Disconnect
Wednesday, 11th of September 2013, 11:17 AM.
Hannah posted another one of her photos on Instagram, and in matter of minutes she had hundreds of likes.Praising comments all over the place.She was the queen of social networks,three profiles on Facebook,thousands of followers on Twitter and Instagram and all this because of her staggering beauty."All of these people", she thought."They all adore me".She felt so loved, so desired, sitting there among her plush toys and shiny trinkets, staring at her laptop... she felt as being on the top of the world. She never got this much attention from her friends (whom she sees so rarely),and I mean....who needs them anyway? When she goes to work she has her colleagues for a meaningless compliment, or some empty human contact, which she despised from time to time, and from time to time it just didn't matter cause that, she thought, is for the best.The people who truly love her were online, always there for her.
Mike and Jinny were so in love. At least they seemed that way. Mike lived in New York, Jinny was in college in Boston.The distance did not matter. They had Skype, and boy, were they Skyping. Jinny used to cook while Mike was watching her, and chatting her up. Mike would call Jinny, telling her how his day was, and Jinny would talk about her lectures.They seemed fine, although they always felt as if something was missing, and the feeling grew stronger with each day passing. Today it was the same, Mike could hardly wait to go to the pub with the guys that evening, and Jinny found herself thinking about that cute guy from her class a couple of times.But hey, that was just a coincidence, there's really nothing more there, they loved each other.Or were they?
Peter does many things in his life,and he does them all online.He works as a freelancer designer from his home.He orders food online, and in the meantime he plays online games.The worse part of his day is before he falls asleep.He can't stand the silence, as he lives by himself, it gets unbearable. He didn't really know anybody, and the last time he had friends was a long time ago when he was just a kid. Several years later he died of a heart attack, the cleaning lady accidentally found him dead in his gaming chair.Nobody even noticed, except of a couple of gamers from his WoW clan, calling him a bitch as he was AFK (away from keyboard) for so long.
Rewind.
The universe is the same as before, but slightly different.
Wednesday 11th of September 2013, 11:17 AM.
The world stopped for a second. Nobody knew how,why or who did it, but it happened: all social networks, chats, messengers, cell phone lines....they all stopped working. Just as if they never existed.
Hannah tried posting a new photo on Instagram but she saw just the dreaded "Failed to upload" message. She tried Facebook - nothing. Twitter - dead. She tried doing it over her phone - no signal whatsoever.She thought it was some temporary glitch, something that would be fixed in no time. However, the world remained disconnected, and after a couple of days Hannah understood the place she was in. The queen of the internet was no more, and she came down from the throne to become the loneliest girl in the world. She understood that the lie she has been telling to herself about all those people loving her, the illusion that she had someone to talk to, someone to amaze with her photos and humor, all of that was just hiding the fact that she was completely, utterly alone. While she was posting her self-shots, performing for the world wide audience, there was no one around her.She was all by herself. Now she thought about finding her old friends, getting in touch with them, but she haven't seen them for such a long time that she almost forgot how they look like. They didn't seem so bad now did they? All she had now, was a shallow, disgusting contact with her coworkers and her empty apartment.
The conversation Mike and Jinny had on Skype, stopped abruptly. Mike checked the network cable, Jinny rebooted her wireless router.No dice, no connection. Neither of them thought it was much of a problem, the connection will come back in a while. Except it didn't, but as the days passed, they still did not think that it is too much of a problem. Mike started going out with his friends more often, talking about how everyone is so crazy about the Internet going down, Jinny even started chatting up that cute guy she was thinking about. Nothing too serious it was just a meaningless flirt, right? Mike and Jinny kept sending letters to eachother but they were slowly fading away. It is then, that they understood what was that thing missing while they were skyping: it was the absence of human face to face contact. The absence of Jinny seeing Mikes messy hair, or Mike seeing Jinny's beautiful smile, made them forget about one another, forget all the things they liked about eachother. In the beginning they missed it, but for a while later, they started seeing other people, and they both got replaced in eachother's lives.
When the connection stopped, Peter's life stopped. He couldn't function anymore. He couldn't work, he couldn't eat as he couldn't order food. As that day passed he started panicking, did not sleep at all that night. The next day he had to go to the groceries store across from his apartment.He actually had to leave the house to get food. So he had to do the same the day after, and the one after that. When he saw that nothing changes, he understood that he needs a job as well. It was a tough time for Peter as he was going through something that resembled an addict's withdrawal. He had a hard time managing it, although there were some interesting new things he found: like that girl that works at the grocery store, there was something about her that he liked a lot. After a while when he started talking to her, she told him her name was Wendy,and that she worked in the store for years, so close to him and he didn't even know. He started minding his weight, going to the gym, he wanted Wendy to like him, little did he know that she liked him even before that. At one of his regular health checkups, to which he decided to go at the advice of his gym trainer, the doctor said that he might have some heart problems later on, but that the fact that he started exercising helped in cleaning his organism, and that he is not in any immediate danger. After a short while, he invited Wendy for a dinner, and she gladly accepted.
Wednesday 11th of September 2013, 11:17 AM.
Both of these universes are ours, but we can't live in them both.
In which one do we want to live? The choice is ours.
We, humans, are seeking for contact all the time, but sometimes we look for it in the wrong places. We seek that human touch, and in that quest, sometimes we get lost.
