Fading Into An Anachronism...2L8

It all began with Twitter, and my friend Karl who didn't quite get the fact that "twitter" was a noun, not a verb. Karl is unique because he does not own a television...hasn't for 30 years. While I see this as a positive, it does eliminate a lot of cultural information that he might otherwise pick up...like the fact that "tweet" is the verb which many folks use when sending inane messages about their immediate thoughts or whereabouts.
During the ensuing confusion of my explaining this to Karl, he attempted to pass off his confusion by saying something like, "I began to get lost when past participles were introduced." This, of course, send the party crowd into a tizzy...not because they were aghast at his lack of knowledge in the participial arena but that he, having been out of school for quite some time, would remember such a construction existed! As the resident grammar geek, I found myself under the scrutiny of all while I attempted to dislodge the memory from Karl's mind, clearly making the distinction among both present and pst participles and their lookalike(in some cases) the gerund.
I realize that, at this point, you are bemoaning the fact that YOU were not invited to this party to engage in such stimulatingly erudite discourse. But, wait! There's MORE! (Billy Mays here) Later when the karaoke got going, we were all rollicking to the theme song from "Gilligan's Island" (well, humming the more obscure parts). And of course, you are now asking yourself, "What the hell is rambling on about?" This is all about being an anachronism.
Though I was at a party until almost midnight, it wasn't a birthday bash even though I, personally, was celebrating one. We were all about the same age, most of us attended parochial grade schools "back in the day" and were subjected to learning things like past participles. We lamented the fact that today's students wouldn't know a participle even if 50 Cent used one in every line. Sadly, though, I really care that I know about them. I think it makes me a more complete (though somewhat maladjusted) person, and I wish that modern students cared enough to use the language to its greatest beauty. Mind you, I see students butcher the written word every day so I'm in the front lines of keeping language alive.
Language that's fading fast into the uselessness evidenced by "RU OK? LOL, IDK!"
It's not just participles that are becoming anachronistic.