Mina

Wednesday, March 13th, 12:30 a.m.

“I sometimes worry people won’t like me”

I think he could feel me looking at him. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I heard a knock at my dorm room in the middle of night followed by the words “you’ve been served.” Always just three feet away- twice a week in a crammed lecture room. One squirrelly, 130-pound kid between us who chewed his gum to the beat of a song that was  blaring through his rose gold headphones. When I felt like the heat of my gaze was making him itch, I’d begin to stare at his shoes. I’d silently trace the outline of the blue nike swoosh with my eyes, it would swing down with impatience, then slowly jolt up in a perfect 45 degree angle. I practically worshipped the ground those shoes walked on. Yet, I would never talk to him.

His name was Andrew. Born and raised in the Boston area, #17 on his high-school lacrosse team. He had a Spotify playlist called “gym workout,” with one-two-many Drake songs in a row, a sister that went to UC Berkeley, and an exceptionally chubby Corgi named Bo.

How incredibly informative Instagram can be. With the push of a single ‘follow” button, Andrew’s entire life story was at the literal touch of my fingertips. Who needs face to face interaction when you have social media?

Well, that may be a bit of an over exaggeration, but it holds weight. Twitter is our very own version of screaming into the void. Instagram is the most meticulous, almost fantastical version of ourselves; if we don’t follow each other are we actually friends?

This Tuesday, I went to a conference on digital media at UM’s Rackham Auditorium. The keynote speaker, Tom Insel, talked about how depression on campuses are at an all-time high. He suggested that one way we could possibly change this phenomenon is through social media itself. In the near future, he predicts, we could potentially have artificial intelligence acting as our own personal therapists. Imagine that! A completely objective, unbiased, fully trained computer giving humans life advice? How incredibly ironic the twenty-first century is. 

Now what I’m about to suggest might sound a bit like the premise of the awkward, yet moving 2013 drama Her– and perhaps in it’s own way it is. But I wondered, could I truly connect with someone that I didn’t know just purely over the internet? I’m not talking like a friendship-based-Tinder. But an actual, faceless, anonymous person.

I remembered the once 7th-grade, braced-faced version of myself. There was a site called Omegle.com and my friends and I would go online (obviously not telling our parents) and would talk to people from all around the world. It was exhilarating, sometimes a bit too explicit, as you never knew what someone was going to say. However, once in a blue moon, you’d actually meet someone worthwhile.

Thus, this blog was created.

Now, meet Mina.

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I immediately remembered the stakes of Omegle after I hoped on.

There was the weird sex-ploy, with a beckoning call for a “good time.” There were the irrevocably lonely people who began a conversation with “ASL?” Which I looked up and found it to mean, “age, sex, and language.”

I was struggling; I wanted to find a way to filter out these types of bot’s and pedophile-esque internet surfers and actually meet someone with substance. I tried to coax a story out of a few people but was immediately shut down for coming on too strong. So, I then typed in one word into the “interests” section: conversation.

I was immediately greeted with a friendly hello, and a general inquisition about my day.

I remained careful this time, tapping into my small amount of journalistic knowledge, I tried to make the stranger feel comfortable, after all, we were alien to eachother and I was attempting to get them to confess (hopefully) a deep-dark secret, or some interesting story.

I know the flaws off my experiment; anyone that I talked to could be lying. Any age they proclaimed could be an exaggeration, as I know that when I went on the website as a middle-schooler, I always fibbed. However, I had faith in this stranger, for they seemed genuine, and just simply wanting a normal conversation.

I told this stranger I was doing a weird form of homework; A sort of investigative-type piece on how people communicate over social media. They then proceeded to ask me if this was an interview. In some ways, I said, it was. The stranger questioned with honest enthusiasm, “How can I help?”

The person’s name was Mina. Mina was a 22-year-old girl who was studying civil law at an university in Europe. The pursuit of law, Mina stated, came from a ceaseless passion for learning new ideas and perhaps a some-what flaw of stubbornness. Mina said, “You could guess I always need to be right.”

I tried to relate to Mina. I mentioned my similar tendency to argue and my own pursuits. I admitted I was thoroughly convinced I was going to be a singer up until like age 16, and then my dreams shifted gears when I realized my immense mediocrity. Our conversation then blossomed to the subject of how to address failure within our professional life and also our personal lives. We talked about failed relationships, or as Mina said, “titanic-level failures,” and our generations wacky values when it comes to said relationships.

Although Mina hadn’t disconnected from our conversation as others had when I started to pry; our discussion was primarily surface level. I wanted something deeper; I wanted something honest, something so unbelievably, unabashedly raw. Somehow, we ended up on the topic of insecurities. In order to cajole something worth-while out of Mina, I mentioned by insecurity of my weight. She finally then told me a story.

I was finally getting somewhere. Mina led me into this horrific scene that took place in her 11 x 16 dormitory. She began to explain her horror within the situation. Her roommate trying hopelessly to tell Mina she couldn’t breathe through elongated gasps while she was clutching her chest. She reacquainted her own terror of not knowing whether or not she needed to perform the heimlich maneuver or if she should wait and call for profesional help.

This was a very important subject to me, as I currently have a very close friend struggling with the same type of issue. This single stranger, however, comforted me. Told me everything would be ok. Giving me a basic step-by-step plan on how to combat this issue. With just the single interest of “conversation,” I was able to acquire not only an interesting tale, but also aiding advice from just a few words from a complete stranger.

After over two hours on a silly website, Mina and I parted. I thanked her for her time, and she told me that she appreciated the company on her random, lonely, sick day.

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I would wager that anyone taking apart in the Omegle stratosphere, is most likely, as brutal as it is to say, quite lonely. (Perhaps myself included?)

Sometimes, all we really need is just someone to listen. When talking to friends, however close we may be, certain feelings are just hard to express. When talking to a screen, it is easier to become painfully honest. The actuality of what we are saying isn’t registered, as we cannot see the physical being we are talking to. We feel a sense of freedom; a sense that no one is judging us and that if we speak, nay type, these fears and secrets into existence- perhaps a weight might be lifted off our shoulder.

With social media we can explore our weirdest interests, make Youtube videos showcasing our hidden talents, and most importantly, we possess the ability to find our own voice. Perhaps the one person that needs to hear that voice, is a 22-year old girl who lives just across the ocean.