Why Is Everyone Filming Everything?

Nobody experiences life. We document it for strangers! I don't know exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way we stopped experiencing life. Instead, we film it. Nothing happened that isn’t filmed or documented somewhere… If you pull your head back from the phone, you can see what is really looks like! Sigh...

Nobody just goes to a concert anymore. They record the concert. They hold their phones in the air for two hours filming something they'll never watch again while blocking the view of the poor bastard behind them. Annoying? Well, I’ve been that ‘poor bastard’ so yes. I’ve also had the pleasure of being the blocker at times… Jon Stevens on Saturday night, but I only filmed a little of it, just so the world would know I was there.

But that seems to be the way of it now. People don't go on holidays. They create content. Nobody eats lunch. They photograph lunch. Nobody sees a sunset. They film the sunset. Nobody attends weddings. They spend half the ceremony trying to capture the perfect angle for Instagram while the bride and groom are standing there wondering if anyone actually saw them get married.

My son got married last year, and the celebrant asked everyone not to film. They were getting millions of fantastic shots that anyone can have – they just asked everyone to enjoy the moment. Sans phone, at least for me, was fabulous. Well, it was after I got over the first withdrawal symptom!

I saw footage recently of people filming fireworks. Fireworks! As though there won't be another lot next year. As though their grandchildren are going to gather around one day and say, "Grandma, please show us that blurry video of New Year's Eve 2024 again."

And don't get me started on people filming complete strangers having meltdowns in supermarkets. Once upon a time you'd quietly think, "Hell, that bloke's having a bad day," and move on. Now everyone whips out a phone and hopes to go viral.

We're no longer participants in our own lives. We're unpaid camera crews. Everything has become content.

Birthdays. Engagements. Car accidents. Marriage proposals. Gender reveals. Funerals. Apparently, nothing is allowed to happen unless complete strangers can watch it later. And the strange thing is, I don't think we're even doing it for ourselves anymore. We're doing it for people we don't know. People we'll never meet. People who will scroll past our precious memories in about three seconds before watching a cat fall off a sofa.

Maybe I'm showing my age. But sometimes I think the best memories I have are the ones nobody photographed.

The holidays where nobody carried a phone.

The concerts where everyone sang instead of filmed.

The dinners where we talked instead of taking pictures of our food.

Perhaps memories were never meant to be content.

Perhaps they were just meant to be memories.

The Entire Internet Thinks It's WWE

I've come to the conclusion that somewhere along the way, we accidentally turned society into one giant WWE event. Everyone is yelling, everyone is angry and everyone is cutting dramatic speeches. Every disagreement has become a steel cage match. I don't remember signing up for this, but apparently, we're all contestants now.

Social media isn't a conversation anymore. It's Monday Night Raw with Wi-Fi. Nobody simply disagrees. No, they absolutely destroy someone. They obliterate them. They humiliate them. Apparently, careers are ended before breakfast and civilisation itself hangs by a thread every Tuesday afternoon.

The audience loves it. We seem to have convinced ourselves that every issue requires heroes and villains. Good guys. Bad guys. Cheering sections. Catchphrases. All that's missing is entrance music and a bloke with a microphone yelling, "Ladies and gentlemen, weighing in at 220 pounds and representing the Department of Outrage, please welcome Karen from Facebook!"

The news isn't much better. Everything is BREAKING. Everything is EXPLOSIVE. Everything is a BOMBSHELL. You'd think meteors were raining from the sky. Meanwhile, the rest of us are standing in Aldi trying to remember whether we bought toilet paper. Actually, I’m only guessing that paragraph because I don’t watch the news anymore! For that exact reason!

Celebrities are feuding. Influencers are exposing one another. Politicians are body-slamming each other on television. People are cancelling people because someone was offended by someone who was offended by something somebody said six years ago. Honestly, I don't even know who the dickheads are anymore.

At least professional wrestling has the decency to admit it's entertainment. The rest of us pretend we're discussing serious matters while behaving like fans in the front row holding signs and screaming for blood.

We've stopped talking to each other. We've started performing for each other. Every opinion is a promo. Every comment section is a Royal Rumble. Every news cycle is WrestleMania. Somewhere in the middle of all this madness, common sense is lying unconscious under a folding chair while twenty million people argue over who won.

I suspect if aliens landed tomorrow, they'd watch us for ten minutes and conclude that humanity's primary form of government is professional wrestling with smartphones.

And honestly? They wouldn't be entirely wrong.

😁

I have to say, "common sense is lying unconscious under a folding chair" is one of those lines I can absolutely hear in your voice.

Living With A Wrestling Fan

I live with a wrestling fan.

Not just someone who occasionally watches it. No. I mean a proper fan. The sort of man who knows everyone's name, their history, their finishing moves and apparently who betrayed whom back in 1998.

Meanwhile, I am still trying to understand why grown adults in sparkly underpants are throwing each other through tables.

The Squeeze watches wrestling with all the seriousness of a surgeon performing a heart transplant.

"Watch this!" he'll say.

I'm watching.

I have no idea what I'm watching, but I'm watching.

Some bloke with hair down to his waist has entered the ring to music that sounds like the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now (I love the smell of napalm in the morning...) while the crowd loses its collective mind.

Apparently, this is important.

Then another bloke appears and everyone boos.

I ask why.

