F&@#ing Kids

The NY Times Magazine had Emily Nussbaum look at the world of teenagers with blogs. With some teens using journals at LiveJournal, Xanga, Blurty, and DiaryLand , they get to air their tortured musings online and support others like them. In short, as Nussbaum says, "an intriguing, unchecked experiment in silent group therapy." Gothamist has had experience with group therapy. And it's not good when it's unchecked. But what's interesting is the awe that the following is written with:

When M. gets home from school, he immediately logs on to his computer. Then he stays there, touching base with the people he has seen all day long, floating in a kind of multitasking heaven of communication. First, he clicks on his Web log, or blog -- an online diary he keeps on a Web site called LiveJournal -- and checks for responses from his readers. Next he reads his friends' journals, contributing his distinctive brand of wry, supportive commentary to their observations. Then he returns to his own journal to compose his entries: sometimes confessional, more often dry private jokes or koanlike observations on life.

This description sounds like every person who uses the Internet at least once a week. If they don't have their own blog, they do check the sites they like first and look at their email. Sigh, it's another "mainstreaming of blogs" aritcle. To see what else teenagers do with their online journals, it's basically the opposite of this.

And now that kids are going online, whither projects like Mangled Puppies, the ambitious fever newsletter from our own Jake, j0sh, and their friends, circa 1990-1991 (more about Mangled Puppies). Clearly a precursor to the egomaniacal stylings on Bluejake, Mangled Puppies featured comic strips, bits of prose, song lyrics, mentions of drugs and sex, and reports of their clique's goings on. Ah, to be young and stupid again.