Contact
Over the past few months, a number of things have happened that have made me wonder out loud: ‘Hello, contact?’
Panic
I am sitting on the train heading towards Utrecht when an announcement is made that the train in question will not go any further than Geldermalsen station. For those wishing to continue towards Utrecht, express buses are coming. People wanting to return to Den Bosch can stay seated — the train is going back.
A real bummer for everyone. By now, I’ve become quite used to the NS. The train doors open, the moment for everyone to make a choice. I decide that it’s not worth the effort and stay seated to go back. Just as I am about to bury my nose deeper in my book, a curious spectacle unfolds.
A woman starts tapping complete strangers, seemingly to ask them what they are going to do now, only to subsequently make it clear to others why this delay is really very annoying for her. A couple with two bicycles starts moving them around as if there are no other people in the connecting carriage — bumping into everything and everyone in the process. Someone else decides to check their phone right in front of the steps at the train exit, de facto blocking the train’s entrance and exit.
Media Usage
It strikes me more and more how people in public transport are shamelessly taking up space. People calling others on speakerphone. People scrolling through their timelines with sound on. People listening to music out loud — whether or not in a quiet carriage.
I am old enough by now to remember that talking on the phone in a public space was seen as a gross violation of decency. The good old days.
YouTube
The management of our online world also seems to have taken a turn. Where social media once appeared focused on bringing together acquaintances, people with shared interests, and people with shared irritations, they now seem primarily focused on sales. For instance, between watching my videos, I regularly receive requests from YouTube asking if I would help them out by naming companies I’ve seen in my ads while watching.
The shameless manipulation by Big Tech is one of the reasons why I recently quit most social media.
One of them is WhatsApp. After deleting my account and the app from my phone, I thought I was done. But things turned out differently. Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard from several people that they could still see my number in their WhatsApp and send messages to it.
I couldn’t verify this myself anymore. I also couldn’t find the answer to the question of how this is possible in the FAQ on their website. So I tried to contact customer service. I soon discovered that nowadays it is an AI bot that presents the standard FAQ texts in a slightly different version every time you ask for something. It ultimately came down to the fact that for the first 90 days after deletion, my account is still kept as if it were an active user. Without my knowledge.
Naturally, I wanted to speak to a human from WA. But according to the AI bot, there are no people working at WA customer service.
Hello, …?
All of this seems to be connected. Since when are we a collection of individuals in our own bubbles instead of people sharing a space together? Since when does your panic count more than that of others? Since when is it normal for companies to ask their users for their cooperation so that they can manipulate you even better? Since when do social media have the power to disrupt my interpersonal communication? In other words: what the hell is happening to our public space and the human contact within it?
There must be more people who see this. If that is the case, then, where is the widespread public outrage?
Honestly, I suspect that most people do not want to see that this is happening at all. And that is precisely, I think, the reason why the erosion of public space as a collective place continues to happen.
It will only stop when we want it to stop.
