I'm so torn on this, because on one hand smart phones have been a net positive in many aspect of my life. I get instantly access to maps, I have my bank in my pocket, I get notified of my bills, check my emails, communicate with friends and family, order stuff online..

Yet there is also the toxic stuff, constantly scrolling X, Facebook or Instagram, bombarded with ads, subscriptions and trash..

I think smart phones can be great devices but their use should be limited to useful functionalities rather than dopamine hits.

FWIW, I'm a mobile dev. So I wouldn't have my career if not for phones. If I were given a wish from a genie, and asked if I wanted to erase smartphones from the human experience, I honestly don't know. At once they're sources of incredible utility, convenience and personal productivity and edification. And again, they are just a CANCER on most people's ability to simply perform being human.

So I absolutely 100% cosign the conflict.

> My most "old woman yells at cloud" opinion is the fucking DISEASE of smartphones that is truly a cancer in our society. Don't get me wrong, I love mine, and they're completely possible to use in a way that coexists with the rest of your tech and life, but my god, the wide adoption of them has demonstrated the majority of our population has the regulation capacity of a fucking carrot.

Every morning, I am one of about four parents dropping Primary 1 age children off at school that isn't nose-down in a phone. While walking, while crossing the road, while standing there waiting to pick their child up after school - nose down, thumb going scroll scroll scroll.

Christ almighty. I only carry my phone because in theory I'm still at work for that half an hour, and if anyone phones me twice it's probably important enough to look at, maybe even answer.

It's all crap, my friend. You can pretend Super Mario is different than Predator longer than you can pretend the Big Mac is different than the Whopper or Home Alone is different than Home Alone 2. Little kids can hold two stuffed animals and make up stories where they are different, but when you're older you can meaningfully accept that it all scrolls by and your life is the same whether you ate a Whopper and root for the Bengals or you ate a Big Mac and root for the Cubs.

I have no clue what point you're trying to make. Super Mario and Predator are both classics of their genre, they're massively different. A Big Mac and Whopper are both hilariously inferior to any decent local burger place, or hell, even a chain that vaguely gives a shit like Five Guys or Freddy's. Home Alone 1 and 2 are both classics.

If you genuinely have never felt different after consuming any art for your entire life, that sounds like my personalized version of hell.

> A Big Mac and Whopper are both hilariously inferior to any decent local burger place

You have agreed with me. They are essentially the same. There is no real situation where one cannot be substituted for the other. Now that you have stopped pretending, you may reach a point where you realize that my other statements are true as well.

Or, you may not. That sounds like my impersonalized version of hell.

Are you always this insufferable when you speak, or do you just talk down to people trying to honestly engage with you as a matter of policy?

And no, I am not agreeing with you. Your statement is incomprehensible. Yes, the Whopper and Big Mac both suck to a degree where they are interchangeable. Home Alone 1 and 2 are not interchangeable at all. They have things in common, they have strengths and weaknesses, and I guess if I was in the mood to watch one, and only two was available, I wouldn't be heartbroken about it, but both have enough going on that they both deserve their own existence as well.

And Mario and Predator is just.. I have no idea what you mean. As someone who has experienced both the urge to watch Predator and play Super Mario, no, one is not remotely a substitute for the other. That's just wacky.

I'm guessing I'm "insufferable" because you don't know a word that fits what you feel. My statement is not incomprehensible, you just don't understand it. I suspect it's because it's about something you don't understand and you don't want to learn, but you do seem to be comfortable being an authority on any bits of everyday media and consumer properties.

The point of the comparison between Big Mac and Whopper is not that they both suck; if you were very hungry you would find either delicious. The point is that there is no real way that one is suitable and the other is unsuitable. This is also true of Home Alone and Home Alone II : there is no situation where one is suitable and the other is unsuitable.

Someday you too will get so old you don't care if your DVDs are in the wrong cases.

As a neutral third party, no, you just actually aren't making any sense.

I think i can imagine the point you're maybe trying to make, but that requires me to make a lot of assumptions

The original post was about how he was angry that his friend was messing around with his phone during a movie. Why does this bother him? He feels his friend was not respecting the integrity of art, that he is missing important things in life, that meaning and value is lost as his friend treats his screen time as a flood of dopamine.

What I was trying to tell him (really just talking into the social media void) is that it's all meaningless anyway. When you're young you care, but as you mature, that feeling of the perfectness of your screen time becomes a childish thing. It is much like the difference between two lousy fast food burgers, the metaphor he partially understood but reduced to "they are both lousy" which wasn't my point.

But his behavior was a little too immature for me, with the brinksmanship and oh-so-daring insults to my intelligence, so I probably got sidetracked in my response and it wasn't very good.

> The original post was about how he was angry that his friend was messing around with his phone during a movie. Why does this bother him? He feels his friend was not respecting the integrity of art, that he is missing important things in life, that meaning and value is lost as his friend treats his screen time as a flood of dopamine.

I love how you ask why this bothers me (a woman btw, your reading comprehension seems shaky) and then go on to explain perfectly why this bothers me. I think "missing important things in life" is a bit strong phrasing, I would say: you're missing a lot of the emotional value the art you're consuming has by way of consuming too much at once to beat dopamine out of your brain vs. having a genuine, personal experience with an art object. But this is solely a situation where you're harming your own experience, not me.

The only sense it would really bother me is that I would throw a soda at you if you were watching instagram reels in a theater.

> What I was trying to tell him (really just talking into the social media void) is that it's all meaningless anyway. When you're young you care, but as you mature, that feeling of the perfectness of your screen time becomes a childish thing. It is much like the difference between two lousy fast food burgers, the metaphor he partially understood but reduced to "they are both lousy" which wasn't my point.

I mean I still don't really understand your point. If you divide your attention, you have a less cognizant experience of... anything. If you text while driving, your odds of getting in a car wreck go up astronomically.

If anything as you get older, you should learn to slow down and do one thing at a time, because your attention span gets weaker as your cognitive abilities decline.

> But his behavior was a little too immature for me, with the brinksmanship and oh-so-daring insults to my intelligence

I didn't insult you. I said you were being insufferable and you were. You're absolutely right, I didn't understand your point, and I seem to be far from alone in that. So I asked you to explain it, and you acted like I was an idiot for not parsing your word salad correctly.

> so I probably got sidetracked in my response and it wasn't very good.

Yeah maybe just answer the question next time.

You weren't making sense well before any alleged insults to your intelligence

And having made your "point" more clear, I'm tempted to actually do so myself

"Commit to taking in ONE PIECE of art at a time you fucking dopamine junkies."

"in-game radio station"

You found a loop hole

I thought Saints Row IV and Sleeping Dogs did this really well, to the point where I'd go around in the car just to hear all the radio stations.

Kinda but not really. The music was all created for the game specifically, this wasn’t a GTA situation. It contributes a lot to the weird atmosphere of that game, hence me being flabbergasted he rolled credits on it having no clue it was there.

My experience playing the first few areas/levels was frequent, unskippable radio chatter telling me to do things when all I wanted was to be alone and explore the weirdness. I didn't (yet?) find out about the music stations but would probably avoid them and the game had my full attention.

Hear hear. I will admit that phones everywhere ( including full speed on highway ) made me finally consider something along the lines of 'you drop the phone in this bowl upon entry in this household'( this should be easier to accomplish at movies where you tend to have codes of conduct, terms of service and the like ). It is getting really bad and it is hard to escape.