Seriously_.I'm Kidding - Ellen DeGeneres [29]
What’s not so great is that all this technology is destroying our social skills. Not only have we given up on writing letters to each other, we barely even talk to each other. People have become so accustomed to texting that they’re actually startled when the phone rings. It’s like we suddenly all have Batphones. If it rings, there must be danger.
Now we answer, “What happened? Is someone tied up in the old sawmill?”
“No, it’s Becky. I just called to say hi.”
“Well, you scared me half to death. You can’t just pick up the phone and try to talk to me like that. Don’t the tips of your fingers work?”
It’s even more awkward when we’re face to face with people. It used to be exciting to make plans with friends because you could sit and catch up and talk about what’s been going on in your lives. Now when you see someone there’s nothing left to say. You’ve already seen the pictures from their trip to Rio on Facebook. You’ve read their tweets about the latest diet they’re on. And they already texted you about the pregnancy scare. So you end up just sitting and staring at each other until you both start texting other people.
Whatever we do say has to be short because our attention spans are now about nine seconds long. We talk in short bursts. We can only read up to 140 characters at any given time before we’re on to the next thing. We don’t even have the patience to wait for Minute Rice. We’ve moved on to instant rice. Because really, who has time to wait a full sixty seconds for rice? I’ll tell you who. Nobody.
We have TiVo because we don’t have the time or patience to sit through commercials. And we have on demand because we don’t just want movies and TV shows available to us at any given moment, we downright demand it.
Just to give you a little example of how patient people used to be, did you know that the opening credit sequence to Mister Ed back in the early sixties was a solid minute long? (I’ll give you thirty seconds to pull it up on your phone so you can see it for yourself.) People had no choice but to sit through the whole thing, and they loved it. They paid attention to it. “A horse is a horse, of course of course. And no one can talk to a horse of course. That is of course unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed!” And it keeps going, for almost a minute more. Now the opening theme song to a TV show is a guitar sting. “Ba-bow!” And we’re inside someone’s kitchen.
Now granted there wasn’t anything else for people to watch on TV at that time so they didn’t have much of a choice. It was either sit through the theme song or play with a yo-yo.
I bet a lot more people read back then. I have to say it’s impressive that you’re taking the time right now to read this book. It’s so rare for people to actually set aside time to curl up with a book and read. By the way, I don’t know why you have to curl up to read a book, but that’s what people say. You can’t just say you’re going to read a book because then someone will ask, “Well how are you gonna read it? What position will you be in?”
“I’m gonna curl up.”
“Oh, good. So you’re not gonna stand?”
“No, no. I’m gonna curl up.”
“Okay, good. Hey, you’re not gonna lay on your side, are you?”
“No. I promise. I’m just gonna curl up.”
It’s an awkward position to be curled up. I like to lie flat or try out a lot of different positions—I’m still talking about reading. We don’t curl up to do other things. We never say we’re gonna curl up and surf the Internet or curl up and knit. In fact, if you’re curling up while you’re doing anything besides reading you might want to look into Boniva.
Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, we lose focus, have no attention span, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. You know what—you can check out my Twitter page or go to my website for more information on this.
Dinner with a Psychic
A friend of mine recently told me she went to a dinner party with a psychic. It really struck me as a fascinating concept.