I didn't, although I did have menstrual cramps! This I learned from an actual, human doctor, who wearily suggested that I not consult the Internet to identify symptoms anymore. "It makes our jobs harder...well, and easier," she conceded. Because at least there's also an upswing in people feeling really relieved when they find out they've mis-diagnosed themselves!

Says the Telegraph, "Increasing numbers of people (48 per cent) say that they have used the internet to find out more about an illness according to a report by Ofcom, the media regulator. The research found women are more likely to do so, with 53 per cent admitted to looking online for medical advice, in a trend has become known was ‘Dr Google'."

Please, Dr. Google's a charlatan. All the best people go to Dr. WebM.D.'s practice. Hello, he's an M.D.! But, oddly enough, the same survey found that the diagnoses left people "worried and confused." Okay, hypochondria aside, there are times when I've found web-related medical stuff helpful: message boards and FAQ pages for birth control and medication's side effects, a migraine support group that made me feel like I had it easy! In these cases, the sense of not being alone, of finding out that things were normal, was indeed comforting. And obviously, the net is a font of homeopathic wisdom!

The problem, of course, is when it enables hypochondria. All those "see a doctor immediately" advisories are probably legally advisable - and if they've forced anyone to take something deadly seriously, well terrific. (And you can't help thinking a little light web-surfing might have been a good idea for some of those "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" dames TLC is always rounding up.) But I'm guessing the vast majority of people with something very wrong know something's very wrong. And if they're not the sort to go running to the net for the slightest sniffle, chances are they'll be calling a doctor with the other hand anyway. The problem, too, is that it's very tricky to actually tell what's wrong from listing symptoms - most of which can presage something serious anyway. Is there anything really wrong with self-diagnoses? Well, not, I suppose, if you get a real second opinion - ergo, if you have great insurance. Otherwise, yes, reading that you might - or might not! - in fact have meningitis is indeed pretty stressful. As my doctor said, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Or at least, annoying.

Half Of Women Are Diagnosing Themselves Online, Says Ofcom [Telegraph]

Writes Elizabeth Bernstein,

We need new rules now. How about these? You can look, but don't make contact. Strike an agreement with your current partner that you will each disclose any Facebook friends you have slept with. Or, like Katie Robinson, limit your online "friends" to people of the same sex. "It is hard enough to have a relationship without the intrusion of people from your past," says Ms. Robinson, a 33-year-old artist in Memphis, Tenn. Some couples share their passwords. "If your bank accounts are common, why not your Twitter and Facebook accounts?" asks Clemson Smith Muñiz, a Spanish-language sports announcer in New York. Sound scary? Mr. Smith Muñiz discovered one of the drawbacks when he checked his Twitter following-which he spent months trying to build-and discovered an alarming trend: It kept shrinking.
At first, he worried that people found him boring and were dropping out. He tried harder to be clever, "tweeting" about Cuban baseball players and his dental problems. He even pleaded for readers: "Follow me and I'll follow you." Then he discovered his problem: his wife."She told me she was going on my account and taking off women she thought were coming on to me," says Mr. Smith Muñiz, 51. She didn't care if they were old girlfriends or porn stars. "She said she doesn't want temptation to be there," he says. (His wife declined to be interviewed.)

Wait, what? This is weird, right? Look, I admit to being somewhat lax in these matters (the one concession I've ever demanded was that a boyfriend not friend a one-night stand with whom he'd cheated on me) but I can't help but wonder: when do rules start to rule you? (Yes, that took a few minutes' thought.) All-female friends? Secret un-following? Hell's no. That's sacred. Trivial and pointless, perhaps, but sacred in some sort of modern irreligious way. Granted, this piece deals exclusively with Boomers who all seem overly involved with the newly-discovered gadgetry and don't share our tacit reluctance to appearing cyber-desperate ("Follow me and I'll follow you?") But seriously, is this a thing? And not just amongst those weird couples who seem to get off on the delusion that their partners are wildly desirable and everyone's constantly hitting on them? I'd always understood these sites to be more-or-less public information; as such, hasn't enough personal editing gone on that more isn't required? And as for those threatened by the presence of exes - well, better the evil you know, surely? As one more cynically-minded friend put it, "it's not like you'll be able to friend them yourself!"

