Seriously, dude?

Dealing with a self-indulgent, unaware society.

Is it not 2014? Does not every mother and child, doctor and janitor, artist and engineer, have a working pair of headphones? How can it at all be considered acceptable to be sitting on a train playing your stupid, mind numbing video game with the volume at full blast? Seriously, dude?

Riding the G train is already an exercise in patience. Waiting at Court Square for the train to begin it’s long journey to who knows where, I am surrounded by ten or so other passengers and engulfed by terrible midi music and 8-bit sound effects. It is impossible to read the critique on — You know what? It doesn’t matter what I’m reading. No — I’m stuck listening to these assholes and their stupid game.

“Yo”, I interject. “Do you mind turning down the volume?” Was I rude? No. Was I polite? Hardly.

There are four 30-something men in the group and they are all but oblivious to me. I repeat myself.

“What’s up?”, one says to the other. His friend mutters something and the worst offender looks up from his game, finally — and then looks down again. It’s hard to tell if this has changed anything. He may have become vaguely aware of himself but before long it’s full on again.

I imagine that these are the same guys that walk down the street talking on speaker phone at full volume.

A complete lack of self awareness seems to have penetrated a certain segment of our city psyche. Head down, buried in a 2d reality, eyes bloodshot and adrenaline levels always competing with coursing cortisone. When did we become so unaware of the world around us? And its not just video games. I see folks with their headphones on, lost in an inhibition-less, zombie state. Screwing their face up or biting their cheek incessantly or picking their nose or clipping their nails — often on the subway, no less. Gross. You’re not alone.

Always listening to music, audiobooks or podcasts. While playing Candy Crush or TwoDots. Walking the city streets with heads down — gaze and phone always in perfect alignment. Walking through red lights or standing obliviously at the exit or in the middle of a busy sidewalk. What has happened to downtime? To pause? The new normal is the distraction. Even in our relationships we are prioritizing the quiet reality on our phone over the tangible one right there in front of us.

I heard a CMO quote a stat the other day that the average person checks their phone 160 times a day. I couldn’t help but think the correct stat is how often do they look away from the phone. Sad but true. It is our entry point into everything. Instead of discussion and debate over, say, “what is ideology?”, my friends and I all check our phones in symphonic harmony, share the definition and move on.

And it’s our validation machine. We post content for the purpose of getting likes, and that little bump of serotonin every time our phone tremors in the time that follows.

There was a lot of discussion over the last decade about the revolution we are living through right now (and its a remarkable time to be alive for sure). I remember when we first began to classify what was happening it was labeled the information age, but when we started to talk about what was really happening, we talked about communication. About being connected. The Internet was finally going to create a truly connected world.

The conversation seems to have shifted back. Forget communication, its all about data. Sharing information, broadcasting everything. Machine learning. Artificial Intelligence. Turns out, we’re less connected than ever before. Head down, living in flatland. Typing preferred to talking. Post, post, post. Like, like, like. Predictable, behavioral machines. Always on our phones.