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re: To those that experienced the 80s
Posted on 2/2/16 at 8:54 pm to TbirdSpur2010
Posted on 2/2/16 at 8:54 pm to TbirdSpur2010
I personally just think that we can't enjoy a lot of what we have because our brains aren't meant to process all of the decisions we go through. You know the old trope. You have a thousand channels on TV and your whole watching experience is flipping through the channels for two hours. It's either "this sucks", or "this is OK, but out of a thousand channels, there must be something better on", so we become enraptured with the possibilities and end up ruining the experience for ourselves. The same way with songs. Nobody sits down and listens to an album anymore. We change the song after the first rendition of the chorus, because we have almost literally every song ever recorded right at our fingertips, so we can't just waste an hour of our life listening to 13 songs by the same person that we might end up hating? Hell, why even finish the song? There are no shortage of them.
The Internet is awesome. I still, to this day, after being connected to it for most of my life, think back to the first time I ever used it to play StarCraft back in the early '00s and think of how awesome it is that we get to connect to everyone simultaneously. But it's ruined me, for sure. We have no patience and no attention span. High technology is making us miserable beyond all doubt. I've had this theory for awhile, and when doing research, I find tons of evidence and studies to agree with me.
If you're a non-fiction/philosophy type, I recommend the book "The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard to be Happy" by Michael Foley. Excellent read about why people in the western world find it so hard to find fulfillment and contentment in each day.
The Internet is awesome. I still, to this day, after being connected to it for most of my life, think back to the first time I ever used it to play StarCraft back in the early '00s and think of how awesome it is that we get to connect to everyone simultaneously. But it's ruined me, for sure. We have no patience and no attention span. High technology is making us miserable beyond all doubt. I've had this theory for awhile, and when doing research, I find tons of evidence and studies to agree with me.
If you're a non-fiction/philosophy type, I recommend the book "The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard to be Happy" by Michael Foley. Excellent read about why people in the western world find it so hard to find fulfillment and contentment in each day.
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Posted on 2/2/16 at 9:05 pm to VagueMessage
quote:
You know the old trope. You have a thousand channels on TV and your whole watching experience is flipping through the channels for two hours. It's either "this sucks", or "this is OK, but out of a thousand channels, there must be something better on", so we become enraptured with the possibilities and end up ruining the experience for ourselves. The same way with songs. Nobody sits down and listens to an album anymore. We change the song after the first rendition of the chorus, because we have almost literally every song ever recorded right at our fingertips, so we can't just waste an hour of our life listening to 13 songs by the same person that we might end up hating? Hell, why even finish the song? There are no shortage of them.
Those are tropes for a reason.
For television? People record the shows they want to watch and/or binge watch Netflix to gain the most out of their viewing experience. Or cut the cord and use slingboxes and the like to narrow down precisely the entertainment they desire as opposed to TV networks "signing off" for the night and being forced to watch a limited number of news sources. You don't have to move to your favorite team's region to watch their games.
With songs, for all the crap people talk about music not being as good as it once was (newsflash...literally every generation says this, and it's never true), we're living in the greatest information-sharing age of all time, and it's reflected in the collaboration of artists and blending of genres. You can have hit songs such as "Lean On" and "Uptown Funk" coexisting as hits despite sounding completely different. The horizons are so broadened it's insane.
People will always find ways/reasons to be unhappy. Always have, always will. Doesn't mean the advances themselves are to blame (hell, the advents of radio and television, respectively, were also thought to be harbingers of the end of human happiness and productivity once upon a time).
Our brains can process so much more than even we know we're capable of. The difficulty (as is often the case in human history), is that those of us accustomed to one way find it increasingly difficult to keep up. Younger people adapt--older folks (and I realize my time is coming to join that group) have to make a conscious effort to do the same.
This post was edited on 2/2/16 at 9:09 pm
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