Hyperlinked is a column written by Media Columnist Colin Angell, asking readers to think about how different types of media impact our lives, and how our lives impact media in turn. Put away the tinfoil hats — this is just about the digital age.
Colin Angell is a Year 2 bachelor of media studies student. He comes from a background in different media and creative practices and has written and reported for several sections at The Ubyssey.
It’s something of a routine for me to get ready for school listening to music. I’ll wake up, throw a shirt on, hopefully get everything in my bag and I’m out of there with my earbuds in by the time hit the sidewalk.
That’s the way it is and the way it’s always been. At 11, I rocked my Skullcandy and crawled the back streets to middle school. At 17, I thought I was all that, rattling along in time while the subway shuttled me to high school (I wasn’t, in case you’re wondering.)
At 21? I mean, my taste has gone and plunged off a cliff, but each and every morning, every effort to get out of bed feels like me just getting ready for the first chord to kick in.
And when I find my place on the 99 bus, I join a bus full of people tuning into whatever their digital coffee is. Some are dissecting their daily mixes, some are shackled to their FYP — showoffs are somehow striking the keys of their laptops to the time of nightcore (or whatever it is that you freaks you listen to). I tap along to my tunes while playing but a part of the digitally-enabled orchestra of headphone wearers.
But a fade hushes the song and in the uncomfortable silence between tracks, I look around me, at my phone, at the others all on their phones in their little la-la lands, and I become overwhelmingly aware that we’re really all just on our way to school. And that’s all it is.
The thing is I’m just on a bus and, no, the bus doesn’t sound like my playlist. It never has and it never will. But that’s okay: it’ll never sound like yours either.
When we entertain ourselves with any media — music, movies, books — we entertain a certain degree of escapism from the moment we’re in. If we ever want to be more mindful of the space we take up within our own lives, then you have to stop running away from taking a critical look at your media consumption habits.
Let’s just focus on music. I love music. It’s easy, it’s fun. It's always in my back pocket. The moment I leave class, I’m free to chuck in my earbuds and replace the hustle and bustle with quite literally anything else. Two taps of my thumb against my phone and I’m diving into catalogues of millions of tracks, spanning decades and geographies, vis-à-vis servers and databases in a cosmopolitan chronicling of humanity’s sonics.
But the sound pours in and everything about where I exist in that hall or on that bus is changed. I’m no longer taking in the bus alone; I’m allowing the experience of hearing the music to enter my life. I feel the sensation of hearing a melody and I feel the tension from the dissonance between the notes of the chords — they become a part of my living and waking experience. The chance of being wholly grounded on my commute to campus is washed away as I give the attention of all my senses combined to something else – something external.
You see the walls of the bus, the disturbingly smudged windows, the ads for schools that could be getting your tuition money if you bomb that final. You smell the musk, you feel the seat, the bumps, potholes and the wheels against the pavement. You hear the hum and you hear the road. You put your headphones on. The vocals; the band come in. The tonic rings out and, suddenly, you’re not just riding the bus.
Marshall McLuhan wrote early in Understanding Media that media is “any extension of ourselves.” What’s meant by this is not some conceited History Channel-at-night idea of transcendence; it’s that, to some degree, a person’s thoughts or temperament or simply character is reflected in media products. Art imitates life, right? Well, this isn’t just for the person who created whatever piece of media's in question, but also for the person interacting with it.
Consider for a moment that music is like a conversation — it possesses all the aspects of one. There’s someone — albeit not actually with you — sharing with us their thoughts, feelings and stories while we give them an ear and listen tight, offering attention to each soundbite.
And, plainly, these stories are likely more interesting than whatever else is going on around us. They offer to us distilled accounts of life, meticulously crafted to be as captivating of our attention as possible. You’re working in Chapman or Riddington or whatnot. Do you want to cram for finals to a score of laptops slamming shut and styluses thudding against iPads? Or would you rather sync up to the splendour of studio-produced gloss with all its high-fi shine and low-note sheen? Next time you’re there, I invite you to look around. You’ll get a pretty solid answer as to where others are at.
To say all this and draw the conclusion that to be more present we must “rawdog” every mundane moment would be missing the point. In fact, leaving it here entirely ignores the other side of our conversations with music: the side that we as consumers hold up.
As consumers, we extend ourselves into our music by building associations with it. Some songs are happy, some are moody. Some make you feel excited, some empty you. Whichever characteristic you wish to apply to a track, understand that there is nothing within the song itself that inherently shackles emotions to it. These associations bubble as a result of you taking in each little twist and turn and characterizing it by how it affects you — how it makes you and only you feel. It makes you assign certain songs certain roles.
Surely you can think of songs that, whenever you hear them, there’s some part of yourself that you can feel just drifting off — away to some other place, some other time. I think of people I’ve met between here and there, and things that’ve been said, thoughts I’ve thought, feelings felt.
Sometimes when I find myself on the south side of campus, I’ll go through my playlists from fall in first year. I pick a song and, again, everything is changed. My walk becomes that of a sleepwalker reanimated en route to PHIL 101. There’s the scent of damp leaves conceding to red and orange. I look down and beyond and, for the first time, there’s the Sea-to-Sky etched white on a cold October morning. I’m in a vignette.
But it’s 2025. I look around me and it's spring, and I’m older and surrounded by different people who’re all on about different things. I’m making a choice to not be fully present.
It’s in the times like when we’re walking between classes or sitting in a lecture hall and wishing that we were anywhere else that we’re supposed to lean into our thoughts. You’re supposed to be listening to your thoughts, daydreaming, seeing what the needle threads. But chuck in an AirPod — hell, throw on New York Times games — and you never have to be bored.
Being bored sucks, but it’s a part of life. Many times after a long day of work, I’ll turn off my phone and lie awake. I’ll realize these last few moments of my day are among the few where I give my thoughts completely undivided attention. When I should have been shifting through them and chewing on them all day, I’ve flavoured my hours with the colour of palettes from far away. Everything comes in unfocused and unprocessed and I’m left wound up over nothing.
It’s not how it should be. You should want more for yourself than a distracted life.
The worst thing about all of this is that it’s on you to make changes. It’s on me too — but only for me. If anything, you’re going to be encouraged to be glued to your tech, considering how being a university student in 2025 requires so much digital interaction. It’s convenient and handy; sure, but it makes it so much more tempting to get distracted by anything and everything online.
Next time you’re sitting in IKB glancing back and forth between the 30 tabs on your phone, and the other 40 on Google Chrome and you keep on checking time and each little buzz and… and… just stop!
Turn the music off. Throw your phone in your backpack. Give your brain some air! Is your playlist actually inspiring you as it should or is it just white noise? Maybe it’ll make your studying easier. All that cramming while someone’s singing — turn it off and let your inner monologue talk without straining its voice.
Take your breaks without your phone. Go for a walk. Pace the stacks of the library and take in the atmosphere in all its psycho-kinetic-intellectualism and pretension. Wander for a bit. Make your way outside and go down a different mall. Listen carefully. Can you hear the sea?
Yeah, me neither — but I can hear geese in flight from down south. I wouldn't have heard that with my earbuds in.
Doodle in class. Let a song simply be stuck in your head — you don’t need to play it. Let your axles and wheels turn. Be bored. A brain left to its own devices is where creativity is stoked.
No one is ever going to come and twist your arm while saying, “Clean up your screen time!” That’s on you. Believe me when I say that I will never give up my music, but from time to time, I’ll try and take a break the way they should be taken.
This is an opinion article. It reflects the contributor's views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
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