That said, I know reading about cracked fillings in 140 or fewer has me hitting "Direct Messages" every time, so maybe she has a point.

When Old Flames Beckon Online [Wall Street Journal]

Okay, first odd thing about Melanie Berliet's "experiment." She claims her journalistic - sociological? - anthropological? goal is "to explore a few thorny questions: What kind of men seek out illicit relationships online? Can adultery be a healthy way to fulfill one's needs without alienating one's partner? Is cheating really as bad as society makes it out to be?" But the thing is, she opens the piece with an account of her two-year affair with a married man. So, um, hasn't she already done the leg-work?

Then there's her actual process, which feels...well, like nothing you'd learn in J-School. She devises the profile of a young, restless matron and engages with three guys. She's into two of them, who seem unconflicted about their cheating and have "arrangements" - tacit or otherwise - with their wives. And they seem on the level. "I, too, was everything I'd claimed-a Georgetown graduate and bond trader turned writer who likes to read and ride her bike-save for one crucial detail: I was actually unmarried and unattached." And, you know, a reporter.

Third odd thing: the writing.

"Why me?," I asked. "What are the other women on Ashley Madison like?"

"Well, for one thing, your skin is the color of purity," he said, as if admitting his darkest secret. "It gets me thinking about the irony of finding you on some filthy cheater's Web site. It doesn't match."

"So I embody a contradiction," I said, aware of my starring role in some hard-core porno playing in the back of his mind.

"Yes. I love it."

She doesn't think this particular guy is really unconflicted about the cheating.

For the sake of my experiment, though, I obliged Jackson by conjuring up several explicit "visuals" via e-mail while he was away. I also participated in a few rounds of real-time cyber-sex, despite confusion over the whole typing-while-touching thing. The transcripts of those e-mails and conversations make me laugh, cringe, blush, and feel aroused all at once, but they're way too graphic to print.

Moving on! So. What does she conclude from her "research?" Well, that different people cheat for different reasons. And, oh yeah:

If and when I find a life companion, I can't say with certainty that I'll be 100 percent faithful-not because I don't want to be, but because it seems presumptuous to assume that strict monogamy is my fate when the majority of people who attempt it fail...Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe, as some social scientists would say, I'm a sex addict incapable of achieving healthy intimacy. Or maybe, as Dr. David Barash suggests in his provocative book The Myth of Monogamy, when it comes to marriage we ought to apply Churchill's maxim about democracy: among lifestyle choices, it's the worst possible option except when you consider the alternatives.

Or...maybe you're doing your "research" amidst a self-selecting population of creepy assholes who've paid money to be on a site whose motto is 'Life is short. Have an affair' and sounds like Nora Roberts named it. Just a thought. But despite the, ahem, depth of this writer's journalistic commitment to the truth, I think I'll happily draw uninformed, judgmental conclusions about most of these dudes - and not feel I'm missing much.

The Cheaters' Club [Vanity Fair]

The program scours the internet for information about the person and then fits them into a set of categories using an algorithmic process. Obviously from the results below, the process isn't perfect, but that's part of the point. The creators explain:

It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

In other words, it may be telling that one of Nadya Suleman's biggest categories is "fame," but "sports" winding up on Anna Wintour's profile probably means the computer misinterpreted combative phrases in articles about her.

You can check out what Personas reveals about your favorite (or unfavorite) people here. Feel free to share the results in the comments.

Click on the images below to make them larger:

Personas [MIT]

You see, crew, Cathy has finally fallen into the ol' technology trap, something the strip has been railing against for a few weeks now, with Cathy sighing not over boxes of chocolates or that bitchy saleswoman who seemingly lives to make Cathy hate herself at the swimwear shop, but over the way that technology has slowly crept into her life, making the personal impersonal, and creating a whole new set of problems to add to her already overloaded list. Her friends go off on vacations and send a billion digital photos; her co-workers talk more about the equipment they own than the lives they live with said equipment, and now, Facebook has come to ruin her life for good.

