Please, sir, spare a little sympathy for those of us who are prematurely obsolete.
I think I know what “woke” now means, but it’s still a bit hazy. I don’t know what “gaslighting” means. I insist that “impactful” is not a word, that “impact” is not a transitive verb, and that “concerning” is not an adjective meaning “disturbing” or “worrisome.” I don’t recognize a single song from the year’s top 40, and the only singer on the list whose name I’ve ever heard is Bruno Mars – and that was only because he did a Super Bowl halftime performance I considered unwatchable.
For that matter, I was already obsolete by the turn of the millennium: I know Mariah Carey is a singer, but can’t identify even one of her songs.
I have never seen a Transformers movie, seen only two of all this century’s comic superhero movies, and only three and a half of the zillion Star Wars films – and until this week I thought “Deadpool” was some remake of the last “Dirty Harry” flick. I’ve watched only about four minutes of “Game of Thrones.” In all the years of “Survivor” I think I’ve watched a total of seven minutes. Until I just Googled the current Nielsen ratings I had never even heard of “Voice” or “The Middle.”
I’ve never used an “app.” I wouldn’t know how to download one. I’m still not sure what the difference is between “download” and “upload.” I use a flip phone. I don’t understand some of its features. I’ve never used Kindle. I think wi-fi is black magic, but at least I’m grateful for it and gladly use it. (I don’t know what the word means, though. Seriously, I assume that “fi,” as in “hi fi,” is short for “fidelity,” but what is the “wi” for?)
Siri mystifies me. Alexa frightens me. Pandora is cool when my in-laws use it, but opening her box is supposed to be dangerous.
Besides, dadgum it, I want to think for myself. I don’t want some voice from my dashboard telling me to “turn right in 45 feet,” because I’d rather use a map and my brain to really understand where I’m going and how the next turn fits the overall geography. I also don’t want some voice-recognition thingie trying to decipher my pizza order – and I sure as heck don’t want self-driving cars.
Besides, if cars are self-driving, it makes no sense to yell expletives at their humans while I’m in my car with the windows down so no one can hear. And, by the way, that’s almost the only acceptable way for expletives to be used – alone, in private – except on special occasions such as hitting one’s thumb with a hammer. If people using profanity in casual conversation is as acceptable as it now seems, then I’m really obsolete.
I’m obsolete if the zeitgeist accepts discussion of sex lives in public, or the videotaping of one’s sex acts, or the legitimacy of porn performers as “actors,” much less “stars” or, Lord forfend, serious cultural commentators.
Gratuitous insults? Falsehoods and lies spread with reckless abandon without social penalty? Refusal to listen to the other side? The assumption that disagreement with you can result only from dishonesty or bad motives? The idea that you have the right to squelch speech that makes you uncomfortable? The failure to distinguish a protest from a riot? The elevation of feelings over facts, of dogmatic assertions over reasoning, and of tribalism over community?
If all those things are now norms, as they seem to be, then I’m proud to be obsolete.
I’m also proud to be obsolete if the alternatives are an over-developed sense of victimhood, and of entitlement, or the over-reliance on litigiousness and appeals to officialdom to referee the sorts of things people for millennia handled on their own. There once was a time when gentlemen knew how to handle things privately, when real men knew the dignity of a handshake rather than the false bonhomie of the “bro” hug – and when somebody could actually talk about gentlemen and “real men” without being accused of improper gender stereotyping, much less be sued for it.
So, please give me music with real melodies rather than serial whining, and movies where character development supersedes special effects, and maps on paper rather than in some invisible cyber-cloud.
And, please, forget this column’s opening sentence. What this world needs isn’t some touchy-feely sympathy; it needs the self-enforced virtues of common decency and mutual respect.
