Logan is depressed, just like a lot of the rest of the world he’s living in right now. For the first time in his life, he’s turning to fully online friend groups and Discord servers. David is out of his life, and he can’t make friends in public right now, so it’s the best he can do to socialize. Logan has always been a social butterfly and a leader, but in online spaces he feels strangely out of his depth.
Small online communities are largely based on seniority and who’s been around the longest. This is true of a lot of in-person communities too, but it’s a bit less intense. A total stranger can walk into a (small) organized event like a potluck or a book club, and help hang streamers or grab napkins real quick if they’re so inclined. In an online community of the same breed, every stranger must prove themselves before being allowed anywhere near the metaphorical streamers.
It makes sense. Your in-person book club isn’t likely right next to every street in the world, including federal prisons and somehow the gates of hell; your online Discord server dedicated to snails eating strawberries is. No matter what you do, or how you set up moderation, the unwashed masses will come. You let a total stranger hang up metaphorical streamers? Bang! Those are Nazi streamers now! You let them bring food to your theoretical potluck? Yeah good luck clicking that link, it sends you straight to virus city, population; you, an idiot for clicking a random link sent by a total stranger.
Logan isn’t a total noob when it comes to being online, of course he’s not; he can’t be. He went to a normal school, and has relatively average parents. He fell somewhere in the huge space between iPad kids and ‘Christian Moms Against Computers’ kids. He’s at neither extreme, just somewhere in the median. He got his own laptop sometime in his early teens, but he never really used it to communicate with strangers. He’s got a Facebook, a Twitter and an Instagram, and he’s friends with people he actively knows on all three. He logged onto Omegle once on a dare in high school and never really tried again. That place was weird and gross. He had a Neopets account, but that wasn’t really engaging for him. He plays video games, but only on his PlayStation, offline.
Now, he’s forced to get online to get his socialization fix.
He tries some different Discord servers. In the first one, he offers immediately to try and program a bot the mods are having issues with. Logan doesn’t know anything about programming, or Discord bots, he just likes to be helpful. He’s sure he could manage with the help of Google. Offering doesn’t get him the reaction he expects, though. The vibe gets somehow awkward, and Logan is left feeling sure he made some sort of mistake. When people begin ignoring his attempts to connect all together, he leaves. As he server jumps, each time he is less and less sure he knows what he’s doing. Usually, offering to be helpful makes him friends and makes him seem friendly and personable. Online, not so much.
Finally, he does figure out that what he needs is slowly-built trust over time. This makes sense, but is frustrating given his current situation. He sticks around for awhile in a few, and sees how newbies are mostly showing off things they’ve done. Code they’ve written, art they’ve made, games they’ve beaten, things they’ve baked. Whatever makes sense for the group he’s found himself in, people show off, and as they do, become part of the community.
Now Logan has a new problem. He doesn’t have any special skills.
Some people show off their pets, which he can take part in, but if he’s honest with himself, that won’t last long. Noodle is twenty, and most pictures he snags of her are sleeping in her favorite spot, experiencing a pampered end-of-life phase.
Logan’s parents watch in bafflement as he orders from their family Amazon account. Sketchbooks, pencils, a beginner crochet kit, a friendship bracelet kit for children, yarn. From the bookshop he carts up how-to books for everything under the sun, and some cookbooks to go through while he’s at it.
Kelly and Michael decide not to step in, but to watch in confusion as Logan seems to be self-soothing some major cabin fever. Logan, however, has decided to use this time to speed-run…having hobbies?
Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them
T w e n t y S i d e d
