Althouse: "It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when New York and also technology started to feel like such a chore."

May 6, 2015

"It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when New York and also technology started to feel like such a chore."

"Maybe it was when I urinated in a slim-fit adult diaper while waiting in line for the iPhone 4 for ninety-three hours and pronounced the experience 'worth it,' or when I found myself testing out tweets on my wife during foreplay, or when a rat scurried across my face and into my mouth while I was checking Facebook and waiting for a C train that never arrived. But a few weeks ago, on a gray April day, as I ambled by the Duane Reade where my favorite dive bar McHurlihan’s once stood, while joylessly scrolling through my Twitter feed in between reading a saved Instapaper article about how to live in the moment, I realized I had to leave New York and stop using the Internet for a while."

The first paragraph of an essay by Benjamin Hart titled "Leaving New York and Also Technology/Why I left New York and also technology." And I love love love the implicit mocking of the requirement that articles have subtitles. I <hart> Benjamin Hart.

42 comments:

rhhardin said...: Internet is for Ohio. Work breaks get you outside. I just did two lawn swaths with the scythe.

It's pretty warm so the dog, who had been watching, is now chilling on the hall floor, which retains a little of the night chill.

There's no need to pinpoint much. That must be an upscale thing.; 5/6/15, 10:57 AM
Kyzer SoSay said...: 2009. That's when NY began to feel like a chore. Leaving was a good decision. Illinois is better, I find folks in the Midwest to be much friendlier.; 5/6/15, 11:02 AM
Sebastian said...: "I realized I had to leave New York"

Wait, he doesn't want to be part of de Blasio's Progressive nirvana?

New York: if you can get out of there, you can make it anywhere.; 5/6/15, 11:08 AM
tim maguire said...: I'd like a follow up six months after he leaves. Anyone who would wait 96 hours to buy a new phone has problems that will not be left behind so easily.; 5/6/15, 11:11 AM
cubanbob said...: Is the piece a satire? I'm not able to discern the subtlety this morning. If not, this guy is in need of a super-duper psychiatric app for his problems, that or to move to a far more edgy and gritty part of the city for his adrenaline kick.; 5/6/15, 11:12 AM
MisterBuddwing said...: We've all seen this, haven't we?

http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/comics-before-and-after-pc-activity-1093030.jpeg; 5/6/15, 11:13 AM
Balfegor said...: when a rat scurried across my face and into my mouth while I was checking Facebook and waiting for a C train that never arrived.

New York encapsulated in a single, nauseating phrase.; 5/6/15, 11:18 AM
Todd said...: or when a rat scurried across my face and into my mouth

WTF?!?; 5/6/15, 11:20 AM
Fernandinande said...: "Maybe it was when I urinated in a slim-fit adult diaper while waiting in line for the iPhone 4"

Maybe it was when you were dropped on your head as a child.

"as I ambled by the Duane Reade where my favorite dive bar McHurlihan’s once stood,"

I doubt it.; 5/6/15, 11:30 AM
richard mcenroe said...: New York is a wonderful place as long as you can leave it. For my part, most of the bookshops, bars and back-issue magazine stores I used to love visiting are long gone; even the 42nd Street grindhouses like the Liberty are a memory.

And not only did going to the theatre used to be affordable, if a show was not doing well they'd actually move you down from the balcony and mezzanine so the performers would have someone to play to.; 5/6/15, 11:36 AM
Etienne said...: You know, you think the guy is trying to crawl back to the 19th century, but when you watch a video where some girl walks into a fountain of water while texting, and you're not sure if you should laugh or cry.

I better wait to see what the others do first, good they're laughing. I wasn't sure.

It's like me and high fructose corn syrup. I know it's bad, and the scale says it's bad, but I can't stop. Do I really need to give it up?

My life was shit when I was thin, and it still is being fat; ergo, going back to thin is no answer.

Could handwriting on parchment really result in any more joy in life.

I say no...; 5/6/15, 11:38 AM
Alex said...: I think all liberals are ready for their adult diapers now.; 5/6/15, 11:41 AM
Alex said...: Coupe - stop digging your grave with a knife and fork. Go low carb, eliminate sugar. Start to exercise 15-20 minutes a day. You'll feel like a million bucks within a month.; 5/6/15, 11:42 AM
Robert Cook said...: This article is obviously a humor piece, and should not be taken literally.; 5/6/15, 11:54 AM
TosaGuy said...: Too bad diehipster.com shut down. He would have had fun mocking this guy's satire because slamming hipsters is what hipsters now do.; 5/6/15, 11:59 AM
Etienne said...: Alex said...stop digging your grave

My avatar show the amount of sugar (as carbs) I am allowed for one meal.

Groton's says I can eat six per serving, but that would be enough sugar and saturated fat to kill a large cat.; 5/6/15, 12:01 PM
jr565 said...: I totally see the desire to leave the state. I've lived hear my whole life, and am looking for anyplace but here.; 5/6/15, 12:04 PM
Sigivald said...: His problem isn't "the internet".

It's "thinking Twitter and His Internet Presence matter".

And being willing to wait for days to buy a phone on release day, and not even for profitable resale to China.

New York, well. Yeah, it sucks, obviously.

