Farewell to smart phones and social networks… Claiming to be Luddites, these 19th century anti-industrialization activists, young New Yorkers are rediscovering real life, far from screens. A report from “T: The New York Times Style Magazine”.
On a chilly winter Sunday, a group of teenagers gather on the steps of the Brooklyn Central Library for the weekly meeting of the Luddite Club, a collective of ten high school students who advocate a network-free lifestyle. social and new technologies. They put away their iPhones as they head to Prospect Park. The most zealous of them have flip phones, sometimes adorned with stickers and decorated with nail polish.
They walk to their usual corner in the park, a small knoll away from the crowd. Among them, Odille Zexter-Kaiser, a student at Edward R. Murrow High School, treads the leaf-strewn ground in her Dr. Martens and mismatched woolen socks.
“It’s quite bad form not to come, she explains. We’re here every Sunday, whether it’s raining, windy, or even snowing. We don’t have any other ways to contact us, so it’s important to come.”
“Bubble of Serenity”
Once there, the young people take logs which they arrange in a circle and sit down to form a “bubble of serenity”.
Some come out of sketchbooks. Others take up watercolors. One of them closes his eyes and listens to the wind. Many of them read diligently – Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Maus of Art Spiegelman or consolation of philosophy of Boethius.
Free spirits like Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac are their heroes, and works that condemn technology, like The Unleashed Pianist by Kurt Vonnegut, are held in high esteem.
“Many of us have read Journey to the End of Solitude [roman de Jon Krakauer adapté au cinéma sous le titre Into the Wild qui relate l’histoire du jeune voyageur Chris McCandless parti vivre dans les étendues sauvages de l’Alaska, et qui y a perdu la vie]”, says Lola Shub, a high school student at Essex Street Academy. “We are all convinced that we are not made to stay locked up and work in offices. This guy has tasted life. The real life. Social media and cell phones are not real life.”
“The day I got a flip phone everything changedcontinues the girl. I started using my head. I observed myself as a person. I am also trying to write a book. At the moment it is 12 pages.”
Luddite proselytizing
A discussion ensues of their Luddite proselytizing efforts. Created last year by another high school girl, Logan Lane, the club is named after Ned Ludd, an 18th-century English textile worker who allegedly smashed a mechanized loom, inspiring a cohort of schoolmates to rise up against the nascent industrialization and thus helping to bring his name into posterity.
“I just hosted my high school’s first Luddite meeting,” says Biruk Watling, a student at Beacon High School in Manhattan. The boy is the proud owner of a green flip phone emblazoned with a photo of Lauryn Hill, lead singer of 1990s rap group Fugees.
A few others then take a moment to list the benefits of Luddism.
“I’ve sorted out the people I want to be friends with.” says Jameson Butler, a young girl in a T-shirt [du groupe de hardcore californien] Black Flag, carving a piece of wood. “Now it takes work for me to maintain friendships. When I gave up my iPhone, some people told me they didn’t like texting me anymore. To me, that meant everything.”
“If you post something on social media and you don’t get
2023-05-01 07:00:00
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