Spent a morning out on the town on my day off, and everyone is just fucking buried in their phones 24/7. This realization was so absurd to me
Of course I’m not exempt from this shit, but no wonder people are having so much trouble making friends and creating meaningful relationships in this day and age. So fucking bleak
Newspapers and what became before them weren’t addictive, dynamic skinner boxes with millions of dollars in machine learning behind them trying to map out and manipulate every aspect of your behavior. It was just good old fashioned one way propaganda.
that’s the individual analysis, i’d argue newpapers could occupy a similar function in public spaces of a tentative ‘do not disturb’ sign that phones do. the OP is talking about people in public and it’s a pretty valid observation that people used to have ways to avoid talking to others and making relationships too.
Oh, yeah, fair enough.
Eh at least it wasn’t so easy. The generation of “meet people or practice socializing in lines” is gone due to phones imo, bit harder to do that with a newspaper at every ‘empty’ moment
yeah paper’s a bit less conveinient and vulnerable to people seeing what you’re reading & inquiring about it. phones have definitely improved upon the “don’t talk to me” meta, especially with headphones
Fuckin headphones. Everyone has them on. How do people feel safe biking in the city with headphones on?!
Also with a newspaper, you didn’t have a real time comment section and if you are all sitting around reading a paper you’re probably all reading the same few papers and it could even foster in person social interaction and discussion. I remember a time where I would come to work and eat lunch in the break room while reading the paper and talking about whatever was in the news that day with my coworkers for example.
If this is what it sounds like, why isn’t my phone more entertaining? Do a better job, manipulators!
Something being addictive doesn’t necessarily mean it feels good; often it’s just the cessation of the withdrawal symptoms.
This is part of why it’s called “doomscrolling”, because it doesn’t feel good but you feel compelled to do it (implicitly because not doing it agitates you or something)
The extension of that take is smugly quoting that one ancient Greek guy that said the children of his time were unruly and disrespectful.
kids these days can’t memorize anything, they just write things down and read them back later
In the contemporary attention economy, I doubt most people of any age actually remember phone numbers or the like without electronic assistance. I sure don’t. There’s so much else going on and it takes up headspace.
I remember having like 30 phone numbers in my head. What a fucking waste of space. Some of them are still in there even though I haven’t used them in decades.
lol still remember the landline number from my childhood home.
Actually I still probably remember about 30 numbers now that I think of it.