Maybe they’re right to point their heads down, to strain their necks, to bury their eyes in texting and tablets. Maybe it’s good for their inner dialog to communicate through screens instead of face-to-face. It used to be that double chins were an exclusive feature of the old and the overweight, but the tablet generation has changed this. You know what I’m talking about, right? The flab in the profile of teens, 20’s, and 30’s age heads you can see after following the once taught contours of their chin down towards their neck. My friends and relatives complain about developing double chins or wattles, but maybe the tech chins an entire generation is developing are good for their social standing.
I don’t text. Can’t stand the medium. If you want to talk with me, we’ll talk. If you want to exchange letters, we’ll write.
I don’t watch movies on tablets and phones either. Same thing. I share that distinction with David Lynch, who channeled my thoughts rather succinctly when he said, “If you’re playing the movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You’ll think you have experienced it, but you’ll be cheated. It’s such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on your f*cking telephone. Get real.” Tech chins are much the same, an indicator of wasted time, life cheated, opportunity squandered. Real life happens between people. There is no time to waste.
My call is to people, to admiring taught lines, keeping their heads up, and keeping it real.
Kelly Hobkirk - teaching marketers how to harness strategy, goals, reality, and purpose to connect and do better work.
Kelly Hobkirk has been helping companies succeed in creative ways for nearly 25 years. His work has been featured in Time Magazine, and books by Rockport and Rotovision. Get exclusive articles when you sign up for his monthly newsletter.