message button, it's usually not a good idea to talk about that particular subject with anyone anyway. But that's not MySpace's fault, that's the idiocy of people. It may sound like I'm defending MySpace, but the truth is that I really, very honestly think our world would be much better if we didn't have it. It'd be a lot beter if we didn't even have any kind of technology. Abraham seemed to do just fine without sending Sarah an e-mail telling her to turn off the plasma tv or they'd have to buy another one for a gillion dollars while he was on the plane to his business meeting in the big city.
I just got finished posting something on another forum about how I couldn't read that much on a forum at one time (we were discussing the murder of the mind topic and I was referring to all the posts in that thread). This goes right along with your point about everything being instant gratification. It makes me really feel like crap that I'm just what I fight against. My father's a bit of hypocrite and I always condemned him for it, but the truth is that makes me an even bigger hypocrite because I was already a hypocrite and now I'm realizing I'm even more of a hypocrite now than then. I quoted that, "I'm responsible for me," thing earlier in this post and I actually thought about blaming the people around me just now about that not being able to read that much at once in a forum. I think the truth is that people around you affect you (see: 1 Corinthians 15:33), but I should be responsible for not placing myself in such bad company. Yes, it's hard to escape, but it's still very possible. My point is that I agree with many people's problems being with that lust for instant gratification and that I even do it myself...often...which gives me even more of a reason to agree.
I seem to recall a man named Kent Hovind teaching that we should use our minds. He was telling people to stop the amusement and to start thinking. He said that amusement was made up of two basic suffixes/prefixes/root words: a(meaning the opposite of) and muse(meaning to think). Ever since then, I've tried not to use the word amusement, but that really just means I'm in denial about the whole thing. Anyway, back to the point. This "amusement" thing is just taking people over. Just look at the people on MySpace's language. This is a bulletin of my friend's: that you con comment bcuz you are soooooooooooooooo nice. (The title was "3 new pics") It just sickens me that people can't even take the time to write out the word "picture" or "because" or that people don't even bother to look up the word "can" in a dictionary before posting their bulletin, or don't even know how to spell can in the first place, or that they don't even bother to use proper grammar, especially when they give you a confirmation screen to make sure everything is as you want it OR especially that they can't even re-read a two-line bulletin! I re-read almost everything I post (whether it be a message, a forum post, a bulletin, a comment, etc.). Not only is it instant gratification anymore, but now it's just become laziness. Both are terrible, and I think both should leave, but we can only hope to inspire such a large mass of people to forsake these things by forsaking them ourselves.
I could go on, but I'm freakin' starving and I think I should probably go get something to eat.
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MySpace
Sept 24, 2006 18:36:57 GMT -5
Post by st1_Emrys on Sept 24, 2006 18:36:57 GMT -5
Best way to protest=don't participate. Go for it me laddy.
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MySpace
Sept 24, 2006 23:31:25 GMT -5
Post by steel_lily on Sept 24, 2006 23:31:25 GMT -5
Worse than communicating in shorthand online, people are now speaking in shorthand....the AIM slang is creeping into common vernacular (a bit redundant, I know) and it angers me. I literally hear people say "J-k, j-k!" as I am walking down the halls. The intellectual that resides in my brain goes into a seizure and refuses to come out for days.
It is true that we live in a sad society of instant gratification. (I could go into why this is, the deeper causes, but it would take forever and it's bordering on one in the morning) It is true that everything is "me"-centered in a racing, desperate attempt to fill the void. Conclusion: People should all ride horses.
Okay, so that was a touch childish and impractical. I tend to get that way at this hour. The internet is good for this sort of thing, the ability to have an intelligent discussion with people we do not regularly see or talk to in person due to time and distance restraints. It also allows me to be talking to you all while you are sleeping. I laugh. But the internet also has its unforseen vices. Everything is instantaneous, and people have forgotten how to talk to each other. They have forgotten the importance of eyes and the set of someone's face or posture. We have grown distant from one another because we spend more time talking to a box with LED's behind it than to eyes with soul behind them. Relationships, of any nature, cease to have any meaning. Everything conducted face-to-face in an Eros-type relationship has to do purely (amusing choice of words) with the physical because the talking part can be done later when we are both at home and sitting in front of our computers. Maybe we can even talk on our phones to each other at the same time.
