Collegiate Times

She said:

Everybody has bad days. It happens. It's natural. It sucks.

During one of these times of my own, a friend's Facebook status -- because the world demands mindless Facebook stalking time to keep you in the loop -- alerted me to a new site that has not only given me a couple laughs, but also makes me appreciate the magnitudes of misery that we may have been graciously and divinely spared in our own daily lives. 

Fmylife.com is a rising pop cult site that, in the likes of Web phenomena such as YouTube and Facebook, is gaining in popularity especially of late in the Virginia Tech community. 

As I was perusing the anecdotes that people have shared about how girlfriends are let down in the bedroom ("Are you in yet? Oh."), several the-McDonald-cashier-made-a-joke-about-my-weight stories and the darndest things parents say, I came to a stark realization of how much technology really has impacted our lives as a generation -- and, more so, how it seems to hinder us. 

A lot of the stories on FML pertain to relationships and the subsequent soap-opera quality that many of them possess. For example, one guy accidently texted his long-time girlfriend with something along the lines of, "I'll break up with her soon. Love u."

Burn. I hope that the girl, after posting her story on FML, went straight to one of those put-him-in-the-doghouse-and-make-sure-he-never-ever-gets-thrown-a-bone-again Web sites and put up a picture and description to warn other susceptible ladies of his menacing presence on this earth. I personally don't understand why so many men dare to verify whether Hell really hath no fury like a woman scorned. 

Technology is the worst kind of paradox, where it's so bittersweet that you cannot decide whether it helps or holds you back simply because it does both. 

You need a computer to type up an essay for English -- thank goodness we have that instead of a quill and ink well, imagine (oh, the horror) how much less time we would be able to spend on Facebook -- but that same computer is hooked up to the Internet where its complicated web of distractions lurk in the pop ups to deter you from your work. 

Technology most notably can screw you in your personal life; from MySpace to mobile to instant messaging, the keyboard has evolved to become dangerously mightier than the sword.  

Tell me one person who has not been involved in a text message war where something you T9ed came out in a way other than how you intended it. 

Uh huh. I thought so.

This makes me think about how there have been studies on how we have become so isolated thanks to technology. I'm not too sure of the details, but I heard about how people don't really go to coffee shops to talk anymore; they just pick up their  low-fat mochas with a shot of something or another from the register and retire to the microcosm of their Macbooks. 

Sure, they might click iChat and type to a couple friends, but there's little-to-no chance that they'll escape and make some new friends. Have we become so introverted to the point that we've unconsciously relinquished that which makes us human in the first place? Our ability to reach out to one another and come together to talk, think, discuss and share the idiosyncrasies of life?  

So not only can our mothers text us about our exams and schoolwork, but we can also learn in the most degrading fashion that some guy who we've spent a lot of time with just wants to be friends, you know, so he can pursue that chick from Biology. 

Oh, they'll be studying biology all right. 

And you're left with just a phone.

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