Smartphones

 
Have you ever been in a social gathering, where everybody had fun talking to each other, socializing, introducing new spouses or partners, making jokes of each other? You have, right?
 
So imagine, after 10 minutes of the fun, suddenly somebody decided to check their smartphone for updates or notifications, and starting from that point, the dynamics of the gathering began to change direction.
 
The first person has triggered a chain reaction, whereby they pulled out emotionally and mentally from the gathering, and in the process, disrupting the whole group.
 
Since the energy of the group began to go berserk, the fun is going to subside and the first person that has gone silent over their phone would seem to dampen the group conversation, and starting from that point, one by one of the members will start to resort to their smartphones, thus rendering the whole gathering dull and uninteresting.
 
We all know who’s that first person shall be, don’t we?
 
 
Now people, people, people. I find it hard, irony even, that our social gathering is actually being disturbed by our constant needs to present online at our social medias. It’s even funny to think that the need to upload a photo of the gathering to Instagram or facebook, and tweeting about it are making the real world gathering itself dull.
 
You will have people looking at their smartphones suddenly snapped out of their preoccupation and exclaiming “Why you guys are so silent? Just carry on without me!”
 
 

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“Don’t get me wrong honey. Just my phone screen looks more real than your face”

 
They seemed to be missing the point altogether that they were the reason the conversation go silent.
 
Some people claimed that they only checked their updates because the gathering was boring.
FYI, the gathering becomes boring when you start to glance at your smartphones, not the other way round.
 
It’s only an excuse if you say "eh sorry aku bukak phone sebab like I'm so very bored"
 
Babe, it’s only boring when you are not adding anything to the conversation, and people have to carry the weight of your absence to keep the conversation going. It’s vey frustrating when you are trying to say or announce something important, but everybody in the group doesn’t seem like they’re interested enough to listen and that their smartphones seems more important than your announcement.
 
But it does not take the whole group to slow down the momentum. Even when only a person is not paying attention, it’s a sort of an indicator that the gathering was meaningless and unimportant. Well because, at least somebody thought so.
 
Try to snap spontaneous photos of your friends at a gathering. Out of all the photos, how many of them are only of people who glance at their phones and not talking?
 
If we made all the efforts to travel few kilometers to meet but everyone doesn’t seem to enjoy the gathering, then what is the reason we gather at the first place? Should we just leave the meeting at our Whatsapp groups instead of wasting our time and money to meet? But ironically, when we are with our friends, we check our phones for Whatsapp notifications. Dammit, I’m so confused myself!
 
 

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This gathering so boring think I’ll Whatsapp Tina.
“Ehmehgerd Tina. So I was like having this dinner with my friends like whatever, B-O-R-I-N-G dinner ever!”
Tina: Bitch I’m sitting in front of you!

 
My friend once told me that whenever he has a gathering with his friends, they’ll put their phones away in a basket. The first person who checked their phone will have to pay for the bills. Now that’s an interesting way to keep the conversation going. I think we should apply this rule everytime we have a gathering so that we’ll pay less attention to our virtual social life and give more to our real ones.
 
It’s even sad when you realise that by time, we will actually see less of each other. But the only thing we see when we meet is our phone screens. How ironic.