I was asked by a friend of mine to write an essay about something. He says he likes what I write and that I should do it more often. The thing is I usually don’t know what to write about. It also happens when I talk with people, I’m terribly awful at finding topics to discuss about. So, anyway, he proposed a topic: How do smartphones influence personal relationships nowdays?
I have a history with smartphones. My first smartphone was a first-gen iPhone. A friend of mine got one and I fell in love with it instantly. So I got one too and I couldn’t sleep for a whole month browsing Cydia (no app store yet), typing in my first tweets, I don’t really remember how much you could do with your iPhone then… seems like such a long time ago, but there I was. Infatuated.
At some point I started depending on my phone so much, I started to carry a charger everywhere. I actually started to tweet about everything I did. I started to check Google Maps everytime I drove someplace new. I’d VoIP my exboyfriend everytime (he owned an iphone too). I’d write down everything on my calendar. I took notes on it (or took pictures of the board in geometry class). I’d use it to listen to music. My celphone replaced all of the gadgets I could ever ask for, now there was just one.
Years later I got an iphone 3Gs. It was pretty and fast, and that’s basically when my relationships turned wrong. I was so into my iPhone when I started dating a guy who though it was just plain annoying to watch me dig into it when we were eating or watching a movie, or just about doing anything. To this day he has been the only person to ever complain about my compulsive phone usage. We never really had any real issues about it, or at least, I never had any real issues with his complaining. But it’s a fact. He didn’t like it. Maybe because he hadn’t owned a smart phone before.
Then comes the fun part. I briefly dated this guy who didn’t live in my city. It pretty much lasted a couple of weeks. One weekend we met in this small touristic town and he asked me if he could check his e-mail quickly. He did. I remember it was a nice trip, however, the day I returned home, I found out he left his e-mail account open (what an idiot!) and OH. I found out he was hardcore dating two girls at the same time. He would send us the same e-mails, send us the same DM’s, for fuck’s sake, he even went on a vacation with the other girl to the SAME place a week before! What a jerk. So I actually reset his Facebook and Twitter passwords, I deleted his Google Feeds, and suscribed him to gay porn websites, and I even told the other girl what was happening. Later, othergirl and stupidguywholefthisemailopen would live happily ever after, but that’s not my problem. If she’d had a smartphone then and read his e-mail, she would have made a smarter choice. (I told you this part would be fun)
So a whole lifetime after, I ended my relationship with Apple and decided to go Android. I can honestly say that I expected so much more from my Android devices, but… I mean, it’s ok, I forgive them. Just when you thought it couldn’t get more intimate, WhatsApp comes along, the little message app where you can text, send voice messages, send photos, videos, music, and location to your loved ones. If you’re in a long distance relationship, WhatsApp is your saviour. Love? What is that? All you need is smartphone. In the bathroom, at work, in bed, on a boring meeting, when you don’t want to talk to someone, etcetera. Yay. Smartphones rock.
