Three things for Friday, Feb. 2
Three things for Friday, Feb. 2
Reflecting on 10 years, flip phone February, and rethinking Filterworld
This past week was the 10-year anniversary of Sam and my first date. We had to piece this fact together based on old email records, and obviously there are a few gaps in our memory and things we don’t remember. But we are reasonably confident that January 30, 2014 was the day we met up after work for drinks at a bar in DC, proceeded to get absolutely hammered on old fashioneds, and then went to a (sadly now closed) Peruvian chicken joint for dinner.
A lot has happened in the past decade. We went from being people who didn’t know each other at all — literal strangers on a dating website — to a couple in a long-distance relationship, to moving in together and moving to Chicago, to getting married, and now to working toward having children. Along the way, my father died, Sam graduated law school, we both changed jobs, we made new friends, and a lot of other big life stuff happened. Time has such a way of collapsing whenever you try to look back on it. The way things worked out just is what it is, and it’s hard to imagine that things could have gone any differently. Even if things might have been different, it’s impossible to say how they would have been different, and what else might have changed as a consequence.
As a fairly committed agnostic-and-non-practicing-Catholic, I’m hard-wired to reject the notion of “fate.” I think “everything happens for a reason” is a facile, juvenile idea to carry with you through life, and it does nothing but provide a false sense of hope or security that things will “work out.” Life doesn’t owe you a duty to work out! Sometimes things happen and it doesn’t mean anything! And yet … I’m struck by how much of our lives is given over to chance.
The moments when you start dating a person are so random and unpredictable! What if I had felt crappy and unmotivated on January 30, 2014, and decided to flake? What if, two months or so into our dating, an ex of mine had come along and suddenly wanted to rekindle things? What if any of the countless moments where I might have felt frustrated or less-than-enthusiastic about where Sam and I were, I had just blown things off and said it’s not worth it? What if Sam had done the same? This kind of thinking is impossible not to engage in, but it’s also kind of terrifying. Our lives are this series of decisions stacked end-to-end over the course of decades, and any one of them has consequences for whatever comes next. No, I don’t think there’s a fate or destiny that has to be fulfilled in each moment. But I also can’t ignore that me, sitting here at my desk at 3:28pm on a Friday, this “me” is the product of the precise path I took and events that happened, and nothing else. It can’t be any other way. Sam and I have had 10 amazing, incredibly consequential years together. It’s a gift.
Anyway. Ten years together is a nice thing to look back and reflect on. Mostly, I think I’ve learned a lot — about myself and about Sam, of course, but also just about .. how our relationship works. It sounds so sappy to say it this way, but I’ve learned what it means to love another person as a partner. It’s not an aspect of life that I was ever sure I’d come to experience, but I’m so thankful I have. This “me” is a better “me” and has a better life than any alternative version I could think of who never met Sam. That’s no small thing.
The New York Times had an article out yesterday about quitting your smart phone and a trend among some people to try Flip Phone February. I’ve written about the idea of giving up all the techy bits of life before, and I admit I’m still intrigued by this. My brother is solidly Team Flip Phone, and has no regrets about it. Good for him, I guess, but .. I still can’t quite picture how it works. What about mobile payments? And QR codes? And my digital CTA pass, and Google maps, and concert tickets and .. all of it? My brother lives in a small town and kinda just says.. eh.. not worried about it, which I don’t think is a satisfactory answer. The NYT tries to get into these areas, and apparently, yes, there are flip phones that have like, Uber and maps and Spotify on them or whatever. But still.
I’m curious about this, and I want to try it. I don’t believe the hype exactly — that it will instantly make me a more focused, calmer, and more intentional person who is less distracted and therefore connects with the world better. But .. surely dumping my smart phone would help a little bit? Or it would be useful to try? I hate the idea that like .. I was a functioning, normal adult for YEARS without a smart phone (from essentially 2002 to 2010), and then there was this tiny sliver of time for like.. two years, between 2010 and 2012, where I had a phone but it was just whatever, and now, ever since then it’s been utterly indispensable — something I literally cannot leave the house without. And it will never, ever be otherwise, unless I decide to take drastic steps and cut my phone out of my life. How did I let that happen?? How am I so sure that I’m better off this way, when I can’t even remember what life was like before I started keeping this thing within three feet of me at all times? It’s unnerving, and I don’t like it.
Anyway. I’m sticking with my iPhone for now. But the day is coming. I want to try this.
Lastly, I wanted to share this Substack post from Max Read in which he reviews Kyle Chayka’s book Filterworld, that I wrote about two weeks ago. I’m almost done with Filterword, and I’ve really liked it. Max Read, however, did not like the book, and I think his take is a really useful counterargument.
Chayka is doing this elder millennial thing (much like what I’m doing here), and bemoaning what we’ve lost in a world given over to smart phones and algorithms. He resents that Spotify and Netflix and TikTok all serve up an endless stream of optimized content, eliminating the need to rely on tastemakers or fashionable aesthetic types who know more than you do and can point you in a direction to develop your own taste in stuff. He thinks the thrill of discovery is gone, and in its place we just have coffee shops that all look the same, music that all sounds the same, movies that all serve a mass audience, and it’s just same, same, same.
Which.. yeah, I guess. Max Read doesn’t dispute this. But he’s also skeptical that any of this is the fault of algorithms. And maybe this is just a bunch of nostalgia wallowing. Like.. you were a 90s/aughts kid, and that world felt very analog and thus “authentic,” in some way, but everyone who’s ever lived has always thought that the way things were when they were younger was better.. and maybe it’s not much of an insight at all to just say “wow, things have changed / they don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
I liked Chayka’s book, but I also really liked Max Read’s post. I’m not sure there’s a need to reconcile the two. All that said.. I’m glad everyone can agree that Spotify sucks, and Amazon-Netflix-Instagram filtering all sucks, and life is better if we can maintain that awareness and try to be more intentional with our own choices about the media that we consume. That’s all.