Monday, October 3, 2011

The Pre-Twitter Generation

Could you imagine what we would have done if Twitter was around when we were in college?

All those van rides back from Rutgers, Mt. Holyoke, Bucknell, etc. and the randomness that we all talked about it. Who can forget Pokey and Kell rocking out to Bohemian Rhapsody on the way back from Mt. Holyoke? Or even that conversation that led to this blog? How much of that would have been posted on Twitter when we got back to The Hill or that instant if the smart phone was around back in 2003?

Not that I don't love social media. I think it's great but it takes a lot out of those meaningless times when it's just you and four of your teammates plus coach, who is probably speeding all the way back to get out (I'm kidding coach). Whatever happened to the old saying "what happens in the van, stays in the van?"

Nowadays all of the bonding is posted on Twitter, Facebook, 4-Square for the whole world to see. But do we really want that? Don't we as a society what some aspect of our life to only between us and a select group of people?

Maybe. But then again I'm coming from one of the original Facebook generation when you had to have a .edu email address to register and sometimes even that was not enough. As it seemed the rest of the higher ed world was on Facebook back in 2003-2004, McDaniel was not, maybe it something to do with the fact that not many people knew about it or knew that it was formerly called Western Maryland. But the second we got it, it felt like we were a part of something exclusive that not many others could be a part of. To quote Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerburg from The Social Network, "it was exactly like getting punched. You had to know the people to get get past your own page." Now anyone and everyone has an account.

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