I disconnected from the World… and I don’t miss it

After a stressful week, I said “Eff it, I’m done, I’m turning every devices off for the weekend”. Except for the MacBook, and if it weren’t for the thunderstorms Friday night, I would’ve kept the Mac mini on, I had for all intensive purposes disconnected. And except for Saturday to have my mother be in touch with me, but essentially email, voice and social media was not on my priorities. I am conquering a mess of clutter of paperwork and unorganized stuff that if you got “little things” they pile up very quickly. I also struck out on Saturday not finding anything of value at Michael’s to use a coupon that was in last weeks Sunday News. I was also planning to read some self help books I got over the course of June, but got tied up trying to wrangle the mess of micro clutter.

After this weekend, sometimes you wonder if America was better off breaking up the Bell System all in the name of special snowflake’s narrowed interest of “innovation”.

More in detail of the disconnection, I ether turned off or closed out the following:

  • The iPhone;
  • the iPad
  • the Mac mini (that I was planning to use over the weekend to edit a podcast)
  • and my deskphone, only because I failed to follow up with an add/move/change to a wire on the punchdown block to the PBX in the basement, so any calls fielding to Extension 200 resulted in a busy signal (the tone when a telephone isn’t registered into the phone system.) It was serendipity at it’s finest.

It’s the people on social media that make their lives fake and make others feel left out. It’s those same goddamned people who in real live look down if you don’t have a four year degree at a “university”, it’s those same people that look down if you don’t have a real job (ahem, a Hack job.) And if you aren’t weird. All these people have done have taken the real-world stereotypes and applied it into the packetspace.

I wasn’t on social media, email, etc. And now my point:

  • I DO NOT MISS SOCIAL MEDIA AT ALL.  I don’t know about you, but I was getting tired of the confusing path of “should I post only positive stuff without much opinions but if I do isn’t that being fake?” Then I figure out “I am tired of posting generic stuff on Instagram and if I post something outside of a generic image, I might ‘trigger’ someone who I may not know but was loyal to my followers for over a year or two.” And what does posting generic stuff get you? So I guess Instagram can be a fake tool just like it’s parent Facebook?
  • Facebook drives me nuts, because I am burning of my majority if not entirely all Facebook-friends, and to be straight up, I knew what “Facebook-friends” meant as far back as the late 00s. It gets painful to be only connected digitally, even tho professionals can do it just fine.
  • It’s ironic that LinkedIn used to bill themselves as “Relationships Manner” – well where did that tagline go? Perhaps social networks is a really lousy form of relationships… and for me Linked In is been a lost cause for a few months…
  • I don’t blame this on the platforms per se, the platforms have taken a beating on Wall Street last week, with Facebook and Twitter bombing on the drop of monthly average users, and the “fast money” types talking the charades of “nothing to see here folks, move along”, I blame it on the PEOPLE. Cars don’t kill people, it’s the drunken or drugged up people who do, it’s not guns that kill, it’s the wacky people that do. It’s the people on social media that make their lives fake and make others feel left out. It’s those same goddamned people who in real live look down if you don’t have a four year degree at a “university”, it’s those same people that look down if you don’t have a real job (ahem, a Hack job.) And if you aren’t weird. All these people have done have taken the real-world stereotypes and applied it into the packetspace.

It’s worse when it gets onto the device level – the lowest form of communications, second to the operating system, the apps, and the ways the apps “talk” to people and the devices.

  • The people also have ruined real life communication. As someone who used his CrackBerry from Christmas 2007 to 2011, I know a thing about constant communication, especially in email! It’s really insane how people at Market Basket for an example look “important” being on their stupid phones while shopping. Do you see the stereotypical girl whose “checking” stuff on her phone when perhaps, perhaps she’s trying to avoid people like I dunno their parents who maybe hack managers? You know the quick, unlock check Insta, then lock, then 30 seconds later.
  • Between Facebook and the tech, people are choosing whether its professional or personal to avoid real world communications. People hate relationships, and want them on Facebook, but while I was taught in the dysfunctional American Educational Crisis known as Special Ed, I was forced to go the next step and/or strongly encouraged, but so many are just glued to messenger, Whatzapp, or whatever.
  • I live in New Hampshire, but the locale is more of a Boston suburb, despite the “small town” going to bed after 8:00 and town management acting like rude city workers. There isn’t that much places in town to meet new people who aren’t parents of children, or they are old as my grandmother. Bars are not an option because I am not a drinker, so that leaves me to coffee shops. Well all the coffee shops are on the other side of the Merrimack River, so it leaves me only to Starbucks, but Starbucks is worst coffee joint to socialize, because the people there are glued to their devices, their ThinkPads or MacBooks and are “working” and of course you never socialize when they are “working”.
  • And Starbucks would piss off too many customers if they closed of the TCP/IP valves of 5060, H323 and all the random ports thats TL;DR material for the contractors for locking out all the traffic to all the messenger and Unified Communications apps. There would be riots.

It’s a clear confirmation that it’s the people who are using telecommunications SO ineffectively, that we are really becoming a scene out of Wall-E. “Technologists” are all so gleeful that we are moving forward and the “knowledge worker” economy (i.e. the Hackerama) of unproductive work that produces anything but contributions to society, mixed in with gawking at social media profiles as bystanders (basically redefining “driveby media”) the new norm. 

After this weekend, sometimes you wonder if America was better off breaking up the Bell System all in the name of special snowflake’s narrowed interest of “innovation”.

Does this mean that I will pull a 2010 and nix all my social media accounts? No. Does this mean I may I might be a figure to the drop of the Monthly Average Users? Hell yeah!

In short, I strongly dislike people, because the people have no sense anymore. I am burnt out of being a “social’ person in life and online.

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