[Misc] Modern life

[portlock seagull]

One thing that hasn't changed in the modern world is people moaning about how things were better in the good old days.

Obviously they can do it online now though!

Meeeow! Skipflation, Shrinkflation and concentration of everything into hands of, well, a global handful of Big Techs has made life so much better hasn’t it?! Fortunately we’ve all got loads more money, haven’t past point of no return on climate change and have Trump’s presidency to look forward to again.

 

[Super Steve Earle]

This is the biggest issue. The amount of people of my parents’ era living the life on final salary pensions, in 4 bed houses they bought for £50,000 is scary. Gen X and the following generations simply won’t know such luxury.

It isn't an issue at all. It might be a matter of envy for some, but be honest, all the people owning nice three and four bedroom homes are not just from your parents' era. It's wrong to pit generation against generation.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

I find it stunning the amount of people who walk around glued to their phones, mum's pushing prams or parents walking with their kids, people out in nature head-down in their phones. Stand on any UK train station platform waiting for train and 99% of commuters are stood or sat head down in their phones. If you'd shown that vision to someone decades back they'd think it was some sci fi dystopian fiction. Really absurd and quite depressing.

 

[Berty23]

I find it stunning the amount of people who walk around glued to their phones, mum's pushing prams or parents walking with their kids, people out in nature head-down in their phones. Stand on any UK train station platform waiting for train and 99% of commuters are stood or sat head down in their phones. If you'd shown that vision to someone decades back they'd think it was some sci fi dystopian fiction. Really absurd and quite depressing.

I agree with the bit about people out with kids and being glued to phones. It is weird. Those kids won’t learn to communicate. They will learn to be ruled by a phone.

Re trains…I remember when everyone had a newspaper to read. Basically the same thing.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

I agree with the bit about people out with kids and being glued to phones. It is weird. Those kids won’t learn to communicate. They will learn to be ruled by a phone.

Re trains…I remember when everyone had a newspaper to read. Basically the same thing.

Newspapers and books traded for social media guff.

 

[Cordwainer]

I find it stunning the amount of people who walk around glued to their phones, mum's pushing prams or parents walking with their kids, people out in nature head-down in their phones. Stand on any UK train station platform waiting for train and 99% of commuters are stood or sat head down in their phones. If you'd shown that vision to someone decades back they'd think it was some sci fi dystopian fiction. Really absurd and quite depressing.

Black Mirror nailed it a while back.

 

[Berty23]

Newspapers and books traded for social media guff.

Or…reading today’s news as it happens vs reading yesterday’s news and potentially while learning something from a podcast.

 

[Coldeanseagull]

Go and sit in a wood? Get back to nature for a bit?

What do you think he is, a bear?.......oh, I seriously misread that

 

[Mustafa II]

Modern life is absolutely grim, unless you have wealth - not even 'normal wealthy' anymore, but vast unimaginable wealth, to most of us.

Capitalism has become absolutely masterful and absolutely relentless.

Kids aspire to be capitalist superstars these days, or 'influencers'. Their greatest ambition is to get moderately wealthy through being annoying twats and making their sponsors lots of money. So grim... Doctors, scientists, pilots - no longer desirable occupations for our kids these days - but who needs them anyway, now that AI and robotics is inevitably taking over those fields. What we need, apparently, more than anything, is for people to sell products to other sheeple. Sorry, people.

Modern life is all about being fed short but constant dopamine hits to keep us distracted and maintain this constant flow of us buying overpriced consumer items. How often do you feel the need to check your phone? If you're normal these days, it's every few minutes unless distracted by something real. And that is by design. Your sweet, sweet data being harvested so that you personally receive the latest fine-tune tailored advertisements, or at the very least to be used as data metrics so they can further mastermind the manipulation of the human cattle that you are, so you and others like you continue this absolutely crucial [to this dystopian capitalist system] trend of getting poorer yet still buying absolute shite in order to make the rich even richer.

Everything that is happening is encouraging us to be mindlessly individual (on our own) and for our real-life communities to perish. We have become cattle. The amazing technologies we have created are being used against us. We are no better than cows or sheep or chicken anymore. We are being harvested for our labour and our data in order to serve a very elite few, and we are blissfully unaware of any of it.

... and it's probably only going to get worse.

That reminds me, I must check my latest feed on social media, I'm sure there is something really, really important on there that I might have missed. What was I ranting about again?

 

[Han Solo]

You know you don't have to, right? Same as you're not 'forced to live in' any sort of digital world. Yes, it makes a huge difference to have an email address and possibly a smartphone, but no-one is forcing you to go balls-deep into digitising every aspect of your life.

For instance, I refuse to use the self-ordering screens in the likes of McDonalds and will always speak to a person to place an order – same in restaurants. I've never ordered anything from a food delivery app, used Uber and only very occasionally buy stuff online. I'll go the extra mile to speak to a customer services operative instead of using an online alternative. I don't read books but, if I did – and I was like you – there are plenty of physical options available, same with magazines and newspapers.

Gotta be honest, you're the one who can change it – and how 'digital' you want to be. It's almost completely up to you...

Did you ever sit on a bus or train, listening to music and thinking "man! I'd like to be that bass player!"?
Did you call your boss, tell him you quit and that you're going to become a bass player?

Unless you are one of the few lucky to be superhuman and thus completely disinterested in whether or not you're rejected by society, you're going to be doing what the other monkeys are doing (like making a living rather than playing bass). If the other monkeys are wearing clothes - even if its way too hot - you're likely going to be doing the same thing. If the other monkeys around you are speaking English, your not going to learn French just because it might sound sexier, you're going to try to fit in and speak English with the other monkeys.

Same goes for using the Internet.

