deducecanoe:

lizardywizard:

I haven’t seen the original article because it wasn’t linked, but I think the choice of pictures for the header makes my point well enough.

Which is: ever noticed how all art about “the evils of the modern world” focuses on smartphones and fat people?

I’d be the first to speak up and say there are plenty of things wrong with modern industrialized society. Like, oh, I don’t know, climate change. Cops murdering with impunity. Species going extinct. The way the US government has practically been taken hostage by corporate interests. An emphasis on throwing away and replacing rather than repairing. Schools teaching to the test and crushing creative thinking. Mass unemployment and poverty. Fox “News”.

I can think of ten dozen more, and smartphones and fat people aren’t even close to making the list. If we lived in a world where our biggest “problems” were people being fat and people having computers in their pockets, we’d be in damn near utopia.

So why do so-called “cutting-edge”, “countercultural” artists insist on repeating those two images over and over again?

We live in the fucking future. I read an article about a young girl who was born with her heart outside of her rib cage. Not only has she survived to seven or nine years old, they are going to perform surgery to put everything where it should be so she can have a long life.

I was visiting my family and used FaceTime do my niece could meet Jim, whom she had never met. And she got to see all my animals. How cool is that?

We can PRINT people new arms and legs. People far away from cities and universities can take classes online and get an education. The Internet has revolutionized how we use libraries and how we manage the information in them (not made it obsolete).

I can get book two in a series downloaded to my e-reader at 2am so I can continue my literary journey without waking my spouse or having a panic attack about how the story ends.

My phone helps me control my OCD because o can TELL it to set a timer so I Am forced to stop my task. It has apps to help with panic attacks and executive function. It’s made my life so much better and more manageable as someone with autism trying to function in the world. My life is so much better with my smart phone than before I had a mobile phone at all, in high school and college. I can’t think of how helpful it would have been in high school.

I’m so sick of this pseudo-Luddite tsk tsk poo poo thing that is super popular right now. We have fucking cars that drive themselves. My prescriptions tell ME when they need to be refilled. But you are worried about how people use their phones to communicate with people they WANT to talk to instead of making uncomfortable small talk with your shitty face. You are living in the god damned future. Every idiot who things they are sharing some clever unpopular opinion about phones wrote their article with spell check on and submitted it for publication via the Internet. And likely to a site that only published online. This pseudo-ludditism can suck my nuts.

Almost every instance of a bunch of people on their phones being used to shame si when it’s in a public place like a subway train or on a bus and I’m jsut thinking “what the fuck are they supposed to do? look out the window to a tunnel or a city they see every day?” Plus, you don’t know if they’re talking to their friends, reading a book or watching a new episode of [popular show]
because of technology, I have friends who live in UK. I have friends who live in australia. I have friends who I may never meet but I trust. Technology is great for people like me because I hate meeting new people and talking face to face because it always feels like people are judging me. With technology, they don’t hear me stutter. They don’t see yawn. they don’t see whatever it is that I’m self conscious about. Honestly, with technology, people are more connected than ever.