(If you don't watch Glee, watch the commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v0G8KdMc3w)
Everybody watching the US Match Airing of Glee on ETC will see what I see: a commercial for some newfangled text promo from Smart, which starts with a bunch of girls fawning over this guy who passes them. After going all "Squee!" over him, what do they do? Do any of them even continue talking with each other about the guy, or even about guys in general?
Of-frakking-course not. Instead, they all whip out their cellphones, and start trying to out-class each other by broadcasting who they'll be forwarding this entirely insignificant piece of trivia (that trivia being "Ang cute ni Joe!") to: the first texts some random name, the second calls some other random name (read: "classier" than texting, supposedly because it's more expensive) and the third blurts out, "I'm gonna text my Facebook!"
I'M GONNA TEXT MY FACEBOOK.
Then the hoopla about the promo comes around. The flashing images, however, no matter how gaudy, are nothing compared to what has just happened, and what effect it has on a student of communication. It is a travesty of the entire process: the choice to simply text a random social network, no matter how famous said network is, over actual human contact, whether verbal or nonverbal. Thoughts about a person near you, transcribed into text then broadcasted into what could probably be called a pseudo-imagined community, instead of going through the simpler, more sensible, more "human" process of translating it into phoneme and utterance and broadcasting to people around you, even if not to the person you really want to talk to. Instead of breaking down walls, as is supposedly the philosophical rationale behind all these advancements in communication technology, we see new ones being erected by no less than ourselves.
What happens after the images are the salt to the wound, though: cute guy Joe's friends receive the Facebook status update, and they joke around with him for being called "cute" and all, revealing that they were connected to the girl in some way (hence the Facebook "friendship" prior to the event covered by the commercial).
End commercial.
People who would rather go and display their exhibitionism in front of a pseudo-present audience? Is this what all this communication technology-related compatibility is leading us to? Will our sons and daughters grow into an age wherein everybody will become even more introverted than ever, for by that time it will be more the norm to broadcast to pseudo-present audiences than to present ones? A future where, simply put, posting a status update will become more important than actually speaking with another person face to face, all verbal and nonverbal signs considered?
Of course, you may chide me for seemingly over-reacting to what is nothing more than a cellphone commercial that probably would not even last a year. But remember that television commercials, moreover ones that come with really popular (hence, commercial-laden) television shows, come from the minds of people living in the now and reflect the value systems of people living in the now, therefore having the potential to influence the minds of people who either already live in the now, or want to. And if this is what stands for communication nowadays, I sincerely fear for the future of my future children.
