The other day my friend Tj sent this picture to me:
Now, I’ll admit that I did laugh when I first saw it, but
then a notion entered my mind.
It may have been my pot-rattled brain thinking into things a
little too much, but at that moment I thought to myself:
“Holy shit, this is
on the internet... which means anyone could see it.”
A child’s first thoughts on Abraham Lincoln could very well
be that he endorsed the idea, that if one was indeed brave enough, that any
plausible item could be used as a dildo.
Now when I was a kid, I had no idea what a dildo was, it wasn’t
even in my vocabulary. But kids these days are a little different. I’m sure
that they know what dildos are the moment they are cognizant enough to realize
that you can look up anything on the internet.
I suppose the point that I’m trying to make here, is that
children these days are born connected and that pop culture is going to ruin us
as people.
People no longer have to wait to learn about something or
ask someone else who knows, they can immediately seek out the knowledge
themselves. Which, in theory, is an incredible idea. It’s instantly gratifying:
something as people we have grown even more accustomed too with our iPads and
smartphones.
I myself own an iPhone, a Macbook and do at times find
myself screaming at a small plastic box full of electronics because it’s
refused to let me connect to the World Wide Web wirelessly.
But, I feel my generation, some of the last to be born
un-connected, were very lucky.
We, as children, grew up with these new technologies coming
into our lives.
I remember first using a computer around the time I was in
kindergarten.
I wasn’t crying to crush the latest version of some time
consuming application game, or using it to watch some garbage reality television
show on the way to the store.
I was selecting different shapes and sizes to make monster
caterpillars, which would then print out, in black and white, onto a piece of
plain white paper.
This process never really sunk in with me.
I made things on the screen, then they were on paper. It was
that simple, it was instant and my horrific caterpillars were very gratifying.
From that moment on it was an inevitable climb up a
technological hill.
Our “on to the next” mentality is at an all time high, can
we push it anymore?
As a connected world, we move through things so quickly it’s
alarming.
We can go from Abe and dildos to Miley and her terrible fucking
presence at the swipe of a finger.
We can see what Kimye is up to and then hate-like all that person's photos.
Snap a few selfies and post them on various online social outlets.
But do we really need to be able to?
I feel that older generations were able to take more time
and appreciate the world around them, and these days we only ask “What’s
next?”
These may just be the rantings of a reclusive, old souled 24
year old, but for god sake’s people why can’t you appreciate the real world in
which we live and stop fawning over celebrities and memes?
Applications such as Vine fully endorse the antics of the
maniacs that are consumed by them.
Download the app and look at the popular page, you’ll see
the same 15 people or the hottest “new vine thing”.
These 6 second skits and ideas are taken on in mass one day,
and easily discarded the next.
Vine, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are a scrambling rat
race of likes, reposts and followers.
I suppose I’m not one to talk, as I’m on all of the above
mentioned apps, but as an observationalist, as well as a blogger and someone who realizes the trauma
social media is causing our minds and souls, you can fucking suck it. I’m
trying to make a damn point here.
Did I ever think that posting my caterpillar monster on the
internet would get me 1000 likes and a cult following? No.
Social media is the downfall of human beings, as actual
living people.
Why be who we are, when we can be who we want people to see?
We can be funny or attractive if we say the right things or
take the right picture, that’s what the internet has taught us, and will
continue to teach many generations to come.
This is very scattered and very unorganized, but this issue
is something that causes me to become flustered. Should it be? Probably not,
but as an observer of human nature and condition, I must say that I am greatly
concerned to see the technologies that unfold in my lifetime.
I will be the old man trying to properly operate my hover
shoes.
I will be the decrepit, senile bastard mumbling to himself
about “the times when you had to pull your phone out of your pocket to view and
reply to all your text messages,” or “still
having to actually answer the door or go to the restaurant to pick up pizza.”
But it makes me happy to know that there will be a
generation of crotchety old fuckers right along side me cursing this “goddamned
technology.”
One final request:
That you please take the time to go outside and do something in the sun? Before there's an app for that too.
PS
These rantings are not the original rantings I had in mind.
I was going to make a case on the forseeable doom that our children and
children’s children face in the wake of this terrible beast, that we call being
connected. I even changed ideas mid writing and didn’t even care to go back and
fix them. Instead I took this moment to give you my thoughts (albeit, sometimes
hyprocritical) view on people and social media.
