Life not worth looking up from your phone for

I hate mobile phones. I hate people constantly taking pictures of their kids, and their food, and their kids eating food, and their kids looking at the pictures they just took of their kids eating food, and selfies of their own faces smiling at the fact that they just took six pictures of their kids eating food. And people are doing this constantly. You know who you are. Stop doing this, you time wasting cretins. Do you not know what your own face looks like? In the vain hope of trying to get you to stop doing this, I kindly present some stuff below: for starters there are some tantalising quotes related to this phenomenon of always taking photos, followed by the scrumptious main course of a relevant article from the Daily Mash, and for dessert there is a Nemi cartoon. Bon appetit!

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• Selfies in Arabic are called nafsies. – Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
• Here you are at 30, suffering peer pressure [to have kids]. And it’s worse than ever, mostly, I think, because of digital technologies. Because all my friends had cool little digital cameras, cos they’re so cheap and accessible these days, and they’re very proud, it takes many photos, and they’re [takes pictures] “Oh, look! There’s absolutely no limit to the number of photos I can take!” And I have broad-band internet, you know, digital technology. And so, every morning, I wake up and, there, sure enough, attached to an e-mail, is another 10×8-high resolution-colour photograph of another f*cking miracle, you know…And, eventually, it wears you down. It breaks you, these photos. You know? And you find yourself having this…inevitable conversation that you thought you’d never have. You know the one. “What are we waiting for? It’s never gonna be the right time. It’s always gonna be tough, it’s always gonna be financially difficult, but, why don’t we just do it? Why don’t we just buy a digital camera?” So, we did. We did, we bought one! And, soon after, almost, it seems, as a result, we had a child. – Tim Minchin, comedian
• Smartphones are an addiction. With cigarettes, you knew each one was 10 minutes off your life, but it was off the end of your life. With these, it takes the 10 minutes while you’re in them. If your phone was literally charged directly off your lifespan –– would you give a sh*t? How many cat videos would you still watch? – Charlie Brooker, shortlist.com, Dec 2014
• Try putting your iPhones down every once in a while and look at people’s faces. People’s faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry or nauseous, or asleep. – Amy Poehler
• The Egyptians have a nice saying: ‘Khalli bariq min nafsiq’. ‘Take care of yourself’. But if you translate it literally it means ‘empty your mind of your ego’. There’s too much ego. Nafsi nafsi. This is Shaytaan. Now everyone is taking selfies. Narcissistic people. In the Emirates they’ve had several mortal fatalities, car accidents from people taking selfies. They kill themselves driving. We had it in America, people taking selfies. One girl was listening to the happy song, this stupid song about ‘happy like a house without a roof’. Who the hell is going to be happy in a house without a roof? And she is listening to this song, and she tweets to her friend ‘Oh I am so happy listening to the happy song’, and she goes into the other lane and has a head on collision. That was the last thing she tweeted. Now where is she? Not so happy. All these cameras, I’m so sick of cameras. I don’t take pictures. This is my camera [points to his heart]. I can see all of you. If I close my eyes, I see my teachers. Wallahi, I see them in my heart. I don’t need a camera. I never take pictures. People say “Can I take a picture?” I don’t want to take a picture. Take a picture right here. Just be here! Be present! Don’t think about tomorrow. You might not see tomorrow. Be present. This camera is destroying us. Really. All these stupid selfies. People putting ‘Oh I had spinach and quiche for lunch, look’. And they put it online and show everybody what they had for lunch. Next, why don’t you take a picture of what goes into the toilet? ‘Oh look how it came out the other end’. Seriously, what’s happened to us? – adapted from a speech by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, speaking at the Global Tawbah event in Malaysia in 2014
• I think our whole culture…we have to settle down with the picture taking…I took so many pictures at Disney. That’s all we do, right, as a society? It’s like, “Hey, instead of enjoying this moment, let’s take pictures!” We take pictures of everyday life and act like we’re capturing history. “Unbelievable! The cat’s asleep. Post that on my twitter.” It’s because we have the cameras on our phones. Do we need that? It’s not like ten years ago we were like, “I wish I could take a low-quality photo of my dessert. Text it to someone that’s not interested. But I can’t, so I guess I’ll just eat it.” As a result, we all have so many photos. All these pictures, and sure, we all want our computers to run slow. But what are we supposed to do with all these photos? I mean, I have more pictures of my children than my father ever looked at me. And I just keep taking them. Like, “click, click, click.” We all do. You click, click, click. Download all of ’em. We don’t even weed through ’em. “Ah, I’ll just get another computer. That’ll be my Disney trip computer.” We used to have boxes of photos in our closets. Now it’s just old computers. “Heh, there’s our wedding computer. That’s my computer when I was single. I should probably destroy that one.” It’s sad. We have all these photos. Everyone has thousands of photos, and besides us, no one else cares, ’cause really any photo you’re not in is not that interesting. You might act interested, right? You’re like, “Oh, you went to Mexico. How long is this gonna take? Because I can fake it for, like, a minute.” I don’t even like pictures that I’m in. You ever see a photo of yourself and it kinda ruins your day? For a second, you don’t even recognize yourself. You’re like, “Who’s that fat guy?…Oh, no! Ugh, I should call my wife and tell her I love her…I can’t believe I’m allowed to wear that color!” I’m wearing all black tonight, ’cause, uh, that’s easier than working out, right? By the way, these aren’t skinny jeans, I’m just fat. – Jim Gaffigan
• We are all addicted to our phones…I genuinely worry where the younger generation, where our artists, screenwriters, authors, are going to come from, because the ‘yoot’ of today are just constantly on screens. A journey now is, “Let’s check my emails”. There’s no dreaming, looking out the window. We’re not going for walks anymore. We’re not going on journeys any more. We’re not communicating. We’re in this sort of world of just looking at a screen, so I worry what’s happening to people’s imaginations. – Miranda Hart, comedian, on BBC’s Room 101, Jan 2013
• Facebook has made us all celebrities in our own little world. We’re constantly documenting ourselves, taking photos of our food, our shoes, ourselves, and letting people know where we are all the time. We’ve become self–obsessed and I do worry about my own narcissism. – Monique Roffey

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Life not worth looking up from your phone for

23-01-15 – Daily Mash

The people, places, objects and locations that make up the physical world are not as good as smartphones, it has emerged.

Scientists studying the brain’s pleasure centres have concluded that true happiness can only be found when shutting out everything around you and focusing on your phone instead.

Dr Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “We wanted to prove that everyone should put their phones down and engage with the world more deeply, but discovered the exact opposite is true.

“That vague feeling of irritation when someone’s talking to you isn’t gadget addiction, it’s because what they’re saying just isn’t as interesting as a notification that somebody you’ve never met has retweeted your retweet.

“Life is nothing more than an overly complex support system for the real deal which is happening right there in your hand.”

Carolyn Ryan of Hebden Bridge said: “We obviously need life to provide content for our phones, but other than that it’s not really important.

“Sunsets, friends and the joyful smile of a small child are alright, I suppose, but they’re much better once they’ve been Instagrammed.”

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