“Hey, You … You’re Doing It Wrong.”

“Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. Of course, this doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.” ~Jimmy Carter

Ironic, isn’t it?

Ahhh, technology—where once I was blind, now I see.  [Good Lord—PLEASE make some of it go away.  I’ve seen enough.]

The entire epic saga of the grotesque comedy of human tragedy—performed on demand, every minute of every day, available with a few strokes of a keyboard or a few swipes of a smartphone. 

Former gilded heroes like Armstrong and Paterno, their tarnish forever blackening their once-lustrous gleam. More people under the age of thirty-five googling how to emulate Psy’s dance moves than how to get involved with Hurricane Sandy relief.  Rihanna flipping her finger in the face of every woman who has known the inescapable terror of abuse, reuniting with unapologetic scumbag Chris Brown.  Kim Kardashian draining the American attention span to announce her incubation of Kanye West’s future-douchebag spawn.  A woman like Sarah Palin making it further in American politics than a woman like Hillary Clinton now likely ever will. 

Awww, resolutions are good.  Chris must not be so bad after all.

Call it saturation.  Call it inundation.  Call it whatever your thesaurus suggests—but the real question is: Where did it all begin???

My origin story—my completely seamless, fluid immersion into the circuitry of today’s modern technology is a moderately amusing outcome, really, because I still vividly recall the time, not so long ago, when a dear high school friend, the identical twin of the love of my senior year life, first introduced my family to the great and glorious personal computer. 

Prior to his insistence that my family move beyond the massive word processing machine housed in my mother’s office, its tiny black screen barely emitting a sickly orange glow, my family’s engagement with modern technology was limited to our Nintendo NES 8bit games (as I recall, Duck Hunt and Super Mario Brothers 2 were family favorites—and a grand step up from the Atari 2600 that had stolen months of my life, one hit of Pong and Pitfall at a time] and the Radio Shack Tandy 1000 [running a smokin’ 8086 microprocessor…jealous?] that sat upon my desk—silently calling for me to return to its Oregon Trails or to engage its Police Quest…or maybe if I was feeling particularly scholarly, create a short story on my DeskMate software to publish on my snazzy 24 pin dot-matrix printer. 

I can't let you do that, Mrs. E.L.

[All you GenX geeks are popping techno-boners at the state-of-the-art equipment I rocked, aren’t you?]

 You see, kiddies, when kindly ol’ Mrs. E.L. here got done walking ten miles to school each way [uphill and in the snow, of course, in boots made of ground glass and chicken wire, mind you…] she had none o’ your new-fangled gizmos like Wikipedia or facebook to help her out.  Nooo.

When papers needed typed, electric typewriters were available, dagnabit.  When you had a research paper to write, you hit the card catalogue in the library and you let your fingers do the walking.  [If you’re under twenty-five, you didn’t catch that little gem, now did you?]

When you wanted to update your German pen pal…

[Hey kids, there were these ancient times when if you wanted to get to know someone on the other side of the planet, you actually wrote them letters—on paper…by hand!—and…gasp!... mailed them.  Then waited for them to get them.  Then waited for them to write and mail something back.  That “Add Friend” button you kids have today?  That’s for pussies.  ANYHOO…]

 …on your latest haircut or favorite band or whatever it was you thought was relevant to share with that stranger from another country who was probably a remnant of the cold-war spying on American youth, you did so as explained above.  

 [Shit.  I think I just realized why my generation drinks as much as it does…]

But damn it, the rules of technology were different: If you wanted to share a new song you’d heard, you made a mixed tape, carefully selecting the songs, timing the spaces between tracks just so.  When you wanted to talk to a friend, you called their house [NEVER after 9pm, of course…for God’s sake, son.  Where are your manners?] and politely asked their parents if you could speak to them—and then hoped no one had picked up another extension in your home and was listening in.  And if their parent said no, they were grounded, or that they were doing homework, well, hell…you just had to wait until you saw them at their locker the next morning. 

