Where ARE we going??

My mom has joined Facebook. The day has officially come, and to think, 5 years ago, that sentence would seem like a foreign language. But just last week, I was on the phone with her as she sat back at home in California, talking her through how to navigate her own home page. It took a couple tries on her own to finally view my profile and all my pictures from my spring break trip to Jamaica.

And so I sat there that day and thought, 'what is our world coming to?!' I mean, it's kind of cool that my mom can see my pics of a trip she paid for (and definitely didn't get to enjoy) instantly, instead of waiting for me to ship a DVD home, or attempt to retrieve them from a very long email. Facebook comes with captions and name tags and all. And thank you for that, because it's so much easier that my mother can now read every single person's name in each picture of mine and find out their basic info by clicking on them. God knows how long it takes to get through showing her pictures in person. Once she is well informed on each individual's name, then we can THEN go onto seeing the next picture. Okay, no more ranting mom...

So now that my baby boomer mother is on Facebook, and so are all her friends and my parents' friends, I think it's pretty crazy how sophisticated the world of online technology has come. Facebook. MySpace (boooo). YouTube. (check out my channel of work from WOLV-TV--our student run TV station at the University of Michigan: http://www.youtube.com/user/RissRiss8). Online newspapers (that's kindof an oxymoron). Google. Mapquest. Twitter (I'm still getting used to the idea that the 60-words-or-less updating-frenzy is the future of my media career...). Ebay! We sell things and buy things onlineee....wow.

To be honest, whether it's because I am forced to be online so much for classes (and we all know how much I dislike being forced to do things...), or it's because starting up my computer's as slow as watching a plant grow,I kind of really really dislike the internet right now.

I think it's the weather.

Stupid COLD Michigan weather makes Larissa stay inside and that really sucks because the sun and being OUTSIDE is WAY WAY WAY better.

Seasonal depression anyone???

Anywho, I'm not liking how much I will need to be online in the future of my life. Yea, it's wayy easier, as I began with. Yea, it's so interactive, it blows my mind. Yea, I couldn't survive without email or my cell phone and being able to call mom and dad everyday from way the heck out here in frigid Michigan as I trek the 20 minutes to class each day. Yea, it's all actually pretty darn sweet. But. Where's the people-to-people interaction? And seriously.(...short sentence for emphasis) I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU ARE DOING AT THIS MOMENT. OR THINKING. And I don't really care in the next moment. Or the one after that. But Twitter and Facebook's "What are you doing now???????????" status updating frenzy is driving me nuts. I'd much rather keep it all to pictures, random messages to each other (not to the whole world about the up-to-the-minute feeling you have deep down inside), and videos.

But, that's just me. And, I understand that as soon as probably five years from now, my opinions will have to adjust because according to Sunday Morning on CBS (wow, I did not know this show was still on...I remember this from my little tike days!), the communications world is getting pretty scary, and everythingwill be oneline:

Watch CBS Videos Online


So watch it. Yea, seriously, watch it above and think about how it's kind of nice to wake up at mom and dad's house and see the newspaper on the table and have that friendly piece of Wake Up! literature where you can physically skip through whatever you don't wanna read. Yea, you can do it online the same way, but think about it---whenever you ask someone "ooh, can I see that?", don't you really mean, "will you hand that to me so I can physically touch it and look at it using my own finger strength?"??. Now, won't you miss the newspaper? I'm old fashioned. I know I will. And the baby boomers are who were the first to grow up with modern technology will probably say the same thing, and trust me, they are still pretty much pretty darn alive. But in all honesty, living on my own with my own kind (students, I mean), I don't have a newspaper subscription and my lifestyle just doesn't call for sitting down and reading the newspaper each morning. It's much easier to check the headlines of the day on my homepage at iGoogle ( I love the thing! I can have my email, the Weatttther :)--Okay, I'm really obsessed with knowing the weather---, ESPN headlines, CNN headlines, SI headlines too, NYTimes headlines and hangman all on the same page!), than to separately check my email and read through the newspaper before my day starts.

I think that's how others of my kind think too. Although I can be old fashioned in so many ways, I'm pretty sure that I was right when I argued with my 50-something newspaper editor family friend over the demise of the newspaper. He didn't believe me that this whole phenomenon was happening. But sadly, I actually am right. Sorry Mike, your job status is starting to look a little shaky :(

In summary, I'm predicting now that within 5 years, something major is going to happen with newspapers, and I think it has more to do with conducting a disappearing act than showing up online free for all to read. I just don't know how the money will transfer to the right people and how many will be willing to spend it. I think someone needs to figure this out though, or else we will all just be dwelling in status updates with no real journalism to give us up front facts.

On that note, on the one hand, it's pretty cool to get the real up-front answer/opinons of bloggers and iReporters of what the story is. But, without hard news, how are we really going to write out history? Once it is all gone---the newspapers, the objective story, the parameters of the unbiased who, what, when, where, and how--how will we know what's really the truth? Yea, we can look it up online maybe at news sites and sports sites, but I'm feeling now that the line between objective and subjective storytelling is getting very blurred. I can't trust it. And to me, that's the scariest thing because in the end, we will all just be a bunch of walking talking heads. Status updates included.

