Maybe it's just because I'm not around teenagers much anymore, but I'm starting to feel like there's a real generation gap out there, widening every day.

Last week, I saw a video on the Internet of a fight in the woods near Oneonta High School. There were probably 20 or 30 students in a circle watching as a pseudo-referee launched the fisticuffs between two guys, one who looked smaller and younger than the other but who clearly was not entering the bout against his will.

Because of the size difference, the fight was over in about 20 seconds. The underdog ended up on the ground, leaning on his head, though he did get in a few good punches early on. The victor was ready to resume the punching if he got up, but he didn't. And that was it.

It seemed clear that the combatants knew the battle was being videotaped, and likely with knowledge that it would end up on YouTube.com.

In Liverpool, near Syracuse, there was controversy last week because someone put photos of dozens of scantily dressed high school girls in suggestive poses on a MySpace.com website. It was called Liverpool Hotties.

Again, it appeared that the subjects knew what they were doing and that they would end up on the Internet.

Though it had nothing to do with the school, administrators were forced to deal with the controversy because parents seeing their daughters posing on the Web didn't know where else to turn.

There is nothing illegal, however, about the above incidents. No laws were broken because no one was forced to do anything against his or her will.

High school fights are nothing new; they've been going on forever and will continue to occur. What's different is that now some of them are being videotaped and put on the Internet for the whole world to see, if it chooses.

Teens and young people have always mugged for the camera, and, sure, a group of them gets together and decides to do poses. Maybe later some prints were passed around among friends. Today, they can end up on the Internet for everyone to see, including sicko-types looking for potential pursuits.

What is this phenomenon whereby we want everybody to see us? It could be the novelty; because we can, we do it. We have the Internet capability and most teens have cameras or cell phones capable of video.

Some say it all started with the so-called reality TV, where people pretend to act out real-life scenarios on camera for broadcast.

When you search for "Oneonta'' on YouTube.com, you don't see a bunch of clips of fights or girls posing half-naked. No, what you see are scenes of mostly college students showing the world what they do when they're not studying _ which is mainly acting silly.

I have no idea why anyone would care to watch, other than the people making the video.

The latest YouTube adventure, the videotaped breakup of a college couple in North Carolina, had 300,000 viewers in three days. Some observers say it was staged for the camera; the couple say it was real. What's becoming clear, judging by the number of viewers, is that it doesn't matter.

Young people want their lives to be in cyberspace, knowing that others are sure to watch.

This apparent decline in the idea of privacy may have started back in the 1960s in the civil rights and antiwar movements, when demonstrators, emboldened by TV cameras, would shout "the whole world is watching'' as they were attacked by police or troops.

But inviting the world to bear witness to the authorities' abuses of power is different than allowing people in Asia to watch some dude beat the hell out of a guy in a staged fight. A lot different.

One of the most important attributes of the Internet is that it offers a forum for voices that ordinarily would never be seen or heard. And a forum that extends around the world, at that. It's so annoying to see such a waste of energy with so much of the stuff going online.

I guess it's sort of like the way television developed. People had dreams about what it could be _ with high-quality programs such as on PBS _ and then what actually developed was a nightmare.

It's the nature of the Internet, however, that anything goes. The last thing we need is people trying to ban content they don't like, find ridiculous or see as dangerous.

So let's roll it. Here's what people in their 50s do when they're not working. Act II, Scene 1, Take 3. Talk about silly.

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Cary Brunswick, managing editor of The Daily Star, can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.