Happy to read you guys are fighting the good fight! I love the story about printing the barcode, because it is a way of working around the use of a (smart)phone in a situation where there is really no need for one. It has no added value. I honestly think this can be said for almost everything you use your smartphone for.
The smartphone has entered my life through my new job and I fucking hate the fact that I'm constantly checking my phone for messages. I'm not blaming the device, because it is me who is reaching for the thing, craving some kind of brain stimulation, some form of attention/connection. Yes, I am a weak willed victim, but I am pretty sure most of us are even though we like to tell ourselves differently.
25 years ago life was just fine without mobile phones. In some ways it was better. Again, it's a taboo to say this, but anyone with half a brain should be able to see that it ain't all progress all the time. That kids today can't imagine a life without a smartphone and consider this a good thing, a quality even, is absolutely insane. It is a celebration of dependency.
At our age it is probably a good thing to be laughed at by 25 year olds. What the fuck do they know?
I try to refrain from using contemporary slang, FOMO being a perfect example, but clearly we are all afraid of missing out. We're social beings, wanting to be part of something, wanting to belong. That's how we're wired. I don't like that side of myself, but it is there. One of the reasons I never went onto Facebook was that I was curious to see how much of an outcast it would make me. If it would go too far, I could still get on board. That never happened though. You don't know what you miss out on unless somebody tells you. Ignorance is bliss in that sense.
Again, there is no need for social media when you've got communication networks of your own. The irony is that a lot of those have been destroyed through the rise of social media. Cultures have been eroded or completely disappeared, making it harder to find something to belong to. In that sense we're witnessing a self fulfilling prophecy. By saying we need social media, smartphones and the internet, we need them more and more. We're doing this to ourselves.
I was raised on Maximum Rock 'n Roll, which was extreme in its stance against major labels and the corporate world. Maybe things ain't as black and white as they were drawn in MRR's pages, but I read the magazine religiously for some years and felt part of a culture that I tried to participate in. A lot of that seems gone now.
Social media connects people in one way, but disconnects in another. When you meet someone in the streets and have a conversation, that is completely different than through typing messages. I think communicating through a video call is already different from meeting someone in person. I'd go even further and say meeting someone coincidentally is nicer than having conversation over a scheduled dinner, but that might just be me. A lot of things including interaction with people just bore me senseless. Things often strike me as shallow and extremely predictable, but you could argue that's a personal defect.
And yeah, the internet has destroyed the thrill of the hunt. That's not the internet as a phenomenon, but the shape it has now. It seems like the www catered to niches in a completely different way 20 years ago than it does now. Enter an analysis of late stage capitalism here.
