One of the most annoying things to have occurred in the last 10 years has been the emergence of one of the most annoying of urban creatures, the phone zombie.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Increasingly, you see hordes of them shuffling around town, eyes glued to their phone, oblivious to their surroundings and devoid of any care for the world beyond monitoring their social media feed, checking out what their Facebook friends – none of whom they have ever actually met in real life – have had for lunch, or absorbing their Twitter feed that delivers them their narcotic of choice in 140 character doses of banal and inane dribble.
The phone zombie is different to the zombies of yore. In just about every zombie movie I’ve ever watched the zombies were always on a relentless quest for brains. Yes, they may have wanted to sink their teeth into the back of your skull, but hey, at least they were motivated and were keen to engage with others, albeit admittedly in a bloodlust filled and homicidal manner.
Phone zombies on the other hand, given their obsession with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and any other social media site inhabited by the vacuous likes of the over-opinionated elite political commentator of all persuasions now appear to be primarily obsessed with all that is brainless.
Wrapped up in their artificial world detached from reality, phone zombies now pose a risk to both themselves and others as they shuffle their way down our streets, often colliding with other pedestrians.
I’ve lost count of the number of near misses I’ve had with these undead automatons who lurch towards you, ignorant of your existence only to realise at the last second that you are both on a collision course and stop inches from you.
Even then, none of them bother to apologise for nearly causing an accident.
All you get from them is a look of disdain for not getting out of their way and for making them have to look away from their phone for two seconds.
I now read that the Labor government is spending $120,000 on a trial to install flashing lights in the footpath at one Melbourne intersection as a safety measure to stop phone zombies from walking onto the road without looking and getting run over.
Seriously, is this what we’ve come to? Why is it that every time enough people engage in stupid, reckless or selfish behaviour that it becomes a problem that someone comes up with a proposal to excuse and accommodate such selfish and self absorbed people.
No doubt that whoever is pushing this trial will declare it a success and decide that such “life saving” technology is now essential and must be installed at every intersection from here to the Birdsville Track at great cost to the taxpayer. “What price a life?” they will cry. Closely followed by “Sign here please, minister.”
Once, we didn’t allow imbeciles to do stupid things that endangered or inconvenienced others. We used to tell people like that to stop, grow up and change their attitude. These days, once enough idiots all decide to do the same thing we declare it a fundamental human right.
Here’s my alternate trial proposal. The next time a phone zombie nearly crashes into you, in really loud voice say to them “Get off your phone you bloody idiot and start looking where you’re going”.
With any luck you might get paid 120 grand by the government for fixing the problem. But stay tuned for my next instalment, coming soon on a more pressing and serious issue on mobile phone technology.
Bill Tilley is MP for Benambra.