Experience Hoarders
Disclaimer: I curse in this blog a whole lot. If you are offended by that, please understand that my outlet is in my writing and I don't expect this to be printed out for anyone under 16 years old as quality reading material.
What in the hell does that mean exactly? Well, I'm here to tell you what my new term is, and how it's defined.. as well as...What it means in your life, and how you can avoid being a douche.
The other day(actually like 2 months ago) I was at this party with several people that I haven't seen in years. I've "seen" them, as in I've looked at their posts on a 2x4 screen... but I haven't SEEN them in a 3-D environment sharing the same atmospheric elements.
I was super stoked to go to this shindig and catch up with everyone, tell stories, have what the old humans call, "a conversation." However, about 4.5 minutes into this gorilla sized let down, I looked around the room and e'rrrbody was on 'dey phones. ERRRRRBODY. They were tagging pictures, posting updates, taking photos of their fucking overpriced bullshit liqueur and as I was sitting there sharing the same air with these fucks, I started getting "notifications."
"_________ is hangin' at ________ with peeps from ol' school days! Having the most AMAZING time, jealous world?"
"_________ is at the dopest bar in Dallas kickin' it old school with some bad ass AMAZING biaatches! Wooooot! OMG I love this place! Take a looksy at my drinksy, stay classy San Diego! :) "
(and now my personal favorite)
"ROFL, Melodee Lenz is like the FUNNIEST person in THA WORRRRRLD. It's so amazing to be here with all my super insane friends. lol."
(this one was tagged with a photo of me looking lonely and staring distantly into the darker part of the bar)
Let me say something... I hadn't told any funny stories at that point when the notifications started streaming to my iPhone. I wasn't "on" yet because to be "on" one must gain some momentum within the perimeters of an ACTUAL CONVERSATIONAL DIALOGUE.
I had to relieve myself in the restroom and regain the personal strength I lost when I started receiving these notifications of how awesome this party was- because I feared ( like you do) that I had eagle-eyed the wrong party and possibly could be (as I've historically always feared about myself) crazy.
Like they say... if you question whether or not you're crazy, you most likely aren't crazy. "They" say a lot of dumb shit though so....
The night went on and there were some conversations peppered into the duration of time between 7pm and 2am, but for the most part it was pretty fuckin' lame.
Jump to NEXT DAY...
I wake up with a barrel full of notifications regarding comments and "likes" and one fingered approvals of my fucking "amazing" night out. That my dear sir is quite queer because I don't remember it as such? How fuckin' daft of me! How could I not recall such an explosive night of "amazing" shit? "AMAZING" drinks, "AMAZING food," "AMAZING bartenders named Raj," an "AMAZING vibe here..."
Fuck you, it's not amazing, stop fucking saying everything is amazing, don't you remember the story about the boy that cried fuckin' WOLF you assholes? Yeah, when a fuckin' unknown metallic hover craft comes in through the Einstein Rosen bridge fuckin' wormhole and lands in the middle of the field during the Superbowl half-time show crushing Paul McCartney's piano from the EMF waves...what fuckin' word are you gonna say then bitch? Oh what? What? You can't say AMAZING because you fuckin' used up all your amazing punch card slots! ... and that was THE wolf.
I digress.
This whole thing got me ta' thinkin'.
I started playing a little game I call, "what really happened last night?" This definitely got me out of the house more because to play this game you have to actually GO to the places you are invited to. I started going to various get-togethers, birthday parties, cook outs, events, etc... I would take notes in my head about the 'said' event and then I'd compare my notes to the shit that would surface on Twitter or Facebook the next day. They NEVER match up. I began reading the "feed" on these sites and came to the conclusion that most people now are hoarders. Experience hoarders.
They hoard their experiences by storing them in their phones. These experiences became so cluttered that they are now spilling out of the phone and into your phone. If this were actual physical objects we're talking about here- the entire US would be buried in blurry edged washed-out 1975 filter photos and 10 second film reels and the muffled sounds of "hilarious" custom ringtones or notification bells... the occasional hand that shoots out from the rubble to take a "selfy," etc...
This term "Experience Hoarder" popped into my head after watching a live performance and having ridiculously great seats, and seeing everyone else around me-Also with great seats- watching this show through the 2x4 screen of their iPhones. They aren't IN the experience, they are hoarding it for their status update and they will never watch it again but will recall it as "amazing."
Now it's time to call myself out and take the plank out of my own eye...
