I’m old. I’ve never grown up, but I am old.
I always have my cell phone on me. From what I can tell 99% of people also do.
I may not be likable, even if I try to be or think I am.
I am single. I wanted to get married more than anything, but it didn’t happen.
I’ve always said that if you are single that the day your friends get married and especially when they have kids that pretty much is the end of your friendship.
So I get all that.
Way before smartphones became so prevalent, I saw a television show about how smartphones were all over Europe and would be everywhere else in the future. I didn’t invest because I wasn’t sure exactly what to invest in at the time. I was actually a professional investor.
You could have bought stock in a lot of very good companies and done very well, but most people invested in Worldcom and lost all thier money. That was the worst possible scenario, but there were then as now tons of other bad options. The bad options outnumber the good ones 100-1 and even with research you never know.
In the late 90’s there were 1000’s of internet stocks, as traders we knew they were mostly all worthless, but one or two would become gigantic. All were way overvalued so picking even the good ones was theoretically a bad investment. You couldn’t even make money betting against the worst companies, because it was so crazy those companies would likely double in value and bankrupt you before becoming worthless.
It’s similar to a Ponzi scheme, which you can make money on as long a you jump out of the car safely before you go off the cliff.
The point of that scene from “Rebel Without a Cause” was mostly participating in chicken runs is dangerous and so is investing in companies especially internet ones. The other thing I take from it is that Buzz dying was sad, but it was even sadder because had Buzz lived they all would have become friends after it was over. Buzz gave James Dean a friendship test. He chose a bad one. James Dean passed, Buzz failed and it got much worse afterwards.
99% of those companies did become worthless, but there was Amazon, and its owner is now the richest man alive.
Some other companies were bought before they became worthless, and mostly the companies that bought them became worthless or lost tons of money buying them.
Some smart people did jump out of their cars in time. Look at Mark Cuban, his company never made a dime for anyone, and he is a billionaire.
Lots of multi-millionaires held out to become billionaires and wound up with a net worth of less than $100,000
Lots of people just invested their hard earned money and most lost it all. A small number did hit the lottery. Someone always wins the lottery, but it’s not a very good life plan. It’s usually a money losing idea, but because someone always wins (even when its a 10000000000-1) shot and because of that people continue to play the lottery.
I did lose my final trading job on the epic day of the announcement of the first iPhone, Jan 7, 2007. Apple always made big announcements on certain days. I set myself up to make at least $50,000 with not much risk if they did make an announcement. Had I gone home right then I might still have a job and I would have made at least $50,000.
Sadly, someone made a fake announcement that there would be no Apple announcement, and believing it I started to get out of my trade. While doing that Apple did then announce the iPhone, and I lost $40,000 and got fired.
So I could be bitter.
But this really has nothing to do with money to me even though much of it is about greed and money.
To me its about the death of human interaction, which I was never that good at ever.
If you are a lonely man or woman, the internet can be amazing. You can watch things, hear things, read things, and do things that were really hard to do in the past.
But you will do these things alone.
In the past, I’d go to the library (with 1/10,000 of the options) and maybe I’d meet someone there or at least see a friendly smile from a librarian.
I grew up first with rotary phones, which were an absurd nightmare especially if you were calling long distance.
But in my formative days if you called a friend they would pick up the phone if they were home. You could also easily get their number from the White Pages.
They’d have no idea who was calling and they would pick up the phone. They would even talk to you. If they didn’t want to talk to you, they would tell you, “dude we aren’t friends don’t call me again” and you wouldn’t.
I still have about ten friends’ phone numbers from 1982 memorized. Right now I only know one phone number and it is my own.
That may sound annoying to have to deal with unwanted phone calls, but today I get nothing but unwanted phone calls. Easily 98% of my calls are someone evil trying to take my personal info or money. Most of them when you answer immediately hang up, and that’s when it is actually a person calling you.
Now you call people and they almost never pick up. They may not like you, they may not have time to talk to anyone, a lot don’t want to talk on the phone to anyone. They do have their phones on them and they do usually know it was you calling them. You can text them later. You know they got that text, and if they don’t reply, they usually don’t like you anymore if they ever did at all.
If you text them asking for a reason why you are no longer friends. You will get no response even though it would take ten seconds to just text back “Don’t call or text. No reason to give.”
This usually leads to them getting 1000 texts or calls they don’t want that they could have avoided with that ten second text.
I have friends and family that just don’t like to talk on the phone. They want to text instead. I guess this is fine.
What usually happens is all of the following:
- Texts lag and you are never sure when the texting is over
- Texts don’t show intent well in the way of humor, gentle sarcasm, honesty, or irony. Phone calls do that better. Sometimes there are spelling errors in texts that make them incomprehensible. Sometimes emojis you don’t understand are used and you misunderstand them. Sometimes that person is in a bad mood and you can’t tell texting whereas you could instantly by voice.
- This often leads to something unintentionally happening that often ends that relationship.
- If you know this has accidentally happened you can call them and try to explain, but they won’t pick up ever.
- You can try to explain what you think accidentally happened by text, but that is hard to do and usually just leads to them getting a ton of texts they don’t want and will not take ten seconds to end.
Maybe you really only have a few close friends and maybe that’s the best thing for you to do.
But if you want everyone to be friends or at least a little nicer to each other, it is all tragic.
I’m no one to lay blame because I always had the attention span of a gnat and spent all my meals with my head in a book, but if you do have a family meal or go out with friends for a drink or a meal, there will be little interaction because they are all on their cell phones. The television or many televisions are usually on loudly too.
If you do want to talk, a lot of times that will make people like you less.
Oddly, people make their circles smaller and smaller, and I understand they don’t want them violated and why. This usually leads to people violating them either accidentally or evilly, a lot they could end with a ten second reply, but because they don’t they get violated much more.
