from “The Real Tragedy Of The United Airlines Scandal” (2017)

“Indeed, here we encounter a serious truth about our current culture: our unequivocal proclivity to react via technology prior to any conscious or physical reaction by our own person. In this case, the example is clear. Our witness sits silent, capturing the event on her phone, only to later share it across social media “disgusted” at the whole experience.

Such is a strange reality. That a witness will loudly decry an action with the same evidence that presents a lack of activism on their own part. Have we then crossed the threshold, where we affirm social media to be the real, ultimate representation of our self, foremost to our physical person? Or, is this event just a simple, sad recognition of how we hide in the safety of the internet forum, promoting our judgment and morality as is most convenient?  Notwithstanding, we are urged to consider a scenario where the passengers did not have smartphones. Perhaps one of them may have given up their seat in the face of such an unsightly scene. Perhaps one of them would have ended it as soon as it had begun, the rest of the world never to know about it.

At that, we measure the old against the new: the former being a justice defined by conscience, courage, and selflessness; the latter being a justice defined by voyeurism, complacency, and internet “virality”. By such a recognition, the “corporatism-vs.-customer” chorus against United Airlines slides into a surprising irony. Namely, it is evident that the airplane passengers trust more in the utility of our institutional media platforms than in their own immediate, physical ability. They cater more to the viral potential of an experience than to their own intrinsic, human reaction. Disconcerting as this is, we see it everyday, from the way a commuter responds to street music — with their phone — to the way a traveler absorbs a beautiful landscape — with their phone. Such a programmatic adherence to technology is sure to doom us, if it hasn’t already.”