MSN COlumn Number Two
Written March 17, 2003

I have to admit that I have a fascination with the Internet, although it’s nothing like the scary stories you hear of middle-aged men who dedicate fourteen hours of each day to awkwardly attempting to ‘pick up’ wood-nymphs in some online game, never comprehending that they are most likely typing love sonnets to 300 pound Icelandic women with overbites. My interests center a little less on the deification of the broadband network cable and a little more on the way in which the web changes the life of the average North American university slacker. To be honest, I’m surprised that more people aren’t stopping to ask the relatively simple question, “Hey Mr. Internet, what’s with you fucking with the way our society works?”

If I were a social or communications researcher-type person I would jump all over this issue faster than a grasshopper jumping onto another grasshopper of the opposite sex (or same sex I suppose, custom tailor this analogy to your liking). There’s so much to explore and analyze within the phenomenon of instant messaging alone that it blows my mind into tiny little pieces and reassembles them in completely random order.

Take MSN, for example. Although this instant messaging program generally serves the same communications purposes as ICQ or AIM, the ability to change one’s Messenger handle quickly and easily lends itself to a whole range of interesting observations.

This may sound ridiculous, but it’s surprising how much you can find out about what’s going on in the world just by taking a glance at your MSN list every once in a while. When big name Owen Nolan was traded to the Leafs recently, it would have been fairly impossible to be unaware of the development if you were connected to Messenger for even a few minutes – I counted at least ten ‘MSN names’ which read something along the lines of “Goodbye Alyn McCauley, Hello Owen Nolan” or “Owan Nolan is my new pimp daddy esquire.”

Sure, these news references are typically limited to events or issues which apply directly to us as university students but maybe looking at MSN handles closely is a good doorway to understanding the interests and attitudes of our particular demographic. I was particularly amused to wake up this morning and find my list peppered with references to green beer, leprechauns and St. Patrick’s Day – once more reassuring me that having an excuse to get smashed is a high priority amongst Laurier students.

However, the subject is far from limited to simply identifying trends and common subjects of interest within a subsection of society. There’s a lot of psychology at work here as well.

A little while ago, an acquaintance of mine attempted to kill herself by taking two bottles of sleeping pills and washing them down with a 40oz of rye. Apparently she had never talked to any of her friends or family members about the problems in her life, but in the six months during which her state of depression spiralled downwards her MSN handles consisted of increasingly morose, Nine Inch Nails-esque quotes. Although her suicide attempt failed it seems to me that if someone close to her had read more deeply into her unconventional indications of unhappiness, intervention would have been possible.

Of course, not all expression through MSN is this extreme. Many people use their handles to talk about how busy or stressed out they are, reference important new life developments, or even indicate their plans for the night. Right now I know that certain friends of mine are ashamedly drinking at Wilfs at 11 am, simply because their MSN names say so. I know that another friend has broken up with her boyfriend again even though I haven’t actually talked to her in two days. I know that people are looking to sublet rooms. I know who listens to what kind of music, just by the lyrics they use to express themselves from time to time.

Nobody takes this phenomenon seriously enough, least of all the researchers and psychologists who could learn so much about an elusive generation simply by immersing themselves in a technology that has slowly become an integral function of youth and young adult communications. What a clueless waste of a valuable resource.

And here's me being a little more serious about the whole MSN thing at the end of the year. Look at me all wide-eyed and astounded. I later went on to write some essays about instant messaging as a social phenomenon. Retrospective note: too bad Owen Nolan ended up sucking for the Leafs.