[1 of 3]

Click. Buzz. Hum. My computer fans started spinning and lit the room in bright blue. The monitor came on as I pulled my chair out and sat. I clicked my mouse, typed my password, and was greeted by the sweet image of three Chrome windows. Just as I’d left them.

Refresh

The active page updated. YouTube was open, and it started playing a video that I supposedly watched the night before. It was one of those random, god-only-knows-why-someone-made-this, you’ll-only-watch-this-late-at-night-when-your-standards-are-a-flat-zero kind of videos. Also, it was straight up ear rape, so I quickly smashed the space bar and stopped it.

Up in the top right of the page, a little red dot with 4 in the center had appeared. I clicked the little bell icon above it and my notifications dropped down.

sniper4life commented: “I get that you can have an opinion of your…” on: This movie looks better than…

“First of all, sniper4life,” I thought, “if you’re going to start with ‘you’re entitled to your own opinion,’ then you’d better not finish by calling my opinion garbage.” I expanded sniper’s comment. It was a reply to a thread I made on a video-review of the new movie, Spectral Slammers. The movie was one of those special gems that made everyone angry with its existence. No one could agree on whether it was total baby vomit or just decent enough to watch. I hadn’t seen the movie, only the review of it.

Me (my original comment from the day before): “This movie looks better than some people make it out to be. Can’t we all be adults and just accept that some will like it and some won’t. I think I might go see it. because I think It looks Good. Emphasis on I think.”

Sniper4life: “I get that you have an opinion of your own and all that but this movie does not look good by any stretch of the imagination. What could possibly make you think that? no one should ever think that.”

Me: +sniper4life How did I know you were going to say that.?

Post

I moved back to the rest of the notifications. The next comment was on the same thread on the same video. I must have hit a tender spot in the fragile ego of the YouTube commenter.

Respectablehobbit commented: “youre poinion make sme want to cry.” on: This movie looks better than…

Me: “+Respectablehobbit Your destruction of the english language makes ME want to cry.”

Post

I found an odd sense of satisfaction from continuing pointless argument. Call me a troll, but I didn’t do anything more than ruffle a few feathers. Nothing like what you see on Twitter or something. I never insult anyone. I just enjoyed arguing. If that’s what you could even call it. All I had to do was continue responding, and they would never let it go. I eagerly waited every comment that told me exactly how and why I was wrong.

Back to the rest of the notifications.

SuicidalBacon +1’d your comment: “I have to go see this for myslef”

Why was this bacon so glum? I really wanted to know more about this guy with a profile picture of an MS paint piece of bacon crying. But that would require effort, so I moved on.

Petroid200x and two others commented on: Does anyone else think that this show went…

Petroid200x was the worst name I’d seen since broniePEGasus. But, all petroid did was agree with me when I said that “Meandering Meat-bags,” the zombie show turned cultural-phenomenon, went downhill in season three. There were two others on that thread who agreed, as well as some fans of the comics fulfilling their obligations to tell us how much better it used to be. Unlike the Spectral Slammers thread, there wasn’t anything to work with. I up-voted everyone’s comments to see if it would grow. Then I moved on.

I switched to window two-out-of-three on Chrome. Facebook.

Refresh

The news-feed popped up with a list of photos and comments in the middle. I scrolled through the images my friends and family found important enough to share, immediately thinking to myself, “Why do I use Facebook?”

The first three posts were all from the same person. Friend60 was one of the share-happy people who never posts anything of their own but shares every photo from every page they follow.

The next three were status updates from Friend18 who never did anything new or interesting but still shared that nothing was new.

Then there were all the sports posts (because who doesn’t want to share which team they thought was the best at doing that one thing to win those points and games?) It was useless to try to understand what theses posts were talking about. I didn’t follow any sports, yet I always found myself reading posts about them and wondering why I didn’t know what they meant.

Next up were the baby pics. A friend’s baby. A family member’s baby. A family member’s friend’s baby. A family friend’s family member’s baby.

Scroll faster

Friend40 shared this picture of a cat

Like

Politics. It felt like all my Facebook friends had completely opposite political views. Any time I saw something political pop up on Facebook I had to restrain myself. It’s not the same ball field as YouTube where I can stir up some anger with my opinion on Spectral Slammers. Political arguments always end in harsh words and only make me angry. But I couldn’t help myself.

