Your Smartphone is Going to Kill You

     “Who’s ever going to give a damn about having the internet on their phone?”  -Evan Adams 1999

Smartphones, facebook, twitter, and apps… they the devil.  Working on a college campus has really jaded me to how we’ve become slaves to our phones and connectivity.  While I love GPS, Google, and the ability to rapidly access information whenever I need it, I think it’s starting to kill us, physically and socially.  You older folks don’t get to complain about millennial on this one either, because your guilty too.  After thinking about this, phone free, and doing some research, I think I’ve figured out some of the darker aspects of social media, and the use of smartphones.

The rise of mere presence marketing

Phones got smaller, internet got faster, and advertiser’s eyes got bigger.  Now instead of paying the middle man of broadcast companies, every jackass with a phone and a twitter feed became walking billboards.  This phenomenon is called mere presence marketing.  For a while celebrities didn’t know anything about it, they’d tout your sneakers and jacket without cashing in on that sweet sweet marketing cash.  While celebrities have gotten savvy on their marketing strategies, us mere peasants probably don’t realize the impact we have on each other every time we take a selfie with a brand name in view and post it on social media.

Minus the irony

Mere presence marketing and manufactured celebrity endorsements have refined this art into a science, hell they’ve even Categorized social media to understand the strategic and tactical applications.  Marketing companies have seen the slow decent into the lifeless shells we are online and have subsequently created lifeless shell profiles to relate to us.  In the 90’s our parents were worried that video games and tv would rot our brains and destroy our social skills, but nay, that was merely a chink in the armor.  The twenty four hour connectivity, mass of information, and shallow relationships of social media (with app games included in there) is, by far, more invasive.  Every time you get a notification, receive a like, give a like, post a comment, we take a hit of that sweet dopamine.  90’s video games could be turned off, but I’ll be dammed if I don’t instinctively check my phone if I even think I feel it vibrate.

I don’t want to mention how much time I devoted to killing this son of a bitch

New Societal Pressures

The problems mentioned above don’t stand alone, the pervasiveness of social media in our culture and throughout the world has impacted our society.  We’re like alcoholics that have developed an extremely high tolerance.  We’re addicted to a feeling, a habit, and a lifestyle, that has engulfed our friends, but we can’t put it down.  The more you drink (browse), the more it takes to find that feeling of euphoria, numbness, and social acceptance.

Every time you look at your phone you gotta take a shot!

We’ve gotten so addicted to the fleeting moments of pleasure, that we’ve developed crushing anxiety and fear, for missing out on the action.  The yoga mom expression, that wreaks of essential oils, is FOMO, or fear of missing out.  There’s so much content being published online that it’s not nearly possible for us to consume it, leaving you in a constant state of information overload.  Ever answer a text while driving?  Ever scroll down a news feed till 2am?  How bout this, ever check your phone while your having sex?   These are the problems that are being reported by teenagers and adults alike.

I hope this goes viral….

We’ve committed to our fake social lives and accomplishments more than our physical lives.  I don’t know where you were in 2016, but you couldn’t venture outside without running into somebody looking for a fake Pokemon.  So yeah, what’s it matter that you have a flesh and blood human being sitting across from you (or on top of you) when you just got a “like” for the picture of the dinner you cooked for them.  Hell, you’ve probably showed it off as soon as you found out.

My eyes are up HERE Karen!

The added pressure to be available online at all times, available for your friends, or your overly demanding boss… (I’m looking at you Matt) whenever they text.  You’re out trying to have the “best weekend ever with the boys” or to eat the best food at the trendiest restaurants so we can capture it online which has pressured us into making Fake Personas. Who wants to be friends with someone that’s unavailable?  Who wants to get notifications from a downer?  How the hell is everyone gonna know how awesome your marriage is if you don’t post it?

Societal Change

What the hell has this done to us? Apparently it has seriously deteriorated our attention spans by about 25% putting us below the goldfish. Those same soulless marketing agencies that are creating those shell profiles are trying to make their videos, ads, and pages easier to digest to account for this ADD.  We’ve become a culture of distraction, looking for constant entertainment and Small, Instant, Rewards.

