Phonies

...HOW DO YOU DO 

Phonies  

More and more people I see doing it. I used to only see them for a moment, checking it or sometimes at the back of a bus killing time, chasing the snake, acting like they were popular but in reality just flicking through their previous messages or typing some considered reply, but now they are everywhere and everyone.

Heads tilted down, staring, transfixed on the screen in their hands, some tap, others swipe a bit, most just stare.  Life passes, they stare, life dies, they stare, life gets reborn in a miraculous turn of events that defies even our collective knowledge, they didn't notice because they were too busy staring.  And staring, and staring. And still staring.  At least the hands free mentals are actually talking to someone, flailing arms with those suspicious brain controlling headsets flashing their blue or green lights, beaming up small-talk to their alien captives. It’s ok, no one noticed, they were too busy staring.     

Sorry, what? Huh, you talking?

When did preoccupation replace occupation?  Experience isn’t sacred, it’s constantly interrupted or we interrupt experience because we feel something might be happening somewhere else or someone might have done something that we don’t know about, or we just got bored of time, a lull, a low point, a point invariably in the past we would have endured, day dreamed, fantasied about killing the protagonist of this tedium is now spent tapping and staring. And the good experiences, those whiz bang moments, shared special times, they’re now just material for an update, a comment, or hastily shot video?  Are we living for the moment or has the moment become just another timeline, a footnote to our electronic life?  We'd rather look at screens of each other than of each other.  Type thoughts to all and sundry than talk truth to that special somebody.

Smarty pants

They need constant recharge, they cost as much as a computer, they shatter if you rest them wrongly or on anything harder than cotton wool.  They get stolen loads, with almost all your personal details on them.  They're big, they're heavy, they're always there to snap you drunk or in an compromising, unflattering or just plain private situations, 17,000 times in varying degrees of awfulness so they can later find the worst and delete the rest, like a journo with an agenda, you become the below z-list celebrity to their own superstar selves.  Uploaded into their lifestyle magazine 'Cindy out 'n' bout' what fame, what cheek.

It's here, it's the Samsam 851vp p

The screens we thought would create a glorious open future, have not only caught but have held captive our attentions ransoming our lives as collateral with no release in sight because the captivity is our own collective illusion that we willing walked into, signing up for, spending big on smart, because why wouldn't you want smart, it's smart, it'll be like owning smart, it'll be like you're smart. It wasn't even smart, if that was the case I'd had a lot dumb phones and a genius computer that couldn't close a program without asking me if I want to. Well are you sure? You've clicked the "X" but are you? You selected the word "close," but do you, do you, do you, you fucking idiot?

How much more future?

So where's next, computers on glasses, always on screens direct into your eye, computer phones strapped to our bodies.  Implants, implants directly into our skulls, desktop towers in our stomachs, fans coming out our shitholes?

Eroding our core, sidelining direct relationships, evermore things designed to bring us closer will ultimately not be used by the advertising idealist's and marketing moguls flashy illustrations and viral adverts but more like our desperate lazy, lonely selves, getting our buzzes and preferring distance over direct contact.

 Is what we want or whether collectively we've ignored the reasons and just bought the next one, and the next one, and the next. The machines are have taken over and we haven't even noticed.