A world of apps

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

For the record, let me declare these:

I do not want to know what I was in my past life, much less am I interested to know my past love life. I do not have a problematic love life, nor did I have one in the past and I certainly do not intend to have one in the future. That also means I am not yearning for somebody to come back to me, nor do I spend sleepless nights thinking if someone I had shared my bed with will ever come back again.

I don’t know if making these public declarations can help, but I’m making them anyway as my humble protest to the onslaught of computer applications – apps, as they are called – that clog our windows in cyberspace, many of them as esoteric as offering you the knowledge about your previous life, love, sex and all.

Maybe, with these public declarations, my friends will stop inviting me to join their imaginary farming or travel or parlor games, although I understand that these invitations, even the ones carrying your friends’ names, are also robot-generated. Your friends may not even know they are inviting you to join in their silly endeavors which can be as inane as knowing the hidden meaning of your name; as silly as knowing whose celebrity face you resemble the most and as downright hopeless as finding your lineage to some unknown royal in Europe.

Sure these are all a game, to kill time perhaps. But boy, they sure are time killers. I get an average of six invites to use this or that app a day, and cleaning them out of your inbox can be a waste of time. Caution: make sure to take these invitations out slowly, because a slight pressure from your fingers can prompt it to open to a whole world of mazes and rigmaroles where you could get stuck silly for some time.

I understand these apps are created by nerds and geeks, many of whom do so for the simple pleasure of creating them and many more who dream of hitting that one app cyberspace will go crazy over and make them the next Zuckerberg.

And the sad thing is, you cannot disengage from these apps, no matter how trivial or silly they are. Or make that: I do not know how you can shun these apps out of your life short of staying away from cyberspace, which, in this time and age, is an impossibility.

I can only make these public declarations which are feeble protests, hoping against all logic, that someone somewhere can read them, take heart and spare me the trouble of having to decline once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to “find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Click here to start your journey.”

And so:

I also declare I do not want to terminate the suspense of living and pre-empt destiny by knowing what my future is, either by way of planetary positions or the flip of the tarot cards on the screen. I still want to wake up each day not knowing what exactly it will bring.

I do not want to farm in an imaginary Farmville. I don’t know with you, but to my mind, “harvest” ends up in my kitchen and my dining table, not in a box or basket trapped on my computer screen.

I do not want to play with robots. I belong to the old generation where solitaire was played with actual cards; I will not enjoy playing it with only my fingers. I want to feel the cards, hear their shuffle, go through the excitement of cutting it at the point I prefer and opening it one by suspenseful one so the surprise is authentic. If I must play bingo, I want to do so in the midst of an excited, oftentimes sweaty multitude, all aspiring for the top prize, groaning and roaring at the slightest provocation.

In other words, hey, fellow cyber citizens: nice meeting you, nice chatting with you, even doing business with you and fighting with or against you. But I can’t stay 24/7; I got real playmates in the real world, and we play real games, and that is where the real action is. GTG.*

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