jennings rampage

The youngest old man in the world.

My brother is an enormous pain in my ass. I can say that because 1) he’d know exactly how to take it, and 2) he’s not going to read this for at least a month.

Jeff is two and a half years younger than me, he’s an electronics technician in the United States Navy, he’s working on a degree in electrical engineering, and he owns a computer and a cell phone. So you’d think he fits the profile of the young and the “plugged in” —­­­­ but he doesn’t have a Facebook account, he doesn’t use text messaging, he’s rarely on AIM, he doesn’t have a GMail account, he checks his email infrequently, he doesn’t blog, and I’m sure he’d scoff at the thought of Twitter. The best he can do is a horribly outdated and embarassingly blinged-to-hell MySpace page. In short, I have absolutely no way to keep in touch with him.

Well, he does call me fairly often, mostly to complain about how I never call him. And it’s true, but I do sort of live in an underground bunker that gets no cell reception, and when I’m out of my bunker it’s because I’m at work or out doing something that I can’t drop to listen to the “you never call” lecture.

And isn’t that basically the point? Back in the old days, back in those awkward Web 1.0 days and before, keeping in touch was an active activity. You had to drop everything and write an email and wait for them to drop everything and write you back, or you had to drop everything and place a phone call and get the person on the other end to drop everything to talk to you. It doesn’t surprise me that I’m bad at keeping in touch with those people. And when those people are old enough not to be up on technology and how it’s used, I feel like I’m the bad guy for not staying in touch. But when it’s people like my brother, I just have no patience.

Hey, Jeff. You and your lovely wife recently took a trip to Sea World, right? Well, if you had a Facebook account, you could upload the pictures she took of you jerking it to Shamu, and I would be notified automatically and I could peruse them at my convenience. And the next time you had a quick question for me, instead of calling me and not getting me and leaving me no voicemail, you could text it to me, and I’d get it on the exact same device, and I’d jot you a quick reply. Or if you were just thinking about that time Dad took the Hot Pocket out of the trash, you could write it on my wall and amuse me and confuse my friends. Don’t worry about Twitter or anything like that for now — that may or may not end up being considered useful. But we’ve got to get you on Facebook right away, and we’ve got to get you doing the texting soon after.

I recently won a battle with my best friend from college to get him on Facebook. It took at least a year, but I won in the end, and he admitted he didn’t realize what he was missing. I made him a better man. That could be you, Jeff. It’s time to leave MySpace, and get the lights on the way out. Get with the program.