I admire people who are not drawn into the online world. Particularly people who are retired, people who don’t have a work schedule to take up a big chunk of their day and yet they continue to spend their 24 hours in productive activities.
I actually know people like that; I know people who clean house, go for walks, read a newspaper, go to church and generally stay out of trouble. If they have a smartphone, they use it to make a haircut appointment or order something practical on Amazon.
My brother is like that—he knew that Pope Francis died but was surprised to hear that some people thought he was murdered by J.D. Vance. Because I spend too much time on YouTube, I knew that one and at least 20 other tales floating around about the Pope’s death.
A lot of topics used to be whispered but now are not shocking: live news reports aren’t necessarily factual, 9/11 conspiracies are factual but you just don’t know which ones, COVID-19 conspiracies are factual but you don’t know which ones--- so forth and so on.
When you start to follow internet platforms, a lot of outlandish (but interesting) stuff will come your way the moment you open up your phone. Ads for tampons and brassieres used to be shocking, but now no one bats an eye. Oddly, male personal accessories don’t come up on my phone, but maybe that’s because I’m female.
Some online ads are illustrating to me what culture is getting to be like approaching the 2500’s. I don’t get upset by very much these days, so I won’t say I’ve seen it all just yet, but I’ve gotten used to quite a lot.
That being said, very few things get my goat for real, but among the most disturbing things I’ve seen lately are hyper-realistic robot puppies and the video ads about them. For $125 plus shipping you can purchase a puppy in a box.
That solves just one aspect that’s always been the trouble with gifting a puppy: you can’t keep it wrapped up under the tree until Christmas Day. This one doesn’t smother, but it will have to be charged for about 45 minutes before becoming the perfect pet: it doesn’t eat, it doesn’t poop, and it’s super-cute all the time. Except when it runs out of charge, so there is that.
I remember having wind-up toys, talking dolls --creepy even then when you had to pull the string for it to say “ma-ma.” But somehow this new robot puppy—and all the different video ads for it-- gives me the real creeps. Is this the future of pets?
Maybe I’m the only one that doesn’t think the whole robot puppy thing is cute. But I’m not buying it.
Marilyn Stokes was a public school teacher in Fort Worth for 15 years and subsequently worked at KERA public television for four years. She retired after 15 years at Ford Motor Company, Southwest Region.