PING!!!

“Ayo, I’m tired of using technology”. I never thought that a day would come where I would quote 50 Cent of all people. But yea, I am sick and tired of using technology.

There are so many mediums to communicate. We are connected 24/7. Messages come and go every second. My Blackberry, What’s App, facebook, twitter, email and what not are peeping or pinging or whatever all day long. The funny part is nothing much is ever said. I know where my friends are at all times; I know what they are doing and whom they are with. I know what they ate and I even know when they are taking a shower. That leaves us with very little to say when we actually meet face to face. How sad. What’s even sadder is when we actually meet we are still glued to our cellphones, iPads, facebook or twitter. I wonder why we make the effort to meet up.

The depressing part is this, when I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is check my blackberry which lies next to me in my bed, and if the red light doesn’t blink and I don’t have a couple of emails, a number of facebook notifications, a facebook inbox message, two What’s App chats and five Blackberry Chats at least I feel sad and unloved. Well, that’s exaggerated but you get what I mean. I feel down. It’s sad that we reached to a point where we measure our popularity and the care of other people by the number of messages we receive that don’t really say much and the number of facebook friends we have that we don’t really know instead of the quality time we spent with friends talking, goofing around, joking and just having fun.

All those communication mediums and facebook also known as the social network is raising a generation of antisocial beings that have no clue how to really connect. Lately when I meet up with friends and I’m talking about something or the other my friend would pick up her/his cellphone numerous times to reply to a blackberry messenger chat, What’s App or text, or post something on facebook or tweet another useless line. What’s even weirder is if it’s not a cellphone in hand it’s iPod headphones in the ear. I am sure you had some sort of conversation while you or the other person had your headphones plugged in. How is that social? For all my friends reading this right now I confess that I am guilty of the same charges. To give you a visual, imagine you and your friend are sitting at your kitchen table having a chat. Your friend gets up 4 times and leaves the kitchen for 30 seconds and comes back in. After the 4^th time I am sure you had enough and will not finish whatever you were saying even if your friend begged you to. It’s pretty much the same thing with a cellphone, your friend is typing something and in those 10 or 15 seconds he/she is not really there.

What’s more and which is sort of funny, I know some people very well. I know their favorite color, animal, food and even their sleeping habits and what they are scared of. I know what they do everyday and even their friends. But you know what! I never met them in my life. They don’t know that I exist. Youtube vloggers invite you to their life, you see what they do everyday. They talk directly to you. After a while you get to know them really well. They become part of your life because you watch them everyday. They might even be a substitute to friends. I know Youtube is awesome and that it is a huge community but I also think that it encourages anti-social behaviour.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful we this technology that keeps us connected. I would not give up my blackberry, iPod, or laptop voluntarily but I miss the days when my friends and me had a long chat that lasted for hours with no distractions, where we were 100% there. I would love to go out with friends and just have fun instead of pausing to take 20 photos of us posing to take that one perfect picture to upload on facebook. I wish I could leave the house without my cellphone or iPod without feeling naked. I’d like to read a whole page in a book before checking my Blackberry because the red little light started blinking again.

There is one last thing that I want to leave you with, this is a scene from the movie “He’s just not that into you” that is related to this matter. I think its funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7GgBlLxwH4