Calgon, Take Me Away.

Calgon, Take Me Away.

Am I the only person who feels overwhelmed by my phone? I ask myself that question all of the time. Surely I can’t be. I have been on the verge of getting a simple flip phone for the past several years now, but I don’t know if even that would do it. Sometimes I feel like going back to a landline phone with an answering machine and just be done with it. Do I really need to be walking around with an electronic Swiss Army Knife that identifies as a phone in my pocket all of the time? It truly is handy but it damn sure isn’t a telephone.

Do I really need to be walking around with an electronic Swiss Army Knife that identifies as a phone in my pocket all of the time?

If you’re anywhere close to my age or older, you don’t need me to tell you this but there was a time not so long ago when people didn’t know where you were and what you were doing every hour of every day. They didn’t need to. People used to leave their doors unlocked and their curtains open but you had no idea what they were doing inside or what they were having for supper. Nowadays, everyone has their doors bolted shut and their shades drawn but you know exactly what they are doing inside because they feel compelled to tell you, Hell…show you! How do they show you? Their phone. How do you know? Your phone.

I don’t care if they are painting their dining room, trying out a new recipe or doing their laundry, you will know about it. The invention of the smart phone has turned us all into the hot new sitcom or soap opera of yesteryear. That isn’t a slight to anyone, it’s just the reality of the present day. You know how I used to know when Johnny and Cindy went on vacation, got a new living room suit or were having marriage troubles? I visited them, sat on the new couch, looked at a stack of vacation pictures and listened to Cindy talk about how Johnny got busted flirting with the waitress. Today, I would know everything they saw on vacation and had a front row seat to the argument before they even got home! Just like the gun argument of “Guns don’t shoot people, people do.” Is the phone really the issue? You may say that it’s social media and not the phone that is the culprit but I disagree. How different would social media be if we had to use digital cameras, video recorders and type all of our posts with a computer keyboard? Remember those days?

Another reason that I am so stressed out about my phone is that it feels like a homing device at times. If you aren’t settings-savvy, people can track your every move. You upload a picture, someone can look at the meta data attached to it and get GPS coordinates of where you were standing when you took it. Different applications show your friends exactly where you are at any moment. If you just want to lurk on social media, a green light will pop up and tell everyone that you are currently on there. Next thing you know they are encouraged to “nudge” you or “wave” to you. Come on now! That’s not cool. You are expected to have your phone with you and be available every minute of every day. Anything less and you are considered a shitty friend or someone who isn’t doing life right. That’s a lot of pressure.

The phone (not the computer or tablet) has taken away things that I cherish, like magazines and newspapers. For years after home computers and the internet became the norm, newspapers and magazines were available in both formats. Many people started enjoying their papers online but for the publishers to get the distribution necessary to sell ads, they still needed to put out print media. As PCs and laptops dropped in price and high speed internet coverage grew, households started having more than one computer. Why then were printed newspapers and magazines still widely distributed? I think I know the answer. The inability to take your computer to the bathroom with you! Most American households, pre-internet, had a magazine rack in their bathrooms or just stacked them on top of their toilet’s tank. People loved reading their magazine or newspaper while sitting on the toilet. Technically you can take a laptop or tablet to the bathroom with you but not everyone has one of those. EVERYONE has a smartphone now. EVERYONE takes it with them to the toilet and that became basically the final blow for print media. You’ll always have books and comic books because of the collectability but as soon as my generation and everyone older dies out, print media will be completely extinct. (I know you’re still thinking about everyone being on their phones while sitting on the toilet. It’s true. The most well put together, high-class person you know has doo doo particles on their phone, even if they try to wipe them off. Next time someone tries to show you something on their phone, don’t take it from their hand. Let them hold it. On that note, next time you think about buying an old magazine on eBay, know there’s a 50/50 chance it had been sitting in someone’s bathroom at some point as well.)

As I type this, I can look at my phone and see that I have 347 missed calls, 768 unread texts and 9,342 unopened emails. You may laugh at that but think about how much of my life could have been lost had I taken the time to read those and give them their proper response? In the time it took to accumulate those numbers, you had better believe that I have interacted with ten times that many of each. It’s a drain. You literally always have to be turned on. I mean ON like the opposite of OFF, not aroused. I think that’s why people take entire days of their lives to disconnect and binge-watch a television series. It’s like we’re constantly trying to steal time back from ourselves. It used to be okay to not answer the phone when you were eating or doing something with your family. If you did, it was acceptable to tell the person on the other end that you were doing something and you’d call them back when you have time. Now, we can’t even get through the checkout lane at the grocery store without having a conversation with someone. Don’t get me started with movie theaters! We have lost the ability as a species to just BE. You can’t escape it. Even prisoners are posting TikTok videos from their cells. I mean CELL, as in the small room they are locked in and not the CELL phone they are using to film, edit and post the video.

