Paper, flip phones, and anvils

Paper, flip phones, and anvils

If someone prefers physical books to ebooks, don’t make them justify it.

If someone doesn’t have a smartphone, don’t make them justify it.

If someone doesn’t have internet access at home, don’t make them justify it.

If someone doesn’t have GPS and, to all appearances doesn’t need it, don’t make them justify it.

It doesn’t matter if they are poor, or old, or technologically illiterate, or made a choice that you don’t understand and don’t give a shit about. Don’t make them justify that they don’t own an item, just like you wouldn’t make them justify not owning designer jeans or not owning a home aquarium or not owning a BMW*.

Not having those things doesn’t mean someone doesn’t understand what they are or what they do. It doesn’t mean someone hates them. You don’t have to explain. You don’t have to evangelize. You don’t have to lay out the logic.

If someone enjoys activities in the physical world, things like:

writing andDSC02354

drawing and

painting and

games and

cooking and

running and swimming and climbing and popping bubble wrap and walking through their town and brewing beer and singing and short wave radio and collecting cool rocks and moonwalking in their socks and making puns and roasting coffee beans and inventing sentient toasters and blacksmithing and exploring and scrunching their toes in their wool socks.

Don’t tell them they have too much stuff, because real hobbies in the real world take up physical space and use stuff, and that stuff can’t be stored on a harddrive. Creating real things with real value in the real world uses stuff. Don’t make someone justify a love for tangible things. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying tactile sensations, and there’s nothing wrong with a screen either.

And especially don’t make them justify owning the stuff that facilitates the activities they love if you’re also going to make them justify not owning the technology you do. Because that’s making them justify not being you.


 

*Unless you do those things too. In which case, congratulations on being an odious caricature of a rich asshat.

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