It started innocently enough, with an invitation from an old friend, as most of these things do. Cathy gets invited to Facebook, and she says yes. Little does she know that it's going to destroy her universe FOREVER. Oh, Cathy! When will you win?


Cathy soon learns, however, that Facebook will suck you in and spit you out like so many nasty women at swimsuit stores, luring you in with promises of good fun in the sun and then breaking your dreams in two with a harsh dose of "Who the hell are these random people and why are they bothering me about my life?" We've been there, too, Cathy. We shall ACK on your behalf.


Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but this strip struck me as incredibly sweet. Cathy is psyched to reconnect with her old friends, and is very excited when "Brenda" writes on her wall. It seems a bit corny, but it was nice to see Cathy get stoked about something that doesn't involve chocolate or her dog, Electra. The last panel is quite interesting as well: the concept of "auto-guilt," that Irving brings up is a true one—how often have you felt bad for not getting back to someone right away, or for missing/overlooking an email/IM/text? So often we bust on Cathy for feeling guilty about dumb things, but this strip felt painfully true. I actually had to step back and check myself after this one. Schooled by Cathy! I'll never be the same, crew.


Of course, with Cathy, the sense of "competitiveness" and the "Aacks!" are never far behind those moments of sweetness.


And now, naturally, Cathy's sense of self-worth goes right back to what she looks like; instead of worrying about her swimsuit, now she has to worry about her profile picture.


Today, Cathy's dogs have become concerned that perhaps she's not setting healthy boundaries re: her internet use. You know it's bad when Electra starts freaking out.

While I suspect this storyline will fade out over the next few weeks, I have to say that I find it pretty interesting and yes, a bit sweet. Cathy, who so often freaks out about her weight and her job, is now freaking out about her social networking life as well, something that I think most of us can relate to on some level. She's overwhelmed but excited, feeling competitive but flustered, and she's just trying to keep up with everyone else. Will she eventually devolve into a neurotic mess and throw her computer out the window? It's highly possible. But for once, I think we can cut Cathy a break and admit that in some ways, we see where she's coming from. So congrats, Cathy. Welcome to the internet. And remember, you can't spell Facebook without A-C-K.

Cathy [WashingtonPost]

'I think there's a worry that an excessive use or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community," Archbishop Nichols says, "We're losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person's mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point. Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very important part of community life and living together."

While Nichols was moved to speak on the matter after the death of a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide after being bullied online, his statements seem to imply that all social networking is detrimental for "real world" relationships, as the online universe tends to create a sense of reality that doesn't always translate in the world we live in once we walk away from our screens.

I spent a good part of my day online; most of it for work purposes, but I also connect with many of my friends through keyboards and screens, as we all went our separate ways after college and grad school, and it's the easiest way for all of us to keep in touch. In that way, social networking provides a means to stay connected to people you actually know and love in "real" life, without having to live two blocks away. But what of the connections we make with virtual strangers? The people we speak to everyday that we've never actually met before? Are they helping us, or hurting us?

In some ways, I think the virtual social world is helpful to many of us, myself included, who are painfully shy in real life: it can serve as a type of practice run for actually speaking to people in person. But in other ways, the validation and gratification one gets from doing his or her socialization strictly via the internet can make it seem like going out and actually hanging out with people isn't necessary, which can certainly become a problem if people become too isolated from the world beyond their computer. The retreat into the online world can be especially problematic for those who are being bullied and harassed; the few who choose to spew hateful, awful remarks at an individual suddenly appear to be the spokespeople for the world, if there are no non-internet people around to provide a much needed reality check.

As with most things in life, a balance is needed: if used correctly, social networking sites can help you meet new people in "real life" and serve as a means to continue socializing when you're stuck at work or in a place where it's hard to make new friends. I disagree with Nichols assertion that the online environment makes it harder for us to read moods, or to know when to make a point or to back off; if anything, I've found that I've learned more about how to approach people in certain situations via social networking, as people tend to be more honest and direct in their typing than they are face-to-face. Still, one wonders if that balance is easier for some to find than others—perhaps instead of condemning one form of socialization in favor of another, we should be educating people of all ages on how to live a life both online and off, with healthy boundaries set up to ensure that they don't lose themselves in either realm.

