This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Oct 28, 2025
I graduated from High School in 1993. We had the graduation ceremony right around Memorial Day, which is pretty standard even to today. 2 weeks later, on June 11, 1993, there was a significant cultural event. The original Jurassic Park movie was released. I saw that movie multiple times in the theater. This movie was wild back in the day because we had never seen anything like that before. The idea of human actors interacting with digital dinosaurs that were photo realistic. That movie changed the game in movie making from then on.
In 1994, the cultural phenomenon known as Forrest Gump was released. It was a movie that gave us the history of the 1960s through the unique lens of the main character. That movie was quoted incessantly. To this day, I have heard people use the phrase “run Forrest run.”
Here are the most popular movies for the next 10 years: 1996: Twister, a great tornado action movie. 1997: Titanic. 1998: Saving Private Ryan. 1999: The Matrix. These are defining movies. At the time they came out, everyone saw them. We talked about them, quoted them, debated them. These were all common frames of reference for everyone in the culture.
TV was the same. In the 1990s, the most popular TV shows were Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Friends, the X-files, ER, and Law & Order. Even if you didn’t catch these shows every week, we were all familiar enough with them that we could discuss them together.
Together, these cultural experiences drew us together either in loving or hating them. They provided cultural milestones, common phrases, and stuff we could talk about together. Not everyone liked the Simpsons, but if you made a reference to Homer Simpson, everyone knew who that was.
All of that changed in 2007 with the invention of a single device that changed the world: the iPhone. In the past 18 years, there has been a tremendous change in the cultural landscape. We no longer have these cultural touchpoints anymore. There are no common experiences like there used to be. The shift has been to very personalized experiences. Now, instead of us having a few TV shows and movies for us to watch, there are an endless supply of stupidity to watch online. All of that content that comes to you through your phone is filtered and catered directly to you.
It is impossible to have cultural references any more. Back in the 90s, a few million people sat down to watch an episode of Friends. Now at 8:00 on a given night, there are millions of options of what to watch. Some of the most popular content creators on earth have millions of subscribers but the vast majority of us have never heard of them. That means we are filtering all of this online content through our brains and there is never an opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with another human being about what you watched.
This is why we don’t quote movies anymore. We are simply watching stuff and letting it fall out of our brain because there is no chance to reflect on it with anyone. Used to be, we watched TV because we knew the next day, that is what everyone would be talking about. Now, we watch stuff and have absolutely no expectation that we will discuss it with anyone. The best we can do now is bump the person next to us, show them a 12 second video where someone falls down, you both laugh and immediately forget what you watched. There is no meaningful conversation about it.
And if you think this problem is bad now, it is about to get far worse. We are right on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence creating movies directly for you. The content will be generated by specifications you input and A.I. will spit out a movie or show that you will like. That means soon, your favorite show will be something that literally no one else has seen. It will be on your screen, catered directly to you.
I am begging you, fight this. Go have conversations with people’s faces. Let’s not lose our ability to talk to each other. Don’t spend time in isolation. That device in your pocket is emptying your mind and forcing you to live your life in the palm of your hand. There is a whole world out there, go out and experience it. Susan and I play on our phones a lot. But when we do, we are working together to do crossword puzzles or hunting Pokemon together. We are interacting with each other while we do it. Be very careful about how much time your device is taking up.
I don’t care how much your phone is catering a reality to you, virtual will never ever surpass reality in terms of fulfillment and satisfaction.