I often try and imagine a world before the internet and wonder how people were able to manage. My parents for instance, if they had a nagging question in their mind they could not simply ‘Ask Jeeves’ for the answer, they would have to either interact with another human being, or heaven forbid go and look it up in a book because ‘Wikipedia’ is two decades away from its conception.

BY PATRICK BROWNE

Imagine then, if you can, a world before mobile phones… it seems amazing to me that the people of my parents generation were able to arrange to meet up with each other at all. If I tell my friends we are going to meet at the pub at 8 pm…I can guarantee that whist I am on my way to the pub my phone will vibrate ominously in my pocket when Rob texts to say he is running 15 minutes late. Ten minutes later Danny will text to change exactly what pub we are meeting at in the first place. All this is no problem, but could never have been achieved without mobile phones. It often makes me feel dizzy: I think we all have social ADHD.

In today’s age of instant information and hyper connectivity conducting personal relationships is a doddle.  Take Facebook or Twitter for instance. I’m sure like me you have spent hours in front of their familiar screens that allow us the almost  telepathic ability to communicate our thoughts with each other.  I know that in this moment Jaime is hungry, and that my brother is looking forward to tonight’s episode of Dr Who. Impressive stuff, but all of it is entirely irrelevant. There seems to be so many outlets for our babble… Facebook, Twitter, BEBO, Myspace….. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that we can talk with our friends so easily, it’s just most of the people whose statuses I can see I haven’t spoken to in years.  They are just friends of friends I met once at a party. I don’t care what they think, and yet here I am reading their hilariously original updates about how socks should be sold in pairs of three.

“LOL”

Why do we post this kind of shit? Why aren’t we talking to each other?  This isn’t human communication, it’s a minefield of inanity and irrelevancy. 90 percent of it is all rubbish, impersonal and devoid of any character whatsoever. When was the last time someone published honestly their hopes desires and expectations naked for their so called “friends” to see? It seems nowadays that communication and, ahem, “friendship”, are so ten a penny that we are forgetting what it means to know people in the first instance. This seems to have washed back from the internet into society…..people don’t talk, and if they do, conversation is stinted by the same level of obsolesce we find on social networking sites. At this rate in future humans will interact with each other by transforming their faces into smilies. Below is an example of conversation in the year 2015.

Mike: (Smiley face with tongue hanging out.)

Steve: LOL, (smiley face) LOL

Mike: (Inquisitive smiley, left eyebrow raised.)

Steve: “Rofl, would you like a beer” ( smiley face winking left eye)

Mike: (smiley face with tongue hanging out.)

Steve: (Shocked face) Did you see last night’s X-Factor?

Mike: OMG ye. (Confused smiley). Socks should be sold in pairs of three lol.

Perhaps not then, but conversation is a dying art form. This is why the tweets have all begun to twitter, why Facebook is full of shit, why I am friends with so many people I wouldn’t speak to if I saw them in the street.  The internet has just become a place for us to vent our social frustrations in that endless shiststeam newsfeed where we carry out our social interactions. Really we are just screaming desperately into the void “SOMEONE SPEAK TO ME”…….Wouldn’t want to seem desperate though, so instead I’ll write, “Wats up with the weather today. Adam Sandler is funny”. There now I feel better, glad I got that off my chest.

Come on people, it really need not be that difficult. Go out the house and speak to people. Ask someone their name, then ask them what they do for a living, ask them about their parents and their childhood, speak of your hobbies. Tell them what you dreamt last night. Recount the story of the time you almost died. Love them, hate them, fuck them and leave in the morning, go to Asia together, Share an apartment together, run a marathon together, make them cry, have a fight, don’t speak for three years, get married, have kids, see them again by chance at Holborn underground station, Agree to meet up in the new year…..

Whatever you do, the choice is yours, When you are done I want to hear all about it. You can leave me a message on Facebook.