Yesterday I was at a restaurant with my friends. This Asian guy came in and sat near us. I noticed him speaking Korean on the phone. I consume a lot of Korean content, so this got me really excited. On a whim, I decided to go up to him and chat. I introduced myself, and he invited me to sit with him if I wanted to, even though he was a bit awkward, lol. He ordered some stuff for me. I found out he’s here in Switzerland for work, and we had a good talk. I ended up hanging out with him around the city. We exchanged contact info and are seeing each other again today after he gets off work. It was my first time doing something like this, and I honestly didn’t know meeting people could be so spontaneous and organic.
Yeah I was gonna say the same.
I grew up when you had to actually memorize or write down a phone number, and actually just know how to drive around your own town/city, without a real life, real time minimap (the 90s).
Yeah, for basically all Millenials and older, this is… completely normal, to occasionally, randomly strike up a conversation with someone.
Learning how to do that, when its unwelcome and you should probably back off, when its going well and it brightens both your days… that’s called ‘social skills’.
Think about it.
There are people reading this thread and having their minds blown.
Also, remember that the 0.01% send their kids to schools with absolute bans on phones. They know the value of being able to create a connection with another person.
You can just go, fairly easily, find a compilation video of children, Gen Alpha… well basically just destroying everything around them if you take away their phone or tablet.
When this all breaks, when internet access becomes exceedingly expensive or otherwise gated, or maybe we just can’t afford phones anymore after China stops letting anything with rare earth metals be exported to us…
Those kids are going to go feral.
Can’t read, can’t write, can’t think, need constant stimulation.