Me: Your opinion makes me want to cry.

Post

Edit

Delete comment

Angry Face Reaction to original post

There were some memes here and there, but they were on Facebook, so they were total shit. Eventually, though, a light emerged from the shadows: a post that caught my attention with a brightly colored picture (I’m easily distracted like that). The chosen one had emerged in my own feed. Oh! blessed day. Could this brightly colored in-joke of the Internet be the one to cure the world of boredom forever?

Friend18 shared Facebook-Meme-Page3611’s photo

Like

About five eternities later I realized that I had been sucked into a Facebook Trance ([noun] a unique state of mindlessness in which the victim is tricked into thinking they are doing something, but in fact have been looking at mildly-amusing-at-best posts for the last twenty minutes). I was disgusted.

Alt Tab: Reddit

Refresh

The new day’s Reddit posts appeared, leaving the ones from the night before buried forever. Pepe was becoming popular again—because on the Internet nothing ever dies. Speaking of never dying, Harambe was still a thing people were talking about. Arthur memes didn’t want to go away either, and somehow, dat boi showed up alongside a few rage comics. Did the Reddit hivemind start a retro-night?

My tolerance for memes isn’t what it used to be. After only a few minutes, I had snorted all the air out of my nose and had to move on. r/mildlyinteresting had found a picture of a glass of beer that didn’t overflow even when the foam towered three inches past the brim of the cup. r/aww was had a dozen adorable animals I hadn’t seen before, but half a dozen I had. Somebody on r/Showerthoughts had realized most small businesses can accept credit cards, but not all parking meters will. r/Jokes had a few NSFW jokes that I won’t share, and r/movies found a teaser trailer for Obligatory-End-of-Year-Superhero-Movie coming out next month.

My computer made a little ding-ding-Facebook-sound.

Alt Tab: Facebook

Friend40 also commented on his post. 1 minute ago.

I clicked the notice for more info. Crap. It was a political post from three nights ago. What were the chances I remembered or agreed with what I had posted? Friend40—guy from high school I never saw eye-to-eye with—had really taken his time replying. And, true to form, his response didn’t make much sense. But in his defense, I didn’t read his new comment all the way.

Me: Look this was days ago and I really don;t care anymoer.

Send

Refresh

“Why did I refresh?” I stared mindlessly at the screen for a second.

Some new posts appeared on my Facebook feed. Friend32 popped up at the top. She was this girl I hadn’t talked to more than once in person but somehow ended up being friends with on Facebook, the type of friend you have to be careful about because if you press like on what they post it could be awkward.

Friend32 shared Random-News-Blogging-Page’s post.

Friend32: “This scares me. Why can no on e agree on gun control? People are dying.”

Random-News-Blogging-Page’s Post: “Today’s society is falling apart whether we want to believe it or not. Check out the latest news from Random-News-Blogging-Page by liking our page (String of emojis).”

The picture from the post showed a map of the U.S., cropped too strangely to see without following the link. The title read, “U.S. cities With Highest Crime Rates.”

Click on bait

Damnit. They got me. I was taken to the “news” article. After closing a pop-up ad from a dating website, I could see the entire map of the U.S. that had baited me in. I scrolled down a little bit and looked at the chunk of text on the page. “TL;DR” I thought aloud.

The map was colored with different shades of blue, everything from powdery white to deep Navy. The legend on the side of the map said the powdery blue areas meant less than .002% of the population got murdered. The darkest blue meant about .08% of everyone guaranteed to be murdered brutally in their sleep (or something along those lines).

Control +

Control +

Control +

Control -

I looked around to find my corner of the world. It got a little blurry when I zoomed in, but I could see the outline of my city. The county I live in was a dark blue—that much I figured since I overheard someone say a stranger tried to snatch their phone yesterday. A quick glance back at the legend told me it was the second or third darkest blue, so there was only a .05% chance of me being killed the next time I walked outside. That made me feel safe.

I switched back to YouTube, curious about the accuracy of the crime report I saw on Facebook.

