DON'T DO THAT. Illustration by Alicia Toldi
Dear Socially (Networked) Inept Person,
The first floor of our beloved Shain library, during certain times of the day and heavier work weeks, is referred to by some as “a zoo” and by others as the hellhole where people (often me) are screaming. While my actions are quite ludicrous in nature (no one’s perfect), they’re not quite as brazen a “f— you” as, say, I don’t know, checking your Facebook and/or Perez Hilton on the damn computers most people need to print!
It’s mid-October and I’ve been stuck behind a few individuals that desperately want their friends to see the latest cute animal video that’s been posted to their wall. Uhm, hi, my name is Kiefer, and I’ve got a paper to hand in about four minutes from now, and you’re too busy LOL-ing it up for me to get my print on? No, no – don’t do that.
All I’m asking is that you wait a few minutes until things at 10:15, 11:40, and 1:05 calm down, and then sure, feel free to post those pictures of you in neon taken in some Plex hallway last weekend. Can’t you change your relationship status on your own time? Even if you just broke up with homeboy, you might not want to be so eager to announce it to the online world – tent dance was only last weekend.
Sure, maybe people who need to print in a hurry could have built that activity into their schedule a bit better, so as to not impose on your precious social networking time. If that’s the way you want to look at it, couldn’t you have picked a better place and time to decide to write a happy birthday message on your friend’s wall? You just saw them and didn’t say anything; they know you forgot. It sucks, but buy them a bottle and get gone, because other people have Moodle assignments they need to access. It’s less about the need to print and more about the civility of caring about your fellow Camels.
This goes double for midterm and finals week. Facebook, blissfully time-wasting as it is, shouldn’t be the reason you’re taking up one of the computers that someone else needs to obtain a draft of a paper. Perez Hilton is never going to write you a letter for visiting his page twenty times in three hours. You know what your pictures look like, because I heard you ask to be tagged in them. And is it really necessary to tweet to the interweb exactly how much you loooovveeee coffee? It isn’t. Oh, and last, a word to the wise: if you’re doing some quality online stalking, that should really be kept in a more private place than the lobby of Shain. Tact, I see, is not your forté. Common courtesy goes a long way in having people not aggressively dislike you.
I can’t specify exactly what it is about people being socially active online in Shain that brings me to this point, but it’s more than the fact that I’m sometimes late, always busy and need to speed through the printing process. Perhaps it’s the state of indifference it takes to actively hold up people who need to accomplish something (even as menial as printing homework or quickly checking assignments) because of something really unnecessary you want to do. Perhaps it’s the idea that one person’s time is more precious than someone else’s. Or maybe, it’s just aggravating to hear people talk about how fat their ex/Jessica Simpson has gotten while I’m yelling across the first floor about how fat my ex/Mariah Carey has gotten. Wait, wait. it’s definitely the first two.
Just Sayin’,
Kiefer
