A bit dumbfounded and just had to express it.
I had a 7 hour flight a couple of days ago and it had free wifi on the flight. Neat, I get to message people on the plane. However, I feel that for that long you still bring a book, or puzzles, or in my case I brought my Deck and played games for the duration of the flight.
The guy next to me though watched TikTok for the entire flight. 7 hours of constant stream of algorithm content to his face. I kind of understand why it’s so addicting, it just keeps coming and coming with no end. I was just astonished with how he could keep going for 7 hours. An hour fine, it’s a lot but we’ve all lost ourselves for an hour. 7 hours of constant feed though.
Idk, people come here to Lemmy and the Fediverse and say there isn’t enough content. Well if 7 hours of content like that is expected it’s too freaking much. If anything I feel I’m much healthier with social media now. Maybe they’re angry because it feels more like a withdrawal.
No real point to this post beyond that. Just a very interesting thing to witness.
My parents watch short-form videos on Wechat. Lol
You can hear it if you stand close to the front door. You can hear it upstairs.
I don’t think they ever watched a movie, or read a wiki page, or ever actually actively look for actual good content to consume.
I remember when I was a kid and on my first plane ride (my only plane ride to this day), I remember feeling so excited. There were no phone, zero smart devices. Never even used the internet before (the region where I lived probably wasn’t even developed enough for internet service yet).
I remember, as a kid, I was just so excited. When the plane started moving, I just looked out the window. Then I see the ground getting further away, and we were in the air. Like just wow, I’m seeing things from above, like a bird. I vaguely remember just playing this golf game thing on the… infotainment system(?), I remember occasionally just trying to look out the window, and seeing things above, but it was just a bunch of clouds (cruising altitude), for hours, so I mostly just messed with the infotainment thing. And I don’t understand why they seemingly randomly turn off all the lights, and close the window shades, I was a kid and didn’t like not being able to see outside. And I then I tried to open the window shades and my mom telling me to close the shade because the light was bothering people sleeping??(idk) [edit: wait why do they do that “turning off the lights and closing the shades” thing?] I kinda try to use the infotainment thing but its dark and I think I stood out, and I remember my mom telling me to sleep and not stare at screen too much, because… nearsightedness (am nearsighted now lol), but it was a rare experience so I just play the games on the infotainment system until I got tired and slept.
It was mostly a blur, didn’t even remember what food there was. I vaguely remember Seoul International Airport, waiting for the transfer flight. Then next thing I remember is JFK airport, I don’t remember much of the customs. But, I was so excited (and I guess nervous too). 美國 (USA; literally translates to “Beautiful Country”). A stange place. My new home country.
Zero phones. Smartphone didn’t even exist lol.
Fuck… I should’ve journaled that, but 8 year old(?) me didn’t do journaling. I never really did any journaling. Fuck, I wish I remembered the whole thing.
P.S. I found a memoir by a fellow Chinese American with the book title “Beautiful Country”, gonna finish reading it (listening to audiobook) soon.
It seems like this could’ve been a long flight, the dimming of lights was likely to help people to adjust to the time zone of the destination. A meal was likely served around what might be the destination morning time too.
Baiyun International Airport --> Seoul Intl Airport --> JFK Intl Airport
I think total travel time was basically almost an entire 24-hour day factoring in waiting times even tho it feels like the same day, left in morning, arrived at nighttime in NYC, but its 24 hours passed.
Googled some airport photos and I kinda remember like a 1 second “mental video” of the airports.
I wanna stay in the memories forever. Because after the excitement subsided… it’s a bunch of memories of abuse at home, new country, very cool, sure, but same family, same shenanigans, same yelling…
I kinda feel like I’d rather just have a random North American or European couple adopt me lol. “Blood relatives” huh…, so much for “blood relations”.
That’s kinda how I remember the flight to Canada I was on with my family when I was 14. Although I unfortunately remember the food… ugh
The now disgraced Louis CK had a point.
Disgraced? He’s on tour right now.