doodledee

The NYT Magazine's cover story this week was one of those pseudo-scandalous ones where they try and scare all us parents with a bunch of crazy talk about all the sex that kids are having and how the whole dating scene is Way Different than it was when we were kids. My hunch is that they run features like this so they can print suggestive headlines over a photograph of a bunch of awkwardly pretty kids because - naturally - that crap tends to sell papers, but maybe their motives are purer than that, who knows.

Anyway, based on the article, things actually are totally different. See, back when I was a dork in high school, all us geeky teenagers spent our weekends staying up all night eating party pizzas and trying desperately to win Zelda before we had return it to the video store the next day. We hung-out in the basement of one of my buddies' house who had a foosball table and a bigscreen and an Apple ][ with a 300 baud modem we could use to dial-up into the local BBS and chat with other geeks in town. What more do you need?

After studying the article, it's become clear that what separated us from the Teenagers of Today is that now, out of nowhere, all the cute girls from school think that boys who chat on the internet are cool and/or hot. And what's more, they sometimes go online and chat amongst themselves and - brace yourself - SOMETIMES EVEN WITH BOYS. WTF is that about?! Girls on the internet? Talking to boys?! And not just geek boys but "popular" boys?! Is *everyone* online now or something?

Lies, I say, all lies!

Oh wait, maybe it's not all lies. It is, after all, based on exhaustive field research including but not limited to spending time at Hooters with a couple of teenagers, spending time in a basement with a couple of teenagers, and having a couple of phone conversations with Ahmad Chalabi. I think in total he talked with upwards of 15 actual teeangers. Those conclusions are rock frickin' solid like a frickin' solid rock. And if you can't see how to extrapolate that type of data to an entire generation of kids, well then you're just silly.

(I think that same logic may apply to the rest of the article, too.)

And for the record, I checked with some of girls who I chat with over instant messenger and none of them think I'm cool.

Friends, Friends With Benefits and the Benefits of the Local Mall [nyt]
Totino's Party Pizzas [pillsbury]