Entering the Game

Twitter confounds me, Instagram is as uncharted as Mars, and, in general, I converse with my computer much the same way your grandmother might with hers. (It is a rather unagreeable machine that refuses to bend to my will.) The only difference between your grandmother and me is the fact that I don't have the generation gap to excuse my ignorance. 

I've brushed off learning these sorts of things in the name of humility. "I will only give into the temptations of vanity if I allow myself to be allured by the neon lights of social media," said I for most of my two decades of life. Well, that might still happen, but only if I let it. I could become just another duck faced self-promoter or I could learn to use the media for some semblance of good. As Mr. Rodger once said in a interview with CNN, "I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen." Instead of being afraid of the ugliness these forms of media lend themselves to, perhaps I should attempt, like Mr. Rodger, to join the already positive forces that have come out of the new technology. Whether I'll be successful or not is up in the air, but I can sure try my darn-diddly hardest. 

The problem comes from the fact that, because I resisted for so long, I am hopelessly lost as to how to play the game called "The Internet." For this reason, I am currently taking a class about Literary Citizenship, which will hopefully teach me how to use social media in a way that builds up people in literary communities for mutual benefits. Perhaps we can rediscover the good old days when the internet was a platform of sharing, only this time instead of data, it can be ideas, emotions, and lives. I'm excited to see what this class can teach me and curious to see where that knowledge can take me.