Jean Guerrero, a columnist for the LA Times, recently took her iPhone in for service:
As I drove around to various errands, I awoke to details of the real world that I’d long ago stopped noticing: the faces of strangers in cars behind me at traffic stops, my steering wheel’s leather, the ethereal whiteness of ordinary clouds. Without social media to occupy me at all times, my mind went empty: gloriously empty, with space for nature and new ideas. It was exhilarating. Suddenly, anything seemed possible.
Wow. That's some detox—though I don't understand how this happened on the drive home. She never used social media in her car in the first place, did she? But it got even better a few days later at a dance retreat she attended:
The next morning, eating breakfast with my classmates on a sun-dappled patio, I noticed a large praying mantis on the ground, its body the yellow-green of a ripe lime.... The insect was crawling toward the dining hall door, where it could be crushed. I knelt down to move it to safety, charmed by its resemblance to foliage and its worshipful pose. I hadn’t seen one in years. I wondered how many small wonders I’d missed while staring at my phone.
....The praying mantis offered an answer. Simply noticing was enough. Attention to nuance and in-between spaces could make existence sacred.
That's some heavy shit. I myself have never been addicted enough to social media to get a big benefit from giving it up, but now I think maybe I've missed out. I need to sign up for TikTok and Instagram—I already have Facebook and Twitter—and start using them 24/7 just so that I can quit after a few months. Only then will I notice the in-between spaces that make existence sacred.
Social media is a blessing. For eons, humanity drifted along without noticing the in-between spaces that make existence sacred, but now our advanced technology allows us to mainline TikTok trivia and photoshopped Instagram pics for weeks and then cut it all off to see the profound. Now let me tell you about a new therapy I've developed for pain relief. First, you pick up a hammer and start hitting yourself on the head with it over and over...
This is just insane horsecrap magazine writing the moronic author must have majored in.
Like going on endlessly talking about talking about something until after around twelve pages they reveal the feeble particle of imaginary interest they have nothing to say about and that was of no interest in the first place. Or when they crank out volumes of self-congratulation on the topic of 'my writing life', or similar waste and specious filth someone is dumb enough to pay them for.
If only these people had the good sense to teach kindergarten like they were meant to we wouldn't be in this jam.
Like +10. And typically, the headline writer suckers you in with something that promises profound and intriguing truths.
Wow, not sure just exactly why a relatively harmless and short essay on the ways our devices can take away our attention from the world around us deserves this level of opprobrium or the completely unnecessary and maybe a little chauvinistic swipe at kindergarten teachers. Lighten up Francis. You too Kevin.
I give it a 2 out of 5.
Points off for failure to use "liminal", and I'm just not feeling her sense of wonder come through.
Maybe a quantum mechanics metaphor or something about ancient Mayan Wisdom would have helped.
????????????????????
If only someone thought of stopping to smell the roses before....
Learning how to be observant enriches our lives.
I don't much care the path one takes. Mine is the woods of Maine.
If you require a heavy dose of dopamine stimulation that's suddenly withdrawn to achieve that end, so be it. But there are other methods and roads. Even some of the new-age bs might work; though you won't learn how to properly cut a tree or follow an animal trail or forage for real food that way.
The Snark is heavy with the Great Man this day.
The amount of information we are bombarded with - social media or not - is unnatural. I must quickly read everything I can online about current events and their history. I am almost scared to stop because I might miss something. Since Covid, everything has been a cram course. The history of diseases and vaccines, the history of Russia, the history of Ukraine, and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the late 19th century on. I need to chill - seriously, chill.
You guys certainly wouldn't miss me if I skipped reading this blog and didn't comment for a while
I should take the month of December off. Just trust in God and tune into what is around me. Finish reading 1776. Read books - not articles. Read a book an old friend wrote about her childhood.
Blogs are social media.
I get the impression Kevin has very little interaction with anyone except his wife and his cats. I am constantly astonished at the way so many people seem incapable of going two minutes without pulling out their phones to check for recent activity. In a doctor's waiting room or a queue at the supermarket checkout, you can guarantee that three quarters of the people will be glued to their phone screens, oblivious to what is happening around them.
So while I share his amusement at this kind of breathless writing, I have no reason to doubt the underlying premise was genuine. It reminded me of one of my favorite cartoons: https://www.leunig.com.au/images/dinkus/curly_world_images/TV-sunrise.jpg
The person writing this piece sounds like an idiot. I use my phone too much but I still notice praying mantises and the like. What's the point of projecting out from the experience of an idiot?