I was syncing my iPhone about 2 months ago and it was taking FOREVER. I got this shitty pop-up Apple "your computer doesn't hold all this shit Melodee" window. I was so angry at my devices... "work damn you, do what I say, I'm the boss of you Come the fuck ON! What do you mean there's no space for my collection of self-important shit?"
There wasn't.
I had actually crashed my hard drive's motivation with the amount of self-deemed important shit. It didn't fit.
That's when you have to evaluate the following:
1. What is actually on my phone?
2. What is that photo/video even mean?
3. When did any of that happen?
4. Why was I there?
5. Is it important enough to keep?
By the time you get to #5 on that list the very nucleus of that internal correspondence with yourself starts to fight back like a primitive pagan forest demon in a cleansing ceremony. "BLAHHHHH, GRRR, FUCK YOU IT'S IMPORTANT, YOU FUCKIN' I WILL FUCKIN' RAPE YOU AND I DESERVE TO BE INSIDE THINGS, I AM THAT ONE TIME WHEN YOU WENT TO THAT ONE PLACE.. DON'T YOU REMEMBER YOU FUCKING AMOEBA, YOU FUCKING SINGLE CELLED BITCH, I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE ADMONISHED AND REVERED AND I WILL GRRRRR STAY IN YOUR DEVICES GRRRRR."
Remember that time I was wondering about whether or not I was crazy? (hi hat drum riff) Lil' joke recall there folks.
I had a choice. I could either buy another computer to store my forest demon on, or, I could delete some shit. Some of you might be saying out loud, "well, why doesn't she just get one of those external USB drives to store the forest demon on?" Because I did that, A LOT, and I have three of them full to the brim with my self-important shit and 2 out of the three are busted and will cost more than my car's blue book value to get fixed. AND AND AND... the one I GOT fixed was stolen out of my car on the very night I got it back. So that's why. Got it? Good. Moving along...
This philosophical sage that lives in part of my head began to really analyze the societal implications to our culture by hoarding experiences. Here's why it's a perfect word to describe what we are doing as a society...
Hoarders start off by liking something. They start liking.
Here's an example-
You know those nice ass brown paper bags with the handles on them? It begins by thinking, "I find these nice ass bags useful and I'd like to make sure I always have this useful tool in my life." There might have been one or two times when the bag's handle broke while they were taking their lunch into work. They get angry because the nice ass free bag let them down. Then they think, "I'll have to always make sure I use TWO of them just in case." Someone else gives them one of those REALLY nice ass reusable bags one day and says, "Hey Scottie, looky here! Here's a better version of what you have! You want one? I have several." Scottie agrees and then thinks, "I find these bad ass reusable bags pretty useful! I still like my old brown paper bags with the handle on them though? Well, I guess you can't have enough bags in your life because you'll always need to put your shit into something, right?"
Before you know it, they have acquired a monumental amount of bullshit just because they had the bags to put it in. It all becomes "useful" and then it avalanches into the dirty swamp of the forest demon who tells them that it's all real real real important...And that's when then the City of Dallas comes and kicks you, your suffocated dog, and your wife with stage 5 smokers lung and an empty O2 tank, out of the house, deeming the house "hazardous," and NOW all you want is like one or eight of those paper bags out of there. Maybe like five of them...
Let's replace "bags" with "devices" and "house" with "social networking site" in the story above and you'll get my point... the dog is still your dog and your lungy wife with no oxygen is still exactly that... in that story I mean.
Saying all of that, I MUST say this...
I'm not one of those people who say, "I just wish all this internet stuff would just go away. I just hate all of it. I just really do. I just think I will keep my 1999 flip phone because it's a phone and if you won't talk to me on the phone then we aren't friends and I'm old and I'm fucking old and I want things to never change and that's why I never had any balls to get out of my bad marriage or quit the job that makes me have reoccurring nightmares about dying in a swivel chair...No, no sir. I want to stay the fucking same. I like same. I hate change. I believe in America and support the troops and if you can't just call me instead of texting me then I just don't have to have friends I guess... I'm fucking old fashioned I guess, call me old fuckin' fashioned, that's me, I guess I'm just ROOTED IN THE SOIL OF MEDIOCRACY." Yes you are.
So I'm not that, that's my point.
I think there's a real happy middle ground between old dehydrated dreams- afraid of change- whiny- bitchy- negative- technologically on-purpose retarded person Compared To... hipster with scoliosis from looking down all the time "uploading amazing experiences" asshole... there's a fuckin' middle. I'm that middle. I will be the Middle's Mascot. Put me in a fuckin' oreo costume with an arrow pointing to the icing part, saying "Melodee is this part, the middle."
