Wow, No Thank You - Samantha Irby Page 0,14

intimate-seeming connections to people I don’t actually know was starting to weird me out. Sure, there’s value in community, but I was sick of seeing fake-news links and thinking, “Wait, how do I know this dingbat again?” But I kind of loved some of those dingbats! And I really loved being able to scroll through their lives and see everything they’ve been doing that they’re comfortable sharing with an audience of virtual strangers without having to, you know, ever talk to them! Do you ever think about how incredible it is that you can pop on your aunt Tracy’s page while in the waiting room at your doctor’s office like, “Great, her dog is still alive! Wow, she got a new car! That haircut is pretty cute….Man, my cousins are a fucking mess. Damn, I see she’s still into conspiracy theories. Oh no, my strep test is positive?” That’s the magic of your pocket computer. You can find out everything you need to know without subjecting your full attention to your college crush’s bad jokes and awful personality. When is the last time an actual human interaction made you laugh more than a meme did?

Sometimes connecting with other people online sucks, like when some dummy you barely remember is assaulting you with posts about beauty products that you can purchase only if they sell them to you from out of a suitcase in your living room, or when people won’t stop trolling you with their truly terrible takes. This makes my case for cell phones > real human interaction even stronger, because you can just block people and pretend they died. You know, without going to jail for murdering them. One time, in an incredibly brave act of self-care, I blocked a dude because he posted the grossest-looking photo of food he was eating, two seconds after I had blocked another dude who was trying to sell me his mixtape in the year of our Lord 2018. Wow, sir, no fucking thank you! I could go on and on about a fifth-grade locker partner adding me to various LuLaRoe legging groups or spamming my Instagram with links for “Free iPhones!” but listen, you know who I’m talking about. And you shouldn’t feel bad for even a second for blocking that hoe and throwing her a funeral in your heart.

Every time someone’s Internet presence feels like a personal attack on my life, I first try to have compassionate thoughts like, “What if something terrible is happening in her world?” because there’s still a very slim chance that hell is real and I’d like to have a plausible defense of my actions on Earth should there be some sort of way to argue my way out of damnation. But then I think, “Well, if she was actually suffering, there’s no way she’d be spamming me links to all these pyramid schemes,” and my guilt evaporates just long enough for me to click that block button so I can move on with my day. I’m a patient person and hesitant to alienate anyone who might have fifteen dollars lying around to buy my books, but it dawned on me the other day that, for me, the Internet has to be a meticulously curated digital space in which your uncle’s vaguely racist tweets have no place.

I hate fighting. I’m sensitive and, frankly, not good at it. If the consequence of bickering online means I’ve got to spend the afternoon feeling bad because a kid I don’t remember from high school called me a “fat-ass Kelly Price” over a Reductress article, please murder me. And if my tweets get on your goddamn nerves: BLOCK ME FIRST. Kill me with your powerful brain! There are too many places in real life where blocking is not a viable option to tolerate someone ruining your secret lives online. You can’t block the coworker who won’t stop fucking talking while loitering nearby as you’re just trying to put half-and-half in your breakroom coffee, but you can block that friend of a friend who says shit like, “I’m not prejudiced, I don’t care if a person is purple or green or blue.” LMAO, blue people???? SHUT THE FUCK UP. You can’t delete the neighbor whose eyesore of a car is parked halfway across your driveway and whose cat keeps shitting on your deck, but you can delete your cousin who earnestly believes that