"That's a great question"

If you've been keeping up, you'd know that today I went over to Thousand Oaks to speak at our local HOBY seminar about this blog. The kids are still as energetic as ever. It's always fun. I also got to see some of my old friends from 2003 that were on junior staff with me in 2004. Jeff and Andy... Cool kids.

So anyway, I spoke a little bit about blogging in general. A brief history about where blogging came from... blah blah, etc, etc. I spun it in a way that showed that the youth can get their voices heard through the internet. We're a diverse and opinionated generation. We're tech savvy and the internet is a common tool used by people our age.

When it came time for a brief question and answer session afterwards, I was asked something along the lines of "Do you think blogging promotes the 'emo' lifestyle and is a means for people to draw attention to themselves?". I had to laugh a little because I think that that question was very true and a good generalization of many teenagers today. It does seem that many teens who blog always blog about something sad or depressing and how 'emo' they feel. My response to the ambassador was that while yes, it's a common thing, it's still a stereotype that unfortunately, others of us who are not like that, have to deal with. I don't find blogging as something where I want people to focus on me and check out the cool things I'm doing. If you read some of the past entries, it's normally about plain stuff that I do, what my day was like, etc. I don't blog for other people. My blogging is mainly a hobby for myself.

After the question and answer session, the ambassadors broke out into their groups. The other panelists and I went around answering any questions that the groups might have had. One question I was asked most often was "Why do you think so many people view Myspace.com as a bad thing?"

My response to this is that Myspace.com is a tool. As any other means of communication (IM, telephone, etc) it can be used correctly or abused. It's sad that the older generations get a bad image from Myspace and the people who use it because of what's displayed in the media. The news wont tell you stories about how people have reconnected with old friends or anything like that. The news will tell you about the 16 year old girl who was abducted by an older man posing as an 18 year old guy in high school on Myspace.com. They'll run the dirt, but not the good stuff. And the sad thing is that this isn't just true about Myspace. This is true about most things involving the youth.

One of the other panelists had mentioned a familiar quote about media and news: "If it bleeds it leads." and "Sex Sells". Sadly, because shocking and horrible things get better ratings, noble and praiseworthy things get overlooked.

The internet is a great thing. It is very useful and can be used for so much benefit. Unfortunately, the internet is prone to human fallacy. You can't blame the internet for sexual predators any more than you can blame a car for someone drunk driving, crashing into and killing someone.


If you're reading this and have a blog or a myspace or whatever, be smart. Don't post stuff that contains personal information such as where you live, your phone number, etc. It's just not safe. I know many parents have concerns about their children on myspace. If parents would teach their kids what's okay to put down and what's not, we'd be in a better place.

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So that was the majority of the day, spending time down in Thousand Oaks. I was suprisingly not very tired considered I worked last night from 9pm to 3am. I woke up at about 9:30am, so i got about 5 hours of sleep. There wasn't any traffic heading down below, but there was a lot on the way up. I'll tell ya. The 405 North to the 5 North exchange is absolutely terrible. On the 14 freeway towards the Antelope Valley, there seemed to be a huge accident southbound, slowing traffic to a dead halt on the southbound side, and also creating a bit of traffic on the northbound side. Hope everyone involved in that was okay.

Anyway, that's mostly it for today. The DaVinci Code came out and I do plan to see it. Should be interesting.

Peace out.
Cy