Internet Manners

“The velocity and volume on the Web are so great that nothing is forgotten and nothing is remembered, like closing time at a blue-collar bar in Boston.

"Everyone’s drunk and ugly and they’re going to pass out in a few minutes.”

(Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, on the toxic state of online manners)

I Never Knew Minnie Mouse Had Breasts


August 11, 2009
ORLANDO, Fla. --A 60-year-old man has been convicted of groping a woman in a Minnie Mouse costume at Walt Disney World.

John William Moyer of Cressona, Pa., told the judge he is innocent. His son said before sentencing that his father would never inappropriately touch a woman.

He was convicted Tuesday of misdemeanor battery and sentenced to write the victim an apology, serve 180 days probation and complete 50 hours of community service. Moyer must also pay $1,000 in court costs and possibly undergo a mental evaluation.

The victim says she had to do everything possible to keep Moyer's hands off her breasts.

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Information from: Orlando Sentinel, http://www.orlandosentinel.com

Everyone's A Star


"At a wedding in Lake George, N.Y., this summer, a middle-school math teacher was chatting with another guest, Reid Rosenthal, a finalist in the reality series “The Bachelorette.” Someone snapped a photo.

"The teacher, who requested anonymity to avoid being teased by her students, was surprised a few days later when she received a notice from Facebook that she had been tagged in a photo. Mr. Rosenthal was also tagged.

"Soon the creepy e-mail messages started, the teacher said.

“Oh, my God, do you know him?” wrote one gaga “Bachelorette” fan who somehow found the photo. “I need to be set up. I’d be perfect for him.”

“It was irritating,” the teacher, 30, said. “I would never do something like that.”

"The photo was quickly untagged and now the teacher has strengthened her Facebook privacy settings, preventing strangers from viewing her profile." NYT

Morning In America


“Things that I thought were unacceptable a few years ago are now commonplace in my house,” she said, “like all four of us starting the day on four computers in four separate rooms.”

"Technology has shaken up plenty of life’s routines, but for many people it has completely altered the once predictable rituals at the start of the day.

This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities." (New York Times)

Mad Men, Woodstock, And The Death Of Fashion


"There’s a reason why no one has created a computer program that allows you to create a cartoon version of yourself as a hippie."

"It’s because that’s called a Halloween costume and at one point or another, we’ve all dressed as a hippie, knocked on a door, and said 'Trick or treat, man.'’’ Boston Globe

While I love Janis Joplin (above) and think she was the most powerful performer I've ever seen, the writer is right about Hippie fashion.

On the other hand, the fashions featured in such exquisite detail in "Mad Men," set in 1960-1964 (the final years of what we think of as the Fifties) have inspired a make-your-own-avatar site, which has been wildly popular. And they have influenced current fashion as well.




Time certainly has a way of separating the wheat from the chaff.