Screens have taken over our daily life now. While this is nothing new, it has dominated how we manage our lives lately during this time. How many of you have contemplated on buying blue light blocking glasses? Zoom; once never heard of, is now a part of pop culture now. The interesting factor of this is how it affects all demographics, not only the millenials. Scenes of my mum putting in all her effort to learn the new horizons of technology just to continue her work from home has been a very interesting journey to document. For I cannot imagine dealing with waking up everyday just to arrive on my computer in order to communicate with people in various moving squares. Just the thought of it makes my head hurt more than the caffeine limits I’ve accidentally dabbled into. Even though we all do this in a similar format, hello FaceTime. Yes, don’t fluster. Your glory is not yet diminished. Since after the completion of my junior year of college, the mechanisms of a hermit called out to me. I stopped socializing in large events and only held my few close. It seems selfish but I adore having one friend to myself in a social event. For they may interact differently with other people that may be too much for my brain to comprehend. Maybe comprehend is too strong of a word, let's go with catch up with. Perhaps it’s the intimacy of two people and the ability of the truthfulness of their thoughts allowed to play around. This is easily one of my ultimate favorite things in the world. Yet it has been stripped. Not for long, yes I know. Surrounded by, “It’s fine” followed with, “It’ll be fine.” Anyways, back to my point. FaceTime has been my comfort blanket lately. It’s been there for me on several occasions except for the several drunk rummaging through your entire list of latest calls and tapping each number until you sober up or fall asleep. We’ve all been there. But now, it’s more than that. All my friends are processing this situation differently with key notes of similarity. We miss each other, we want to see each other, we want to hold each other and laugh. But for now, this pixelated moving image of their face along with a delayed audio will have to suffice.
My brain has not ruled out the conspiracy that this is somehow connected with the latest release of Animal Crossing to crank up sales and provide a sense of comfort for all beings stuck in this vicious cycle of emptiness. I, of course, stayed up until midnight of the release to play it on my switch. This was followed with many days of activating my avatar to run in circles catching fishes for five hours straight just to pay off a loan. My friend finally gave in and bought a switch just to play this game. A kiddie version of the Sims, she put. Our other best friend was caught up in the trend and decided to follow suit. She was sent home from college to finish her masters from her sofa along with working online. So, of course this was a perfect platform for her and her boyfriend to kill time. After three weeks of them playing this game, I asked how many hours did you play? She said she didn't even know and assured me to look at her profile to see. Never did a number baffle me in quite a time. One hundred and sixty hours were played among the both of them in a simple three weeks with completing a masters degree on top of it. Which was calculated to roughly 11 hours a day that this simulation graced the glowing embers of the tv screen in their apartment. Since then, we agreed a small break would be good for our mental health. How many of you contemplated on buying blue light blocking glasses? Haha.
Even then, my vision in one eye has gotten blurry from all the pixels stared at, not unlike the glares placed over me inside grocery stores due to my fluorescent pink hair and gauged ears. These grimaces have been a part of my commute for the past six years as I have transformed through roughly seventy different hair colors/styles. But what makes these facial muscle contractions so bold now is the new fashion accessory that is required, the mask. They add a form of vagueness, a sense of shame transmitted across which once could be interpreted as shock from the elderly to utter fascinations from young beings. My middle finger urges to make a scene every time but how am I to know what their sole purpose was? This my friends, is one of the struggles of being deaf in a situation like this. We rely on lips to complete our form of communication or to even understand the complex possibility of behavior being rendered on a slab of human flesh. Now it’s reduced to only, ”oh wow that’s the color of their eyes” paired with garbled speech. These blocks of color, which seems oddly eerie. No longer being able to witness the color of a woman’s lips, the crookedness of a male’s overbite. It all seems to be a forgotten memory,