Pearly Gates

Narcissus, resurrected in the 21st century. He wakes up, before anything, he checks his phone, how many likes does he have on the carefully positioned picture of his face, deliberately made to appear flawed, a few more likes added on the ones he recorded yesterday. He smiles, proceeds to scroll down his timeline, in yet another application, what fad has the internet provided for us to follow. None at the moment. Maybe about thirty minutes, still in bed, endlessly going back and forth between applications for gratification, every time, the demand grows.

Finally, he leaves his bed, to take a shower and start his day. The plan today; do some shopping, meet up with friends, go out to eat, watch a movie, and possibly spend the rest of the night turning up. Out of his house, he goes to the shop, hoping to find something he can afford, but also something that will make him look richer and better than he actually is. So he finds something he likes, unfortunately, he can't afford it, lest he resorts to starving himself for as long as it takes the next check to arrive. He goes by the changing room, takes a couple of shots, before taking it off, he takes another five minutes, looking for the right picture and right filter to maximise the number of likes he'll get. Posted! Relief, now let's see how many likes this'll bring. He drops backs the clothes, and proceeds to meet with his friends.

The restaurant, not overpriced, but not cheap either, somewhere in between, beautiful enough to make the pictures look posh, as imagined by them. Twenty minutes they've sat, yet not one person knows what to order. All this time, everyone is texting, tweeting or sending stories on snapchat, indirectly telling their other family and friends how much better their lives are and intentionally but subliminally reminding these people of how much fun they are missing out on. Well, finally, they phone tapping is done, and they order. In that time, well, more pictures are taken, girls sucking in their cheeks to have a well defined cheekbone for the pictures, guys pretending to not know a picture is being taken. Knowing fully well they'll request and post it up later, with the most cliché tagline imaginable.

Food comes, but more pictures. They have to remind everyone, yet again, of how beautiful this food is, food eaten by hundreds of people everyday. Finally, they begin to eat. Done, they go out, head to the cinema. More pictures of course, stories and tweets about how much fun they are having. Mr. Narcissus, perhaps out of spite, changes his profile picture to that of him and one of the prettiest ladies of the bunch, in hope of getting the attention of someone who does not seem to show as much interest as he hopes.

The film is done, he writes a mini review on twitter. Every minute checking for a reply or a retweet, who else is on the fifty shades bandwagon, in his mind he asks, he needs some sort of approval. He needs to know he's not alone. Finally, a retweet, two and three, a reply and finally, his heart falls back in place, a few more minutes without response, he would have coughed his heart out.

The turn up, according to his snapchat and twitter, is banging, in his exact literature. But still, in his enjoyment, so to speak, he finds enough time to take out his phone and share the moment with the virtual world. After the party, he is back home, where it's just him, his space and his smartphone.

His online persona on twitter is that of a political analyst and activist, even though he has no qualification to support his image, on instagram, he is a lover of art and all things natural, on snapchat, he is a fun loving people's person. But today, twitter seems to be popping more than the others so there he resides.

Talking about something with so much passion, often neglecting logic or reason, or even the consequences of the words he posts. Every post carefully written and published to trigger a certain response, for better or for worse. His opinions, not necessarily informed by fact, are strong, yet he refuses to agree or even acknowledge the opinion of others. Every time he talks, he has a follow up that is made to look like he could care less, in reality, all he is doing is compensating for his uncontrollable craving for approval. He has had twitter for a while now, well over a thousand followers, so he feels important. Better than the peasants with barely a hundred.

For the person he's put himself to be, it is shocking that he cannot seem to disagree with counter-arguments in peace, he must resort to name calling. He has been spoilt, he has a bunch of followers that take the title of yes-men, so he has convinced himself that he knows all, and thus can never be wrong. Now the leaders of twitter are critically discussing an issue they ironically know so little about, and as a curator of the twitter virtual space, he joins the conversation. Every tweet, carefully done, again to trigger response. This tweet in particular must have been too intelligent, by twitter world's standard, because he has over twenty retweets and a lot of comments that go along the lines of "gbam" "so true" "i love your tweets" all which he retweets to not only remind others that he indeed is right, but also to remind himself that there are people as clueless as he is.

Before he sleeps, he found a picture of one of his most expensive shoes he's bought, he had quite a day on twitter, people on his snap seem to be asleep, so, he carefully positions his shoes, poses from a good angle to get a fine picture. And he is off to instagram where he keeps this picture; an inspirational quote with a few more hashtags to secure some extra likes, heck if he is lucky, he'll make it to one of these vanity celebration pages. Again, minute by minute he goes back, ten likes here, five likes there, before he drops his phone to sleep, he must have received well over a hundred. He smiles, in his head, he thinks, more of that tomorrow. And he sleeps.

This is his life everyday. The doctor says it's a sickness, but by the world's standards, it's okay because everyone is doing it too. He does not care, it makes him happy, and that is what is important; to be happy. The joy he gets from all this, is the same as a righteous man would upon setting sight on the Pearly Gates.

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