Adolescence was a long time ago. Grad school taught me to relate to others more as colleagues than friends. If I need reassurance of my students’ esteem, I need look no further than my course evaluations (Ha!). So my sparse friend count doesn’t normally bother me.
But when I first opened my account, it read “You have no friends” at my institution. Such a bold declarative statement has the power of persuasion. —John Lemuel —Why I Registered on Facebook (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
The primary audience for this publication is college administrators and professors, so most readers would understand the “I” in the title as referring to “a professor”.
So far, I’ve spent much more time and effort researching the internet at large, though I’m following eagerly the work published by grad students and younger professors who are more closely associated with the internet’s social aspects as defined and experienced by people of college age and younger. (Even my earliest forays onto the internet were for academic or professional reasons, though of course I enjoyed the virtual company of others who were similarly excited by the possibilities.)
Once when I told a class of students that I don’t have any friends to exchange IMs with, I got a sympthetic “Awww!!” What I meant, of course, was that I keep in touch with friends through other media.
Post was last modified on 5 Jul 2019 3:41 pm
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I remember reading I had no friends at Texas A&M (which was not true) whenever I logged into Facebook and began questioning the rhetoric of Facebook. Unfortunately, I am probably not equipped to tackle such a project, but I believe some potential is present.
Great article, Dennis. Thanks for spreading the word about it. Lemuel builds an interesting and logical case (especially the point about alumnae and alternative student evaluations). I've always drawn the line at facebook as a "private" space for students and still don't want to sign up, but now that I've got a myspace page (for my film, Exquisite Corpse) I'm finding all sorts of intriguing subcultural matters that I hadn't seen before and when I stumble upon a student page, even a suicidally exhibitionist one, it's fascinating. Lemuel's got me seeing the more positive side of this stuff. In five years, most new comp teachers, for example, will all probably have already grown up using facebook and it will be quite natural for them to use it (or have more valid reasons why they shouldn't than I do).
Yeah, IM's. Me neither. Because I don't want to be at the world's beck and call... I'd never get any writing done if I had popups on my computer from people all the time.