Honesty Died with the Polaroid Picture.
I sit on a train listening to three girls talking about Facebook like it truly is a revolution. They talk about wall posts and IM's like they are words and phrases etched into history as the tide changing, generation defining, rousing dialogues that will be remembered in years, decades, centuries to come.
“It's your love that controls me. No seriously, he wrote that on my wall!” Darts out from under a hum of train talk; the mundane weather and the general state of public transport, and the buzzing of the train in motion.
“I'm going to Tweet about today when I get home.” Is met with a series of nods and smiles.
A group boards the train and the seat next to me appears to expand and force me to press against the window under the expanding weight of sport relief conversation, how packaged salads contain more calories than a Big Mac, Converse trainers, tight jeans, I-Pods and flat caps as fashion accessories and the does and don'ts of wearing pumps (“Don't!” I scream inside to myself). I feel suffocated by a world I am losing touch with. We used to talk to God but now we just type it into Google.
For the longest time, maybe even as far back as my childhood, I have felt that the air on Sundays is heavier than in the week. I know that is impossible and it is probably just ingrained human guilt towards the rejection of the almighty on the holy day of rest. Rest under our new God, Money, just seems harder. Everywhere you look is a statement, be it a billboard or an item of clothing or a text message all of which even when consumed serve as an advert, or rather a message, just like mass, that the new God is there watching, wanting from you but for nothing in return. At least with God we felt we had something even when we had nothing but with money as a replacement if you don't have it then you don't have anything. You don't have faith, hope or comfort. I can't ignore the voice echoing in my ears “We did this to ourselves”.
In a sea of denim, leather and Indian ink identity gets blurred and lost as individualism becomes a contest for who can afford the latest accessory first. Your only artistic expression is the colour of your I-Pod, your status update, your myspace bulletin – You are what you Tweet. I have never had so many friends yet felt so alone.
I find myself sailing on a boat out in the vast ocean, the wind whistling past me, the water spraying my face. I feel free. I try to smell the salty sea and the freshness of the air and to feel refreshed by the cool water and calming breeze but this isn't real. The motion is digital, my companion is a collection of pixels, the sounds recorded and played back upon demand, all wrapped up in an advanced physics engine designed to capture and simulate reality. Second Life is the closest many of us can get to a second chance. I don't see that as a bright side.
Everything seems so immediate, so impersonal, so forced, so manufactured, from phrases uttered to the clothes that are worn to the way each and every detail of your life is shared with a hundred or so “Friends” who only know you through a portal to your life on an internet site. Who you are and what you do are fused into one. You are like an art print of a person – a copy of an original. They claimed dance music would be the future, the future of what nobody could be sure but whilst that prophecy fell by the wayside make no mistake that the digital revolution is here and in full swing and your success of adapting to it can be measured by the Linden dollars you carry in your open source designed trouser pockets.
If you can remember when adult meant grown up and not pornography then you have been left behind, a relic, a dinosaur, a piece of history. Honesty died with the polaroid picture. If you don't fit the bill they can photoshop you out. Who will remember us when we are gone if we leave nothing more tangible behind?
I sit on a train listening to three girls talking about Facebook like it truly is a revolution. They talk about wall posts and IM's like they are words and phrases etched into history as the tide changing, generation defining, rousing dialogues that will be remembered in years, decades, centuries to come.
“It's your love that controls me. No seriously, he wrote that on my wall!” Darts out from under a hum of train talk; the mundane weather and the general state of public transport, and the buzzing of the train in motion.
“I'm going to Tweet about today when I get home.” Is met with a series of nods and smiles.
A group boards the train and the seat next to me appears to expand and force me to press against the window under the expanding weight of sport relief conversation, how packaged salads contain more calories than a Big Mac, Converse trainers, tight jeans, I-Pods and flat caps as fashion accessories and the does and don'ts of wearing pumps (“Don't!” I scream inside to myself). I feel suffocated by a world I am losing touch with. We used to talk to God but now we just type it into Google.
For the longest time, maybe even as far back as my childhood, I have felt that the air on Sundays is heavier than in the week. I know that is impossible and it is probably just ingrained human guilt towards the rejection of the almighty on the holy day of rest. Rest under our new God, Money, just seems harder. Everywhere you look is a statement, be it a billboard or an item of clothing or a text message all of which even when consumed serve as an advert, or rather a message, just like mass, that the new God is there watching, wanting from you but for nothing in return. At least with God we felt we had something even when we had nothing but with money as a replacement if you don't have it then you don't have anything. You don't have faith, hope or comfort. I can't ignore the voice echoing in my ears “We did this to ourselves”.
In a sea of denim, leather and Indian ink identity gets blurred and lost as individualism becomes a contest for who can afford the latest accessory first. Your only artistic expression is the colour of your I-Pod, your status update, your myspace bulletin – You are what you Tweet. I have never had so many friends yet felt so alone.
I find myself sailing on a boat out in the vast ocean, the wind whistling past me, the water spraying my face. I feel free. I try to smell the salty sea and the freshness of the air and to feel refreshed by the cool water and calming breeze but this isn't real. The motion is digital, my companion is a collection of pixels, the sounds recorded and played back upon demand, all wrapped up in an advanced physics engine designed to capture and simulate reality. Second Life is the closest many of us can get to a second chance. I don't see that as a bright side.
Everything seems so immediate, so impersonal, so forced, so manufactured, from phrases uttered to the clothes that are worn to the way each and every detail of your life is shared with a hundred or so “Friends” who only know you through a portal to your life on an internet site. Who you are and what you do are fused into one. You are like an art print of a person – a copy of an original. They claimed dance music would be the future, the future of what nobody could be sure but whilst that prophecy fell by the wayside make no mistake that the digital revolution is here and in full swing and your success of adapting to it can be measured by the Linden dollars you carry in your open source designed trouser pockets.
If you can remember when adult meant grown up and not pornography then you have been left behind, a relic, a dinosaur, a piece of history. Honesty died with the polaroid picture. If you don't fit the bill they can photoshop you out. Who will remember us when we are gone if we leave nothing more tangible behind?
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