I'm Becoming the Wi-Fi Nazi
Wednesday October 25, 2023
If I look around while hanging with my friends and every one of them is on their phone, it instantly makes me sick. If I notice it after looking up from my own phone I will intentionally put my phone out of arms reach so I don’t habitually take it out of my pocket and check it for no reason. What is the point of being here? Why gather together just to ignore the people around you? I’m not trying to single out my friends, tons of people default to their phones as soon as a conversation or group activity isn’t engaging enough. I can’t enforce rules on people like I’m a parent, but I can at least make brainless scrolling difficult on purpose.
When I first got internet at my house, I set up a guest network just to keep the list of connected devices clean on my router’s web interface. I’ve had this “fuck you, be social” idea before, which resulted in me removing the guest network and keeping the main network password a secret. What destroyed my plan was using the default password for the main network like an idiot. One of them simply flipped the router over, got my password, and shared it with the rest of them. Fucking crackheads, I swear to God. Later on I changed the main password and kicked them all off. That plan was over as soon as we wanted to play Jackbox because the cell reception is ass at my house and they all needed a stable internet connection. I told myself I’ll just give them the password and change it later, but I didn’t.
The plan is to make a guest network and disable it. I’ll be a huge fag about it. The only reason this plan has a chance of working is because the cellular data connection at my house sucks so bad. Originally I thought I would turn the guest network back on only for Jackbox, but now that I think about it, the connection is probably good enough for Jackbox. I’ll just keep it disabled. It’s possible I could make a few exceptions on the main network, but that could end up ruining the entire plan. Maybe I’ll go even crazier and whitelist MAC addresses. NO WI-FI FOR YOU.
I’m curious if all of this normal. Not just my feelings about phone use, but is this type of “socializing” normal for people? Please leave a comment.