The internet’s come a long way in the past few years. Sites like YouTube, Facebook, and all the other Web 2.0 advances have created an internet almost unrecognizable to what it looked like five years ago. Many would say for the better; they’d at least try to convince you that the internet is a more social place than it was back in 2000.

After all, just from your news feed on Facebook’s homepage, you can see the status updates of five of your friends, view thumbnails of John’s trip to Hawaii, and see what two of your friends are writing on each others’ walls. Now, this may seem like social interaction to the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds who got their first cell phone in the 6th grade. But is it really?

I remember an interesting statistic from my Government class: The average “sound bite” from a politician that would be shown on the evening news used to be something like 47 seconds back in the 60s. Over time, that number went down until eventually, the average clip became only a few seconds long. Honestly, how much information can you really get out of a few seconds? And yet we still call it news.

Same thing goes for online social interaction. What did you do on Facebook today? Left a comment on someone’s photo? Replied to a wall post? Updated your status? It’s like sending the world a voicemail to keep in touch, when you don’t want to have an actual conversation with it.

In some mediums, the social element has been removed altogether. Back in the late 90s you’d have thriving message boards – you’d make friends, and have long, in-depth conversations about topics (leave your computer for a bathroom break, and you were likely to find four pages of new posts). This is how you’d find funny videos – someone would post a link to an avi file on someone’s server, and you’d all have a laugh and talk about it. It was special, because you’d found it yourself.

These days, you might look at a few videos on YouTube from the front page. Videos made popular from pageviews by people you don’t know and will never talk to. And the only discussion that will ensue comes in the form of “comments” that are a third the size of discussions that used to happen on message boards, and are too shallow for anyone to really read or care about.

This “social interaction” is the online equivalent of those two-second sound bites. The difference is that, while most people have an excuse for not remembering the sixties (and thus holding modern broadcast journalism to the same standards), these changes in the internet have happened in just a few years. We still remember what it was like to actually be social online. Do we have a responsibility to fight this depersonalization? Or, as with the evening news, is the internet destined for a future of 2-second soundbites?

The internet’s what we make it. What do you want your contribution to be?

I feel really guilty I never kept up with my blogging about my internship at NBC. As my time over at Channel 29 is coming to a close, I’m starting to wish that I had a record of how my skills and views about the media have changed during these past few months. I’ve been through a lot over there: drug busts, shootings, going to my first football game… Despite me going into the internship with my idealistic worldviews and aspirations of making a difference (like every young student of journalism that’s never had real experience), I quickly found myself melding into the system that is Big Media. Excitement over the big stories (Death/Destruction/Dismemberment), groaning over the soft stories (graffiti, development, finance)… The job became about the thrill of running after a story, finding a way around the police tape. And I lost touch with everything I’d originally hoped to glean from the experience - the connection with the community that allows you to truly tell stories about the people.

And this is why I loved my internship yesterday. Originally, I was scheduled to help out with coverage on a giant Meth bust that involved dozens of people and years of dealing. “Awesome!” I thought. That was the kind of excitement that kept my adrenaline going well past the 11 o’clock broadcast. 30 seconds later, however, I was reassigned to go ride along in the Santa Van - a group of Charlottesville Police Officers that dress up as Santa Clause and give out toys to kids in poor neighborhoods. Drug bust, or riding in a claustrophobic van for two hours… You can imagine which I would rather have been on.

But as soon as I got in the van with the officers (and an off-duty Daily Progress photog who just loves kids), my entire mindset changed. The van was completely filled with stuffed animals, toys, fruit, and candy canes; not to mention the four officers who had more Christmas spirit than any people I’d ever met. The NBC29 photographer I was with had the filming covered, so I was able to forget about the establishing shots and color balance and the Nat Package we were supposed to be creating. I wasn’t an intern for those few hours - I was just a kid helping Santa help the community.

And it made me remember why I had first become interested in the media, in journalism. It reminded me of what journalists are supposed to do. Because it’s not just about “reporting the news” - or at least the “news” we tend to concentrate on. It’s about giving a voice to those who speak softly; it’s about telling the stories of the people that make the world run, whether it’s on a global or local scale. And most importantly, it’s meant to be a service to the people. Not a business, not an international corporation - journalists are meant to be public servants, helping the communities in which they live by opening up lines of communication between its residents.

That’s what we were doing, riding on that Santa Van, watching the kids literally run up to us, screaming out of excitement to see Santa. To see the love and care that the citizens of Charlottesville are capable of.

We never ended up running that story about the Santa Van - three deaths and a major meth bust bumped it out of the lineup.

The Virginia High School League AA State Theatre Festival was on Tuesday. And, out of the hundred or so schools in our division that competed in the various district and regional competitions, we ended up with 2nd Place in the State (not to brag, or anything…). I’m always so impressed with the high level of work high school students bring to the state competition every year - and I haven’t even watched the AAA State Festival (AAA = larger schools, supposedly better plays).

But there are always a few plays that manage to make it to the State competition which have… shall we say, “objectionable” content. I don’t mean objectionable as in “not suitable for children,” or anything to do with the sex/drug/violence content of the piece. I mean that some of the plays touched on subjects in such a way as to make them irresponsibly offensive and downright distasteful.

Now, I’m not saying that a play shouldn’t “go there.” That is, after all, one of the purposes of live theatre - to bring people to places where they normally wouldn’t go, in some cases because it’s an uncomfortable subject. Just look at the plays that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama - they touch on touchy subjects. And they tend to be very “low-concept,” in the sense that, if they’re done correctly, they’ll be a big hit. Conversely, if any part of it hasn’t been done perfectly, it’s going to fail. Unfortunately, in the case of the plays I’m talking about, they failed in the sense that many people walked away feeling like the author had no business going where he went. The purpose of the play in question was [or at least seemed to be] to satirize how addicted we are to technology. How we can’t get away from our cell phones or computers; even how the news media have become vultures that descend upon tragedy and pain. And this is where the play lost me. It depicted scenes of rape, suicide bombers, people dying in a car crash because they were texting on their cell phone - but in the process of attempting to show how horrible it is that we watch endless news stories on those subjects (and view it as entertainment), the play used those very subjects as a form of entertainment in itself.

