No Messages

FOMO.  My interactive electronics, other than telephone with my kids, shut down for shabbos each week.  From candle lighting Friday until the specified conclusion of shabbos on my congregation's weekly newsletter the internet gets placed someplace else, with rare exceptions like needing Waze to get where I need to go.  Festivals extend that.  These last two days.  When they begin on Wednesday night, or on rare occasions Saturday night, that extends to a three day internet free hiatus.  But mostly two days.  They can cluster a bit, like they do each fall for Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah, plus the Shabbatot between them most years.  FOMO more at the beginning of this season.

I find myself in the middle.  Sukkot with its two days off ended, extended about an extra hour as I was having dinner with friends in a sukkah when the Festival time concluded.  I had left my cell phone in the car's cell phone holder, covered with a baseball cap to deter thievery.  When I returned to my car, Festival fully concluded, I just drove home.  No FOMO at all.

Into the house, supine posture on the living room couch, then see what I missed for two days.  Not exactly Nada, but nothing of any importance that would cause me any hesitation about setting the phone aside again next weekend.  All emails but one, some three dozen of them, from commercial or subscription sources, those automated messages that just go out from places that think I might want new tires or have an article that I have to read, or a FB friend had posted a message of some type not really directed at me personally.  Only one real notification, a message from an old friend wishing me a great Sukkot.  The FB notification bell read 14.  Majority were Likes of something I had posted about the Sukkot festival or something else.  Reminder that a Hagar the Horrible strip was open for view would never get opened, nor will a couple of real FB friends making one more post to share guidance from somebody else who shares their political hashkafa, which never gets opened lest I offer a false impression that I buy into something like that.  The text icon had only one message, that I am due to schedule platelet donation, which I already knew. My initiative to block unsolicited political messages over the past month seemed pretty successful.  Reddit r/Judaism, no messages.  They were all off for Sukkot too.  And Twitter, now appropriately Rated X as a public blight, had no responses to any of the few things I had posted.

So, it appears that much of cyberspace is very expendable.  We've probably known that for about a hundred years, ever since a personal telephone in the home became an American population norm.  When it rings we answer it.  Mostly still do.  For a long time, we wondered who might have called while we were away, mostly rationalizing those missed chances to chat with the largely correct assumption that people who really needed to reach us will call back.  Then we got answering machines and caller ID, so the compulsion to answer every ring before it stopped ringing became much less, though for many of my era never fully disappeared.  And in business and medical care, we accumulated secretaries, answering services, and beepers so there would never be FOMO in that setting.

While postal mail is never urgent, many of us are scripted to look out the door for the mail carrier.  Birthday or holiday cards could be open on arrival or deferred.  Letters, bills, bank statements all had their envelopes opened. Same with IRS refunds, and for those of us applying to schools that year, their correspondence was eagerly awaited each day. Solicitations for money, maybe not.  The nature of postal mail has shifted.  There are no letters, maybe a few greeting cards, no postcards of friends on vacation, bills on autopay and therefore either not notified by mail or already paid before the notices arrives.  Instead, we have a few periodicals, some by paid subscription, some a benefit from organizations where we hold membership, many unsolicited.  But mostly the daily mail is from somebody who desires a portion of our accumulated treasure, sometimes for a worthy cause, sometimes to enrich themselves.

And now we have things beyond our telephone calls that really are interactive.  Personally I don't care who or if anyone responds to my FB posts.  At one time when most of my Class of '69 enrolled, who is doing what today had more urgency than it does now.  Birthdays and anniversaries come while I am away on shabbos.  At one time a belated greeting went out, or if I remember I could be the first to convey my best wishes.  Now I'm just not part of FB that day.  Somewhere between sign-up and a fair number of years ago, notes from my friends mostly petered out in favor of pitches for things for me to buy or to believe in.  Those things don't seriously compete with shabbos or yontif when I am electronically away.  And the posts really haven't generated faux conversations for a considerable time

Some users of Twitter and Reddit try to handle their posts as dialog.  I don't.  I write what I want, let the readers do with it what they want.  No reason to respond to most whether shabbos or not.  

Some use their text messages as a conversation.  Good way to collide with something while driving.  And even if not driving, it's never as good as a telephone call for personal interaction with exchange of ideas.

So for two days periodically and one day every week, I have cyberspace rest.  No FOMO, as I am really not part of this global conversation in real time.  But in exchange, I get fifteen minutes of real interaction, those few minutes selecting who I want to talk to at kiddush or who might want to talk to me while we nosh on a mini black & white cookie and some babka.  Those only happen when the cell phones have been set aside.