Combination football game and grocery store? No thanks, Instacart | GUEST COMMENTARY

The other day I saw a commercial for Instacart that captures so much that is wrong with the ever-accelerating app-ification of our lives.

In it, a father and son are attending a football game. A baseline thumps in the background, and a terrible but kind-of-catchy song, like something by Maroon 5, begins:

I’m at the football game,

I’m at the grocery store, 

I’m at the combination football game and grocery store!

Sounds like a treat. In fact, it got me thinking: What are some of life’s other pleasures that we can spoil with a wholly unnecessary downer combo package?

I’m at Disney World,

I’m at the DMV,

I’m at the combination Disney World and DMV!

Or how about:

I’m on my honeymoon,

I’m at the Home Depot,

I’m at the combination honeymoon and Home Depot!

Or maybe:

I’m at the poker night

I’m at the Pottery Barn

I’m at the combination poker night and Pottery Barn!

In the ad, the father eyes the playing field, cheers, then impulsively whips out his phone and purchases one avocado, three oranges, and some bananas. The camera pans to the son, who looks lovingly and admiringly at his father’s slick multitasking.

Sure, their father-son time has been dealt a blow, and they missed a thrilling touchdown by their favorite player on their favorite team in the game they came to watch together, but at least they’ll have bananas when they get home. So worth it.

Another fan stops abruptly mid-cheer as he notices that the protagonist is at the combination football game and grocery store. His eyes grow big — “Wait…he’s at the football game? AND THE GROCERY STORE!?” — and his face falls as he realizes he’s missing out on buy-one-get-one-half off chicken stock. He probably also misses the game-winning touchdown because he’s staring at a stranger’s Instacart checkout. Whoops.

I wish I could have just shrugged this off as a bad commercial and moved on with my life. Alas, I could do no such thing.

That’s because the boasting lyrics and approving looks of Son and Fan #2 underscore a worrying reality: namely, that our pervasive and permanent distractedness is increasingly seen as perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable, maybe even virtuous. Fidgety and frazzled is our new resting state.

At one point not so long ago, there was a kind of tacit agreement that some activities — dinner with a spouse, a hike with friends, a ballgame with your son or daughter — were off limits to digital intrusion. But the goalposts have moved; now it’s all fair game. It feels like we’ve given up.

But for those of us who do not wish to conduct our lives through combination poker nights and Pottery Barns — and I have to believe that’s still most of us — we can thank Instacart for this inadvertent reminder to reclaim all those moments for which we want to be truly present, and not fiddling with our phones for fish sticks.

Zach Przystup (zprzystup@gmail.com) works for the Fulbright Program at the U.S. Department of State.