Cable Television kept consumers depressed and spending for decades. Now it is the smart phone's turn!
I was bartending at a reception at Goodyear and one of my friends had their grandchildren there. It is funny, living among old people, how you forget what it was like to be young. Many of the oldsters said the same thing, "Did you see those kids? Perfect skin! Were we ever like that?" And indeed we were, once upon a time. But today, we go to the dermatologist twice a year to have parts of the largest organ in our body (our skin) removed, after decades of exposure to ultraviolet rays. We are jealous of the young, who think life will go on like that forever.
I digress, but I ran into someone the other day and they made some noises about "being old" and said they were an ancient 61. "Oh wait," I replied, "I'm 63!" "No way!" they retorted, "your complexion is so good, what is your regimen? What products do you use?" Uh, I wash my face with a wash cloth? He was so flummoxed that despite the plethora of "product" he used in a daily torture to scour his face, that the end result was worse than my benign neglect. I consoled him by saying that all my fat tends to stretch out the wrinkles, and he laughed.
But it illustrates how unfair life is - here's a guy trying to look youthful and failing at it, while I don't give a damn and look younger than him. Maybe there is a hint in there as to how that works.
Anyway, another friend is performing at the reception and his grandson, barely in grade school, was dancing with abandon. Where does he get off being so happy? Then it struck me, he doesn't have a cell phone - yet. He doesn't have a little pocket-sized depression box constantly telling him what a shitty place the world is and how rotten things are. Even if he had a cell phone, chances are, all he does is play happy games on it, instead of doom-scrolling all day long, or being bullied on social media.
Yet. This too, shall change.
Soon enough, one of his fellow kids will bring a fancy phone with him to school, and all the other kids will "ooh!' and "aah!" over it and jealousy will start to set in. Why won't Mom and Dad buy me a shiny consumer object so I can be the center of attention, if only for a minute? This is how it starts. This is how Adam and Eve got tossed out of the garden of Eden.
And he'll get that phone and go down the rabbit hole - just a little bit at a time. He'll exchange messages online and the kids - being kids - will mock the oddballs and bully the newcomers. Eventually, he will find online discussion groups, video channels, and social media, which will put rotten ideas into his head. As a teen, he will think it is "edgy" to profess the moon landing was faked or that the world was flat - after all, these stances garner attention. And when he reads about the world at large, well, it will seem that everything is horrible and his generation has been singled out for special punishment. It is all so unfair!
And that happy-go-lucky kid who is dancing to the tune of his grandpa's guitar, is gone forever, replaced by a truculent teen and a depressed 20-something. He will become one of us in short order.
I have mentioned before, once or twice, how the television is a recipe for depression and the "nightly nooze" sells nothing but bad news. Oddly enough, people pay - big bucks - to get cable tee-vee and then spend hours watching Fox News, who tells them nothing other than the world is a shitty place (well, except Russia, which is a paradise-on-earth) and everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
And people believe this, because, as I noted before, it is fun to feel bad sometimes - which is why people do it so much. "The world is coming to an end!" is a message as old as our civilization. And no matter what the situation, you can say that the "end times" are upon us, as all the signs, as foretold, are there.
But funny thing, the world doesn't end, and life goes on. And plans made based on everything going to hell often backfire in a big way, whether it is the doomsayer who shorts the wrong stock, or the "prepper" who spends every last dollar on canned goods and ammo for his bunker - for a zombie war that never takes place.
Depressed people make excellent consumers. Since they have basically given up on life and embraced learned helplessness, they see nothing wrong with "spending it all now" on either some consumer bauble they think will make them happy (and will, for ten minutes, until the unboxing is over) or on a delivered happy meal with a $20 upcharge. The real misery kicks in, decades later, when Uncle Tomorrow finds out the cupboard is bare.
We should all be as happy as that little kid. Why not? All it takes it to put the phone down once in a while and try to appreciate the world as he see is - a sunny day, pleasant breeze, people having fun, and grandpa strumming the guitar.
What more do you need in life?
Because life is short, and too short to spend hours yelling at the tee-vee or staring at a little black box in your hands, thinking life is awful, when it really isn't.