Now, we have unlimited means for sharing our music, our movies, our moods, our meals.  Technology drives our every waking moment—but I am a member of the luckiest generation because I can partake of all the luxuries that technology affords our lives, but I come from a time when we weren’t completely dependent upon our digital leashes.  My cohorts and I can still remember the moment when our world stood up and spread its legs wide, straddling the divide between the then and the now.  Which, rather tastelessly, brings me back to my own technological deflowering—

The year was 1991.  Jamie (the boyfriend’s twin brother) was aghast at the prehistoric communication abilities of my parents’ law office; he made it his personal mission to drag us out from beneath our Neolithic incompetence [regardless of whether or not we were willing participants of this quest]. 

I still remember the lazy afternoons our unusual circuit of friends spent bumming around on the faded floral couches of their waiting room, talking the shit that seventeen-year-old morons talk.  Why my parents tolerated our near-constant presence is still a mystery to me—perhaps they figured if we were in there with them, we weren’t out knocking one another up or “taking the pot” that had every small-town parent in a tizzy. 

Anyway, Jamie was sitting beside the monochrome IBM monstrosity my mother coaxed her legal briefs from, stroking his artfully crafted mullet thoughtfully.  I could tell he was deep in thought as he fussed with the machine, but I knew something was really amiss when he failed to correct the peg in his tight-rolled Guess® jeans that was slowly unfolding above his spotless Air Jordans, but when you’re young and in love, it’s difficult to come up for air often enough to make a difference, so I returned to Hoover-ing his brother’s face when no one was looking. 

[Note—the Mrs. E.L. has replaced her usual brand of smarmy smart-assish comments with a special, limited edition, 90’s-reference humor!  Let’s see if the reader notices!]

Thus, I failed to notice him entering my mom’s office or even the engaging conversations they shared over the next couple of afternoons.  In fact, it wasn’t even until the glorious, custom-built 486 computer—loaded with Windows 3.1 and Word Perfect—and the enormous 14” monitor, was delivered and installed the following week that I put it all together:

Jamie had made his case for technological advancement and here it was, our liberation from the 80’s and our invitation to the 90’s revolution (admittedly, a year or so late…)

As my dear friend set up the system, his eyes gleaming with the unlimited potential of this advanced machine, I, frankly, was a bit more dubious.  After all, my Radio Shack Tandy had been serving me juuuuust fine for years.  Besides, my experience with this kind of technology (so readily available to the unsophisticated hands of mere mortals) was limited to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, War Games, and Evilspeak [< Best. God-Awful. Horror. Movie. EVER.]  I mean, just look how THOSE situations turned out.

But sweet Jamie was like a child with a new toy—although, in retrospect, perhaps he was more like Gollum with his precious ring.  I distinctly remember him furtively encrypting the device with passwords only he knew, declaring himself to be the emperor of all of its software and hardware management.  A diehard fan of “Wayne’s World” on Saturday Night Live, I simply snorted at the mention of the words “software” and “hardware”, then returned to his brother’s face.

 Fast forward twenty years. 

Here we are: A new world, a new generation… 

…and what exactly are we doing with the blessings of our technological forefathers?  

Everything is online and available now [and I’m not even referring to Rule 34 of the internet here]—but despite the glory of our advancements, the world wide web is still virtually an unsupervised playground perpetually at dusk. 

What’s worse, in some ways, technology has become this ironic universal unifier and leveled the playing field so that everyone has their shot at being the bully behind the anonymity that technology provides, the sanctimonious safety of their cloistered keyboards. 

I mean, look at me, rambling thoughts into some imagined space.  I trust the integrity of my blog’s only request—if you don’t like it, don’t tell me you don’t like it, just go away—to protect me from being verbally eviscerated by anyone who stumbles across this open diary.  But I want to be known, to be agreed with, to be fussed over, and placed upon my electronic laurels to snuggle and bask in your love and friendship.  But God help me, the first time someone latches into me for something I say that offends or crosses them—I’d be a heap of so much ruin.

Let me put it this way:

Even I—the least pragmatic person you will likely ever meet—realize that human beings are not exactly known for their even nature, their abilities to abide others that disagree with them, or their skills in listening to an opposing viewpoint [rather than waiting, preparing what they plan to say in rebuttal]. 

Where there is community, there is usually dissension; I’ve likened the internet to a glorious island paradise, where everything is abundant and readily available and plentiful—run by four wild, discordant tribes who are determined to burn this motherfucker to the ground because they can’t seem to get over themselves and our perverse, incessant human need to be as “right” as we possibly—and publicly—can be.

