Wow, No Thank You - Samantha Irby Page 0,13

to me when I went to dinner with the kind of pretentious know-it-alls whose idea of fun is to condescend to you about wine and make fun of you for pronouncing “Ni?oise” incorrectly. One of these smug assholes boldly suggested that we all put our phones facedown in the center of the table for the entirety of the meal and the needlessly lingering discussion afterward. They did it. Grudgingly, I did it, too. I placed my phone facedown next to a twee mason jar with a plant in it and ordered an Aperol spritz and a focaccia to start, which is a dangerous choice because I can never tell from the menu description whether I’ll receive a piece of pre-meal snack-bread or if the waiter is going to wheel out a whole fucking pizza. When a modest board with a perfectly reasonable slab of rosemary-crusted bread was placed in front of me, the first thing I thought was “I wish I knew what everyone else on Earth was doing at this exact moment. I wonder if there is a device nearby that could tell me.”

We talked during dinner because my companions wanted to connect to one another. Everyone talked and talked and talked, but it was the kind of talking where you know every single person at the table is low-key wondering what they’re missing on Twitter. The only thing I’d done that had been more excruciating was the meditation I tried to take up but had to stop because I kept falling asleep. Now, okay, I didn’t die during dinner. But I also didn’t know what time it was or if anyone had texted me. I’m not really a post-a-picture-of-my-fancy-meal kind of person, but I could tell that other people wanted to. The air in that extremely Instagrammable restaurant was heavy with missed opportunity. Do you know what we talked about while cringing internally as the carafe of tap water we actually had to pay for came perilously close to splashing on our helpless devices every time it was passed? TV shows, which you can watch on a phone. Books, which, if your eyes haven’t already burned through the back of your skull from being on your phone all the time, you can read on it. Murder podcasts, which are specifically designed to be listened to on a phone in the shower or during a nightmare commute. Okay, fine, maybe you listen to podcasts on your computer while you’re working, but can’t we admit that your laptop is little more than a giant, foldable phone?

It’s annoying when someone bumps into you on the street because they’re looking down at a screen instead of paying attention to where they are going. I have had a handful of close calls in which I accidentally almost pinned a pedestrian under my front tires because they’d stepped into the street without glancing up from a phone. I bristle when the peaceful darkness of a movie theater is interrupted by a rude cell phone light, or worse, when a Parks and Recreation ringtone blasts through a tense, quiet moment from inside the pocket of a whimsical cherry-printed dress. I saw Dave Chappelle do a stand-up set one night in Nashville, and there were signs posted everywhere yelling at us in bold font that phones and cameras weren’t allowed in the theater. We would be ejected by security if we tried to record any part of the evening’s festivities, and I did a silent but enthusiastic cheer as a handful of people were escorted out as they tried to Snapchat parts of the act. Just be present, Gabe! Laugh along with the rest of us! You paid sixty-plus dollars for the ticket to this once-in-a-lifetime experience!

It’s bonkers to pay money to go to a Broadway show on opening night and sit in the front row and text. I get it. But if I have to go sit in the lobby or on the toilet, I would like to get a couple rounds of Words with Friends in. It’s only fair.

I deleted my Facebook account. I mean I really deleted it, “scorched-earth, can’t ever reactivate it, good-bye to all my 2012 photos” deleted it, “whoops, I forgot to get your phone number before I bailed and Facebook was the only connective tissue between us, guess I’m never going to talk to you again?” deleted it. Having