When I was young, I enjoyed pornography like every other red-blooded, hormone-riddled young man my age. I would take it however I could get it but that mainly involved me having the courage to purchase a Hustler, Penthouse, High Society, Chic, Cheri, Juggs, or Swank magazine. I always had a collection and had to have a good, convenient hiding spot. My good friends knew where my hiding spot was and I knew where theirs was. We had those magazines memorized! I remember the advertisements for X-rated movies on the back pages. You could order them by mail and have them discreetly delivered to your door. We would be holding the magazine at an angle under different light sources to try and see through the black spot covering the actual penetration in a picture no bigger than your thumbnail. When we were lucky enough to get our hands on a VHS copy of one of those movies, we handled them like they were a container of nitroglycerine out of fear of breaking or damaging them. We were a bunch of horn dogs but that’s not the point. The point is still smart phones and their role in the decline of modern civilization. To fulfill our urges, we had to have the balls and money to purchase something or have open conversations with our friends. As I mentioned earlier, we knew where each other’s stash was located. You had to be able to have talks about things that led to the discovery of your buddy’s perverted side and vice versa. You may think that’s weird but I think it’s extremely healthy, not only for the person but society. It’s a way to keep your kinks, fetishes and fantasies in check. You can always count on your friends to let you know when you’re a weirdo. Young people today are walking around with the entire adult book store in their pockets and can choose to remain isolated in the thoughts that we know pornography can induce. They don’t have to look a clerk in the eye when purchasing something pornographic, nor do they have to learn how to be slick when consuming it. Again, we can blame the internet but it’s the vehicle that delivers it. These “phones” are too much.

Start paying attention when you are out in public spaces like a food court. I’ll bet there are as many conversations being had between people on opposite ends of smart phones as there are people talking directly across the table to someone. We are quickly, and I mean quickly, losing our ability to communicate effectively. I say “WE” because I am seeing it in myself as well. I was once proud of my ability to have a meaningful conversation with someone but have evolved into someone who prefers texting. Even the best writers lose the ability con convey emotion in text. Especially when they don’t have much time to reply. Now emojis have grown in popularity for that very reason. Again, I am guilty. So what we are saying is that we identified a real problem with this style of communicating but instead of reverting back or working on our writing skills, we introduce emojis into our everyday communications. Many people use shorthand or popular slang when texting or and that dumbs-down the conversation as much as it speeds it along. Having said that, I currently would prefer to type out a long text than talk on the phone with someone and that bothers me. I know why I do it. It’s because I am able to do it while indisposed, while having multiple conversations at once and to be able to stop and start as needed. I have noticed a new trend in my texting that is bothering me and that’s leaving off the period at the end of a sentence while engaged in a back and forth textathon with someone who is doing the same thing. Peer pressure works on people in their fifties and I am living proof of that in many ways. I think we all are. But I don’t want to live in a puntuation-less world. Do you?

We are quickly, and I mean quickly, losing our ability to communicate effectively.

See what I mean about my phone giving me anxiety? It’s not overwhelming and I am going to be okay. It just makes me think about what’s next for us all to learn or adapt to? We have smart phones and watches but that doesn’t seem to be good enough. I keep seeing things about the new glasses that allow you to be reading your grocery list (on the inside of the lens of your glasses) while talking to your friend you encountered at the grocery store. They allow you to watch a video while walking on the treadmill and can also be recording the person walking in front of you at the same time. I know there are some really cool uses for them that I didn’t describe but the point I am trying to make is they’re just another extension of our phones that are designed (intentionally or not) to keep us plugged in and isolated. The thought of what things like Neuralink and Chat GPT will ultimately do to society plays out like a horror movie to me. I think we all enjoy the idea of how our phones help us manage so many facets of our lives but the people who liken us to cyborgs are onto something. We are attached to them pretty much 24/7. They have become an extension of our bodies.

We stopped memorizing phone numbers years ago. Kids no longer need to learn math or spelling. They don’t really understand how to read a map, operate a camera, change the batteries or bulb in a flashlight, etc. because their phones are everything in one. There’s no need to ask your friend or family for advice on parenting or relationships because your phone can give you the latest and greatest information and methods from around the globe. How can we put the genie back in the bottle? I don’t think we can. For all of the reasons I outlined here and many, many more…surely I can’t be the only person who feels overwhelmed by their phone. Thanks for stumbling through my unorganized thoughts on this topic. I wish I had more time to really hash all of this out and deliver it in a more concise way. Until next time…

James