I haven’t done a single assignment today, and I’m genuinely curious to how much longer this place can justify having any freelancers, let alone two, to sit here and essentially get paid to do nothing on days like this. Needless to say, I’m really bored, and there’s only so much wikipedia I can read before my eyes feel like they’re going to fall out of their sockets. So that beings said, let’s ask another question for black history month:
Why do black teenagers feel the need to pretend like they’re on their cell phones when they’re clearly not using them?
Again, this could be an “Atlanta-thing,” but without fail, whenever I go to the store, there will always be at least one 15-25 year old black person who has a cell phone against their ear, but they never say anything back to it. Because, they’re not actually on a phone call.
I know this for a fact. After the initial hypothesis formulated in my head, I made a point to try and get definitive answers. I would pretend like I’d need something from the exact same location at the grocery store, as an excuse to get close by. Naturally, being rude little shits, they are reluctant to move, but not before I can hear absolutely nothing coming from the speaker. I’ve done this enough times to enough people to know that it’s not coincidentally a whole bunch of people, sharing extended awkward silences between one another while one is conveniently in the store.
In the past, I think it was T-Mobile, or one of those one-off companies that tried to market to youths, had some feature where you could “call music,” to where you could just listen to from your phone. But whenever I experimented with these kids at the stores, it was very obvious that there was no sound coming from the phones. So, for reasons completely unknown, there is a compulsion for young black kids to have their phone up to their ears regardless.
They don’t even fake it well, if they’re genuinely trying to appear so socially active, that they have to be on the phone at all times. No mumbling back to the invisible phone call, no facial expressions as if the imaginary person on the other line were telling them that they were so pretty, or they were so good at basketball. Just deadpan facial expressions while they compromised the usefulness of an entire arm, as they pretend to be on the phone while in public.
So the question is why? Why do young black kids feel the necessity to pretend like they’re on the phone?
The knee-jerk, racially insensitive hypothesis for this goes back to the days in which black people in the 80s carried around ghetto blaster boomboxes, and walked around while hoisting the gigantic mammoth of hardware around to show everyone their technology, or their luxuries. It’s clearly important for everyone else to see, for them to know, that this guy is clearly, the tits.
Since ghetto blasters don’t really exist anymore, and Discmans, and other CD players are pretty much dead these days, and iPods and MP3 players are “too white” or rather, “not black enough,” it appears that cellular telephones have essentially become the new ghetto blaster, in my hypothesis. Much in the same manner in which young black guys back then carried around their ghetto blasters for everyone to see that they got shit, it’s become socially vital for young black kids today to hold their phones where everyone can see them at all times, regardless of it they’re actually using them or not, so that everyone can see, that they got shit.
You know, I didn’t think about it, but out of all of the ones I’ve done so far, I think this is the first time that I feel that I’ve actually given myself a somewhat plausible justification, and I’m coming to the point where I feel like I’ve solved a tricky riddle, and found the answer to a difficult question.
Cell phones = modern ghetto blasters, when displayed frivolously and not being used in an appropriate manner.
