The 'Information Age' and society as a Borg collective.
No, I'm not some kind of Star Trek geek, but I just don't get it. At what point in time did we decide, as human beings, that we cannot get along in life without being somehow electronically tethered to a bunch of other people? A couple of cases in point:
I've been eavesdropping on people's cell phone conversations. I figure, hey, if they care so little about privacy that they are going to babble into a little plastic device while I'm trying to watch a movie or enjoy what little peace and quiet I'm afforded then I'm well within my rights to listen to their idiotic mouth-squirts. And you know what, 99% of the conversations I've heard are 100% shit, falling roughly into one of the two categories below:
Absolute Shit
The overwhelming majority of spoken language, these are those conversations that are complete and utter fluff - as base, shallow, and irrelevant as humanly imaginable. The kind where if I was one of the conversants I would be forced to scream "Who gives a fuck?" at the top of my lungs.
Shit that could Wait Until Later
This is really the most annoying. If you see this same person every single day, why is it neccesary to call him in the middle of a Monday morning meeting to ask him what he's freaking doing on Saturday? Or to ask him if he can do something when he gets home, when you're also going to be home at that time? Why not just shut your silly skull-cave until you see him again?
Cell phones are great as emergency devices, for long trips away from home, or if you're some kind of executive that has to be reachable at any given time day or night. Or maybe a Viking. I've got one too somewhere, currently serving the valuable function of collecting dust or being a paperweight. But they are toys now. They need to be made insanely expensive again, or we need to discover and inject everyone with some kind of mutant gene that slowly degrades one's voice box in response to vibration so that people are limited to a set number of words they can speak in a lifetime.
People are amazed that I don't carry one of these damn things around. I've gotten along just fine for a few decades without one and don't see my world collapsing because I don't use one now. If you want to get a hold of me, call my house. If no one answers:
a) I'm not home and am probably doing something either more constructive or more amusing than listening to your verbal diarrhea.
or
b) I am home, but just don't want to talk to your ass.
People seem to have forgotten the simultaneously inalienable and enjoyable right to be simply left the hell alone. You honestly don't need someone giving you an aural enema every waking hour to be happy. Trust me on this.
Oh yeah, another case: The instant messenger programs. These are fine, but I just don't get the "random chat" thing. I used to get these when I was on ICQ. Some absolutely random person in fucking Belize or something pops up:
"Hi! Wanna chat?"
I'm like, "Who the hell are you, and why in God's name would I want to waste precious minutes of my life babbling to some nameless, faceless person from who-knows-where doing Christ-knows-what and who is probably an asshole to boot? Hell, I could be wasting the same amount of time typing stupid crap in some equally stupid blog that a whole bunch of nameless, faceless people are never going to read instead!"
Maybe I'm just anti-social.
I've been eavesdropping on people's cell phone conversations. I figure, hey, if they care so little about privacy that they are going to babble into a little plastic device while I'm trying to watch a movie or enjoy what little peace and quiet I'm afforded then I'm well within my rights to listen to their idiotic mouth-squirts. And you know what, 99% of the conversations I've heard are 100% shit, falling roughly into one of the two categories below:
Absolute Shit
The overwhelming majority of spoken language, these are those conversations that are complete and utter fluff - as base, shallow, and irrelevant as humanly imaginable. The kind where if I was one of the conversants I would be forced to scream "Who gives a fuck?" at the top of my lungs.
Shit that could Wait Until Later
This is really the most annoying. If you see this same person every single day, why is it neccesary to call him in the middle of a Monday morning meeting to ask him what he's freaking doing on Saturday? Or to ask him if he can do something when he gets home, when you're also going to be home at that time? Why not just shut your silly skull-cave until you see him again?
Cell phones are great as emergency devices, for long trips away from home, or if you're some kind of executive that has to be reachable at any given time day or night. Or maybe a Viking. I've got one too somewhere, currently serving the valuable function of collecting dust or being a paperweight. But they are toys now. They need to be made insanely expensive again, or we need to discover and inject everyone with some kind of mutant gene that slowly degrades one's voice box in response to vibration so that people are limited to a set number of words they can speak in a lifetime.
People are amazed that I don't carry one of these damn things around. I've gotten along just fine for a few decades without one and don't see my world collapsing because I don't use one now. If you want to get a hold of me, call my house. If no one answers:
a) I'm not home and am probably doing something either more constructive or more amusing than listening to your verbal diarrhea.
or
b) I am home, but just don't want to talk to your ass.
People seem to have forgotten the simultaneously inalienable and enjoyable right to be simply left the hell alone. You honestly don't need someone giving you an aural enema every waking hour to be happy. Trust me on this.
Oh yeah, another case: The instant messenger programs. These are fine, but I just don't get the "random chat" thing. I used to get these when I was on ICQ. Some absolutely random person in fucking Belize or something pops up:
"Hi! Wanna chat?"
I'm like, "Who the hell are you, and why in God's name would I want to waste precious minutes of my life babbling to some nameless, faceless person from who-knows-where doing Christ-knows-what and who is probably an asshole to boot? Hell, I could be wasting the same amount of time typing stupid crap in some equally stupid blog that a whole bunch of nameless, faceless people are never going to read instead!"
Maybe I'm just anti-social.
posted by Soulend at 5:26 AM
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