I took the metro train the other day. A strange practice to do int he high paced car culture world of California. But a thing that struck me the most about all of it is that everyone was face down in to their phones looking to converse with the strangers on the internet instead of the strangers sitting right next to them.
It made me wonder about all those complaints that people just don't interact anymore and just put themselves into their own echo chamber of a social circle, so that their opinions are just re-enforced instead of questioned and evolved.
Then again, do you really want to be that annoying guy on the fucking train who keeps trying to talk to you while you're just trying to check your fucking emails? Fuck that guy. Ugh, Get the hint, fucker, I don't want to talk to you right now!
It really does seem that the complaint by strangers and old folks is that everyone is on their goddamn phone and not socializing at all with the world around them. Man, I bet the folks from the past had a better way to be social while in public places and actually conversed with one another.
Centennials, Am I right?
Look, it must have been annoying as fuck back then as well. Papers rustling constantly making your reading on a bumpy train even much more difficult and the idiot next to you keeps hitting you in the face with his paper page turning. And I can't forget to bring up the one fucker who didn't buy and bring his own paper on the train who is just so hard up trying to share yours - "Can I borrow your sports section?"
Then again, look at the picture and tell me what you notice more - the answer is is simply that the women in the photo are just flat out not allowed to read at all. Oh wait, no. One is reading a romance novel. Good for her, she must be getting ideas for her husband when she gets home from secretary work.
The photo does seem to predict and cement the theory that every complaint about the effects of 20th-21st century technology seems to be the same ones said about the creation of anything by the generation before the one who created it. I'm pretty sure Greek philosophers complained about this newfangled "writing" thing making people just far too lazy because they wouldn't have to memorize everything anymore.
Anyhow, back to forced conversations. I don't seem to run into "Annoying public transportation conversationalist who doesn't fucking get that I want to be alone in my thoughts" nearly as much as I used to. Mainly because I don't use public transportation all that much. But maybe smartphones have finally killed them off for good. Just think - future generations won't understand what we all had to suffer through.
Then again, there's zones that you are just not safe. On an airplane, the moment they tell you to put your cell phone away or put it into "airplane mode", is when the cue to ask what book you're reading or what you're watching or where you are from comes out. I don't want to hear about your stupid life story all that much, to be honest, and I don't want to know that you're going to visit relatives. I want to sit here in silence, thanks.
It sort of makes me want to just say the most reprehensible shit possible to just insult them and get them to think bad of me and not talk to me anymore. It's just not a place for talking. Just because we are sitting next to each other doesn't mean I want to hear what you have to say. I honestly would just rather make odd eye contact with you. That is if my face isn't buried in a cell phone, ya know.
I think it may be because we are just conditioned to treat anyone talking to you on the street as someone trying to run a scam on you. It's like people who talk to you in the bathroom at work or in public. Why are you doing this and what scam are you trying to run on me?
And you know why that's my fear. Because guess what, life is just a big pyramid scam since the time it was created. We're just getting in on the entry level so we're all fucked beyond all belief. Yup, sorry to break that news on you.
Finally, can I just say one thing. We probably just look down at our screens because we just don't want to look up and see the man urinating in the corner or furiously masturbating. This is the common place public transportation issues that we have to deal with these days. I don't want to acknowledge the man who is making racially charged statements at the top of their lungs. Can I just escape into the world of fake and filtered happiness of instagram for a second?
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