July 03, 2013
The one helpful social side effect of “smart phones” is a reduction in the number of loud idiots bellowing half a conversation in public places. Since their wireless ding-dongs don’t work so well as a legacy telephone, most rude gits have taken up texting. Unfortunately, otherwise polite people now find it impossible to refrain from hypnotically stroking their electrical pork sword in public places. Fiddling with your precious nerd dildo in public ought to be regarded the same way as picking your nose: It’s occasionally useful if done discreetly, but it’s always rude and shameful.
What unmet psychological need causes people to alert the universe that they have “checked in” at their coffee shop? What perverse compulsion makes Tweeting blockheads want to share their neural misfirings with the world 140 characters at a time? What pathological dopamine loop causes people to fondle and caress their chirping nerd dingus while attempting to converse with civilized people who are corporeally present? What debauchery of human evolution causes people to post snapshots of their godforsaken lunch, their tasteless concert-goings, or their general drunken idiocy? Am I supposed to be jealous of the really excellent times being had by people so screwed-up that they think live photographic updates of their parlous existence makes them more interesting? If there is something very important happening on the Internets, maybe you should stay home and use a real computer to find out about it. If you’re attempting to maintain a 140-character limited conversation with people all over the world, is there a chance you’d be happier making friends without the aid of the creepy spybot idol in your pocket?
I have a couple of friends who develop software for the things. These experts have informed me that the real-world utility of smart-phone software is to make money for software developers. There are no applications for doing useful work on “smart” phones. The screen is too small, and in any case, nobody seems to want useful programs for their nerd dildo; they want distractions. Blessed with a shorter attention span than the common fruit fly, modern homo sapiens uses his nerd dildo to distract himself from the horrors of being alone and conscious for more than a few seconds.
Computers have inarguably increased human power over nature. They allow us to plumb the universe’s mysteries and run statistics on systems of incredible complexity. They make cars run better, and they make the trains run on time. They even allow us to communicate more efficiently. Nerd dildos do no such thing; all they do is prevent people from excreting an uninterrupted thought that lasts longer than a couple of heartbeats.