The question is- Is social media a good thing?
Here's the deal... Yes. Yes it is. I know the bad shit is what everyone is building their case study out of, but let me give you an example of how it's good...
In the Kenya mall attacks recently, the ONLY reason anyone lived in that ordeal was because of texting and tweeting. The phone people who called up 911 and had to TALK to someone, were capped in the fuckin' head. Not a ninja move if you're HIDING from masked gunmen with automatic baller ass guns and an agenda to murder the capitalistic pigs who shop in malls. (their words, not mine) I heard an interview with the head of the Red Cross in that area and he said that there would've been no way they would've been prepared for that level of emergency response deployment if TWITTER feed had not been streaming in from within the kill zone. It was as he said, "the most efficient means of communication at that time."
Another example I'll give is of a global value.... Fifteen years ago people thought of anyone outside of the US and UK as being like fuckin' neanderthals with no culture beatin' on cave walls and cookin' up chicken feet. The kind of power that the world of social networking is creating, has/is uniting the world in more ways than it could possibly divide us. Nobody would be shocked, even in rural parts of West Virginia(dig), to see someone "dressed diffrnt" or "havin' opinions about gays and Jews," or whatever else... We have a new problem we've created which is "cyber bullying" but that's just hilarious to me because I remember "sticks and stones....."
Here's the whole tired truth of where we are, in my stupid ass opinion, as a society present day...
Historically speaking, any great invention that changes the way in which we conduct daily life has always been met with 2 types of reactions. The first group being an outpouring of energy and excitement which only adds to the advancement of 'said' invention. The second group being the fear of invention overtaking what is established in society as being "good enough".
The first group get's a bit overzealous in the beginning of that invention and changes the usage and function of it with lightning speed thus propelling the invention and daily life into such rapid social transitioning that it gives the appearance, in that whirlwind of momentum, as being the very undoing of culture as we know it. Tower of Babel type thinking. And lo, I do love a great conspiracy theory or doomsday prediction, but fuckin' FACEBOOK and TWITTER aren't ever going to be bad ass enough to make God himself destroy it with a thunderous roar of angelic warriors charging toward the..... It's fuckin' Facebook, I mean come on.
Look at the invention of radio. Families were rushing out to buy radios and gathering around them instead of the dinner table and listening to stories being acted out and songs being performed and comedians doing their 5 minutes, etc... There was a backlash of social/religious/political leaders saying that radio was "replacing family time at the dinner table and corrupting moral values," and "women were going to stop cooking and the family unit was going to turn into a new babylon of sin and mayhem."
WE WOULDN'T HAVE WON THE WAR WITHOUT RADIO. Radio was THE thing that united people. It created movements by being a platform of which information could be shared en masse. This tool, "the radio" could be used to gather up civilians to help with the war effort ...or it could be used to brainwash an entire nation into thinking Hitler had some good ideas. And there's that dark side again damn it.
Humans create. We create new things to make the old things work better. Humans become fascinated with their creations and exploit them. They eventually reel it in to a rational and practical application of that invention and then everyone will think that invention is perfectly acceptable... and that is exactly when some new smart game-changer will try to make it better....
Rinse and repeat until the end of time.
Enjoy life... even your fake one on Facebook. Please be aware though that it is fake. It's fake. You ARE NOT having that much fun and you are making other people depressed because they envy your life and if they only knew that nobody actually gave three shits that you were there, they'd probably not stay at home and eat an entire 23 gallon trough of pizza rolls... which is contributing to obesity in this country and making my grocery store shopping difficult because of so many fucking fat people in electric carts blocking out the aisle and talking about how fucking tired they are... STOP EATING! But seriously... keep it kind of real once in a while. Trust me, it feels great. You might even be called a 'cyber bully,' but if someone calls you that, you can prove that you are in fact a REAL bully by getting their address and kicking their ass.
Enjoy invention, even the ones you don't fully understand yet...Like that As Seen on TV pillow thing with the lights in it...how do you even sleep with that on? See there... I don't understand the luminescent pillow but I also know that it exists and respect that some people may want a rave blasting in their face all night long. You know?
But don't forget that humanity was involved in the creation of all of this shit.
So wake up, look around, make eye contact with the people you are tweeting about, and stop hoarding the experience. It can't be an experience if you aren't actually experiencing it.
If you start having out-of-the-phone experiences, you won't have to hoard it.
Your brain will hoard it for you and the playback gets better with time.
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