Egads, it is soooooooooooooooooo easy.

You “jot” down a few thoughts–organized or not, well thought out or not, inflammatory or not, edited or not. Instantaneously, or in seconds at most, these pearls of wisdom which have poured from your tortured soul (wracked with angst because you are only able to operate at 10g speed instead of 10.1g because your part-time job as a college student has not provided the funds necessary to buy every single iDevice the moment it comes on the market) are magically communicated, presented forthwith to the reading eyes of the recipient—

who wonders what all the gibberish is about—there are so many words misspelled, so many grammatical errors, so many half-baked thoughts, so much ill-advised terminology, and loads of stuff of interest to, uh, not too many people—that the e-mail addressee or social media junkie is both perplexed: “why did that idiot send/post this? and irritated: “why am I wasting my time reading this!” (Maybe it is because I am doing the same thing.)

In reply, which is similarly easssssssssssssssy, the recipient “says,” whatsup? Don’t understand,” which message arrives equally rapidly in the gadget of the original “writer.”

And so it goes. From completely unedited social media sites to the girlfriend who is on her way to becoming your “ex” because she saw an e-mail that, despite you being Composition I challenged, revealed more than it should have, material enters the public arena which heretofore would have been the subject of the type of conversation where a person moves his lips and sound comes out—an action undertaken in the presence of another person who responds in like fashion.

At some point, it might be productive for e-mail and social media users (that’s everybody, right) to put a little sign over their computer or paste it on their iDevice (maybe there could be an app for it, with a locking mechanism that would prevent e-mails from being sent instantly; I am told there is something like that relevant to texting)—DO NOT PRESS SEND! or POST!

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