Louis CK, the best working comedian right now, is a bona fide Internet sensation. He was on Late Night With Conan O’Brien last fall, and he proceeded to eviscerate my stupid, spoiled generation. You know, bitching about things like “oh, my phone is too slow,” “what, this airplane doesn’t have on-bord Wi-Fi? fail!” etc. Typical First World nonsense. Louis CK’s point was that, look, technology is as good as it is, and there’s no particular point in complaining about it; maybe this recession will teach some of those in my previously worry-free generation to appreciate things for what they are.
Vanity Fair interviewed the comedian to get some perspective on what he meant.
Responding to the question of whether or not technology has spoiled us, Louis says:
It’s definitely spoiled us. When you have a slightly slow signal on your PDA, or it takes more than 30 seconds to download a picture of Axl Rose on your iPhone, and that irritates you, something is very, very wrong. “This is too slow!” Well, why wouldn’t it be a little slow? Why do people think that they’re owed a perfect day as a consumer? The phones are as good as they are. But Americans feel like it’s in the Constitution that our phones should work perfectly all the fucking time and that we get the most bang for our buck. We think it’s literally a human right, like it was mentioned in Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man” or something….
So there!
Upset that your phone only has EDGE? Big deal—at least you don’t have to worry about where your next meal is going to come from. No copy-paste on your little iPhone got you down? Yeah, well, at least you have access to clean water. Hate the quality of Netflix streaming movies? Sure is cool that you won’t freeze to death if it gets too cold this winter, right?
Louis CK was also on Opie and Anthony yesterday (you can buy the episode on Audible.com), talking about the clip, his opinion vis-à-vis technology, etc. He even uses Twitter, for those of you still using it like it’s your job and want to see what the man is up to.