Wonkette
THEY GOT WHAT NOW? Here’s a four-page Atlantic article about how the Web has ruined the brains of book readers and writers and now we can only deal with single-sentence blog posts. [You Won't Ever Make It Past The First Page]
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I didn’t make it passed the first paragraph, because it SUCKS, not because of the interwebs.
“Dave stop will ya Dave stop will ya Dave stop will ya Dave stop will ya Dave stop will ya!”
SHUT UP IDIOT
…my brain was ruined in college from excessive drinking; years before I started blogging!
Crap… I was gonna read the whole thing just to prove your teaser wrong, but like 3xShorts, couldn’t even finish the first paragraph, due to my inability to digest ideas unless they come in one sentence bog postings…
tl;dr
Please repost as 3 one sentence posts instead of 1 three sentence post.
Gopherit v2.0: Ah, bugger.
shortsshortsshorts: You got farther than me. I couldn’t get past the title. But then, I was raised on Sesame Street which someone once told me taught: “ghetto English.”
so who’s complaining? old men?
i remember when TV ruined book reading because everyone got a short attention span, but i guess that doesn’t count anymore.
This article is completely ridiculous. There is no way that my addiction to LOLZ Cats could possibly……
Sorry, what were we talking about again?
metropolitan: What is this “book” you refer to? You mean like when you get arrested and the cop has to “book” you? I don’t get it…
Didn’t read, too long.
I’m writing a memoir of my childhood titled “Remembrance of Mah Buhket Past” that begins with me looking at a video of tubgirl, her feet raised in the air, a gallon of poop about to soak her face. No sooner had the warm liquid (are their crumbs in it?)touched her face than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me,its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory–this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to
feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the image of tubgirl, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not,indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it
signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Hey, give us some credit! Most of us were stupid long before Google!
I try not to read anything where I have to click ‘next page’. That blog failed x4 for me.
Reading is for sissies.
Call me Ishmael… fucking whale.
“I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
Yeah, that makes way more sense than, “I’m getting lazy and stopped reading books.”
Hah! Thanks to the intarwebs, I can recognize a complete waste of my time in less than a paragraph. This includes anecdotal shit about some writers shortening attention span, proven only by personal anecdotes and baselessly extended into a global phenomenon. :p
Otherwise, I still read books on history…for fun! Two of my recent favorites: The Peace to End All Peace and The Savage War of Peace. Peace out.
Oh what a crock. I can stay focused on American Idol from beginning to end.*
* If my bladder holds.
Mahousu: I’ve been stupid since Prodigy.
Blah blah hyperlinks, blah blah, googley webs blah.
Hyperlinks? Really?!
TGY: I’m also losing my grip on syntax, obvs. I blame Google.
If you make it to the end, you are treated to the writer tracing the exact same argument he’s making back to Socrates being afraid of this newfangled writing craze, I kid you not, and then concluding with “But this time, it’s different!”
I’m developing a strong intuition that Google is not to blame for this particular person’s stupidity.
If only presidential candidates could deliver their speeches in 1 line formats.
We could finally understand what the hell they are trying to say.
The Real JR Revisted: Prodigy? Kind of goes without saying, then.
Personally, I blame Lycos and WebCrawler
Imagine that a dynamic medium reflecting the current state of the world might be more interesting that static writings from bygone generations.
But fuck, what do I know? Pass the Miller Lite and Cheez Whiz…NASCAR’s about to come on!
1974 (again): What’s amazing is that the fucking article actually INDICATES why reading one-or-two sentence blogs is better. I prefer one-or-two words, however.
Mahousu: Oh, and I’ve been stupid since B News.
Actually, that’s not true. I’ve really only been stupid since around Majordomo 1.62.
article fuck bad blog LOLcatz ron paul pr0n love 9/11WASANINSIDEJOB hope change bored.
What’s happening is an evolutionary change. For better or worse, we are externalizing our brains, merging them into a collective consciousness of enormous proportions, albeit without a proportionally higher IQ and prone to excessive preoccupation with vaginas, penises and stupid abbreviations. It’s a tradeoff, and it’s inevitable that our individual brains will atrophy somewhat from lack of use.