So what say you, commenters? Is social networking hurting your "real world" social skills? Or is it making them stronger?

Transient Friendships On Facebook And Bebo Can Lead To Increase In Teen Suicides Warns Archbishop [DailyMail]

The video starts off a bit slow, but once the song kicks in, it gets funnier and funnier. See for yourself:


Yo Comments Are Whack! [Mental Floss]

She writes,

I'm starting to think that Internet romances, including Mark Sanford's, are not romances between people at all. They're affairs with the Internet. Watch people who are newly in love, especially any kind of love that requires that the participants keep stealthy and apart, and they're all over their iPhones and Palm Pres. It's P.D.A. with P.D.A.'s. Romance seems to have become an online multiplayer fantasy-adventure game, no less thrilling than World of Warcraft, and open to all ages.

Ignore the lame jokes (from the Maureen Dowd school of technological humor), and she kind of has a point. The Internet, whether you use it to meet or just correspond with a partner, and whether said correspondence is adulterous or not, provides a whole new platform for romance. It allows lovers to communicate with far more frequency and granularity than physical dating affords. You might only see someone once a week — especially if you're not supposed to be seeing them — but in that time you can exchange thousands of e-mails, IMs, and Facebook messages (does anyone really flirt via Twitter?).

These modes of electronic communication don't just augment a relationship — they create a whole new relationship, parallel to and existing apart from any actual face-time. Anybody with both a computer and a heart has probably known someone who sends really charming e-mails but is a dud in person, and anyone who grew up with the Internet has probably had a few IM-only friends or more-than-friends. As Sadie points out, a correspondence can be as exciting as a meet-cute story, and Heffernan notes that frequent e-mailers tends to fall into a certain simpatico groove with one another.

But are they really "with one another"? Or are they just in a relationship with their chosen medium? Maybe a little of both. I know that when I'm stressed out, I find myself checking my e-mail the way others might reach for a cigarette, and I know that online communication itself can satisfy other cravings as well. Getting a lot of e-mail can make you feel successful and desired in a different way than locking eyes with a crush; quickly crafting a witty IM that you can refer back to later is different than simply telling a joke. Especially with the advent of Google's saved chats feature, all my online correspondence can now be archived forever. Critics say the Internet is ephemeral, but the typed word is now more indelible than the spoken one, and lovers can carry on a romance with their inboxes long after the actual affair has ended.

Of course, where there's a new platform for love, there's also a new platform for hate. People are notoriously willing to say things in, say, blog comments that they'd never voice to someone's face, and one reason advice columnists tell you not to break up with someone via e-mail is that it's so (comparatively) easy. The Internet divorces us from the human reality of our interlocutors — we are names typing at names. As such, it's easy to respond to the smallest slight with a burst of vitriol, and to care more about how many followers we have than about whether we've hurt someone's feelings. So has the Internet simply freed us up to express our true enmity for one another? Or have email and blogs and message boards and Twitter actually created a new hatred, a hatred for what other people become when they're no longer forced to deal with us physically, but also for what we've become, and for the medium that has transformed all of us? Is what we have with the Internet a love affair or a hatefuck? Again, maybe a little bit of both.

Love, Virtually [New York Times]

Earlier: Has Online Dating Really Lost Its Stigma?

Smith is particularly into the new navigation bar, which offers "illustrated links into specific features and popular articles rather than generic links into subsections." True, the new pulldown menus offer pictures and links to stories Cosmo's currently pushing. Take the Celebs & Style menu:

Pretty flashy. But when you click through to the swimwear story, you get the same lame "best swimsuit for your shape" advice that's in every magazine every summer — except even more repetitive. The story is basically a slideshow of bathing suits ranging from okay to hideous, many of them with the same exact caption: the words, "If you're small up top, flaunt what you've got with a foxy style that will make your twins the main attraction," for instance, appear four times. I don't even want to hear my breasts referred to as "my twins" once.

