Our Digital Age Stories
Not too long ago, I heard someone (probably my age) talking about how happy they were that they were young before the days of social media. In the dark ages, we were free to be a little stupid without it being documented, circulated, and preserved for all time. Back in the day (ugh, am I really old enough to say that?), youthful adventures were preserved only through rumour, gossip, and bragging. Our stories were chock full of “if only we’d known”. If only we’d known it was past curfew. If only we’d been able to check someone’s facebook page to see if they were actually single, before we started flirting with them. If only…
We didn’t know it at the time, but we were part of a long tradition of blissful ignorance. Stories, both factual and fictional, hinged on all sorts of well-intentioned players who didn’t know squat, but went on with their business, regardless. We couldn’t text each other, google each other, and unless we were near a landline, we couldn’t call each other either. We were at the mercy of the whim of the universe.
Let me make it clear that I’m not a technophobe. I am typing this on an electronic device, and I will be using other modern technology to post it, tweet it, and generally annoy people with it. I’m all about little things that light up and make noise. But I do miss the grey areas that existed before they became part of daily existence. I think stories, both real and fictional, were a little more interesting before we knew everything about each other, all the time.
Case in point: Romeo and Juliet. If ever there were a tale with more bad-timing, misinformation, and “if only I’d known” in it, I’ve never heard it. Can you imagine it happening the way it did if Romeo had been given an unlimited data plan and a smart phone? He would have known who the strange girl at the party was, her relationship status, etc. Juliet would have known the same. They might not have bothered with one another at all. No running around behind parents’ backs, no missed messages, no death. No story, actually. Pretty flipping dull.
Come on, you’ve thought this too, at some point, maybe while watching a movie, or on those days when it seems like your whole house is buzzing with messages from people who need something from you. Haven’t you ever wanted to be goofy in public without fear of it being broadcast? People complain about their privacy having disappeared in the 21st century, but maybe the bigger loss has been our sense of mystery. Ignorance is indeed sometimes bliss, and we don’t get a whole lot of it anymore. Too often, we have the universe shoved in our faces all at once, instead of getting to sit back and letting it unfold a little at a time.
It used to be that conflict in stories fell into one of three categories: human vs. human, human vs. environment, and human vs. self. I’d like to propose a new source of conflict, one that might add a little mystique back into our existence, one that will bring back some of the excitement our stories used to have. How about human vs. missing gadgets? What if we focused on what happened when the power went out, when we ran out of minutes, or when our smart phone accidentally fell down a sewer grate?
Once upon a time, there was a person who had no clue…