Published on 12, July, 2020
It feels a bit ironic that i'm about to post about my hatred for social media yet here i am taking advantage of one such platform to get my view across. However, please hear me out and do tell me if you feel the same.
I believe that the key component of my Aspergers that is holding me back is not so much the inability to interact and communicate with people but more that i am fighting against modern technology and the way (i believe) it is slowly but surely changing people and their behaviour into something i am not part of nor wish to be a part of.
I've had to adapt myself to 'fit in' to a social, communicative NT world these past 30 years and i've managed it but social media has ramped up the stakes significantly. People seem to want to be more communicative and connected than ever before and that causes a problem for me. Everyone seemingly you meet asks you if you are on Facebook / Twitter etc etc and are obsessed with having a social media presence. Like a double life.
I have one life. This one. I don't post pictures of my unborn baby's unltrasound scan to a world that doesn't care. Why would i want to post up pictures of my kids? I can show them to those who know me when i see them. I don't spend half my holidays taking photos of where i've been and putting them up online. I don't stand behind the goals at my teams football match and film a goal being scored. There are TV cameras doing that on your behalf anyway, i'd rather just celebrate the goal and live in the moment like we all used to do.
I don't go to see my favourite band and then spend the entire time recording it on my mobile. I don't pose for staged self absorbed vacuous photos of me kissing my other half with my tattoos showing and baseball cap on back to front just so i can 'look cool to others' on social media.
I don't walk a mile into town with my head down staring at my phone and taking no notice of the outside world. I don't need to check my phone every 2 seconds. I have the rare ability to be able to wait at a bus stop for 5 minutes without feeling the urge to whip out my mobile phone so i can check some more pointless trivia.
So you had a pizza hut last night and you've kindly posted up a photo of your pizza for us all to see. How about just eating it and enjoying it instead of taking a photo of it? It's a bloody pizza for God's sake. It's nothing special.
I don't spend hours arguing with and trolling others on social media. I don't have a burning desire to push my opinions on others on social media and even if i did. What good comes of it? So i hate rap music. Nobody cares if i do or don't. So why tell everyone? So i disagree with the way my football club is run. Do i get off my *** and try and do something about it or just moan to everyone on social media?
Why do i give a [removed] what Britney Spears wore to last weeks awards ceremony? Banal clickbait crap all the time. Bombarded with pointless rubbish all the time. It's all negative and superficial.
You get the idea.
The thing is that this is the world we are living in now and it's bizarre how the world is even more connected than ever but yet i feel so much further away from being able to connect to others because of my disdain for all this stuff.
People are being drip fed constant streams of information and news and the like and it's all pointless. It's an addiction. Could you live without your phone for a week? I reckon with most people a day would be nigh on impossible.
I know that if i am to find my way back into the world then i have to accept and integrate into this digital way of living now and i am not sure i can. My rigid thinking holds the opinion that all this social media is pointless and therefore by association so must anyone that chooses to live their lives by it. Given so many people do so then how the heck do i stand a chance of connecting with people when they are away with the fairies all the time texting pictures of their genitals and things?
I don't know really. I had a mistrust and sceptism of people in general before all this digitial explosion happened so now how do i fit into this world now? I'm only 40 but life and society now is moving far too fast and i can't keep up. I've been left behind but the weird thing is i know i've chosen the mor natural nurturing option. The thing is that nobody else has so i'm more alone than ever despite having a family.
Does anybody feel this way and not motivated to interact due to this?
Being in my mid-fifties, I come from an even earlier generation in terms of technology. Until I was 16, we didn't even have a landline at home and the only way I had to phone someone as a boy was through a public phonebox (inserting coins). "Long distance" or "trunk" calls were very expensive and phoning someone abroad was simply ruled out. Together with my Asperger's, it probably explains why I'm still very uncomfortable using phones, unless I know the caller well. I don't have a mobile.
I grew up in the pre-video era when all TV had to be watched live and if you missed a programme it might never be repeated and could not be purchased or seen anywhere. Unusually, I did have an 8mm film projector and hired sprocketed films on spools (generally silent, lasting only 10-20 minutes) from a library located in a dingy backstreet. It also sold and hired what were then called "glamour films" for adults.
I also had an 8mm cine camera but the film was so expensive - allowing for inflation, about £40 for three minutes - I had to be very careful not to waste any. It was generally reserved for holidays. The only way of editing in this pre-video system was by physically cutting the film and re-assembling it.
