Virtually over it

Look around, odds are that a large percentage of people are currently on their smart phone, snap chatting, facebooking, tweeting, and whatever else there is to do on there, you know besides being a human being. Is anyone sick of experiencing life through the filters supplied by instragram? As was the case 10 years ago, no one cares what you lunch looks like or what you look like every 5 seconds with duck face permanently in place. Can selfies just stop already? The people who see you all the time are most likely satisfied with that and the ones who don't are probably tired of seeing the same facial expression with the same of ample amount of cleavage any ways. Please stop.

Please stop crying all over facebook then getting defensive for people giving an opinion you begged for. We get it you need attention, but either accept that most people think you are a moron for posting personal and trainwrecking things online or stop. I know what you are thinking, if I do not like it, unfriend them, stop going on facebook, be the change you would like to see. The truth is for the same reason as many, trainwrecks are fun, they make you feel so much better about your ability to restrain your crazy to real life, not virtual.

Can we stand to pry ourselves away from our online lives to experience it in real time? Can we stop dreaming of the locations we see so many pictures of and go there? I hope so, but lose faith with each day. I was recently chastised for turning off my tablet when someone came and sat by me, I turned it off in the expectation to have a conversation or at least hang out. Instead, I was met with derision at the notion that I turn off my electronic device when he sits down next to me. The reason? He would like to be on his phone. I have been replaced by facebook.

Now I don't want to come across as hypercritical because when I am into a book, I am positively unreachable. But maybe that is still better, is there a difference between choosing literature, albeit sometimes not superb literature, over people; to choosing facebook or another form of internet over people?  I also feel I must reveal, that I do not nor ever have owned a smart phone, I understand the draw, the appeal, and the need. I just cannot justify it, I miss the days of having an argument/discussion where no one knows the answer and we each defend our reasoning and move on, now the conversation stops for one or more people to google the answer from the dinner table to resolve the quandary.

We have become so dependent on a site that our ability to think, speak, and function relies heavily on it. I fear getting a smart phone will make me dumber, make me stop thinking, make me even less social, if that is possible. Am I alone in a world of smart phones, when people 10 to 15 years older than me, my mother in fact have adopted such a common accessory? Some days it feels like it, and most days I love it. Silence and the ability to truly experience my lunch, my friends, my life without documenting every second.