iphonesabers

The X-iest Generation

by J.D. Oxblood

Let’s start wide and zoom in slowly. I was born in the very early 70s, which makes me a member of what used to be called Generation X. Speaking for all of us, as a generation, there is something that makes us completely and totally unique in history: we are the last generation to remember life before the internet and cellular telephones. This is a big deal, kids. The cellular phone and the internet have done more to change the entire landscape of society than anything, arguably, since the internal combustion engine. I’ve always loved the phrase “the best thing since sliced bread” but, let’s face it, sliced bread only changed the way we make sandwiches.

The cell phone changed fucking everything, including the way we fuck, and the internet changed everything again—especially the way we fuck. Generation Xers, do you remember when you first started masturbating? Shit, if you could get your hands on your old man’s Playboy—or even a friend’s old man’s Playboy—you were jerkin’ in high style. And I’m talking Playboy—bunk-ass, airbrushed pictures of titties with seldom a pussy in sight. Most of the time we made do with the bra section of a goddamn Sears catalog. Kids today don’t know how good they got it—two clicks and you’re watching pussy getting pounded—two clicks! No high-stakes heist, climbing through the bedroom window of your buddy’s house while he distracts his mom in the kitchen, no passing around a six-month old copy of Hustler that has so many pages stuck together you’re left reading the forum—no, son, we’re talking two clicks of a mouse and these fourteen year-olds are beating meat to REAL LIVE GIRLS, filmed freaking yesterday, getting their asses rammed and asking the camera, “Are you gonna come on my tits?” Shit… I don’t think I even fucked a girl in the ass until I was like 20. Back then, if you wanted to know about fucking, you had to ask your friends. You were only as dirty as your friends were, or as dirty as the girl you were fucking, or as dirty as the girls your friends were fucking. Threesomes and anal sex and spanking and dirty talk and bondage and getting nekkid with donkeys were all shit you read about in the Penthouse forum and did NOT believe until someone you knew said he did it. Even then you didn’t believe it. Kids today know more about sex than I did when I hit drinking age. They got it easy. And I mean easy… chicks today got no excuse not to know that they ought to trim that shit, they ought to give up the ass now and then, and if they ain’t gonna swallow they better spit it out on their tits. It used to take us MONTHS of fucking a girl to impart that kind of knowledge.

Can you imagine trying to explain any of this nonsense to even a college student today? No internet? How did you find a roommate? How did you buy a car? How did you buy CDs without eBay? (and don’t get me started on CDs. Vinyl forever, baby.) How did you keep in touch with that hot little Irish girl you met backpacking across Europe? Paper, son. Newspapers, catalogs, letters. Remember letters? And if you think I’m just being nostalgic, fuck you. An email from that hot Irish girl will be just as good as a sweet letter written on lavender paper the second somebody figures out how to get SMELL into an email. Word.

Oh, and the big question, before the internet, before Facebook, how did you get laid? We went out, my pasty little grasshopper. We left the house. We grew a pair, we walked up to strangers, we got digits, and we got laid just fine.

Do you remember life before cell phones? Here’s a test—do you remember the “car phone?” For those who don’t, the first telephones that weren’t plugged into the fucking wall were in people’s cars. I had a friend in college who wanted to get one, with an answering machine, so that he could have the outgoing message say, “Sorry, I’m at home. Please leave a message and I’ll call you when I go out.” It was a brief little moment in time—and then everyone had a phone in their pocket. Life used to be very different, to say the least—not horse and carriage different, but still. Used to be that when somebody called you, if you weren’t home, you didn’t talk to them. They had to call back. We would call our friends up—from our HOUSE, calling their HOUSE—make plans to meet at a bar, and then we would all go there. Zip zip. And yet, amazingly, we managed to socialize. But what if you can’t make it? What if you’re late? Somehow, children, we worked it out. I dated for over a decade without a cell phone. There was life. There was dating. There was sex. Keep this in mind the next time some inconsiderate motherfucker no-shows on a date and doesn’t call. YOU HAVE A PHONE IN YOUR POCKET, BITCH. Ain’t no excuse.

Ok, grandpa, we get it. The cell phone and the internet changed things. But how can you hate the iPhone? It’s the coolest EVER. It has the internet, it has this cool vibraphone application so you can play it, it has a cool light saber ap so you can fight your friends. And it’s a PHONE. And email. And music. It’s everything.

