Binders Full of Women, Big Bird, and Other Memes

As we drank wine on Saturday evening, one of the many things that my friends and I talked about was how grateful we were that we did not grow up in an age when Facebook and other social media sites were quite as prevalent. We laughed imagining the immature comments that would surely grace our "walls," the "un-friending" that would likely occur (followed, of course, by re-friending weeks later), and the documented trail of years that are often volatile and filled with irrational pubescent behavior. A recent article in The New York Times pointed out that the college student of today often spends weekend mornings untagging him or herself from pictures and essentially doing social media damage control. I fear the amount of pictures of me sticking out my tongue that would be out there circulating for the whole wide world to see...

Despite my gratitude that I did not grow up in an age when social media was quite as overwhelming, I do love many social media platforms. Pinterest is endlessly entertaining. Instagram is oh-so-fun. And Facebook, while certainly losing its luster, has its moments. Last night, for example, when Mitt Romney made his now infamous "binders full of women" comment--within seconds I was invited to a group "Binders full of women" and my friend Carl had soon gone viral with mentions in The Wall Street Journal blog and fingers sore from adding people to his group. So, while I feel badly for my thirteen-year-old students who will one day look back on some all of their status updates and cringe, social media can be downright entertaining sometimes if I do say so myself.