MSN Column Number One
Written October 11, 2002

It is a quiet night in Waterloo at roughly three in the morning. The meat markets at Louie’s and the Rev are finally silent, most people who went to Phils have ended up in the drunk tank or have passed out in a gutter somewhere, and the terrible racket emanating from the Silver Spur under the pretense of being karioke slowly bleeds out onto King Street as university students stumble their way home to bed, happy that they have once again been given the opportunity to belt out renditions of sub-par Bon Jovi songs. God is in his heaven, all is right with the world and the city is as peaceful as Euler-Leupold on a Friday evening. *zing!*

And yet if you have listened carefully during the last few years, sound still exists in the tapping of keyboards across the campus and outlying areas - residence buildings and student housing. A piercing UH-OH! shatters the stillness from time to time, signifying that someone has received yet another ICQ message and is still stupid enough to not know how to turn off the annoying sounds. BLING! From MSN means that Sally has signed on to excitedly and hurriedly tell Mary about how she picked up the greatest guy at the bar earlier, he’s sitting outside in the living room right now, and should she schlock him right away or no?

Yes kids, it’s true. I’m talking about instant messaging and the way in which it has slowly become an incredibly time-consuming activity for the average student in the last few years. Used as a vehicle for procrastination, idle conversation and keeping in touch with faraway friends, these internet communication tools have taken their place in university life as an essential mainstay. It is now possible to have decent conversation with five separate people while writing a Cord opinion column, fighting off a drunken roommate who has just staggered in, and eating a massive plate of chicken wings all at once. Huzzah!

Once considered an internet-geek thing to do, instant messaging has been assimilated into popular culture and now you are hard pressed to find a person who does not log on at least once in a while when they have nothing else on the agenda. It makes sense too - messaging someone is far more casual than a phone call, doesn’t really interrupt anyone who doesn’t want to be bothered and can be done in conjunction with numerous other activities. You can screen your ‘calls’ with Block/Invisibility options and ICQ even lets you recall important info that you may have received, for blackmail or perhaps to use for the purpose of slandering a certain individual named ‘Chris C.’ on Radio Laurier.

After you get past the obvious benefits of instant messaging, begin to think about the social ramifications. Suddenly it becomes so much easier to stay in contact with friends from high school who foolishly went to other universities to study agriculture or lord knows what, and maintain a large web of relationships that would be humanly impossible under any other circumstances. Even people that have only met once or twice can become good friends through instant messaging, although talking to someone you haven’t met is a sketchy idea (think lonely, balding 40 year old man named Molly who has the ICQ handle seXXXygirley69).

Sure, there are obvious drawbacks to the widespread use of internet communication. Picture hundreds of students glued to their monitors, no longer able to relate to anybody unless their message is accompanied by a ridiculous half-ass smiley face, like so - :) . Picture a world that has forgotten the importance of actual interaction and places value on how many people you can talk to simultaneously rather than the quality of each conversation. Picture having three X-girlfriends verbally abuse you, all at the same time. Yeah, it sucks.

Despite the horror of my last example, instant messaging is still a powerful force in communications between young people today and needs to be recognized as such. It amazes me how this social phenomenon has seemingly slipped under the radar and become something that everyone takes for granted, rather than curiously exploring the circumstances with which it has forced its way into everyday life here at Laurier. After all, everyone’s doing it, so it must be cool and ready to be exploited!

MSN is a huge part of our lives ("our" being teenagers and twentysomethings). I'm pretty impressed that I was able to identify this topic and write about it this early in my columnist shtick. Instant messaging continues to be an interesting subject for me, but this column kicked it all off. Thank you, MSN Column Number One. Thank you.