The first weekend of confinement we made video conferences before we even missed each other. Almost as a way to probe the future terrain, to discover how we were going to see ourselves from now on. There was more curiosity than strict desire to see us. The networks were filled with screenshots of the calls themselves as a way to get used to it. I myself shared, on day 2 of confinement, a capture of a Zoom to three with my mother and sister. Under normal conditions, he wouldn't have made a call that day, much less a video call. I'm also the type of person who always finds something better to do than talk on the phone. Not only did I make the video call, but I shared the screenshot on Instagram and after a while I deleted it. I felt, like most of the time these days, ridiculous in networks.
All this absurd process coincides with the reading of False Mirror , by Jia Tolentino, and I do not stop thinking all the time on the Internet as an amplifier of all the absurd. I read bad news and instantly feel bad for thinking about sharing a video of me and my family playing Asteroids Attack on my mother's virtual birthday, a game where you steer a ship with your nose while dodging obstacles. I feel sad and happy playing Asteroids Attack, moving my nose as I speak to my mother. Confined. I do not understand anything. I do not share capture because I decide that I am ashamed.
"There is no limit to the amount of misfortune that a person can perceive via the Internet (...) and there is no way to correctly calibrate this information; There is no manual to learn to broaden our hearts and thus accommodate these simultaneous scales of human experience, nor a way to learn to separate the banal from the deep, "suggests Tolentino in a very eloquent essay that understands the doses of impotence and pleasure generated by the Internet.
I go back to the first weekend of confinement, we made video calls with people that we had not seen in a long time. We made combinations so improbable that it happened that there were people being seen by Zoom that had not been seen in real life. It was wonderful. More than connecting or really talking about us, we needed to contextualize ourselves in that crazy scenario. I mean, talk about everything that was happening. Childhood friends or ex-boyfriends who only talk to you when you are in poor health or have won an award return in these times of global pandemic to have a moment of estrangement, fear and joint freak. It seems very natural to me. I've already had my share of all that.
The second Saturday we had a party. An almost real party. A party where we shared the screen and played a Bad Bunny song, so we all danced the same thing while drinking. When we disconnected, the apartment was empty again and my friends seemed like a mirage. It was as if something broke and I was left alone with my drunkenness.
As the days go by, I notice that the display of screenshots has been reduced. It is not that people have stopped making video calls, but now there is no performance element. Now the habit begins. Or as Fernando Simón, the visible face of the health crisis until this week, warned, the first three days of confinement can be “fun”, but then comes the good, that is, the sad.
That Zoom, that Hangouts, is the tool you use now to connect with the boss (if you still have a boss) or with any stimulus from outside. It is becoming less and less exciting and in my case I remember why I did not like video calls. The image is cut and I can't hear you well, sorry. Every time one finishes, I can't help but wonder: will we get used to this? I start to want you to look me in the eyes, I want to touch you.
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