The featured article under Secrets & Advice, 40 Ways to Survive Any Sticky Situation, is pretty standard Cosmo fare. Advice ranges from the uninspired (if you get laid off, start looking for another job) to the bizarre (are penile fractures really common enough that the Cosmo reader needs a detailed game plan in case of one?). For extra annoyance, though, the feature includes a tacked on webvertorial called "Plan B Summer Tips," in which the makers of everybody's favorite emergency contraceptive explain how to combat tan lines and frizzies. What's next, makeup tips from Mirena?

It's true that, as Smith points out, users can now access Cosmo's "Hot Right Now" articles from the interior pages as well as the homepage. But when those articles are things like "10 Summer Truths You Can't Ignore," (sample truth: use bug spray) do you really even want to? Cosmo's redesign does look kind of nice initially, but further investigation is repeatedly rewarded with annoyance. And ultimately, the new site reveals a sad truth of web design, not just in summer but year-round: no layout will make up for crappy content.

A Flatter, Sexier Cosmo Site [Minonline]
Cosmopolitan [Official Site]

In our line of work, we do a lot of image-searches, for all kinds of things. Now, there are certain keywords - "girl," "kitten," "doll," anything having to do with camping - that you know are gonna result in a blitz of NSFW, and that's just the way the cookie crumbles. (Note: avoid "pregnant teenager" and "menstruation" if at all possible.) And then there are the things that take you by surprise. Like, when I searched "crying bride" - looking for an image to illustrate a post on depressing wedding coverage - and ended up learning that "the weeping bride" is apparently a popular position in a certain subset of GoG. The more you know! Coworkers report horrifying results from the seemingly innocuous "ponytails" and "homework" and, says Megan, "'woman wearing jeans' and 'adopted Chinese girls' are particularly seared into my brain."

With this is mind, we couldn't help but wonder: is there any phrase innocent enough to confound the porn elves of Google Images? ("Innocent" naturally brings up a lot of seductions and deflowerings.) After much trial and error - "rainbows" obviously equals a bare-assed chick in a pair of striped knee socks; you're safe for the first page of "mustard," and "meninkilts.com" disqualified the seeming front-runner "tartan" - we compiled the following definitive SFW list:

"floral china patterns"

"Puppies"

"birch bark canoe"

"Graham Crackers"

"Queen Victoria"

"yarn"

"gladiolas"

"wide-ruled notebook"

"Unicorn"

"Demijohn barrel"

Happy hunting!

Researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center examined 69 non-abused teens from age 14 to 17, and 104 abused adolescent girls recruited from child protective agencies, CNN reports. The girls participated in a laboratory session in which they were asked to create avatars on a fake social networking site that allowed them to choose their physical features, provocative or conservative clothing, bust and hip size, and visible navel piercings. The participants were then asked to rate how many times they had received sexual advances online, which was described as "explicit sexual chatting in virtual worlds," and how many times they'd met a person who first contacted them online in real life.

Forty percent of the girls said they had received sexual messages online and 26 percent said they had met someone after getting to know them on the internet. The study reports that "abuse status was significantly related to online sexual advances, which were, in turn, related to offline, in-person encounters." There was no direct link between abuse and online solicitation, but researchers said the abused girls were at a greater risk.

The study also found a connection between a provocative avatar, or more sexual profile pictures posted on sites like Facebook and MySpace, and the girls who had received sexual messages online. The study says:

Those adolescents who may be unaware of how their appearance might be perceived may not, from a developmental perspective, possess the social sophistication necessary to field and ward off sexual advances in ways that protect them from sexually explicit suggestions.

Though in the past, experts on children's online safety reported that some pimps are recruiting from social networking sites and looking for girls whose profiles indicate that they are vulnerable, the new study may be too alarmist. A report released in January by a Harvard University task force found that the percentage of children who received sexual solicitations online fell from 19% in 2000 to 13% in 2006. Of those sexual messages, most came from other minors, and predatory incidents occur online about as often as they do in the real world.

The Prevention study's analysis of something as innocuous as a girl creating an avatar with a belly button ring and pouty lips places too much blame on girls for inviting online predators to victimize them. However, the study's main recommendation, that parents monitor their kids' online activities and talk to them about how they portray themselves online, is a good idea for either gender.

