Bunkerbuddies unite!

Today’s pop quiz: How is a woman who’s crossing the street while staring at her cell phone the same as a guy in a bunker who’s railing online against people he’s never met?

They’re both part of the largest social experiment in the history of the world, an experiment so vast that it includes all of us and offers no option to sit it out. It’s not a scientific experiment, though, so there is no control group and no way to stop the chain reaction.

Our pal with the cellphone and our bunkerbuddy on his keyboard are both getting carried along the stream of technology that leads inexorably to isolation and narcissism. The same tools that were supposed to create a worldwide web of connections have created 8 billion armies of one, each a hero in their own minds and each besieged in a lonely tower.

It seems we’ve all started to believe the world revolves around us. It could be that we’ve spent so much energy cultivating our ‘best lives’ that we lost the ability to connect with everyone else. Possibly, we’ve been told so often about the incredible hellscapes outside our doors that we’re afraid to venture beyond our portals.

Whatever the explanation, the result is the same: the ultimate test of nature versus nurture. Do we instinctively need to connect with other humans in real life or do we only need to experience the rest of humanity on a screen? For millions of us, during the Covid lockdowns, our most frequent interaction with outsiders came when the (essential worker!!) delivery guy brought us our pizza and ammunition. We’re getting out more since then, but we’re interacting with the world much differently than in the time before.

On the street outside my apartment, people stare at their phones when they walk, silently demanding that everyone else look out for them to keep them safe. Cars, trucks, bicycles, scooters, skateboarders and pedestrians dare me to violate their space. In the bunkers where preppers wait for the civil war, every infraction anywhere in the world is a very, very personal assault, directed specifically at them by people who know who they are and where they are and are coming for them very, very soon.

None of this is exactly new, of course. Drivers forgot how to use turn signals a decade ago and everyone shares photos of their food instead of the other people at the table. Bunker Bob posts images of his gun collection and the gun range, but he never offers up a group photo from the family picnic. The prevailing photo format of the 21st Century is the selfie, a photo we have to take of ourselves because we’re all alone. Or so it seems.

There’s still some hope, though. Brave patriots are venturing out to the beaches in Chicago, gathering at neighborhood festivals, and dining at restaurants in the vicinity of total strangers. These are acts of rebellion today and these are the true heroes, battling to regain what has been lost and reject the tyranny of technology. You won’t read about them in the mainstream media, but they are our last hope and they cannot afford to falter.

Perhaps I am naïve to dream of a day when people can speak without a keypad, when we can take group photos of our dinner parties instead of our dinners, when we replace the selfie with the ussie, or maybe the weie or the groupie. Yes, I might be naïve, but I have a dream of a better day. It’s only my dream right now, but I am the center of the universe and everyone will follow my lead now that I’ve shared my views online.

Right?

Right?

Hello?

Look at me, sitting alone in my bunker and railing at the world. End my isolation by subscribing  now. You might not be glad you did, but I will certainly be much happier.

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