I want to test this youtube 11ty Embed Everything and see if it works but I suppose I also might as well write a response to this video (who cares about my opinion? No one and this is good).
If this video is too short why not watch an even longer one?
I vacillate between ardently agreeing with this video and strongly disagreeing with it. There’s no reason for telling you why I agree with the aforementioned videos because I’d be parroting both these videos.
Let’s just talk about isolation and Chess. It is always a good time to talk about Chess.
I started getting into useless hobbies a few months ago. Ever since I left the service industry I’ve been given the opportunity to live. I began reading books and getting into Chess and Scrabble. What did I do before those useless hobbies? Sit in front of my phone and mindlessly watch Youtube.
I’ve played Chess and Scrabble on the phone and over the board. You know what I prefer? Over the board for both, always, 100% of the time. Playing with other people, talking to them, picking up actual pieces, sitting on chairs, seeing the boards between me and the other player, talking about the games before and after-all of it. I enjoy it all.
Playing on the computer makes me too competitive. I want to win but I don’t intrinsically enjoy winning. I’m hunched over my small little phone. My heart’s pounding and when I finally emerge victorious with my sweet sweet octothorp which lets people know I pummeled someone in Chess, I move on to the next game. I blunder my Queen on move 5 (it’s an Elo 800 thing you might not understand) and then the world stands still. Nothing but me, my phone and my too damn loud heart. How STUPID coud I be? Who leaves their Queen hanging, chilling in front of a pawn? A patzer I tell ya. In online Chess, the wins are whatever and the losses are low. There are no highs.
Could I play Chess online and never see a human being ever again? Of course. And so could those good players IRL whom I’ve had the privelage to play against.
Even with all this tech, with all these digital distractions, humans are still humans. We still seak each other.
It is not in our nature to be complacent. Social media is new but one day we will get used to it. And we will get bored of these marketers’ cheap tricks. We’ll get tired of the influencers, of the addictive nature of gluing our eyes to a glass screen. And we’ll move on. Some of us are already starting to. The new will replace the old. Sure right now we worry about Big Tech but around the corner somewhere not too far in the distance, there’ll be something else to terrify us.
As long as Chess exists, there will be someone who will want to play it the 'ol analog way. As long as people exist, they will want to see each other and no matter how much Techies want to delude themselves into believing they have this vast paramount control over our existance - they don’t. We have much to fear but I don’t think technology turning us into hermits is one of them.