Okay.  Maybe THIS one was a little deserved. I'm kidding. Sort of...


I’ve read a bit over the past year about google and youtube’s plan to limit abusive users of their technology, but I haven’t seen much progress (especially if you add up the troubling numbers of “kill yourself” memes that pop up with alarming frequency). The trolls are still lurking under every communication bridge, the billygoats are gruff and hungry for every human fallibility.

 I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the infinite opportunities of communication technology recently and I’ve come up with a disconcerting conclusion: Most of you are doing it wrong. 

Seriously.  Like 3/4’s of you.  Completely.  Wrong.

[And to be perfectly unambiguous, the unclear pronoun “it” is referring to using technology and by “wrong” I mean you are acting like assholes out there.  Hope I clarified any confusion.]

All of this extraordinary technology at your fingertips, all of this unlimited potential for knowledge and growth—and, as far as I can see, approximately three general sectors of users employing its powers: the young, the responsible, and the old.  And to be clear, age is not really the defining factor—it’s more a matter of philosophy of application. 

Don’t believe me?  Let me break down my observations for you so that you understand just how fairly I’ve examined this subject before drawing this deduction.  Before you move to argue, read on—

TECHNOLOGY LEVEL #1: Neophyte Tech-ling

Odds are that if you are using technology and you are between the ages of birth through, let’s say twelve:

1) Your parents have lied about your age to create illegal facebook accounts in your name to share delightful pictures of your adorable self to your family and their friends [or their exes.  You see, kids, depending upon how cute you are, your parents secretly believe that sharing photos of you with “the ones who got away” is an excellent punishment for those lost loves who didn’t realize what they had when they were with your mommy and daddy.  Yes. It’s pretty creepy.]

Typically, this stage of technology is reserved from birth through approximately age 3, when you become decidedly less adorable and usually have food/boogers/or shit (or—God help your gene pool—all three) on you somewhere rendering your photos useless for their intended purpose.

2) Your parents have discovered that sesamestreetworkshop.org, nickelodeonjunior.com, et. al. contain free resources that are superior to their own pathetic attempts to teach you to count or read or recognize anything outside the realm of Elmo or Dora because they have failed miserably as parents and should have their breeding licenses revoked.

[Remind me again why we require permits to fish or to drive but not to breed children?]

Typically, this stage of technological advancement is reserved from pre-school through second grade—but if you’re really in a pinch, you may still find the PBSkids grammar lessons helpful in American public high schools.  I should know.

Grandma simply wonders how much she truly means to you.

3) You have discovered youtube videos where the world of Spongebob Squarepants episodes dubbed with horrifying sexual innuendo and inappropriate dialogue is substituted for the charmingly inane chatter of the underwater sea sponge and his friends, where senseless clips made by scantily clad twidiots dancing, singing, and behaving like pre-pubescent morons are abundant, and where there is no limit to the number of “EPICFAIL” videos featuring guys racking their nuts in an endlessly entertaining variety of ways and may be consumed, day or night. 

Typically, this stage of technological interaction is reserved for adolescent males, from first grade through junior high, because they need something else to do besides masturbating.  [Parents, pick your poison.]

TECHNOLOGY LEVEL #2: Novice Tech-ubescent

Odds are that if you are using technology and you are between the ages of thirteen through, let’s say college:

1)      You are taking countless shady pictures of yourself (usually in your filthy bathroom, with the toilet and sloppy towels in plain view).  What’s worse, you are so busy trying to look like the photo is casually random and that you have no fucks to give, that you:
 

[Insert your own bizarre behavior here]:

a.      Make those absurd and deeply unattractive duck-like faces

b.      Stick your tongue out to the side of your face so you look like a drooling idiot

c.       Lift your shirts just enough to display your abs and/or underboobs, inviting pedophiles to sample your wares [Dumbasses.  And by “dumbasses”, I mean YOU, not the pedophiles.  They’re evil.  You’re just stupid.]

d.      Look so utterly bored with your own existences that you take on the qualities of old-timey, post mortem photos of corpses.  [Seriously.  Isn’t there, like, a nursing home or a pet shelter you could volunteer some of this free time you seem to have in abundance?] 

e.     [Bathroom photo exception] Create permanent blackmail chronicles of your friends at your Red-Solo™-cup basement parties.
 

