It’s been too long since we’ve let Buzz readers have the soapbox, so here are a few items from my inbox.
It’s been too long since we’ve let Buzz readers have the soapbox, so here are a few items from my inbox:
Last week’s collection of “2008’s 25 Geekiest 25th anniversaries” was a true trip down memory lane for this anonymous reader:
“In 1983 I was in the military, and I remember reading about every one of these. Makes me feel like an old fart,” he writes. “I’m now a geek (engineer), and the impact of many of these to our world is indisputable . . . even the movie ‘War Games’ spawned an entire generation of wannabe hackers and cybercriminals. I hate to admit it, but I had the ‘WarGames Dialer’ for my trusty C-64 and a 300bps modem. Never did anything criminal, but it was thrilling to hear that carrier come across!”
Steve Kennedy writes in response to my recent rant about a rude e-mailer who went so far as to call my teenage daughters an ugly name, despite the fact I don’t have any teenage daughters:
“I did a research project many years ago, comparing the negative words used in response to a survey. One group completed the survey face to face; one group completed it via a phone survey; and one group completed it via e-mail (not anonymously either). The amount of negative words used were over three times higher (and usually courser) via e-mail than either phone or face to face. It serves to remind us all to practice e-mail etiquette.”
However, another reader found little value in the same column and so found himself fishing about for an explanation.
“In reading your March 31 column, at first I thought you’d blown your cool, something a columnist should not be so thin-skinned as to do, or at least to admit to doing. But then I realized many of us would be reading it on April Fool’s Day and you just wanted to fake us out, that you wouldn’t really waste a whole column on such a rant except as a prank. Right?”
A column about an analyst’s suggestion that “virtual marriage” — and divorce — will come to pass had this reader longing for the good old days:
“It seems that forever isn’t a concept often associated with real-life marriage any more either. The advent of no-fault divorce in the late ’60s destroyed the standing of marriage in the eyes of the law. . . . It’s no wonder that the lines are becoming blurred and “virtual marriages” are being discussed.”
A self-serving column lamenting the fact that blog readers are no replacement for editors, despite what a lot of blog writers claim, elicited this suggestion that I look on the bright side.
“Maybe today’s dropped word is tomorrow’s acceptable, or even proper, sentence structure,” writes Doug Townsend. “Maybe the shortening of sentences by expecting the reader to fill in gaps is the next evolution of language. Maybe people are getting smarter and don’t need as much hand holding in the language that they once did. (OK, maybe not.) I hope it’s that and not the text message LOLs and WTFs! An Plez don mAk it like dis!”
Finally, just about no one agreed with my prediction that 75% of MySpace users would pony up $2 a month, however reluctantly, to keep their accounts active. A poll had predicted roughly the opposite would be true.
“I have three teenagers with MySpace accounts,” writes one dad. “Should they begin charging any amount for the service, there will be three less accounts for MySpace to worry about: 100% defection here.”
Hey, I’d pay two bucks to hear him explain that decision to his kids.