It reminded me of another play I saw at States two years ago: “Hitler Goes to Prom.” That play’s premise was to be a parody of all the Holocaust one-act plays that schools put on. In the course of doing this, it depicted Hitler doing fairly horrible things - in a comedic atmosphere that thew most of the audience into hysterical fits of laughter throughout the entire show. Now, had the purpose of the play been to make people laugh, and subsequently make them realize how horrible it was that they were laughing, it might have been a bit more acceptable. But no - it was a comedy. A comedy that played off of a horrible event that killed millions of people. And made you laugh.

This year, the judges seemed to love that type of play. They called it “gutsy” and commended the cast and director for not being afraid to do a piece that has the potential to make people uncomfortable, even angry. And I could understand that - if all the play had done was poke fun at the government or made people ashamed that they were this obsessed with technology. But there were characters that had been raped, characters that had been killed by extremists from the Middle East, or killed in the Virginia Tech shootings, that were crossing the U.S.-Mexican border with incredibly insulting accents. There’s a point when “gutsy” turns into something that’s unnecessarily racist, bigoted, and insensitive.

There is a definite responsibility in live theatre that is sometimes overlooked - the director needs to remember that plays are an imitation of real life; an imitation of real events that involve real people. And when you portray people that have been affected by things like Virginia Tech or rape, you’d better treat them with respect. People were laughing at the rape victim in this play (and didn’t even think to feel bad about it). Because you never know who might be in that audience - a family member of someone who had been killed at Virginia Tech, who’s father had been killed by a suicide bomber, or died in a car crash because the driver was talking on their cell phone. Then you don’t just end up with an audience that feels like throwing up - you end up with people who can’t fall asleep that night, because those two years of emotional recovery were suddenly thrown out the window.

Think before you act.

I love the times of day when you just need to talk to someone, but no one’s around. Your Gmail chat box is a solid mass of grayed-out names, chronicling all the people who aren’t around to comfort you. The one person online is sleeping - as they groggily inform you after your first message. They sign off before you get a chance to respond.

You switch to AIM - a few people still dwindle in your buddy list. You message one friend. No response. You message a second. Same. After a few minutes of waiting, the first signs off. So does the second. And you’re left with an empty list of names - all ready to talk; none ready to listen.

Monday morning. 1:06 AM. No one around; no one awake… Left all alone in a dark room, staring at an LCD screen that brings only false promises and delayed rejections - waiting for the week to begin.

“First I should say that I hope I don’t get in trouble for this. My teachers have been known to stumble upon my blog every now and again…”

That’s how I started off a post I made on Sunday. Is it too terribly ironic that within hours of my posting “Educational Complaint No. 839,” the very teacher whom the post concerned found my blog and read that post? It’s ironic in a very grim, depressingly perfect sort of way. I should have realized he’d read it when our assignment the next day was listed as “Assignment No. 839,” but I missed that little hint. It took until today, when that teacher held me after class and spoke to me about being disrespectful for me to have that classic “Oh, crap…” moment.

My teacher was offended that I did not come to him with my concerns first. Unfortunately, he must have missed the “Rant” category I placed the post in. Rant is defined as “extravagant speech,” and I use it as a way of venting emotions that are building up inside of me - regardless of whether the resulting thoughts are coherent, my rants are not meant to be scholarly pieces of social criticism. Likewise, a rant criticizing an educational policy should not then suggest that I see no merit in that policy, nor should it be taken entirely seriously. It is an emotional piece of writing, not an essay. Thus, there was never any need to approach my teacher about my concerns - I knew very well that, given a week or two, I would adjust to the grading system I had been criticizing.

I do however find it inappropriate for a teacher to approach me about what I’ve written on my personal blog. Admittedly, whatever you post on the internet is susceptible to be read by anyone, anywhere, at any time - but the dynamic between a teacher and a student has some guidelines about personal boundaries that should not be crossed. My theatre teacher, for example, created a Facebook profile a few months ago, “Just to see what it was all about.” When we were talking about it, he specifically mentioned that he wouldn’t attempt to friend any of his students - not only would he not want to see some of the things his students were putting online, he knew that it would make many students uncomfortable to feel as though teachers were invading and watching over every aspect of their lives. That’s what I’m beginning to feel online after this incident. I shouldn’t feel like I have to censor myself online because a teacher could see it at any time (this is actually similar to people being nervous about employers checking myspace pages for incriminating photos, except that I’m not doing anything illegal or indecent here).

This brings up the question of how exactly my teacher found this site (it is, after all, quite a coincidence that he stumbled upon it within hours of my post). I know some teachers have found me by a simple Google search for “Michael Strickland” - though specifically searching for your students online is rather creepy. The rest probably found it through either my Poverty Diet podcast or my piece on Tracking (the latter of which has apparently become very popular amongst the CHS administration…). That’s all well and good - but to keep visiting it? That’s just as creepy as those who searched for me by name. There’s a fine line between “teacher” and “friend” - and certain things that go with those two types of relationships just can’t apply to both.

So I refuse to censor myself. This blog is written from the perspective of a seventeen-year-old gay high school student who likes Photoshop and writing. And as Marijean Jaggers once wrote in a comment on this blog, “There’s no room for blogging as anybody but you.”

By the way, I’m labeling this one as an essay, not a rant. Just so things are clear.