Two young girls take on an older gentleman in a game of chess in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park. Increasingly, this is my kind of social media. Mitch Traphagen photo.
I’m becoming increasingly aware of the notion that permanence is nothing more than an illusion. When I was a younger man, a week, a day or even a few hours could seem like they lasted forever. That occurs much less frequently now. Time passes by so very fast, and I am repeatedly struck by how moments are truly fleeting.
Nothing we have will last forever. The homes we live in, the businesses we work at or visit — all will someday either crumble or be torn down. As will all of us.
It probably doesn’t help that I fly back and forth between South Hillsborough and the New York City area. I don’t really have a foothold in either place; neither of them really feels like home anymore.
And back to the fleeting moments — with Facebook and Twitter, moments seem to fleet like never before. Just about the time I see something and think, “Well, that’s pretty cool,” it’s way down the newsfeed and off the radar for everyone else. Somehow it seems that such things are removing the ability to savor moments and incessantly increasing the pressure to always move on to the next one, always the next, most cool thing.
I don’t think I’m a Luddite. I’ve been using computers in some form since the late 1970s, but I don’t think there is much that is good about the constant, incessant flow of … stuff. I like savoring moments. Sometimes, at least, for a few extra moments.
I’m becoming something less than a fan of social media. On one hand, it has allowed us to see and have contact with people from decades past that would not otherwise have been possible. On the other hand, sometimes it seems to bring out the worst in us.
A recent study, highlighted a few weeks ago in The New York Times, revealed that apparently people get resentful of cool and unique adventures their friends post for the world to see. In other words — people evidently don’t enjoy the photos you posted of your European adventure; they may well get angry about it.
Of course, that sort of thing has been around for a while. It used to be that people would be invited over for a slide show in a darkened room using a Kodak carousel projector. No, they weren’t always all that much fun, either. But I don’t recall them generating anger or resentment. Sleepiness, perhaps, but not anger.
And then, of course, there is the fleeting moment problem. No matter how cool your vacation photos are, they are eclipsed within seconds by someone else who had an even cooler vacation. Your moment of riding a small wave of “Likes” is brutally short and then the “Likes” go on to someone else. It’s the Internet’s version of manic-depressive disorder.
There is also the question of wisdom. Yes, older people are signing up for Facebook like never before, but they, too, are getting trampled. Social media isn’t geared for older people. It simply isn’t a means for sharing their hard-earned wisdom, which often takes time not only to share but also to absorb.
Instead, “wisdom” on social media seems to come mostly from cute little graphics promoting a clever phrase. In other words, it’s generally an empty shell of an inscription that is also lost in the morass of other people’s moments. Nothing stands out anymore — not even for celebrities; certainly not for the commoners like most of us.
There is a restaurant in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village that the gentry somehow overlooked in the wave of gentrification that had engulfed the neighborhood. On a recent weekend, a woman of indeterminate age walked in, perhaps late 70s or 80s, and was greeted by the waitress. She was escorted to a seat near the window, and the waitress elegantly placed the napkin on the woman’s lap. It is probably what the woman has done for the past many decades, and a succession of waiters and waitresses had kept the tradition alive.
At the next table were two young men; both had the clothes, attractive appearance and demeanor of those who have never had to concern themselves with the little matters in life such as money. They were likely students at nearby New York University, and they didn’t appear to be fretting about the mid-five-figure tuition required by that institution as they ordered brunch just off campus. Instead, they sat talking to each other, occasionally even offering each other a glance over their omnipresent iPhones. Their laps were unadorned.
Most of the rest of the diners likely were tourists.
The elderly woman didn’t have a smartphone and wasn’t surfing Facebook over brunch. Someday she will pass and what I’m guessing is a tradition will pass with her, leaving the place to students of wealthy parents and tourists, most with smartphones in hand, none knowing that there was something else before them and completely oblivious to the fact that social media itself is the definitive proof that something else will come after them — and immediately so. Social media, like a vacuum, abhors a void.
I know that social media has benefits. I appreciate them. But I’m also aware of the potential for destruction of true, meaningful social interaction.
We left the restaurant and walked into Washington Square Park, one of my favorite places in the city. On the outskirts, a group of mostly older men sit at chess tables waiting for someone to join them in a game. Oftentimes, they’ll convince a young person, or perhaps two, to join them. As the games ensue, serious looks of contemplation mix with smiles and laughter. Those older guys are teaching young people much more than how to play chess — they are teaching them about something that has been taken for granted for millennia but is now remarkably threatened with extinction: what human, social interaction really is. They are teaching them a way of life that no smartphone or web app can match. Life is just better when it’s experienced personally because moments can truly be shared and savored long after the game ends.
