PORTALS NOT PETS

Sometimes I just want to throw my phone into the sea. You know - slip it out of a well-worn pocket, grab it by the corner, and hurl it full-pelt into the ocean waves, never to be seen again.

Yeah. And you can take all that social media with you too, you little plastic brick. All the politics and showing off and all the pretending everything’s okay. Splash into the sea like it’s 1997.

“Where have you been, Matt? Did you get my message?”

“In the sea.”

I won’t do it. Life’s woven in to having the Internet in your pocket now, and it’s lonely when inevitably you just get forgotten about. And that would happen, as charming and as likeable as I am. Polls and meet-ups would come and go. Group chats would rise and fall like stars in the sky, all without you. Information would be slow to reach you if it ever came at all, and there’s only so many times you could tell people that you’re not on WhatsApp because you threw your phone into the sea.

“You did… what?”

But along with the connection to people you like… comes the inevitable portal to the underworld.

Yes I can make my family laugh on our group chat, but also I’m one click away from Right Wing Fred who wants to tell me in detail why Progressive Marxism will lead to the end of civilisation, or Lefty Lou - who reposts straight-faced intolerance at transphobes, and wants to tell me how capitalism will.. you guessed it… eventually lead to the end of civilisation.

Then along comes a US election (today). You might already know the result if you’re reading this tomorrow, but I don’t yet. The only guaranteed thing is that half the world think that the outcome is the best thing ever, and the other half are furious. Relief, vindication, righteousness, fury, red-faced allegations, despair, hate - it’s an inevitable blend tomorrow. And that bittersweet-sweetbitter mixture will pour through your portal to the underworld, and it will seep into your pocket, regardless of who wins.

Also… and this is on me… I still spend too much time on it. I reach for it in the mornings, I cradle it at night. I caress it with a scrolling finger, I peer into its bright blue face and let it ping and buzz and hum at me for attention. But it’s not a pet. It’s a portal.

So. If not the sea then what?