definitely NOT the greatest generation

[veronica_rich]

This falls in the category of 'Oh dear Dog, how stupid ARE you?'

There are two things in here that stand out as annoying and offensive to me:

1. When I was a kid and hadn't heard of something, I had to go look it up in a book or ask a teacher or my parents (or grandparents, whatever). We didn't have the Internet; hell, I was lucky I had an Atari 2600 and Pitfall for it. The point is, there was no ten-second point-and-click research. BUT REGARDLESS, THERE ARE THINGS YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO LOOK UP OR ASK ABOUT IF YOU'RE OLDER THAN, OH, NINE. "Was the Titanic real?" Are YOU for real? I knew about the Titanic literally decades before James Cameron told us about it.

I don't think I'm being culturally privileged; you people literally have the easiest research tool in the history of ever. The only way you could find things easier is if Servo the Robot could read your mind and download information directly into your brain as soon as you wonder something. If you have the privilege of access to Twitter, you probably have the privilege of Internet access, too. So don't give me that.

2. No, don't go "wikipedia" something. Use a real source. Take a few minutes to verify it by crosschecking. Wikipedia is good for killing time or bullshit, or finding external links to real sources. Period.

Comments

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Do you know, authors who write actual books about factual events and make the effort to base everything on first-sources and paper research impress me, because just for doing even shallow articles in my career, I have had to do tons of research just to know basically what I'm writing about? This made me remember college - I was a Lit major, so it was nothing to have a research paper or more due every week, or perhaps an essay on something you had to read and criticize. Again, pre-Internet. It was standard procedure for me to have several books checked out of the library at any given time. Honestly, it's a good thing the Internet wasn't around then or I wouldn't have gotten much work done - LOL.