Member-only story
A young man wearing way too much cologne sits down next to me, on the subway platform benches, and begins to mug for Snapchat. Who is he talking to? No one, really: just the mirage of the screen — the invisible hive of his friends, or followers, or whatever they are. I guess it makes him happy. I wonder why he doesn’t realize that his odor is unpleasantly strong, especially in an enclosed, public space.
The messages that come through my email and over text usually cause me anxiety; very often, they’re negative in one way or another. Human beings have evolved a delicate, precise form of passive-aggression. It seems to me that we’re connected to each other only so that we can manipulate each other, criticize and control each other. It’s not just big tech and the government that’s tracking (if not watching) our every move — it’s us: we stalk each other, cannot escape each other.
As spring comes, and tourists arrive, I can’t help but rue what modern tourism has become: standing in front of the same famous spots that everyone else stands in front of, taking selfies. It’s almost too obvious, too banal, to even bother writing down (it pains me to have to regurgitate what’s essentially a truism) — but I have to, in order to establish my premise, and thus make my argument: technology is actually making travel impossible, because we can never leave ourselves, our homes, our habits, behind. We carry our lives with us; travel means imposing a way of life on another place. Think about it this way: Airbnb has stopped suggesting we ‘live like a local’ and started insisting locals start acting like multinational hotel chains.
