You see them everyday, their numbers slowly and steadily increasing. They are identified by the familiar gait, the shambling and mindless shuffle of the unthinking, the unfeeling, the unknowing.
I am, of course, referring to cell phone users. At first I thought the novelty of the smartphone would wear off–the iPhone is six years old, after all, a veritable lifetime for a tech product–and people would treat the devices like a tool, a convenience.
Instead I see more and more doing the zombie shuffle as they step off trains or walk down sidewalks ever-so-slowly, their heads tilted down, their eyes focused on the tiny screen clutched in their hands, their world compressed into a glossy four to five inch display, their lives inescapably linked to the information conveyed from those tiny screens.
Most of that information being Facebook updates and other miscellany that they somehow survived without just fine for all the years before the smartphone existed.
I have a smartphone and it’s nice. It can be handy, entertaining and as my only actual phone it serves a very practical purpose in keeping me in communication with family, friends and co-workers. But I do not do the zombie shuffle. The Internet offers a smorgasbord of information–much of it dross or more generously, not particularly necessary or enriching. But instead of being discerning, instead of picking and choosing it seems many are gorging instead, filling up on the information equivalent of fast food.
And even that is not all so bad. I can be a slave to pop culture and fads if I want to be (I managed to duck acid wash jeans, though). Mostly I just hate that these slowly shuffling zombies always seem to end up in front of me.
So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re going to be a brainless zombie checking Twitter for your entire six block stroll, can you at least not shamble down the center of the sidewalk when you do it so I can more easily get by you? Thanks!
P.S. I like the stock photo I found not only because it shows people doing the ‘zombie cell phone walk’ but also because the guy appears to be some sort of hill giant.