Too many carrots will turn you orange.
Ya know what I really miss? Good old-fashioned human interaction. Remember when we used to call our friends to hang out… and then actually hang out? I do, although I’ll admit it’s becoming a distant memory. Some loneliness is expected nearing 30, but I didn’t anticipate that my social life would take a nose-dive as early as it did. Not thinking twice about it I dredged on through my mid 20s. We all got busy, we stopped hanging out at bars, most of went back to college, and a few of us beat the odds, finished and got a career. A small number of unsuspecting old party pals had kids. WEIRD. After calculating for lost hangouts based on the known factors, something still wasn’t adding up. But I chalked it up to other variables like living in remote areas or having mismatching schedules. During all this early-onset loneliness I was still consistently discussing potential plans with living, breathing, human flesh… Funny how the best laid plans go awry.
At some point I decided it would be a great idea to get a masters degree in one of the lowest paid professions on earth, social work. As I write this I’m registering for my final semester. Um, yay? I’m crazy busy, and I mean, irresponsibly so. I own a house, married, part time job, 21 hours a week of unpaid internship, full time graduate course load, 2 dogs and a cat, and did I mention I have an up to 2 hour commute one way? At what point did I actually think I’d have time to get together, kick back with a few chums, and shoot the shit? Well, turns out I do have time; it’s everyone else that sucks. Want to know why? Because I make the time, because friends are important to me. Then I got kinda-sorta angry. Why in the hell am I the only idiot still trying to not be a hermit just because I’m nearly 30?
I’ll tell you why… THE INTERNET.
The internet has single handedly ruined human interaction. And I hate it for that. But damn, the internet has done incalculable amounts of good for the world! The “information age” has allowed otherwise remote third world countries to flourish, it has fueled ground breaking research, particularly in medicine, information dissemination of pivotal news (the few unbiased sources that can still be called that and actually discuss world events and not celebrity gossip) has been catapulted into mainstream discussions, and has enhanced education in priceless ways. How could I hate such a force of progress? Because it’s made the human race a bunch of techno-zombies. Just like mom said, too much of a good thing is bad. Like too many carrots can turn you orange, or in our sad culture, so can too much fake tanning. A part of me daydreams about living in the agrarian age sometimes. The target of my anger is the behemoth, social media. Surprising, right? I’m quickly realizing that the topic of technology distorting our relationships with literally everything around us that we come into contact with is a more popular idea than I originally anticipated. It’s not that far fetched so just hear me out.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman written in 1985 (as in like the year I was born) warned about just this. Postman is a pretty prolific writer and I won’t attempt to summate his work, so just do yourself a favor and read it. This tidbit should give you a well-rounded idea though, “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.” Otherwise the long and short describes how we are completely and totally screwing ourselves with a constant regenerating need for novelty and excitement. Techno-zombies with ADHD… Brilliant idea.
It’s not that this was the intended purpose of technology’s information dissemination, but the information has lost its value. The news would be kinda boring without makeup slathered pretty ladies and epic intro and outro music. Reality shows psychologically trick us into believing we really all can be insta-celebs or subconsciously alter our desires for any level of privacy. I’m starting to believe the real world version of Idiocracy is actually happening. Twelve-year-old girls desire to be half naked tabloid news and boys are evolving into bravado cavemen. These fads don’t seem to be a tween phase that goes away either. Each sex or age group and religious or political affiliation are all blaming each other for the devolution of our culture (or what’s left of it). We’ve Huxlied ourselves folks.
Ironically I ended up reading Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, the sequel to the famed Emotional Intelligence immediately following the Postman book. This guy is a brilliant psychologist that studies the brain in relation to behavior. If you don’t know who this dude is either, get yourself on Amazon, stat. I’m only about half way through thanks to post-midterm mind fry. Yet it only took me to the halfway-point to feel a flood of emotions that leave me relieved that I’m not the only one thinking something is really wrong with how we go about human interaction these days. Goleman states, “To the extent that technology absorbs people in a virtual reality, it deadens them to those that are actually nearby. The resulting social autism adds to the ongoing list of unintended human consequences of the continuing invasion of technology into our daily lives.” Social autism… Ding-ding-ding! My aging, uncool, heart did a little flutter. It wanted to do a backflip, but let’s be honest my knees are getting bad.
