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Under the clever moniker of "social networking," those who would make money off the unwitting masses are reaping billions of dollars. In the days of "It's all about YOU," what could be more sinister than making a person feel important by ironically diluting their intimacy for large sums of money?
My wife and I have noticed the ever-increasing incidence of people tinkering with their so-called smart phones while participating in a physically face-to-face social gathering. For example, over the holidays, there were several people (not all of them young) who believed they were successfully carrying on conversations with those in the room and simultaneously with those on their phones. They were wrong. A conversation, or at least a truly satisfying one, involves talking and listening, not just making oh-so-clever sound-bite commentary to as many people as possible at the same time. Does a performer truly care what the audience has to say? Imagine for a moment what it means to be "plugged into" all your friends, all the time. No matter where you go, you bring your entire crowd of five hundred friends with you. Any seasoned party host will tell you that it's a fine line to walk when you're trying to keep everyone happy and leave no one out. You can't interact intimately with one individual during the process, otherwise other partygoers will feel left out. Where does the ego amplification come in? When people think they're having decent conversations with not only the person in front of them, but also simultaneously with everyone in their friends list, what they're actually doing is becoming the center of attention (or at least it feels that way). Having lower quality conversations with more people is not the best way to maintain genuine friendships. Human beings, in a normal state, want to be wanted. They want to be interesting to others, they want to be heard. What better way to address this need than to provide the attention of others on electronic tap, twenty-four hours a day? Okay Mr. Techno-Scrooge, what's wrong with that? A handful of manipulative human beings are getting insanely rich by abusing the natural inclination of humans to be heard and understood. They do this knowingly, by the way. Don't ever imagine that it's just unfortunate fallout from a technological "blessing." How about you tell me what's wrong with being used like that? In terms of wanting to be heard, how is this blog any different than using a smart phone? Well, this blog costs me nothing but time to type, and as far as I know, the people who read it are getting a bit more from it than the following text, culled from textsfromlastnight.com: I have discovered my latent superpower. If a friend is dating a bi chick they will inevitably try and talk me into a threesome. |