I Hate Your iPod®

...and your cellphone, too.

It's not envy, oh you happy, plugged-in masses. I do not cloak my craving for the latest technology in disdain and contempt. I really, sweartahgod, don't want one. You know why? This is why. I watch you, all of you, you twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings, yuppies and slackers alike, nice girls and bitches, frat boys and flamers...I watch you, on the T, on the way down the street, in the airport, at the store, on campus...every other one of you, sometimes two or three in a row, with the telltale white wires snaking up your chest and into your ears. You all have that same half-here-half-not look on your faces, a face that says, "No, seriously, I'm listening to my iPod®. Don't bother me. I'm serious! I don't care if the subway has been overrun with al-Qaeda® operatives. I'm totally into my flavor-of-the-nanosecond-pop-band." So, seriously, no, I wouldn't tell you if your ass was on fire, not with that look on your face.

I hope I don't come off sounding too snarky, and maybe in my subconscious, there is a part of me that desperately wants one and feels the need to lash out, labeling it "my fight against materialism, and its role as the new opiate of the masses" but truthfully, I doubt it. I'll be honest with you: I think it's a reaction to what I perceive as a conscious decision to render one's fellow human beings nonextistant (non-extant?). I noticed a few things today as I waited for eons for my one chance at getting back to Boston the under-$200 way. The only people who really spoke to me were over the age of 50, and that was mostly at the airport. Everyone else was either a) wired to an iPod or b) sealed to a cellphone.

(By the way, this invective can also be applied to cellphones. I have one, which I feel I use far too much for a person with as little going on in her life as I have, but I'm embarassed to use it in public--gasp--especially while in an enclosed public area such as a shopping mall, train station, campus, restaurant, bathroom, hookah bar, you name it. Not unless I'm on it for 30 seconds to establish locations and ETAs. I also think it's tremendously rude to be on your cellphone for longer than that when in the company of even one other person. You're with someone. You have company. They have priority since they're giving you their time. Show some respect). For example, I'm coming home today from the library, oh happy student that I am, and some kid was behind me on his cellphone. He was probably a good twenty yards behind me, possibly more, but I heard everything he said to his friend on the cellphone. Some of it was incorrect, all of it was inane and loud. I'm not saying I've never been wrong/inane/loud, both on and off a cellphone. But at the same time, I do try to avoid being all of these things at once and in public. I felt the urge to turn around and correct him ("no, it didn't snow 'a couple weeks ago' in Boston, it snowed last Saturday. No, it's not $200 each way to Boston, even from the coast---you can get much cheaper tickets on Travelzoo"). As my family and my boyfriend could tell you, the impulse to correct people is hardwired into my genes. But I would be completely uninterested and have a much higher opinion of you if you would just not be having a conversation in front of me. Really, people, it's so gauche.

I feel like I'm some kind of troglodyte, a throwback to an era I didn't even live in. I want to maintain the value of human communication. iPods block it, cellphones cheapen it. Why would you want that? If you have something valid to say, you want to say it to people while they have their full attention on you, not when they're gazing off into space, plugged into an electronic device of any sort. Unless, of course, it happens to be your grandmother and her hearing aid battery has died. That's a different story altogether.