In Dear Diary, Jag Lever

Signing on.

Wait… can we all take a moment to remember the days of “singing on”? Why don’t we do that anymore? Oh, that’s right… we’re always connected.

I decided to download AIM just for kicks on to my Mac and wow, was it ever weird to see the little yellow running man on my desktop again. I was inspired to do this because one of the recent times I went home to Michigan my grandma put on a VHS tape that I made in high school. Basically it consisted of my friend Sarah and I on my computer talking to boys and giggling. A lot of “OMG he just signed on!” and “OMG he messaged me!” ‘s were heard.

That got me thinking… what’s as exciting as that in terms of communication these days? There is no more getting home from school anxiously waiting for that boy to sign on and send that first message.

Texting killed that! It dawned on me. We are always connected. Even if the boy you like is fast asleep… you can still instantly message him. It’s kind of a bummer. Obviously I am stoked about the direction social media and technology is heading in… it’s groundbreaking and it’s why I can live in New York and pursue what I love. I owe it all to technology.

But there are times when I miss the simple days of picking up a brick-sized phone to call someone or hearing the creek of a door open when someone signed on to AIM (and even then, that was crazy technology). It was those last gasping breaths we took before we surrendered to always being online and connected.

This in a way is a rant about texting and smartphones in general. Not so much about photo sharing… that’s kind of always been a thing with MySpace and Facebook, then Instagram. But texting… it’s a whole other level because you can’t ever “sign off”, and I’ve never really thought about that. There isn’t really a way to get people to pick up the phone and use their vocal chords unless you ignore their texts in which case they’re probably going to use their vocal chords to voice anger.

Shit. Now I want to turn my iPhone off and drive upstate to a log cabin for a couple of days…

Love,

R.

xx

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Jag Lever

I love blogging, fashion, cooking, my cats and coffee.

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2 Comments

  1. Tonya
    9 years ago

    I couldn’t agree more. It seems harder than ever to just relax and get a break. I’m just as obsessed with instagram as the next person, but I find it running my day and that just seems wrong.
    I need a little vacation from technology too, or maybe just starting to turn my phone off more often.
    Thanks for the little extra inspiration I needed <3

    Reply
  2. Helen Grace
    9 years ago

    I totally get what you mean! I keep thinking about locking my phone away in a drawer so that I won’t be tempted to reach for it all the time. Yet, at the same time, I keep making up excuses, and constantly worry about not responding to people immediately. I may end up taking your lead and driving up to a log cabin in the middle of nowhere.

    Reply

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