“Pick me up.”
He looked at the locked front door, then the room itself, wondering if he was hearing things.
“Look at me.”
He put down the book he was reading and tip-toed around the room, trying to locate the sound. When he got to the opposite end of the room he looked back at the place he was sitting – visualizing himself a few minutes before, hearing that calm and soothing voice. He looked at the book, laying facedown on the table, and thought maybe it was part of the story somehow. Maybe he wasn’t paying enough attention. Maybe he was subconsciously projecting the story into reality. In that moment he couldn’t remember what he was reading anyway.
“Pick me up.”
The voice sounded the same as before. The same distance, tone, calmness. It didn’t matter where he was in the room. It was real, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t place its origin. It seemed to coming from outside the walls, an extra diegetic emanation he wasn’t sure he should be hearing, like something a narrator was saying to an audience without the characters knowing. It felt like he was being let in on a secret, which made him feel crazy the second the thought popped into his head.
He grabbed his keys and shot out the door, determined to walk it off. There were a long line of sports coaches in his youth who were big proponents of walking off any minor injury. Middle aged men who spent a sizable chunk of their time distilling complex problems and situations into bite sized lessons that somehow always came back to bottling up the problem and moving on without a second thought. It was engrained in his thought process now. If it worked all those times for muscle strains and bruises then surely it could be applied to ethereal voices as well. He walked for miles without hearing a single word. Convinced the voice was gone, he went home.
He entered slowly, fearful that the voice was somehow linked to the room. He sat down and looked at his book, then his phone, both sitting idle on the table. He wasn’t sure how he left the phone behind, or hadn’t missed it while he was walking. He never let it out of his sight, let alone left it behind. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Everything was a little off, a little different than normal. It was difficult to concentrate on anything. He thought of trying to read again, centering his mind on one thing, but he was afraid his mind would drift back to the voice, bring it back from wherever it came. Instead, he picked up his phone and opened his favorite application to see what the algorithm had in store for him today. He wasn’t always sure if it knew what he liked or was trying to convince to like certain things. He thought it was the latter, but still let himself be sucked into the vortex anyway. It was an easy way to not think about anything.
The first video was a boob tube thing, a term he coined for videos that prominently featured a woman’s breasts, no matter what else was going on the scene. They were the unspoken main character, the reason people watched he supposed. This video was from a couple he recognized. Their setup was pretty basic. The man would film and stay behind the camera, usually baiting his girlfriend into a childish and unfunny prank. He would steal food off her plate at a restaurant, for example, or call her by his last name in fake earnestness. She would always react the same way; stare straight into the camera, feign surprise, then take back her food or give the boyfriend a little push, whatever physical reaction the prank would normally elicit from a person. The setups weren’t just basic. They were downright stupid. What tied them all together was the girlfriend’s interesting choice of clothing. She always wore a skin tight shirt, obviously without a bra underneath, which accentuated her surgically enhanced chest. They were the focal point of every video, but unstated for some reason. It was clear people weren’t watching for the pranks, but sitting there watching in a new light, he questioned his assumptions. Maybe a woman would see it differently, if they even watched. Maybe there was something wrong with his sense of humor. He watched another one of their videos, shown to him without choosing, where the girlfriend accepts a large bottle of soda that is shaken up and opened just before it is handed to her. This was maybe a groundbreaking episode – wet boob tube.
The next video was one guy playing three roles – a wealthy person, a merely rich person, and a straight man. Each had a stereotypical style and affect, designed to make the straight man seem common and rational, while the merely rich person acted like an inconsiderate ass hole, and the wealthy person was the picture of cool. After watching a few in succession – ordering coffee, talking to a mechanic, trading in a cell phone – he wondered which character he identified with. He didn’t know. He also wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was an actual stereotype or something made true through these repetitive videos. He didn’t know many rich nor wealthy people, and the ones he did know seemed to all act similarly. Maybe it was supposed to be funny? Maybe being wealthy or a regular Joe was better than being somewhere in between? But if that was the case, why would people in that group automatically be mean to regular people. It didn’t make sense, but judging by the millions of view, it didn’t need to.
The next video was a long-haired fake rocker type who went to a guitar store acting like he was new to the instrument, but proceeded to “shred” and presumably impress the music store employees. One thing that was odd was the presence of the unacknowledged cameraman trailing the fake rocker. Who films an adult going to buy their first guitar? The employees ignore the cameraman, like they are in on the setup. He also thought it was odd that anyone would care about the skill level of a prospective buyer. A salesman will sell a guitar to whoever wants one, no? Then there is the main character, which he thought of as a fake rocker for good reason. In all the videos he dresses like a cartoon version of a rock musician, which are inherently cartoonish to begin with, but the actor takes it to another level. He’s like something out of central casting, or the airbrush Hollywood would put on an otherwise marginal social figure. He thought about all of those questions as he cycled through all the videos, always the same setup and payoff – guitar store noob becomes rock star god in one minute flat.
Three hours later, with his eyes starting to close, and the voice completely gone, he put down his phone and got into his bed. He wondered what it was like to land on a viral persona then have to live inside that box in perpetuity. It seemed like a jail sentence, but with the obvious financial rewards that come with likes and views and ample product placements negotiated by a team of agents and managers. He wondered what would become of those people when their entertainment hack ran dry and had to pivot to normal life. He also wondered who would take their place. What bite sized entertainer was in the proverbial lab thinking up the next great hack. Those thoughts made him feel better himself, like he was above it all, seeing it from a distance, a dispassionate critic, albeit one who regularly samples the product.
He finally sank into a beautiful sleep where he dreamed that the algorithm would recommend a video that could answer all his questions, and still be entertaining.
“Pick me up, Look at me.”
The voice jolted him awake, but now he had a sense of its origin. He picked up his phone and turned off the power. He was still half asleep and probably dreaming. That kind of will power only exists in dreams.
