Last week I tuned into an internet radio show on which the host ranted on and on about all the things he doesn't like about the web. He railed against Twitter, Facebook, chats, internet friendships, and web shortcuts like LOL and ROFL. He mostly went on about the way internet friends support each other with imaginary gestures of kindness like giving someone a drink, or a cookie. Really, I think this guy must have no imagination. He certainly has no fun. What's he so afraid of? Is a simple LOL going to demean his sense of human dignity? ("You're not laughing out loud, you're only saying that you are!")...How does he know? I frequently do and when I do, I type it. I don't think I've ever actually ROFL while chatting on the web, but there have been a few times when it took a lot not for me to do so. True, I've never LMAO, but as Monty and I discussed last night during her Friday Night Live show, it would be cool if we could, because with all the laughing we've done, we'd have no asses at all by now.
I couldn't help thinking that while this particular host went off about all of this, asserting that people on the web have no lives, he had absolutely no problem sitting alone at his computer "wanking off" (so to speak) on the internet via his radio show. That's hypocritical. If you hate the web that much, perhaps you should just close it down and join the chess club that meets at the local Barnes & Noble. Meantime, why is this so threatening?
Instead of enjoying things that are meant as fun and entertainment, we analyze them and pick them apart. And it goes from a simple LOL to saying "Merry Christmas". Something bad happens to some people when they move into adulthood: they lose their imaginations and their sense of play. We need to to remember how to play, people. Remember how fun it was to play pretend when you were a kid? We were creative then. We didn't pull everything apart, we just enjoyed.
You can look at a tree and think, "How pretty!". Then, you can chop it down, slice it into rings and figure out a lot of things about it. How old it is, what it has lived through, what droughts it endured, what blights it survived. You know everything about that tree. And it's dead. Unfortunately, too many adults treat life and the fun of life the same way.
Life is difficult and keeping our imaginations free to play is a creative alternative to becoming hard and bitter. Don't be so closed down. Stop thinking so damned much.
