Sunday, December 5, 2010
Town of the Living Dead
Here's a delightfully cutesy ad for yet another phone-gaming-texting-video hybrid monstrosity featuring an entire town of drugged zombies who are simply incapable of taking a step or developing a thought which does not involve gazing fondly at a screen and pushing buttons.
Here's a guy who can't play his keyboard unless he's got his little security blanket positioned where he can read it- or maybe he's just not willing to do anything that doesn't involve using the thing he convinced himself he needed last month. Here's another guy who isn't about to be drawn into a conversation with the driver of the car he's in- to hell with that, he's too busy playing some clueless, braincell-sucking game. Here's another guy on a bus who figures that he might as well take a photo of two total strangers, because what the hell, his overpriced little toy does that, too.
Best of all- here's a guy with flowers who is having a hard time finding the object of his affections because he's relying on his phone to guide him to the very SPOT she's standing. Never mind that all he has to do is LOOK UP- how could he bear to to that, what with this wicked cool electronic thingee? And of course, his potential Better Half is doing exactly the same thing. These guys are one dead battery way from never meeting up at all- and seriously, would this really be a bad thing?
Sometimes I feel like I live in this town. More than once (more than a thousand times, actually) I've taken long walks through local parks and down local streets, passing people whose necks seem permanently bent down and their brains focused on the Really Important Thing that's happening on that little screen in their hand. I've seen small children practically beg for attention from their parents (usually in vain,) and I've seen older kids apparently resolved to the fact that it's not worth the bother. More and more of these older kids have their own nifty little time vampires to keep them happy in their social retardation, so it's All Good, I guess.
Still, I don't regret the fact that this junk didn't exist when I was younger. I guess I'm just weird in some ways.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I have an online friend who updated her Facebook status yesterday as each task was completed...
ReplyDeleteThe end result of her tasks? Her wedding. She even updated it with: "[her name] did it." (I cringe when people do the third-person thing, as if FB wasn't already annoying). Then, of course, came the status-change from "engaged to [his name]" to "married to [his name]".
A few weeks ago, I met up with a long-lost friend (twenty-six years long-lost) and neither of us had anything to do with our phones in the computer sense while we were together. I did, however, take a couple of calls- one from one of my kids and the other from my father. But they were calling.
I can't remember the last time I had lunch out with someone who didn't check their phone every few minutes. I notice people I'm with rarely get calls- but they got lots and lots of texts, which of course must be responded to, instantly. I often wonder why I'm even there.
ReplyDeleteAs for your Facebook-addled friend, it must be great to feel so important that you think that the world is hanging on every Life Update. Oh, did I say "great?" I meant "pathetic."
It was cute for about a second.
ReplyDelete"[her name] is off to the salon."
"[her name] has her hair done, now for makeup!"
Literally... each task.
What worries me is that there were probably people incessantly refreshing their pages to see what was next. (not me, she was always just there).
As for texting, if something is so important that it needs an immediate response, CALL!
And we wonder why we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic. I can't tell you how many people I see outdoors or at the gym, NOT MOVING because they are too busy staring at their stupid phones.
ReplyDeleteI bet they think they are getting exercise simply because they aren't actually in their homes.
And to think that the bandwidth crisis that's supposedly going to mess up the wireless networks is being caused by these zombies; when they do have to suffer rolling brownouts, it'll look a lot like AMC's 'The Walking Dead' or a George Romero film.
ReplyDeleteHey! I just realized something! The 'zombie revolt' movies are a metaphor for what'll happen when these jerks are deprived of the right to consume the ether posting every trivial detail of their banal lives; just as it is on the screen, we'll be seeing angry, mindless dead(-from-the-neck-up) creeps roaming around mindlessly and smashing things.
When the aliens use these devices to suck up organic matter to feast on, I'll be laughing.
ReplyDeleteDreaded, I've already seen versions of this when I've been on subways- the frustration and sheer despair on the faces of people when they realized they don't have service is just priceless.
ReplyDeleteI've also had teen-aged students break into tears when told to surrender their cell phones because they were caught texting in class. You'd think they were being told their puppies have to be put down.