A Digital Detox

Guys, you're gonna have to bear with me on this one, it'll be a long one! I was going to post this in the boards outage thread but I think it deserves a thread of it's own, because my addiction isn't just to boards but to other social media sites and to my phone in general.

So last week I was saying how I could really do with a digital detox, as I'm over-reliant on my phone and addicted to certain sites. For those of you who don't know what a digital detox is, it's basically stepping away from gadgets/technology/the interwebs/any technological stimulus. In short, taking a break from your smartphone and the interwebs.

I wasn't addressing the universe when I was saying this, but obviously the universe heard me and thought 'Hmmm, digital detox you say? Well, let's make it happen'.

So, maybe two days later my laptop charger died. Frustrating but I still had my phone and it wasn't too much hassle to order another charger, it just meant I couldn't watch what I wanted to.

About a day after that happened, I let my phone fall down the sh*tter. I left it in a bag of rice for 3 days but the Asians must have been under pressure because they did not come in the night to fix my phone.

I thought I 'd survive with the old Nokia smartphone I'm currently using which has absolutely nothing on it. I think it cost about 100 euro at the time of purchase which was at least 4 years ago. I was lucky enough to even get whatsapp on it. After about 2 days with the old phone, I got a message from one of my friends 'Christy, are you alive? You haven't been opening my snaps. I don't know what you've had for breakfast/lunch/dinner, whether you've been to the gym or if your life is still amazing because I haven't received any snaps from you.' So now, all 3 of snapchat friends are missing out on my selfies and important moments in my life. The only good-ish thing about the phone is the camera, but what is the point in having a good camera when you can't send willie pics to everyone?

Because the phone I'm using is an absolute dose, it took me ages to reply to my friend, so she sends a second message 'Christy, I see you've read my message and you normally reply within .1 of a second because contrary to your snaps, your life actually isn't that great'. So after struggling for a half an hour on whatsapp, I finally get the message sent to let her know I'm actually alive and not too worry. So whenever I see a whatsapp message notification instead of being like 'ohhhh someone loves me', it's more like 'Oh gawd, it's gonna take me ages to get onto whatsapp and even longer to reply on this kunt of a phone'. Half my messages were like 'dkhsjdhjsk' because the phone likes having a stroke every now and again.

Anyway, so I don't have snapchat and whatsapp is sh*te on this phone, what gives? I'll be fine, I'll just log into boards and get my daily fix of what's happening. Boards is down, DDoS attack....this CANNOT BE HAPPENING! Fcuk you DDoS, whoever you are, ya kunt. How the hell am I gonna get my cyber word count in for the week?! I'm not on facebook. Welllll, that's a lie, I do have an account with no friends on it that no one knows about (shush!!) to follow my gym but I log in so rarely it's probably time for it to go. I was full blown addicted years ago with 5788 friends, all of which I knew personally of course, but I decided that account needed to die and so it did. I do miss the passive aggressive status updates and creeping on people but something has gotta give. Back on topic, my current account wasn't going to give me the social media fix I needed!

Okaaayyy boards is down. Hmmm. I'll just do other stuff! I went to book into a gym session and realised I don't have the gym app on my old piece of sh*t phone, so I can't book in. I had to email the guys to book me in like a proper plebeian.

On Sunday I decided I'd bring my dog out for a long walk and when I got to where I wanted to go, I realised there is no music on the phone and the interwebs is soooo slow and won't play youtube videos. GAH! The radio, it has the radio, thank feck! Off we go and I was trying to figure out a route we could take back to the car......google maps won't fcuking load! Oh you kunt of thing. After asking for directions, we finally made it back to the car.

Out of sheer desperation, I decided enough was enough and went to carphone warehouse to get a new phone. I looked at a few phones and the deals with them etc. The one I wanted was out of stock. Motherfcukers! They said it should be in the next day, definitely by Friday. I rang them today and it'll probably be Monday now.

Fcuk you universe, fcuk you. On the upside, my laptop charger arrived a few days ago.


Sooooooo, are you addicted to the ol' smartphone/social media sites? Ever done the whole digital detox thing or did you ever get stranded in Ballyfun after losing your phone to 4 penguins? How did ya cope? Or do you think I'm an awful gobsh*te and ya could go weeks without the interwebs/phone?

Tell me your stories.