Marshmallow Pebbles (which is a crappy cereal and I regret having tried it)

This is going to be a short post since I've implicitly learned that anything "controversial or thought-provoking" I write about while looking for a job may keep me from getting hired. It's a shame really, but everyone has their own agenda, whether good or bad. If you've been around me long enough, you'll learn two things: I think very unconventionally, often to the point of counter-culturalism, and that appearances can be deceiving. Also this is a short post since I'm still really pissed off from the dinner tonight at Stockyard. (Read my review on Yelp to find out why.)

So tonight after dinner, we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts to chill. We were talking about all types of issues, which was cool, running the gamut from marriages and businesses, the economy to job outlooks, and how often people socialize with each other. What we ended up coming together about though were various Youtube videos that became popular memes on the internet. You know which ones I'm talking about-some of the more recent ones: 2 Girls, 1 Cup, Double Rainbow, the Best Cry, and rampant use of autotune. Most of these spectacles picked up steam for their shock value, derisiveness, and outlandishness and many have been viewed by millions as well. A friend commented that even CNN had covered stories about these memes. From that comment, I started thinking...

My initial thought was about the state of entertainment right now, especially with so-called reality shows that are more often staged than spontaneous. Youtube is the perfect example-everyone wants a piece of the action by creating a skit, speech, or an act that's going to capture people's attention. Is this life imitating art where folks integrate these memes into the daily grind, or art imitating life where subject matter is created from others' recycled ideas? I can see another purpose for Youtube now. Like a comment on Facebook statuses, some people like having a soapbox to stand on. It feels good, and it's a part of human nature to be noticed, to have praises showered upon oneself, to be regarded as important to the masses. Perhaps some entertainment needs to be concocted and planned out, but more often than not, it is the natural ebb and flow of life that's going to provide the fun times. The elements of life that are unexpected and can't be controlled: it is those that we cherish and long for the most. Anyone can be an internet star by doing something silly, but at the end of the night, you're only a blink of the eye in society's timeline-easily forgotten and ridiculed.

The following thought came afterward, that the internet has fallen from its original purpose. I remember the day where I first logged onto America Online with those CDs that people use as coasters now, cause they were spammed in people's mailboxes. The first site I went onto was Nintendo.com, where I looked for the latest cheat codes for video games I had. Now I use the internet for a whole laundry list of tasks but mostly it's for information. Google can be a time-saver, but Wikipedia can be a time waster. A lot of people use it for different purposes too, noted by e-commerce and personal communication. (Wasn't the original purpose of internet military related?) Anyways, the internet is integrated by people in order to bolster their own lifestyles while expanding into new frontiers. That famous quote where someone says the internet is a series of tubes? Perhaps they weren't that far off: those pneumatic tubes are there for transporting an item from one location to another. This is what were doing now.

I have relatively little insight for the future direction of this world, and certainly much less for the artificial one created on the internet. Many moral and ethical issues also come into play especially for the nature of the internet in how connected this network is and how quickly information is disseminated as well. It is not my job to police people or wage wars against organizations (at least without bigger weapons, both mental and financial). Rather it is to understand how and why these elements are here and figure out how to fix them, or at the very least temper their effects. Why? Above all, the internet is a tool, created by people for people. If we knew how to work well with people, then much of the problems created by the internet affecting people on the internet would be gone. Maybe they'd be done away with in real lives too. 

Posted via email from Bloodscope Economics