The room is very large.
Big enough for however many friends we have.
50 or 300 or 500 or 1,000.
Plus a little extra space for followers
And some private rooms off to the side
For slightly less public conversations.
The room is inhabited by people
From every era of my life,
From elementary school through college
And beyond,
To first jobs
And second and third and current.
Plus people I've volunteered with,
People I've gone to summer camp with,
And some people I'd never actually met before
Who just happened to also be in the room
Who I know through other friends.
The room is large,
As I said,
But divided by partitions
That make it hard to tell who's currently in the room
Or who's out, or who's paying attention or not.
The strange thing is
The way conversations get started.
The room is full of tall platforms,
And every so often someone -
Sometime me, sometimes someone else -
Stands on a platform
And shouts something to the room at large
Or maybe holds up a gigantic sign or video player.
We shout about what we just ate
Or watched
Or experienced
Or how we're feeling.
We shout about the things that happen to us:
Funny
Frustrating
Tragic
Inspiring.
We shout political statements
And scream our opinions -
Never to a particular person -
But to anyone in the room who happens to be listening.
We just shoot our ideas into the air
With a flare gun that spells out words.
If I did this sort of thing at the grocery store
Or coffee shop
Or post office or public library,
People would think I was insane.
"Everyone!
Watch this video in which
A kitten falls off a window sill!
"Everyone!
I had waffles this morning!
Here's a picture!"
"Everyone!
Here's a political idea I just found somewhere
That I didn't check on to see if it was true!
I agreed with it - and so should you!"
But in this room, no one finds these declarations odd,
Because we all make them.
We all stand on our platforms and shout,
And after we shout,
We wait.
Because then a lot of other people in the room
Start shouting back.
They shout:
"Like!" "Like!" "Like!"
Or "Love!"
Or "Angry!" or "Sad!" or "Haha!" or "Wow!"
Can you picture this happening in a room
Full of real people?
Crazy!
Oh, wait, that's not an option. You only have six -
Unless you comment.
So in addition to shouting single-word responses,
People can stand around the base of your platform
And talk back to you
As well as start to talk to each other
And sometimes argue about how right you are -
Or wrong.
They relate their own experience to this topic,
The commiserate.
They comfort.
They clamor.
They hold up TV screens with little moving images.
They make faces at you and at each other.
Or rather -
They hold up masks that make faces.
Masks - because no one in this room
Is completely real.
We are all personas
Constructed for this space -
Carefully curated versions of ourselves
Created for the benefit of everyone else
Who's in this room.
So when the comments start
And I feel like
People from different parts of my life
Are communicating with each other -
A kid from my second grade class
And co-worker from the newspaper
Interact with a teacher I had in high school -
Is it really those people talking,
Or just their masks?
I look down from my platform and see them talking
And jump down to join them.
And there's something intriguing but jarring
About finding
Fifteen people from my life
Who have never met each other before -
Or even met the other versions of me
They each know -
All chatting together.
And sometimes it's good fun
Having all these people together
In this vast, vast room.
Gathered cozily at the base of my platform.
That is, until someone says something rude,
Or at least in disagreement,
Which in this room is the same as rude.
And sometimes people leave the room for a while.
Or things escalate and get tense -
And I have to leave the room for a while.
Because here is the other thing with this room:
It has areas.
Areas for people with different views of things.
And some people tend to cluster all the way to the right
Or all the way to the left
And everywhere in between
Or sometimes they're hanging from the chandelier
And you'd don't know where they stand because they aren't actually standing at all.
People tend to cluster
At their end of the room
Where the people on their platforms
All agree with them,
And the Likes are all alike
And the comments all agree.
And the more time you spend
At your end of the room,
The more you know
That you're RIGHT,
And everybody else is WRONG.
And when you do run into people from the other side of the room,
You Like them less and less,
And like them less and less, too.
And if you dislike them enough,
You can simply pull down a lever
To remove them as a friend
And a trap door opens beneath their feet
And they are GONE
From your room for good,
And you can go back to your friends
Who tell you what you want to hear.
Of course, you don't notice him,
Because he's so ubiquitous,
Yet also invisible,
But there's this guy -
We can call him Al -
Who guides you around the room
Gently.
He doesn't tell you,
"Listen to them!" or "Ignore them!"
He simply guides you around in such a way
That you seldom see the people
Or hear the voices
That might make you uncomfortable.
Al takes you along the well-worn carpet
To visit the places you like to go
Full of friendly faces and familiar ideas.
It's almost as if, when you're with Al,
The room grows smaller,
Cozier.
More intimate.
But you are never really aware of Al.
Because he doesn't want you to be.
And when I'm in this room
I can feel liked
and I can try to share my
Best self with the world,
Because these rooms are big enough
To hold the whole world,
And being here makes me feel like I am
Doing things,
And affecting change,
and improving the world outside,
But without every having to leave this room.
But this room,
Which stands before us
Like a land of dreams,
Full of platforms and signs and flashing screens
And trap doors
And well-worn carpet
And people yelling out their emotions
From underneath their masks,
Is not the world.
It feels like my world
This room.
But everyone else here
Thinks
It is their world too.
If it existed as a real place,
We would run out,
Revulsed by the cartoonish
Madness of it.
But instead,
We sit and click and type,
And think, because this room's vastness
Is confined to a few inches by a few inches of rectangle
That we are in control of it.
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