Better than a C+

It’s October! And that means the first exams of the year are right around the corner. I think I’m doing okay in 5 of my 6 classes. B pluses in Ancient History, Geometry, and Earth Science. A in American Lit and A minus in French. And Media Matters? Not so much. On my first paper I got a C+ and I don’t understand why. The subject was the Immediacy and Intimacy of the Internet (“imMEDIAcy,” get it?). This was the comment on my paper:

“You’re not plumbing the depths of the Internet. You’re only skimming the surface and making superficial comparisons. Go beyond Google and explore what New Media really means.”

Huh?

I argued that the nature of blogs – confessional and tell-all – gives readers a false sense of intimacy. They feel like they really know a person when, in fact, they don’t know her at all. It’s like when you watch “Days of Our Lives” or something every single day. You turn on the television at the same time every afternoon and there are your friends, the people you’ve seen for years and you know all about them. You know who slept with who, who killed whose evil twin, who died and came back a different actor. And it seems like you really know them. But you don’t. Same is true on the Internet. People email like crazy and they read and write blogs and they act like it’s the real world. But it’s not! It’s not real at all. That’s why they call it “virtual.” I concluded that the Internet actually fostered isolation, not intimacy.

So basically, I refuted Evelyn’s point and she didn’t like it.

Was it the soap opera comparison that got me the C+? If I had used Virginia Woolf instead, would I have gotten an A? Probably not. Virginia’s not “new media” enough.

What I’d really like to hear Evelyn Beauchamps discuss is the class discrimination of blogs. Who, after all, can keep up a blog without access to a computer? I don’t have one of my own. Lots of people don’t. Even if blog space is free (like this one) you still have to be able to afford A) a computer and B) a broadband connection. Because my sister has such a crappy job that we can only pay for rent and food and the occasional movie night out with popcorn OR candy and because I’m not old enough to have a job, we don’t have a computer. When I want to use one, I have to go to the library or wait forever at the computer lab after school. I’m lucky to have Reggie as my friend and she lets me use her laptop so I can type up my papers and post my blog.

But what if you don’t have computers at school or a friend like Reggie? That’s right, because you’re…let’s call it, “financially-challenged.” Well, you can’t publish your every thought about the latest Outkast video you downloaded onto your iPod, can you? Then again, you probably don’t have an iPod because you’re…financially-challenged.

Or maybe your family prefers to spend its money on other things, activities everyone can enjoy together like games and DVDs. Maybe they like to go out to the theater or baseball games or on hikes. They’d rather encourage social interaction instead of isolation.

There are a million reasons why people don’t own computers. That means a huge segment of the population doesn’t blog.

So who blogs then?

Think about it.

I would argue (if Evelyn decided to teach this which she probably wouldn’t because she probably doesn’t believe it exists) that rather than the Internet being a landscape of varied and intriguing opinions representing a multitude of cultures and concerns, it is actually quite homogeneous. I’ll bet lots of people (including myself) are not represented on the Internet but they don’t even realize it because they don’t access it regularly.

What do you think, Evelyn? Is that better than a C+?