By Joel Hess –
So I’m sure y’all have tapped on the epidemic video ‘look up’ by some British educational advertisement company. Oh, I just ‘looked up’ the author of this viral Mona Lisa on the World Wide Web using my smart phone. He is the artist formerly known as Gary Turk (although I’m sure he disapproves of my dependency on hand held electronics).
Every matriarch on my Facebook friend list has proudly posted this little Romeo and Juliet on their home page with good intentions. And why not? It befits the maternal disappointed head nod when mom sees her son hanging out with a girl whose blouse is a little too low cut. Tsk, tsk, tsk. I am sorry friends for ragging on this. I almost posted it too. Then I watched it.
In the video, a weak looking British homie poorly rhymes his way through a melodramatic tale of the horrors of smart phones. Ironically, probably 80% of Gary’s viewers viewed his viral video on a smart phone. But that’s good smart-phoning, I suppose, like e-cigarettes. Still, both should be tightly controlled by the government!
What I learned most from this clip is that I mourn the good ol’ days when Brits were so clever with words! Ah, the real damage done by the information age is not the breaking down of community but the dilution of Grande Britannia’s vocabulary. Better yet, the Hiroshima unleashed upon the world through the smart phone is not social isolation but crappy photography and videos bombarding ordinary unsuspecting po’ folk. Ansel Adams has been reduced to a bore by Instagram. Thank God; it’s overrated anyways. Like all of photography.
Gary’s best line is something like – dumb people using smart phones. Get it? That verse should go down in literary history along with New York’s public ad rap in the 90’s addressing sexual assaults in public pools – “Don’t dis your sis in the pool. Ain’t cool!”
And of course we had to hear a word about those greedy bastards – a.k.a. anyone who has a lot of money except for Gary Turk. He should run for President…or Pope.
Since Gary can’t really trust his poorly chosen words or even his ideas themselves, he (a.k.a. greedy bastard) accompanies his sad tale with predictable melodramatic mega church worship instrumental music to create the illusion that his words are dead-seriously true, meaningful and sad. I would have taken him seriously if he had just cut his ear off. But that’s me.
Gary (I will forever think of SpongeBob when I say that name) blames smart phones for causing social isolation. Do you feel socially isolated? You are the person he is white rapping (wrapping) about.
Now don’t get me wrong, I too have become increasingly annoyed at mine and younger generations’ obsession with our ‘precious’ metal rectangles. At least I have noticed fewer of those blue tooth ear pieces – creepy. I would rather have you look down at your phone while talking to me, than looking right at me while talking to someone else. Cyborg. Google Glass might prove to be sillier.
Our addiction to smart phones make us look stupid, tru dat. But I don’t know if smart phones will keep us from getting married, climb a mountain or hang out with fellow members of the My Little Pony Men’s Club. Is there any actual evidence that people are doing less as a community these days? And can it be clearly linked to smart phones? I wonder if it is the opposite.
Actually, I wonder if people are connected in communities now more than ever – even to a fault. Maybe there is too much community, group think, peer to peer influence. When we home schooled people responded with the knee jerk non thinking critique – well he’s not going to get social interaction! First it may amaze people that there are groups of people outside of the school. Secondly, I don’t want my kids to get social interaction from halfwits.
Just to be annoying to the mob, I will suggest that we are actually unable to be alone these days! Community for community’s sake is not a good thing, just ask those who lived under Nazi and communist rule. They had a real strong sense of community. Or the people of Babel I suppose. No smart phones there.
Community for community’s sake ain’t good, in fact, it be bad. Yet it is the Lord who says after he formed Adam – it is not good that man is alone. Indeed it is not if you have ever visited a bachelor pad. Yikes. Satan came in a separated Eve from Adam when he knocked on the door and through that sin and our sin he separates and isolates us so that we feel very alone! Yet Christ died and rose to form a community between Himself and sinners, you and me. Because, as he said, ‘ it is not good that man is alone!’
I know the irony has not been lost on you, o intelligent reader, that both the viral video and this blog post requires the use of your smart phone! We are stuck on a merry-go-round and I want to get off but it’s going too fast! And the guy telling me to get off is spinning the circle! What do you do when you want to get off a merry-go-round? You can wait for it to slow down. But it won’t. No! You have to violently throw yourself over board with the fear of getting your head stuck underneath. We all have a sad story around 2nd grade when little Timmy got stuck beneath this medieval torture device right?
So let’s jump together! 1….2…..3…..
I chickened out!