This distance has a deeper consequence.
We have forgotten how to love. We have forgotten what love is.
It is not that mad rush of sensation that tangles your words when you see that cute person in the hallway. It does not even have to be toward someone you intend on treating that way. I can love you, I can love my mother and father and brother, I can love my mentors, I can love my friends, and I can love the random toddler who talks to me at a graduation party. And none of it is wrong. It is just that lines have to be drawn...rules have to apply. And we have forgotten that.
If rules apply, we must have self-control. It cannot be an all-or-nothing ordeal. There are lines not to cross, directions not to go. But we cannot do that any longer. We cannot identify the necessary absolutes, and have not the strength of will to hold to them. So instead we demean love into a word synonymous with sex. Into the easiest, most self-gratifying, most instantly fulfilling sense of the word. And we leave it there, shriveled and but a tiny whisper of the strength it should carry.
But I think I got off-topic.
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MySpace
Sept 25, 2006 8:42:37 GMT -5
Post by Alameth of the Iron Fist on Sept 25, 2006 8:42:37 GMT -5
Something that I thought of while reading the "Conversion" thread...
We have forgotten how to insinuate. The internet, with its myriad words, has made us literal beings who take each word at face value. Even when speaking orally.
Okay, so not all of us have forgotten. And perhaps insinuate wasn't the right word to use. But you all know what I meant, because you haven't forgotten. Right?
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MySpace
Sept 25, 2006 12:06:49 GMT -5
Post by steel_lily on Sept 25, 2006 12:06:49 GMT -5
The word you were looking for was "connotate". We have forgotten the deeper, multi-level side of words and the world. Insinuation, for example, has a bad connotation. It puts a snakelike image in the mind, deception. I would be glad if the world forgot how to insinuate....there would be far less underhandedness. But the world has forgotten how to take connotations, and how to translate words and phrases into an actual meaning. Metaphors are lost to the public....sad thought, isn't it? Metaphors are not an advanced concept.
Oddly, this goes two ways. Yes, we have forgotten how to take into account such factors as tone of voice, context, and facial gesture...but we have also learned how to be more deceptive than ever. Noone is who they seem to be, noone can even identify themselves as who they are because they do not know themselves. A deeper level of meaning and communication is completely lost because you cannot communicate that with words. Not with words alone, at any rate.
And yet, when you read this, you can see my face (those of you who know my face, and even if you do not, I'm sure you have an image), you can hear my tone of voice, you can feel the emphasis on certain words in a sentence. That is the connotation of things....that is the continuation of sublevels of meaning. Without that ability to hear my tone and feel the way I shape these words, the argument would be flat. The words would fall dead upon deaf ears because there would be nothing to hear. Just another stream of data. But so few now know how to find the tone even in written language. Why? They have failed to communicate in other venues.
So...If (and I emphasize if) proper instruction and growth takes place beyond this monitor before you, the internet and these brightly lit words can be an effective source of communication. If we are willing to continue to form people as a society instead of relying on machines to raise our children, there could be no innate evil in the internet. If we could teach them music that is in fact music instead of a long string of barely-distinguishable expletives and references to drugs and fornication, we might even be able to re-cultivate art in our culture. Thereby, the internet could even become an effective venue for the circulation and publication of art...an enhancement to our society.
Instead we are teaching - nay, inculcating - that the internet is a substitute for real human contact, for the sound of someone's voice. That it is a substitute for one of the most essential and basic needs of human life.
What, then, are we left with? A society of children who never grew up. People who have not known love or beauty or pain or any of the things so essential to growth. And they therefore have not grown at all. They remain small children, regardless of physical stature, huddled in a dark (dank?) corner of their mind and soul, crying out for someone to love them and to teach them. Children want to grow, they have a right to grow. But we are denying them that basic right by turning them over to cold machines for cold information with a cold deadpan ring. Other people are important for growth, and that is slowly eroding away...but the need remains.