Or something like that.
See http://staringatstrangers.typepad.com/staring_at_strangers/2008/06/this-is-your-br.html
: See, that was so much easier to read than the article, and conveyed as much info.
Another pointy-headed blowhard telling me I’m stupid. Whatever you say, guy.
You can make this stuff up as you go along, you know!
HOW THE WEBS HAVE ADDLED MY BRAIN
by a Top Writer
The other day my phone rang. “Hi”, the voice said, “It’s your old friend Jerry D Smith.” I hastily googled the name. One of my old blog entries revealed that I’d gone to school with him, and then shared an apartment with him for 10 years before he moved out. That was 18 months ago. I began to remember . . . “Oh, HotBoi77, it’s you!” I quickly found his MySpace. “How are your wife and newborn child?” I asked. “Fine.”
There was a very long awkward pause. Neither of us seemed able to speak. (I later realized that we had both forgotten how to make conversation.)
” . . . I’m currently listening to the Dropkick Murphys,” he ventured, “and would you like to take a quiz?” Yes, I stammered. He proceeded. I told him that I would someday have 2 cats; that my fave hat is green; and that I have never slept with a Scorpio. Then another long, horrible silence ensued as we both wracked our brains for something more to say.
“A/S/L?” I murmured desperately. “Wanna cam?” he barked back. I was about to launch my webcam when I suddenly took stock. No, this would not do. I was going to try to hold a proper conversation - for both our sakes. I limbered up mentally. “You know there is an excellent monograph on Nietzsche’s interpretation of the bacchanalian available -”
“On the web?” interjected HotBoi79. “No” I confessed. “Okay. Whatever. Laterz.” He hung up.
I stared at the screen and asked myself what had become of my life. I couldn’t quite remember, so I downloaded a wank vid to kill some time while I waited for my long-term memory to kick in . . .
. . . As I wiped the jizz away a few minutes later, I realized that I had become a worthless shell of a man with no personality any more. But I swear, before the internets, I had a beautiful mind and a terrific personality to match. No really, I did. You must believe me.
(c) some random magazine
wheelie: The Atlantic wasted page space not adopting your version.
wheelie: Win.
Duh.
wheelie: LOLz.
The Atlantic guy may be right, however. I’ve been trying to read Pynchon’s “Against The Day” and keep stopping, due to …?
Is it my fault, teh internets fault, or the fault of “Against The Day?” I’ve read all of Pynchon’s other books at least twice and never had this problem before.
I also useto spell guder.
Heh heh, Truk Nutz!! I just got it!
wheelie: Yes. That was FTW
Gopherit v2.0: AxmxZ: Lascauxcaveman: shortsshortsshorts: Thanks! I really appreciate that! Put me in a good mood xx
This started way before the internet. I recommend Jerry Mander’s “In The Absence of the Sacred”. Mander talks about his front-row seat to the degradation of communications skills as the television entered America’s homes in the 1950’s. This transcended to video games in the 1970’s as well. Parents now rely heavily on these two as babysitters at the expense of a child’s attention span. I don’t want to elaborate too much, but the children of these homes can only process information that is basically shot at them in short, rapid bursts. Fellow humans and the natural world become too goddamn slow for them. Hence the sudden emergence of ADD, ADHD, and so on. Teachers are almost completely incapable of grabbing a child’s attention unless they put on a huge presentation.
I think blogs can encourage creative writing and test one’s ability to effectively communicate with others. Something that’s very lacking today.
Here are some general recommendations for everybody:
Jimmy Buffett’s “A Salty Piece of Land”
Damn near anything from Bill Bryson
Steven King’s “On Writing”
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series if you’re a glutton for punishment.
I’m sorry. I lost you when the type went all slanty and stuff.
Only a four-page piece in the Atlantic?
Physician, heal thyself.
