Video shows a horrifying world where people only talk to one another if they appear on screens
I get an insane number of PR pitches over the course of the day. Most of them go straight into the trash, some of them are followed-up on and made into stories, and some occasionally catch my eye for reasons that their senders probably weren’t expecting. In the case of the Tablet Claw — a tablet holder that you can use to stand up your tablet on your kitchen counter, desk, etc. — it was the promotional video they sent along:
Let’s go over all the major events that happen in his short film:
0:16: The alarm clock on a woman’s tablet wakes her up
0:19: She uses the Tablet Claw to stand the tablet up on her sink and read it while she’s brushing her teeth.
0:28: She sits with a friend at a cafe drinking coffee. Neither of them interract with one another once. They’re both looking at their tablets the entire time
0:40: She gets on and off an elevator at work and never once puts her tablet down.
0:55: Whoop, whoop! We have our first social interaction! She’s saying something to some of her coworkers… who are all ignoring her because they’re looking at their tablets.
1:00: Whoop, whoop! We have our second social interaction! And this time she’s talking with someone who’s responding. This person, of course, happens to be on her tablet screen and is talking with her through video chat. If you want to make yourself heard in this world, it seems, you should just walking around holding a screen up to your head so people will be compelled to look at you.
1:07: She picks her kids up from school. Both of them walk toward the car holding tablets.
1:12: The family is sitting around the kitchen counter. None of them are talking with each other while the mother cooks dinner — they’re all staring at their tablets. Yes, even the mother is watching something on her tablet while she’s cooking.
1:21: The mom unwinds on the couch with an adorable dog… who receives no attention because his master is still reading her tablet.
Now I’ll admit to being a device junkie myself and am pretty addicted to my smartphone but this is just a whole new level of sad. How did this person ever raise children in the first place? Did she have to glue tablets to their heads while they were infants just to be reminded that they existed?
Regardless, the Tablet Claw video paints a fairly dismal portrait of modern life. I can’t tell if it’s an advertisement or outtakes from a Radiohead video. Some enterprising person should set it to “Let Down” or “Karma Police” and make a truly deep artistic statement about the dangers of being consumed by technology.
