The New World...

As many of you know, I have had my Facebook account deactivated for quite some time now.  Well, I decided to re-activate it.  Not for the sake of nostalgia nor to say hello to old friends but simply to look for an old buddy of mine that was deported to Ecuador when I was a teenager.  It was that or jail-time for him.  Shit, which would you choose?  My cause came back empty but I decided to hello to a few folks...

What I came away with as I reached out to some people I have not communed with in some time was interesting to me to say the least.  Almost to a tee, I read them all write "Wow, where were you?  You fell off the face of the earth".  Now read that again and tell me if that isn't an odd thing to say.  Did I?  Now keep in mind that most of these Facebook friends are all local.  They not only live in the same state I do but also the same borough.  Shit, for most it would take me about 20 minutes by train to reach them so how in God's name did I "fall off the face of the earth"?

Understand that this is not a criticism of my friends.  We are all just a part of this new normal that has brought us here willingly.  It's just the past comes to mind by comparison.  I remember the days when we would travel to see our friends on a daily basis.  We would hang out and seek new friends to join us.  We called this "chillin".  Now these are called "get togethers" and they require invites to be sent by one to many on some "friends list".  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc, has become "the world".  Never mind that I'm in the next room.  Never mind that I live two blocks away.  If I'm not on some social network...I may as well have passed away lol  I just reminded them all..."Hey, I'm still here" lol  My seclusion was by choice and that's well understood but the reaction from people speaks to the state of the times we live in.  God help us all...

It's a sad thing to witness the deterioration of community through things that are meant to make life easier but that is, in fact what has wound up happening.  Can we stop this?  If we could, would we?  No, this my people is a wheel that has no stopper...except of course if there was a catastrophic power outage lol  Imagine that?  No cell phones, Facebook or Twitter.  Shit, people wouldn't know what to do with themselves lol  Anyway, that's my thought for the night.  I'll be deactivating again...until my next resurrection lol

~Apollo