(Or, as Red Foreman said, "Bad things happen to you because you're a dumbass".); 5/6/15, 12:11 PM
J Lee said...: Go back over a century and New York is perpetually a city that remakes itself after falling into a grind and losing people, which then attracts new people, where some eventually leave as the most recent improvements fade and things fall back towards the minimum level of tolerance.

As for the C train not arriving, I give you this YouTube video from a month ago. Exploding rail cars can cause some delays....; 5/6/15, 12:14 PM
Franklin said...: That was pretty hilarious, even though The Awl is, in general, horriblehorriblehorrible.

Choire Sicha is a terrible person.; 5/6/15, 12:18 PM
Roughcoat said...: Obnoxious writing, shot through with humblebrag and arrogance.; 5/6/15, 12:20 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Humblebrag." I don't think I've heard that phrase outside Sub-Genius journals and dive bars.

You do realize, the quality (or lack of same) of the prose notwithstanding, the article is humor piece.; 5/6/15, 12:31 PM
Roughcoat said...: It's not humorous. Neither are you.; 5/6/15, 12:37 PM
ron winkleheimer said...: You know, just today I found out that that Ezra Klein fellow finds reading non-fiction books to be "boring" and, for him at least, to take a "long time."

Every day I keep finding out that our public intellectuals, who, I suppose, are assumed to be my intellectual superiors, are a bunch of maleducated nitwits with connections to the apparatus of state control.; 5/6/15, 12:49 PM
Big Mike said...: @Kyzernick, you must be well outside of Chicago.; 5/6/15, 12:53 PM
ron winkleheimer said...: "(Or, as Red Foreman said, "Bad things happen to you because you're a dumbass".)"

Red Foreman, now there was a public intellectual. I too want to know where my jet pack is. They promised us jet packs.; 5/6/15, 12:54 PM
Mountain Maven said...: jr565 said...
I totally see the desire to leave the state. I've lived hear my whole life, and am looking for anyplace but here

Leave ASAP. We fled a left coast urban wasteland and have no regrets.; 5/6/15, 1:00 PM
chuck said...: After close reading and rigorous analysis, I think the author is trying to be funny. But I could be wrong about that.; 5/6/15, 1:03 PM
Thorley Winston said...: Red Foreman, now there was a public intellectual. I too want to know where my jet pack is. They promised us jet packs.

I think you mean hovercrafts ;); 5/6/15, 1:16 PM
Howard said...: The last paragraph was perfection:
It’s now been a month since I left New York and quit the Internet, and I don’t regret what I did for a second. In fact, I want people to know everything about my life now, but it’s hard since I lost all my followers and nobody gives a shit what some piece of shit from upstate has to say. That’s why I’m writing this letter on parchment paper, and that’s why I’m having it hand-delivered to every major media outlet in America. Because you can quit the city and you can quit the Internet, but you can never quit telling people how much better you are than them.; 5/6/15, 1:37 PM
Anonymous said...: Makes me want to drop out of society for a few weeks and go out and touch Indians.; 5/6/15, 1:45 PM
Julie C said...: This was very clever. I don't understand why people are having trouble understanding that it is satire.

Did you see the comments? Some guy said, I call bullshit - you can't buy a fourteen bedroom house for $250,000 upstate.; 5/6/15, 1:57 PM
J2 said...: Paul- Stay out of the casinos.; 5/6/15, 1:58 PM
Roughcoat said...: Clever? More like too clever. By several orders of magnitude.

And his satire is labored.; 5/6/15, 2:04 PM
jr565 said...: Mountain Man wrote:
Leave ASAP. We fled a left coast urban wasteland and have no regrets.

The family has a house in PA, so we are spending more time there. It's still a blue state, but at least its not NY.; 5/6/15, 3:30 PM
Birches said...: I thought it was hilarious.; 5/6/15, 3:46 PM
Jaq said...: Hah! That was funny.; 5/6/15, 3:51 PM
Jaq said...: Did you see the comments? Some guy said, I call bullshit - you can't buy a fourteen bedroom house for $250,000 upstate.

Ha ha ha! It was the Butler's Quarters that made me start to doubt!; 5/6/15, 3:54 PM
Jaq said...: Though if you get three or four hours outside of NY, you can buy a capacious, if rotting farmhouse with 75 acres and what seem like 14 bedrooms and a place where you could put up a butler, if they didn't mind hay in their bed.; 5/6/15, 3:56 PM
kzookitty said...: Mildly entertaining, though the dude never was a true New Yorker to begin with...true NYers have rats crawling into their adult diapers.

kzookitty; 5/6/15, 6:06 PM
Brando said...: Some people simply could never leave NYC--whether it's the nature of the work they do, the city's cultural offerings, or their social networks--so I can understand them putting up with the city's myriad challenges. A number of my friends are like that.

But then for everyone else, they can only last there so long before they decide they'd rather have more living space and different conveniences (big supermarkets vs. bigger variety of ethnic restaurants; ability to get where you need by car vs. ability to get around never needing a car). To each their own!

Sadly a lot of the city's problems could be improved if their governing class had it in their interest to do so.; 5/7/15, 7:36 AM
richard mcenroe said...: Gone to Texas. Got me a 3+2 house and a peck of land, total price wouldn't have bought a one-bedroom condo in LA, let alone NYC and the mortgage is just two-thirds of my LA monthly rent. A multiplicity of coffee shops and feminist bookstores seems like an eminently fair trade for what I got.; 5/7/15, 4:22 PM