I’m sorry what was that?

Participation in organized sports, outdoor activities, and social interaction has also severely crippled our accountability.  When’s the last time you made plans with a friend before hand and executed it without a phone call or text message?  It used to happen all the time, you’d make a plan to meet up, and just do it, I can’t even get my friends to come to my door without receiving an “I’m here” text.

Just ring the doorbell I see your for God’s sake.

Our society has become self loathing narcissists, lying about how happy they are but unable to make eye contact.  People that have a following of a thousand “friends” but suffer from loneliness.  The anonymity of the internet has also allowed us to share that hate and self loathing even easier, without the fear of having to gut our the physical and emotional response from our victims.  We used to have a word for people that couldn’t understand others emotions, it carried a certain social stigma, it was psychopath.  You’re smartphone, has turned you into a psychopath.

Depression

So why the hell do we care about this?  Because humans have grown technology much faster than what we are biologically and socially ready for.  Much like the advent of the atomic bomb, we’ve created a way for us to destroy ourselves in an instant.  Let’s take it back a few years, Homo Sapiens became the dominant species of humanoids because of their ability to form social networks and work together to develop to dominate the landscape.  Either that or it was all aliens, but regardless, my point is that we’re social creatures.

The truth is out there

     As social creatures, we need touch.  No shit, we need it, it’s not a want, something that’s good to have, its a necessity.  So the fact that we’ve put each other on the back burner, bypassing our instinctive need for human touch is one hell of an omen.  Quick, do you think teen sex is on the rise?  Do you think these damn juvenile delinquents are hanging around everywhere getting stoned, smoking, and fucking their way through their teen years?  The answer is no.  A resounding no.  If you’re older than 30, chances are you were far more promiscuous than your nephews and nieces.

Grandma got down a lot harder than the average high school student

The bottom line is Kids aren’t having sex as much any more, they are barely even dating, hell, they aren’t hanging out in person anymore. If you don’t know why this is a problem, look up the rising accounts of incels.  Our social barriers are  expanding, our outrage culture, and vindictive natures have made almost all forms of interactions a minefield.  Privacy and tact have died, and the pressure is driving us all into depression.

So if you’re reading this on your phone in a waiting room, or while you’re laying in bed next to your loved one, do humanity a favor and put this away and strike up some small talk.  Shake a hand, give a hug, or just simply give a shit about somebody else for two seconds.

Lightsabers are horseshit

 

There’s always been something a bit off about watching lightsaber duels in Star Wars, and I’ve finally pinpointed it.  This is a technical aspect that I’ve rooted out, not the fact that most of the newer fights deal with the good guys and bad guys simply taping blades and lacking follow through.  To be fair, Disney had done a better job of addressing the follow through piece, but is still guilty of producing crappy movies, er, technically flawed representations of a lightsaber duel.  The Achilles heel of every single lightsaber scene in every star wars movie boils down to weight distribution and inertia.

Balancing the blade

The lightsaber’s only weight, is the casing and components, known as the hilt, with a very light blade giving you essentially a deadly flashlight.  Real swords and sabers are balanced so that the blade’s weight, and the handles weight, equal out giving you a center of gravity somewhere along that handle slightly up the blade.  This gives you a bunch of mass balanced on a small pivot point that allows you to control the blade through minimal movement, capitalizing on gravity and momentum.

from: http://blog.subcaelo.net/ensis/documenting-dynamics-of-swords/

 

Sword makers can balance these things out through a number of ways, one of which was to introduce a pommel (noted above), which lets you wield a heavier, heartier blade.  This is a problem that sets you up for a whole slew of problems that we’ll address.  With a real sword, you can move and twist your hand slightly, allowing for the weight at either end of the sword to take over and effortlessly move the blade.  For lightsabers, the hilt itself has got to be balanced, taking the blade mostly out of the equation, giving you the maneuverability of a roll of quarters.

NOPE!

     Basically, now you have to employ a lot more movement of the wrist and pivoting at the elbow which will dramatically slow down your lightsaber duel.  Additionally, if you look at the construction of a lightsaber, most of the weight appears to be in the butt end of the handle in the power cell.

