Social Media. What?
How can a long series of trivially retarded conversations constitute "social"? How can splatting blurbs everywhere about the little and embarrassing things in your life be considered "connecting with people"? How can people pretending to read your drivel so that hopefully you'll read theirs be equated with "media"?
Seriously folks, these systems are fun, but they are merely entertainment. Once the next best things comes in, we will drop them like the brain-dead stupidity that they really are. After all, how much do you really need to know about people's status, particularly if you barely know them?
This week's hula hoop is next week's landfill. Get ready to move on ....
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Mission Accomplished
Why do things, when it is so much easier to say that you've done them? After all, expending effort requires effort, while just talking about effort only requires a creative enough spin. A misappropriation of the truth, by just the smallest fraction.
When they are looking back on the start of the 21st Century the biggest thing they'll note is how we claimed -- so often -- so much more than we did. How we claimed -- so loudly -- so much more than we knew. How we just kept claiming everything, like a pathological liar stuck on 'repeat'.
I guess most people think that if they say it, then somehow that constitutes action, and if they say it often enough, it will somehow become the truth. We can talk about a virtual world, a digital utopia constructed cleanly inside of a machine, but when we come around to trying to re-create that alternative reality over top of our modern one we know that we have diverged too far from our center. Too far from what makes us tick. Too far from what makes us wake up in the morning, put on clothes and then withstand the pounding and scratching of our own pitiful existence.
The world then, has become full of people's resumes proudly proclaiming success after success accomplishing their missions. Great works of fiction, created by our greatest minds. Yet a sad testimony to a world drowning in its own stupid rules and asinine regulations. A world caught in a downward spiral. Proof that somewhere along the road, we dropped our wisdom and have not yet had the good sense to go back and look for it. A forgotten ability, lost in a forgetful world.
When they are looking back on the start of the 21st Century the biggest thing they'll note is how we claimed -- so often -- so much more than we did. How we claimed -- so loudly -- so much more than we knew. How we just kept claiming everything, like a pathological liar stuck on 'repeat'.
I guess most people think that if they say it, then somehow that constitutes action, and if they say it often enough, it will somehow become the truth. We can talk about a virtual world, a digital utopia constructed cleanly inside of a machine, but when we come around to trying to re-create that alternative reality over top of our modern one we know that we have diverged too far from our center. Too far from what makes us tick. Too far from what makes us wake up in the morning, put on clothes and then withstand the pounding and scratching of our own pitiful existence.
The world then, has become full of people's resumes proudly proclaiming success after success accomplishing their missions. Great works of fiction, created by our greatest minds. Yet a sad testimony to a world drowning in its own stupid rules and asinine regulations. A world caught in a downward spiral. Proof that somewhere along the road, we dropped our wisdom and have not yet had the good sense to go back and look for it. A forgotten ability, lost in a forgetful world.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Unchanging
Everybody says they want change. Everybody says that they want to fix the problems. But once it comes down to something they've said, or something they need to change, or even something they can do something about, it is suddenly an issue. Suddenly something to be avoided. Something wrong.
We proud creatures seem to be gifted at talking about stuff, but acting on it is another matter completely. We will talk. We will say. But we won't move.
Intelligence, that odd beast, is not with us often enough. We float mindlessly through life. Wisdom, particularity when defined to be an understanding of when not to get pedantically caught up in nothingness, is a rare commodity. Thinking, then, is not something most people are actively involved in. In fact, they try very hard NOT to think about things. To avoid those things for which they don't like, or don't want or are just too confusing to them in some vague way. We are a society of willingly blind fools. One that just keeps hoping, beyond all reason, that somehow, in some-way, it will all work out.
And thus we don't get change. We don't get fixes. We don't get better. We just get the near-perfectly shallow existence that we traded our lives for. A chance to fill up our rec. rooms with another pile of plastic products. Stuff of unnecessary and unexceptionable quality. Junk, by any other name. It is our stuff. What we own, what we wear, what we use, and ever more increasingly, what we think. We are evaporating. Disappearing slowly, beneath a sea of mindless slaves that must always do what they are told. Hollowed out shells that no longer no why. That no longer care why. They seem -- at the surface at least -- perfectly content with just fiddling around with another stupid gadget, instead of finding real meaning or purpose in their lives. And so it goes.
Everybody says they want change.
We proud creatures seem to be gifted at talking about stuff, but acting on it is another matter completely. We will talk. We will say. But we won't move.
Intelligence, that odd beast, is not with us often enough. We float mindlessly through life. Wisdom, particularity when defined to be an understanding of when not to get pedantically caught up in nothingness, is a rare commodity. Thinking, then, is not something most people are actively involved in. In fact, they try very hard NOT to think about things. To avoid those things for which they don't like, or don't want or are just too confusing to them in some vague way. We are a society of willingly blind fools. One that just keeps hoping, beyond all reason, that somehow, in some-way, it will all work out.
And thus we don't get change. We don't get fixes. We don't get better. We just get the near-perfectly shallow existence that we traded our lives for. A chance to fill up our rec. rooms with another pile of plastic products. Stuff of unnecessary and unexceptionable quality. Junk, by any other name. It is our stuff. What we own, what we wear, what we use, and ever more increasingly, what we think. We are evaporating. Disappearing slowly, beneath a sea of mindless slaves that must always do what they are told. Hollowed out shells that no longer no why. That no longer care why. They seem -- at the surface at least -- perfectly content with just fiddling around with another stupid gadget, instead of finding real meaning or purpose in their lives. And so it goes.
Everybody says they want change.
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