So I saw a Pizza restaurant advert yesterday. It contained the text (I might be paraphrasing but you’ll get the jist): “It is scientifically proven that spending time with family and friends will cheer you up”.
Okay, either they’re joking/being ironic and I missed it (in which case totally ignore my rant), or they’re not. It’s the latter option that freaks me out more than just a little bit: has modern society, in all its facebook/twitter/match.com glory, seriously come the point where we’ve forgotten that spending time (dinner-at-the-dining-table-time, not facebook-you-at-work-time) with family and friends cheers us up? And are we seriously so ruled by science/left-brain activity that we’d actually require scientific proof before we’d believe such an assertion? Does science really hold so much weight in modern society? All I can say is ‘bring on the age of pisces’, hopefully it will bring with it a bit more idealism.
As for me I think I’m going to conduct an experiment. I’m only going to see people in person for a month. No facebook. No twitter. No answering the phone unless I’m at home and would answer it if it wasn’t mobile (I can’t leave it at home as I need the satnav – not want, need, as in will-end-up-walking-to-Tibet-instead-of-work if left to my own devices).
Because I don’t like being at everybody’s beck and call. And I don’t like the fact that people can simply press a button and ‘like’ your status instead of picking up the phone and having an actual conversation with you. It can’t be good. Sorry, not to sound like the last vinyl record in a world of auto-cued, digital dance music, but it can’t.
Will report back…see you in a month.
xxx
