PROMPT: Communicate Online

Daily writing prompt
In what ways do you communicate online?

Like everyone, with a great deal less civility.

Also, with the recognition that no one is trapped by societal convention, so one must be concise, or no one will take it in.

Also, I end sentences with prepositions more.

PROMPT: Podcasts

Daily writing prompt
What podcasts are you listening to?

I don’t properly listen to any, but I watch clips and segments from many on YouTube — mostly those of comedians, but some of a popular science or current events / international affairs / macroeconomic nature.

PROMPT: Screen Time

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

Keep moving. One can’t be zombified by the machine when one is swimming, running, or otherwise getting a move on.

PROMPT: Favorite Websites

What are your favorite websites?

I fall down the YouTube rabbit hole more than I’d like to admit.

PROMPT: Modern Society

Daily writing prompt
What would you change about modern society?

In short, I think we need to foster emotional intelligence and not just academic intelligence, and we need to rebuild social interaction in a super-tribal world (i.e. a world too big for everyone to know everyone else.) [But do the latter without the xenophobia.]

To elaborate:

First, I think we need some true coming-of-age experience that facilitates a sense of self-empowerment. This would not just be collecting envelopes of cash and dancing a dance or reciting a prayer, but something more akin to being dropped in the woods for a week. Of course, this would require engaged parenting and skill acquisition and not just leaving kids with video games and social media. It seems like a lot of our present problems result from people with no sense of empowerment or the emotional intelligence that comes therefrom. Such people may have passed all the tests but still have “imposter syndrome” and the like.

Second, we need some sort of way to build tribal-scale groups in which people interact with a small group of others repeatedly — in person and face-to-face. The challenge is that this needs to be done without increasing xenophobia, which is already trending the wrong way. I think there is a problematic tendency to be virtually engaged but not personally engaged with others in humanity. Even in I, who am intensely introverted, the social impulse remains, but we live in a world where people can successfully dropout.

Some people get one or both of these experiences in any number of ways, but it seems like an ever-increasing segment of the population lacks confidence (even if they had a 4.0 gpa the whole way through their formal education,) and lacks human interaction (even if they have 2000 social media “friends.”)

PROMPT: Unplug

Daily writing prompt
How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?

There are many levels to this. At one end is getting up and moving for a half hour or hour. At the other end is going for a ten-day hike in a part of the planet that has no cell service whatsoever. (Yes, such spaces still exist, but are continually getting smaller — mostly valleys of large mountain ranges.)

This is probably not as big a challenge for me as for many because I find it neither that enjoyable nor that necessary to be jacked in.

PROMPT: Emojis

Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite emojis?

As might be expected of a device that only exists to facilitate lazy, I don’t have impassioned feelings about any emoji, but I do use the “thumbs up” more than all others combined, so I guess it would be fair to say that’s it. “Thumbs up” is very versatile, and if one is being so lazy as to use an emoji for communication, one might as well go all out an add ambiguity to the mix. “Thumbs up” just says, I have some kind of feeling between indifferent and ecstatic about what you’ve just said.

PROMPT: Social Media

Daily writing prompt
How do you use social media?

For endumbening. Whenever I feel I’m being too cerebral, I go to social media and IQ points drip away by the minute.

And, you know, to keep up with family and such.