There used to be stores and places to meet people, but they are all gone because of Amazon and cell phones.
There are coffee shops where you can potentially meet and talk to people and that’s perhaps what they are there for, but everyone there is always using their phone and that never happens.
There used to be places where people were paid just to be nice to you even if they were acting, those are mostly gone unless tipping is involved.
If you have a question about a business or even your cell phone, it will take you 15 minutes to talk to a human being about it, and a lot of times those human beings are paid to have little interest in helping you or even being nice to you.
I’ve found dealing with all of this is easier online, and that you should never answer an unknown call, but again that leaves you all alone at your computer forever alone.
Maybe I’m an annoying, unlikable guy who no one wants contact with ever. There is maybe a 75% chance of that.
But I have noticed in general that friendships have gotten worse. Relationships have gotten worse. Politeness has died. More people hate more people than ever before and more vehemently.
All of this is from technology and especially cell phones. Long distance calls were expensive and rarely made. Now they are virtually free and too many are made and with bad results.
One of my best friend’s favorite show is Green Acres, which people don’t really understand.
So that was how hard it used to be to make long distance phone calls, and if you watched the show Oliver Wendell Douglas mostly only could use his phone by climbing up a pole to do so.
There was one obviously evil con man in that town, but everyone understood who they were dealing with at all times.
The rest of the people were all nice.
Oliver Wendell Douglas thought they were all insane, because he couldn’t understand them at all. He tried to change them instead of himself. So everyone was nice, got along well and understood each other, except for Oliver, who understood nothing. My friend will point out accurately that the message of the show was that they only insane person on it was Oliver Wendell Douglas from New York.
As populations grow and transportation becomes easier, we get closer and closer to each other and have forced interactions, which has made us less close and less kind.
Those people in Green Acres were loved for their idiosyncrasies. Now they are vilified for them. We vilify anyone with the wrong idiosyncrasies. Some of those people still exist. Some have changed. Some people would watch the Beverly Hillbillies and love them. Some would love watching them and feeling superior. Some would watch and see that often the hillbillies were superior to the greedy people who tried to take advantage of them. Some are nostalgic for those crazy characters that no longer exist, if they ever existed.
Everyone loves the Andy Griffith show. That guy was a Sheriff. He didn’t carry a gun because he wanted people to respect him. They did respect him so he didn’t ever need a gun. He was the sanest one in town. There were black people on the show, but few. There were many comments on big city people versus small town people.
There was no racial strife, which sort of made it unrealistic. It was made by Andy Griffith as a lesson on an ideal world. It would have been better if there were friendly black characters that were loved and respected, but that was tough to do at the time.
It took that show like seven seasons to introduce a black character, but when they did they did it respectfully.
All the phone interaction on that show went though Sarah the operator who was nosy, listened in on the calls, would interrupt the calls to add her two cents and then gossip about them.
Things did not get better quickly. In the ’70’s the most popular show was Happy Days which took place in the 50’s and they did have one black character and only one and it was brief.
They did use that character, “Sticks,” to talk about racism in the 50’s.
So there Fonzie does say everything that needs to be said about both the racists and the too proud non-racists. Fonzie just said treat all people well and usually did.
Nonetheless Sticks did not become a major character. He instead disappeared.
This led Jimmy Walker to talk about it in his stand up routine.
The essence of the routine was Walker phoning up ABC and asking why there were no blacks on Happy Days and supposedly being told that “There were no blacks in the ’50’s.”
People of color on television and movies is very important. Walker was actually on a good show that did that called “Good Times.” A great actor John Amos left that show because he didn’t like Walker’s very funny, but slapstick portrayal of a black youth. The intended role model was the youngest son, but Walker was the funniest one and took over the show. It’s very complicated and people will still argue about it.
Happy Days was also ruined when Fonzie became too prominent for similar reasons.
So in ways we’ve seemingly progressed, but we get along worse. The people from the South are villainized and misunderstood. Sometimes with good reason and sometimes not.
They all follow Donald Trump on their cell phones. They think Donald Trump cares about them and their concerns. I don’t think he does, but the people who villainize them hate them and give them no chance to become part of a better loving future. That future is like Rosa Parks and her bus.
The best future has everyone sharing that bus, and perhaps people on that bus giving up their seats for older people, or pregnant women, or a mother to sit next to her child.
The problem with that bus as currently visualized is the villains see no seat on that bus for them. So of course they hate that bus. A better ideal bus needs to be invented and supported.
If you want to you can blame the press, the media, celebrity, greed, ill intentions, con artists, and political figures that play on all of that.
Actually, Andy Griffith showed you all that was happening right before he made his very good television show that could have been even better, in the 1957 movie “A Face in the Crowd.”
If you watch it you will see everything that is currently happening in America from the very bottom to the very top.
Oddly, the one place I did not find these horrible things happening was in Europe, where I first found out cell phones were the future.
Most everyone I met in Europe were all from somewhere else, and you could at most places sit right down and talk to them about anything. Everyone was friendly and willing to enjoy each others company. Now these were all tourists and the locals although making their living from those tourists probably hated them.
Maybe we should all just be tourists.
Maybe, it’s just me, and you receive what you put out there. Maybe there are just winners and losers. Everybody is not for everybody. Some people are of no use to anybody. Maybe I am Oliver Wendell Douglas.
I may be wrong but every step technology takes us puts us two steps backwards as a humanity.
That’s almost all Kurt Vonnegut wrote about, and he was always my favorite writer even before I saw it happening.
So do whatever you want to do. Be polite if you can, it doesn’t really take much effort. It usually entails less effort and much less long term hassles.