95.3% of the population in the United Kingdom are Internet users.
We can pretend this is an entirely independent decision influenced by no one other than themselves and their own free will. We can ignore all research around the addictivness of social media, environmental determinism, the influence of commercials and culture indicating the benefits of Internet, and just imagine it being something you just easily opt in or out of.

Or just realise the whole "you're free to do whatever you want"-Milton-Friedman-bullshit actually isn't connected to how things work in reality. A signficant portion of that 95.3% would be better off with less/no internet but they are afraid of leaving it and all the 95% of the monkeys who are connected to this thing.

 

[zefarelly]

Day off today . . . . . . . Spent hours in the workshop . . . Tinkering with Lambretta bits . . . I did have the wireless on in the back ground . . . . . Mondays 'off' are great . . . .everyone else is at work/school whatever . .. . And its a quiet day . . . . Sheds/caves/garages/allotments/gardens/greenhouse's. . Are all the best mental health aids. .

 

[The Clamp]

Yes. I don’t really understand the world today.

I’m putting it down to inevitable generational confusion.

Left behind as the world rolls along.

It was ever thus.

The best antidote is to get on with your own thing.

As @Zaferelly wrote.

I spent my day off today tinkering with my motorbike, radio 4 on in the background, popped to the cafe, did my own bits and bobs. Nobody bothered me and I didn’t bother anyone else.

Seems to work.

 

[portlock seagull]

Or…reading today’s news as it happens vs reading yesterday’s news and potentially while learning something from a podcast.

Yes, because 24hr rolling news is so much better!!! And everyone’s listening to the New Scientist podcast too…

 

[zefarelly]

Did you ever sit on a bus or train, listening to music and thinking "man! I'd like to be that bass player!"?
Did you call your boss, tell him you quit and that you're going to become a bass player?

Yes, YES, Yes I did. . . . .

Balance is key . . . . and we're all different . . . . but always always follow your heart, or you're just kidding yourself.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Yes, YES, Yes I did. . . . .

Balance is key . . . . and we're all different . . . . but always always follow your heart, or you're just kidding yourself.

Unfortunately the need to put food on the table yadda yadda means that for the majority following your heart isn't always an option.

 

[Justice]

I find it stunning the amount of people who walk around glued to their phones, mum's pushing prams or parents walking with their kids, people out in nature head-down in their phones. Stand on any UK train station platform waiting for train and 99% of commuters are stood or sat head down in their phones. If you'd shown that vision to someone decades back they'd think it was some sci fi dystopian fiction. Really absurd and quite depressing.

Why do you find what other people do depressing? It’s their life not yours.
Have you never looked up information whilst out and about? Finding directions, paying for parking etc? You have no idea what people are searching for or doing on their phone one may need a washing machine another maybe paying a bill, booking a tradesman, replying to posts like these. It’s not really absurd when you think about it.

 

[Greg Bobkin]

You do have to, increasingly, that's the point. The Albion's preferred method of ticketing is clearly by smartphone; there are alternatives available at the moment, but give it a couple of seasons and probably it'll be completely compulsory to have a smartphone if you want to get into the Amex on a match day.
There are already some events and venues which operate like this. There are many car parks you can't use without a smart phone.

And you can sit there and say, "It's up to you"? No it isn't!

Only I didn't say that.

And, what I said earlier on in my post was 'Yes, it makes a huge difference to have an email address and possibly a smartphone...' which it clearly does. That one example is hardly being a slave to technology and the digital age, is it?

I gave loads of alternatives if people want a predominantly analogue life. If it bothers people that much to use an app to park, find somewhere that has a machine.

You want to bank in person? There are still options to do that - a place opened up in our high street earlier this year.

Fancy a bet? Try one of the many bookies all over the shop.

Want to know the latest news, but hate the thought of the Internet? Turn on the wireless (AM, FM or LW, obviously - none of that DAB nonsense for the non-techically-minded).

Want live sport? Does a TV count as 'digital'? Need a recipe? Try a cookbook. Want to listen to music? Plenty of CDs, records or tapes around (and the antiquated machines to play them on).

As I DID say, in most situations it's almost completely up to the individual. Sure, it might be a bit more of a ballache, but if it bothers people that much, they'll surely be willing to go the extra mile and do what they did in what they would no doubt call 'the good old days'

 

[Greg Bobkin]

I know what you’re getting at, but Big Tech isn’t just about user inter face frustration. It’s changed everything. Even your thinking.

You might think it has, but it's probably easier than you'd think to live a mostly analogue life. If you hate it *that* much...

 

[jcdenton08]

Some really interesting takes. I see life as about the balance of priorities. Most people’s priority is a roof their head, food, and health of themselves and their loved ones.

Ultimately, it’s also about responsibility vs pleasure. I could be having more fun “doing what I feel” and going for two weeks to the Bahamas instead of paying rent or bills, or going to work, or caring for my elderly mother. But that doesn’t work in reality without financial support that many/most don’t have.

It would be more interesting to give up a steady career in finance to run away with the circus, but people don’t do that because how would they feed their kids, pay their mortgage or provide for their own and their family’s futures?

The usual suspects with their ideas of changing the world and magical thinking - shades of mid-life crisis, we’ve all had them at one time or another - but the reality is society doesn’t function without people playing the society game.

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

Yes, YES, Yes I did. . . . .

Balance is key . . . . and we're all different . . . . but always always follow your heart, or you're just kidding yourself.

Let's face it, most people who do something like that end up splitting up with their partner and working in a Sainsbury's/Wetherspoons/Tip for the rest of their ultimately depressing lives.

There's a balance to be had between following your dreams, and finding some satisfaction in the more mundane reality that most of us are stuck in one way or another.