I'm doing a LA boot camp with my coach Frank, and Alex. Frank and I decided to go 'freeze' before the boot camp, which by the way has been great so far.
As we're driving down Robertson Boulevard heading to the Freeze Center, I find this girl stopping abruptly in the middle of the road and I just can't figure out why.
There's no STOP sign, but the person behind her is too polite to honk. I do, because I'm not going to sit there and really wait for her indecision to completely take over the drivers of LA.
So, as I pass her by the right hand side, guess what I see her doing? Texting, of course! She feels it so important to stop and text bang in the middle of the road that I decide to stop right in the middle of the road as well to just mess with her.
This woman is totally engrossed in a text conversation - while stopped in the middle of the road. It must have been an extremely intriguing conversation for her to have stopped to text. God forbid if you can't keep up the flow of a text conversation, especially when you're driving...
If it's that important, shouldn't you just pick up the phone and actually talk to the other person and get to the bottom of it?
Obviously not this girl, she had to go on texting with an utter disregard for the other users of the road.
Meanwhile, Frank was telling me he works in a bar now, in Denver, two nights a week. He wants to be able to watch humans 'not interact' on Friday and Saturday nights. He says the guys come in and stand by the dance floor, and wait for girls to come over to dance so they can stare at them and mentally masturbate.
And what do they do the entire time whiel they're standing there watching? They are either 'Snapchatting' pictures of people they don't even know or texting people who're not even there.
I don't hate texting, don't get me wrong. I think it's great and convenient in a lot of ways. It's a lot simpler too- it lets you make plans on the go and in situations that are not conducive to talking on the phone. It lets you set up casual meetings and get-togethers with friends with much less of a hassle, but it is clearly not a substitute for real conversations as it has unfortunately become in today's day and age.
People can't even stand around by themselves or talk to the people they are with any more, they're constantly texting somebody that's not even there. We have these fragile security blankets called the iPhone or the Samsung S6 or whatever else smartphone, behind which we choose to hide ourselves, our personalities.
We can't bear the thought of being alone even for a moment. Let alone talking to a stranger, we can't even be polite as to just look up and smile at people around us, but we sit there instead and text one another non-stop.
So, if you went to meet somebody this weekend or this week, and you see them texting, just look at them and say- "Wow! You're on your human pacifier".
It amazes me that they haven't yet stuck a little nipple at the end of those phones to allow you to suck on, so you could feel an even greater sense of security like you felt as an infant on your mother's breasts.
You get my point- these phones have become our pacifiers.
My daughter had this little pacifier thing when she was younger, it was a panda bear and it had a 'Nuni'- a pacifier attached to it. While the Panda hung from her neck, the pacifier itself hung from her mouth.
I think we should put a little Panda bear at the end of our iPhones, so we have something cuddly and warm to hold onto because we're all so fucking insecure. And we are all so incapable of being in the present moment that we choose to be constantly looking at our phones and text.
So, welcome and suck up to the Smartphones - the modern adult pacifiers.
The next time you're out and about - and you can't stand there and talk to somebody... although you were out and about because you wanted to meet people, because you wanted to work on your social life, or because you just didn't want to be alone anymore, go ahead and keep texting.
Or better still, get a little cuddly stuffed Panda bear and tape it to your iPhone and hang it from your neck, so you have your pacifier, your security blanket.
Come on people, stop texting and start interacting - I mean literally talk to someone in person. You'll be amazed how good it will feel after you get past the initial shock of talking to a real live person!