Column:

Adults ruining the internet

By Hannah Hayes

Published March 4, 2008

I now feel compelled to revert to my six-year-old self and reiterate a timeless, answerless question: why do adults have to suck the fun out of everything?

The item left fun-less I speak of is the Internet.

I used to love the Internet.

A place where you can download Boston’s greatest hits, watch 30 Rock reruns, find a recipe for duck l’orange that uses mango chutney and reconnect with your long lost third cousin who’s living in Singapore — all at the same time, no less. It was the peak of human creation and I had some good times air guitar-ing to “More Than a Feeling” while I chopped my mangos.

But then we made the mistake of showing our parents how e-mail worked, and from there it was a downward spiral. Suddenly your neighbor Sheila was selling her crocheted hats online and adults everywhere were buying domain names.

Then the worst happened. The equivalent of the Death Star crushing the rebellion, Sammy Hagar killing Van Halen; teachers seized the network. Creating electronic academic journals, bashing wikipedia.org and the final blow, developing Blackboard. With this crushing move they ensured the good times would no longer roll.

Now when I log on, my eyes do not well with wonderment, but rather real, raw sorrow, for I know lurking in the World Wide Web is a Spanish exercise I must accomplish before noon.

If it was just that, I could deal with it. I would slap a git ‘r done on it and go back to searching for “Legends of the Hidden Temple” t-shirts and uploading pictures of baby ducks to Cuteoverload.com. But that’s not all.

Professors don’t understand that just because it’s online, that doesn’t make it “fun.” In fact it’s the opposite of fun when your connection crashes as you’re taking an online statistics quiz on Sunday. It just sucks.

I call this philosophy held by educators the “Lite-Bright” theory. Remember in the late ‘90s that most of the popular toys had some sort of illumination feature? Hot Wheels came with flashing sirens and kids were snuggling up to Gloworms late at night and thus rose the empire of Game Boys and Tamagotchis.

I think adults still maintain that if it’s got a screen and it’s glowing, it must be a barrel of monkeys. No, I’m sorry, the glare from my computer screen is not comforting when I forgot that my Aplia assignment is due in 15 minutes. It doesn’t make your last minute e-mails seem like love notes.

And this theory that I hold self-evident, explains why our professors don’t substitute online homework, they add it. And too much homework is like too much Meg Ryan. It’s okay to watch “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” Hell, if you’re really interested throw in a little “You’ve Got Mail.” But after that you’re not really getting much out of “Kate & Leopold” or “Against the Ropes.”

It’s like when your fifth grade teacher gave you a word search about plant anatomy along with your paper about photosynthesis. It doesn’t make sense that you get a zero for worrying about your example on page seven instead of searching for “stamen.”

It’s driving me crazy. I don’t want to take reading quizzes Monday morning; I just want to sleep as long as possible and maybe check Facebook.com. I don’t want to watch my friend rush back to his room to submit his Quia exercises when the first day of spring is upon us.

So can we please take our quizzes on paper again? Nostalgia is in.