In a world where robots are slowly infiltrating and subsuming industry, where social media is evolving at an exponential rate, and where technology is slowly destroying the world in its rampant and relentless quest for progress, it is indeed quite difficult to understand that there are still some people who own and use Tracfones.
But I do.
In a seemingly amusing twist of fate, I, a forward-thinking and rational millennial attending college in a trendy and technology oriented city, in a technology-oriented country, in a technology-oriented world, use Tracfone.
By all means, laugh.
I could defend this seemingly barbaric practice by delineating the quiet dignity of a lesser model. Similarly, I could detail the simplicity it allows me, or even the freedom it grants me, as I am not encompassed in the ever-expanding crevasse of iPhone games and unlimited RAM. I could defend a 3 megapixel camera, stating that I should be focusing on the wonder of the world by seeing it through the lens and aperture of my own eyes.
But, I won’t.
Really, I won’t.
I wouldn’t know where to begin if I wanted to. I’m not a Tracfone fan by any means. Having to constantly check your balance on a glitchy and oftentimes frustrating app is not an easy thing to do. Time and time again buying data and text cards but being left with thousands of hours of unused calling and never being to balance them evenly is a struggle I combat almost daily. Making sure you have enough service days, and always being wary of wasting data on something insignificant so that you stingily use it in order to make it last isn’t what I’d like to be spending my time doing. Not to mention the constant slow connection, limited storage, and overall annoyance with the entire franchise.
However, I didn’t write this to spend an entire page and waste your valuable time complaining about my phone. That would make me sound rather entitled, not to mention someone without anything better to do than be dissatisfied.
Whenever I walk through the hall at school, or study the people on the train or bus, or even walk through the city, people are constantly on their phones, forever consumed by idle games, unrelenting emails and texts, or just bland and uninspired tweets from people we forgot we follow. Facebook posts constantly repeat themselves, and whatever is shown on one site is restated a thousand different ways on the next, leaving us “informed” but having not retained any actual information.
Not that technology is a bad thing, by all means, it is a wonderful thing.
Advances in science and modern medicine have made life spans higher than ever, and the likelihood of surviving diseases once seen as death sentences has increases exponentially. Cars and roads are safer, and vast improvements to everyday appliances have been made to make life easier, simpler, cleaner, and more efficient.
Really, I shouldn’t be more pleased.
It’s just, even though I should be dewy-eyed, lusting over the latest phone with unrestrained fervor, I find myself a little attached to my dinky little phone. Sometimes, I can even appreciate its simplicity, and maybe even overlook the nature of the franchise.
Maybe one day I’ll get the latest phone, and immerse myself in all it has to offer.
I just hope I remember to look up once in a while, and realize just how lucky I really am.
