• by Amanda , July 13, 2007

This week I found myself strangely irritated by media everywhere I turned. I’m not one to get keyed up about technology usually, but this week was different for some reason. For the purpose of catharsis and potential communion in irritation, here are my media pet peeves of the week:

- CNN.com has messed with their website: Over the last few years, I have become entirely accustomed to navigating the page, its layout, its color scheme; I used to know where everything was and how to get there quickly. Perhaps I need to update my Flash- or something- but strips of white block off paragraphs in the stories and text overlaps itself all over the page. Yeah it’s alright to navigate, but there is something entirely unsettling about someone fiddling with my web comfort zones.

- The iPhone: I actually do care that it’s really cool and even took the time to look at one last weekend in an Apple Store. The fact that I could find my address on satellite with this lightweight, seriously pretty piece of technology has been greatly diminished over the course of an entire week of nonstop debate, coverage and iPhone smashing. I could also just be jealous of the 70,000 people who can actually afford the “dream phone.”

- I am having problems connecting with people who have AT&T… calls drop in the middle of conversations, reception is poor, and in some cases calls are missed by my recipients altogether. This is a fairly new phenomenon after the Cingular-AT&T merger.

- Facebook applications are taking over people’s profiles!

- The FCC debate: I don’t have kids and cussing really doesn’t bother me at the age of 21, so I definitely lean towards the stance that foul language will not, in fact, erode the values of American society. The most irritating thing about this debate, though, is that headway in either direction is debated or uprooted within a week.

- My recently-downloaded Windows 2007 and I are going through growing pains: I think it comes down to the fact that I was very comfortable with my outdated Microsoft suite. I use Word a lot, so getting used to the new layout, and finding simple buttons like “insert comment” and the different layout options takes too long.

I am sure these minor annoyances will pass but this week shows me now, more that ever, how connected we are with these everyday platforms. Even minor alterations will freak us out or annoy us to the point of posting our inner musings on a community blog.