We’re all entitled to some healthy narcissism. But, let’s be real here, all of you and including myself are 100% guilty of going a little overboard on the internet narcissism. Social media has allowed us to make mini webpages made by us, for us, and dedicated in our honor for all the caring citizens of the world to give a shit. Beyond our own egotistical relationship with technology is how it has affected how we interact with one another. Think about this scenario for just a minute: A long, long time ago in a land far, far away, when we wanted to hang out with a friend, how did you go about it? You called them, right? Now we go to whatever social media is popular at the time and put out a public beacon of our loneliness and sit back and wait for others to respond. No matter how you approach it, when you want to hang and no one else can, it just plain sucks. The difference lies in whether we broadcast our needs via candle or a lighthouse. But seriously, how annoying is it that people who you know can’t hang out like your “hang out with me please” post?
So let’s say you finally get to hang out with that bud you made loose internet plans with. When was the last time you two actually talked, like with voices? How kinda-sorta awkward is your hang out? How much are you on your phones updating your mundane hang out in your mundane place for the 500 people from high school you kinda-sorta remember on your friends list to pretend to care about? I’m all about creating a “phones off during human interaction” law. Next I’ll be screaming at children to get off my lawn. We tell people happy birthday on a wall, we tag friends in posts telling them we love and miss them, we give condolences on the fucking internet people… Where is the value in that? What ego beast are you feeding in letting the world know you’re hanging out doing every day people things or telling someone you probably would have lost contact with over a decade ago if it weren’t for social media that you’re “so incredibly sorry about their loss.” My absolute favorite is the reply; “I’m always a phone call away.” Ya know what takes time and energy? A phone call, hell I’ll give an award to a late 20-something that sends snail mail cards. Want to know what takes little to no effort, assuming you have 4G? Conversing via the cold, dead, black hole that is the internet. I can’t stress the lack of value in social media enough… I want to beat it into pre-teens faces.
The scale of hatred (this is an actual measurement, ask my friends) has tipped to loathing and despair. We give out social media site addresses instead of phone numbers or we lurk through mutual friends a few days later (assuming we’re trying not be too stalkerish) to find our newfound pal. Instead of actually interacting with people we base judgments on their internet likes and dislikes. Remember the top eight? Do you remember your sense of dread when one of your besties didn’t reciprocate the same undying internet love for you? The invention of the seen timestamp in social media messaging has altered our values placed on conversations. If you were on the phone or in person and the person on the other end said something, you heard it, but weren’t ready to respond, how awkward would that be? We all like a lot of stuff and have friends far away that we use technology to make keeping in contact simpler, but there is nothing simple about the psychological mind-fuck social media has had on us as a culture. If your pal “misses your face” then there is this fantastic invention called video chat. My two best friends live more than 1500 miles away and we keep in touch by having video dates regularly.
I’ll step off my soapbox now because I am guilty of ALL of these things. Hell, I met my husband on the internet who lived 1000 miles away at the time. But the difference between me and my 30-something friends still living their lives through internet personas is that I want to change, and all of you can too. Over the last few weeks I’ve been making a lot of positive changes in regards to my social media usage. I’ve seriously contemplated getting rid of it entirely. Instead, I ironically started blogging. Look, this beast is hard to break, and it makes sense in my head, so just run with it, ok? I’ve actually met or reconnected with a seriously small handful of worthwhile people due to the demon that is the interweb and I half-heartedly thank it for that. But honestly, I’m a serious believer in the Ron Swanson “1-3 is sufficient” rule. We’re all allowed to have acquaintances and people that fill the boredom holes when our best buds are busy with life. But let’s stop pretending we have hundreds of dedicated companions or even followers and focus on those that matter. Let’s get back to real… human… interaction. Because if we don't, I give it 20 years before we develop technology that allows us to stay out of boob and testicle jail 24/7 sipping craft beer from our beds while we navigate our clones through awful city traffic, day jobs, and eventually real life interactions.
