SOCIAL NETWORKING ON THE INTERNET: The new Hollywood Squares.

In the “good old days” when one wanted useless information on tertiary celebrities and their ilk you were at the mercies of re-run classics movie theaters or that treasure trove of the totally unnecessary detritus - daytime television.  Queries such as “Is so-and-so still alive?” and/or “What ever happened to that woman who starred in that midnight movie we saw last weekend?” required a commitment of some measure by the inquisitor. Inevitably, and with some effort, the answer could be found in one of three places… The Merv Griffin show, The Love Boat, or that Holy of Holies where grand dames like the highly interchangeable Gabor sisters carried on their meteoric descent from the panoply of stars to that ignoble cubicle on Hollywood Squares (or the mysterious wild cards like Paul Lynde who, seemingly without celebrity resume, sprang forth whole and fully grown, like Athena freed from Zeus’s forehead, to take possession of the all critical center square). The “three-in-the-afternoon” timeslot - much too early in the day for anyone but alcoholic housewives, late night entertainment workers and the chronically unemployed – was hardly any advertiser’s dream-team demographic but then any press is good press as long as they spell your name right.

Of course these days all you need is a little broadband and the ability to remember your password occasionally.  Thanks to those all prevalent social networks, literally anyone and everyone can become a tertiary celebrity and, if I choose to squander my time thusly, I can all too easily learn how very too much sorority sister "A" had to drink at the bar on Friday or what clever things "B"s piss-dog puppy did this week or the coma inducing dietary habits of "XYZ".

I can be friends with uncounted numbers I have never actually gotten to know and I can even make friends with corporate giants and local dining establishments (sorry, but the last time I went to a friend’s house for dinner they didn’t slip me a bill alongside my dessert plate…) Best of all I can exercise that nifty new verb and un-friend those who garner my displeasures… even easier and less emotional than dumping your girlfriend with a quick text.

Now I’m all in favor of free speech but let’s not dwell on the free part at the expense of the speech part.  Speech is the communicating of thoughts and ideas by speaking, not just opening your mouth and letting images and words tumble out all willy-nilly with little or no regard for content or the permanence of the expressed word.

My fear is that we are creating a mind-numbing, culturally stupefying realm devoid of critical thinking and the art of the wordsmith where pabulum, stirred up for the palate of the most common of denominators, becomes the lingua franca of a generation steeped in an ugly brew of self indulgence and transient fascinations.

Although I am a practicing, card carrying curmudgeon I am not a Luddite… a fact made obvious by my dubiously applied talents in Photoshop and the mere fact that I am blogging this complaint rather than transcribing it by hand with a quill pen in the dim light of a single flickering whale oil lamp.

That being said, I would like to quote Jaron Lanier from a recent New Yorker article, “...it’s not that technology has taken over lives but that it has not given us back enough in return. In place of a banquet, we’ve been given a vending machine.”