T w e n t y S i d e d

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

Logan sits at the dinner table looking between his parents. The cups of tea are growing cold on the table as Logan gives several false starts to what he’s trying to say.

“It’s…a few things…” He mumbles, followed by silence.

The creeks and moans of the old house always grow louder when the family is at a loss for words. The layers of wood and brick and old insulation that have been in their family for a century almost become part of the conversation, the house putting in it’s own quiet two cents. Tonight, it’s grumbling, maybe about Logan’s predicament, maybe about the mice in the basement.

“You know…” Logan finally speaks again, his voice sounding louder than reality for a moment, breaking the pause.

“I’m failing English…” He offers, looking defeated. Kelly and Michael share a look, but don’t interrupt yet. It’s not like Logan to do badly in a class, but they’re far more surprised at the idea that he’d think they’d be…mad? No, that doesn’t make sense.

When his parents say nothing, Logan continues.

“And I hate living in my dorm.”

Alright, that made some sense, sort of, but the world was on lock-down, living in his dorm couldn’t be an issue now.

“The showers are down the hall and you have to carry your stuff and change in a weird kind of communal space.”

Another pause.

“Like, it’s private! But it’s also not? Like a pool changing room? Or public bathroom? It grosses me out!”

Logan is on a roll now. His parents nod sympathetically as he vents, letting him go.

“And I hate this lock-down, I miss the grocery store! I didn’t think I would and now I do!”

Fair enough. No one is enjoying the current situation.

“And- and David! I called him when I got back home! And everything was fine until I mentioned a guy on campus asked me out! I was just laughing about it and…” Logan is looking hard at his parents’ faces, trying to gauge their feelings. “I’m not even gay! I don’t think? I don’t know! I didn’t say yes!”

Logan grows more and more animated, all the bundled up feelings of the last few weeks coming rapidly to the surface.

“But David got really grossed out! And said some really awful stuff! We’ve been friends since like, eighth grade and I didn’t know he felt that way! And then…I realized I didn’t know how my mom and dad felt either, and maybe I had this whole idea of how everyone thought and then wham! I find out my best friend is a homophobe! How were we friends for years and years and I didn’t even…”

Logan is experiencing a paradigm shift. A nasty, frustrating paradigm shift.

He slumps, and puts his head in his hands, speaking into them. “That whole friendship is just gone…we fought…and…”

Kelly puts an arm around her son, Michael gives her a hopeless look. Neither of them know what to do, their son’s world has just expanded rapidly, and he’s gotten hurt in the process. It’s easy for a twenty-something to think everyone thinks the same way, especially if they’ve never been challenged. ‘Homophobe’, to Logan, was a word for a nasty little Disney villain type out there, kicking puppies and picketing parades. To another kid, ‘Homophobe’ is something some self righteous little shit throws around as a way of saying ‘less open-minded than myself’. Both of those kids are wrong, and both of them have to learn it sometime. Sadly, for Logan, he’s lost a friend to the process.

Despite the fact neither parent fully knows where they stand or how they feel yet, they affirm that David shouldn’t have said those things.

Kelly and Michael later stay up, sitting and reading through several advice columns and Reddit threads about having gay kids. Logan hadn’t come out to them, but he had admitted he didn’t know what he was, so they decide to get ahead and read up just in case. Would either of them have really cared or been upset if Logan brought home a boyfriend? No…but they also wouldn’t have been prepared for it. The thought hadn’t even crossed their minds.

The age of the internet is strange. Logan had an entire belief system built on the part of the internet he used in high school. David had his own, and Kelly and Michael didn’t experience either. All they can do now is go to research on the exact thing that cause the whole situation and try and be more prepared. This is a mess.

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them