Saw an update on Facebook, “nice weather” – I looked out of the window and it really was…times they are a changin’…now we need a virtual update to feel the weather around us!
Seeing my thirteen year old trying desperately to get the right filter for the colour of “hay” – I smirked and smugly stated, “do you know that while trying to get the colour of your hay right, you forgot to smell the hay while it lasted!” Pat came the millennial reply, “Hay has a smell, seriously mom!”
Lost we are in the maze of making memories, all that remains is the digital version of these memories, colour corrected, filtered to perfection with the hashtag that matters – #bhfyp #clickbeforeyoueatsleepshit……..there you are, you just pressed that “pause” button in your real life moment to record the same for others! Your real life connection with real people goes for a toss and then starts the long wait for those “likes” from the online connections which matter the most nowadays. No trip to the favourite cafe for your plateful of goodies is complete without the mandatory “mobile clicks” to show the virtual world the #fries #yum #cheeseoverload and the works. The fact that the cheese gets stringy and inedible in this process is “not a case at all,” after all we got the best #foodporn click for the “gram” (that’s instagram for the uninitiated, you stupid dinosaur)
Getting back to my thirteen year old millennial and the trials and tribulations of trying to get her off the digital world, I once showed her Monet’s painting of the Sunflowers and asked her if she would like to see them in real life? A flip second twitch from the cell phone and a poker faced reply, “ Yep, why not along the Tuscan Highways,” and she shows me the sunflowers of Tuscany! You nitwit, you millennial dimwit, blind aren’t you, how easily could you fail to see those beautiful sunflowers blooming in your Nani’s backyard, when we last visited that nondescript Himalayan town called home. How could you not miss, Miss cell phone all the time!
Source: The New York Times
The travel stories are the best examples of the digital overload and “life in the times of the gram” (how I wish the “gram”was the gram as in a village) Go anywhere for that vacation be it the hill station trips in the scorching summers or the lazed winter ones to warmer climes, you never get enough of those “pout selfies” – #meh and those undulating hills, valleys amongst the long and winding roads- #lost #wanderlust. Not forgetting the photos of bags and suitcases and the knapsack backview at the airport – #travel #flyin #goodtimes….the list goes on…staring from the hotel rooms to the swimming pool, the buffet breakfast, the fruit basket, each cafe that you visit, each meal that you eat…all clicked, hash tagged and posted for reference to the world to see and like. All I can do is sit and sigh and relive these moments but not before reprimanding them for losing out on enjoying the moment. But a reply is always ready made, “ Can you even imagine that we travel so many miles away from home and not capture the same on “gram” – Mom’s gone bonkers – Grow up man and live with the time!”
Source: Global News
Ahh whatever! The perennial millennial answer to all said and done… but I still insisted that the hay does smell and it took “Chergui” by Serge Lutens, a bottled perfume with the smell of hay and couple of dollars to prove my millennial that, “Yep, hay does smell and that while trying to get the right filtered shade, she forgot to smell it while the moment lasted! I guess “you win some while you lose sum!”
