Life on the Other Side

30 March 2005

I did it. I caved. I swore I never would, but I gave in to lust, intrigue, and peer pressure.

I got an iPod.

To be fair, it was a gift--a reminder of which is engraved on the back with the message "Happy 21st, Caroline / Love, Mom and Dad." To continue this theme of fairness, it's what I told my parents I wanted for my birthday.

I tried to fight it--I really did. Everyone else in my six-person family got one and loved it. I saw on average thousands of fellow college students a day on campus, jamming along to their own drummers. I even saw a homeless man with one across the street from a major mall in Los Angeles.

And yet I resisted. I continued to stand as a regressive member of society, lugging my old-fashioned Nike Athletic Discman and CaseLogic book of 500 CDs through airports, used a boom box, and the CD player in my car got tons of exercise. But finally, I gave in.

The simplicity, ingenuity, and rationality of the iPod is undeniable. Thousands of songs on a small, lightweight electronic device the size of an index card (or smaller)? Brilliant! Going to school in LA with my family living in London, I do more traveling than the average Joe--seems the perfect accessory for someone like me.

But those iPod people--they drove me crazy. Bopping through public in their own world, ignoring everything and everyone around them, carrying themselves with that haughty air of technological supremacy. Haven't we as a culture gotten anti-social enough? Dow we really need more to separate us from each other? I guess so.

But you have to admit: it just makes sense. My first day with my iPod was certainly an enlightening one. I felt self-conscious and more acutely aware of my fellow iPod-ers while walking to class, feeling as though I should nod hello to these people, as though we were part of an elite group (nobody returned the nod). But I was one of THOSE. Sadly, though, I was instantly addicted. Listening to my professor all afternoon was out of the question. I did my best to hide the wires coming from my head with my hair; pretended to be intently taking notes while secretly scrolling through half of my music catalogue. The cost of getting caught and singled out in front of the class for listening to my own lecture was high, but a risk I was suddenly willing to take. (Much like the chance of walking into moving traffic because I decided to switch between the first and second discs of the White Album while crossing the street. And they say technology saves lives.)

Suddenly my internal monologue and daydreams had their own soundtracks--how post-modern is that? I was always closed inside my own head; now I'm locked there. I've always felt slightly odd, walking around lost deep in thought (I like to compare myself to Socrates, who supposedly had the same habit, muttering through the streets of Athens), and now I have something to further enable my quirkiness. But now, surrounded by thousands of similar music-obsessed loners, I have to ask: are we ALL freaks?

Who knows, really. Maybe we are, maybe we're all joined by this common denominator of freakiness. Is this a development in humanity or in society? The post-modern answer is that it's a little of both--but it probably is anyway.

Sure, it kind of saddens me that people would rather lock themselves away, cowering from others safely behind their iPods. But honestly, most of them probably weren't all that worth my time anyway. I guess one day I'll get to know some of these iPoders. In the meantime, I'll be perfecting my lip-reading skills, because The Killers are far more entertaining than Hobbes.