Study: Abuse, Provocative Images Increase Internet Risk For Girls [CNN]
Percentage Of Kids Solicited Online Drops, Harvard Report Says [National Sexual Violence Resource Center]

Earlier: Pimps Finding New Ways To Recruit Women, Girls

Although Japan's unmarried population has risen steeply in the last few years, and its birth-rate declined (possibly as a result of increased wealth and dedication by both sexes to career), the last year has witnessed the creation of a new movement: konkatsu, or "marriage-hunting." The term is a literal adaptation of "job-hunting," and the process is not dissimilar.

While the raft of new matchmaking services and sites are not unfamiliar, and matchmaking is as old as time, the pragmatic, modern, businesslike approach - and cultural embrace of the phenomenon - are. Basically, "marriage-hunting" employs the methodology of a successful job hunt. Konkatsu@net, a marriage-hunt site, explains the approach, as translated by Global Voices, thusly:

During a ‘job hunting' period, it's not only important to have contacts with the company you want to work for participating to its ‘company explanatory meeting' and interviews....In the same way, ‘marriage hunting' consists of many different activities.Men will ‘train their body', ‘improve their taste in choosing clothes', ‘increase the number of subjects to talk about' and ‘go to aesthetic salons'. Also women will ‘have aesthetic treatments for body and nails' and ‘learn how to cook'. All these measures are considered necessary to konkatsu. However, the most important thing is ‘increasing the number of opportunities to meet people'.

This particularly straightforward approach is, some feel, the result of a paradigm shift. Explains the maker of that forementioned bra, "Japanese women are becoming more aggressive than men, working actively to make marriage happen, whereas in the past it was men who led women toward marriage." And "aggressive" new women are the target demographic for the terrifying konkatsu bra, lingerie worthy of a regressive Bond villainess. We couldn't have made this up - nor would we have wished to:

Triumph's latest novelty bra features an electronic nuptial timepiece, putting women seeking spouses literally on the clock. If an engagement ring is inserted into the mechanism, the countdown stops and the bra plays Felix Mendelssohn's "The Wedding March." The bra also includes holders for the traditional seal some people use to sign off contracts and a pen for any possible nuptial agreement.

If this is the armor of female empowerment, well, we're doin it rong. One older lady objects to husband-hunting on more romantic grounds, writing on the Konkatsu message board,

They have got to take interviews and exams to meet their partner? They have to dress up to pretend like good person?
The people who make up these new words must have a plot. They try young people to feel rushed to get married and persuade to join the marriage agencies [ja]! Don't be deceived, ladies and gentlemen! Don't be rushed and don't fake yourself!

Japan: Marriage Hunting! [Global Voices]
Japan bra maker offers support for husband hunters [Reuters]

According to Utne, there's a raft of pro-adultery literature cropping up on the Wild, Wild Web. They cite a piece on Briarpatch that dismisses marriage as a tyranny in which"your intimacy is governed by scarcity, threats, and programmed prohibitions, and protected ideologically by assurances that there are no viable alternatives"; and an irreverent post on Jewcy about the (apparent) Jewish infidelity movement. (I choose not to view yesterday's Daily Mail tell-all by an "utterly shameless serial mistress" as evident of any philosophical trend.)

Now, as we all know, the internet is rivaled only by the Good Book in its ability to provide evidence for any argument, and that quality is rivaled only perhaps by its capacity to help anyone rationalize anything. Does the internet facilitate cheating? Sure. Does it cause it? Doubtful. And anyone agitating for extra-marital shenanigans is surely more than matched by an equal body of pro-fam literature.

Reading the "pro-cheating" manifestos, one can't help thinking, "so...why get married?" And, once married, there's no terribly compelling rationale given for why the miserable parties involved must stay chained to their nuptial servitude, save a vague "societal" dictate that seems rooted in the first half of the 20th Century. Certainly, it seems unlikely that anybody who embraces the philosophy of infidelity as a weapon against "capitalist oppression" (as Utne would have it) would be tethered by such notions of traditional domesticity or any other traditional rationale for staying in a marriage.

