Laptop Party

I am sitting in a room with seven people. But I am completely alone.

It's a paradox, but it's true.

How? We're all on respective laptops. Two on facebook, one playing a sandbox game called Minecraft, two playing Doom II on a British server, one reading a blog, and one writing a blog; a scene that Postman and Keen would surely shake their heads at.

Ever since I started writing in this blog I have gained certain sensitivity to this scene. It’s something my friends and I have been doing since we came to college, gathering in our common room to do what we will on our computers. This year has been an especially popular year for the “laptop party” because of the addition of WiFi to our dorms.

I find this scene particularly interesting because it happens for various occasions. There is the music sharing laptop party, the facebook laptop party, the general laptop party, and the ever-elusive study laptop party (which never goes according to plan). It’s just how we do things now.

I’ve come to value the time I spend with my friends without the distraction of Facebook or the allure of Stumble Upon sitting in their lap. Every time I look up to find the glow of a computer screen upon my friend’s face, fears of total media saturation come to mind. A generation swallowed into the virtual world, like so many cheesy 90’s movies.

My only hope is that people continue to value time spent away from their various devices more than the time they spend on Facebook.