My husband is curious about this nanny service.
To follow up on that child's welfare, of course.

Typically, the ridiculous photography phase with this type of technological engagement has a very limited age range: fourteen to seventeen.  Most parents don’t award pre-teens smart phone technology and by the time you reach your   eighteenth birthday, you’ve likely reached your facebook mobile upload limit and finally noticed that potty pictures really are as disgusting as the rest of us think they are—so thankfully this period of your technological development is mercifully brief.

2)      You’re posting memes (which, frankly, are usually hilarious, so no fault there) or those absurd “Like if you…[insert random bullshit here]” photos from strangers filled with either completely banal or bizarre images (and hideous molestations of the English language and the basic tenets of grammar) or you’re filling your time posting updates of:

a.      …how bored you are.

b.      …how overworked you are.

c.       …taunts (in a rather ignorant half-written jumble of misspelled words with cavernous gaps in grammar) and/or flaming (do they still call it flaming?)—as in harassing, insulting, pestering —your parents, your teachers, your friends, and even strangers on the street for every single little thing that irritates you because, clearly, modern technological advancements in communication were designed with your annoyances in mind so that you could use these miracles to consistently express your displeasure with every element of society that does not conform to your expectations. 

[Oh, and please feel free to continue avoiding proper spelling and appropriate grammar, thanks.  It’s infinitely more fun to try to read through the incessant complaints when they’re written like cognitively impaired four month old chimpanzees composed them.]

                              

Unfortunately, unless you are friends with or followed by a parent or a boss, this particular type of technological interaction usually spans the entire age range from pre to post-teenage years. 

d.      You are inciting drama where you cast yourself as the reluctant star.  Breakups, makeups, everything is about shaking everyone up.  [Oh, are you pretending to not know what I’m talking about?  That’s so presh.]  Here, let me hand you the script:

You: [in tweet/ status update/ text] “OH. MY. GOD.  I cannot BELIEVE this is happening to me. Kill me now.”

Your friends: [with loving, urgent concern] “WHAT?!  What’s wrong?!  Are you okay?!  Where are you?  Call me.”

You: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Really?  Because THIS is what untold trillions in designing, testing, and implementing state-of-the-art communication operating systems were spent for—your coy fishing expeditions for attention?  Well played, teenage technology wizard.  Well played.  Steve Jobs just rolled over in his grave to give you a nice, slow, sarcastic clap round of applause on that load of bullshit.

TECHNOLOGY LEVEL #3: Master Tech-Wizard

Odds are that if you are using technology and you are between college age and middle adulthood:

Bless you.  You are the “Baby Bear” of the technological age: Everything you do is, for the most part, juuuuust right. 

You use Linked In to network broadly, you use Twitter to amuse regularly, you use Facebook to share with those closest to you, and you text or email to season your relationships with those who matter most.  You trade jokes and photos and recipes and advice, but rarely your dignity or your self-respect. 

I can't be alone on this matter...can I?

Sure, perhaps we’d all like to know a bit less about your Christian Grey obsessions/ your neighbor disputes/ and/or your sister’s latest commitment to weight loss.  And sometimes I’m a little concerned that your obsessively manic need to photo-document every moment you experience is destroying the point (e.g. it’s not about that moment anymore but the images that can be posted later via your instagrams, twitters, and facebooks.  While you may walk away with “proof” that the memory happened, despite the plasticized smiles and perfect poses, there is often no actual evidence of anything being made other than a good photo).  Something to think about.   [And, of course, you should still be careful when seeking out old classmates, former flames, and scores to settle.  When you even consider looking for trouble with technology, it has a way of coming back to you in ways you probably aren’t prepared for—but that’s another blog for another day.]   Still, y’all are still all right with me.

Seriously—we GenXers [yes, I said “we”—of COURSE I’d belong in the wisest tribe] temper our technological prowess with an appreciation for the past and a humble respect for the future.  You’re doing a great job.  Keep it up.  Be proud of yourselves, my brethren…it’s not like you’re anything like those [shudder]…

…Baby Boomers.

