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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on January 30, 2006 1:58 PM. The previous post in this blog was Yes on the Portland income tax. The next post in this blog is Feed your head. Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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Monday, January 30, 2006

Amy to blogosphere: Get a life

Advice columnist Amy Dickinson of "Ask Amy" fame had these words of wisdom to impart today to a reader whose boyfriend had developed an unhealthy addiction to his Myspace account:

Your story is yet another reason why life online has become not only messy but also so boring. People who live a virtual life don't have actual experiences. Their blogs tend to reflect that.

I can't understand why people are so hungry to share their every waking thought with the rest of the world -- and I certainly don't understand why people are interested in reading these musings, personal details and lies.

Indeed, especially when there are high-quality newspaper advice columns to read instead.

Comments (8)

Agreed, it seems Miss Amy has a skewed point of view concerning the modern world and the direction a large part of society is heading.

Okay, Jack: If you're the soloist at a wedding, are you expected to bring a gift or not? See, it's not so easy, is it?
Seriously, there's probably something wrong with criticizing women for taking a role like this. Especially since men kept women from serious jobs in journalism, and women were forced to go light. In fact, many of the female journalism pioneers like Andrea Mitchell are still with us today.
That's not to suggest her dismissal of blogs wasn't rude, unnecessary, and downright hurtful (sob). And the worse part is I can’t even write her my musings about it, because she doesn’t seem to give a flying hump.

Or just newspaper columns in general. Ask Pete Schulberg how his is going.

Speaking of columnists, have you seen Steve Duin's blog on OLive? Kinda cool.

I guess Amy has missed the Web 2.0 boat.

The best part about her response was that she completely didn't answer the question -- just treated it as an excuse for an Andy-Rooney-style rant about kids today and their darned internets. Given that the question was about a man who fell for someone else online, through a MySpace blog, and then began cheating on his girlfriend, with the other woman's blog serving as daily evidence... yeah, I didn't get the sense that the writer's point was that her ex's blog wasn't interesting enough, and she certainly seemed to feel that he was having more "actual experiences" than she was comfortable with.

Gee I thought that the whole idea of the internet was to interact with other people. ya'll ain't computer generated are you? ;-)

That's not to suggest her dismissal of blogs wasn't rude, unnecessary, and downright hurtful

Not only that, but SHE'S WRONG.

A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found the exact opposite.

Disputing concerns that heavy use of the internet might diminish people’s social relations, the report finds that the internet fits seamlessly with Americans’ in-person and phone encounters. With the help of the internet, people are able to maintain active contact with sizable social networks, even though many of the people in those networks do not live close to them.

I blogged about this over at Politics and Technology.

It's completely idiotic. My closest friend in the world is someone I met through email after he responded to something I wrote. She needs to stop blaming the internet for the fact that nobody wants to hang out with her.




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