You know I realise now, at the age of 35, that I'm about to sound like a dessicated old husk and totally out of step with everyone, but smartphones.
bleeping hate 'em. bleeping hate smartphones. bleeping omnipresent, and apparently give out radiation that hits the bit of the brain labelled "endorphins for mats", because every fucker is always on them. Every traffic light now takes five minutes longer than it should because half the bleeps driving are staring down at their phones rather than paying attention*, can't walk down the street without bumping into mats checking their phone, can't go into a shop withouts squeezing past some fuckwit who's stopped in the doorway** to message their mate to remind them what they're in there to buy. Social meetups consist of staring at your mate's illuminated foreheads while they page through bleeping Facebook to hunt out some rit viral video they're desperate to show you, and you can't drink your pain away because the bar staff are all stood in a bleeping prayer circle Whatsapping each other. I used to play poker a lot, and every bleeping hand you'd have to wake some wanker up from his social-media-and-betting-app induced stupour, explain to him what the bet was, slowly entice him back to reality...then watch as the fucker disappears back into Narnia. I play bridge now, the old bridge ladies are mean and smell of wee, but at least they're paying attention to reality rather than some fuckwit's TikToks. Heaven bleeping forfend you go to the cinema nowadays, can't watch the bleeping film but for a forest of glowing white squares and bleeping PING, PING, bzzzt bzzt bzzt, PING PING PING. One time someone actually was playing Candy Crush in front of me at a West End showing of Wicked, during Defying motherfucking Gravity what the duck. And of course, every fucker expects me to be at their beck and call 24/7, and if you don't immediately respond to a message they assume you're dead and alert the search parties and you're supposed to submit to the indignity of taking 50,000 selfies until we find "the good one" so some wanker can upload you to their feed as "this one here" and uuuugh duck offfff.
AND TO CROWN IT, the average slack jawed, weak-necked chin dipping phone monkey isn't even that good with the phone they spend all their time using. "HOWDOAHHHHHH" is the battle cry of half these bleeping vitamin-rich gristle deposits, I swear, and every bleep's always whining about critically low battery because "Maybe charge up the thing that is apparently the most important thing in your life" is some kind of outlandish request. All the actually interesting things a phone can do is sidelined for bleeping social media and bleeping video snippets of unfunny tit for bleeps.
Oh and when people refer to a group I'm in as "guys", as in "Alright guys listen up". Hate that.
* When driving past traffic that's queued in the opposite direction, I've gotten into the habit of laying on the horn and screaming at the top of my lungs whenever I see someone engrossed on their phone. Provokes some hilarious reactions. Try it today!
** This should be a capitol offence. No trial, no warning, just an angry big b in black garotting you with a length of piano wire and dragging you off to the incinerators.
takes just as long anyway.
