Jonovan Peavie
Snapchat’s discover page is usually something I try to avoid, but today I’m seeing what I missed. Batista is upset at WWE for not including him in their new commercial, for SmackDown’s 1000 special episode. Hurricane Dorian is continuing to move toward the United States and a short video clip shows the damage that it’s already done to the Bahamas and other islands (the trending hashtag on Twitter is misspelled #HurricaneDorain). In Florida people are either stocking up on supplies or not worried at all. I get an ad for Groupon that can save me up to 15%. There was a shooting in Odessa Texas that killed 5 and injured 21. I get an ad for Rise of Kingdoms which looks like a society building game for IOS. A man eats his AirPods. 13 reasons why there never should’ve been a third season of Thirteen Reasons Why. The first guy to ever get back implants looks strange to me, but you do you.100 people rate the same stranger on a scale of 1 to 10 when he is standing right next to them. He averages about a 7. People are still preparing to raid area 51, while the rapper Blueface has multiple girlfriends. My hour ended faster than I thought it would.
I sit down on a large log to the side of the trail I’d been following, near University Park. It was early morning, so it might’ve been a little wet. I’d walked down here before but hadn’t ever stopped for too long. I was close to a small slow-moving stream that cut through the trail. It was way too small for fish, but I was hopping I’d see a frog before I left. The constant trickled made nice background noise mixed in with the birds. The chirps were loud and frequent, but not piercing. I wondered how birdwatchers could recognize a call of a particular species. They all sounded the same to me. A squirrel jumps from one branch and makes a loud crash as it clutches onto one that is much smaller. It runs up the base and then disappears into the canopy. A jogger comes up the trail and we wave to each other. An hour passes quickly, but it is a different type of quickness than before. I leave without ever seeing a frog.
The information age is an interesting time to live. While we live in a time that give us almost instantaneous information on any topic we can think of, we often don’t use our available knowledge in any meaningful way. This is due to our obsession with speed. We want quick, quotable news or stories that we can easily digest and finish while only half paying attention. While our knowledge base has broadened considerably, details often get lost. Obviously, it wouldn’t be viable to shun technology and live completely unplugged, but I think that it is useful to reach a balance.