Thursday, July 28, 2011

Keep your smart phones out of view in gatherings – The correct social etiquette

Despite the advent of technology to bridge the gap of communications between human beings, we are clearly moving the opposite direction. Call it the irony of things or call it human ignorance, as communications technology become more sophisticated, we ourselves grew more distance to each other.

Try asking yourself how many times such a situation has happen to you; you’re out having a meet up with your friends at the cafe and one of you start taking out his or her smartphone and say “Hey, check out this new app I have downloaded, it can do cool stuffs like make you look fat”, duh~, then followed by the rest of the group taking out their own smartphones and saying stuff like “That’s pretty cool, where did you get that app from?” Then everyone started to download the same apps from whatever smart store or market and suddently, very suddently, it does not seems like a meet out anymore but more like a bunch of strangers sitting at the bus stop each busy playing with their own phones. Yup, communication terminato~ I wonder if everyone would just do that at the kopitiam then I would have my peace and quiet meal ;P (Do it at delicious pleaseeee)

Take another example, you are out having a nice dinner with your friends and everyone was busy catching up but one of you start taking out his or her smartphone and starts playing apps with it ignoring much of the flow of the conversation and pretty much in a state of apathy towards his or her surroundings until “Hey, I’m talking with you”. Then he or she just nods and answer you in a simple sentence while dwelling back into his own realm of phone ecstasy. Hanging out with my robo pet would have much more interaction.

Personally to me, it is very disrespectful to the friends you are meeting up if you keep staring at your phones while everyone was suppose to be socializing and doing stuffs like “talking with each other”. If I would want a meet up where everyone was blissfully looking at their phones, I would have just sit comfortably at my home and send you a blardy messages thru my computer. The point of meeting up is to have a proper conversation while enjoying maybe a cup of tea or coffee, laughing at each other, or doing silly things but not sitting together and playing with our phones with zero communication. Take in mind I came out all the way to meet you and talk with you, not to watch you play with your phones.

Bearing all that in mind, I hope the next time you have a gathering or a meet up with your friends, the first thing you must remember is to keep your smartphones where they belong, out of view in your pocket, bag or whatever you use to carry it with, thank you :)