How to be happy when digital media want us miserable

Plus: real toy phones, eyes in the back of your head, dinosaur phones, and more!

Nov 23, 2021

Here’s a quiz for you. What do these three phenomena all have in common?:

TikTok challenges inspire students in thousands of US schools to vandalize bathrooms, steal computers, slap teachers, assault fellow students, falsely accuse teachers of sexual assault and other anti-social acts.
Intelligent family members and friends get sucked down a rabbit hole of disinformation from which they cannot be dislodged and which animates their actions in the real world.
Millions of people live in despair because they’re certain the world is filled with growing anarchy, violence and injustice.

These circumstances all stem from the same fairly modern phenomenon: The world as it appears to us in digital media can overwhelm and cancel out the actual world we live in.

It’s time to understand and take action on the reality of our world. It’s time to understand the source of our despair. It’s time to take back our time and attention, and live our own real lives again. Here’s how.

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Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas

1. This toy phone is now a real phone

The Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone toy has been around for nearly 60 years. And now, for its 60th anniversary, the company is enabling it to make actual phone calls. They’ve installed a speaker and microphone and other electronics, including Bluetooth capability. It connects via Bluetooth to your smartphone. The rotary dial even works for dailing calls!

2. Now you can watch your bad haircut in real time

Cutting your own hair is never a good idea. And I’m not sure the CutCam can help. The CutCam is a hair buzzer with a built-in cam, so you can watch the live stream on your phone from the buzzer as you plow runways into the back your head.

3. Jurassic perk: This smartphone comes with real dinosaur bits!

Luxury Russian smartphone customizer, Caviar, is selling a tricked-out iPhone 13 with a chunk of fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth embedded in the phone. The company’s Tyrannophone, which is part of the “Tera” line, has one terabyte of storage. It also sports a T-Rex head with eyes made of real amber.