Unplugged

I am just so deeply disturbed by what I’ve been seeing on the internet recently. I am in disbelief that a member of our school community would spend time creating a twitter account dedicated to exploiting and alienating peers, especially female peers. I am in further disbelief that my good friends ended up following the account. I don’t know if it was out of fear or hope that they would be tweeted about, but it just doesn’t matter. People fueled the success of this effort by following the herd. It proved my fears about the internet to be true. The internet has the potential to be infinitely more destructive than it has to be creative. Imagine if the administrator of that account spent the time needed to create and maintain it on something creative or productive.

I leave you with this…

Too often it seems as though all I ever do is sit around. Even when I’m ‘doing things,’ I end up just sitting and processing. I get into my friends’ cars and sit while they drive me places. We go to coffee and sit, 75% of potential conversation time taken up by our staring at our phone screens and devices. We go to a movie and sit for two hours of our lives. And even if the movie is worthwhile, even if it’s exceptionally pretty, even if we’re saturated with thousands images that will haunt our minds for weeks because of their tremendous poetry, there’s no getting around the fact that we just sat in a dark room for two hours watching people live. We watch people do things that we won’t because we’re watching them in a movie theater. When comes the point at which we stop sitting, and start doing the things that filmmakers are prompted to write these movies about?

I was at coffee with my friends tonight, and I had a sad moment of insight that came on very fast. We were definitely in each other’s presence, but each of us was absorbed in some intangible event taking place beyond the thing glass film of our cell phone screens. I looked up at the sad pair before me soaked up in artificial handheld light, and realized that I was the third sad creature. Moments beforehand, we’d been making fun of this couple a few tables away because they were so invested in some abstract card game about the future. The thing is, they were living, and we were the ones sitting. I felt so terribly uncommitted to my relationships at that point, I made a resolution.

My cell phone and technology in general are getting in the way of my relationships. I look back on the days of my flip phone that ran on prepaid cards bought from the gas station. I miss not worrying about staying committed to someone on the other end of a cyber void. I miss being automatically fully invested in the person that sat before me. I miss being present. I will from this day forward:

 

                                       Shut my phone off and put it away

                                                During school

                                                During acting class

                                                During any class

                                                During all meals

                                                During parties

                                                During studying

                                                Before I enter my bedroom for bed/naps

                                                During concerts

                                                During dances

                                                While there are people around me

                                                During any rehearsal

 

The list will be longer someday, but this is a starting point for me. I advise you all to reevaluate your phone and internet usage and begin to revitalize your commitment to the relationships in real life. Unplugged is cool.

Sam