Sad Bear 1 by nedroid. Click to see the original.
Over at the site A Pointless Waste of Time, there’s a great essay by David Wong titled 7 Reasons Why the 21st Century is Making Us Miserable. Go read it, because I’ll talk about it later.
Sad Bear 2 by nedroid. Click to see the original.
For those of you who want a quick roundup of those seven reasons, here they are:
- Not enough annoying strangers in our lives.
- Not enough annoying friends, either.
- Text = Bad communication.
- Text = Less communication.
- We’re not criticized enough.
- The outrage machine.
- We feel worthless because we’re actually worth less.
Sad Bear 3 by nedroid. Click to see the original.
Go read the essay (’cause it’s a worthwhile read and I’ll talk about it later), and feel free to discuss in the comments.
6 replies on “Why the 21st Century is Making Us Miserable”
I think the lack of silver jumpsuits, flying cars and robot servants has something to do with the miserability making influence of the 21st century. Where is that future we were promised!?
If the 21st century is making people miserable perhaps it is because our civilisation is too wealthy,too soft, too spoiled and too egocentric.
I think that David covers those points in his essay, with a few extra ones for the internet crowd.
Actually, it seems totally focused on the internet crowd. Having never used chat rooms or text messaging, for example, I found myself skipping over huge chunks of the essay. And I’m not unique.
He actually illustrates his own argument — David seems so consumed by his world, that he assumes the rest of the world is a part of it. It’s not.
Here in Spain nobody did their shopping online up until a couple years ago, now it’s big.
We are moving toward this scenario.
But I live in a “Happy Internet Place”, and I use my blog to keep up my friends with my house renewing, (friends that I made on the traditional way), my e-mail to set them up to go to the swimming pool tomorrow, and the messenger to hear and see drooling my soon-to-be-2 years old nephew who lives in France.
No big deal, we will get over.
With the recent failure of Snakes on a Plane to stir up the expected stampede to the cinema, it seems even more obvious that internet crowd is very much a minority influence.
What was more fun about the movie was the enthusiasm of the audience. Those who did show up (mostly young office-class men) knew they had a role in its creation, and the hooped and hollered and cheered throughout. The rest of the world simply stayed away.
Didn’t you have your own comments about this Joey?