ECHO CHAMBER MOOT

“Do you think you might ever branch into providing Internet?” I tweeted to my ISP, “Only I think I’d be interested.”

I had to apologise for the sarcasm. They replied pretty quickly with some advice, and then I phoned them up and yes, they turned out to be even more helpful. It’s odd because you hear a lot of negativity about their service, and their support, out there in the world.

“Oooh, you’re with them are you?” ask people when you tell them, sharply inhaling. “Only yourself to blame then,” or “You probably want to switch to…” whatever.

They were okay today. I got through to a real person with just three clicks and three rings of a phone. He was a young man called Brett, who seemed more nervous than I was. I put him at ease while he got me to go through the security questions.

Then I told him how my hub silently flashes the word ‘INTERNET’ at me as though it’s some sort of taunt, and how I can’t actually get online despite checking for network outages, having unplugged, replugged, switched off and on, and performed a rather uncomfortable ‘pinhole reset’. He was sympathetic. Nonetheless, young Brett agreed that someone should come round to look at it.

“Could you make sure the engineer lets me know when he’s coming to look at my hub?” I asked. He reassured me that that would happen (booked for Wednesday).

“Thanks Brett,” I said as warmly as I could.

“Would you mind mentioning my name in your feedback?” said the young man, nervously, telling me about how I’d get surveyed on how well this call went… “Only I’m still in my training, and it would help me out.”

“Sure thing,” I said, smiling, “I’ll make sure I do that.”

It’s funny how your echo chamber tells you a narrative about something being true, but when you actually dig deep, you find a slightly different story. We’re all part of families, organisations, companies, clubs, that presumably have a reputation out there, lambasted or praised in certain corners of social media. There’s probably an element of truth to what they’re saying, but it can’t be the whole picture, can it? It’s always worth finding that out for yourself.

Mind you, without the Internet being plugged in, social media’s a bit of a moot point, isn’t it?