Don't get me wrong, I too have enjoyed having hundreds of "friends" on Facebook, and that feeling of warm fuzzies when the majority of those people message me the token once-a-year on my birthday, which they rely on Facebook to notify them of. Or how about learning of a family member's engagement (OMG! look at my huge diamond!) or pregnancy (surprise everyone! Here is our first look at baby!) via a Facebook post. What happened to a phone call and/or a simple email to those who are closest to us? Are these life events not special and sacred anymore? Seems like they are all just for show these days.
Social media. Facebook. Television. Celebrities. All of those other online apps and groups and garbage that is flooding our minds.
Wake up friends! IT'S. NOT. REAL!!! It's not genuine human connection. It's stealing from all of us the quality of life and those meaningful connections and memorable moments that we are ALL seeking. Our children are not learning the skills needed to communicate with each other while their noses are pointed at electronic boxes of various shapes and sizes. People are passive-aggressively putting each other down and gossiping and sharing false information and it makes my head spin!
I have stepped back from Facebook for a few months now, occasionally posting a link to these blog posts, but making a conscious choice to avoid scrolling mindlessly through people's complaints, ego flaunting and dramas. The result? I feel lighter. I feel happier. I don't feel left out and I would certainly hope that if a life-changing event were to occur, that my REAL friends and family would send me an email or even better yet, pick up the phone.
This brings me to my next point which is cell phones. I have had one version or another for over 10 years. The phone companies have usually had to arm wrestle me to get me to upgrade my ancient (folds in half with a pull-up antenna) phones to the newest versions with day-planning, dinner-making, weather-forecasting, trend-watching, OMG!!! alerting shenanigans (of which I have one and am typing this post with, but is mostly severely underutilized).
What has happened to our ability to think for ourselves??? At this point, if you don't carry around one of these gadgets, I don't know how you even get out of bed in the morning!
On top of this, I (and the masses) am spending over $1,000 yearly to keep up with everyone else in the technology race. The phone companies (among many others, which I will eventually post about) are laughing at us. I called my mobile phone provider today and said that I wanted to cancel my phone plan and pay the remaining balance on my contract. The fellow helping me was quite surprised and asked why I would possibly want to do that?! I simply said that I am no longer interested in paying such high fees to stay in touch with the people who matter to me. So after an hour of being on hold repeatedly, I am still using my phone and was offered a "bargain!!!" I am no fool, and although I accepted the offer, I have a master plan of scrapping my phone and freeing myself from one more of the tentacles of modern society, which I truly believe is dumbing us all down and keeping us working like rats on a wheel so that we can keep up with society and be cool.
After all, that's what life is about. Right?
No comments:
Post a Comment