Oh man is a giddy thing, oh man is a giddy thing, oh man is a giddy thing, oh man is a giddy thing
Excitable and prone to share excitement with others, adults are like children at times (most of the time if you're lucky). Sometimes I think children are better at giddiness because it is so genuine, coming straight from their soul. It is not carefully thought out, not tempered with the diffident attitude that adults garner through years of socialization and adjustment. A child's giddiness is pure and unadulterated, infectious to the point where an adult will simply marvel at and envy the child for their innocence and joy.
Regular facebook addicts and web junkies manifest their addictions in many ways: sharing funny or tragic videos or pictures from an unknown source of a person or people they will never meet; sharing insightful or interesting articles that they stumbled upon which seemed to be written well enough to convince them of the author's logical or untenable point of view (I've certainly done this). Internet users want to make personal connection and share their point of view, I get it. However, if the sharing of an article is of a subject matter that the reader knows little about in the first place, is it truly making a connection? Are we really sharing articles because we want to make a point about something that we really know nothing about? Why?
For instance, a recent article that was shared by numerous FB friends on my endless stream of updates is Preschool Children should not be in school at such an early age?
While the article, from a website that was started by Ariana Huffington and a bunch of other greedy "news" writers with the simple goal of acquiring hits... er, I mean writing alternative news. Huffington Post itself is actually being sued by a bunch of bloggers who have spent countless hours and work to garner hits and spread information for the website but who did not receive any compensation for their efforts. Any. Meanwhile, the founders of the website were bought out by AOL and received more than $300 million Yes, it's a Wikipedia source but it's legit...
Anyway, this particular article linked to the original article from Scientific American in which a guy was quoted as saying that all research on young minds points to not having structure and allowing the kids to play and have fun, etc. While I may agree that children should definitely do more play and not as much rote learning tasks, no person who is supposedly espousing truth about scientific research should say "all research supports this thing I'm talking about", especially when that particular subject has decades of research. There is nothing in any scientific field which has 100% of the research backing a claim. We have scientific facts which can be indisputable but, especially when dealing with human behavior which is infinitely complex, we can not say for certainty that anything is backed by all of the research.
Giddiness in this case is on the part of people reading an article and upon finding that article to be supporting whatever they are feeling in the moment and then sharing it with other users to show that this is what they believe. We are awash with articles, videos, pictures of people. We are simply click-happy. Yes, click-happy. User's thoughts while clicking: "That is really true. I totally need to post this because other people will then see how I believe and they will know me better." - or - "I want to start a conversation about this subject, even though I really don't know much more about it than this one article but that's all I need to form an opinion on this very complicated subject."
We, the internet users and addicts, just want to click. I've read somewhere Not at all what I read that said when we use the computer, it makes us feel like we are doing work. We can sit at the computer and feel useful, as if time spent on the computer and reading articles, clicking buttons, and typing some words has a utilitarian purpose. The computer is our tool to a greater self, we think. We may not consciously think that but we feel it; the part of our brains that needs purpose (or something like that) will feel better by sitting on the computer. Finding articles that are intellectual and 'scientific' helps to accomplish that.
So, continue to read the articles and watch the funny videos, I will. However, if you are not spending an equal amount of time elsewhere on something actually meaningful, what are you doing?
By the way, the lyrics at the beginning are from Sigh No More and it is worth a listen. The meaning of the song is about relationships, etc. and it may tie in with this particular blog entry... but probably not.