Servo: It isn’t a degradation, its an evolution. I’m quite certain that were you to show any 15th century scholar a copy of Vonnegut and he’d probably see it as an abortion of language.
The rules have been changing since before they were rules. Our modern standards attempt to artificially retard the natural and continual evolution of our language.
Think about it, 98% of all technological advances in the field of communications have taken place within the last few generations, hell my first phone number had letters for a prefix. Language has a lot of ground to cover to catch up to developments.
Sadly, modern grammar is not up to the task. Some blame it on a “dumbing down” or “ADD” effect, but I aver that the base of it is adaptation to modern communication devices. These kids are the first generation to venture into this uncharted territory. Remember archaic “Proper” phone etiquette?
Here’s an idea! Don’t write pretentious bullshit, and people might get to the second page! Or sentence, word, whatever. Just don’t bore the shit out of me, and call me stupid because you can’t write. Oh, by the way…it was in the Atlantic? And it’s about no one wanting to read…there’s a real irony there somewhere, I think.
I read long-form pieces all the time. I subscribe to Harper’s, and I spent two hours at a Starbucks today reading Kierkegaard. On the web, rarely a day goes by when I don’t read some long articles from Slate, Salon, Portfolio, the WSJ Online, and the FT. I just finished two books by Niall Ferguson, and Margaret Mead is next on my reading list
The linked article, however, is unreadable bullshit, and I couldn’t get past that annoying-as-hell first sentence.
My attention span is
jagorev:
I only read Ayn Rand’s “We the Living,” because that was a really stupid book. Other than that, I don’t know how to read.
QUIZ:
If: Language is a virus from outer space, then The Internet is:
(a) The Black Plague
(b) A Common Cold
(c) An STD
(d) LoLz OmGzzz!!!11!!!1!! DoO0ooOOoOd! tl;dr!!1!! UnIcOrNs+PoNiEs+UnIcOrNs+PoNiEs= AwEsOmEz!!1!1!!!!
Is it just me, or are the writings of bygone eras intolerably tedious? I mean, so much inane beating about the bush, plus the near wholesale absence of factual knowledge, so much earnest fraudulence. We sort of have it better now. We’re less patient with overt bullshit than the previous generations were obliged to be. Of course we don’t have the patience to wade through narcissistic crap that mainly serves to validate some self-important asshole’s fantasy about the true nature of being, etc. And, really, almost everything in print is just entertainment, and the tired old crap from before simply isn’t entertaining. So we play Halo, or watch teevee, or do this.
And, another really annoying thing about literature; you can’t respond to it! How infuriating! Even the dipshit weasel’s article in the Atlantic can’t be responded to, except here.
Big Liver: tl;dr
I WILL FUCK CINDY WITH TRUCK NUTZ!
Shypixel:
You’re absolutely right. However, most of those kids have somewhat morphed into their devices. They communicate like a commercial, fast and loud. I sometimes have to remind my teenage son to turn his volume down and that he isn’t being timed. Deep breath, relax, think, speak. He understands and appreciates it. He watches television, plays video games, reads a lot, and enjoys the outdoors. Unfortunately, he’s becoming unique amongst his peers.
Also, we are becoming more and more dependent on devices to communicate. Bear in mind, our networks are truly at Mother Nature’s mercy. Communications companies CONSTANTLY monitor the sun and for good reason. One nasty coronal mass ejection in the right direction ( ours ) would fry damn near everything electrical and electronic. Could our society handle that today?
Lionel Hutz Esq.: Yeah, that’s about where I lost it.
gurukalehuru: It’s like any other system of memes. Eventually, longer forms will come back, carrying with them new tricks learned from this era. Perpetual snacking didn’t kill the idea of eating a really good meal. Also, think (for instance) about how dense the average wonkette post is. I don’t think this site would be fully intelligible to anyone who isn’t 1) pop culture literate, 2)Aware of politics on a fairly sophisticated systemic level, 3)rolling decently deep in irony, self awareness, and cynicism; and 4)Who knows that one’s poop chute isn’t just for poop.