Inquiring Minds Want To Know About Shoutouts
April 19, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Did you know shoutouts are due today? Well, they are, so send 'em in. Did you know that there's a big article about said deadline in today's Philadelphia Inquirer? Well, there is. It begins:
At this very moment, hundreds of Penn students are hunched over their computers, furiously composing pithy bits of prose that they hope to get published in the Shoutouts section of 34th Street, the Daily Pennsylvanian student newspaper's weekly magazine. Today at noon is the deadline for the much-anticipated, once-a-semester feature.Wrong, Inquirer, wrong! At this very moment, hundreds of Penn students are in fact still lying in bed, hungover and recovering from Fling. "Pithy bits of prose" sounds nice, but most submissions are more along the lines of "illiterate Engineer utterances." (Don't worry, we <3 them all.) And a noon deadline? Hah. Everyone knows that deadlines are negotiable -- we'll be accepting shoutouts all day.
The gist of the article seems to be "ooooh, shoutouts are MEAN." Tell me, Inky, have you ever perused City Paper's I Love You, I Hate You, or Craigslist's missed connections? It's a mean, mean, mean, anonymous world out there. In the pantheon of anonymous meanness, shoutouts are a lot funnier (and a lot more harmless!) than a lot of what's out there. But we understand: you've got to connect this to issues of free speech in the digital age and trot out the expert academic source: "This generation has been schooled in the misogyny of bravado. . . . It's become a point of pride that I can talk that way, too. I can be a vicious [expletive]. Young women are jumping on this, thinking it's empowering. It's anything but." How right you are, random lawyer lady -- shoutouts are part of a vicious [expletive], but like, duh, motherfucker, that's the point.
Also, the headline makes no sense. "Penn shoutouts is due." Yes, they is!
To the scandalized adults in the newsroom: you're only young once. With love and squalor, 34th Street.