Reality vs. Surreality

We truly live in a world where this line is blurred, what with 24-hour "reality" television networks that focus on anything and everything from the benign to outlandish and idiotic. I mean, when un-celeb, celebrities can regain some semblance of stardom through so-called reality television, what has the world come to?

I want to blame Facebook and Myspace, Friendster, Twitter and those that came before it whose names I cannot even be bothered to remember much less "Google" to find the names of. I want to blame them for making the world as it is, but I can't. The minds of today's youth were destroyed long before Myspace and the rest were even a million-dollar glimmer in the eyes of their obnoxious creators.

I harken back to "Basketball" (Trey Parker/Matt Stone/Carmen Electra, if you've not seen it I highly recommend) where there was a line of dialogue I will paraphrase here; kids today have an attention span that can only be measured in microseconds...and it was a truism all the way back in 1998 when that film was released, even moreso today. I am a product of this technological system, I cannot deny this.

When left to my own devices I will chose to use technology to keep my attention more often than I will a book or a comic. Granted, the things I can do on my iPhone are more immediately entertaining and take little to no time to get into. Instant gratification is one of my many vices.

Another thing that's changed a lot since the boom of the technological age is alone-ness. Is one truly alone if they are connected to the internet? And by that idea, if one has a cell phone of any kind that has internet access is that person ever truly alone? I would argue that they are not.

Dictionary.com defines alone as, "separate, apart, or isolated from others" and if one has access to the internet, to instant messaging, to facebook, to twitter...are they actually separate, apart or isolated from others? It would seem not, wouldn't it.

If reality is what we can see and touch, smell and taste and surreality is dreamlike, unreal and fantastic...does it not stand to reason that these two ideas are constantly blurred with the world as it is today?

Think about it.

Forever indebted to your gracious readership,

Tb (JQ)