Typing in search bar: Crime Rates in the US

Top 10 worst cities to live in the US

Click

After watching that video, I looked over in the recommended sidebar—or “up next” as YouTube is calling it now. The heads of the website are under the delusion that people are going to actually turn on their “autoplay” feature and let YouTube decide which promoted videos to play next. As if.

Absent minded click

12 most deadly cities in America

The second video told me the exact same information as the first one, but with two extra cities and an extra five minutes of watch-time. I didn’t notice because I had already forgotten the previous video. None of them mentioned my hometown, but, I watched, and then went back to the recommended bar and the spiral began.

10 most gruesome murders

Top 5 unsolved murder mysteries

Most Haunted Places in America

The Most Haunting Moments in Video Game History

Petrifying Promontories Game Review

Fifth Night’s Nightmare Plot Explained

When I was done watching the in-depth analysis of the horror-game trilogy I never intended to play because I didn’t really care, I scrolled to the comments.

ButterGNome: “I don’t understand why these games get so much attention. They’re not frightening in the slightest. Only chicken shit little 12 year old girls should be afraid jump scares like this.”

147 others up-voted this

Up-vote

Alex000: “we NEED more Fifth Night’s. This game is so good.”

281 others up-voted this

Down-vote

ButterGNome: “+Alex000 fuck off you little sack of shit.”

Down-vote.

“Too far Mr. Gnome,” I thought to myself. “What a pity.”

FalconWings: “I’m doing a playthrough of this game on my channel 0w0. You should come check it out. (btw sub4subs XD)”

0 others up-voted this

Immediate, no-hesitation down-vote

Me: “Who do you think you are that”

Cancel

Me: “Who do you think cares?”

Cancel

Me: “No one”

Cancel

I had to say something to FalconWings. It was my duty as an internet citizen of the year 2016 to violently attack anyone who unironically said OwO. Where did generic-anime-girl-I didn’t-recognize-profile-picture get the gull self-promote in the comment section of someone else’s video? Thorough punishment was needed, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I needed ammo. I clicked on FalconWings’s name and went to the channel.

368 subscribers.

130 videos, All organized with recognizable black and purple thumbnails that had the title of the game, a picture from it, and, in the bottom corner, a big #47 or #20 to show the order they were uploaded in.

“Ok, so the channel homepage looks well-made, but the playthroughs are probably garbage,” I told myself. The Fifth Night’s playlist caught my eye. I clicked on the video with the #6 in the corner. It wouldn’t be fair if I judged the very first episode before they had a chance to get good.

The video started up with a take on the “Hey, guys, welcome back to my let’s play of ________” line that literally every person who makes playthroughs starts with. It went like this:

Female voice: “So I see you still haven’t found anything better to do with your life and are back here watching me. That’s good. Really. Welcome back. We’re still in the _______ part. ___________ just happened.”

She had an annoyingly good microphone. She spoke clearly, no funky foreign accent, like Australian or miscellaneous-small-European-country that I had to strain my ears to understand. (Oops. Facebook made me do a xenophobia.) And the quality of the captured footage looked just as good as the video I had come from.

The playthrough only went on for about 15 seconds before she jumped screaming at something. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to know what scared her. I just heard her start screaming and looked up in the top left corner where she had a webcam pointed at her face while she played. Her long white-blond hair was flapping around like a mop on her head as she shook around.

Jump cut

She’s in a different part of the game, running away from whatever scared her

Another scream

Laughs

Jump cut

She has a total mental break down

Only thirty seconds into the video

I chuckled, futilely biting my bottom lip to stop it. Much to my dismay I was unable to find anything wrong with her video. It wasn’t a low quality piece of shit like I thought it would be. It wasn’t the same exact thing as every other gameplay channel, only a few of them. It actually made me laugh, something not many people with less than a million subscribers could do anymore.

Me: “I’m only here because you made a self-promoting post on some other video like an arrogant little asshole. But this video is actually funny, so you win this round. You’re promotes are supper cringe. You’ll probably get further in the long run if you stop.”

I looked over the comment once or twice to make sure it was the right amount of compliment and insult. I couldn’t let her think I enjoyed the video, and I still had to reprimand her for her sins. Let us not forget the unironic OwO. It still wasn’t right, but whatever. It did the trick, and I had already wasted enough time with this silly distraction.

Post