Finally out of the breach, dear friends, finally

2009-04-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Coach,

I am sorry about the source, I that bit about the football player on TV and when I googled it that was all I could find.

Thanks for making the class fun, it has been one of the few I have enjoyed going to. Have a great summer (I should probably say life, as I should more often, but that just seems so much more post-penultimate, so much more gloomy). Either way I had a great time and didn't absolutely hate writing for the first time in a while. Adios.

-Max

Social skills widdled away one text at a time

2009-04-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

For thousands of years our ancestors have been making social progress, and in one fell swoop we are negating it. You may not have noticed, but cell phone text messaging (or texting) is causing the degeneration of social skills. We are losing the ability to communicate properly. We are losing the art of body language, the ability to think on our feet, the eloquence of speaking, and the ability to deal with confrontation. All of these valuable traits are being replaced with laziness and cowardice. Our culture is slowly devolving due to cell phone texting, and those affected do not even realize it. Cell phone texting is turning American society into a lazy, anti social, borderline illiterate cowards.

Cell phone text messaging is turning many Americans into sloths. Dialing a phone number and having an actual conversation with someone may not sound like it requires that much gumption, but that is what makes pathetic. We don’t even have the initiative to do something as easy as making a phone call. How long will it be before we have robots doing all of our communicating for us? This is just another step in the degeneration of the old-fashion American work ethic that made this country what it is today.

The new “internet language,” if you will, is giving English teachers around the country nightmares. People are now abbreviating words, making egregious spelling errors, and using acronyms in serious pieces of writing such as essays and important emails. What started with internet communication (i.e. internet forums and instant messaging) has been carried over to cell phones via texting. The plague of abbreviations and misspelling is mercilessly killing grammar and the English language. So very many young people are growing up with this internet language and many do not see the line between proper English and this messaging slang.

Internet terms that proclaim the writer’s emotion are a death trap. Adding a smiley face made out of text - :) for instance – or saying “lol” (meaning laugh out loud) to convey emotion is killing the art of writing. The subtle, eloquent conveyance of emotion through simple tweaks of language and tone are being lost. You do not need to do so when you can take the lazy route and add a smiley face or say “lol.” Not enough people are worried about this. Will our future authors be taking the easy route and using these internet acronyms and the like to convey points? Will our future Presidents be communicating to world leaders with smiley faces? We are headed down a dangerous road, leading to a world without great writers and literature.

A number of these issues I have brought you have probably heard before. Many people realize a number of downsides to texting, but one often goes unmentioned. Cell phone texting is promoting cowardice. It is happening more and more often, and it is one of the biggest downsides to cell phone messaging. People are replacing a face to face meeting, or at the very least a cell phone call, with text messages for incredibly important messages. When you have to relay a message that you know will make a person upset, rather than having some dignity and conveying the message in real time (rather than sending a message that will not be responded to immediately) you can dodge the brunt of their anger by taking the coward’s way out. By doing something as important as breaking up a relationship or telling your boss you cannot make a deadline in a text message you are telling someone you do not respect them, and they should not respect you. Just today I read that a former college quarterback, Josh Freeman (he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2009 NFL draft) had committed to play college football at Nebraska. He decommitted by sending the Nebraska head coach a text message. This is the ultimate sign of disrespect. This is an absolutely huge decision this young man made, and he knew he was letting down many people. Rather than toughening up and dealing with the consequences of his decision, Josh Freeman decided to take the immature route and avoid any confrontation. This is just one of many such cowardly instances that cell phone texting is causing. Possibly the worst part about this is many young people think this is a proper thing to do, and an easy method to avoid conflict.

I have been rather harsh on cell phone texting on this blog, and some of you might think I am overreacting. I am not delusional; I do see the uses for texting. If you know someone is in a meeting or class and they cannot talk on the phone yet you have a message they must receive, a cell phone text message is the perfect answer. However I believe that replacing the intimacy of a conversation with text messages for general conversation is eroding some of our valuable social skills. So many people on this planet already have poor views of us as Americans, please do your part to prove them wrong and do a bit less texting. We don’t want to enforce the rest of the world’s view of us as lazy, anti social, borderline illiterate cowards.

Source:

http://www.cornnation.com/2008/11/13/660211/nebraska-vs-kansas-state-j

You think you know texting?

Finally out of the breach, dear friends, finally

Social skills widdled away one text at a time