I got an iPhone last week and now
I will never be lost again. Sitting in the passenger seat of a friend’s car en route to Charlotesville, Virginia, we will not decide to pull over at a gas station for directions, will not watch a woman in a pink wig steal a Snickers from the candy aisle, will not be asked, by the boy behind the counter with a mustache somewhere between Franco-and pedophilic, if we know where the party’s at tonight, because he knows some cute girls, they’re trying to go to a party if we know of one, also he’s got some weed if you wanna blaze and maybe chip in a little, manager’s not gonna be back till three, he owns a popular seafood restaurant says the boy and between you and me I think he fucks the waitresses. Instead I will plug our destination into my iPhone’s ‘Maps’ application and a woman invented by lonely technicians of transportational efficiency will get us there just in time to go to bed before the sun rises.
And in a foreign city I will, using an application that weighs price against user and professional reviews, eat an affordable, satisfying chicken pesto sandwich. But what of all the mediocre, overpriced restaurants whose revenues put chefs’ sons and daughters through college? The shitty falafel place whose owner can’t help the fact that his falafel is mealy and goes cold too quickly, you know, he’d make better food if he could, and time was people would here and there stop by and eat his food but food has been democratized and they don’t anymore, which, fair is fair, that’s how capitalism works, but every pre-prepared shwarma thrown away unsold is another $9 (“$8.99 more than it’s worth” wrote a Yelp user with undiagnosed Huntington’s disease) not going towards his and Esther’s retirement fund, he’s getting old. Only the top-rated will survive, those establishments that are as sleek as the iPhone that will guide me past the miserable falafel shop proprietor’s pleading eyes.
I will never again recall a snatch of a song I heard on the radio on a 6th grade field trip and wait patiently all day to excavate it from YouTube’s depths, because I have YouTube on my phone now, and also Spotify.
And I’ll never be bored again. Or, that’s not true: The never-ending game of Whack-a-Mole that is staying on top of Tumblr and Twitter and RSS feeds is its own kind of sinister boredom, the kind that convinces you that you’re not bored. And maybe, waiting for a bus to take me somewhere while reading a Tumblr post about sexist undertones in the phallocentric architecture and programming of Midwestern planetariums, I will miss a girl’s glance. Not saying I’d talk to her if I did catch it, but who knows, maybe I would.
I brought this upon myself. I wanted it. Want it. Want to, with this tiny machine, shear off any and all deficiencies and retardants until I am the most entertained, efficient member of this efficiently entertained nation, Tweeting about my hangover while watching last night’s episode of Community and texting my mom, “I won’t be home for Thanksgiving.”
