Persuasion

“Please don’t do that,” Isabella is standing behind me trying to grab her phone out of my outstretched hand as my thumb hovers over the blue “Disable Account” button in her favorite social media app. I feel Isabella’s breath on the back of my neck as she reaches her left arm underneath and I clamp my arm down, thwarting her attempt. She swings her other arm around the outside of my body, and I drop the phone down low, out of her reach. I turn to face her and say to my best friend since college, “Bella, stop and take a look at yourself right now. You’re legit freaking out.”

She throws both of her hands up in the air as if I’m robbing her at gunpoint and her frantic look quickly switches to one of innocence, “Sam, I’m not freaking out. You know I need to interact constantly with my followers if I want to make my business happen.” Isabella, once an aspiring artist herself now focused singularly and intensely on posting content to her social media account to realize her dream of opening her own art gallery in New York City.

I pause, considering her excuse, but decide I’m not buying it. “It’s only a 48-hour break Bell. If you can’t stomach a short break, then you are addicted just like Elon Musk wants you to be!” My frustration is seeping through. I don’t understand how she can’t how see this is ruining our friendship and her formerly blossoming, now deceased, art career and just overall life in general.

“Elon Musk runs Tesla Sam, not social media,” sighs Isabella. “I think you’re trying to throw Mark Zuckerberg under the bus right now.”

“You know what I mean!” I cry. “Remember when we used to LIVE our moments, not focus on what those moments looks like to other people? Or how many likes we are going to get by people from high school that never talked to us the first place?” I flashback to the summer of 2000, the semester we spent wandering Italy was one of the happiest of my life. We’d wake early, everyday a sunny one, go to our respective classes then meet each other at the steps of the Duomo where we would sit and smoke cigarettes, watching the Italian couples pass while an elderly man strummed his mandolin on the street corner. How could I have anticipated that these moments would end? That in a few short years I would sit in a group of several people and not even a single one of them would look up from their cell phones to notice I was there. 

Isabella sighs deep and places her hands on her hips. “Sam, I think you’re overreacting. Social media has no meaning, you just give it one. No one has a better life than you or me or anybody else. YOU need to stop believing people.”

“What do you mean ‘stop believing people’?” I practically wail.

“It’s like, if someone goes to Coachella and they’re taking all these sunny pictures with perfect outfits on and they’re with perfect looking people, it’s not real.”

“They’re not really at Coachella???” I spit back, wide eyed now and in absolute confused dismay.

Now it’s Isabella’s turn to get frustrated. “Omigod Sam, yes they’re really at Coachella. But they probably got drunk the night before, hooked up with someone they shouldn’t have and are now attempting to cure their shame with this picture and hoping will give them lots of ‘likes’ so they can feel better about themselves.”

“That documentary I watched said it’s the same thing as a slot matching. It gives you dopamine hits.”

“Exactly,” Isabella replies.

“Well how are you any different?” I ask her dropping my hands down to my sides, her eyes following her phone the entire way down.

“I’m not addicted. I do this because I have to do this. I’m making so many connections in the art world.”

“But what about your art career? You’re not creating anything anymore. It’s just all so shallow it’s depressing.” Although my desire for Isabella to take an Instagram break is mostly for her benefit, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a personal stake in the process. Ever since the day we downloaded the app excitedly, together, the promise of catching up with old friends and spying on exes being too enticing to resist, I had slowly over the years begun to despise this app. What started out as a fun diversion soon began to replace actual interaction and when I created my first post all I ever thought about again was my post. How many likes did it get? Are people still liking it? It’s there forever? Social media kept me more stuck in old moments than my brain did for God sakes. And having to be internet-ready at all times was exhausting honestly. Yeah, I have bad angles. Isabella, for the most didn’t, and therefore her internet start continued to rise and rise.

“It’s just a tool Sam!” shouts Isabella. “It’s not that big of a deal! Can I have my phone back now please?”

“How about Lisa Kellerman?” I asked. “That girl we graduated with.” I re-explained to her about that one time we tried to find out who the most successful person from our graduating class was. At the reunion, most people had agreed that Lisa Kellerman was hands-down the most successful as she had made the list of top five social media influencers and had something close to “almost a million” followers.

“Yeah, I remember that, so?” Bella says.

“Craig from our physics class just invented something that gets us closer to Mars!” I shout back at her.

“Listen,” she says. “I have to do this for my career and sometimes this adult stuff gets takes up a lot of time. We just don’t have the time to hang out like we used to. But I love you. And promise to try hard to make you feel special, you freak. Now hand me back my phone please.”

I look down at her phone in my hand and grin back up at her. “The screen went black anyway.”

The next day I smiled as the dashboard of my car alerted me to an incoming call from ‘Bella.’ She called to tell me a celebrity contacted her and asked her if she wanted to be a partner in her new art business. I congratulated her and she congratulated me as had deleted my social media accounts the night before.