The Longer Ones

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Screens

"Alexa play some Hozier"
"Hey Siri, what's the weather?"
"Guys stop looking at your phone"
"I wish I had that iPad"
"When the sun end of the world comes, that's what we'll do... We'll light up the sky with tiny glowing screens"

TECH! TECH! TECH! It's everywhere, it's our closest friend, honestly it's my best friend. You can't live your days without seeing at least one and as much as they affect our lives, they also affect the relationship of the people we care about.

Before I continue I'd like to say that I talked to an old dude about this today, so I'm pretty sure there's something good in here. He (that one old dude) made fun of me errrr my generation because he said that "y'all have the attention span of a goldfish." And I guess he's sorta right but it's not really our fault. One way to spin his quote positively is by calling ourselves "technology native." We're the first generation to grow up with technology and it causes us to adapt with new equipment. But it wasn't always good...

By being able to understand technology, we became more fast-paced. New inventions and new trends happen so fast and to fit in, we desperately tried to stay on top of all of them... And that's exhausting. No wonder our attention span is like a goldfish... More new things pop up, and to keep track we only look at them if they're entertaining to us.

I guess that's okay... It influenced us to learn about the world and trends to keep up, until... it affected us. First off with how we see ourselves. So we're only happy once we're caught up? That doesn't make sense. That's like feeling happiness only at the end of a goal. After we finish a goal, we set up another one, after we catch up to a trend, another one follows. At this pace, we put our happiness beyond the cognitive horizon... we set ourselves up to never feel happiness... can't we just be happy with what we have now? With what we're doing now?

Next. What did technology force us to do? Like each passing trend, we treated our friends and family like entertainment. We forced ourselves to become performers so that we can always entertain our wives and our husbands and our friends and our superiors and it doesn't end. We put on a smile, we act professional, we act happy to please the people around us. Even when I try not to pander to my audience, it happens anyway... We perform constantly to each other, and when we're bored we look for another performer.
.
.
This is hell.
Like actually hell. It's exhausting and it hurts and it's not real and worst of all that's not how you find a friend. A friend isn't there for just the good and happy times... they're there almost all the time. To deal with your crap and to deal with your joys. That's what friends do isn't it? So why do we keep abandoning them so often?

... I guess it's like those other tiny glowing screens. When I don't like or enjoy you anymore, I'll just swipe left.

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