It usually starts out relatively simple. Someone on Facebook will post a video clip of something and then say: “OMG you’ve got to see this!” And...I’ll pass right on by. Then another person completely unrelated to the first person will post the same video and say: “Brilliant!” And, again, I’ll pass right on by. Within the next few hours, though, it will spring up more and more. This time from another person. Or Huffington Post or even a friend of a friend’s friend and it’ll be: “So true!! Take a look at this!” And, finally, as if having to go to the dentist – I will click on the video to watch it. Partly because I want to see what all the fuss is about and partly because I don’t want to be the one person to NOT watch it and feel like I’m missing out on something AMAAAAAAzing!
This happened this week with a video called “Look Up.” This music video is kinda “rapped” by a
British Guy (and when I say rapped by a British guy – I mean he just rhymes
really really slowly – referred to as spoken word poetry or, as I like to call
it: White People Rapping. And the fact that he rhymes really slowly it is
as if he’s talking to someone who won’t GET IT). The plot of
the video takes to task all of us people who don’t look up from our
devices. Our computers. Our laptops.
Our smartphones, etc.
Of course the irony being that many people watching this
video and posting it on Facebook are watching it on their cell phone or their
lap top or other device. And the other
irony is that the technology that this song is dissing is the same technology
that is, probably, going to make the video makers quite a lot of money.
Destroying your chance for a relationship? Maybe?
Now, I don’t want to be too hard on the message here as it’s
a good one and the story the video tells is about a young man who is looking
for an address. Instead of using a
smartphone, he’s going completely old skool and using paper. Because his handwriting is terrible (or
something) he has to ask a hot gal passersby for information. Three minutes later they’ve lived a full and
wonderful life with marriage-child-death-love-happiness-sadness, etc. Then the twist shows him using, not a
scratched on piece of paper but a cell phone and, sadly, she just walks on by
and they don’t “connect” neither spiritually, physically, sexually or whatnot
(ESPECIALLY not whatnot!). And then the
British guy tells us again that we need to ‘LOOK UP!’ Okay, I GET IT. Put the damn phone
(laptop/smart-phone/cell-phone/GPS/tablet/Kindle) down and connect with the
world around you.
It's hard to hold flowers on your wedding day, if you're holding a cell phone.
But here’s the rub...the overall subtext of the video is
that we are becoming less social in our world of social media (I think he
actually “raps/rhymes” about that). That
it’s pushing us farther and farther away from true connections. But is it?
These are just electronic devices bent on destroying your social life.
I have a friend who refuses to use any and all types of
social media. Be it Twitter or Facebook
or Snapchat or MySpace or... He refuses
to have a cell phone or a tablet. His
answer is not that he wants to connect with people face-to-face but that he
doesn’t want the government tracking his every move. And that’s a legitimate concern. But, he’s telling me all this on a
computer. Which makes me assume that when
the first books were published there was someone who was like: “Hortence!
Jedediah hath postponed his gathering of wood and is just partaking in
READING! Does he not knoweth that
reading will lead to evil? Certainly it
can’t lead to anything good, unless, of course, it’s the Bible!”
Books, just a downward spiral to loneliness and depression.
And then, when the radio was invented and placed in every
home, I could see furrow-browed parents lamenting: “Doris, Elmer Junior is on to his fifth hour
of listening to the RCA radio. He needs
to go outside and play, I swear that kid isn’t going to accomplish much
listening to “The Shadow” and “Edgar Bergin and Charlie McCarthy” all day.”
Oh, yeah. You know she died old and alone with only her 52 cats, all because of that damn radio.
Certainly, we knew how the TV turned out. Parents around the country frustrated at the
box. Calling it the “boob tube,” it was
turning us all into couch potatoes – festering starches growing directly into
the couch like some sub-human mutant half-human/half-couch/all-potato hybrid
freak. Hell, we even ate TV
dinners. Certainly our ability to
interact with others was going to suffer greatly.
The downfall of society as we know it. No one will interact with anyone again...EVER!
But...wait for it...the PC was just on the horizon – but
before that it was the Nintendo and Atari and gaming systems solely designed to
turn us into more freakish bits of nature – hiding us in our rooms like Golum,
calling our Super Mario Cartridge “Precious.” Certainly we weren’t going to interact with
people, right? Certainly we were going
to just lock ourselves in our rooms and forget to be social...right?
Yeah, they may be connecting now, but his love for Pong will be too much for her...
Since I grew up in an age where phones had cords and this
rotating thing you actually had to rotate to call someone and have merged,
semi-successfully into the world of PC’s and smartphones and gaming systems
(I’ve had, over my years an Atari Pinball Game, a Nintendo 8-Bit System, an
Atari 5200, Playstations 2 and 3,
three pinball machines and a handful of electronic devices from Gameboys to
Coleco “football” – seriously just red LED dots) – I think I can consider
myself learned (note, I didn’t say expert).
Seriously. Red dots. And it was fun.
So where has this world of Social Media taken me? Over the past couple years I’ve been able to
re-connect with people I, seriously, thought I would never connect with
again. Richard, my mentor. Taso, my other mentor. Mike who I bullied in High School – finally
got a chance to apologize. Jeff, a high
school buddy, who I found out had married his partner and is very happy. Monika, the girl I had a total crush on in
Jr. High School. Still seeing her photo
makes my heart skip a beat. And so many
others: good friends from my past,
church friends, writer friends, acting friends.
Certainly you can call me crazy and say that these “relationships” don’t
amount to much in the grand scheme of things.
And I would tell you to kiss my a**.
It’s certainly far more than me just wondering quietly how so-and-so is
doing, when I can see what they had for lunch...or read their political views.
It's all this thing's fault no one connects anymore.
And what of the outpourings of support I read when someone’s
pet or parent has just died? Or the
support we give to performances that we’ve seen or photos of someone’s garden
or when someone posts that they’ve lost 50 pounds?
But, I know what you’re asking: Aren’t there some serious issues at play
here? Well, I would assume that there
are some serious issues when the electronic device starts to take over some
aspect of one’s existence. I know I
became a bit panicked the other day when I realized I left my phone at home
when I went to get Miriam from her work.
And, yes, I’d like to see studies done when it comes to those who are
extremely introverted or extroverted and how they connect and use electronic
devices. But, honestly, I see no real sustained
issue here. So what, that when I look up
on the bus and see that most of the people are staring at a device. 10 years ago I looked up on the bus and most
people were staring at a book...and we seemed to go through that stage okay.
Looking at the video it implies, in some way, that if we don’t
stop looking at a device we’ll never find love.
I only have to look so far as my friend Shannon’s facebook page (and the
photos of her handsome husband and beautiful daughter) to see how connecting
through a computer can work. She met her
husband through an on-line dating site and, just like the video, they looked up
(probably at a computer screen) and got married and had a child and this has
been years ago now. Who’s to say that
you can’t make a “love-connection” through a screen as opposed to accosting
someone on the street because your 55th ave. looks like 53rd
ave?
Or this thing's fault...
I don’t fear that Social Media is keeping us away from connecting
with other people. I just see Social
Media as connecting in a DIFFERENT way with other people. Like the examples I gave above, there is a
beauty about connecting – even if just for a moment, just to think about
another person, just to relate to someone’s struggle. That’s connecting. And, besides, until they make a computer or a
tablet or smart phone that has sex with you and can cuddle with you at night, hold your hand, cry on your shoulder
and make you feel like you’re the greatest person in the whole wide world...I
wouldn’t worry. Still...they might have
an app for that.
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