The iPhone can fucking blow me. And come to think of it, if they ever make one that CAN blow me, I’ll consider getting one. But I fucking hate iPhones and there’s one very simple reason for it: everyone who owns an iPhone is compulsively addicted to it. Try having lunch with someone with an iPhone—they can’t go seven goddamn minutes without whipping the thing out like a Bonobo in a cage alone. That little vibration goes off, and they just have to look and see who emailed them, even if it’s the twenty-seventh “enlarge your penis now!” spam they’ve received that day. The texting is a constant flow. Has anyone ever seen an old movie, where the waiter brings a telephone to the table? The gentleman always apologizes. It used to be considered rude to take a phone call when you were with people—real life people trumped on-the-phone people—and, as far as decent people are concerned, this is still true. Only assholes talk on the cell phone in restaurants and at the movies. But somehow texting has snuck in under the wire. I think it’s because, generally, people think they can do two things at once—like have a conversation and text—but they’re totally wrong. If you notice how many times you have to prod someone in line at the bodega who’s got a face buried in a text message, you’ll see what I mean. But the iPhone goes one better—it has this snazzy keyboard that makes it all-so-easy to text, and the owners can’t stop doing it. I get pissed off when I even receive a text from someone with an iPhone—sorry, I was born in the 70s, my thumb isn’t naturally suited to this bullshit from decades of practice, and if there’s more than one sentence, I fucking make a phone call. And if this conversation is going to be any longer than you-me-you, just fucking call me. When you’re done having lunch, of course. I can wait. I waited thirty-five fucking years for them to invent the Jetson’s video phone, I think I can wait a half hour for you to finish your chicken sandwich.

And let’s remember the iPhone’s heritage—this demonic piece of shit started out as a glorified music player. It’s not enough that punk-ass DJs think they can put legit wax hounds out of biz by plugging in a playlist; now you can’t even go to a house party and rifle through the CD collection looking for something to bump to. Some asshole plugs in his iPhone and we all have to listen to the same shit he was listening to on the subway. Or, worse, some bullshit mix he made specifically FOR the party, before he saw any of the guests, before anyone knew it was gonna go from beer and chips to cocaine and tequila before midnight. “This mix sucks, dude. Got a cigarette?” And it gets worse—iPhones now have an application that will play any music that’s roughly in the style of whatever crap you want. Now we get an infinite playlist made up of whatever random shit that this mindless algorithm thinks is cool. Infinite choice is TOO MANY, folks, marketers have done studies. When you have all the music in the world to choose from, it all sucks.

BUT WAIT, THAT’S NOT ALL. iPhones have the INTERNET. And this is the kicker. The iPhone is single-handedly destroying the last unique characteristic that separates human beings from chimpanzees: the conversation. I don’t mean communication—I mean the art of the conversation. MAKING conversation. Talking shop. Chewing the fat. Having a discussion about politics or philosophy. Playing “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.” Talking shit. Busting jokes. The dozens. Banter, man, as in to bant. No more, kids, not if there’s someone in the room with a fucking iPhone. Get into an argument about who played in the Superbowl in 1987? “Hey, I’ll check Wikipedia.” Can’t remember the actress who played opposite Kenunu in “Point Break?” “I’ll look it up on imdb.” “Isn’t there a town in Morocco named Tatooine?” “Let’s check Google maps.” Fuck you. I don’t care if you do have infinity in your pocket, I actually LIKE talking to people. And getting into discussions, even—god help us—a disagreement about a point of fact is part of having a conversation. It leads to good jokes, lively and interesting digressions, and you might just fucking learn something—something that might stick because it was delivered with humor or biting sarcasm or backed by personal history—shit you just can’t get from Wikipedia. “No, dude, it was the Broncos. I remember because I got a hand job after that game—shit, when was the last time you had a hand job?” “Asshole, it was Lori Petty. Tank Girl, remember? She just directed a film last year. And I always wanted to bang her—she reminds me of Audrey Hepburn.” “No, dumbass, that’s Tetouan. Not far from Chefchaouen—best goddamn hash on the planet.” To loosely quote Tom Stoppard, it’s not better because I say it’s better, it’s better because it’s fucking better.

But go ahead, buy an iPhone, never miss a single penile enlargement email. Sneak into the bathroom at work and jerk off to some quality porn on a screen built for one. Never go five minutes without checking Facebook, text the hell out of everyone you know, and continue to whip up feeble Costanza excuses when you flake on people and, suspiciously, fail to answer the super-phone that, we all know, is always in arm’s reach. But the next time I’m engaging a fetching brunette in some witty repartee, deliberately confusing her about the actual ingredients of the cheesy poofs she’s munching, and am leaning in to procure the ninth giggle—the one that says, “please, lick this artificially-orange cheese off my fingers and take me the fuck home”—and you lean in with that douche-bag expression on your face, whipping out the iPhone to Google the nutritional information, I swear to Obama I’m gonna Google that fucking thing right up your ass.

But I’ll call later. Promise. No sense in that vibrate function going to waste.

Kiss kiss,
JDX

Editor’s note: J. D. lives in New York City by choice — home of the iPhone and the Archie Bunker style rant.