h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What the hell is this crap? I turn around and all of a sudden the Guide has turned into some Seventeen Magazine derivative. I bet the real editors are bound and gagged in a cellar somewhere while some crazed lunatic develops forums on Leonardo DiCaprio's hair. This is the sort of mainstream, you-can-find-it-in-any-other-publication garbage that I go to h2g2 not to find. I mean, how about something at least remotely interesting or useful?
I mean, I dont want to be one of those annoying "what the hell is this crap" guys, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from.

Cool. Not that I agree or anything. Or disagree. I'm just neutral. But...cool.

Actually, I quite like what Leonardo has done to his hair

Yeah, but the beard has to go...

Ugh! Sorry, went all funny for a moment there. Anyway I disagree with, with, um, whoever started this topic (name forgotten) Okay so if every week we've got a teenage topic it gets dull, but on the other hand if you do a search on teenagers in the guide you'll get a hell of a lot of entries, mainly because a lot of the people on the guide are teenagers (myself included) That's not to say there aren't grannies tapping away at a lap top somewhere, but teenagers are a sizeable portion of the people on the guide and so naturally your going to get conversation topics relevant to them. So naah.

I agree with you that there are a lot of teens who use the Guide--I'm one of them. But I don't think that they should be pandered to by the editors.
Ideally, the Guide is a publication that consists entirely of contributions from its readership. This solves the problem of trying to figure out what people "really want to read"--the publication has a life of its own. Any teenage-related material is the natural result of a large number of contributors who happen to be teenagers.
This article, however, was not written by the demographic it supposedly targets. It was written by someone whose concept of a teenager is someone who worries about whether they should be a virgin or not. And while this concept is often accurate, it smacks of the sort of corporate marketing techniques that the mainstream media employs. The sad result is a shallow and non-intellectual Guide, that, as I mentioned before, likens it to Seventeen Magazine.
In other words, instead of reading an entry about god-knows-what, we are forced to digest the most dull-witted, forgettable, and lackluster of questions: "Is being a virgin cool?"
Publications that ask questions like these are usually the ones I have never bothered to read. I think it safe to assume that we're all a little smarter than that.

OK, when you put it like that I have to say that I agree with you. But the wants, needs and opinions of teens have always been misinterpreted. Just look at the way that the authorities are trying to promote virginity as cool. Every teen knows that this is the most ridiculous pile of donkey dung they have ever heard. And at its core teenage sex has nothing to do with 'cool' and 'uncool' - it's the natural instinct to mate kicking in at the point in the human life cycle when the chances of reproducing (and hence continuing the species) are at their highest. 'Cool' and 'uncool'? Way too shallow an interpretation...

Adults will never be able to provide teens with what they *want*, and they were never meant to. Teens turn to eachother for that. The function of the adult, going back to the dawn of the species, has always been to provide their young with what they *need* - food, shelter, etc - until they are capable of surviving on their own.

It's all about wants and needs.

This can and should be extended to fit our modern scenario. Our parents, and maybe even the authorities to a certain extent, should provide us with the basic things we require to grow up healthy - both mentaly and physicaly. That means giving us guidance but not *telling* us what to do. That is not how the relationship was meant to operate. Making each new generation behave according to the beliefs and experience of the previous generation is equivalent to giving evolution a smack in the face. The only way a species evolves is by letting each successive generation do their own thing and hence improve upon what they had geneticaly to begin with.

Our parents think we kick against them telling us what to do because we are immature and not ready to make decisions for ourselves. Wrong! We kick against them telling us what to do as a basic primal instinct because what our parents are doing is going completely against nature. If they carry on we may as well revert back to being asexual amaeobas.

Save the whales? Save the pandas? Try save the humans...

Oh, and BTW I do realise that I've gone somewhat off topic, but at least now you have some scientific background for your argument.

I agree when you put it like that, the trouble is recently there haven't been many talking points you can really argue about, I mean drinking stories and dating disasters might give you an opportunity to tell a story, but I always end up skimming past the forum entries, and as for the "Does God Have A Beard" week, I mean really, can't we have something argue about that doesn't insult our intelligence?

And how come I've gone from defending the guide to attacking it the space of a single forum entry?

Actually, though the topics presented in the Talking Point sometimes seem glib and shallow, the debates that ensue are usually just the opposite. This talking point has already gone way beyond a Seventeen magazine level in terms of the opinions presented. Not that I have ever *read* a Seventeen magazine. Oh no no no no no...!

JyZude.

Okay, so this subject is not for you. But front page links also include one to a page and a discussion on Amnesty International and their Stop Torture Campaign and a call for entries on' How not to get a cold'. Previous subjects include A448544Talking Point: Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse A447211 Dating Disasters A443134 When Do You Become an Adult? A440650 Medical Facts, Tales and Trivia A439878 Is Honesty the Best Policy? A435197 Should Cannabis be Legalised? A432442 Vanity and the Knife (plastic surgery subject) A427510 Inventions and Time Travel A421994 Why Should We Care About the Environment? A401699 End of the Affair So you've totally got the ear of an Editor. Tell me what you want. What sort of subjects do *you* think we should be covering on Talking Point? I've started a thread specially for this conversation in the Community Soapbox. http://www.h2g2.com/F55683?thread=84276&post=672485 That's the difference between us and Just 17 magazine. We listen, we adapt and we evolve. :-)

The issue of teenage sex is far from a teen magazine issue. It is currently being discussed, throughout the world, at the highest level - the World Health Organisation, National Governments and AIDS organisations to name a few.

It is an issue that will affect the future of various developing countries as well as those nations in the west that seem to have become blase in the face of STDs and unwanted pregnancies (see the recent study that showed the rise of syphillis, warts and other STDs among teenagers). These diseases have adverse side effects and can lead to infertility.

This is a topic that needs to be brought out in the open - the more we discuss, the more we can learn from each other.

This was my idea and I stand by it.

I suggested this topic because the British Government had announced £60 million pounds worth of funding to convince teenagers that it was ok to be a virgin and I felt this raised a number of ethical issues particularly in a country where, many people would argue, the money could be better spent. Then again Britain has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe. In turn, the British media devote a lot of coverage to the American teen movements dedicated to promoting virginity.

I do believe this is an important issue and while I accept that some people might not be interested, I think the depth of issues we cover here on talking point has something for everyone.

I live in an area of Britain that has the actual highest teen-pregnancy rate in Europe, and nobody my age seems to have noticed that the government has a campaign for virginity. My class had their "sex talk" today, and the nurse was actually very, for the want of a better word, thourough. I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make, maybe just that the government should be spending more money training people like the nurses (she was from the family-planning centre), and less on campaigns using the word "cool".

gets my vote!