An Inhuman Condition

These are a few pieces of flash fiction from the Blue Valentines lot that were off subject or unrelated.

Blog Post

I’m in public trying to remember why I associate with people. I catch myself like this every now and again, and realize too late that it’s a mistake. This doesn’t do anything for me. It doesn’t challenge me at all. I don’t grow. I don’t do anything worthwhile around other people. I just pass the time and play my own little games to keep it interesting. They all seem to like it when I’m around, but it’s so close to masturbation that I might as well have my cock out arm-wrestling the shame.

It’s not just the drivel posing as conversation that bothers me; it’s the constant interruption to stare at a phone. What did people do before they could be accessible to everyone in the world simultaneously? Trying to say anything to a person that pulls out a phone is meaningless. They are zombies. They might tell you to go on talking, that they are expert multitaskers, but that’s all bullshit. The human brain was never wired to speak and listen at the same time. They are mutually exclusive activities. That’s why we take turns talking.

It seems to me that the more we do this, the worse it all gets. The content in our media has been watered down for easy consumption. It’s a clip, a sound byte, 140 characters or less. If you want people to see it, it has to fight our waning attention. “Did you get the email?” “Text it to me.” “I found this video.” “Did you see the pic?” It’s become this in-the-moment thing that is always changing, requiring more of our attention to keep up with it all.

And it’s taking a toll on speech too. Conversations change topics wildly, never wanting to delve deep into an issue. On the phone – all alone. We’re isolated by this next-century communication. We sit in circles full of chatter never saying anything; never accomplishing anything. This is the pinnacle of what our society has become. We can instantly send messages around the planet, but what we send is a cute kitten or drunk college kid. Do these things enrich us? No. There isn’t room for growth in the world anymore. It’s all commercial garbage and immature regurgitation.

This is the future in motion. It’s not going to be a high future full of respectful beings using their power to make a difference. The 1980s killed any hope of that. This is a crescendo to dystopia; this is the prologue to the road warrior. And it’s not the technology’s fault – the devices themselves are a blank slate. The global conversation could be an ethical, philosophical one. It could be aesthetic, beautiful. People make their future, and our future will be static.

Human beings will continue to make the choice to be part of it all. They won’t stop to question if they should or not; that isn’t their way. It’s the modern Manhattan Project, and they will boldly march with the meme theme until everything crumbles. We’ll let the computers continue to conquer our lives until we can’t remember living without them. In this future we’re all standing around, talking at the same time, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.