15 mei 2013

Phonecalypse One - Back to Basics

I would start this day of without Social  Media. Better said, no internetconnection..
   
      "SAY WHAT?
       HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?
       WITHOUT YOUR PHONE
       YOU CRAZY
       I CAN'T IMAGINE A DAY WITHOUT MY PHONE
       IMPOSSIBLE "


Unfortunately, I'm not an 'easy to reach person' ( I quote my friends here).. so living without media applications wasn't THAT hard for me. Back to basics..
My plan was to be 'out of social media picture' for three days. This became six days in the end. Why? Because I didn't miss the Social Environment. I found myself talking a lot more(yes even I can talk more than I already do) to my friends at the end of the day.
WhatsApp breaks your day into pieces discussing segments of your day on the moment something occured. I'd like to keep it to myself until the end of the day. Why? I miss the real conversation; the open 'how-was-your-day-honey conversation'.
We are one week further and I still haven't download WhatsApp back to my applicationlist. I find myself in peace, calmth and rest. (read: don't have to stress about charging my battery again).

What about the secondlife of my alter ego on Facebook and other social media? Well it is obvious that we're more and more changing our standards and values about privacy. People are constantly sharing minor news events about changes and happenings in their lives. These minor-facts are in turn getting more minor since you have to keep up with the 'share society' but face it; not every occurence in life is a event worth sharing. Reading a book while drinkin' tea? Sorry, we don't care. Somehow we are starting to create an narcistic image to ourselves with the love to share. Where's the collective belonging? There's no collective belongin'. Oh well.. for Google and Facebook maybe?! Only macro-news, news that concerns the whole society, flows collectively through social media. Since nothing big had happened in the past few days, my Facebook timeline was basically a garbagecan with clots of personal dairy sketches that apparently were worth spilling ink for. There's nothing major that I missed.. nowadays we simply just accept the minorfacts to make life more exciting.

What I'm about to find out the next few days is that I'm a pricey friend without all these media..

Move - "Phoneless - Around" - Ment 1 - 3

So.. as an experiment for school, me and my schoolmates were interested in how smartphones nowadays slightly silently change our perception of time and space. While we're in a room, it's easy to visually exit the room through your phone; just give in to the gaze and disolve. Our smartphones nowaday are becoming more and more an excuse to get out, to choose not to talk in public, to choose not to participate in public. We are trapped between the flow of statusupdates, never ending WhatsApp conversations and real life experiences. We live in a 'share-culture' where time is not just a matter anymore of the 'linear but time is an compilation of statusupdates from yesterday and lastweek overlapping eachother, waiting to be read by us. Wasn't it just more fun to share things in public, face-to-face with your friends? We simple care to much about that goddamn phone. We have the urge to be constantly available, reachable. Often I see girls sitting next to eachother while lunchin' and talking about what happens on Facebook while they're both looking to the same update on their own phones! Where it simply went to far for me was a week or so ago. A girl was sitting on her bike, I guess on her way to school. She was busy with her phone and was certainly not paying attention to the road or anything else that happened around her... and then.. *TOEEEEEET*
If the busdriver was also caught up in his phone talking to his wife about his goddamn brainkilling job, this would end up in a catastrophic accident. Luckily, the busdriver was doing his job and cursed at the girl. Of course.. the girl didn't hear anything because 'she was so busy with her phone' and drove on..
For me.. this was the begin of the end. Phone-Apocolypse.