You may be asking, "Why does Steel keep using 'we'? I am no part of this! I am a living, thinking, real human being who has not yet propogated nor been allowed a major part in society. Therefore the blame is not mine." You are a fool to say this. To borrow a tired old euphamism, there are two varieties of sin. The sin of commision and the sin of omission. In essence, he who stands by and allows murder to occur is as guilty of murder as the murderer himself. I say 'we' because it is our responsibility as much as it is anyone else's. We are required, by birthright, to be active and responsible members of society. We are required, by our profession of Faith in God, to speak out against evil. Noone said it was easy, noone asked you to change the world. But noone asked you to breathe, either.
This is no altar call for the faithful who want to change the world. It is a statement of responsibility.
We have forgotten intellect.
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MySpace
Sept 25, 2006 16:17:22 GMT -5
Post by beefmonger on Sept 25, 2006 16:17:22 GMT -5
You people...need to meet with me sometime. I feel so lost and lonely where I am right now, and I'm now almost certain that it's because of the people around me. If I could only find people like you that I can actually interact personally with, I'm sure I'd be a much better person. This damn computer has killed me. I was raised with the internet at my hands, my television being my best friend. All that you people say here is true and I've been searching for peopel who understand this. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing, though, because at first when I found this forum, I was the most excited person in the world to finally find people who understand things. People who pay attention. People who know real importance. But now I just want more. I don't know if this makes me a person who's hungry for righteousness or just someone with an unquenchable desire for more that can only be satisfied with the constant showering of "gifts." Paul (I think) said to be content with what you have, and I'm starting to think I may just be dismissing that as not applicable to myself, when this is what I need to learn. It's confusing, to say the least, but I guess I can only hope the answer is revealed to me before I hate myself for it.
The rest of what I post in this thread will almost undeniably be in agreement with your words, so I'll basically just be adding to what you say.
About the losing of the definition of love, it's gotten to me. So often I ask myself what it means. I've asked people, and I've never gotten a satisfying responce. It worries me, because I don't want to forsake the most improtant law due only to my ignorance of the definition of a word. If you could, please tell me what love means...
I'm...not the most sociable person you'll ever meet. It takes me three or four months to even make a friend any time I change schools or anything like that. It's not just a school thing. I thought it might've been the people at the school/church/etc. that I just couldn't connect with and my problem was only because I hadn't been in the right place. I guess I was wrong. I had no problems with these problems from the ages whenever-you-start-being-social years old to 11 years old, but I moved and changed schools, and everything just absolutely fell apart for me. I'm afraid to attend bible studies, youth groups, classes at the local college, etc. because I don't want to face another person and make an ass of myself like I always do. This crap is interfering with my life, and until now I had no idea what the reason could be. Now I think you've made it clear to me...the internet has basically stolen my soul. I can conduct myself perfectly when I "talk" to someone over an 8mbps cable connection, but when I try it over an ∞tbs face-to-face connection, it all falls apart. This technology has broken me. When I have kids, we're going Amish...
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MySpace
Sept 26, 2006 5:01:51 GMT -5
Post by steel_lily on Sept 26, 2006 5:01:51 GMT -5
<smiles encouragingly> Then you are on your way to healing. The whole wanting more thing...I understand that completely. I spent a long time having friends and losing them and being very confused after I moved across the country (Colorado to New York....bit a of a distance). It took me a long time to find people I could trust. Once I did, I had to know more. I have this insatiable curiosity of all things anyway, but somehow this made it worse. There were things behind these people's eyes, behind their words, things I had to understand. And I couldn't just give it up, I had to know more, had to feel more, had to have more words and more stories...
That's how you get to know someone. The whole wanting more words and stories and whatnot doesn't really ever stop for me. There's not a point where I get comfortable enough with someone so as to stop asking them questions. It's just the way I am, and that's a thing that's saved my bacon more than once.
Please don't be lost and lonely where you are...I know that's hardly something you can control...but you will find someone real to talk to. In the meantime, there is at least one person who should give you purpose. Actually, an insane adrenaline-infused drive. Your friend in trouble...there's a purpose. Talk to him, face to face as often as possible. Try to stop the bloodshed. Even if you do get outside help (Which you should!), he will be able to talk to you more comfortably, and you will reach him better. There. You have purpose. No more being lost.
As for the love thing....I'll start a thread soon enough.
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MySpace
Sept 26, 2006 16:26:57 GMT -5
Post by st1_Emrys on Sept 26, 2006 16:26:57 GMT -5
Beat you to it Steel
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