Look Up (the words ‘lousy argument’)

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While I appreciate the sentiment, here are the issues I have with the Look Up video.

1. Small talk is occasionally a precursor for real conversation; however, it’s more often than not a silence filler, a vacuous and meaningless chat instigated to pass the time. Implying that all small talk is one and the same, and is both necessary and pleasant, is the silliest kind of false logic.

2. Some of my most honest and open relationships are conducted almost exclusively online, with people who I’ve either never met or haven’t seen in years. Physical distance needn’t be a barrier to knowing someone, provided you both agree to be frank. If you have 422 friends and don’t really ‘know’ any of them, then you clearly need to be more careful with your requests and acceptances.

3. If you’re bigging up your life on social media, that suggests self-esteem issues that Facebook didn’t cause. It’s no different to bragging to your mates in the pub. Facebook is a medium of expression, not a catalyst.

4. Crowded commuter trains where no one is talking to each other may make you depressed, but to many of us they’re a haven – the one quiet part of the day. Some people don’t want to talk to others because they’re naturally introverted. I am not, but when I am on a bus I do not want to speak to the random stranger sitting next to me and pretend that I care about who they are and what they do. I want to read my book. Oh, and avoiding eye contact on the Tube has nothing to do with Candy Crush; it’s a British thing. Deal with that.

5. I met my wife online, and I find the Sliding Doors notion that you’ll miss out on your one chance at true love and consign yourself to seventy years of bachelorhood because you were looking at Google Maps demeaning, patronising and insulting.

6. I _do_ spend too much time looking at my smartphone, and having a detox while it’s in for repair has done me the power of good. But I don’t need you to tell me that. It’s a vice, and some vices are hard to break. I am working on it.

7. So you built dens as a child and now the world’s gone to hell in a handcart because of Steve Jobs? Have you actually *been* in a park on a sunny Saturday afternoon? You can’t get near the swings. When I was a kid I built dens in the old house down the road, and then went home and played Magic Knight games on my Spectrum. These days we play hide and seek in the garden and then the boys go for a Minecraft session. I think your spectacles might be a little rose tinted.

That’s all. I am off to check my hit counts.

What more in the name of love?

I mean, I don’t get this. I don’t.

It doesn’t strike me as being about equality at all. The reason for gay pride – for any sort of pride – is as a natural response to repression: in other words, being told that you have nothing to be proud about. But I don’t know of any straight people – any at all – who’ve been targeted by the gay community and told that what they’re doing is unnatural, or disgusting, or morally wrong, or will land them in eternal damnation. Perhaps you’ve heard different, of course, but I think if this was happening, we’d know about it.

So this is either an argument founded on utterly false logic, or it’s a guarded way of saying that you’re proud of being straight because it’s the right way forward. In which case it’s homophobic. Either approach, as far as I can see, is wrong.