Every generalization about the institution of marriage in this day and age is problematic, for it's become an intensely individual decision. It's funny; the wedding business has boomed even as cynicism has made it impossible to enter into marriage with unembarrassed idealism - even if, at heart, that's what marriage demands. We all know the divorce rates, the difficulties, the many unhappy endings. Some will always claim we are not, by nature, monogamous (although, as an inherently monogamous person? I've always found the suggestion that I don't exist to be somewhat confusing.) And yet people still do it. Sure, not everyone's cut out for monogamy; it's also true that in free-love communities like Oneida and Johnstown, some would rebel and flee in order to pursue one-on-one relationships with people they were in love with. There are a lot of reasons a major portion of this country's been agitating for the right to marry that has nothing to do with taxes and hospital visits, and no one can look at the pictures of a couple of thirty years allowed to finally make it legal without feeling pretty sure that, whatever either Focus on the Family and various hoary revolutionaries might suggest, the institution's probably not going anywhere.

Defending Adultery [Utne]

Related:
Adultery And Other Half Revolutions: Towards A Post-Scarcity Economy Of Love [Briarpatch]
Cheating Is For Winners: Meet Shaindy.Com [Jewcy]
A Mistress Confesses: Why I Want To Sleep With Your Husband... And Why HE Wants To Sleep With Me! [Daily Mail]

Boytaurs fall into several categories, apparently: either half-man, half-horse, or just men with multiple arms and legs. "Of course, many boytaurs don't stop with four legs," notes the site, "Some add more legs, going six-legged or more. Some add extra arms. And many, enjoying all their boytaur feet, decide to go wristfooted as well." [Urlesque]

So in this piece in the Telegraph, Christopher Howse notes that the digital age is doing a number - not shockingly - on snail mail, and as such love letters are an endangered species. Which, he adds, is awesome. Because other people's love letters are embarrassing, and in any case good correspondence provides perfectly adequate reading-between-the-lines proof of affection without the slop, thanks very much. Quoth the curmudgeon,

perhaps love letters will be the last to disappear, for being in love preserves antique behaviour: dining out, dressing up, being polite, even writing poetry. The poetry will be bad, not for lack of feeling but for lack of skill, and so will the love letters. Like other people's holiday snaps, they suggest a whole world of shared experience that we outsiders cannot share. Digital cameras mean the death of old snaps and digitalia are killing love letters. And I, for one, shan't mourn them.

Unlike Howse, most of us are aware that the advent of email meant a resurgence in quotidian correspondence, and if there was a dry patch for a while there, well, now we've got as many revelations and day-to-day details and secrets as the biographers of tomorrow could wish for, at least as much of it preserved in perpetuity as the more ephemeral correspondence of yesteryear. Sure, stuff gets erased; but then, stuff used to get burned. But the man raises a good point: the internet doesn't really lend itself to love letters. For all the risks of drunk-emailing and the manifold indiscretions technology encourages, poetry doesn't tend to be one of them. Sure, there are unwise late-night confessions of interest, but is that really the same thing?

Weirdly, though, the breakup missive is flourishing. (See: Crap Email From a Dude...or that book Anna did!) I'm not even talking drunk, insulting ramblings, here, although I guess those are a sub-genre. Rather, we're discussing the antithesis of the love letter, a detached, deliberate statement of vitriol. Part of why breakups rate this, I think, is that such emails are often couched in terms of practicalities, like, "let's work out this rent issue, and by the way, here's why you suck as a human being." Email is also particularly well-suited to snideness; as everyone knows, it takes a ton of exclamation points and one smiley face more than you mean even to convey warmth; passive-aggressive curtness is so much easier. If you're a communal type, you can read it over, even get second opinions - something one would not do with a love letter. Most of all, email is casual: a dismissive email has the double effect of showing that you don't really care, whereas a letter would imply a telling expenditure of effort.

Best part? As a recipient, you can erase instantly. And without the risk of setting off the smoke alarm.

A Fond Farewell [Telegraph]