As if all of this hassle wasn’t enough, consider the fact that you have to tend the turntable like a fire, flipping and adding logs as needed. And that’s where all of this inconvenience pays off. Like a fire, those records keep you company, asking for nothing but a little reciprocity and attention in return for sharing their warmth. It’s not something unfair and it’s not something unreasonable. They just ask you to care.
My phone asks me to turn on notifications. It also asks me to share my location data, install updates, and rate my in-app experiences. Sometimes scrolling on it literally makes me car sick but it keeps asking me to scroll, ignorant of my displeasure.
Smartphone life makes me miss the good old days when everything was a little more scarce and a little more meaningful. We missed our friends when we didn’t know what they were up to every second. We looked forward to taking girls on dates instead of staring at strangers on Onlyfans. Going to the video store to rent a few movies was an event in and of itself. What could feel more like the good old days than sitting next to the fire, cell phone on silent in another room, while enjoying the annoying crackle of remnant dust stuck in the supposedly ultrasonically cleaned grooves of a used Tal Farlow record?
Via Robin Sloan.