The Virtual Entourage

Coming to a quarantine near you. “ @apersonyouvenevermetbefore wants to send you a message”

I haven’t abandoned this blog, I’ve been staring at my window distracted by the hellfire of 2020. Let’s begin! Recline your chair or put your feet up on your kid’s, pets, or unopened tv box because we have been panic buying!

Likes, DM’s, Mom pages, Performative Activists... a world in which your external validation stems from strangers on an app, where hot takes you didn’t come up with are formed in tweets and you’ve isolated yourself so much from the real world that you believe you’re the only valid person in existence! 

Is this a thriller? Yes, it is. I survive this story the Black person doesn’t die first in this horror flick. 

Are you imagining ominous music in the background? Or are you normal?

A lot of my writing hangs on digital life, it’s such a huge flame in our back pockets, how can we not discuss it. I inconsistently post on Instagram, tweet gangsta shit on twitter, and lurk on Facebook to check out the cheerleader who locked flirty eyes with me once in 9th grade. She’s married now and following social distancing rules. You go girl. 

The internet is fascinating, because you’re either laying it out all bare or posts time-lapse photos of your asparagus fern in 365 days hiding behind an avatar of 20 years old you ( don’t take that idea I’m gonna create that exact account when I finish this) 

Okay, so why you’re really here DRAMA!!!! 

I just want to look up food pages and follow unconventional people with crooked smiles like myself, 2020 almost killed me and it sorta changed how I respond and act to things. Insert cliche “ life is short” and I won’t be punked simply due to being an accessible person. Something I keep in mind, there are people behind these accounts and I’m not entitled to them, it’s an honor that anyone wants to share their life with others, strangers at that. I feel like I’m imposing as if I shouldn’t be here, but I am like everyone else admiring following, blocking, and... Ouch! Fuck! Here it is, opens the gates of hell, —falling in weird internet drama.

I’m a Libra I love drama, I’ve applied to be a producer to The Real Housewives of New York 3 times and almost took a job at the Maury show. But I’m not just watching the drama per se, I’m analyzing who started what, who is in the wrong who has an undiagnosed case of narcissism and why did this person lie?! Yes, duh, of course, the hair-pulling, I never said I was healthy.

But I don’t want to be actually in drama, I wanna eat popcorn on the sidelines.

 I’m curious as to why we do things to hurt each other and how we handle it, sometimes it’s healing to clothesline someone in the neck because they messed with us and sometimes I just wanna crack a case to why you did what you did!

Every time my fiancé is trying to watch an episode of Monk, I get an alert that drama is near, I wanna blame this on the white guy in Monk,  but there’s more to it. I’ve considered that tiny robotic keyboards with legs controlled by the managers at Karen’s R’ Us have crawled in every avid internet user’s brain and they’re controlling this main character narrative that makes us think everything is about us! We’ve lost all forms of how to communicate with one another, all forms of how the world functions... I hate to break it to you,  we have a long history of being unoriginal but the internet told us we’re the best! In all our mediocre glory. It’s like those participation certificates? Remember those? You raised your hand once during the semester and it was only to go blow cigarette smoke out of the restroom window, staring at that one chick carving her boyfriend’s name in a heart on a stall. Then all of a sudden, you’re sitting one day during an assembly and hear your name being called, and everyone claps. You get up confused at first but you’re like fuck yeah, I love this, don’t hold the applause. 

On the internet, we have our own little community pods applauding us every day and it’s not their fault. We drive away with it, get a bat and knock off the side view mirrors! You like me because I’m different and I’m the only one doing this... then you scroll past ... no, no wait, no, there are more people who exist and have the same ideas? 

The internet can cause some friction, it’s a claustrophobic app that’s holding millions of people, you have to start hating someone for no reason right? That reason could be some bitch ate a burger and is still a size 2! Or this person said this better than I ever could!! She’s a witch burn her! Or maybe you’re actually the victim this time... finally right? You have proof to destroy this person’s weird internet theories they’ve created because your existence is turning them on, in the friendliest way possible, you’re best friend material. Hear me and my theories out, anytime someone hates me I assume they just couldn’t say “hey can we be friends?” 

I mean it’s endless, the ways we feel inferior, and threatened by each other online, since living our real lives offline we aren’t accessing thousands of random people every day, we never have. Because this isn’t real life! We’re not being followed by an army of comments throwing heart emojis at us while we’re jogging... well unless we’re Instagramming it then maybe you might walk around with a virtual entourage all day, and cool for you. 

We have to do mental gymnastics around how we’re feeling after we read a subliminal post, and our own boy band fan base centers us in the world of excellence so everything will feel like you’re the main character. And what the internet has taught me is that I’m only the main character in my own story. On my own page. Think of it like this; we’re all Netflix shows and sometimes we’re queued up in the same genre, same stories, different actors, can we co-exist on the internet, please? 

Haha just kidding tell people to fuck off, let everyone know you’re from the streets even if it was in the suburbs, you lived on a street, right? Don’t say avenue. 

Block everyone with a fire that can fuel a Wawa gas station, write a book about your nemesis, and don’t look back! 

The next episode of Monk is playing and my therapist is reading this, which means she’s gonna call me. See ya.

*its a jungle out there,  it’s a jungle out there*