Day: August 30, 2014

For the first time in six years I agree with President Stompy Foot.

It’s either a miracle or the end of days.

The president has been quoted as saying that the world is a messy place and always has been. He’s right. Further, the president has said that our awareness and feeling that things are very bad is due in large part to social media.

Again, I agree. 

I’ve recently come to believe, (recently being a relative term) that our connectedness actually leads to an overall feeling of hopelessness and perhaps even depression.

I’ve written in the past about my reasons for closing my social media accounts and also choosing not to watch the news. I’ve been known to go for weeks at a time not even reading the newspaper or online news sources. Honestly, the saturation of our world with all the evil that people do could make you long for a fifty mile wide meteor, or a plague. 

Sure, you’re likely to end up just as dead as everyone else but at least you’re likely to be able to witness a bunch of really evil people getting their comeuppance.

Really, would any of us shed too many tears if a meteor obliterated Washington D.C.? I didn’t think so.

I’ve written before that I wouldn’t mind seeing something similar happen to the evil fucks in the Middle East. I could easily picture myself lying on my deathbed seeing the talking heads reporting “The Horror”, and questioning why no-one was able to detect or stop the awful rock from space, then laughing myself to death.

A scenario as I’ve described is however, unlikely to happen.

So we continue to focus on our twitter feeds, and keep up with people we’ve never met on Facebook or LinkedIn, or Instagram, or any of the myriad of other distractions brought to us second by second on our computers, tablets and phones. Some of us are so distracted and focused on our phones that we’ll walk into fountains in shopping centers. Then we’ll try to sue the mall for our public humiliation claiming that there should have been a taller rail… To protect us from our OWN stupidity.

We’re too connected.

Who hasn’t been on the phone, or at the doctor, or in a dentists chair, then had someone calling repeatedly? I recently had a professional do EXACTLY that. I was in a dentists chair and my phone began ringing every 30 seconds. It was the same person calling again and again refusing to accept that they’d have to leave a message.

Eventually the dentist put the tools down, and told me to answer my phone. I simply turned the damn thing off. I was so angry that had I spoken to the person trying so desperately to contact me… I would have been far less than professional.

 As the dentist smiled and resumed his work, you know, the work I was paying professional wages to have him do, all I could think was “I’m not going to deal with the person or his company in the future.”

As I read about president stompy foot’s comments this morning, I couldn’t help but think that he’s damn lucky we’re so distracted, fractured, upset and confused by social media and the cacophony of noise in our lives.

If we weren’t, we’d have nothing better to do than pay very close attention to him and his cronies in Washington. 

I doubt any of the people in the government could stand that kind of scrutiny.