Tag Archives: social media

Laid Back Existence in the City

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Social media has become a mainstream source of every sort of high level information. Things have seen to evolve just to integrate social media, a telephone for example. As observed, the fundamental needs of food, water, clothing and shelter in order to live are not enough any longer. Internet is on the list. Filipinos type their complaints of slow internet connection in social media as if it’s a life and death situation. Just the same I believe they would die, though not physically. That’s how dependent humans have become to our virtual society in order to live.

Personally, social media, websites and television have become burden to the soul. The downpour of information along with trivial, useless  and false ones give extra work for my mind to filter out those relevant, original and well-researched data only. On the other hand, I can also limit information overload instead of letting myself be fired upon with television ads, self-praising paragraphs from social media, brain carcinogenic television entertainment,  consumerism driven blogs, shallow topics on vanity driven pursuits, and all sorts of public display of affection, spending, narcissisim, and affliction – again in social media.

How can one control unnecessary information overload? Information technology (IT) has always been my occupation where I design software and process data all the time. Implausible it may sound,  but I don’t spend on gadgets and never felt tiny bit of affection for iStuff. Likewise, I haven’t subscribed for broadband connection at home, neither do I have television connection for 8 years already (not missing this at all). Mobile phone internet is the only connection I have. In fact I’m publishing this essay on WordPress just using my phone (which I always do). I guess, this how I forge my laid back existence in the city.

Unnecessary Noise

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During my pre-college years back in Bacolod City, it seems there were more major storms then than in the last 15 years I’ve lived in Metro Manila. Back then blackouts were frequent and when hit by typhoons, blackouts will last for a month or more. A few days or even a week of that hardly affects our day to day life then. That was yesterday; today, a 12 hour blackout seems like a personal catastrophe for most. Man have created this dependency on appliances, gadgets and comforts that when deprived of, the noise from the complaints made the natural disaster look more devastating than it should be.

Yesterday afternoon in the wake of the storm, I surveyed the village where I live by running within its perimeter. There were several tree casualties, blackout like the rest of Metro Manila, but no flooding and no major debris blockage. It was very quiet in the village that I suppose residents must have fled to the malls because of electricity deprivation along with impending social media deprivation due to dying battery life of their gadgets.