There used to be a time when you could have endless pointless debates in the pub about anything at all - when did Ziggy Stardust take his final bow; who scored the winning goal in the FA Cup Final of 1957; in how many films did Doris Day star with Rock Hudson; you know the sort of thing.
Now, if you ruminate on any sort of question of this nature, someone will irritatingly whip out their smart phone and tell you the answer. Okay, so it may be smart, (or smug) but it ruins all the fun - at least you should waste a good half hour discussing it first.
This is why they may be good for virtually anything, but smart phones are the death of (pub) conversation. In the last week or so, I have whiled away many pleasant minutes (if not hours) with the family deliberating such pressing issues as:
5 Recent Conversations which didn't involve a Smart Phone:
- Does what goes up always have to come down?
- If fish spoke English, which species would have what accent?
- Why is some 80s music shockingly bad when some is excellent, and why do Americans and Kiwis generally prefer the former?
- When does attractive confidence become ugly arrogance?
- If you could live in any era in history, when would it be?
Judging by recent self-congratulatory reports as the media falls over itself trying to prove how hip it is, we are now meant to all hail Twitter. This ‘social networking’ site (more often used for trumpeting what you had for breakfast or which C-list celebrity you just spotted) has apparently proved invaluable because, after accredited journalists were banned from Iran, someone filmed Neda Agha-Soltan dying on the streets of Tehran and the images have gone viral.
Naturally it is very sad when someone dies a violent death. Repressive regimes are generally considered wrong in Western society, unless they have oil and are on our side. Now we can all jump up and down and decry the Iranian government because they are slaughtering innocents. We know this because pictures were smuggled out on a cell phone and people are ‘tweeting’ about it – don’t even get me started on the banality of that language.
There is no considered commentary from a reliable source – on either side. We may never be able to know the full story, but now we know even less than usual. The people who are trained in how to present these facts and occurrences are banned from reporting on them. The crack-down on the media provoked much outrage from those who believe in the freedom of the press, but I’m sure there are more than a few unscrupulous moguls rubbing their hands in glee at this unlooked-for cost-cutting measure.
Why pay for educated journalists and photographers with experience and credibility when you can get any Wayne, Trevor or Shirley with barely a rudimentary grasp of grammar to ‘capture live events’ for free? All they ask for in return is their five minutes of fame (it used to be 15 but attention spans are shorter these days) – it’s easier than eating live cockroaches on Fear Factor to get people to notice them.
Of course they will have to have an unlimited text programme because if they try to phone it through they will run out of pre-paid air-time before they can say, ‘It was like totally awesome and I was like, oh my god, just so freaking out – I’ve like, never seen anything like it before in my whole entire life.’ Of course you haven’t – you’re 15.
So, in the quest to bring you the news, who are you going to trust – a despotic megalomaniac, or a teenager with a cell phone? And, to be brutally honest here, is there any difference?
