Oh I see: you think I'm a wino and since I gave away all my booze I must be a struggling alcoholic. You fool. Cirrhosis pales in comparison to carpal tunnel syndrome and the dreaded internet addiction. Specifically, I am talking about Facebook.
I admit it: I am hooked to my various electronic devices which are no doubt rendering me infertile as I type, frying my crown jewels with assorted radiation of various wavelengths. I look at my Blackberry if I wake up at night, and check my iPhone for email and open the FB app several times an hour.
The worst part is - no offense dear "F(B)riend" - I don't give a shit:
- where you "checked into" ("Tyler is at the bodega with Allyson picking up a box of wine!!")
- what you do ("Kelly is chillaxing by the pool at Bali"), where Kelly is a desperate crone that is past her prime and inviting melanoma or a pear-shaped loser who just bought his first motorbike and sold his second home to pay for a divorce. I would like to pole-axe posers who say things like "I'm chill-axing".
- who you just "friended" or whose feed you "follow" ("Omar subscribed to Mark Zuckerberg")
- your utterly repugnant life events ("Jamila is curing her warts with some liquid nitro at the clinics")
- the crazy capitalizer post ("Congratulations, I am so happy about your Marriage. God loves You. I hope you have a Blessed Life.")
- about your inane hobby, photos, next Jaeger-bomb party, or a hundred other completely worthless pieces of shit.
Can you imagine where this could lead one day when they say our thoughts can be read? We'd not even have to fumble with the smart phone to update our statuses, our minds would feed in automatically:
- Pedro is having sex. (30 seconds later) Pedro just had sex.
- Martha is chillaxing. (Gets fired after 5 minutes later when her boss, at the office busting her chops, finds out this slacker is not working from home as she is supposed to)
- Rupert is out about town (Gets burglarized that evening. If you don't already know this: a great many people getting burglarized are having their Foursquare status checked to ensure they are not at home).
- Pedro likes Rupert.
- Martha has broken up with Pedro.
- Martha is waiting for Rapture.
The only reason I am on FB is because friends that I do give a shit about have begun using it as the primary medium to share information about themselves and in this case I find the site useful: someone's child's graduation, another moving town, a serious event in someone's life, pictures of something meaningful in someone's life. For this reason I do not hide feeds, because you never know who may post something that is actually of interest or even concern.
But the fact is none of that stuff happens several times an hour or even hourly.
So I haven't opened FB even though I am at my PC now typing this out. In fact I haven't looked at FB on any device for about 3 days now. And guess what, the world has not ended.
Likewise, I shall look at my blackberry no more than twice a day this vacation-week. And I will use the phone only to answer calls and maybe check my personal mail a couple of times a day. And it is going great so far. I have so much more time to:
- enjoy time with the family. Even if it means a lot more noticing all the things that used to drive me crazy before I could escape into the infinite world of FB and the Internet through just a palm-sized device
- go out and meet people. Just as soon as I can get them to join my "offline world" so that we stop meeting at Starbucks to look at our individual iPhones for status updated, sometimes about each other, and instead look at each other and eventually drive ourselves nuts not knowing what to say and possibly commit murder.
- smell the roses. You fucking kidding me, this is Singapore. It is uber-pragmatic and there is no room for roses. Also, I do not want to get pricked by a thorn on my nose and die of septicemia.
- say "hi" to strangers. Finally, I can once again pull myself out of my engrossing iPhone and shout at strangers for blocking me on escalators or in the doorway of public transport. Ok, more like "haieee" followed by an imaginary karate chop against stupidity, but close enough to "hi".
2 comments:
Re point no 4: I love to use Chee Bye instead. Said with a thick Indian accent, and coupled with 'excuse me' it sounds like Cheers Bye.
But you are actually calling them cunts! :) I love the hokkein language. And I love it even more when folk say 'byeee' back.
*Snigger*
~deviousDiv
Vintage CY - loved the post. Glad I stopped by - since you probably are not going to post it as a noteworthy entry on your FB as done in the past.
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