For the last few years I have become increasingly leery of technology's growing take over of our lives. The current downward spiral began with the iphone and it's Star Trek super-transporter-phaser-shield powers. People had already been texting like crazy on phones, but the iphone take over is when EVERYONE suddenly had a phone in their hand at all times. In the car, at lunch, at the school play, in church, at the doctor's office, in the elevator: Hey, you, douche bag in the produce aisle, I don't care that your friend is going Brazilian so either learn to talk softer on the phone or hang up.
Listen, if you can't sit and have a nice lunch without checking your texts or e-mails then your ass better be President Obama because that is the only person I will accept cannot go an hour without checking his phone. And people, stop with the text lingo, just stop. Before this texhonics came along the U.S. was already way behind in math, science, reading, and writing. Now, we are raising a crop of citizens that think this is a complete sentence: u r 2 ha ha ha lmao lol jksdfjierje. I hate you lol.
Then overnight it seemed everyone was tweeting, twatting, twucking on Twitter. I signed up, but could never figure out how to make it work. Boy, am I glad I am too stupid to set up a Twitter account as I have witnessed America's devolution through soundbites from the most famous to the most sorry of creatures. My complaint about Twitter is that people are fools. Just take a gander at, I don't know, umm, Kirstie Alley's Twitter. Twitter gives everybody a platform for whatever they have to say and everybody should not have a platform.
And then there's Facebook, FB to the devoted. Or, as I like to call it, the beginning of the Tribulation. Yes, I once sang the virtues of FB until I realized that it is actually causing the divorce rate in our country to rise, kids to get involved with unsavory people, and boring people to suffer under the delusion they are interesting. Another problem I have with FB is that it is everywhere! I go to CNN to check on Charlie Sheen and there's FB, telling me what CNN stories my friends like! That is frigging creepy. FB is stalking me.
So, you can see my attitude toward technology has been souring slowly, but surely. Until, until, I realized the problem isn't technology, it's people! People can't handle technology. It takes about half a minute for someone to become addicted to tweets, FB, texts, and time travel. Yes, time travel. People get on FB and start reconnecting with high school pals and suddenly they're in 1988 with their pink and green polo shirt, hammer pants and a Footloose sound track blasting on their boom box. Time travel is dangerous. It plays tricks on your mind. You'll start to think those really were the good old days and the present is just a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and a big old pain in the ass. Next thing you know, you're leaving your husband for some high school has-been you think is so rad. Human beings cannot handle time travel.
I blame the ego. Most people, apparently, just want to be heard. They want to be heard when they have a pancake for breakfast, when they miss their exit cause they're texting LOL, when it's TGIF. Ugh. Some FB "friends" of mine have posted so often and are so mind numbingly boring that I had to hide their posts. It was just too much. And then I just stopped getting on FB, but for the occasional check-in, because it was all too much.
Don't get me wrong. I see the virtues of FB-- it allows me to stay in touch easier with family and real friends than I would without it. But I can handle it. I appreciate the convenience of my iphone-- texting, e-mail, music, pap smear, all in one. But I sat through a lovely lunch at La Duni yesterday and did not touch my phone one time. Handled. It. And, yes, I think enough of my opinions to write this blog, but these words blast off into anonymous space and are not ejaculated all over FB. In other words, I can handle it. I time traveled and saw the past exactly how it was- no where near as good as now. Handling it.
So, are you handling technology or is technology handling you?
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