Sometimes I wonder whether I was born into the right decade.
I say this because at times I seem to fail to deal with the horrors of modern life. Let's take technology. I spend a good sixty-ish percent of my life bemoaning the woes of not understanding how my laptop works, or hurling abuse at the intensely irritating invention that is the touch-screen phone, or still not really comprehending the difference between an I-pad and a Tablet, which apparently is no longer something you take when you are ill... It has got to the point where often I find myself collapsed on the floor, clutching the 'Novatech 139' laptop manual, weeping, and weakly shaking my fist at whoever decided to make computers a regular feature of our everyday lives.
My music tastes are also something to be reckoned with, i.e. the most recent track on my I-pod may date from the early 2000s...? Perhaps that is a small exaggeration, but anyone scouring my music selection in hope of discovering anything remotely modern will be sadly disappointed. Although in light of the Daft Punk and Robin Thicke Blurred Lines debacle, I feel slightly better. Forget offensive and smutty songs about bending the rules regarding the age of sexual consent, give me The Kinks, Bowie or The Beatles any day! The late great Lou Reed, guaranteed to set you up for a Perfect Day! Let us block from our memories the music video of poor, shorn Miley Cyrus demonstrating all too clearly how her life is spiraling painfully publicly out of control via a Wrecking Ball: give me Freddie Mercury, dressed as a woman with a fabulous 'tache, blasting out that he wants to break free. I am lucky enough to live in a flat with other like minded souls. Case and point: last Saturday night. Whilst everybody else our age (and in their right mind) was spending their evening/early morning out with other students, we were busting our moves to Come on Eileen and Uptown Girl with people at least twenty years older than us in an 80s club in Birmingham. And we knew all the words.
On a more serious note, something that does seriously concern me is the alarming rate at which aspects of modern life are changing the way we interact with each other. Never has the meaning of an add on Facebook or a comment on Twitter had more significance than in 2014. Over social media or via text, we are forging fabricated friendships with people that we have barely met - we profess to 'know' people, having only really interacted with them over a screen. I found this particularly at the beginning of University. There were so many names and numbers flying around all over the place that often Facebook was a very useful tool to keep track of them all. But it should not be the foundation of a friendship, or take precedent over actually talking to someone face to face. I do not want to be argued with/asked out/apologised to via text. PEOPLE. Please talk to each other. Otherwise, in a few years time, we will find ourselves each sitting on our own, in separate rooms, surrounded by screens, not bothering to have a conversation with anyone because we can simply communicate our inner-most emotions and deepest feelings via a screen. Our 'relationships' and 'friendships' and even our memories will be stored on some horrific database that monitors our actions on the internet and on our mobile phones. Sounds pretty grim, n'est pas? And because of this, sometimes I long for the years when technology did not hold so much bearing over our lives.
So, I think I have well and truly revealed to you that I am secretly a middle-aged woman trapped inside an 18 year old girl's body. I am now going to retire to the kitchen, make myself a cup of tea and carry on reading my book, because that is what us premature Grandmas do.
Adios! :)
I say this because at times I seem to fail to deal with the horrors of modern life. Let's take technology. I spend a good sixty-ish percent of my life bemoaning the woes of not understanding how my laptop works, or hurling abuse at the intensely irritating invention that is the touch-screen phone, or still not really comprehending the difference between an I-pad and a Tablet, which apparently is no longer something you take when you are ill... It has got to the point where often I find myself collapsed on the floor, clutching the 'Novatech 139' laptop manual, weeping, and weakly shaking my fist at whoever decided to make computers a regular feature of our everyday lives.
My music tastes are also something to be reckoned with, i.e. the most recent track on my I-pod may date from the early 2000s...? Perhaps that is a small exaggeration, but anyone scouring my music selection in hope of discovering anything remotely modern will be sadly disappointed. Although in light of the Daft Punk and Robin Thicke Blurred Lines debacle, I feel slightly better. Forget offensive and smutty songs about bending the rules regarding the age of sexual consent, give me The Kinks, Bowie or The Beatles any day! The late great Lou Reed, guaranteed to set you up for a Perfect Day! Let us block from our memories the music video of poor, shorn Miley Cyrus demonstrating all too clearly how her life is spiraling painfully publicly out of control via a Wrecking Ball: give me Freddie Mercury, dressed as a woman with a fabulous 'tache, blasting out that he wants to break free. I am lucky enough to live in a flat with other like minded souls. Case and point: last Saturday night. Whilst everybody else our age (and in their right mind) was spending their evening/early morning out with other students, we were busting our moves to Come on Eileen and Uptown Girl with people at least twenty years older than us in an 80s club in Birmingham. And we knew all the words.
On a more serious note, something that does seriously concern me is the alarming rate at which aspects of modern life are changing the way we interact with each other. Never has the meaning of an add on Facebook or a comment on Twitter had more significance than in 2014. Over social media or via text, we are forging fabricated friendships with people that we have barely met - we profess to 'know' people, having only really interacted with them over a screen. I found this particularly at the beginning of University. There were so many names and numbers flying around all over the place that often Facebook was a very useful tool to keep track of them all. But it should not be the foundation of a friendship, or take precedent over actually talking to someone face to face. I do not want to be argued with/asked out/apologised to via text. PEOPLE. Please talk to each other. Otherwise, in a few years time, we will find ourselves each sitting on our own, in separate rooms, surrounded by screens, not bothering to have a conversation with anyone because we can simply communicate our inner-most emotions and deepest feelings via a screen. Our 'relationships' and 'friendships' and even our memories will be stored on some horrific database that monitors our actions on the internet and on our mobile phones. Sounds pretty grim, n'est pas? And because of this, sometimes I long for the years when technology did not hold so much bearing over our lives.
So, I think I have well and truly revealed to you that I am secretly a middle-aged woman trapped inside an 18 year old girl's body. I am now going to retire to the kitchen, make myself a cup of tea and carry on reading my book, because that is what us premature Grandmas do.
Adios! :)
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