I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE VIDEOS LIKE THIS EXIST

He has a point. I just feel that, for the sake of the rhymes, that whole thing got pushed to the top a bit more than was necessary. Social media makes our lives easier, but a lot of people spend far less time together than they did before. For me, that's not really a bad thing all the time - I like to be alone sometimes. But nobody wants to be alone all the time. And while internet friends are just as great as 'real' friends that you can meet in your real life, they can't come over if you feel bad. You can't go to a party with them or see a movie together. I love to play video games, but having a nice day with my friends where we talk about everything that's on our minds is just as great, if not better.

To be fair I am picky when it comes to spending time with friends because I'm an awkward little penguin sometimes...but I would still feel lonely if no one was there for me (physically). I feel like that's what he wants to explain: That we get lonely without ever really being lonely. Such a thing can happen. Both, real life friends and internet friends are important, but without the real life ones we would just be...lonely. Or at least I was at a point in my life. Our technical devices aren't monsters, but they aren't saints all the time, either.

You had me on everything but this.

author=Yellow Magic
Why on Earth should we do nothing but conform to the 'perfect' idea of a single, monogamic relationship, and then sit around waiting for death?

This sort of mentality arises from not knowing how to live life the proper way. Love isn't about "conforming". Life isn't about waiting for death.

Technology does a lot and we should make use of what we have, but we can't forget, like the guy speaks of, to look up once in a while and make the best of where we are.

YM much prefers videos like this:


I know which I prefer of the two. Problems included :V

(I'm sorry okay I just wanted to post it again)

Seriously though, the guy's got a very good point, not one that wasn't really already very obvious, but a point nonetheless - and we live in a time that unless you have some sad piano music behind what you're saying on a youtube video them nobody will listen to you anyway - so the execution is excusable.

Oh and re: the conservative values subtext - yeah it's a bit blah there and maybe it goes off the deep end with it - I took it more as an appeal to sentimentality for the world of real life connection with others (just through a single perspective) rather than something nefariously regressive, though?

I agree that social media and smart phones tend to be distracting rather than helpful in my day-to-day, but using them in moderation has some pretty great benefits. I mean, it can just be another route of escapism, and it's not one that's particularly worse than other ways we isolate ourselves: alcohol, drugs, hoarding, excessive video games, etc. My only real problem with that video, though, is that the guy boils down the meaning of life to meeting some broad and knocking her up, which is a pretty reductive way of looking at the human experience. In an ironic twist, his appeal is just another bit of distracting white noise thrown at me through social media (saw this on Facebook before seeing it here). Also his poetry read like a fucking Hallmark card.

author=Yellow Magic

author=Housekeeping
My only real problem with that video, though, is that the guy boils down the meaning of life to meeting some broad and knocking her up, which is a pretty reductive way of looking at the human experience.

Yeah, this is my main issue with the video too, and is a very dangerous way of thinking that should be brought to attention. Unfortunately, the majority of the arguments I'm seeing atm are by people butthurt by the reality that maybe they really ARE on their smartphones a bit too much.

If that's what you took from the video, I think you're focusing on the wrong thing.

Yeah, the point of the video is to stop spending time on smart phones and social media and to focus on real life. That's obvious and we all knew that prior to this moron revealing it to us. But, his understanding of real life is brainless and saccharine. If his proposed solution to stepping away from technological distractions was that you take time to think and determine what's important for your own life, then that would've been fine, but I guess "introspection" is too hard to rhyme.

When I was a kid computers hardly existed. The most advanced computer used the big ass floppy disks where you had to insert 2 disks just to play number crunchers. The phone I had was one of those where you needed to rotate your finger in a circle to dial the number (and hey what was an area code?)

It's hard to imagine what kind of life our children will have. They will
never had known the world without computers that we did when we grew up.

When he said, "the time you don't have to tell hundreds of what you've just done"... that line is where I think he hits the mark. You don't need to tell everyone on FB that you had that fantastic lunch with your friend, or take a photo to prove you were there. Yes, it might be cool, but if you have any sort of compulsion to let people know that you exist by posting attractive photos online, then maybe it's wrong to do it just to impress others. The flipside of that, is that people will browse FB and other social networking sites thinking: "I really want to be like that person, they always go out and do cool stuff and I don't get invited" and that perpetuates the loneliness. Even though if you went to that cafe with them, it was probably just a boring old chat.

I think the bottom line is: yes, don't always look down at your phone and report to the online statusphere what you're doing, or whether you're taking a shit, or wiping your bum or whatever you're doing and broadcasting it to the world to get attention. Maybe just savouring the moment by yourself instead of feeling the need to share it with the world will make that shit come out your ass way more smoothly. Either that or you can take a laxative, or a great amount of red beans, I hear that does the trick. I think you also might need to get some more fiber in your diet. I've heard that makes the consistency of the fecal matter a lot more 'scrunchy' and less 'pasty', which leads to a much easier bowel evacuation. Having a strategy also works too, I mean if you're yearning to push waste material out the rear end, one of the prime tactics people use is to spread yourself right on the outside of the lid, thus increasing the surface area, and relaxing the muscles that aid in the transport of bodily by-products out the waste disposal chute.

I'll say that too much of anything is too bad, there should be a balance.

RMN is the only account I have online now and I only have like 5 people in my contacts on my phone, since I only use it for emergencies. I don't really think I'm missing out on much according to this guy's idea of life.

But wow, If I've been doing the right thing why haven't I got a date yet?

forever alone