Oh Lord, we all know who we’re talking about, right?  The aging aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents, otherwise known as:

TECHNOLOGY LEVEL #4: Crotchety Tech Codgers and Crones

Odds are that if you are using technology and you are between late adulthood and death:

1)      You log onto your facebook account, go directly to your  son/ daughter’s/ nephew/ neice’s/ grandson/ granddaughter’s wall and write an embarrassingly personal message IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT CAPITALS ARE USED TO EXPRESS STRONG EMOTION so said recipient (and all of their friends) think you’re a shouty moron.  Or else you forward us a shitton of virus-loaded emails that go straight to our spam folders and then nag us non-stop about whether or not we received your “letter”.

"I love the young people!"

2)      You are clicking on every random ad that pops up on your screen with your name in it or an announcement that an old friend is looking for you because you can’t seem to grasp the concept of web cookies [In Voice of Old Man Jenkins: “Web cookies?!?  Sounds delicious!”] and infecting your system with absurd garbage that you know you’re going to be begging us to remove for you.

3)      You think the world wide web is like your backyard and everything and everyone that runs through it is a hooligan you can holler at for whatever reason you please.  You comment on every God-forsaken thing anyone has to say—relishing the public injection of your unsolicited opinions and rationales for why “they” [the strangers who disagree with you] are wrong and you are right.  You consider your actions as some sort of civic duty to inform the world…but your steadfast refusal to broaden, develop, or even budge your world-view make the rest of us view you as less of renegade tech hero and more of an obnoxious troll.
 

"I send him out for incontinence pads,
and he comes back with an iPad!"

Look…if it seems like I’m being particularly unkind to the elderly here, well—you’re pretty perceptive.  I have to put up with the young ‘uns thinking I’m an outdated, outmoded, hopelessly unhip and out of touch near-senior-citizen, too—you’ll survive.  Toughen up, old-timer. 

Upon reflection, I guess I’m not all that mad about the misappropriation of our technological resources—maybe just a little disappointed in my fellow traveler along this electronic journey.  I suppose that rather than being annoyed, I could just sit back and chuckle at the bizarre balance we four branches of technology users bring to the forum.   Sure, after this nasty election season and all of the fallout from the conclusion of the Twilight films, I’ve been a little bitter about technology of late—but in truth, I suppose I’m happy that the medium is available to us all.  It has been said that getting information off of the Internet is akin to taking a drink from a fire hydrant, and brother, they weren’t kidding.  Wading through the mess of information accessible today is a daunting task—perhaps we need our informal internet system of checks and balances from one another probably more than ever.

I just love awards season.

I have my freedom of expression fiends, I mean friends, who would argue that what the young and the old are doing is perfectly within their rights and even, arguably, their responsibilities as free-thinking Americans.  They don’t see themselves as rabid, bored house pets or obstinate, bored pot stirrers.  At the risk of biting the butts of either camp, I’ll stand by my assertion that the best use of the technology is the one that holds the middle ground and tries to make some kind of positive difference out here in the electronic world.  You know—the kind of user who is not yipping for attention or pontificating on the exhausted ideals they refuse to surrender.  The true winners in this electronic frontier are those who try to use this space for opening eyes and opening hearts.  Period.

In fact, we probably all have a mix of each kind of technology-user already in our lives—maybe it’s time to extend the olive branch… see the forest for the trees… buy each other a Coke and teach one another to sing.  Perhaps the way to fix the 75% of people misappropriating the internet is not by segregating, castigating, humiliating, deleting, or defriending them—but by leading the way for them by creating an excellent example of the way things could…and should…be.
     

Be the change...but did Gandhi envision Skype?

This brings me back to my sweet childhood friend, Jamie, without whose influence I would not likely be posting this message today.  [So, in essence, if you don’t like the shit that I write, blame Jamie.] 

The fact remains that this brilliant young man recognized the need for a family to move forward, fearlessly, into the coming future and he encouraged them to break free of the shackles that tethered them to the past.  Jamie ushered our family into a world where the access to information and entertainment—the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the unbearable—was at our veritable fingertips.  I will always be thankful for Jamie’s insistence on a life embracing technological advancement; his passion that we follow the electronic road more traveled has truly made all the difference.

Then again, maybe he just wanted to look at porn. 

Nah.  Nobody uses the technology for things like that.