I’m slogging through that awkward kinda-winter/kinda-spring phase when it’s cold outside but not cold enough to skate on outdoor hockey rinks, so my downtime is spend dicking around on Instagram in a sort of open-faced, melt-style rundown of various lunch-related videos. In desperate search of a distraction from the apotheosis of oligarchy, I begin with a bit of avant-gardism as I watch some tweaked-out TikToker construct an experimental hash brown and avocado double-down, then I speedrun through a hierarchy of Italian-style sandwiches. As I mainline the latter genre of food content, I confront the worrying extent to which Italian-American aesthetics do not necessarily guarantee a high-quality Italian-American sandwich experience, and that’s before pondering the lamentable extent to which dreary reactionary political signifiers in a deli DOES correlate with a high-quality sandwich experience. There is also an Italian chef from Montreal that I have an evolving and seemingly quite complex parasocial relationship with, and it began with a morbid obsession with his cream-sauch fetish; this will inevitably lead to a reservation at Resto Vivaldi.
A whole hour of this sort of thing is a lot, and it should be approached as an ambient experience. It’s sort of like Law & Order: SVU in that paying attention too closely will spoil the fun, and then you’ll suddenly find yourself invested in Ice-T disgustedly saying, “They found more semen over here” while Mariska Hargitay makes an indigestion face. For the past two days, I have had an image of a steak sandwich with chimichurri sauce on a Portuguese bun in my head. But my days are devoid of any greater meaning right now, so I return to my phone, disgusted that chopped sandwiches are still a thing and people hold their sandwiches to the camera and squeezing all the juices and sauces out of it and then wonder who finds this appetizing. Apparently, millions of people! And while I considered whether I’d eat an Italian-style sandwich from a place with a Blue Lives Matter decal on the front window, my sandwich binge experience was completely ruined by a flagrant assault of spam texts. They were mostly the DNC asking if I’d donate some money, presumably to help them fund all those goofy auction paddles they held up during the State of the Union.
Communicating on your iPhone has devolved into a ragged experience, as the amount of texts from five-digit phone numbers has gotten out of hand. These are texts made up of text-style things in roughly the same proportions that a hot dog is made up of ingredients that would be identifiably edible on their own, which is to say that it is almost but also not remotely an “actual text.” There is something kind of bracing about a notification breaking up the monotony of swiping through content slop, and then I have to text the word “STOP” to a different phone number every day.
It would be one thing for these texts to zip into my messages like an IV drip, but I am constantly typing “UNSUSCRIBE” to services that I don’t remember subscribing to, and it is all kinds of services. I could’ve ordered a coffee when I was in Manhattan three years ago, and I’m still getting reminders from the Cappuccino Club from Atomic Roasters Coffee Shop. I did not consent to this.
The second I hit Submit Order on a food app, my phone vibrates with updates about the status of my pesto chicken cutlet sandwich like I’m getting briefs from the Pentagon. Your delicious meal has been prepared. Happiness is on its way. It is two minutes from your door. Derek just arrived. I don’t need to be on a first-name basis with a delivery guy.
Gmail does two-factor authentication whenever I open the app, as if some scam artist is dying to know where I ordered a bouquet of white roses for Valentine’s Day. There are politicians I’ve never heard of panhandling me to chip in to what they call “the resistance,” written in a type of prose that could only be described as K-hole hypochondriac. It’s never-ending. There are all these thinkpieces about the loneliness epidemic, and maybe it’s because our message inbox is starting to resemble the Dead Internet Theory. Half of our recent texts are comprised of numbers that look like a bunch of random zip codes.
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Author: Sam Colt
Karen O’Blivious – Senior political correspondent who insists she’s neutral but only interviews people who agree with her.