Contact ads - for finding potential partners - had to be placed weeks ahead in magazines, then there was another delay of a month or so, while the publisher collected any replies in one's individual "box number" then forwarded them in a bundle. I remember one instance where the replies were mixed up and I got those intended for someone else, who had very different requirements!
If I wanted information for homework, books were the only resource. We had a lot at home but it often meant a trip to the public library. Buying a vinyl "long player" record was a major event, and only after careful choice, as they were generally so expensive in the 1960s & '70s. Most homes then only owned a few dozen of these 33rpm twelve-inch records, the preference generally being for cheaper 45rpm "singles".
Although I don't use a mobile, or the more common social media sites, I do use a PC and email a lot. My most emotionally intimate friendships are now with people whom I've never actually met (or in some cases even spoken to), despite the fact I've been corresponding with them for up to 20 years! So digital technology provides a benefit but at the expense of isolating me more from the real world. Similarly, all the objectives described above - which once required me to go out - can now be achieved without leaving my computer desk!
Onionbag said:You are right though Arran, the way in which technology has shaped and changed our lives in just a relatively short time span is pretty remarkable AND frightening at the same time.
At the age of 40 you are part of the last pre-internet pre-mobile phone generation of teenagers.
A friend around the same age tells me that nobody at college with him owned a mobile phone and it was quite normal and acceptable for a teenager not to own a computer - or even a game console - back then. Even owning a printer was uncommon and it was the norm for students to handwrite homework and coursework assignments. It was an era when teenagers only needed to own a bike, a TV, and a device to play recorded music to be normal and a have a landline phone at home.
On Saturdays they would prowl shopping centres and hire videos from the video shop in the evening. Teenagers nowadays buy stuff off the internet and I doubt anybody under 16 knows what a video shop is.
If they needed to take a photo they used a film camera then got the film processed days or weeks after the photo was taken when it was used up. The cost of films and processing meant that few teenagers could afford to photograph every 5 minutes of their life or every pizza they bought. Camcorders were now becoming affordable to teenagers but they were too large and heavy to just carry around everywhere. Even after taking photos and videos there was no way to show them to anybody outside of their circle of friends, family, and classmates.
Most interesting is that very few teenagers ever communicated regularly with another person of their own age outside of their locality unless it was a relative or a friend from where they used to previously live.
Hi Onionbag
Just read your posting. Thanks, it made me smile and laugh a bit with appreciation. I have never used those social media things you mention and from what you describe I am absolutely glad that I haven't. Why would I? Since my diagnosis in later life I have come to understand how enjoyable it is to talk to someone who is physically there. Far nicer to observe the communications that I have missed out on all my life, like smiles and facial expressions that previously meant nothing, kind words, friendly talking and laughter. It can be very calming and fun, as long as they go when I want them to.
I have distanced myself from people (apart from one or two) all my life. Why on earth would I spend my time in their virtual world when I have spent most of my life in mine.
You are certainly not alone in your views and I think that when the next wave of social media stuff takes place you'll begin to see more people that can't keep up, or get fed up with the senseless timewasting and overexposure of everthing about themselves.
You'll also see people like me appear when the wave moves on, who never took part in the first place and never will.
Thanks again. Apologies for finding humour in your rant, but it did cheer me up.
I'd just like to say that i have no complaints against the internet or technology in general or indeed who choose to use them and be interested by them, as it is quite clear technology has benefitted the world greatly in many ways.
It's more the societal culture of how we use the internet now rather than the actual internet itself. There are no doubt many people who spend vast amounts of time online such as on support forums from which they gain great benefit but on the flipside there are many people who spend vast amounts of time online just wasting their lives and caught in a bubble. It's more these types of people i was referring to.
You are right though Arran, the way in which technology has shaped and changed our lives in just a relatively short time span is pretty remarkable AND frightening at the same time.
Just a mere quarter of a century ago (1992) the majority of British society had never transmitted data themselves - and that includes sending a fax, telex, or morse code. They had only transmitted audio using a phone and received data in the form of teletext.
If a young teenager used a modem to connect their computer to the wider world back in 1992 then their classmates would have considered them to be a geek.
In the late 1990s I can vaguely remember being told that the internet will never catch on.