The Smartphone Zombie Apocalypse Is Nigh

  Back in the heady days of the year 2000, these as-yet unkissed lips belonged to an eager 20 year-old, who fell in love, became a fiancee, spent a further year finishing a university degree in Drama & Creative Writing to get a 2:2 (which I occasionally wear to parties), and went out into the big wide world to work libraries (six months) and a shop (five years). Partway into this retailistic sojourn, the lad got a promotion to management staff, and the engagement sadly evaporated. Never having experienced this sort of emotional trauma before, it was undoubtedly a bad time to be plunged headlong into a retail-based Christmas Nightmare at shop-management level. If you're reeling from the dissolution of a four-year relationship, you don't want to be running a late-shift in a shopping centre, with 30 boxes of stock deliveries, three members of staff, and an army of moronic shoppers asking for refunds and trying to buy non-existent DVDs featuring the Churchill Insurance dog.

  Nevertheless, this was the situation in which I found myself, age 24, surrounded by stock with no hope of getting it all done before the centre shut, queries coming from all sides, Muse on the shop stereo, and Bing Crosby being piped in through the rear corridors (audible from our stock/staff room). Borderline madness. Then I knocked a pile of DVDs over, and my fuse blew.

  I do make it a rule not to lose my temper with people. If I have ever done this to anyone reading, it was a rare incident, and I would have apologised to you at the time. So, in my frustration and anguish (not to mention eagerness to not bellow at the staff in my charge), I did what any rational human being would do. I abandoned any pretence of booking on deliveries, and proceeded to welly the plastic boxes of stock with a broom handle (I even removed the brush-head so that it wouldn't fly off and hurt anyone). Those on the tills, serving customers, would have heard "SPINK! SPINK! SPINK! SPENK! SPERNK! SKENK! SCHENCHK!" until eventually, the broom handle broke. (I imagine the stereo was turned up a little at this point.) After I achieved this feat of strength, I took a permanent marker and wrote "FUCK CHRISTMAS TO FUCK!" on the side of a cupboard.

  The following day, my manager and I had a little chat about my feelings.

  This incident was affectionately referred to as "John's little breakdown", and the cupboard bearing my Festive inscription was henceforth used as a place to blu-tac newspaper articles of note, photos or posters. Pretty much anything that covered up the evidence of my blip, really.

  And it has to be said, in this age of mobile communications via multimedia, photos of the evidence from my outburst would have gone down a storm on Facebook & Twitter. Equally, though, they would almost certainly have scored me the sack. Had I a smartphone back in those days, utterance after utterance (either by customer or by colleague - both hilarious, but the former unintentionally so) would have been turned into social media comedy gold. I took photographs prolifically back in those days, and the sort of stuff that fills up that photo album would have been crammed onto Twitter in the blink of an eye, courtesy of a handheld link to the interwebs.

  I find it amazing the way social media is so accessible these days. My phone is not just a lifeline to my friends and family as it was in those days (my aunt once called my mobile to congratulate me on my aforementioned promotion while I was on the work toilet), it is also a window on everything. I talk often about how media such as Twitter, Facebook, Bandcamp, and more besides, have revolutionised the way I conduct my music affairs. The other thing I mention alongside it is the sheer number of people (and this is primarily via Twitter) that have been brought into my life via series of 140-character vignettes. People that I have, over the last sixteen months, come to care about a great deal.

  Now, sometimes, the question I have to ask myself is "Is this a problem?" I present unto you this small quote from an interview with Conor Oberst, of the band Bright Eyes:
"To walk into a room and it's a bunch of people going like this [pretends to type on a cell phone] it's so depressing. I do it too, so I'm not pointing fingers. But when you project into the future and you think, 'Well, this is eventually going to be archaic. We're not going to need the keyboard anymore. We're just going to be connected.' It'll all just be information-ideas space."


  Now, you know what this is like, and so do I. Like Oberst, I do not point the finger because I do this all the time, when time allows. My weekends are like marathons for my phone's battery, because I am catching up with Twitter, and sharing my life with it. I want to communicate with people, I want to know that Claire is okay! How did Max's meeting go? Is Kai having a better day today? I just heard/saw/thought of something funny that I bet will get a laugh!


The other weekend I went to my parents' house, and we watched the Wimbledon final. I was livetweeting it. It made me laugh, perhaps it got a few chuckles in Internetland as well, but I was in company. Part of me is a little bit sorry that I did it. But it is exciting to be so connected to everything, and the capacity to see something clever or funny and show them to your friends is overwhelming, which is why we do it. You don't want to miss your moment to catch someone's attention (especially if you follow someone who makes work you love) for that magic re-tweet or 'like'. And I play that game. I want to be noticed by people for being a witty and nice chap, because the chap that you see in that smiley avatar is the same chap that's sitting in a chair, in a music room full of fading sunlight, typing this.

  But sometimes I need to know when to put the smartphone down and look at the world with my eyes open. Last night I went to town to use a cash machine, and as I walked back along my street, I visibly and audibly jumped because someone two doors down from my house was standing in his front doorway, smoking a cigarette. I didn't see him from the far end of my road, because I was staring at my phone. That, to me, says "John, they will be okay if you don't look at them for half an hour or so. Put the phone down for a bit."

  But that doesn't mean I don't love you, okay? You get me through the quiet nights when there's no one in the vicinity but me and two bonking neighbours. You make me laugh when I'm having a down moment. When I make a thing, you're there straight away to tell me whether or not you like it, and the fact that you pay any attention at all (right down to reading this) means everything to me. And egotism aside, I am glad that I can be there for people who aren't having a great time themselves. It always makes me happy to know that I've cheered someone up or made them feel better.

  I'd say that overall, by and large, if you're having a hard time, it's better to reach for a smartphone than a metal broom handle.

Lots of love, speak soon.
John xxx

P.S: I know I called this "The Smartphone Zombie Apocalypse Is Nigh" - I don't even think it is, but if scaremongering works for the Daily Mail, what the hell!