chronically offline: smartphone bad.

an opinion piece by sundayroastonline.

we weren't meant to own computers- we weren't meant to go beyond whatever bubble we lived in. we weren't meant to be able to instantly communicate with someone at the speed of sound. we weren't meant to be able to have access to all of this information at once.

i really think this is why the world is so fucked.

whenever i ask someone out in person, they'll say that they want to "get to know me better" before they go on a date. now, i understand why someone would wanna get to know someone they met online before meeting up- sure, there's more fear there. but in person?- if i ask you out in person then i am very sorry but the first date is the getting to know eachother. ive had so many people cut it off before the first date happens because they didn't like how i texted. how are we supposed to get to know eachother through text? i believe you can't ever truly know someone over text.

i hate texting. i hate texting. i fucking hate texting. everyone has too much time to think, including and especially me. case in point, "risky texts," there is no such thing as a risky sentence, but there is such thing as a risky text. i am much more confident in what i say in person, why wouldn't i be?- i said it. if i send a text, the words stay on the screen- and the longer i look at said words on screen, the less sure i am of them. when i send a risky text i oftentimes have to fling my phone across the room to stop myself from reconsidering. the last risky text i sent, i was in public; therefore not a space in which i could fling my phone- i up and left the room, then.

calls are only a little bit better, i often find myself on calls that go a little bit too long; especially with people i'm dating, we will just sit there and say nothing, and the chemistry i feel with them in person is negligible- i can't think of anything to say. do i need to say anything?- why can't i think of anything to say? with friends it's fine- i love a short, to the point call. like- hey, how are you, meet you in ten- perfect. i've gotten to the point where if someone's speaking too long i'll cut them off- i’m in the car trying to listen to my music right now; there's a very good reason i don't listen to podcasts in my car and that's because i value my quiet, not having some blokes voice in my ear time- i would never cut off a friend in person, but how we treat eachother through a screen is the wild west.

i think of a time before i was born- one where you could stick your thumb up on the side of the road to get a ride, one where you'd set a date and meet them on that date; wherein you would get to know eachother in a meaningful way. a time in which, during arguments about fictional characters, no one brought up a webpage of an ai robot saying that they were right. an age wherein we knew exactly what we thought we needed to know- i'm not going to pretend life is worse now, i'm not an idiot. but, what i will say is, things were much simpler then- at least in terms of inter-personal relations; i just wish we weren't so tied up in the fake problems that come with having supercomputers in our pockets.

-offline.

listen to the playlist:

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