So I’m still not sure what to say except that I feel this weighted sense of Le Sigh. The same mix of depression and exhaustion I felt this morning when I was playing peek-a-boo with a smily child in an airport and her parents whisked her away, glaring at me as though I was the devil incarnate. I realize that many parents think that they’re doing good by their kids when they choose to limit their exposure to the randomness of the world, but it just makes me deeply deeply sad. And this deserves a Le Sigh Royale.
“The same mix of depression and exhaustion I felt this morning when I was playing peek-a-boo with a smily child in an airport and her parents whisked her away, glaring at me as though I was the devil incarnate”
you made me laugh today. kids are funny, they have a sense of what a persons heart is like, far better than grown adults. while i realize with my large athletic humanoid body, people will act odd…but i can’t tell you how many times small kids walk up, smile and engage me….most of the time i hear the parent look quizzically to say “who are you?” and then sometimes i see the parent do everythign they can to cover their fear. but mousemingle ons to have YOU, with your gigantic physique cause the same effect….that is funny. cheers
But I need your advice on a another topic concerning Youth-Culture. You will understand more, what I am talking about, when You have visited the blog I am-painfully-trying to set up, without any talent for digital communication, because it is not of my age. But the subject I am trying to pass through is after long experience in the field of Youth-Culture and concerns an extremely important message from the Indian Red-Path towards the Western Youth-Hanging out and Messing around I hope You will be able to contact me, because I need some help in this confusing
i wonder if this is merely a consequence of the demographic shift. in a sense, ye olde days of the internet (which I only caught the tail end of) were full of people who had taken what was, by any standard, a rather unusual step to connect with others. i think of my time in the hitchhicker’s guide to the galaxy website – it was rather like hanging out in a cozy coffee shop where you could talk to anyone, and conversations lasted days and weeks and most people had something unique & different about them and something unique & different to say.
I am not so much reacting on-your very sympathic article-on chatroulette
in short, perhaps ye olde internet was weird and convivial because the people on ye olde internet were weird & convivial.
And so I simultaneously am amused by ChatRoulette and depressed because I realize that so many folks would prefer to keep themselves and their teens/college-aged-kids sheltered rather than giving them a way of thinking about systems like this and teaching them to walk away when things get weird
now it’s just everyone. and given how social networks operate, i wouldn’t be surprised if the social structures of the world are merely being reproduced in the social structures of the internet. just like in the ‘real world’ there are interesting people whom you’d happily engage with randomly but are hard to find, i suppose there are interesting people you’d happily engage with randomly but are hard to find online, because in both cases the uninteresting ones are much more populous than the interesting ones.