"He turned heel."

I don't know what that means.

Apparently, he used to be good, but now he's bad. Or he used to be bad, but now he's good. Or he pretended to be good while secretly being bad and now everyone knows. 

Honestly, it sounds less like sport and more like high school. And don't get me started on the names.

The Undertaker.

Stone Cold.

The Rock.

John Cena.

Randy Savage.

These are not names. These are things you'd order from Bunnings.

Then there are the moves.

People are thrown off ladders.

Through tables.

Onto chairs.

Onto other people.

And somehow, they all get up and continue arguing.

Meanwhile, if I sit awkwardly on the couch for twenty minutes, I need to stretch before standing up.

What amazes me most is the commitment. The fans know the storylines are ridiculous. The wrestlers know the storylines are ridiculous. Everyone knows. And yet thousands of people willingly suspend reality for a few hours and cheer like children. Hell, even my grandma loved wrestling! 

Which, when you think about it, is actually rather lovely.

The world is serious enough.

Perhaps there is something comforting about knowing that somewhere, every week, two grown men in sequined underpants are pretending to hate each other while fifty thousand people scream in delight.

And if that makes the Squeeze happy, who am I to judge?

Although I still maintain that if someone hits me with a folding chair, I'm not getting back up. I'm sixty-four. I pull a hamstring putting on my socks.

Politics Has Become Professional Wrestling

I have reached the conclusion that politics is no longer politics.

It's wrestling.

Not actual wrestling, mind you. Nobody is in the ring with Trump, lying on all fours with him. Although, give it time.

No, I'm talking about professional wrestling.

The Squeeze loves wrestling. He watches it with all the seriousness of a man observing open-heart surgery. Meanwhile, I sit there wondering how grown adults can become emotionally invested in two blokes in sequined underpants pretending to hate each other.

Then I turn on the news.

And suddenly it all makes sense.

Politics has become wrestling.

Everybody has a favourite. Everybody has a villain. Nobody changes sides. Facts are optional. Outrage is mandatory. The crowd's chant. The commentators scream. The fans buy merchandise. And every week there is another dramatic comeback, shocking betrayal or feud that absolutely nobody saw coming, except everyone did because it happened three months ago.

The amazing thing is that wrestling fans know it's entertainment. (...although won't admit it unless pushed)

Political fans seem to think it's life and death. Spartan's; in the arena - and the crowd baying for blood.

People no longer discuss policies. They discuss personalities. Nobody asks, "Will this improve the economy?" They ask, "Did you see what he said?" or "Can you believe what she posted?"

At this point, I expect election debates to be sponsored by KFC and settled with folding chairs.

And social media hasn't helped.

The internet has convinced everyone they are either defending democracy itself or fighting evil, depending on which team shirt they are wearing.

Honestly, I think we'd all be happier if politicians entered Parliament with theme music and pyrotechnics. At least then we'd know where we stood.

Because let's face it, politics stopped being boring for some people years ago.

It became entertainment for the brain dead.

And the entertainment became an addiction.

Which explains why half the world is furious before breakfast and the other half is selling T-shirts.

Personally, I'm waiting for the day somebody jumps off the top rope during Question Time.

At this point, I wouldn't even be surprised. 

Nobody Warned Me About The Passwords

When I was younger, I had this vague image of retirement.

I imagined leisurely mornings. More cups of tea. Perhaps the odd crossword puzzle. Maybe even some gardening... Anyone who knows me knows that the plants and I have a very easy relationship. My kitchen is like an indoor forest. It reminds of an old Australian Crawl song... 'the gardens full of furniture, the house is full of plants." Except in my case, my garden's full also!

What nobody warned me about was the passwords.

Sweet Jesus, the passwords.

At sixty-four, I spend half my life trying to prove I am actually me.

Everything requires a password. Banking. Email. Streaming services. Shopping accounts. Government websites. Medical appointments. My fitness watch. The television. The remote thing that controls the garage door. I fully expect the toaster to demand two-factor authentication any day now.

I like my phone, where everything compares me to the thing it has mapped and knows it is me...

Oh but passwords... Heaven help you if you get one wrong. Not only have you entered the wrong password, but now you're locked out because apparently you are a criminal mastermind attempting to infiltrate your own Outlook account.

Then comes the reset process.

First, they send a code to your email. Except you can't get into your email because you've forgotten the password. So they send a code to your phone, which you can't find because you've put it somewhere "safe", which in my house means it has vanished into another dimension.

By the time I finally gain access, I can't even remember what I wanted in the first place.

We used to remember phone numbers; admittedly, they weren't that complex then. I knew everybody's birthdays. I could recite addresses from twenty years ago. Now I have forty-seven passwords and can't remember why I walked into the laundry.

Apparently, this is progress.

And don't get me started on the requirement to have one capital letter, one number, one symbol, one Egyptian hieroglyph and the blood of a virgin just to sign in and check your electricity bill.

Then they helpfully ask if you'd like to save your password. Of course I would. But no. Apparently saving it on one device doesn't mean it will appear on another. That would make life far too simple.

Meanwhile, my mother managed perfectly well with one key and a purse full of twenty-dollar notes.

I don't remember her ever needing a verification code to boil an egg.
Nobody warned me about the passwords.

And if retirement was supposed to be relaxing, somebody forgot to tell the internet.