Technology - Turning us into Twats one Gadget at a Time

Has anyone else noticed that as our social technology has advanced and become less physically personal that people are getting progressively ruder?

I have.

When you work in hospitality you learn that people are more than willing to treat you like something they found stuck to the bottom of their unattractive shoes than be told “no” over the phone. Of course there are the people who act like complete tossers face-to-face - but that is a different story.

Firstly, people don’t like being told they can’t have or do something and they get crappy about it. Which is fair enough if they have been promised but people in our fast-paced, consumer driven, me me me world aren’t okay with less then what they were after and more.

People like to complain – a lot. It’s the bad things that happen to us that we remember most. So, in turn, we like to whinge and bitch through a variety of isolated mediums. We like to take our attacks out on anyone we can. Any slight indication of another person we can blame and insult for our sake and we are off like a shot. We scream at the telemarketers, we berate the receptionists, we write long winded and poorly thought out complaints that will only be seen by a few people at the bottom of the chain who will creatively fashion their idea of the complainer in their heads and move on (this imagination will always leave the complainer being fat).

Before phones were invented I can imagine people getting around in crazy old timey dress and being polite to one another and accepting when things didn’t go their way with a tip of their hat or a flutter of their Parisian fans. Then Alexander Graham Bell had to invent something that would allow these people to vent wholeheartedly into and not suffer any of the disappointed looks they would face were they in person.

When you are mean to someone on the phone you don’t take into account that the voice on the other end is actually a real person with real feelings. Well they are. I’m sure we’ve all had our moments when we’ve got frustrated but swearing and becoming unreasonable to someone via this medium is a little trashy. At least you can pull faces and flip people the bird into the phone without them noticing – or hanging up on them. Though hanging up on someone doesn’t feel as victorious when you have a cordless phone. There’s nothing like slamming a phone down in a fit of passion. Pressing a little “end” button isn’t as poetic or cathartic but much more prissy.

Then it comes to the internet. I think you all know where I’m going with this one. Have you ever been a chat room? Or read some of the comments people write about anything and everything? Good lord. The internet has become a place consisting mostly of half-illiterate complainers and people with a vocabulary that consists of misspelt profanities. When you read some of these can you imagine them being said out loud? To another person?  I marvel at half the crap these people come out with. If someone said to me, at my job, in person “yo didn do wot i asked an evrything woz shit so gimme bak my $$$ bich – LOL”. I would have to stifle my laughter whilst pressing the button for security to take this person somewhere special.

Let’s get eloquent with our complaints. Let’s get creative with our issues. If you need an example take a leaf out of www.27slash6.com ‘s book – this is a huge plug for this website. It makes me literally lol.
So the next time you get frustrated with something in your life – just take a second to calm down before verbally lashing out at another person or else you’ll be laughed about for days later for being a fat complainer. Whether you are fat or not.