“Nicholas sank deeper into the faux-leather sofa that perfectly camouflaged his degraded wardrobe of black cotton and dark denim. The surrounding living room was a standard-issue minefield of tangled cables and accumulated debris. Lit by the crisp 1080p glare of his laptop screen, he took a desperate, lung-busting pull from his weed vape, chasing the seven seconds of cognitive silence where the feedback loop finally died. He was six months away from thirty, unemployed, and surviving on a rotating carousel of chemical oblivion to mute the interior noise. Yet here he was, at three in the morning, holding the line on a classic World of Warcraft custom server, mentally drafting a piece of Situationist satire about the raid.
“Make me a sandwich, bitch,” a squeaky voice shrieked through the headset at the guild’s only female healer.
Nicholas exhaled a thick cloud of vapor as existential dread circulated through his bloodstream. He hated the mental health industrial complex, but he hated adolescent misogyny slightly more. He unmuted his microphone, instantly weaponizing his useless undergraduate philosophy degree.
“Listen to me, you prepubescent artifact of bourgeois neuroses,” Nicholas rasped, his voice dripping with the detached cynicism that usually ruined his real-life relationships. “Your rigid, localized identity is a pathetic defense mechanism against a cosmos that is fundamentally predatory. You cling to digital patriarchy because you are terrified that reality is just primordial fire in perpetual flux. Now heal the raid before I track your IP and introduce you to Hegelian bad infinity.”
The lobby fell dead silent. Nicholas killed the remaining third of his cheap Comrade Vodka in three long swallows. He was the vanguard of early-internet feminism, a reluctant white knight wrapped in the grim, comfortable familiarity of suicidal depression. The girl in the chat quietly thanked him. Nicholas felt a swell of innocent pride for once, but hollowed out, entirely exhausted by his meager existence.
The digital crusade was over for the night, leaving him alone with his faulty neurochemistry and the overwhelming urge to spark a menthol. He dragged himself toward the front porch, wondering if his entire online persona was just another externalized splinter of his own fragmented ego.
If Nicholas was forced to exist in this engineered construct, did he at least choose the right philosophical coping mechanism to survive the era?
-AI Wrote It. You’re still gay, critics.”
-Brett William Urben