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Silence died before social media. Silence died with pervasive flat screen TVs everywhere sometime during the mid-90s. I was in grad school at the time, and one
by LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
Silence died before social media. Silence died with pervasive flat screen TVs everywhere sometime during the mid-90s. I was in grad school at the time, and one by one, the previously quiet spots in cafeterias between meals and nooks went loud with a TV permanently tuned to ESPN or 24/7 news. It was like the planet Kakrafoon Kappa as if the most dangerous thing in the world was to allow students to be alone with their thoughts. Then it hit the restaurants and cafes.
And while one could get away from this by taking a walk, cell phones finished the job. It's unreal to see someone walking their unruly dog, borderline shambling, while they stare, transfixed, into their phone. And I am out of you-know-whats w/r to this. Zuck won because he gave people what they craved. It wasn't what they needed, and it's up to the people to break their own addictions. I figure that's either after the commencement of my dirt nap or some contrived utterly avoidable apocalypse scenario triggered by our collective negligence on par with an expectedly dirty telephone as the root of a global pandemic.
- gWPVhyxPHqvk 2mo agoTikTok has ruined public transportation for me. One idiot blasting short videos on their phone at 7am is so annoying. I remember back in the 90s there were signs for no boomboxes on trains. Now it's nearly expected that someone is mindlessly scrolling TikTok at max volume per car.
- LogicFailsMe 2mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf5iwGZNY_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf5iwGZNY_Q
- mdp2021 2mo agoWhat you are describing is actually the coma of civic society: in proper societies (I have witnessed them), the «idiot» ("layman in civic education") would have been corrected by the affected and informed by his acquaintances. It is a grave sign of downfall when disturbing elements roam unreached by any wakers. Note that the phenomenon is symmetrical in the "upper" strata: just like in the lower "kids (of any age) are an island", in the upper administrations embrace the absurd without the voices of the intellectuals chastizing them.
- AnimalMuppet 2mo agoI used to go out into the Mojave Desert for a few days. It's quiet out there - so quiet that your own footsteps are very loud. You're also very much on your own out there. That dirt road you're stopped on might see two cars in the next 24 hours, or zero. It was amazingly freeing. You could hear yourself think, and nobody could bother or interrupt you. Then my wife started worrying about my safety out there, and insisted that I carry a cell phone. Well, she was undoubtedly right that it was safer (this is another reason that married men live longer). But a bit of the freedom disappeared too - now I could be interrupted at any time, and sometimes I was.
- mdp2021 2mo ago> But a bit of the freedom disappeared too - now I could be interrupted at any time, and sometimes I was ...Remember what you are there to do, so keep it off and only turn it on periodically... Maybe if it is a matter of being able of being geolocated (so with frequent status updates), you could code an application that updates said status periodically (e.g. 40mins disconnected, 5mins updating, in a loop). > wife Maybe watch Deliverance (Boorman '72) together: it could confuse her into a state of indecision...
- LogicFailsMe 2mo agoMy wife wanted me to carry my cell phone with me even when I walked the dogs. We fought over this. I stood my ground. I work with technology, I love technology, but I need time away from it and my dogs are fantastic company and I want to walk with them like a pack. It's the best part of a typical day in my life actually because they're two very smart and protective german shepherds. But, if you're not poor, and you don't want to carry a cell phone, you need one of these: https://www.acrartex.com/products/resqlink-ais-personal-locator-beacon/ https://www.acrartex.com/products/resqlink-ais-personal-loca... Who says you can't have it all? Not technology!