The Final Four and Detroit's Latest Savior

Once again, I spent much of my weekend at the wonderful world of Buffalo Wild Wings. It seems that for every major athletic event calling attention from television audiences, I happen to be stuck serving wing-hungry guests in a blinding venue of 43 television screens. I missed the Big Dribble event that the Local Organizing Committee put on Friday afternoon in lieu of the Final Four in Detroit, but I'm pretty sure that in the background of handing my guests at table 243 their 24 Honey BBQ wings, the local news was flashing b-roll from the event. Yet, if someone like me who was actually aware of the event didn't pay attention to it, then how would any other student on this campus know about it?

For the most part, I don't think the LOC or the city of Detroit had students like me in mind for these events. Students are not the target demographic for local news media. Neither are Buffalo Wild Wings servers who pay attention to their guests far more than the 43 TV's in their environment. Whew, I can scratch that off my "To Be Guilty For" list.

For being a sports bar server, you'd think I'd also take note of the Final Four Hershey's College All-Star game, featuring the country's best collegiate seniors of the trade. It's got a little more pizzazz than the Big Dribble, and I'm thinking these college seniors can bounce the ball a little better than 12-year-old Jeremiah from Detroit.

But, I didn't notice. I actually had no recollection that the event was even taking place this weekend, nor did I really care. My roommate noticed, but that's probably because these last weekends of her senior year have seemed quite happily empty.

Overall, I missed out on noticing the Big Dribble, the Hershey's All-Star Game, Hoop City, the Final Four Team practices, and Road to the Final Four 5k Run/Walk. Granted, I live all the way in Ann Arbor, known to be its own bubble, but in all honesty, I'm pretty disappointed in myself for not even taking it upon myself to look at local media for this weekend. The Final Four is a major national event, right here in Michigan. However, I find that people my age tend to ignore the little things that perhaps different demographics might care about far more.

Or, maybe it's just me. Maybe I just plain stink at using the media around me. At this point, I'm so Facebooked out, I don't even want to glance at whether Twitter has cancelled my account for not touching it in a month. How will I ever survive in this business?

Let's take a breather here from PR and community cares, and focus now on what we all are focusing in on Detroit for: the games. It's the competition of the year, at least, for this particular season. Now, in sports, everyone seems to have their opinion on who's going how far, who's the best, who will win, who will lose, who's overrated, blah blah blah. For me, I couldn't care less about what everyone thinks. It's allll speculation and to be blunt, nobody can tell the future! I'm a female, but I sure as heck hate gossip, especially about sports, and for that reason exactly, I tend to ignore speculation. I'm a "Give me the score" girl and with that, "throw in some heartfelt stories while you're at it". The end.

So, for purposes of this entry, I mustered up some predictions for this tonight's game I found online because again, I really stink at paying attention to media around me, and working to find out what they are saying only seems natural these days.

-Seth Davis from SI.com says that Michigan will pull an upset. Yes, they may have gotten beat by North Carolina back in December by 35 points, but that was then, and this is now. His argument? Michigan State has a much deeper team. Also, it's "their destiny." Ok. I think he means this in that because the Michigan economy is such a wreck, it only seems natural in the world of sports to have this blue-collared team muster up all they have and win it for their homebase. But still, Seth, you are just another speculater that I love to ignore.

-Dick Hubert and Jay Digger battled it out to give their take of who's going to take the National Championship on ESPN's SportsCenter last night. Hubert took UNC, saying that even though Michigan State will give a great effort, "they're gonna celebrate in Chapel Hill." His argument didn't go much deeper than that. Digger took the opposite road, giving a more respectable argument. He mentioned UNC's offense and Michigan State's potential foul trouble as an issue. He concluded thatUNC just has that better team. Oh, then Hubert gave a little more insight.

Overall, specualtion is key in major events such as these. Many would agree that much of ESPN's content consists of talking heads competing against other talking heads in an argument that will seem pretty useless once the actual event finishes. When I get the on-air opportunity to analyze big games on my own televison shows at WOLV-TV, I often find myself feeling like the hypocrite I am because seriously, do I really think I can tell the future? I usually end up tripping over my own words in the end. My anti-speculation attitude flares up, and my mind starts thinking "huh?" and my mouth starts speaking circles and my arguments start
going
down
hill.
Which is exactly why I stick to the news and feature stories.

Who knows, maybe they will one day invent an award for whoever speculates most accurately. But wait, isn't that what brackets are? Isn't that why March Madness is so popular? Because everyone and anyone can speculate the outcome?

I'm pretty sure that many of your bracket choices have already been upset, I know mine did (and I thought girls who knew nothing of college basketball were supposed to win these brackets...).

We'll just have to see if the Davis and the talking heads called it right. Be sure to catch it at 9:21pm. The Michigan economy will thank you.