Smartphones

This is a post which goes hand-in-hand with yesterday's post and it is basically an expansion on one of the points I made in yesterday's post. If you have not read this post, click here. Yesterday I mentioned how socialising had updated to meet the current world standards of technology and how this has impacted us both negatively and positively. I made a point about smartphones and their impact on socialising and so today I am going to expand on this point as well as discuss some other areas of our lives that smartphones are affecting. As I said yesterday, they are limiting our face-to-face interactions while also stimulating our world-wide connectivity. Even on a local scale people text more to each other than they would talk about face-to-face as they do not have to face the social awkwardness that a topic or question would bring up.

Source: http://urbantimes.co/2013/09/this-restaurants-policy-put-your-phone-down-and-socialise/

Smartphones, in fact most phones, have made it easier for the rise of the global community. People are now easily able to instantly communicate to someone on the other side of the world and receive an instant reply. In this respect, smartphones have made great headway in this respect by making it even easier to communicate quickly through video-calling and texting which saves individual conversations. They have also limited our world-view. If you go to a concert today you will most likely be seeing the majority of people (probably including yourself) using their phones to record the concert, take photos/selfies, check Facebook and do everything but enjoy what they paid so much to see. It has become socially accepted and if you go to a concert, expect to be watching it through someone's smartphone camera. Even when on dates you see both people on their phones texting other people. Sometimes you even walk past a group of people texting each other! As I said yesterday, it can make for less socially awkward moments but it can also leave people with very little social skills and manners which you can only gain through experience. Even when you go out with family and friends you seem some people living on their phones. My brother is an annoying culprit for this. No matter where you go, be at a restaurant or someone's home, he is always on his phone for the majority of the night. Not only is it rude, it is incredibly annoying. Especially when you need to repeat yourself several times before he understands what you are going on about. It is really frustrating.

Smartphones are both an improvement and a hindrance in our modern society, see you tomorrow!

WATCH the video that sparked these posts:

Decisions, Decisions

You know how annoying it can be to make major decisions in a rush? Decisions like where to go, who to see and where to see Catching Fire are just impossible to make on limited time. The worst part is you can not stay silent and think about it first because then people just stare at each other in an awkward silence. Then this awkwardness just grows to an extent that by the time you have a decision it is too awkward to say anything and so the rest of the time is spent in silence. To avoid this you have to use filler words like "um", "er" or "uh" and after a while of doing this you just seem like a brain-dead idiot. It is just so hard to make decisions on the spot guys, do not put me under such pressure!

Source: http://9gag.com/gag/6866225

So think before you ask me these major decisions. How am I supposed to remember what my favourite movie is so that I can answer immediately after you ask? It just makes me look like an idiot when I go "Hunger Games... no! Catching Fire.... no! Hunger Games" and it gets worse once people realise that Catching Fire has not being released yet and they realise I am presuming this. When you ask me where I want to go do not expect a straight answer. Of the trillions of locations within our world how am I supposed to know where I want to go at that exact moment. Unless I need to go to the toilet really badly I will have no idea. Even then, when someone asks where you want to go "Toilet" is in no way a valid answer. It just leads to an awkward silence and a hasty change of subject. How should I know what I want from the store? I have literally milliseconds to come up with something and then I say something stupid that I will never need like tampons or a life. I mean, come on guys. If you ask me hastily you are going to get a hasty response. Now questions like what do you want to be when you are older, what are you going to study in VCE, do you want to be resuscitated should the need arise are ones that do not require as much thought. Just remember that where I want to watch Catching Fire is going to be a major decision and turning point in my life so do not expect me to answer you immediately, I need time.

So next time you ask any of these important questions, do not expect a responsible answer. See you tomorrow!

Problems

We live in a world where problems are everywhere. Such a change would require an equivalent adjustment but in our case society has just moved on and let these problems fester so that we become a generation of complainers. We have so many problems that we even have categories for them. Oh, there are so many categories. You have the ordinary relationship problems (self-explanatory) and health problems but then you have the more interesting ones which I will go into more depth later. We have had to create new categories that, just years before, could never have existed. In this way we are our own worst enemies and should tackle our problems head on instead of letting them get to us enough that we feel the need to categorise them.

Source: http://www.pinterest.com/search/?q=problems

We have people problems which come from our unstoppable need to be better than others. We have relationship problems, more commonly referred to as Taylor Swift Problems, which come in the form of boyfriends/girlfriends breaking up and, in the case of Taylor Swift, write endless songs about it. You see, we do not hold grudges. Then we come to the places where these problems are played out, our social media sites. We have Facebook problems with so much to do yet nothing that will not destroy a few brain cells. We have Twitter problems for those who read through every tweet in their feed. We have Instagram problems for people with too much photos and not enough followers. Do not even get me started on YouTube problems because that is a whole other post. Actually, come to think of it, it probably will be a whole other post (be looking out for that sometime in the distant future). Then there are all the other sites on the dark side of the internet. Yes, I am referring to CoolVid and LinkedIn, do not think I would not go there because I just did. Nothing is off limits in this post (well, many things are but). Then you have school problems for people who do not pay attention and wonder why their marks never improve. This is generally accompanied by parent problems when they find out what is going on. So, as you can see, our modern society has created so many new and 'interesting' (think of a horrible antonym) problems that we have felt the need to categorise them.

It is only through problems that we will grow but at this point, I think we are pretty much on a plateau. See you tomorrow!