Sometimes, you need to disconnect, so that you could connect.
Hannah posted another one of her photos on Instagram, and in matter of minutes she had hundreds of likes.Praising comments all over the place.She was the queen of social networks,three profiles on Facebook,thousands of followers on Twitter and Instagram and all this because of her staggering beauty."All of these people", she thought."They all adore me".She felt so loved, so desired, sitting there among her plush toys and shiny trinkets, staring at her laptop... she felt as being on the top of the world. She never got this much attention from her friends (whom she sees so rarely),and I mean....who needs them anyway? When she goes to work she has her colleagues for a meaningless compliment, or some empty human contact, which she despised from time to time, and from time to time it just didn't matter cause that, she thought, is for the best.The people who truly love her were online, always there for her.
Mike and Jinny were so in love. At least they seemed that way. Mike lived in New York, Jinny was in college in Boston.The distance did not matter. They had Skype, and boy, were they Skyping. Jinny used to cook while Mike was watching her, and chatting her up. Mike would call Jinny, telling her how his day was, and Jinny would talk about her lectures.They seemed fine, although they always felt as if something was missing, and the feeling grew stronger with each day passing. Today it was the same, Mike could hardly wait to go to the pub with the guys that evening, and Jinny found herself thinking about that cute guy from her class a couple of times.But hey, that was just a coincidence, there's really nothing more there, they loved each other.Or were they?
Peter does many things in his life,and he does them all online.He works as a freelancer designer from his home.He orders food online, and in the meantime he plays online games.The worse part of his day is before he falls asleep.He can't stand the silence, as he lives by himself, it gets unbearable. He didn't really know anybody, and the last time he had friends was a long time ago when he was just a kid. Several years later he died of a heart attack, the cleaning lady accidentally found him dead in his gaming chair.Nobody even noticed, except of a couple of gamers from his WoW clan, calling him a bitch as he was AFK (away from keyboard) for so long.
Rewind.
The universe is the same as before, but slightly different.
Wednesday 11th of September 2013, 11:17 AM.
The world stopped for a second. Nobody knew how,why or who did it, but it happened: all social networks, chats, messengers, cell phone lines....they all stopped working. Just as if they never existed.
Hannah tried posting a new photo on Instagram but she saw just the dreaded "Failed to upload" message. She tried Facebook - nothing. Twitter - dead. She tried doing it over her phone - no signal whatsoever.She thought it was some temporary glitch, something that would be fixed in no time. However, the world remained disconnected, and after a couple of days Hannah understood the place she was in. The queen of the internet was no more, and she came down from the throne to become the loneliest girl in the world. She understood that the lie she has been telling to herself about all those people loving her, the illusion that she had someone to talk to, someone to amaze with her photos and humor, all of that was just hiding the fact that she was completely, utterly alone. While she was posting her self-shots, performing for the world wide audience, there was no one around her.She was all by herself. Now she thought about finding her old friends, getting in touch with them, but she haven't seen them for such a long time that she almost forgot how they look like. They didn't seem so bad now did they? All she had now, was a shallow, disgusting contact with her coworkers and her empty apartment.
The conversation Mike and Jinny had on Skype, stopped abruptly. Mike checked the network cable, Jinny rebooted her wireless router.No dice, no connection. Neither of them thought it was much of a problem, the connection will come back in a while. Except it didn't, but as the days passed, they still did not think that it is too much of a problem. Mike started going out with his friends more often, talking about how everyone is so crazy about the Internet going down, Jinny even started chatting up that cute guy she was thinking about. Nothing too serious it was just a meaningless flirt, right? Mike and Jinny kept sending letters to eachother but they were slowly fading away. It is then, that they understood what was that thing missing while they were skyping: it was the absence of human face to face contact. The absence of Jinny seeing Mikes messy hair, or Mike seeing Jinny's beautiful smile, made them forget about one another, forget all the things they liked about eachother. In the beginning they missed it, but for a while later, they started seeing other people, and they both got replaced in eachother's lives.
When the connection stopped, Peter's life stopped. He couldn't function anymore. He couldn't work, he couldn't eat as he couldn't order food. As that day passed he started panicking, did not sleep at all that night. The next day he had to go to the groceries store across from his apartment.He actually had to leave the house to get food. So he had to do the same the day after, and the one after that. When he saw that nothing changes, he understood that he needs a job as well. It was a tough time for Peter as he was going through something that resembled an addict's withdrawal. He had a hard time managing it, although there were some interesting new things he found: like that girl that works at the grocery store, there was something about her that he liked a lot. After a while when he started talking to her, she told him her name was Wendy,and that she worked in the store for years, so close to him and he didn't even know. He started minding his weight, going to the gym, he wanted Wendy to like him, little did he know that she liked him even before that. At one of his regular health checkups, to which he decided to go at the advice of his gym trainer, the doctor said that he might have some heart problems later on, but that the fact that he started exercising helped in cleaning his organism, and that he is not in any immediate danger. After a short while, he invited Wendy for a dinner, and she gladly accepted.
Wednesday 11th of September 2013, 11:17 AM.
Both of these universes are ours, but we can't live in them both.
In which one do we want to live? The choice is ours.
We, humans, are seeking for contact all the time, but sometimes we look for it in the wrong places. We seek that human touch, and in that quest, sometimes we get lost.
Sometimes, you need to disconnect, so that you could connect.
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