Calling All 20-Somethings: Observe Your Digital Habits This Year
By Matt Staff
I’m a weary traveler. Vagabond. Depraved, misbehaved, delinquent. I gave up on love when I realized there’s no gold at the end of the rainbow.
I read too many hopelessly hopeful, fairy-tale ending, romantically driven stories in and throughout my youthful, developmental days – still developing, still reading ‘em. Maybe I lend myself, recklessly over to this notion, a soul’s alone ’til the gravity-arresting moment it makes it’s graces with it’s counterpart – both missing pieces, yet love, that uncatchable golden snitch love, says the two lovers will make it work somehow.
I met plenty of beautiful, independent, over-opinionated to the point of leaving me infuriated, sexually liberal, nipple, eyebrow, belly button, pierced young ladies in 2014.
I sifted through the stupendously fucked slew of mindless, last call, booze-induced antics, crossed my fingers, wished upon hypothetical falling stars (’cause damn, those are a rarity) I’d wake up, just once, next to a young lady painted in a few rays of baked-biscuit toned sunshine that stuck around to get to know the personality behind the face, from the night prior.
Days on a weather worn, driftwood plank, assembled bench, sitting side by side with me, myself, and I. Listening, listening to the barks, industrialized honks, lavish laughter, and toddler gone done tripped and fell-disaster I’d wonder, speculate, when might I look out and behold the transient, evolving painting with a young lady interested in more than a mindless fuck, abbreviated-conversation, late ‘o clock booty call.
I’m no young, millennial man to pass judgment on a generation I myself, am a part of, but I can’t help but implore the reader, to damn well consider this : Somewhere along the road, we took a left, right, u-turn around a blind corner, and collided head on with a digitalized vehicle of narcissism perpetuating “make.”
We proceeded to chat-snap, tweet, re-twit, twit, and insta-fuck our way into physical loneliness, despite “feeling” more connected with friends, part-time/full-time lovers while oceans, states, and islands apart.
Hell, we’re all on these islands, waves of confusion fervently crashing against the shores, of social media driven isolation, sometimes, sometimes myself included.
Hence, I approach 2015, apprehensively. Technological innovation skirting along at such a rate, it short-circuits my hard-wired, muddled mind – who’s to have a shot in an archery range in hell, at guessing what’s next in the way of social media dating, inspired fervor.
Some of us enjoyed, Spike Jonze’s Her, this last year. We felt artistically, enlightened, really connected with what the story conveyed – if you’re in love with a computer, no matter the make, you’re “not doing it right,” – though, Scarlett Johansson is an entirely viable exception to the lesson learnt, preached, conveyed by the film.
When is it, these four fingered machines of self-driven isolation we call our smartphones, devices we’re rendered dead without became the means to which we fulfill our innate desire to connect with another personality? Sexually, mentally, and spiritually?
As for the physical fulfillment, please, lets not allow such an absurdity to become reality – though, I must say, my sexually inspired side’s a bit intrigued at what that might imply.
Let’s stride briskly, power-walk, back-pedal exuberantly, meaningfully through the finish line of ’14.
Let’s take upon ourselves a newfound goal, that’ll require conscious decision making, on a daily basis.
The physical interaction, the trip-stutter-word cluster of a first dialogue between couples on their first date – “check please.”
The 2am walk home, pizza box, half pepperoni-half Hawaiian, right arm interlinked with a snarky, witty, wizened beyond a wizard named Gandalf in her years, morn-evening date – to the morning after, shared hangovers, omelette in bed I prepared like the damn gentleman I pretend to be every now and again.
Take what’s impassionedly imagined from a screen, dreamt up while counting sheep – before falling asleep, and live in between the social media stream.
The ever-elusive bastard, love, might present herself.