Pop Rocks

Author: Lanford Beard

I rue the day IM was invented.

Okay, back up the bus. I don't rue the day, but I am slightly saddened by it.

IM has snatched credibility away from courting rituals as we know them.

Honesty? Forget about it. Joking flirtation? Meaningless. IM transforms even the most friendly of friendly banter into a breeding ground for misunderstanding, angst and eventual hostility.

Don't get me wrong, I love being able to talk to friends in Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia (yes, folks, I'm from the dutty South), but when I'm communicating with someone who is not even one mile away, our relations are strained by the all-encompassing personality void that is IM.

Case in point: I, along with countless others, have been guilty of talking on IM with a roommate (who is actually in the room) or a hallmate (who is only steps away).

I have also frantically posted an away message to avoid a "buddy" who has just come online (and don't even get me started on the etiquette and pitfalls of the whole blocking tactic).

So I ask: When did IM move into the arena of flirtation?

If negotiating a conversation with your dearest friends whom you have known for years and even lived with can be treacherous turf, then how are we supposed to form intimate bonds using a medium that is specifically and purposefully the very antithesis of intimacy?

What ever happened to oldfashioned, one-on-one encounters? Why do we have to pick up the slack for the computer age?

I hate to pull the "Sex & the City" card, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Even Carrie Bradshaw herself was hesitant to join that newfangled e-mail trend to negotiate the tricky terrain of her romantic life (though she was, unsurprisingly, fabulously creative in choosing the moniker ShoeGal). What's more, when she did succumb to the evil empire of AOL-Time Warner, the plotline was ultimately a blip on the narrative radar-which is much more than I can say for America.

Well, friends, Cupid is sending us a message. He's screaming at the top of his winged-and-naked lungs, "Get out of your rooms, you lazy asses! Get it like it was supposed to be gotten! Shake ya ass, watch yaself, shake ya ass, show me whatcha got!"

Oh, sorry, disregard that last message. It was from Mystikal, not Cupid - how easily those two are confused!

Well, rap-versus-romance confusion aside, all I have to say is this: In the over-involved, over-intellectualized, overwrought world of Middlebury, for better or worse)we certainly have not stepped into the over-sexed category. We have enough ambition to provide a stumbling block for our romantic endeavors, we don't need the internet to double the love lethargy.

Put an end to all of this madness! Get your freak on where the folks of yore got it - McCullough.