On my "love blog" www.WhereDidOurLoveGo.blogspot.com I recently wrote a poem about how we "people" socialize so differently and yet all of our problems really are the same. Bars, clubs and social events lost ground to the Pary Lines of the 1980's. The Party Lines lost ground to the Yahoo and AOL chat rooms of the 1990's. Those '90's chat rooms lost ground to Blackberry Messenger and phone text chat of the 2000's. Now in 2014 and beyond, we have mobile chat room and messenger platforms to once again communicate, socialize, interact, hunt for mates or just plain old looking for either just sex, or love, or both.
When was the last time you saw a soda shop where teenagers or even young adults in the early twenties sit and meet to socialize? When was the last time you heard teenagers or even couples in their early twenties talk about or even attempt to duplicate the latest dance move? Can you imagine any modern pop singer or rapper trying to pull off back to back dance hits like Chubby Checker's "The Twist" or "Let's Twist Again". This young generation hasn't "twisted" or danced in quite a few summers.
I see smoke shops, hooka bars and bars with names like "social" popping up. If the younger generation behave in those bars the way I've observed the older generations behave in the bars that I've stopped in, all they are doing in these places is looking at their phones - texting or taking pictures. No one is actually interacting and talking.
There is something to be said for staying on your phone late at night talking to someone you have romantic feelings for. I'm sure that today most people simply choose to text each other late at night instead of having actual conversations.
Perhaps our human need to communicate will not completely fall prey to our new communication abilities? Perhaps our future will eventually turn back to people simply wanting to talk face to face, dance romantically on a date, or simply socialize with others in a more "in person" fashion. We shall see...
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