Stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld's been back on the prowl recently with his oddball and descriptively-titled Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, though his eponymous "show about nothing" has never been far from the public consciousness (see: iToilet and Google Wallet). Seinfeld himself showed up on The Tonight Show this week and he, as he's prone to do, talked about how we use our smartphones and the way they've changed how we communicate.
"That's your life, because of the people, right? That you need to stay in touch with that are so important. The people in your life, they're so important, aren't they? Yes. Really? They don't seem very important, not the way you scroll through their names in your contact list like a gay French king. 'Who pleases me today? Who shall I favor? Who shall I delete?'
And we call it a phone, but we don't really use it much as a phone, do we? No, we don't, because they gave us the option. Some years ago you were given the option when you want to communicate to another person: you could talk or you could type. Well once you had that option, well that took half a second — talking lost. Talking's over!"
Seinfeld's not entirely wrong, as Facebook's recent $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp indicated, text message-style communication is incredibly important to us these days. Have we lost something in the process, or, as Seinfeld pointed out, has texting just made things easier and more to-the-point?
"If you want, I could text you this whole thing and we could get the hell out of here."
Source: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (YouTube), Thanks to Brent for the tip!
Reader comments
Seinfeld on smartphones and texting: 'I could have called you and I chose not to.'
He's still funny. I'm glad, because some of his other stuff blows. Glad he's getting back to his roots!
wow that was not funny at all.
One of the greats!
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That was actually pretty funny considering. He seemed to be bringing some new stuff to his standup which is cool. His old stuff just didn't seem funny but that did.
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Fallon calling the big guns on his first week. Understandable. But that theme's been done time and again. He still got some delivery genius to him, but this just doesnt seem as sharp as some of the things he used to do. Even recently.
He's actually used that bit almost verbatim for the past 2 years on his stand up tour.
The great thing about the sein is his act is nice and clean and he's kept it that way his entire career. Everyone else has to swear and be vulgar for their material to be funny. There's something to be said for that
I did like the Super Bowl ad. It was a nice homage to his show that he had. Though the Full House one while interesting doesn't work with not knowing what happened to his wife and kids.