In other words, the lightsaber has a budonkadunk

      In a real sword, you can use the weight of the blade, coupled with leverage along a long handle to strike down your enemy, in a lightsaber, you are really hoping to make a clean, quick slice to avoid your blade bouncing back at you quickly.    This brings me to my next point.

Inertia issues

Ah inertia, as an Allie it’s a beautiful thing, as an enemy it is your undoing.  By giving up the mass of a blade, you give up a lot of inertia.  Why, because you have drastically reduced mass, which lets you move faster, but with far less impact.  Like a Moped moving at 130 mph.  Swords do a good job of transferring energy from the handle, along the blade, using leverage and inertia, propelling the mass of the blade into your enemy.  If you take away the blade’s mass, the energy stays right in the handle, forcing you to exert a whole lot more force, outside of the center of mass, if your lightsaber comes against some resistance.

Near mass-less objects encountering resistance, what lightsaber duels would really look like

      Now instead of a real blade being accelerated and gaining momentum due to it’s weight, all you have is a handle with all it’s weight centered in your hand, dramatically limiting gravity and inertia’s role.    Additionally, without a pommel and mass of a blade, it takes a whole lot more effort to hold that handle still when an enemy hits the tip of your blade thanks to leverage.  So, little to no mass, coupled with little to no leverage at the handle, means you can move the blade fast, but with very little inertia.

Problems with Twirling

So why is that inertia important?  Because you want to twirl your blade all sexy like, both impressing the girls (or boys), and striking fear into your enemy.  You wanna look like a god damn ninja master bouncing away blaster bolts and severing limbs.  Well without a balanced blade, and a center of gravity in the center of your hand, that twirling becomes extremely difficult.  There’s a reason baton twirlers keep the weight on the ends of the baton.

Darth maul aint got shit on this lady

     You can really see this principle if you take a flashlight, and a bat, and feel how much the barrel of the bat causes the handle to pivot.  Eliminate the barrel of the bat, and you lose a lot of the force you can exert, and a lot of potential energy stored at the beginning of a swing.  You might not think this is a big deal until you realize how much you depend on the weight of a blade to turn the handle in your hand.  Hell, look at the delicate balance of weight in that baseball bat, there’s a reason the handle is the thinnest.  The balancing of a bat, much like a sword, gives you a sweet spot about 2/3rds of the way up.  Without mass at the end, your sweet spot is in your hand.

The Saber Toss

Back to that whole twirling thing, if you watch the link you’ll see a lady throwing crazy spinning batons in the air with easy.  This is possible through her intrinsic understanding of momentum, balance, and fine motor skills of a long object, with a center of gravity balanced between a long axis.  Now if you shrink that axis, and center the weight, your going to dramatically slow down the ability for that object to twirl around brilliantly, leaving you looking less like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and more like your haphazard wood shop teacher.

Not a lightsaber

     Throwing a saber would look less like a brilliant spinning display of aggression, and more like a lazily thrown beer bottle.  The only movie to get this right was Return of the Jedi, where Vader’s throw barely makes a full circle in a sloppy attack to throw off Luke.

When Blades Meet

So, what happens when these blades meet, or maybe you hit some armor resilient to lightsabers?  A flash of light, some electric whirs, a stalemate?  No, with no mass at the blade, that handle is going to pivot violently unless you’ve got the grip strength of Dr. Arnold Nerenberg.  See, all that speed you put into your swing might not carry a bunch of inertia at the blade, but that handle does have inertia in it.  By bouncing off an offenders blade, your blade has nothing to slow it down on it’s bounce back towards your face, which means your handle just got some force introduced to it, far away from it’s center of gravity.

So what would a real duel look like?

In a reality with lightsabers, and in my opinion, every saber duel should be like the one between Obi-Wan and Darth Maul on Tatooine.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are not nerdy enough to understand this article, and you need to watch some Rebels.  Either way, it would look more like very risk adverse fencing, rather than knock down dragged out slug fests.

Boss

Shout out to George L Turner of the Association of Renaissance Martial Arts who is far smarter than I ever hope to be.