Some time ago, I drove down the street to a Verizon Wireless outlet. It was square in the middle of one of those quintessentially Florida strip malls – tan, drab, and rundown. There were no other customers inside, just me and three bored salespeople. “How can I help you?” One of them asked me after I spent a minute pretending to be interested in cell phones and 5G. I … [Read more...]
Zen and the Art of Being Online: 41 Ways to Waste Time Online Until We Can All Go Outside Again
Watch videos of people building log cabins from scratch, and then think about how you’ll never be enough of a man to do something like that.Look through the IMDb Top 250 and get angry when you realize that Space Jam isn’t on it.Watch scenes from the few couple seasons of Game of Thrones on YouTube.Watch scenes from the final season of Game of Thrones on YouTube and become … [Read more...]
Zen and the Art of Being Online: If You Want to Have a Successful Election Season, Stay Off Facebook
As a planet, we’re still in the beginning stages of testing the results of merging the centuries-long tradition of democracy with the infantile era of social media. And so far, the bag is as mixed as they come. A 2018 study by Pew Research found that Americans now get their news more often from social media than newspapers. The problem being that one source is … [Read more...]
Zen and the Art of Being Online: TikTok Is a Journey Into the Psyche of Generation Z
It’s too easy to lose track of time swiping up and down TikTok, where minutes become hours and even the eye strain doesn’t make you want to do something else. I feel like I’m living someone’s doomsday prophecy of what the internet and smartphones would do to young minds. I lay in bed in the dark, and only the backlight illuminates my facial expressions – blank, smirk, and … [Read more...]
Zen and the Art of Being Online: This Holiday Season, Think Twice About Letting a Mega Corporation Into Your Home
Throughout the holiday season, we’ve seen the commercials while we tried to mind our own business watching TV and gorging ourselves, as is the American holiday tradition. An inexplicable happy and attractive couple, probably wearing expensive sweaters, whose lives are made so much easier with the help of a new metal box that sits on the counter. With the help of the Facebook … [Read more...]